Getting Rid Of The Wait

[kiiyo]

As of right now, Starbase (outside of the SSC) largely consists of waiting. A lot of waiting. Summoning the gods of waiting won’t even help here, there’s so much wait to absorb in our economically and spatially overinflated asteroid belt. Getting to a decent distance into the ‘roid field takes about an hour on an average freighter, then about 45 minutes of gameplay as you fill up your ship (Done by holding right click and moving your mouse around in small circles), and then you wait ~150% of the amount of time it took you to get to the mining spot in the first place, since your ship’s tummy is now full, and it now slowly lumbers back like you roll back home after a good visit to a donut shop. In general, we end up with a ratio of gameplay:elevator of about 1:2, sometimes 1:3 if the trip is far and the ship is small. And, during this time, players don’t really engage with the game much. It’s boring to stare at your screen, and in the age of technology, it’s extremely easy to quelch boredom by flooding your head with useless information, drowning out any useful thought or creativity. So, during flight players do exactly that. Youtube, Reddit, Discord, Crunchyroll, and other sites I dare not speak the name of on our christian forum - all of them are frequently visited while piloting, since to fly in Starbase, you only really need to glance back to the screen every 30 seconds or so for a single moment, tap a couple keys if there is an asteroid, and go back to washing away at your brain with yet another vtuber clip.

So, we’d like to make travelling between A and B less boring. There are two ways we can do this: Shorten the time it takes to travel the distance, therefore giving the players less time to watch a cat(fox)girl singing Scatman, or make the game more interesting to play while in transit, but leaving the time to travel the same.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Shortening The Trip

There are generally 2 ways to make the time it takes for you to get from A to B shorter. One way is to shorten the distance between the two; With less flying, there is less waiting. It’s that simple. The other way is to speed up the object, in our case the spaceship, that is travelling from A to B, therefore shortening the time it takes to get from one place to another. I believe the first is quite unrealistic: We’re effectively asking the devs to rebuild practically the whole universe to a new scale, and if that’s going to lead to anything, it’ll be half the dev team quitting. So, let me elaborate a little on the second solution!

--------- Speedening Up

The first and most obvious way of giving the players more speed is moving the speed cap higher, or hell - even removing it completely. However, this has not yet been done by the devs, so there must be a reason behind it. I asked around for the reasons behind this, and the answers I got were either fairly abstract or dangerously close to calculus/dark magic territory, but it can be summarised in a simple if condition, presented in our favorite language of YOLOL:

If :shipSpeed>150 then :WackyThingsHappen = 1 else goto 1 end

As we can see above, going above 150 m/s isn’t really recommended, and because of this we are capped under that speed. Something to do with it being hard to synchronise vectors of multiple fast-moving objects while retaining the physics simulations.
That is if you try to re-render ships moving above 150m/s to form smooth movement.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: The Pulse Drive!
What is the Pulse Drive, you may ask? Well, it is a way for ships to move faster than 150m/s. Maybe. I’m not employed at FB, I haven’t seen the code. But, hear me out.
If re-drawing fast-moving ships is the issue, it is still possible to do fast movement, just with the ships being rendered way less. Let me explain how that would work.

You, as the pilot, enable your Pulse Drive. The space in front of you is distorted a little via some fanceh VFX, and the next thing you see is your ship has moved some 800m to the front. The drive immediately spools for a couple seconds before the next hop, and you continue on your way. On a code level, it would work this way:

- The player’s ship’s position is taken.
- From that position, a ray is cast forward according to the FCU.
- If that ray hits anything, the position of the hit is marked.
- The ship is warped to its destination; That being the max range of the drive, or the place where it registered a hit.
- Another trace is done, and the cycle is repeated.

This would allow some interesting counterplay and/or interaction between warping players and those who don’t want them to warp: for example, if you see someone has jumped, you can shoot where you predict their next jump will happen, and the enemy will appear right inside of your bullets, since the cast ray will collide and the destination will be cut short of the max range. This would solidify the drive’s purpose as a travel tool and not a “Oh no quevin is here better gtfo” button.

