Jump Bubbles or Jump Buoys?

S

spiritplumber

Spaceman
Which do we want to use? Both appear in the games, so both are acceptable (in WC2, there is neither, you just "know" a nav point is a jump point). I personally feel that buoys look a lot less goofy.

I ask because a friend of mine thought a bubble was a planet and complained to me "I shouldn't be able to fly thru planets".
 
Jump bubbles look very impressive, while jump buoys and/or simply knowing the nav points make a lot more sense.

I'd have to vote for the bubbles, really - if nothing else, blowing up jump buoys could have interesting side effects that you may not want to get into.
 
spiritplumber said:
Which do we want to use? Both appear in the games, so both are acceptable (in WC2, there is neither, you just "know" a nav point is a jump point). I personally feel that buoys look a lot less goofy.

I ask because a friend of mine thought a bubble was a planet and complained to me "I shouldn't be able to fly thru planets".
Click to expand...

Yea, first time i played P:R, i got the same feeling. I even flew around it to be sure ( no point in crashing your expensive ship into what looked like a planet ).

I got used to it, but it still looks strange ... A buoy will be more in sink with the universe & the tech. Only problem with buoy's is they are object's, and unlike the buble, they can be hit. Can be a problem if your in a dogfight around a jumppoint ( or can be even a advantage ). Mja, scratch that reservation, it's ok for me if it's a object. Doesent mather much sinds it's small & hard to hit anyway.

Btw: isent the jump itself a bit strange. It starts forming before you, and then move's over you. Isent the jump more realistic if it's a field that's created around you?

Nadrek: Well, if you attack a jump buoy. You need to be flagged for everybody in the sector as red. Sinds it's against everybody's intressed to attack a buoy. And you can equip a jump buoy with a heavy shield. A buoy also open other mission objective's where buoys become the target or something you need to defend.
 
i would go for Jump Buoys and Bubbles. So both.

Here we can take Freelancer as an example, which had Jump gates and Jump Holes.
That was player may travel between most developed regions with the help of nav buoys and between far systems (poor worlds and so on) with the help of Jump Bubbles.

The only thing that I would suggest is to change bubble into some kind of animated vertex (like in freelancer). And call it Jump Hole, makes more sense i guess.

I can model the jump buoy if you want, will take a day or so ;) np
 
hmm....for frontier systems, use the bubble. for core-ward systems, buoys. my suggestion anyway.

the freelancer jump hole deal wasn't so great :(
 
spiritplumber said:
I was thinking "very small bubble you don't actually have to fly IN, just NEAR, and make sure it's indestructible"
Click to expand...

Makes sense to me.

Forseeable bug: So, can I tractor it into my hold, and either hold it for ransom ("You'll never see your home system again until you give me the codes for the atmosphere shield!"), or simply create SuperNexusSystem?

Forseeable bug: Transfer of inertia by ramming.

Forseeable amusement: Send the Marines to take over the jump buoy!

Honestly, what really does make the most sense is the nav points... bubbles or buoys in and of themselves would seem to merely be useful markers.

Arquentus: Regarding attacking jump buoys - that's not necessarily something that's bad, though destroying the jump point clearly wasn't possible in WCU! For instance, non-bribed militia and Confeds might very well want to destroy the jump buoy to Pentonville or the other pirate-only systems ("There, that'll stop the contraband traffic from here once and for all!"), and the Confed had excellent reason to want to close off the jump points to and from Kilrathi space when we were losing the war.
 
Yeah, but blowing up the buoy on confed's side wouldnt stop the kilrathi, just making harder for confed to make jumps from their side of the hole.
 
except that you can't close down jump points....

they either naturally die, or shift, or whatever. but confed couldn't close down a jump point. if you want to cite WC3, you'd be wrong. All the cats did was cloak the bouys or whatever so they couldn't lock and get a decent nav plot working. also, this ONLY works in a nebula.
 
Nadrek said:
Arquentus: Regarding attacking jump buoys - that's not necessarily something that's bad, though destroying the jump point clearly wasn't possible in WCU! For instance, non-bribed militia and Confeds might very well want to destroy the jump buoy to Pentonville or the other pirate-only systems ("There, that'll stop the contraband traffic from here once and for all!"), and the Confed had excellent reason to want to close off the jump points to and from Kilrathi space when we were losing the war.
Click to expand...

