Jumpdrives got me into X3, highways just dropped me off XR, and we're legion

[ZaphodBeeblebrox]

@Cryonist

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geostationary_orbit

You can have two points in space that always maintain their relative positions. Each seeming to be in the same place above the planet and the same distance from each other. Simple basic physics.

I love the fact that the path of the Earth through space is a helix as the ecliptic plane is tilted with respect to the Milk Way.

[edit] Oh yes, no point on the Earth is fixed with respect to any other its called plate tectonics. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge means that London and New York are very slowly moving apart from each other.

[Graaf]

@Cryonist

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geostationary_orbit

You can have two points in space that always maintain their relative positions. Each seeming to be in the same place above the planet and the same distance from each other. Simple basic physics.

I love the fact that the path of the Earth through space is a helix as the ecliptic plane is tilted with respect to the Milk Way.

[edit] Oh yes, no point on the Earth is fixed with respect to any other its called plate tectonics. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge means that London and New York are very slowly moving apart from each other.

Highways work because the planets/POI's do not move relative to each other. Because it's a game. We may see planets rotate for a day/night cycle, but planets do not move around their sun. Highways do not magically extent several million km due to their planet/POI's changed orbital position around their sun.

The movement of the tectonic plates is negligible. Even with Earth-Crust Displacement, most places stay relatively in the same place.

[blotunga]

Highways are such a huge time waster. I wish jumpdrives would come back. I think the best way is how it was in pre-Rebirth. In Rebirth i simply loathe going from A to B, especially since it sometimes takes like 20-30 minutes IRL. I find myself returning to X3 (either TC or AP) and not caring about Rebirth.

[Cryonist]

@Cryonist

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geostationary_orbit

You can have two points in space that always maintain their relative positions. Each seeming to be in the same place above the planet and the same distance from each other. Simple basic physics.

I love the fact that the path of the Earth through space is a helix as the ecliptic plane is tilted with respect to the Milk Way.

[edit] Oh yes, no point on the Earth is fixed with respect to any other its called plate tectonics. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge means that London and New York are very slowly moving apart from each other.

You are right that relative motion between objects in space can be 0. I mentioned this in my post but perhaps you misread it. I'm not sure why you are bringing up geostationary orbit in this context since its not really relevant when discussing orbital to orbital mechanics.

To clear up some possible misunderstands you have about geostationary orbit you should note that a object in geostationary does not stand still, it actually moves pretty fast. It only seems to stand still from the perspective of someone looking up from earth to the sky. All these objects need constant course corrections and once their fuel runs out they all fall down to earth. I added some wiki information you provided below for reference.

Placing something in geostationary means their relative position to the earth surface is fixed, but x-games do not have highways from planets, which would be named space elevators and are quite common in SF. There is no planet to orbital interaction simulated at all. We should therefore look at orbital to orbital mechanics only when debunking the highways mechanics.

You seem to suggest that all objects in geostationary orbit have a relative motion of 0. This can only be the case of those objects are in the exact same latitude orbit and are very close to each other. If objects have a geostationary orbit but are not on the same latitude their relative motion is always higher then 0. This was the basis for my statement "Any distance far enough apart to warrant a highway makes it impossible to have one".

I mentioned that a possible solution for the highway dilemma could be that all connected parts of a highway all have a relative motion to each other of 0. But I also mention how this can be impossible. There are highways around stars, around asteroids in asteroid belts and planets connecting these objects. In the real universe these objects are constantly moving away and towards each other.

I'm gonna ignore the tectonics remark here, that's just you trying to be funny I guess .

A geostationary orbit can be achieved only at an altitude very close to 35,786 km (22,236 mi) and directly above the equator. This equates to an orbital velocity of 3.07 km/s (1.91 mi/s) and an orbital period of 1,436 minutes, which equates to almost exactly one sidereal day (23.934461223 hours). This ensures that the satellite will match the Earth's rotational period and has a stationary footprint on the ground. All geostationary satellites have to be located on this ring.

Also this guy understands. Having a static universe for gameplay reasons is fine in my opinion, X3 had this too and I like my PC not being a smoking wreck from tons of orbital calculations to do it accurately. But this static universe is not the real universe its a gameplay abstraction. If you add highways and nonsensical stuff like that to this mix it stops becoming a cool future imagined representation of our universe and starts being a arcade game with no basis in reality what so ever. We have plenty of those, the X-franchise was so much more.

Highways work because the planets/POI's do not move relative to each other. Because it's a game. We may see planets rotate for a day/night cycle, but planets do not move around their sun. Highways do not magically extent several million km due to their planet/POI's changed orbital position around their sun.

The movement of the tectonic plates is negligible. Even with Earth-Crust Displacement, most places stay relatively in the same place.