When implemented, a whole bunch of stuff can be done with this. It might eat some sort of special fuel made of xhalium and the condensed soul of an SSC dweller, therefore increasing the hunt for that material; It might use the modular system the generators have, therefore allowing players to tweak how far each hop is, and how many hops they can make before overheating or whatever; These are all tools to balance the thing in a gameplay sense, and I’m not here for that. I am merely proposing it as a solution.

--------Making It More Fun

But maybe even the Pulse Drive doesn’t solve the technical issues between faster travel, and that alley is closed off. In that case, we can make it more entertaining to travel, therefore keeping us players at our desks instead of going off and making some tea or whatever (I know multiple of you who make sandwiches while in flight, don’t try to hide).

Well, there are a whole bunch of ways to do this; It’s up to FB what they do. Here are some examples I thought up of, but the list doesn’t end here.

• Some sort of board game
• • Pip-gi-oh or something along those lines would make for a neat side game for the players to enjoy and compete at while flying on their way to kidnap some asteroid and smelt it for profit. Could be housed in the Universal Tool
• Global Chat
• • Talking with people is also a form of entertainment; A global chat might be handy for the players, but moderation for it would be needed since it’ll just get flooded with faction ads. And russians screaming insults at eachother.
• Non-mandatory smallwork
• • Having to clean the insides of your thrusters, wipe the dust off your YOLOL chips, or brush up the connections on the propellant tanks will both encourage innovative design (in ways that make components reachable while flying, instead of tucking them in somewhere they will never see the sunlight ever again), and give the players something to do - I think what’s important here is that components that aren’t tended to won’t eventually break or just die on you randomly, but instead components that, figuratively or literally, eat all their veggies and get daily headpats perform slightly better than regular ones. Factions that care about minmaxing performance will of course use this system, while players that still would like to insist on making tea (brits these days smh) are free to do so.

Conclusion
At the end of the day, it’s not even my decision. I made this proposal in order to try to make the game more fun and enjoyable for everyone, and I think on a corporate level players that engage with your game more are a bit more useful than those that simply have it on the “always running” prog list, alongside Discord and Spoopify. But, I don’t think this post is perfect. Not at all. If you have any suggestions or corrections, please tell me and I’ll do my best to edit the post in accordance. Thank you for reading.

Cave Jo- kiiyo,
We’re done here.

 

[Ranzeth]

Adding minor wear and tear to your armor and plates, so that you fix it while traveling would be an idea.

I like both concepts. Having played DU where they had travel time of 3 plus hours, I agree- there should be something to do to go faster or occupy your time so you don't sleep at the wheel.

Love how you identified a painpoint and took the time to come up with solutions. Keep up the great work.

 

[Amos.37]

The travel time and waiting is certainly an issue at the moment.
However, it's also a huge balancing act. Space is big, and the way to convey this is that it gets a long time to get anywhere. Cool, but not the most riveting gameplay. But if travel becomes too easy, or if the size of the universe is scaled back, then the sense of scale goes with it.
The distance between points of interest also adds incentive to build better, faster and more fuel efficient ships, which is great. But at this point there's not really all that much optimising that can be done. And the speed hard cap makes it impossible after a point.

The warp gates allow some level of solution, cutting travel time between really far away locations (takes literal hours to reach the nearest moon normally) but doesn't address the issue you've raised here. That travel to and from even comparatively nearby POIs takes a really long time, and that isn't very conducive to fun gameplay.

The 2 main solutions I've read in the forum are:
- Ship mounted warp drives of some description (similar to what you've suggested, which is a neat and very creative idea for how to implement, although I worry that such a system, while maybe great for a single player in an area, would cause havoc on the p2p system when multiple players are near each other).
- Scaled down warp gates (think trade lanes and warp gates in Freelancer, trade lanes for quick movement within a system, warp gates for travelling the distances between systems).