True, but, it also opens op some other intresting points. A Jump buoy is nothing else then a marking point. It's your jump drive that does all the work. So what if the Confeds destroy the buoy to Pentonville. Hell, even the pirates may want to destroy it to prevent people from finding the system.

What i mean by other intresting points, is the possability of learning the coordinates of jump points by buying maps, or as rewards for missions, or as needed requirments for a mission. Take the wing commander movie ( yes, i already hear people screaming murder for using the movie as a referance ;) ). The main reason of the kilrathi attack on the base at the start, was to gain access to the jump coordinates of sol sector. Having buoys is not bad for commercial shiping highways, but it doesent make sence that the militairy uses the same commercial buoys, who for the enemy are a clear path.

Take the jump bubbles at blokkade point a etc. To me, it makes more sence that there is no bubble to this point, or buoy, sinds it's the front. So in my eyes, a jump bubble or buoy is nothing more then a visual aid.

It makes more scence learning the coordinates for Pentonville base from Tayla. It doesent make scence that regulair john doe ( me ), can find the base so relativly easy, just by looking up the map & sector name. I found the base when i played the original Privateer, very fast. And i dident even knew about the missions. I turned into a Pirated & used the base. But for me to find it so easyly...

There are place's where regulure john's like use ( hunters, merchants, pirates ) may not gain access to just by looking up the map.

This also plays in to the story elements some people here have proposed for WC:U. When you join the Confed's, you gain access to jump coordinates a regulare person can not. If you join the pirates, you can learn of the pirated bases coordinates. Or, you can tail a pirated ship, to see where it goes & jumps ( note: ai needs a workover for this, sinds the ai in general when red, is shoot, shoot, shoot ... it needs a more agressive run away ai ).

A part i find a bit overlooked, is the explorer type of person in game's. Hidden bases, left over fighters with advanced tech etc etc. Something i liked about freelancer was you are able to find neat stuff hidden away.
 
I completely agree on the surprise encounters in space like in Freelancer.

Just imagine the sector of system, where was a battle between kilrathi and Confed. There should left few fighters, which may have some nice weapons ;) Or blownup pirate base and some nice metal loot around it, which you may collect ;) that would breathe a new life and will be one of the great WC:U features.
 
Another pointless post.. brought to you by..

What about,

a) Jump Buoys which EMIT the jump bubbles.

b) Tagging anybody who is agressive against them red [because it's against everybody's interest]

c) in case of b, put Jump Buoys on the open market.. or have the Mission computer suddenly spawn a re-deploy/repair mission

The way I figure it, if the jump buoy drifts out of the nav-point (where the [story] math has been calculated one needs to be to make the jump), it simply thrusts itself back to the proper coordinates and re-emits the bubble..

unless it's emitter is damaged.. hence repair/replace mission.

(hmm, so suddenly buoys need their own AI)

is that a totally stupid idea?

- Mousey
<:3)-'
 
umm... the jump bubbles in Privateer are just virtual representations of the area in close proximity to the jump point where you can successfully use your jump drive. If you were looking at it without your HUD, you'd probably see normal space, not a glowy blue thing. I don't recall the Pentonville jump showing up in the original Privateer until you talked to Tayla (maybe it's findable, but you have to get close enough to "discover" it...) so I don't think they're necessarily permanently marked. As far as the markers go, both the jump buoys (WCP, maybe WC3?) and the jump bubbles of WCU are targettable and attackable, but either don't take damage or have an insane amount of hit points, and I don't remember being able to ram any of the buoys in "official" WC products.
 
Mousey said:
a) Jump Buoys which EMIT the jump bubbles.
Click to expand...

Isent it more logical that your HUD does the display of the bubble. Your onboard nav computer knows xxxx,yyyy, zzzz is a jump point. At xxx, yyyy, zzzz there is a jump buoy located. When you are in visual range of the coordinates ( that is if your computer knows the jump point ), or your radar detects the jump buoy ( in case your nav computer doesent know the point & add's it to it's list ). Your hud shows the bubble based on the size of the jump point.

This is also a importent point we keep forgetting. While in P:R all the jump points are the same size. Doesent it make more scence that not all the jump points are of differant sizes. For instance a cap ship can't use xxx jump point, and needs to use another point to get to yyy point.

