Respawn, teleport, disconnect and death consequences.

CalenLoki

Master endo
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
741
#1
The idea have been mostly rewritten after all the feedback I got.

Respawn is available at starting starting stations. Pretty much certain, unlimited and cheap. So we'll not discuss that much.

Respawn on ships and player station however is confirmed, but no exact mechanics have been announced. So here's my idea how it could be done.
It's designed to create several limitations, dangers and challenges, proportional to the advantage of respawning wherever you want.


1. You need spare body to spawn. Those can be produced on station. But the process is very space and time consuming.
Inactive spare endo parts can be keept in standard cargo crates, which are much smaller and lighter than endo racks.

2. To spawn, you need loaded and charged endo rack.
Rack uses constant 10-50 eps (TBD exact amount)
Loading is done by placing all the body parts. It can be automated with robot arms, or done by hand.
Charging is automatic, after 1h of uninterrupted powering. If rack looses power, it need to re-charge again.
It's quite big: between 1x1x2m and 1.5x1.5x3m.

3. You can only spawn in a network that you're registered to.
To do that, you need to personally go to conciousness link module (CLM).
CLM is small, around battery size.
It can keep single player registered.
It uses constant 10-50 eps.
Loosing power wipes out registration.
CLM can be configured to require constant payment in order to keep registration, and set price per respawn. That opens it to use as commercial respawn market.
Player can un-regiseter from any CLM via menu.

Logging off inside a rack both loads it and charges instantly, as well as registering you to connected empty CLM.


Disconnected body should stay in game, unless it happens within safe zone (to prevent lag caused by 100s of offline bodies). So it's best to do that while in endo rack.

4. Optionally whole re-spawning could be possible only outside direct combat. Combat zone would be determined through use of respawn jamming module (RJM).
The furthest distance between any two RJM on the same ship, multiplied by 10-50 determine the range of respawn jamming. (i.e. 50m long sip creates jamming sphere of 500-2500 meter radius).
It blocks all respawn attempts, by allies or enemies.
RJM would have size and power usage of transmitter, so affordable even on small ships. And only 2 are needed.


Why this way?
Long travel through empty space is rather boring for everyone except the pilot who need to dodge asteroids from time to time. So IMO all the passengers should be able to do something more interested meanwhile. Like being at base and building ships. Or maybe just being offline. And they should be able to hop in in case of action, like pirate attack or arrival to destination point.

However, the more people are allowed to respawn on a ship, the more space and energy you need to use.

It would also open possibilities for companies who specialise in transporting CLM around the universe. Kind of cryogenic tourism.

Death consequences shouldn't be IMO too severe. By that I mean that getting shoot down should be comparably devastating as any other 2-7m³ module of your ship (i.e generator or turret). After all we don't want instant battles.

And there shouldn't be much of respawn delay. We're here to play, not wait.

Keeping offline bodies in game (outside of safe zones) helps gameplay in many ways:
-prevents combat logging (both out of combat and into the combat),
-allows your crewmates to continue space travel without leaving you alone in the middle of nowhere if you loose connection,
-prevents using body as absolutely safe storage outside safe zones,
-Is more immersive, as it follows basic physics (conservation of mass).
-has no negative consequences that I know of.

The limitations of the system are there to provide more challenging and balanced gameplay. Any decision should be meaningful, with its pros and cons.
Some examples:

-Boarding party can register into your ship network and use your respawn point. It can be avoided by smart use network relays.
-CLM can get destroyed and leave you without respawn. Risk can be minimised by protecting CLM with heavy armour, having multiple CLMs for each crew members or keeping respawn ship out of direct combat.
-Large factions need to provide CLM for every player for every respawn ship/station, and pay energy upkeep. It's a price for having huge potential advantage in numbers. Encourage building fleet flagships proportional to faction size, rather than using swarm of mid-size respawn ships.
 
Last edited:
Joined
Aug 10, 2019
Messages
110
#2
Hmm... i see many thing that could ruin the game and wouldnt work with the lore... (thats just personal oppinion tho)
1. im against fasttravel throught dieing or any other methods.
2. you can despawn your ship at any station anyways so why should your boady stay?
 

CalenLoki

Master endo
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
741
#3
Could you point me to that lore? I must have missed it. I'm curious how lore can explain lack of fast travel while having respawn mechanics at the same time.

Share your concerns, all the things that could ruin the game. Highlighting holes in ideas helps improving them.

Your body would stay in game only if you disconnect outside safe-zones (megastations) and offline-protection-zones (player-made stations).
Because that:
-prevents combat logging,
-allows your crewmates to continue space travel without leaving you alone in the middle of nowhere,
-prevents using body as absolutely safe storage outside safe zones,
-Is more immersive, as it follows basic physics (conservation of mass).
-has no negative consequences that I know of.
 

Vexus

Master endo
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
280
#4
I agree bodies should stay in-game and online after disconnecting. I don't agree with you having to respawn back at station if you are offline for too long though, but I understand why and the concern. If someone can load onto a transport ship and then just hop on to another account, they're basically teleporting all around the game world. So if players log out and then log back in wherever the ship is, this allows players with multiple account to fast-travel. They can have someone fly them far away, while they work on their station rental lot, and then swapping accounts lets them fast-travel. The 10 minute timer thing would mean if you are out of a robot body for too long, you can only respawn at a station, but this would see people logging in every 9 minutes to refresh that timer, and all sorts of nonsense to bypass the mechanic in the first place. In considering this - that multiple accounts would let a player effectively fast travel (after all, fast travel is not a physical state, it is a mental state, all other things being equal) - the dev's current solution of logging off and on keeps your robot body exactly where it was in space kind of eliminates this issue, but adds in issues like combat logging and ghosting to avoid enemies and then pop-up behind them and so on (though, this only impacts FPS combat).

It's a complex crossroads of features. If logging out did mean you could only log back on at a station, in a new robot body, that would be great except for the limitation that would see people bypassing that limitation. So maybe if it were 5 minutes of being logged off or something. I see this at least being a way to a) keep physical robot bodies in game and b) make travel meaningful and c) make multiple accounts not have a serious fast-travel advantage. It's a really good idea overall, I'm just disagreeing more on the time frame and how possible it would be to cheese the mechanic. After all, a player with two accounts can just leave one client running while they play on another client (two computers, if necessary), bypassing the mechanic. So if it's too easy to cheese the mechanic, favor should be put on everyone else's enjoyment of the game instead, by having them just log in wherever their physical body is in game.
 

CalenLoki

Master endo
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
741
#5
Maybe I wrote it not clear enough. By "proper respawn point" I consider those on the ships too.
So you despawn, within 10 minutes you can respawn back to your body.
After 10 you need to choose ship/station, while your old body either stay unanimated in game world with all the gear (open space) or it get removed by trash collector and you spawn with all the gear.
 

CalenLoki

Master endo
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
741
#6
Small revive. I've re-written whole system based on received feedback. From this thread and discord discussion with Burnside (even if we disagree on the need to manually register to each respawn network)

Endos from logged off players no longer deteriorate, so it's safe to do unless someone finds your body.
And a lot of other, smaller changes.

EDID: Added respawn jamming.
 
Last edited:

Otac

Well-known endo
Joined
Feb 25, 2020
Messages
60
#7
i think ships shouldn't able to transport
but it can get some space jump for like 1000km onece or more
 
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