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[StarSchulz]

Hyperspace has no beneficial terrain. you have deep hyperspace which slows you down, and storms that slow you down a lot and hurt your CR. with long distance travel being common with just about any profession now, many players are having to deal with the now even more dangerous deep space and storms where they didn't have to as much before.

So, i propose a kind of Hyperspace current. they would naturally spawn and despawn over time, and move around hyperspace and deep hyperspace areas slowly like a snake.

Visualization:

Spoiler

[close]

These currents or rivers would bring the maximum burn of the fleet to 20, and reduce its fuel consumption, as if it were "riding" the current across deep hyperspace. Maximum acceleration would be reduced, and the fleet would be pulled slightly towards the center of the lane and carried in the direction of the current. It would be somewhat difficult to pull out of a current once in one, but not impossible regardless of the size of your fleet. in an emergency, you could also choose to use E-burn and pull right out without any resistance.

The goal is to create something the player would want to use, to assist in moving around through deep hyperspace and storm territory. being in one would completely ignore other terrain effects, but would drain your fleet's CR at a very slow rate instead, maybe 1% a day.

In the example, the longer current would be an old one, approaching the time where it will collapse entirely and dissapear. the shorter, green one represents a newer one, that is short and has only recently formed. you could take that current from Ex-Vis all the way to the black hole, but when you came out of the black hole the current might not be there. Think of these things lasting about a month, where they slowly begin to cover a large distance, and then at the end of their life cycle they shrink up to nothing within a couple days.

They could connect and cross over each-other, and do all sorts of weird strange things.

Something else interesting to think about, trying to cross a hyperspace river would be fairly dangerous as they might come very wide, and will try to drag you down its current. you can spend the fuel and or CR to force your way through with E-burn, or you could try to cross with just sustained burn and risk being blown somewhat off course. The currents could possibly vary in speed, length, width, or even lifetime. the faster ones might drain more CR than a slower one, and it would be easy to see which ones are more dangerous just by looking at how fast the current in the river is going.

That's just an idea ive had since i saw the hyperspace terrain blog post. thanks for reading!

Edit: i should add, that the effects are only at their greatest at the very center of the current. hanging around the edges wouldn't be anywhere near as fuel efficient / effective as being dead center.

TLDR- make glorious hyperspace rivers that you can ride!

[FooF]

I like it, though I'm not too keen about CR loss while "riding" the current. If you're mostly at the whim of the current, I think that's penalty enough (especially if it takes timing and a bit of luck to get out where you want).

You're right, though, hyperspace needs some beneficial terrain. I posted some ideas here, including revisiting Alex's wavefront idea he had many moons ago. I think I like the idea of currents better than wavefronts because they'd be a bit more predictable and straightforward.

[StarSchulz]

well at burn 20, the distance you will be covering over the course of 10 days for 10% CR is very far. 1% a day, or half a % a day would be a small cost to represent the strain on the ship and the crew, holding the ships tight together in a formation, fighting the current.

Maybe it would be somewhat better if it were accelerated past 20, to 25 or even 30 on a very fast current. this makes it very time / fuel efficient to travel on a current, while paying somewhat through supplies depending on how far you go.

in fact, have the CR reduction be reduced by the industry skill (50%) and the solar shielding hullmod, (75%). so without proper setup it might cost you 15-20% cr on a long current, which wont cripple the combat capability of your fleet. with the skill and solar shielding hullmod, you might loose around 6-10% CR on your ships, and would be a minor dent, like running into a storm.


I like your idea of a reverse hyperstorm, i would think a campaign ability unlocked somehow would allow you to harness the power for some kind of benefit.

[nomadic_leader]

I like the idea of beneficial hyperspace terrain. But don't forget there is beneficial terrain already: deep hyperspace provides a very good reduction in sensor profile.

The currents sound interesting though. I like the idea of them changing and shifting randomly. But a speed boost doesn't matter much with sustained burn. However if you didn't have to use fuel, that would be a big deal.

Speaking of beneficial terrains, how about some terrains (either in hyperspace, or in system) from which you can harvest antimatter and create fuel, if you have the right equipment/skills/etc?

[StarSchulz]

i think Snrasha had a fuel scoop working in a mod, that would replenish fuel if you were in a corona but it wasn't balanced right and was removed.

[Andy H.K.]

I believe Alex discussed that in a blog post:
http://fractalsoftworks.com/2015/09/20/hyper-terrain/#more-2452

[Deshara]

while reading Alex's reasoning behind the hyperspace storms, I caught upon an idea: since the motivation is to make travel take longer if players goof, you really could do hyperspace hurricanes, and make the storms generate "eyes" within themselves, traveling safezones that don't move as fast as a fleet could at sustained burn speeds but spares the player the supply drain of the storm and also has a chance to be going in the correct direction that the player can ride an eye towards their destination
in fact, you could make a significantly large storm have multiple eyes, which travel from end to end of the storm, reflecting off the edge of the storm back into the storm and towards the other end, allowing players to "hop" from eye to eye if they've gotten caught in a big one
and you could even make the eyes travel faster than a fleet can and "pull" a fleet to the front of the eye if they're in it (ejecting them out of the storm when the eyes gets to it), thus solving the "wavefronts" problems, wherein their location is easy to predict (they'll be in a storm)

Edit: in fact, you could tie the deflection patterns of the eyes to a hidden integer that changes discretely, and when a player runs a sensor burst with a certain science skill (or ship with correct sensor array hullmod), the game quietly refreshes the integer to a new value, locks it in to not change for a time then maps the trajectory of the eyes for the player, with the eyes touching the start of their track on the UI display as the sensor burst's mobility redux ends, so the player can easily check to see if there'd be an upcoming wavefront they can utilize and if they see no trajectory that aligns they can safely hit sustained burn and just go about their business, no 'searching' beyond an initial sensor burst needed

[StarSchulz]

Yea, this idea is sort of a different adaptation of wavefronts. you should be able to see these on a starmap, and would be able to plan your course instead of relying one one showing up.

[Ranakastrasz]

I like to think of the Hyperspace storms as areas which are larger, geometrically. As in, distances inside deep hyperspace or storms are larger than outside, so it takes longer to travel.

Having hyperspace lanes doing the inverse could be interesting. Make some systems spend a few months much closer together, and even using less fuel, in effect.