Because the scaled down warp gates idea uses the same premise as the existing warp gates, I would hope that it might be easier to implement, but I'm no programmer, so really that's a question for the devs.

Personally I lean more towards the scaled down warp gates. A form of smaller, easier to build but less effective warp gates that can be built between relatively close POIs (like 50-1000km distance).
For huge distances, the current warp gates remain, but are super expensive to build and/or maintain.
For intermediate distances, have smaller, less effective but cheaper to build and/or maintain gates.
I don't know the exact figures for the warp gate, but for example, if the full size warp gate makes you go 20x faster, the smaller gate only makes you go 5x or 10x faster.

Factions will likely spring up around the charting of routes, building of trade lanes, patrolling of the most prominent trade lanes (for security or for pirating), and so on.

If players or a faction find a valuable POI that they don't want others to know about, they may choose to simply not build any trade lanes to keep the location hidden, or try and build private lanes that other players don't know about if the faction has enough resources.

I'm hesitant regarding the whole, 'make travel fun by adding more tasks to do on the ship mid-flight,' because the tasks could very easily become tedious and annoying, creating a new problem to address. I'm sure it could be done, but I think it is the sort of thing that could backfire easily by being frustrating if not done just right.

 

[kiiyo]

- Scaled down warp gates (think trade lanes and warp gates in Freelancer, trade lanes for quick movement within a system, warp gates for travelling the distances between systems).

The issue with warp gates, and the reason I did not propose them for this purpose, is that they are stationary. Stationary, which means you might as well say "grindy as god knows what" and "extremely hard to build with anything less than a Collective-sized faction". Even a station without a gate requires multiple thousand stacks of ore, and I would assume adding a gate onto that bugger will cost you even more sanity (and free time). Therefore, I think that even a lite version of the gates will not result in a dense enough network in most areas of space as to allow for easy and non-boring navigation.

- Ship mounted warp drives of some description (similar to what you've suggested, which is a neat and very creative idea for how to implement, although I worry that such a system, while maybe great for a single player in an area, would cause havoc on the p2p system when multiple players are near each other).

Drives that speed up the ships are the issue, as far as I can understand. I attempted to fix that by having the ship be stationary during warp, and it is only the calculations that are ran to move it forward in hops. If this can be implemented, I believe the game will be a bit more fun, since you get more parts to mess with and you fly for less time with nothing to do inbetween.

I'm hesitant regarding the whole, 'make travel fun by adding more tasks to do on the ship mid-flight,' because the tasks could very easily become tedious and annoying, creating a new problem to address. I'm sure it could be done, but I think it is the sort of thing that could backfire easily by being frustrating if not done just right.

This is a fair point, but I think that if the maintenance buffs the components rather than degrading them, if a player thinks they are tedious they still have the option of skipping out on it. Although I can see how a whole majority of the gaming community will ignore that fact and go "why are the devs forcing us to do this tedious work mid-flight", so this is a controversial thing to implement.

 

[XenoCow]

- Ship mounted warp drives of some description (similar to what you've suggested, which is a neat and very creative idea for how to implement, although I worry that such a system, while maybe great for a single player in an area, would cause havoc on the p2p system when multiple players are near each other).

Premise:
I'm thinking about how to properly have personal warp drives that:

1. Allow interesting travel
2. Don't break the speed limits
3. Allow for piracy

The Basics of Solution:
One idea I have to address those points is "Beam Warp." Beam Warp steps:

1. Warp drive spools longer dependent on distance and drive capabilities
2. When engaged, a beam is cast out from the ship all the way to the destination (only checking for things in the ray path and that there is enough room at the destination for the ship
3. The ship is converted into a non-physical object and sent along the path
4. The ship / crew are loaded into a pocket level that consists only of the ship and cool warp effects
5. After some time dependent on the drive etc. etc., the ship arrives and loads in at the destination.

