Player Features and Ideas Discussion

In my effort to think of how the game can be improved upon its design and appeal to all players, I decided to put my attention to the aspect of traveling through the numerous systems of Eve.

As of now, there are only two methods of traveling between systems. Star Gates, and Jumping. Both instantaneous methods of travel that would take years to travel at the speed of light.

Here's a little science and math.

Now we know that based on human measurements, Earth being 1 AU (about 93 million miles [149,597,870 km]) from Sol, our local star, light takes 7 minutes to travel before it reaches our planet.

Ships such as frigates in Eve are traveling at speeds such as 6 AU per second. Approximately 558,000,000 Miles (897,587,220 km) per second.

The speed of light is about 186,282 miles per second.

A light year (the distance light takes to travel over one year) is about 63,240 AU. I'll save you the extra numbers and be brief)

Star systems are about 1.8 - 5+ light years in distance.

A frigate wanting to travel just 1 light year would take about three hours. This obviously wouldn't be acceptable to a player as no one would want to sit in warp for three hours.

My suggestion: I want to see how implementing trans-system warping could work out. Here is a mechanic.

Star Gates provide instant travel between systems: The luxury / reward
With an established point of entry and exit with Star Gates, hostiles in gate camps can effectively cut off travel: The risk

Much of the design of Eve with High Risk-High Reward, this idea should be propelled in the sense that if the player wants to give up the luxury of instant travel, they eliminate the risk of hostiles and gate camps.

Edit*- Perhaps not eliminate the risk, but reduce, giving pilots a better fighting chance at surviving through a blockade.

The response to the problem of a three hour plus warp...
Players who wish to engage in these extended warps will require a modification to their ships engine, a module (Low, Medium, High,) that will increase the speed of their ship's warp.
For the sake of the player, but to appeal to game balance, certain penalties should be in effect like the Micro-Warp Drive does with its Capacitor and Signature Radius bonuses.

For a ship to travel from one system to another, I figured that warping between the two systems should take about 15 minutes, maybe more or less? The deal with a trans-system warp is, in order to travel a distance of let's say 3 light years in 15 minutes, a ship's warp would have to be a little over a staggering 200 AU / second.

The power to reach... and maintain this speed... would be immense. But it's science fiction, anything is possible.

There would have to be a lot of thought, more than what I've contrived here, to make a balanced implementation of this.
How can we implement this type of travel and still maintain the need for gate-camps, create runways for long warp or use of a cyno? Balance, it's so important.

Purely from a game-design perspective, I think this could work. For the sake of lore in the Eve universe, I'm unsure how "science" could explain an increase of speed to 200 AU/second.

I personally love traveling in the game of Eve, watching the blue and red shift around the ship as I casually pass by a star. To watch the nebulae grow and shrink into the distance would truly bring about a sense of awe in me.

Does this have potential? Ideas welcomed.
An infographic on Long Distance Warp Mechanics

I do like this idea, it is one of the better long warp Ideas Ive seen on this forum. Essentially you are balancing things up whilst giving both parties (Campers and travelers) a choice of path. This adds to the whole sandbox mentality of eve, your choices have consequences

I would support this kind of change

I like the disturbed gravity well idea. It would definitely increase the need for probers and maintain the need for gate camps, rather system camps. Would that gravity well be exact or be a random spot in the system?

This idea has been posted and shot down numerous times in various incarnations. The most recent one spawned a hilarious discussion of capital (namely triage) mechanics, hosted by a guy who wouldn't know how undock, nevermind operate, a capital ship even if he did manage to get a hold of one.

The problem with this idea is that it completely removes the choke points that stargates provide. While titans enable people to do this already, it does require a fair amount of planning and getting 200 clueless drake pilots to navigate a menu without shooting each other. (it also provides the potential lulz of the titan having a "derp" moment and activating his own jump drive instead of the jump portal)

Hey there. It's a good idea, in theory, but would need a little more to it than what you've stated.

What about a mid slot module that is essentially a hyper drive? Now, I've been thinking about this myself, and I could see it working like this:

The difference between Warp Drive and Hyper Drive is that Warp engines operate on acceleration of the entire ship in regular space, making them travel at immense speeds faster than light. Hyper Drives, on the other hand, operate on a principle of opening up two windows in subspace and moving the windows between origin and destination points closer together in subspace, and then accelerating the ship into the subspace window. By closer, I mean a LOT closer, but travel in hyperspace isn't instantaneous, nor is it infallible.

Hyper Drive engines would require a massive amount of capacitor to maintain a stable subspace window, so obviously, the smaller the ship, the lower the range given capacitor limitations. Also, Hyper Drive engines would work on a similar principle to Jump Drives, and would still need some sort of destination solution in order achieve and maintain a stable hyper drive window. Also, Hyper Drives would still be effected by Cynosural Jamming arrays due to the fact that the jamming arrays work on a principle of disrupting all ships in its vicinity to lock on to the destination solution of cynosural beacons, or the ability to create a destination solution for their hyper drive.

Long story short, Hyper Drives would serve as gateless inter-system travel that would still have limitations and would also take time to move from system to system.

Yesss.


+1 from me !

Choke points aren't that great either to be blunt. Some points of 0.0 are dead-easy to defend just because there is pretty much only one way to enter. Might as well say that it is a carebear haven because one can easily defend any visitor slowboating in.

One must keep in mind that you cannot come with the I live the rough life of eve and I'm a tough pvper, yet have a simple and easy door to defend anybody who even dares to warp2zero on that gate.

I know there is cyno and people who can attempt to visit, but not everybody, especially roaming small gangs, have Titan/Blackops. And this is possibly the reason why the OP is suggestion an alternate propulsion system.

I'm certain there is a way so that it is not that efficient.
For instance, say if there is a huge SOV-alliance, you should be able to indirectly-hyperjump to one the bordering SOV systems rather than a random star deep in the heart of this Alliance.

To possibly add to this suggestion:
Aside to POS modules detecting "hyper jump/gravimetric anomalies", the defending alliance could maybe have those player-owned PI custom offices have additional stellar sensory to detect them. Perhaps the "Remote Sensing" (PI skill) could be of any use here.
Herp-derp - one could have PI modules/structures feature some orbital "Hubble" satellites to detect those anomalies.

As one propose, that unknown gravity well should randomly be placed in the star system and it shouldn't be all too easy to probe out, meaning you need the probing experts who actually skill things through and not those who just skill to level2.

Lastly, the Deep Space Scan Probe with the 256 AU or so radius - I forgot the name - could be more of a use here.

This idea is intriguing, so how about adding a new galaxy to explore, a single jump gate to a concord controlled system, then all other jumps from there are via this method, and you can then introduce

Gate Building Ships.
Like a Pos but you can then make your own systems and build your own connections and it would truly be completely new and exciting, like WH space but better.

Think you could have whole alliances leaving by this single gate, manually jumping to a new system then building a gate out from there. so their "network" is not connected to the rest of the universe and needs this module to get there. - until someone else comes in and links up to their network, gates able to be destroyed etc.

That would definately be Eve 2

Edit : - hey even allow everything to be player made in the new galaxy so customs offices, stations etc, wouldnt that make it more interesting when you even have to make the gates for use....

Babylon 5 jumpgate technology; you fly "into" warp-space, where you're travelling at unimaginably vast speeds, and exit out of a jumpgate. Similar to what we have now, but *not* instantaneous. This is precisely what would work for the whole "explaining away 200AU/s :)