I think that blink drives are a great idea. Love the fact that you're still adding exciting new mechanics.
Walt But you can't just hop anywhere: The distance you can hop depends on your FTL efficiency, with greater efficiencies meaning you can hop farther.
Personally, I'd do the opposite to this, and make short jumps harder than longer jumps. This is for two reasons:
Firstly - From a lore PoV jump drives are powerful devices designed to carry ships to different star systems, so using them for short hops should be difficult (and dangerous) to do. Think of it like using a solid rocket booster to get to the corner shops. Yes, it will be fast, but that's not the problem.
Secondly - Short jumps are tactically more important than longer jumps IMO. Short jumps would be used for getting into/out of combat quickly, for delivering and avoiding alpha strikes, for protecting damaged areas on your ship, and for bringing different weapons arcs into range quickly. Longer jumps are useful for kiting and getting out of no-win situations temporarily.
How could blink drives work if shorter jumps are harder to do?
I'd begin by setting the standard jump at something like 800m, basically, a nice long distance that will get you away from combat but not out of arena completely. This sort of distance is ok for getting into or out of combat fast, but of no use for manoeuvring when in combat. From a lore PoV, this standard jump range is justified by arguing that the jump computers have a hardwired program, that cannot be altered or reprogrammed without a massive loss in efficiency.
Adding extra drives and increasing jump efficiency would increase and decrease the possible range of the jump (Hard limit?) so something like:
150% efficiency would be +/- 400m range (Min jump 400m, Max jump 1200m)
200% efficiency would be +/- 600m range (Min jump 200m, Max jump 1400m)
250% efficiency would be +/- 700m range (Min jump 100m, Max jump 1500m)
300% efficiency would be +/- 750m range (Min jump 50m, Max jump 1550m)
350% efficiency would be +/- 775m range (Min jump 25m, Max jump 1575m)
400% efficiency would be +/- 788m range (Min jump 13m, Max jump 1587m)
I'm not sure if the jump efficiency can go this high or if ranges given are appropriate. But, scaling values with jump efficiency are the goal, and with this system Jump ranges of 0 or 2xstandard range are the outside limits that will never be reached even with infinite jump efficiency.
More values with the same system to give a better idea of whats happening
113% efficiency would be +/- 100m range (Min jump 700m, Max jump 900m)
125% efficiency would be +/- 200m range (Min jump 600m, Max jump 1000m)
138% efficiency would be +/- 200m range (Min jump 500m, Max jump 1100m)
150% efficiency would be +/- 400m range (Min jump 400m, Max jump 1200m)
175% efficiency would be +/- 500m range (Min jump 300m, Max jump 1300m)
200% efficiency would be +/- 600m range (Min jump 200m, Max jump 1400m)
250% efficiency would be +/- 700m range (Min jump 100m, Max jump 1500m)
300% efficiency would be +/- 750m range (Min jump 50m, Max jump 1550m)
350% efficiency would be +/- 775m range (Min jump 25m, Max jump 1575m)
400% efficiency would be +/- 788m range (Min jump 13m, Max jump 1587m)
Hard vs Soft limit
I think I'd favour a hard limit on these ranges, simply because it would be easier to use in practice without worrying about going under or over your range limit and causing damage. But I can understand the argument for a soft limit that would limit the extremes of some kiters if soft limits were used, I'd still set the min max range as 0/2x standard with damage approaching 100% the closer a ship gets to these, whatever its base ability.
Velocity after blink
One other thing I'd include is a limit to velocity after using a blink. Again this can be argued a limit introduced by the hardwired blink process. Again this would stop the extremes of kiters, but it would also make add a balance to blink/engines, a kiter with high-efficiency blink may still be vulnerable to very fast ships and vicer versa. It would also put a limit to the extremes of fast attack ships, so you've got the options of blink vs manoeuvrability vs speed, rather than making blink ships automatically better than fast or manoeuvrable ships. Finally, limiting post-blink velocity will stop ramming exploits. Without a blink velocity limit, it will be easy to make a fast ship that blinks past weapons range to ram ships. A ship may not ram an opponent when it blinks, but if it keeps its velocity it will be easy to aim a rammer at targets and blink in just next to them.
I can see this as being something of an exploit.
Apologies for the info dump. This is a realy cool topic that just got me thinking.
