Alternative uses for transporter

[ZaphodBeeblebrox]

@Ketraar

Back in the day Eccentrica Gallumbits said I was "The biggest bang since the big one." I have been known to indulge in Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters.

Now I find myself sipping tea with the Earthman Arthur Dent.

[edit]
Now if I could teleport back into the past.... I'd tell my younger self to party more....

Is that possible? If this quantum entanglement is real then does it not happen instantaneously. Is this not faster than the speed of light. If something can happen faster than the speed of light does this mean time travel is possible too?

[edit the second]
For those interested here is an Horizon program on building a time machine

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bb33ht

[Snafu_X3]

You must be still waiting for the periodic table of elements to be trivially disproved then. Rocket equation as well.

IIRC the currently recognised periodic table layout was conceived by a German (I'm too tired to look it up to check atm), but in general you're correct: I should have added 'claims' in my note. My bad

[Axeface]

More seriously, please do read Vandragorax's post again. This is all about making gameplay more strategic, not less, while still allowing the player to get into the action when they want to.

Was making it a VR interface rather than teleportation ever discussed? Gameplay wise it would function exactly the same (unless im missing something) and it would thematically make a lot more sense for the player to be the only person in possession of lost VR and instant-communication technology than teleportation. Im with the 'its weird' crowd on this.
Perhaps the player instead cold develop quantum linking or something, allowing them to remote pilot ships instead of teleporting their corporeal self. Could even manifest a hologram of the player at the target locations or something, so it makes sense that you can interact with npcs while using this 'VR' interface.

Making it VR would also convieniently stop the player from seeing a reload screen while pilotting a remote ship that gets destroyed, not sure how you are planning to handle player death though - perhaps you will automatically teleport out of a ship thats blowing up?

I really that the plot manages to explain away the inability for the npc's to use the teleporter, and the inability to teleport objects with it too.

[sh1pman]

You must be still waiting for the periodic table of elements to be trivially disproved then. Rocket equation as well.

IIRC the currently recognised periodic table layout was conceived by a German (I'm too tired to look it up to check atm), but in general you're correct: I should have added 'claims' in my note. My bad

Not quite sure which German you refer to (Meyer?), but the table (and the Periodic Law) in its currently recognizable form were first formulated by Russian professor Dmitry Mendeleev. Surely, his claims were improved upon later, and not disproved.

[CBJ]

Making it VR would also convieniently stop the player from seeing a reload screen while pilotting a remote ship that gets destroyed, not sure how you are planning to handle player death though - perhaps you will automatically teleport out of a ship thats blowing up?

VR is not a great solution. Not only is the player not really "there", and therefore not taking real risks in combat, but there is also the issue of what happens if the ship or station their actual body is aboard is attacked. The remote control feature in XR suffered from the same problems, and the methods we had to use to mitigate them were never entirely satisfactory.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

VR is not a great solution. Not only is the player not really "there", and therefore not taking real risks in combat, but there is also the issue of what happens if the ship or station their actual body is aboard is attacked. The remote control feature in XR suffered from the same problems, and the methods we had to use to mitigate them were never entirely satisfactory.

It felt to me that you nailed it pretty well for the Nova Torpedoes. The player could control them, and if under combat pressure (e.g. drones from the target reaching me if i was out of range of turrets) or wishing to do something else, they behaved autonomously in a predictable way.

There may be other problems with them from your perspective but at least in the VR sense they seemed well done!

[CBJ]

The experience of using them wasn't the issue. The issue was what happened to the player ship while you were doing so.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

I can appreciate that dilemma.

Perhaps theoretically the player could one day access VR whilst the NPC retains control of the ship. Although if the concept of 'ship' is intimately linked to what the player is controlling, then I could see why that might not be practical.