Details:
The beam would have an effect that shows the direction the ship will be traveling in and there could be a hologram of the ship at the end so that other players know how far to stay away from the endpoint. Either by getting in the way of the path or by some device, ships could be pulled out of the warp stream prematurely for the purposes of security checks or piracy. Lastly, the ship could be shown to travel along the beam with an effect, but no physics would be calculated on that effect.

Further Considerations:

• Warp drives could be something that takes large ships to manage the power for. Thus, the role of ferry will be actualized.
• Instead of having to dock ships to the ferry, potentially a field could be created to allow many ships to travel along one beam. This would make escorts much easier to bring along.
• Although the ship would be unloaded from the game during flight, the pilot or crew could still interact in the warp dimension.
  • This could also lead to encounters in the warp if desired.
• To keep with the physical nature and hands-on approach that Starbase has, the drive could have to be aimed manually (or by YOLOL).
• Travel through the belt might be difficult since there are many things to bump into, but I could see this being used to travel along the outskirts and then flying in and out as normal into the deeper parts.

What do you all think about this? I think it ticks most of the boxes. Shrinking of the universe is potentially the only problem, but as long as the warp drives are expensive enough that most ships can't carry them, but cheap enough that it is a profitable business venture, then I think this could work.

 

[dusty]

I'm of mixed opinion on it, but I think if there needs to be a warp drive of some kind, then it should be of a similar concept to things like Slipspace from Halo. Rather than visibly hopping around the regular universe, ships would open a temporary portal to an alternate dimension inside of which X distance corresponds to X*Y distance in the normal universe; for example, each meter of travel in the warp space corresponds to ten meters in the normal universe. Some safeguards would be needed to prevent ships from exiting the warp dimension while clipping inside stations, ships, or rocks (or maybe not, and some kind of beacon would be necessary to indicate an area that is safe to exit inside of) and the warp space itself would be dangerous to travel inside of owing to environmental hazards and pirates.

 

[kiiyo]

I'm of mixed opinion on it, but I think if there needs to be a warp drive of some kind, then it should be of a similar concept to things like Slipspace from Halo. Rather than visibly hopping around the regular universe, ships would open a temporary portal to an alternate dimension inside of which X distance corresponds to X*Y distance in the normal universe; for example, each meter of travel in the warp space corresponds to ten meters in the normal universe. Some safeguards would be needed to prevent ships from exiting the warp dimension while clipping inside stations, ships, or rocks (or maybe not, and some kind of beacon would be necessary to indicate an area that is safe to exit inside of) and the warp space itself would be dangerous to travel inside of owing to environmental hazards and pirates.

I really like this idea! Kind of like the nether in Minecraft.

 

[Cavilier210]

I'm of mixed opinion on it, but I think if there needs to be a warp drive of some kind, then it should be of a similar concept to things like Slipspace from Halo. Rather than visibly hopping around the regular universe, ships would open a temporary portal to an alternate dimension inside of which X distance corresponds to X*Y distance in the normal universe; for example, each meter of travel in the warp space corresponds to ten meters in the normal universe. Some safeguards would be needed to prevent ships from exiting the warp dimension while clipping inside stations, ships, or rocks (or maybe not, and some kind of beacon would be necessary to indicate an area that is safe to exit inside of) and the warp space itself would be dangerous to travel inside of owing to environmental hazards and pirates.

My problem with this is that interdiction is even more complicated by such a secondary layer of the game world, and splits dev attention between two game worlds.

 

[dusty]

I don't think it would necessarily be so complex that their attention would be split like that. Hazards in that dimension would probably run on the same tech that they're planning for nebulae, etcetera, and you could perhaps mitigate the issue entirely by limiting the time that a player can actually stay inside the dimension - either an artificial limit (booo), or something like plate erosion (or some other status effect) over time. As for interdiction, that may actually be easier: while ships would be vulnerable for a shorter period of time, you could increase the render distance (since there wouldn't need to be any asteroids) and adjust the environment's visuals to make ships more readily apparent.

