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[Paul_Kauphart]

One last thing, to make Hyperspace Travel a little more involved, maybe give us a way to map the deep hyperspace. Initially you're going in the unknown, and as you explore the sector you can start using your map to trace routes and ways to avoid storms and deep space, and plan your travel. Right now, I find myself hitting TAB on hyperspace travel, looking for a way to avoid a huge deep hyperspace region, only to get remembered that ho, yeah, the sector map doesn't have that.

It DOES have the map, just not turned on by default.  Just press 1 or click the Starscape tab while viewing the sector map.  Instead of a pretty map, you get an ugly map with lots of blue haze that shows exactly where the clouds are.  Last release, there were so many clouds that it blotted out the map and it did little good.  Now, with somewhat less cloud density, it may be a bit more useful.

I tried that yesterday evening, and it's no good, because the clouds on the map don't match the clouds in the actual game. So my point still stand.

[intrinsic_parity]

The clouds match fine in my game

[Eji1700]

There is something like that already. If you hit just one bad cloud, you get one hit. Get stuck in a sea of thunder and now your fleet takes several hits, before it gets out of that situation.

But it's not something you mitigate, control, or make any decision on.  Hell you can't always tell if your'e going to eat one hit or 5 even in cases where you think "meh this won't bounce me into anything else"

The current system doesn't really promote any interaction.  Either you negate it through skills/mods, accept it because you're willing to take the loss, or avoid it. There's a lot more that can be done.

Hell bring back the old storms as well as the new storms and give them a visual difference (make the old ones much more rare), would already at least put a little more thought into how you approach it (i'm willing with skills to tank a new storm since it just bounces me, but an old storm is a nightmare to be stuck in even if it's not eating all my supplies)

[Megas]

Old storms were horrible.  I never want to see them again.  New storms are much better than old storms, and they often do more good than bad.

[outdated]

Old storms were horrible.  I never want to see them again.  New storms are much better than old storms, and they often do more good than bad.

I haven't experienced old storms, but as they are now they are pretty much inconsequential.

[Megas]

Old storms slowed your fleet to a crawl, and voraciously devoured supplies by quickly draining CR of all ships in your fleet.  At the time, transitioning from S-Burn to E-Burn took one or two seconds so if you were caught while S-Burning through, you either spent time crawling through with S-Burn, or paralyzed trying to get out with E-Burn, either way, fleet lost too many supplies.  It was so bad that I often reloaded the game and re-try hyperspace traveling again.

[intrinsic_parity]

Yeah with old storms, it wasn't really possible to go through them, and you just reloaded the game if you accidentally ended up in them. It was totally uninteresting and uninteractive.

[Megas]

Also, the difference between inactive cloud and cloud activating to storm was too subtle and not always easy to tell apart.  Sometimes, there were so many clouds that there was no easy way to go around, and you had to take your chances and drive through.  Finally, collision detection was sloppy, and you can get trapped just by being near the cloud!

If I had to drive through clouds, then get caught, it was reload and better luck next time.

Old storms were almost as bad as getting sucked into a black hole.

New storms may be annoying, but at least you are not caught in quicksand and supplies blown out the airlock.

[Igncom1]

I have had just the once, last patch, where I got caught in a storm with my capital ships..... and was then flung out to the very border of the sector, storm after storm, before I could regain control, totally beyond salvation and all hope.

I mean, I reloaded, but that did make me salty.

[Eji1700]

This is why you'd have "old storms" be rare and obvious (and yes probably toned down to some extent).   Not just randomly mixed in and looking identical.  It gives skills another level of ways to deal with storms and is something you'd actively want to avoid.

It's really not that different from a black hole and would add variety to traveling which is hardly a bad thing.

[Paul_Kauphart]

I like the current version of the storm, especially compared to the previous version. Of course, sometime I make a bad decision or I act too quickly, and I end up bounced around off course for several light years, but most of the time I can avoid storms (more so when I use a smaller agile fleet), or sometimes I'm in a hurry and actually ride the storm by flying through and enjoying the speed boost.

What I'm most missing right now is the ability to plan ahead by knowing where the deep hyperspace clouds are in advance along my path.

[xenoargh]

I don't like the storms at all.  They're uninteresting mechanics; if they were occasional areas of peril we had to go around, they'd be all right. 

As it was (previously) they were too random and could occasionally wreck a fleet, without feeling like a good mechanic... the current version feels like we're pinballs, it's also random, but usually not fleet-wrecking.

Honestly, I don't think Hyperspace works.  Alex has tried about 5 different iterations now, and they're all pretty boring examples of Travel in RPGs that aren't inherently rewarding or interesting. 

How to fix?

1.  Make it difficult / perilous to get from Point A to Point B; hard-to-dodge enemy swarms, deadly storms (that aren't random blippy things, more like multi-week affairs so we can go around them reliably).

2.  When we get to B, make it easy (in terms of our time on this planet, at least) to get back to A.  Perhaps, if A and B are pretty close to one another, it could open a "warp tunnel" that re-connects this System to the other one, permanently, for example; then there's no more need for Hyperspace and we can move efficiently. 

