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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Author Topic: Hyperspace Terrain  (Read 45787 times)

Cycerin

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Re: Hyperspace Terrain
« Reply #30 on: September 21, 2015, 11:10:04 AM »

I rather like that you used a cellular automata approach to handle the storms changing over time. I can totally see how that would yield some sort of folkloric understanding of how they evolve after playing for a while, which is really cool.
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HELMUT

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Re: Hyperspace Terrain
« Reply #31 on: September 21, 2015, 11:11:49 AM »

I really like the hyperstorm idea, watching the gif reminded me of Stalker's emissions. Those storms seems pretty huge too, like, nearly as big as the length between two systems.

I wonder how the AI will react to it. Will the militaries be willing to brave the storm to catch their target? Will the traders makes a detour to avoid the storm? Will there be pirates skulking on the edge of the storm, waiting for a weakened prey to come out?

I understand why Wavefronts couldn't work. However i liked Hartlord's idea about currents rather than waves, like some kind of temporary space highways. Could be handy to ride one to reach a distant system. On the other hand, sometimes you would also be forced to go through a current from the wrong side to reach your destination, making the travel trickier (pushed straight in a hyperstorm? Fun).

A current is also much easier to anticipate than a wave. The current can be there for a few days, unlike a wave that come and go, making the whole thing less luck based. A bit like this:

Spoiler
[close]

Edit: damn, got ninja'ed hard.
« Last Edit: September 21, 2015, 11:27:03 AM by HELMUT »
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Thaago

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Re: Hyperspace Terrain
« Reply #32 on: September 21, 2015, 02:00:50 PM »

Looks neat! Any thought on how navigation might interact with storms?
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Callabaddie

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Re: Hyperspace Terrain
« Reply #33 on: September 21, 2015, 02:09:22 PM »

Spoiler
[close]

Ideas for Alex;

  • 1) The warp as a mess of varying solidities. Near stars, you have big, incongruous blobs of "thick" warp, think of these like land masses. These extend a fair distance out into the "open" warp, resulting in rivers and lakes.
  • 2) Warp Lakes have a higher chance of creating large and powerful warp storms, but can be avoided by hiding in warp "estuaries" or the thicker warp. Warp lakes have light circular currents.
  • 3) Warp streams or "rivers" have naturally occurring wavefronts. These wavefronts can be taken advantage of or avoided as necessary, and have to do with storm "backwash," and as such, can negate the streams' natural current, or enhance it. Avoiding these is as simple as setting up on the riverbank while it passes.
  • 4) Warp rivers flow from warp lakes out to warp seas.
  • 5) Warp seas allow for very fast and expedient travel, but the dangers of gigantic warp storms and hurricanes (which the treacle-like thick space protects star systems and lakes from) is very real. It's the open sea, and it's a cruel mistress.
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MShadowy

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Re: Hyperspace Terrain
« Reply #34 on: September 21, 2015, 02:14:34 PM »

Hmmm, been thinking about it, and I'm a bit curious about how the safe/slow routes in hyperspace are determined.  I wouldn't think it would be purely procedural, so my initial suspicion is that they're formed by placing down and connecting nodes either automatically (i.e. these two nodes are the closest to each other and are so connected) or manually (the map maker says Node A connects to Node B, and so on).  Well, probably a dumb question.

As for the waves/streams/currents notion I think it would certainly be a nice thing to have but is also something whose implementation likely needs a considerable degree of testing on top of the testing already expended on the idea.  I wouldn't consider it especially critical for the upcoming release myself.  There are further landmarks on the way to 1.0, after all, should you need to include it.
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SafariJohn

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Re: Hyperspace Terrain
« Reply #35 on: September 21, 2015, 02:38:37 PM »

:) Always wanted to do this. I mean, storms in hyperspace? Sign me up!

Now we need battles in storms in hyperspace. 8)
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Masterzh

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Re: Hyperspace Terrain
« Reply #36 on: September 21, 2015, 02:57:26 PM »

Even that i dont play starsector these days (get bored in hunt for Astral after xx hours) i love your updates and your honesty in all of them. <3 Keep it up!
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SafariJohn

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Re: Hyperspace Terrain
« Reply #37 on: September 21, 2015, 03:21:33 PM »

Even that i dont play starsector these days (get bored in hunt for Astral after xx hours) i love your updates and your honesty in all of them. <3 Keep it up!

Astral isn't sold in the current version.:-X IIRC the Tri-Tach military market is too small. I think it spawns in fleets sometimes, so you theoretically could still capture it.
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Tartiflette

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Re: Hyperspace Terrain
« Reply #38 on: September 21, 2015, 04:30:08 PM »

The one thing I'm curious about, since the update seems all about the troubles traveling from A to B, is will the events be still broadcasted universe-wide???

Events could be an extra incentive to put your beacon on, because then you receive the local broadcast of the sector news that got reported. If you want to stay anonymous, you have to put a bug on the local relay to get the news. And those news only cover what all the fleets in the system know, so messengers have to be sent from the source to spread the info. That would allow for missions about either spreading an info, or on the contrary preventing it's transmission elsewhere.
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Dark.Revenant

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Re: Hyperspace Terrain
« Reply #39 on: September 21, 2015, 06:44:00 PM »

The one thing I'm curious about, since the update seems all about the troubles traveling from A to B, is will the events be still broadcasted universe-wide???