 

[kiiyo]

I don't think it would necessarily be so complex that their attention would be split like that. Hazards in that dimension would probably run on the same tech that they're planning for nebulae, etcetera, and you could perhaps mitigate the issue entirely by limiting the time that a player can actually stay inside the dimension - either an artificial limit (booo), or something like plate erosion (or some other status effect) over time. As for interdiction, that may actually be easier: while ships would be vulnerable for a shorter period of time, you could increase the render distance (since there wouldn't need to be any asteroids) and adjust the environment's visuals to make ships more readily apparent.

Ooh this alternate dimension seems more and more fun the more I think about it. You could have the drives still be modular, and perhaps they would draw a ton more energy if you wanted to transition between dimensions at speeds faster than say a minute per hop. If that's the case you could have chases like...

"They're still on our tail, captain!"
"Spool the drive, we'll lose them in the transitions. Few ships rival our transitioning speed around here."

And the small and nimble pirate ship swoops into the red-colored, cloudy dimension, only to hop out of it a little while later - but that's enough to bait the cruiser that was chasing them into switching planes, and the pirates make their getaway while the crew of the cruiser angrily attempts to speed up the speed of their drive spool...

Sorry, got off track there.

Anyway, this idea has a whole bunch of potential. Both for writing silly stories and for gameplay situations.

 

[Lukas04]

I really like the idea of a seperate dimension you can warp in to that is pretty much empty, in wich the distance in it is way lower than in the real dimension, similar as mentioned here before with Minecraft and other Sci-Fi travel types. Using the Space Fog to add some Hazards would definitly be nice for this.
Additionaly this would be a great place for piracy, since the distances are way smaller in this universe, it would be way easier for pirates to spot someone there, so entering that universe has an inherint risk to it.

Also the amount of Propellant needed in that dimension could be multiplied by the amount it would take to cross the distance in the real universe. This way the amount of resources you need to get somewhere through this method of travel would stay balanced to the normal universe, so you cant just warp to the moon without a ton of propellant, wich would also give other warp types a reason to exist, so the gates would be a free way to move once they are build.

I dont think this would need that much work on it, instancing the ships and players to another dimension is probably the most difficult part to code seamlessly. The Universe itself would just need some kind of filter to change its color up a bit and placeholders for planetery objects.

 

[XenoCow]

I feel like there are a couple problems that would need to addressed about the alternate dimension warp:

• If the goal is to remove time spent doing boring travel, isn't it antithetical to create a boring dimension with nothing at all in it to travel in? At least there is the chance of encounter or finding wrecks and asteroids in the normal universe.
• This may apply to all warp travel, but does making travel faster actually help lessen wait times? I'm thinking about the case of automobiles. Before them people worked only in their own town or city, afterwards people will drive miles and miles to their job. I worry that any faster travel will just give people license to travel farther, rather than travel the same distance faster.

 

[dusty]

It'd be a slightly less populated dimension for sure, but I don't think it'd necessarily be boring. It seems viable for there to be enough environmental hazards and piracy to make it interesting - but realistically, you'd hopefully not be spending hours in it. I'd guess it could be made to pair with the existing warp gates: the alternate dimension for more specific and local travel, and gates for getting to far away places like the moon.

In either case, just spitballing. I don't even know if I think it's necessary just yet

 

[Cavilier210]

It really is about traveling farther, and will dilute players pretty rapidly. Things to do on the ships during travel should be a priority over making faster travel.

 

[CalenLoki]

Carriers (single pilot for multiple ships and people) + ship-based SSC. And no travel is too long!

Also ability to transport offline people (bodies should stay in universe outside stations!) And switching bodies at will (i.e. between different stations).

Those would remove wait, at least for personal transformation.
And when you're transporting something, IMO you should stay in universe and spend time proportional to distance.

