X4 - classic X3 gate alignment still viable?

[mr.WHO]

Recently when I was flying through the main zone (the one with two gates and warehouse) of Cold Star I asked myself something trivial and obvious:

"Why all gates in the systems are not aligned like that (close proximity to eachother)?"

What I ment was something like classic N,S,W,E system from X3.
If the real distance between systems is from point A to point B via gate system, then most obvious solution to shorten the distance would be to put all gates in the system very close to eachother. Even push it further than X3 with N,S,W,E gate set where gates are not in the EDGE of the zone, but in the CENTER (maybe with slight Z-axis diffrence between gates to avoid pathfinding problems with traffic).
Basically something like tiny Hub sector from X3.


To me the only downturn for this setting would be that any hostile would easily penetrate multiple system by running from gate to gate.
However such gate run could be easilly mitigated by:
1) removing the "Hostile gate" (e.g. gate to Maesltrom) away from Hub to a diffrent zone/sector.
2) Adding static defense and patrol ships to Hub (you have to only defend one place instead of several).

Basically if gate lead to friendly//neutral system - group in to System Hub.
If gate leads to hostile/unknown system - put it far away from System Hub.


What do you think about such setting?

[Ezarkal]

I rather like the way the gates are. It gives a more organic feel to the game, rather than the "everything is face to face in an orderly fashion" we saw in X3.

Plus, while having all gates in one spot would make the system easy to protect, it would also become too easy to control the whole gate network with only a few strategically placed defense. It would be easy, but also somewhat boring in my opinion.

As far as having "chokepoints" goes, I'd even go further than that. I'd place more than one jump beacon by sector, and allow player to blacklist certain beacons to avoid hostile areas.

Also, it forces the player to explore a bit more.


The way I see it, CS was designed that way to prevent HoL from becoming a cut off island, gameplaywise. Since neither CS nor Torride have highway, M traders would become useless for any early game trades between HoL and other major systems. OL is simply too far, with Torride being super dangerous for anything that can't boost, then sigma sector forcing your traders to go through a danger zone (sturdy crusader). Having the gates alligned for easy traver between HoL and Albion keeps possibilities open. It doesn't change anything for ships with boosters and jumpdrives, but M and smaller ships do have a safe path.

[RAVEN.myst]

Hmmm, gates could also have access control, so that invading forces could be blocked. This would, of course, have profound gameplay implications, but could lead to interesting gameplay opportunities, too. For instance, stealing access codes, hacking access, perhaps boradcast of "no-fly" status takes some time, so after perpetrating something, if quick enough, a player could make good an escape... etc.

Just throwing ideas around

To be perfectly honest, however, I wouldn't favour gates being close to each other, despite the fact that in terms of plausibility/realism, that would make a whole lot of sense - but then again, I'm known for eschewing games being made easier... (perhaps I DO have a masochistic streak, after all... hmmm)

[BigBANGtheory]

imho Babylon 5 had the best 'gate system':
- You need massive resources to build a jump gate
- Gates can expand or contract in size according to the object passing through
- The gate is to and from hyperspace not point to point in real space
- To navigate hyperspace you need beacons or a very advanced ship
- Capital Ships can open jump points for themselves and smaller ships
- You can destroy a jump gate and beacons but to do so is considered a very bad thing i.e. a decleration of war almost
- There is typically only one jump gate per system
- Jump gates are valuable and therefore well defended in many cases

[RAVEN.myst]

imho Babylon 5 had the best 'gate system':
- You need massive resources to build a jump gate
- Gates can expand or contract in size according to the object passing through
- The gate is to and from hyperspace not point to point in real space
- To navigate hyperspace you need beacons or a very advanced ship
- Capital Ships can open jump points for themselves and smaller ships
- You can destroy a jump gate and beacons but to do so is considered a very bad thing i.e. a decleration of war almost
- There is typically only one jump gate per system
- Jump gates are valuable and therefore well defended in many cases

Hahahah! Right at this moment, as I read your post, I am re(re-re-re-re-re-re-...etc)watching Babylon 5 - currently just started season 3...
And I agree with all points made above.