Events could be an extra incentive to put your beacon on, because then you receive the local broadcast of the sector news that got reported. If you want to stay anonymous, you have to put a bug on the local relay to get the news. And those news only cover what all the fleets in the system know, so messengers have to be sent from the source to spread the info. That would allow for missions about either spreading an info, or on the contrary preventing it's transmission elsewhere.

Going dark generally means you turn off your transmitter, not your receiver.
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Debido

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Re: Hyperspace Terrain
« Reply #40 on: September 21, 2015, 07:55:17 PM »

I liked he idea of hyper space waves and the hyperspace terrain in general.

Perhaps with the hyperspace waves you could have them as intermittent wave events that spread out radially from stars, this allows a player to ride the wave in any direction they like. Radial textures increasing in size can be difficult to do though...

But you would be able to make waves visible inside and outside of hyperspace by having the wave generation events from suns effect the luminosity/colour of the sun. So in the 30 seconds to a minute or whatever leading up to the event there is predictable and easily observable changes giving the player some warning to if they want to jump on the next hyperspace wave.

By having the waves generated from stars and having them on a regular or predictable basis it would be easier to program Fleet AI to take advantage of these events as you could check the star's 'hyperspace wave generation' timer and determine when best to move through a jump point and exploit the wave.

Had a similar idea, actually, with a slight twist - basing wavefronts on solar flare activity. The issue here is, why wait for a wave? If you just go, you'll catch it whenever it catches up to you, if it does. On the flip side, you might have trouble approaching a star if you keep being pushed away by 360 degree waves. It's a neat idea, but it doesn't seem to do the job by itself.


Yes I was wondering about solar flare activity myself after remembering the new effects you've done for stars.

So let's address the two gameplay issues behind the implementation.

Why wait?

 By drastically reducing fuel usage the closer you time your wave surfing to the event and adjusting fuel pricing accordingly you can increase the value of timing your departure. Being there at the start of the wave will save you more fuel, when you have big fuel hungry fleets with lots of tugs it can save you thousands upon thousands of credits.

Next you could look at wave surfing or the wave providing a boost before washing past you. So if you catch the wave closer to the source you get a bigger boost for longer before the wave outpaces you, compared to going ahead of it.

As for approaching a system that has outgoing waves, like I said the wave is not a wall and has a degree of permeability, the degree of permeability will depend on your orientation and vector to the wave. Taking a real life analogy if there is a large wave coming towards you, you point the nose of your ship toward it and power over it - potentially using the fleet engine boost command/ability.

In the game best case if you are pointing your fleet perpendicular to the wave origin you will be paused momentarily as the wave passes, worst case is if you're between 46 degrees to a tangent to the wave front and your fleet gets CR reduction, fuel increase or possibly damage.

On the flip side if your ship is facing directly away from the origin you save fuel and get a speed boost as the wave moves past you, and as you change the facing of your ship away from this by up to 89 degrees you use more fuel BUT the wave will carry you for longer as the 'friction' between your fleet and the wave increases -thus allowing you to 'surf' the wave edge

To stop riding the wave you turn away from the wave front and let it pass over, or maybe use the fleet engine boost command to quickly turn and ride over it.

It would be a bit of a pain to get right and adjust all the parameters for the boost given by the wave and having the ship interact with the wave front etc. and the fleet AI...oh *** snacks...yeah that would be painful to teach a fleet how to surf. At best with the AI they'd know to face into the wave and hit boost?
« Last Edit: September 22, 2015, 05:07:47 AM by Debido »
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Tartiflette

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Re: Hyperspace Terrain
« Reply #41 on: September 21, 2015, 11:35:36 PM »

Going dark generally means you turn off your transmitter, not your receiver.
Yes but I doubt the transmissions would be omni-directional either! Given the value of information, the transmission could certainly be laser based (or tachyon beam based?) and only sent to the ships with a positive relationship that are transmitting their ID.
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Dark.Revenant

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Re: Hyperspace Terrain
« Reply #42 on: September 22, 2015, 12:33:02 AM »

Going dark generally means you turn off your transmitter, not your receiver.
Yes but I doubt the transmissions would be omni-directional either! Given the value of information, the transmission could certainly be laser based (or tachyon beam based?) and only sent to the ships with a positive relationship that are transmitting their ID.

Then the faction would have infinite sensor range.  If the Hegemony relay is, well, relaying to your fleet, they should see you from any point in the entire system and know exactly when you go dark, and slap you with a fine the moment you do so.
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Tartiflette

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Re: Hyperspace Terrain
« Reply #43 on: September 22, 2015, 01:07:50 AM »

I don't see how it is related, besides, there could be many other ways to only transmit the sensible news to a few selected ships, and I think that would be an interesting mechanic that complete the limited sensor range. Having to fly dark to bug a relay, evading the inspections to get the latest news directly from a station... With the corollaries: courier ships flying around with valuable data, siege that also try to hush what is happening, "events" forgery, delayed information spreading, info brokers...
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Histidine

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Re: Hyperspace Terrain
« Reply #44 on: September 22, 2015, 04:44:34 AM »

Hyperspace rivers (or just plain "roads") might be nice yeah.

It seems a bit unintuitive (for terrestrial players with their heads stuck in maritime analogies, at any rate) that being caught in a hyperspace storm makes you more visible to others.
I guess you could say the storm emits Minovsky particles that ship hulls alter and reflect strongly or some other such technobabble...
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