Walt
The premise seems all good to me. Whether it will be tactically useful will come down to just how quick the charge-up is and how far you can jump, which can be modified in balancing. I'm glad you made rotation non-fixed. When I saw 'work like regular FTL jump' I thought you were going to make the jumper have to align for the jump (ew!). This will make it so you will probably also want your jumper to be maneuverable, rotation-wise.
My one complaint is that Tactical Jump Drive is a bit of a mouthful. I much prefer Blink Drive.
Dibs 2. It needs ACTIVE counter play. If you want the TJD to be effective and fun without being OP by not being countered or, conversely underpowered by any passive lockdown counter, any device designed to counter the TJD should be a button actively pressed by the countering opponent.
I actually agree with this even though I was the one who suggested that tractor beams counter it. It can't be passively countered by a relatively cheap and ubiquitous part. But perhaps tractor beams could reduce TJD efficiency by a small but significant amount, making it so that a TJD ship with multiple tractors targeting it would have a greatly shortened jump range. It wouldn't be a hard counter, it would be a soft counter.
As for an active hard counter - earlier I mentioned the idea for a jammer part to counter large missile salvos. When active it makes incoming missiles unguided. Walt suggested that jamming could be an alternate usage of the sensor array. Maybe the jamming could also disrupt TJD, completely inhibiting any jumping within about EB range while active? Or it could be targeted jamming, only affecting the ship you have targeted. The idea is that it disrupts TJD targeting/nav systems.
Lafiel a large electrobolt weapon could for example temporarily disrupt it.
This brings up an interesting question: If just one of the TJD parts is under fire from a power-draining weapon such as EB or EM missiles and is unable to achieve the necessary charge for a jump, will the jumper be unable to jump? Or will the jump efficiency just be diminished?
Dibs maybe have the possibility of randomised fires emerging from the module as well when used
I agree - the fire aspect is good. Fires need to be more relevant. I say make the TJD both cause fires in its room and take damage if you jump too far. The fires should be based on probability which increases with distance beyond safe maximums, and the part damage should be proportional based on distance. So you would always take part damage when jumping beyond max safe range, but fires would only have a chance of appearing.
Examples:
•At 10% beyond safe max range, each TJD tile has a 10% chance to catch fire. So you might only get a single fire sprite in each of your TDJ drives or you might get no fires at all). Your TJD parts take only 5% damage.
•At 50% beyond safe max, the fire chance is 50%. You might get a couple fires per TJD room. Your TJD parts take significant damage (like 25% of part max health).
•At 100% beyond safe max (double safe jump range), the fire chance is 100%, so every TJD tile catches fire. Your TJD parts take 50% damage.
Elethio If TJD's use mass in their efficiency calculation, perhaps Tractor beams could add more "mass" to the equation.
Yes, this was something we discussed in the tractor beam thread. I agree, tractor beams should just reduce TJD efficiency. A mass increase is a good way to do that, but it has the added effect of making ships slower and less maneuverable when targeted by tractor beams. That might be a good thing, or it might be something that Walt doesn't want to do with TBs. Would TBs actually pull a target slower if multiple beams were locked on, since the target has much more mass now? If TBs add mass, then it should probably be a flat mass increase per beam to the target, not a percentage increase.
Elethio When jumping, do you go for maximum range? or for a shorter jump, giving you a better safety margin in case of tractor beams?
I would think that if you're being tractored, your jump efficiency indicators would show it. But then of course you might start to be tractored only after you have activated TJD.
