Stellar Gravity Wells Possible?

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darchseraph
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Sep 05, 2015 6:35 am

Stellar Gravity Wells Possible?

Post by darchseraph »

I would really like the option of setting ALL star systems as no-hyper zones. Preferably something that varies based on star size (Giant stars would have massive hyper interdiction areas while Dwarf Stars might only cover the inner planets).

Is this possible at all? Or failing that, creating a script that places an invulnerable, neutral station at every star that spawns a large HyperDeny field that affects everyone?

The main reason I want to do this is currently later game combat gets incredibly chaotic. Once you have more than a few ships mixing it up you can't effectively implement tactical decisions such as keeping your Missile ships and Carriers far away from nasty enemy short range energy ships. I mean you technically CAN do it, but the micromanagement is intense.

Removing Hyper from star systems would do a few things:

1. Slow down the game somewhat since it would affect all civilian shipping. Can be compensated for by tuning engine speeds somewhat higher so the game doesn't slow to a crawl.

2. Make defensive options more viable. By forcing attacking fleets to stop at the Hyper Limit and proceed at Sublight when invading, you can predict their axis of movement and vector defensive ships to intercept them short of important planets.

3. Add tactical fleet movement and deployment considerations. Where do you position your defensive fleets if they cannot almost instantly teleport to other planets in the Star System? What if your own fleets need to travel at sublight to defend nearby systems, it makes intel and planning far more key.

4. Make battle less chaotic. The sublight movement of the fleets will give you a large amount of time to arrange your ships or subfleets. Make sure your heavily shielded and armored warships are out front and keeping the missile and carrier ships in the rear. Right now once you order a fleet to attack, it hypers on top of an enemy and all bets are off due to random hyper dispersion.

Essentially this one change would dramatically alter the way the game plays out and could be very interesting.

Is such a thing even possible within the bounds of modding? Or do we have to petition Matrix and hope they include it in a followup game or expansion?
Aeson
Posts: 786
Joined: Fri Aug 30, 2013 7:36 pm

RE: Stellar Gravity Wells Possible?

Post by Aeson »

The only information on the subject that I know of can be found here:
tm.asp?m=3864689

The short answer would appear to be that no, it is not possible to add a jump inhibition/interdiction effect to stars or other bodies. As to whether or not you can set up a script to spawn in more or less invulnerable stations over all the stars to provide an approximation of that capability, I do not know. The system radius is 25,000 range units, so you'll want to have a component with a similarly-large inhibition or interdiction range to simulate the effect you're looking for, though I doubt you'd need to reach the full 25000 range from the system center to force ships to exit far from the planets; 25 seconds + jump initiation is a fair bit more time than I recall my Warp Bubble Generator ships taking to jump from one outer planet to another on the other side of the star, even when they're not running with fully-powered drives.
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