Fast travel as a way to avoid combat (important part of the game!) Is even bigger no-no.

This may apply to all warp travel, but does making travel faster actually help lessen wait times? I'm thinking about the case of automobiles. Before them people worked only in their own town or city, afterwards people will drive miles and miles to their job. I worry that any faster travel will just give people license to travel farther, rather than travel the same distance faster.

That makes all fast travel irrelevant at best, harmful at worst.

 

[QuoteMarks]

TL;DR: Fast travel's fine in MMO's as long as it is expensive and/or dangerous enough to not always be the best option. Plus an extended suggestion for a fast travel system.

I don't think having a fast travel system is inherently bad, the problem is that fast travel especially in MMO's is it's usually far to cheap and far to safe, it's always the best way to travel in just about every respect with little to no drawbacks. Once you have access to fast travel there is usually no reason, other than personal whim, to travel any other way. Now I'm gonna present a potential fast travel system, and because the above suggestions made me think of it, and because I lack enough imagination, I'll just be taking Babylon 5's FTL travel system and modifying it to fit within the context of Starbase.



JumpGates
First things first Warpgates are replaced with Jumpgates. Instead of teleporting you from point A to point B like Warpgates, Jumpgates can open a portal to Hyperspace. They are player built. They take a significant amount of power and resources to remain open and so spend their inactive time closed. To open the Jumpgate you must have the correct codes, if you don't have them then no traveling through this gate for you, unless someone with the codes opens it for you. This would allow Factions and players that own the Jumpgate to Toll other players for it's use, this could lead to a conflict if two jump gates are to close together, reducing each others profit margin. A potential way to both discourage Jumpgate spam and organically cause otherwise staged or forced conflicts between factions.



Hyperspace
Hyperspace is a naturally dangerous place. Dense clouds of an unknown and stormy composition limit visibility and transmitters don't broadcast here. Transmissions from real-space however do reach those in Hyperspace but the range is much shorter, even shorter than the relative distances between dimensions would account for. For example if the distance traveled in Hyperspace is multiplied 10 times in real-space then the distance that transmissions can reach those in Hyperspace from real-space would be divided by something Higher than 10 like 20 or 30. This would allow for pirates/rescue services traveling through Hyperspace to be able to find broadcast signals/ships in real-space from Hyperspace without it becoming to easy.

Jumpgates are not present on this side unless they are open, activation codes can open the gate from this side but they are otherwise undetectable from Hyperspace. The lack of visible indicators of an inactive Jumpgate in hyperspace would potentially allow for secret bases hidden with the fog of the rings to have access to hyperspace, without the Minecraft problem of a nether portal in the nether being a clear and obvious indication of someones base is on the other side. For example pirates or enemy factions could set up a jumpgate to aide in raiding those in hyperspace without setting up a virtual neon sign pointing out their location.



Gonna be honest I have a hard time thinking of how one would balance ship mounted fast travel systems, but to continue with the Babylon 5 Hyperspace bit.

Ship Generated Jump Points
Ship based Jump-point generators require immense amounts of power and resources. Enough that just using a Jumpgate would more often be the better choice. Just like with a Jumpgate any ship, not just the ship that created it can use the jump-point to fly in or out of Hyperspace. However Ship created jump-points are much less stable than those created by Jumpgates and open and close much slower than Jumpgate generated jump points. Any ship that tries to fly into a jump point while it is forming or while it collapses will have a significant amount of damage applied to their ships systems leaving it questionable if they would still be fully functional on the other side of the gateway.

 

[RyuShihan]

Warps that have a spool up time so it can't be used to escape, maybe a 5minute spool up. Uses a special fuel, that can only be mined in pvp space. So its latter game not early game, this makes you have to do long runs early on but as you progress you don't need to. Started ship can't use it. Maybe it takes a large generator to use, this means only larger ships. Assuming you can dock smaller ships to a larger ship at least.

 

[Messir Astaroth]

Make chat system like in EVE