Elaboration on the jump system

[elijahlorden]

In Sci-Fi universes which bother to explain their FTL technology, ships usually require serious hardware in order to move around. Star Trek ships have warp nacelles, which use coils to create a warp field around the ship.

Other ship systems such as cloaking, weapons, and shields are far more complicated to setup and operate than the warp drive itself, which is the most critical component of a ship.

What I propose is a redesign to the way ship dimensions are handled:

• Add a new 'Warp Field Emitter' block, which could be either physically linked to the Ship Core via cables, or linked via frequency.
• These could either be powered independently, or draw energy directly from the ship code.
• Placement of these blocks around the Ship Core would determine the shape of the rectangular warp field, which is currently set using the Ship Controller Lua API.
• Stacking these blocks (like the particle booster can be stacked) along an axis could effect how far out the warp field is extended, with longer stacks extending the warp field much further on that axis. This would allow for creating Trek-style nacelles, or placing the blocks individually in many places on/near the outer hull.
• Additional methods would be added to the ship controller for interacting with these blocks (Get a list of all emitters, turn individual emitters on and off, etc).
• Shrinking of the warp field (for example, if an emitter was destroyed during combat) would prompt a warning from the ship controller when attempting to jump, requiring a second call to confirm the jump. This reduces the risk of a player accidentally leaving part of their ship behind because it was damaged during combat.

A system like this would give the external design of the ship more meaning, while not severely restricting possible hull designs. This might make combat more interesting, since the warp drive would have multiple points of failure, rather than being completely protected in the center of the ship. Implementation of this is probably also more performance-friendly than the flood-fill solution proposed in #29.

[LemADEC]

First, here are a few things to consider.

• Ship dimension detection by flood fill would simplify ship configuration for players and allows concave ships overlapping. On 1.7.10, code structure was prepared for this. However, due to limitations on the block change event parameters, it couldn't be completed easily. It remains to be tested on 1.12.2.
• The emitter you propose would keep the constraint for ships to have a boxing bound like the cloaking.
• In terms of warfare, spreading the emitters across the ship makes it much harder to disable a ship warping system since it adds lots of redundancy. So it's not really good for us in terms of gameplay.
• Nacelles are very StarTrek specific while WarpDrive is intended to be more of its own, across multiple franchises.

Now, what is in my mind for this:

• Enantiomorphic reactor produces lots of energy.
• LHC produces antimatter.
• Warp matrix/crystal consumes lots of energy and antimatter to produce WarpPlasma. Crystal are rare resources and slowly degrading over time.
• WarpPlasma is transported by WarpConduits.
• WarpInjector injects WarpPlasma into Warp Coils to power the field required for warping.
• WarpCoils are also consuming power. More coils will increase your warp speed. More injectors can help too, but differently.
• WarpTransformers can convert WarpPlasma to common energy to power machines. (this is very OP, so might never be implemented)

At this time, there's no recipe, texture nor model for any of those.

[netherever]

* Placement of these blocks around the Ship Core would determine the shape of the rectangular warp field, which is currently set using the Ship Controller Lua API.

From this all begins. In the 2011. Long-long ago. This time is gone.

[LemADEC]

What do you mean?

[netherever]

Something like this or this 2011, aerospace server, mod PRYGI (plugin for IC2, for true) - when all this was born. Cross and his warpdrive was first successor after some years.

[LemADEC]

I've yet to find a download for that mod/plugin

[netherever]

You funny. Has some version of this - from aerospace N1 or N2 maybe. Will look for it and upload, why not.