[ZaphodBeeblebrox]

If you add gates that let you travel from one side of the galaxy to another, jump drives that can move kilo-tonnes of starship from one side of the galaxy to the other

nonsensical stuff like that to this mix it stops becoming a cool future imagined representation of our universe and starts being a arcade game with no basis in reality what so ever. We have plenty of those

.....

One can take a whole lot of things from any X game, that are in fact nonsensical and have no basis in reality whatsoever.

You know things like dividing up space into a couple of hundred cuboids X Kms on a side. I would have thought that any race that could travel interstellar distances would have colonised their own solar system first. Like humans getting to the Moon, Mars and maybe someday beyond. I like space to be represented as solar systems.

[Cryonist]

If you add gates that let you travel from one side of the galaxy to another, jump drives that can move kilo-tonnes of starship from one side of the galaxy to the other

nonsensical stuff like that to this mix it stops becoming a cool future imagined representation of our universe and starts being a arcade game with no basis in reality what so ever. We have plenty of those

.....

One can take a whole lot of things from any X game, that are in fact nonsensical and have no basis in reality whatsoever.

You know things like dividing up space into a couple of hundred cuboids X Kms on a side. I would have thought that any race that could travel interstellar distances would have colonised their own solar system first. Like humans getting to the Moon, Mars and maybe someday beyond. I like space to be represented as solar systems.

I knew this was coming and you are not wrong. In my defense I prepared a wiki link for you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_of_disbelief.

The term suspension of disbelief or willing suspension of disbelief has been defined as a willingness to suspend one's critical faculties and believe something surreal; sacrifice of realism and logic for the sake of enjoyment.

I guess highways in space is where my suspension of disbelief reaches it limit.

[sd_jasper]

Again, it isn't like ES created this idea whole cloth...

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ ... spaceLanes

[Graaf]

One can take a whole lot of things from any X game, that are in fact nonsensical and have no basis in reality whatsoever.

You know things like dividing up space into a couple of hundred cuboids X Kms on a side.

Somehow this comes off to me like you're dissing a game that is running on an engine 20 years old just to glorify Rebirth? And sorry, but in my opinion, that is just pathetic.
On the other hand, "X" could have a value of 10million, which then comes close to Rebirth (although it only has 8.). And that makes your remark nonsensical?
Which is it?

I would have thought that any race that could travel interstellar distances would have colonised their own solar system first. Like humans getting to the Moon, Mars and maybe someday beyond.

Who said any race had mastered interstellar travel? In all likelihood everyone is probably just using the gates.
Besides, Argon Prime's system description says that it is located near the busiest planet, so the others must have colonies too.

I like space to be represented as solar systems.

Do you? Or do you just want a bigger box with more content? Because this just gets us back to the 8 vs 200 discussion.

[Mick Maidens]

The current Gates and jump drives are not a new idea, as i said in an earlier post i had a game on my Atari in the eighties that was almost exactly like the X series (in concept) with gates and jumpdrives and a map of sectors. Jumpdrives and gates are well known and based on wormhole theory. the size or weight of an object is irrelevant as long as it fits in the wormhole. The sectors are not physical just a representation of an area of space for mapmaking. The logic is there, it makes sense, its elegant and just happens to get around some "moving from a to b issues" without making ships so fast there is no way to dogfight with other ships (the Aldrin issue). In my view highways are clunky, slow, ugly and a fix for something that was not broken. Add to that the fact that from what we know wormholes are possible whereas highways patently are not. When you actually look at what has been said, jumdrives are gone, sectors are gone, the Boron are gone, ES openly said the X series had "too many features". So obviously some other stuff has gone, it makes me worry "what is left" will X4 have only the X in common with it'#s predecessors.

[kilerkg]

Another vote for not a fan of highways at all.

[Thurgret]

I'm not a fan of highways, but I dislike galaxy-spanning jump drives much more. I feel the jump drive just makes trade too simple and it means that there is not really any border anywhere, or a front in the case of a conflict. I am really looking forward to having something designed from the ground up with no jump drives. Not so much to highways, though on the other hand, I was fine with them in Freelancer. I think I just disliked the awkwardness of using them in Rebirth and that they were aesthetically out of place.

[Mick Maidens]

I can sort of understand the Galaxy spanning Jumpdrive argument, but I am not a trader, to me trade is just to get more ships. I chuck up factories any-old-where and use a lot of Universal traders. There are no borders on Earth they are just lines on a map. In a conflict situation they go out the window. Even today we are way past the castle stage, you can only protect your assets with defences. I am concerned that with the protection obsession they will throw the game in the bin and it will become "Castles in space sim". So mainly trade, big fleets watching specific choke points and missiles. Not my idea of fun. I would much prefer big fleets jumping into my sectors and smashing up my factories, and then i retaliate. There were things they could have done to limit the jumpdrives range and make jump beacons more important. But they didn't so we will have to wait and see. The question is will the X series survive another game with low sales.