Also brings up another nice theorie where small pirate ships can outrun/outjump the bigger confed craft that's chasing it.
 
I don't know how to implement jump point sizes, but that's to take into consideration as it IS canon after all (WC4). As for buoys/bubbles, still working on that one... right now I'm trying to implement both.
 
Ok here is another idea. Jump buoys for popular destinations. A buoys would contain all the data on the jump points recient fluxuations and behaivor, and beakons out this information allowing faster and easier access to the jump point. If the buoy is destroyed then a longer amount of time is needed to calculate the jump.

Another option is, and forgive me for my lack of knoledge of WC jump points. But I remember hearing that some jump points can only be traversed by smaller ships. What if jump buoys allowd one or two class size larger vessles to pass through? This would be a great tatical reason to plant / destroy bouys. Also it would make economics more interestering. Do you buy the big cargo hauler but can only travel the big trade lanes carrying boring cargo, or pilot a scout / currior getting expensive contracts to carry time sensitive goods through short cuts.

Otherwise I would have jump points "bubble" more like a 3D crosshare generated by the ships computer and projected onto the HUD. A map including the jump point must be owned by the player to see the jump point. Optionally players could buy a (very expensive) sensor to detect jump points in a system from X distance depending on the quality of the sensor.

Edit: Guess I took to long to type this :p
 
I vote for neither.

One of the few positives about Privateer 2 was the introduction of jump gates. Makes a bit more scientific sense, in the sense that wormholes wouldn't just happen there, so here is a piece of technology, a ring that creates some kind of field that precipitates a wormhole on command. And since it takes energy to create a wormhole, you have to pay a toll fee. And some of the rings could be larger, to allow capital ships to jump; and some of these larger rings could have habitats on them that you could land on and trade.

EDIT:
And for an Easter Egg, we could have it happen once (just once, and when you're NOT in a mission) that as you approach one of the smaller jump gates, you find it blocked by a Confed Paradigm that tried to pass through it and got stuck, and lots of "pilots" around, like astronauts on EVA, working on trying to get it off... ;-)

EDIT2:
It would perhaps be too harsh a penalty to prevent large ships from reaching destinations due to small size jumps or gates. But if in many cases there were two gates at a site, the larger costing 2000 credits to use, vs. say 400 credits for the small one, then this would alleviate the situation. And then there could be extra, "express" gates that shortcut several other jumps, so that even if you have a small ship, you might choose a large gate for the sake of expediency. Also, larger ships are boring to fly because it takes more time, but if you already *have* to use the larger gates, and larger gates are often the express ones, it sort of compensates.

Another idea: To prevent collisions at gates, we could double them up for outgoing and incoming lanes. So a full-sized gate might look like...

Code: 
              ____________     ____________
  ________   /            \   /            \   ________
 /        \ /              \ /              \ /        \
|   red    |      red       |      green     |  green   |
 \________/ \              / \              / \________/
             \____________/   \____________/
             |                             |
             |       habitat/shopping      |
             |_____________________________|
Where the red-painted rings are incoming lanes.
I could try and make a model, if there's interest.
 
here's an idea....lets follow the way it's been setup in the WC games? wow....what a concept. i think the general consensus is that Privateer 2 is supposed to be set in the future WC universe, not 100% on that, but pretty sure.

bouys do not emit jump points, jump points cannot be shut down, the bubbles are a means of making it so the pilot knows where he needs to jump, its a graphical thing. the worst thing that can happen if a bouy is destroyed, damn...its seriously a pain in the ass to plot that jump, and uh oh....the relay point for burst transmissions has been cut off.

the only jump craziness to happen is in WC3 when nebular gasses were used to mask the jump points.
 
Good ideas, but that's really not seen outside of Priv 2 and a lot of people consider it off-canon. Plus, jump gate sizes are a PAIN to implement...

Right now the way I'm having it is that every faction has their method to mark jump gates: merchant systems (i.e. all of gemini, pretty much) have the "blue ball" thing, Confed has buoys, and pirate systems have none because you're supposed to be in the know to get there in the first place. Kilrathi systems will have a more Kilrathi-looking buoy as soon as I get around to making it... Kat designs, being asymmetric, are a pain to model. (for pirate and retro systems, the nav point still appears and you can jump normally, just you have to guess when you're close enough).

Is this acceptable?


(This is what I am working on today btw -- download sometime tonight)
 
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