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Warp Drive

Posted: Fri Apr 02, 2010 4:01 pm
by Tuviks
I like Star Trek movies and I want to implement warp drive in VS. As far as I know, VS uses jump drive instead of warp drive. If I implement warp drive then the pilot will only need to set course to destination(s). Does VS support this function/sub-routine ?

Thanks

Re: Warp Drive

Posted: Fri Apr 02, 2010 9:41 pm
by MrUnderhill
you purchase a jump drive, go yo the correct way-point for where yo wish to go, then jump! much simpler, much quicker.

Re: Warp Drive

Posted: Sat Apr 03, 2010 1:13 am
by Tuviks
I think the simpler methode is warp drive. I choose a system as destination, set warp factor then engage. With this method, perhaps I just need one course to reach a system instead of using jump drive which may require several jump points.

Re: Warp Drive

Posted: Sat Apr 03, 2010 5:23 pm
by Deus Siddis
I think the engine supports this at some level, I remember one of the devs talking about it in the past, but if it is implemented in VS fully yet I don't know. Either way it wouldn't be practical because it would still take weeks of constant play time to get to a neighboring star at 97 times the speed of light. SPEC would have to be rebalanced to have a much higher top speed for this to make sense.

Vega Trek will most likely implement/use such a feature though, if they haven't already.

Re: Warp Drive

Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2010 9:18 pm
by klauss
If you select a system in the nav computer and SPEC far, far away of your current system in the direction of the target system (I don't remember if that last bit was a requirement) you'll eventually "jump" to the selected system. That's the intersystem SPEC, which is a documented part of VS canon, but only used for space exploration since it takes a lot of time to get to your destination. VS would time-compress that time and just make you jump to the destination system.

So the feature is there - VegaTrek is the biggest obvious user.

Re: Warp Drive

Posted: Sat Apr 10, 2010 8:02 pm
by chuck_starchaser
Interesting; didn't know about this feature. I wonder if VS itself shouldn't be using this for jumping, instead of jump points. In the Wing Commander universe, jump points are (however unscientifically) explained in detail; but I'm not sure the same is true in vegastrike. OTOH, I think VS relies on jump points to spawn opponents to challenge the player. Then again, with proper AI and autopilots we could have opponents actively intercept you, rather than need to be spawned in your way.

Re: Warp Drive

Posted: Sun Apr 11, 2010 4:14 pm
by klauss
But then you'd need combat situations in intersystem space (and eventually simulation at that bigger coordinate system).

It would be cool, but a lot to implement.

Re: Warp Drive

Posted: Sun Apr 11, 2010 4:32 pm
by chuck_starchaser
True. To get there, the first thing we'd need to implement is multiple frames of reference, so that switching to inter-system doesn't have to be "special code".
This feature needs to rise higher in the to-do priority, as we desperately need frames of reference for collisions. I was thinking about implementing collision cones, which should be far more efficient than spheres; but the problem with them is that right now all the cones for units in a given theater would be almost parallel and generate too many false collisions due to the absolute speed of the whole theater's frame of reference.