[ZaphodBeeblebrox]

Interesting to note that the mods people seem to be enjoying the most introduce strategic game-play. Something that was sorely lacking in the base game.

Now in X4 we have races and factions that will expand economically and grow their territories.

They have given the player more tactical opportunities by the introduction of the RTS like map.

Almost everything will be built out of complex/station production. Strike at your opponents production and you can really cripple them.

If the game plays anything like Rebirth then the player is almost certainly going to need to build a number of fleets for patrol / protection duties.

Then I expect there will be areas controlled by the Xenon, if they are trying to expand and gain territory, probably the best thing, will be to take the fight to them, to trim back their stations and ships.

Now if "Castles in space" means that races and factions fight to hold on to their own and to get more, I'm not sure how that ends up as bad.

[Mick Maidens]

Although i own it, I have not played rebirth so i am not able to comment but i am a great fan of the RTS game and have played them since Total Annihilation and as you must know there are good and bad. and even the good guys can sometimes get it wrong (CoH and CoH2). X3 was not an RTS game, it was a sandbox game. how can you have a realistic Space RTS map there is no terrain everyone should be able to attack from every direction. In a conflict the highways etc would be the first things to go. I admit my concern is selfish, i want the game to be brilliant and successful. The problem as i see it is they have an existing fan base for X3 that is feeling very wary after what happened with X-Rebirth. So they choose now to completely rewrite the gameplay. Then drop some of the basic things that fans know and love about the game. And when I say some i mean lots, and seem to be trying to turn the game into an RTS. I really do think this is going to be Egosoft's Windows 8, the developers love it , the users not so much. I don't think Egosoft will be able to afford to give away X5.

[Tomonor]

snip

If you are referring to the new ingame map system, think of it as the sector map from X3 that functions like you expect it to function in 2018. In fact, the sector map counting from X2 The Threat always was a small RTS game (X2 even supported live video feedback of the sector if you had an advanced satellite in there), the difference was that you couldn't control the map with a mouse pointer, thus it became pretty tedious to move entire fleets on it.

The problem arose with X Rebirth's map. Now, if you ever seen a confusing map, that was it. And the layout of the sectors/zones made it even worse, a complete mess.

https://seizewell.de/rebirth/map/Map-Rebirth.jpg

[Mick Maidens]

Yes that map is confusing and only eight sectors. And I have to admit moving entire fleets is not really my thing. I do have a fleet but it sits idly in a sector. The best thing about the X series was it was different things to different players. That is the sand box idea. Now they seem to be making it appeal to a much smaller audience. If i want to play an RTS I would play CoH not X4. The guy who suggested that the most popular mod was for Strat forgets that those players that use mods are a small subset of all users and those who use Strat mods are a subset of mod users. X4 needs to appeal to a wide majority not a small minority.

[AdrianB1]

Guys, I have an idea for jump drives. Not ideal, but hear me out and tell what you think.

One of the biggest negative part of jump drives was described as instantly jumping a fleet anywhere and destroying key installations or the entire sector. The biggest positive is allowing the player to move between distant sectors without spending hours of real time just for that.

Well, let's keep the jump drives, but very limited to what they can do. For example, make the energy consumption so big, a capital ship cannot jump more than a sector or two with the full weapons complement. Let's say that jumping 5 sectors with a capital ship require the entire capacity of the ship in energy cells, so if you really want to jump the fleet, it will be useless as it is disarmed. What good this does?
- player can scout freely in some fast ship and jump as needed as long as he does not engage in fights. Scouting and fighting in the same time is not a good idea, you either fly a Blackbird or a F15 with loads of stuff, not both in the same time. So let the player use an unarmed ship with long jump range or a fast and very expensive ship (Kestrel?) to roam around the map
- moving capital ships from the shipyard to the place where they will be equipped is fast, moving in to battle is not
- transports doing trade can jump to the destination instantly, buy the goods at the price that is valid now (not in 15 min that would take to travel) and return the slow way, like NPC do
- the player can position ships for personal use, fully equipped, in key parts of the map and jump there to man it

Offtopic, someone came with an idea to build some corporations. I think that can be a great idea if the player is also competing, like you are a corporation and you have a position in Fortune 500 - it adds more purpose to the game.