[mr.WHO]

imho Babylon 5 had the best 'gate system':

While I do think that B5 system is very interesting I think it wouldn't be possible in XR/X4 engine. Not to mention it is so unique that copying it would feel like copyright infrigement.

[RAVEN.myst]

imho Babylon 5 had the best 'gate system':

While I do think that B5 system is very interesting I think it wouldn't be possible in XR/X4 engine. Not to mention it is so unique that copying it would feel like copyright infrigement.

True - the subtleties and complexities could be at the very least tricky to implement. B5's and its spinoff's (Crusade) hyperspace navigation would at the very least necessitate a second "universe layer", dedicated almost purely to travel - a lot of work for a small payoff, in my opinion.

And yes, I also think that copying it too exactly would certainly be, at the very least, very poor form.

[mr.WHO]

Hmm... thinking about how to make B5 system in XR brought me interesting colclusion - such sytem wouldn't be as hard as I thought as many puzzles are already there.



Hyperspace:
make separate system in XR which is called hyperspace, with proper testure, fog effect and limted sensor range.

Additionally hyperspace would have jump beacons that allow nearby ships to jump to the "normal space" location they are leading to.
The "normal locations" would have invisible jump beacons so that ship would be able to jump to them.

Gates are perfectly doable in XR.
Additionally when ship is jumping in/out all nearby smaller ships (fighters and corvetes) would jump with that ship - I recall there is such scrip already in XR modding section (I 'm not sure if ti's stand alone or part of CWIR mod).


So the only technical limitations would be:
- coding that prevent ships from jumping to any jump beacon in the hyperspace.
- ability to pair jump beacons (one JB in hyperspace paired with one JB real space)
- coding that from hyperspace ship can jump only along "JB pair"
- coding that from real space ship can only jump to system JB (so that jump capable ships can jump from anywhere in real space to JB that mark the hyperspace JB location of that system).
- coding that jump gate lead to hyperspace JB location (same as above).
- adding some way for ship to "get lost in hyperspace"

Such system should quite accuarately simulate B5.

Who know maybe if X4 will be good enough this could lead to X4 B5 mod?

[ubuntufreakdragon]

So the only technical limitations would be:

These type of answers are normally Unitrader's job but ....

- coding that prevent ships from jumping to any jump beacon in the hyperspace.

Ships can only jump to neighbouring sectors, declare each hyperbeacon to be in an unique sector and link these by invisible superhighways.

- ability to pair jump beacons (one JB in hyperspace paired with one JB real space)

Just use gates instead of beacons here they are already pairs.(you can also make a gate only consisting of the wormhole and such)

- coding that from hyperspace ship can jump only along "JB pair"

see above

- coding that from real space ship can only jump to system JB (so that jump capable ships can jump from anywhere in real space to JB that mark the hyperspace JB location of that system).

see above again(use gates)

- coding that jump gate lead to hyperspace JB location (same as above).

again use gates

- adding some way for ship to "get lost in hyperspace"

enter a kill command? Or what do you mean? You can also reuse the Torride Anomalies if getting lost only means being somewhere else unplanned

[Skeeter]

B5 jump gate and hyperspace was in x3 mod and worked ok, could work in rebirth/x4.

[UniTrader]

sadly didnt watch B5 yet, but if i am right its actually far easier to do in XR than X3. ubuntu already pointed out the most stuff, so i will just make some additions..
=> opposed to X3 there is no obvious limit on Gates per Zone or Sector or Cluster, so making a Hyperspace Cluster/Sector and put a Gate to everywhere there should be pretty straightforward
=> Technically Jump Beacons are not required for Jumping. This limitation is done in the Jumping Script itself (i actually regulary use Stations as Jump Beacons, and P2P jumps without a beacon are also no problem Coding-wise)