And gosh darnit, have the ability to build Gates to connect two areas, so that Travel is less of a drag on our playing-time.  When I found myself keeping my high-speed setting for Burn after playing that way for a day... it was a sign that, frankly, travel's not that interesting, despite Alex trying to put in things to make it so, like the occasional hostile Scavengers or Distress Calls that don't give enough reward to be worth responding to.  Honestly, I'd rather have a trip that was scary-dangerous, but was relatively short, time-wise, and where I didn't have to do it a million times.

[Hiruma Kai]

I don't like the storms at all.  They're uninteresting mechanics; if they were occasional areas of peril we had to go around, they'd be all right. 

As it was (previously) they were too random and could occasionally wreck a fleet, without feeling like a good mechanic... the current version feels like we're pinballs, it's also random, but usually not fleet-wrecking.

Honestly, I don't think Hyperspace works.  Alex has tried about 5 different iterations now, and they're all pretty boring examples of Travel in RPGs that aren't inherently rewarding or interesting. 

How to fix?

1.  Make it difficult / perilous to get from Point A to Point B; hard-to-dodge enemy swarms, deadly storms (that aren't random blippy things, more like multi-week affairs so we can go around them reliably).

2.  When we get to B, make it easy (in terms of our time on this planet, at least) to get back to A.  Perhaps, if A and B are pretty close to one another, it could open a "warp tunnel" that re-connects this System to the other one, permanently, for example; then there's no more need for Hyperspace and we can move efficiently. 

And gosh darnit, have the ability to build Gates to connect two areas, so that Travel is less of a drag on our playing-time.  When I found myself keeping my high-speed setting for Burn after playing that way for a day... it was a sign that, frankly, travel's not that interesting, despite Alex trying to put in things to make it so, like the occasional hostile Scavengers or Distress Calls that don't give enough reward to be worth responding to.  Honestly, I'd rather have a trip that was scary-dangerous, but was relatively short, time-wise, and where I didn't have to do it a million times.

The issues I see with instantaneous transport or really quick transport would have implications for the player's interactions with the very simple economy that has been implemented.  It becomes very easy and fast to go from surplus to deficit planets, requiring a rework of the economy, possibly turning that kind of credit making option off.  Its maybe not a crazy idea, but it would require a fair amount of balancing work with the other subsystems of the game.

Secondly, hard to dodge enemy swarms is probably not the best option.  What is scary for a fleet composed of frigates is not scary for a fleet of capitals, so that hard to dodge enemy swarms would have to scale in some way.  As for someone who plays a fair bit of iron man spacer starts, whats worse than boring travel, is getting caught having to do the boring run away battle every, which takes far longer than the travel time usually.  Presumably sufficiently large fleets would simply find it an annoyance being constantly interrupted by a swarm of non-dangerous fleets.

As for deadly storms, that sounds like just a variation on what storms we currently have (or used to have).  As a iron man player, I'd prefer not to lose a several hour long session to a mis-click on the travel map, which is not to say I haven't done that and accidentally engaged something I shouldn't have, but at least that is due to a fleet and has some interaction after the mis-click.   If storms are literally deadly and will destroy your fleet that is probably reload time for most players - which feels terrible to me.

Similarly, lore-wise, it becomes hard to justify raiding fleets giving you time to respond in transit, or even intercept them in transit with your transponder off when quick travel is an option.  They should launch, and then just like you can, be in the target system efficiently.

I'm not sure what the right answer is.  I don't think the campaign layer is intended to be the main draw of the game, but it also should be fun when you're there.  Its a mini-game between sessions of the main draw of the game, the space battle simulator.  On the other hand, it seems like people prefer the campaign mode to the stand alone missions.  Presumably because its a framing device that lets you tell a story, rather than just disconnected battles.

I'm guessing for testing our variations on your concept, it should be possible to create a mod where when you reach a jump-point in system, instead of taking you to hyperspace, it just presents you options like:

1) Travel to a core system
2) Travel to an explored system
3) Travel to an unexplored system

and then a sub-list like
1) Askonia (5.0 ly, 50 fuel, 20 supplies)
2) Corvas (9.0 ly, 90 fuel, 36 supplies)
3) etc
6) previous page
7) next page

And then teleports you to a jump point of that system less the fuel and supplies, and perhaps some damage if you didn't have enough fuel/supplies.  Not sure how hard that would be to code up, but as long as the system list can be parsed, and there is a change fleet position function (which the jump points presumably normally use), it shouldn't be too bad I think.

[Megas]

Storms are only really bad if the fleet cannot E-Burn (to control path) for some reason.  With E-Burn, storms are mostly a speed boost.

Traveling is most annoying inside systems if you need to search for something, or if you do not have Navigation to drop through wells and jump back to hyperspace to avoid a two-week in-game trip to a permanent location, like your own colony or a recurring pirate base that always respawns there like clockwork.