Some more ideas in the same direction:
- put limits on capital ships that can be in one race sector at a time to something like 1, otherwise the race will become hostile. Yes, you are a friend, but you don't bring your 10 M2's in our core sector
- protect the race sectors against attacks on other corporation ships - make the races hostile against the player if you attack ships there and impose huge fines, like 3x-5x the value of the attacked ship, to redeem yourself. Make that an economic war, not a gun war

[Général Grievous]

Yes that map is confusing and only eight sectors. And I have to admit moving entire fleets is not really my thing. I do have a fleet but it sits idly in a sector. The best thing about the X series was it was different things to different players. That is the sand box idea. Now they seem to be making it appeal to a much smaller audience. If i want to play an RTS I would play CoH not X4. The guy who suggested that the most popular mod was for Strat forgets that those players that use mods are a small subset of all users and those who use Strat mods are a subset of mod users. X4 needs to appeal to a wide majority not a small minority.

The best way for a stellar map to be represented is to represent it like it should be:
- 1st level: A view of the galaxy, with systems joined by each other with lines. Travel made by jumpgates.

- 2nd level: A solar system with a star in the center and planets around it. each planet or stellar body, is a sector. Travel by large ships "booster" ou blue highways.
This representation in X Rebirth is a mess.

- 3rd level: A stellar body (planet, asteroids, etc...). Composed of different "zones" or "area" if you want.
This representation in X Rebirth is a mess too.

I do not undesrtand why Ego always tried to make it different. Now in rebirth it is soo messy. I think they should go back to the basics.

[Tomonor]

I do not undesrtand why Ego always tried to make it different. Now in rebirth it is soo messy. I think they should go back to the basics.

Mostly because they want to make it more complicated to navigate. It was the simplicity of the older X games that made it less challenging to navigate by design: North gate, South gate, West gate, East gate. Problem is, there are no such directions in space, which indeed made the games less authentic if you think about it. It also limited each sector to 4 jumpgates maximum, with the exception of the Hub in TC, ultimately resulting in "box" star systems.

Other reason might be related to the lore. The jumpgates in the X universe don't necessarily connect systems in a straight line, hell, they might even skip out many-many star systems along with their very own gates. That's how I interpret the X universe, a maze that's interconnected and if you think you have reached the end of the universe, you are suddenly back where you started from.

In the case of Rebirth, the idea was good, but the practical implementation along with the map's GUI made it so confusing that it had put down many veteran players from playing, including me, shamely. And I don't even want to mention that not only star systems and sectors, but even zones and other points of interests had fantasy names given to them.

That's why the new hexagonal universe (with the RTS-type GUI) seems a lot better to me. It leaves both Egosoft and the players with a lot of room for expansion while keeping the simplicity of the now complicated universe.

[gbjbaanb]

Guys, I have an idea for jump drives. Not ideal, but hear me out and tell what you think.

One of the biggest negative part of jump drives was described as instantly jumping a fleet anywhere and destroying key installations or the entire sector. The biggest positive is allowing the player to move between distant sectors without spending hours of real time just for that.

Well, let's keep the jump drives, but very limited to what they can do. For example, make the energy consumption so big, a capital ship cannot jump more than a sector or two with the full weapons complement. Let's say that jumping 5 sectors with a capital ship require the entire capacity of the ship in energy cells, so if you really want to jump the fleet, it will be useless as it is disarmed. What good this does?
- player can scout freely in some fast ship and jump as needed as long as he does not engage in fights. Scouting and fighting in the same time is not a good idea, you either fly a Blackbird or a F15 with loads of stuff, not both in the same time. So let the player use an unarmed ship with long jump range or a fast and very expensive ship (Kestrel?) to roam around the map
- moving capital ships from the shipyard to the place where they will be equipped is fast, moving in to battle is not
- transports doing trade can jump to the destination instantly, buy the goods at the price that is valid now (not in 15 min that would take to travel) and return the slow way, like NPC do
- the player can position ships for personal use, fully equipped, in key parts of the map and jump there to man it

Offtopic, someone came with an idea to build some corporations. I think that can be a great idea if the player is also competing, like you are a corporation and you have a position in Fortune 500 - it adds more purpose to the game.

Some more ideas in the same direction:
- put limits on capital ships that can be in one race sector at a time to something like 1, otherwise the race will become hostile. Yes, you are a friend, but you don't bring your 10 M2's in our core sector
- protect the race sectors against attacks on other corporation ships - make the races hostile against the player if you attack ships there and impose huge fines, like 3x-5x the value of the attacked ship, to redeem yourself. Make that an economic war, not a gun war

Sounds a lot like what's been proposed already - in that jump cost rises with mass. So a trade ship full of dirt costs too much to jump profitably, and jumping capital warships costs a lot that you won't want to do it much.

For small ships, the idea is to remove jump drives from them entirely (ie drive it too big to fit).

So you end up with the slow trade, the fast player ships (eg corvettes and frigates) and slow but potentially jump=capable capital warships. This doesn't sound so bad to me TBH, fixed most issues people have with jump while keeping this fast and fun for the player.

But even then, in X3, I had a lot of fun (as I assume many other players who spent thousands of hours in it) and it had jump drives. So the old X3 jump obviously isn't a problem.