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[Alex]

I'll just say this: "hyperspace as an ocean" is definitely something that's been/is being thought about.

[icepick37]

Cool. Hyperspace = teh awesome, and I like the way it's sounding already.

[Gothars]

I'll just say this: "hyperspace as an ocean" is definitely something that's been/is being thought about.

You're doing it again! I'm sure there's some paragraph in the Geneva Conventions that forbids excessive teasing of defenseless fans.

[Flare]

Officer skills also include navigation as well?

[Alex]

You're doing it again! I'm sure there's some paragraph in the Geneva Conventions that forbids excessive teasing of defenseless fans.

This here is a non-extradition forum.

Officer skills also include navigation as well?

Really haven't settled on just how officers will work, especially regarding fleet-affecting skills.

[Cycerin]

So you are not going to interpret Hyperspace as a shortcut into a 4th spatial dimension, but sort of as an alternate reality, still 3d+time, with different physical properties? Interesting. And works better with the game's 2d.

[Alex]

Right, it's basically just another 2d location, a hub of sorts.

[xenoargh]

Question:  are we going to be able to automate travel?  Like, just skip the traveling and go places, if we've already been there, with some chance of randomly encountering stuff, triggering a battle or a dialog?  Fallout 3's fast-travel system was one of the only reasons I bothered finishing its side-quests, and Freelancer's Trade Lane system saved much boredom and frustration for me and practically everybody else who played that, so I thought I'd throw it out there

[Gothars]

Question:  are we going to be able to automate travel?  Like, just skip the traveling and go places, if we've already been there

There's apparently some kind of faster travel method planned:

Any news on star-lanes for faster/cheaper hyperspace travel? A while ago there was some discussion about actively building lanes vs. self-forming through frequent use vs. no lanes at all.

No news. I do have some mechanics re: speed of travel in mind (and have for about 3 years - neat that they are actually getting close to being tried out!), but don't want to get into the details quite yet.

I very much doubt that it will be just Fallout/TES-like "teleportation", though. I think traveling will be a core element of Starsector, as indicated by the existence of fuel.

[xenoargh]

From the sounds of things, it should be possible to write up Stations that provide instant transport, so that's an option.  Just was thinking about that one in the context of what happens when we have 1000 Systems- that's a great deal of merely flying around 

[Gothars]

that's a great deal of merely flying around 

Well, I suppose that one big difference to the afore mentioned RPGs is that Starsector will not focus on pre-made quest lines. So while the RPGs herd you across the entire game world on a regular basis, your activities in Sector are more of a choice and can be more local. Or, if you want to make a long journey, the journey itself will be the quest.

[PCCL]

still, even in X traveling in the local area can be somewhat frustrating.

I'll withhold judgement for now, let's see how things feel first

[xenoargh]

Well, I suppose that one big difference to the afore mentioned RPGs is that Starsector will not focus on pre-made quest lines. So while the RPGs herd you across the entire game world on a regular basis, your activities in Sector are more of a choice and can be more local. Or, if you want to make a long journey, the journey itself will be the quest.

Well... talking quite long-term here, mind you... it needs a capstone series of quests to win (or at least arrive at resolution, ala Fallout series) to really be the classic open-world RPG.  Kind of like Freelancer in that regard; it had local quests a-plenty, but they were, well, all about money and buying the toys, not about winning.

Hence at some point, we'll almost certainly have to do a lot of FedEx shuffling and traveling about.  Then there's the favorite activity of many- roleplaying a trader or building a trading empire or just exploring for the sake of it.  Travel, travel, travel.  Having to re-cross the Sector because you didn't explore 50 Systems in one corner of the map during early game, for example, sounds pretty grueling.

Stuff to keep it from becoming "OMG, how many hours of my life have gone down the drain watching my sprite crawl across this screen" is important when we start having a big enough scale, basically.

In Star Control II, this was resolved with the gate / wormhole system to some degree (although I'd like to argue that it was less fun than really exhausting for new players unless they had a guide to where the holes went sitting in front of them all the time- the map UI should show these relationships clearly, imo).

Anyhow, Alex, don't think of any of this as critique- what we see for travel right now looks great for local exploration of the Sector.  Just thinking ahead about the issues involved in getting it the last few miles

[Alex]

Just in general, I'm not a fan of fast travel. For me, personally, it's a big immersion-breaker. Going to the TES series as an example, I think Morrowind handled it best - you still had to do some walking, enough to get into the RP mindset of "hey, I'm traveling". There was also Mark, Recall, and a few other spells that made travel instant but took a bit of planning to use. They also worked within the world's rules (i.e. it really WAS instant, rather than the game giving you a break, and thus underscoring its gameness.)

I wouldn't rule out some way of getting around quickly, should that become necessary. I just really doubt it's going to take the form of "let's just skip the travel bits". If possible, I'd rather go the route of making travel itself dangerous, and having costly options to avoid it - where you'd balance the cost of that against the cost/danger of a lengthy trip.

That said, we'll see.

[xenoargh]

If possible, I'd rather go the route of making travel itself dangerous, and having costly options to avoid it - where you'd balance the cost of that against the cost/danger of a lengthy trip.

Well, but that cost eventually is near-zero.  It's like every other cost in the game, really- we're going to be able to opti-max and conquer those things to a large extent.

For example, let's say you're a maxed-skills player, your fleet's good against everything except for ultimate bosses, you have a couple of million in the bank... and you need to cross the Sector. 

You're not going to find running into Pirates fun; it's just more time spent, killing the poor fools.  Shades of every bad JRPG ever made there. 

One of the obvious solutions is to have a skill tree for Hyperspace flight speeds; another is to have the ability to make Gates of our own, through getting some Blueprints and doing some hard quest. 

Or... here's an idea... perhaps once players cap a skill, they're going to be able to repair / re-activate the Domain's Gates, after investing some time and resources?  That would fit the lore and would even give players one major goal- re-connecting all of the lost peoples of the Sector again.  If 4X mechanics are ever a big part of the mix, it could be one of the major ways to get your economy going, but with the risk of allowing invaders an easy way into the System.