philosophic problem with Jump Points

M

motti

Spaceman
How would something like the Wing Commander Campaign actually work, if we know the situation about jump nodes from games like Privateer?

I mean there are 8 tightly packed jump holes and they could be easily controlled, so what about sending out deep-space exploration or even 8 Nav inspections?

I mean what would be the sense of it, because the Kilrathi will come through this one jump hole from their side Oo.
Perhaps I lack certain background information, so I am waiting for the die-hard fans to explain this to me :)
 
greets! good question actually :)

from reading the novels and stuff i can tell you that there is one big difference between them and privateer, mainly the systems in privateer are pretty small, in the novels they actually describe transits between jump points and and stuff as taking hours. This isn't exactly something that would work to well inside a game universe, so my only summation is they scaled the systems down by a lot to make it more manageable.
 
Jumps and aferburnets generally work a lot different in Priv than anywhere else, mostly because anywhere else jumps mostly just happened to the player, with some exceptions -- in Priv the player happens to jumps. :)

I propose that in this respect we:

(1) Stick to Priv jump point wise.
(2) Try to make civilian (priv style) and milspec (wcX style) 'burners. It may be possible with the current engine, working on it.
 
You got better speed (3x cruise instead of 2x cruise, roughly) and there was a fuel gauge you used up. Out of fuel = no more afterburner.
 
In the WC games I've played (3, 4, and Prophecy) the afterburners used fuel, yet the engines didn't seem to. Energy reserves only powered weapons. You didn't have a jump drive, instead you counted on a carrier to take you through jumps.

In Privateer, you have a jump drive, which is the only thing needing fuel. Afterburners just suck down the energy reserves.
 
its pretty wierd how they did it too. in the novels they describe the figthers as having fuel reserves which are eaten away by both normal flight and afterburners, the ships collected fuel (larger ships) as they flew through space with hydrogen intakes. i wonder if it was to hard to implement a full out setup like described in the books at the time, or if they just thought it'd gum up game play to much, or maybe the nav-point system they had setup wasn't conducive to simulating realistically a fighter which has a set range. *shrugs* the world may never know.....



until they make a new WC :)
 
I'm going to TRY to make milspec afterburners, but I don't know if VS will play nice with it. As for the other stuff... eek complicated @_@;
 
The WC games (except Privateer) didn't have a lot of bases, planets, etc... It was mainly about nav points and jump points. So scale could have been a bit.. skewed. Also, your carrier isn't going to go as fast as a fighter.
 
BradMick said:
its pretty wierd how they did it too. in the novels they describe the figthers as having fuel reserves which are eaten away by both normal flight and afterburners, the ships collected fuel (larger ships) as they flew through space with hydrogen intakes.
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IIRC the Fighters in WC1 & 2 also burn fuel in normal flight. But I never had run out so I can't tell what would happen after all fuel was gone.
I can't tell why they changed that for WC3, 4 & 5.
 
spiritplumber said:
You couldn't afterburn anymore, that's all that happened.
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yape, and than you probably continued to fly on the Ion engines worked from the ship's main generator.
 
As I see it, the problem looks like this:

We have the original Wing Commander, which (f.e.) takes place in Enyo System. There you have to fly several missions along some nav-points, escort a freighter to a jump point and such things.
Well, where would be the point in doing a nav-point patrol, if there were only some very close jump fields. Where in hell would be the sense in leading a war like this, if you are able to close down a jump node by surrounding it with ships and lasers?

Then we have Privateer and there are lot of jump nodes in close vicinity to each other, which is the total opposite of what is necessary for a good war-game.

Now, there is a need to reconcile this two issues somehow to make (f.e.) a Wing Commander I campaign possible.
One thing would be that the Confed and the Kilrathi Empire jammed the jump nodes close to planets and so the war takes place in some outer jump holes, which are not regulary observed, because civilian traffic wouldn't use them. (Also, a good thing to give pirates the chance to sneak into systems :p)
 
motti said:
Where in hell would be the sense in leading a war like this, if you are able to close down a jump node by surrounding it with ships and lasers?
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What? They do mind jump points... It'd be stupid not to...

One thing would be that the Confed and the Kilrathi Empire jammed the jump nodes close to planets and so the war takes place in some outer jump holes, which are not regulary observed, because civilian traffic wouldn't use them. (Also, a good thing to give pirates the chance to sneak into systems :p)
Click to expand...

Nobody knows how to jam a jump point. The Kilrathi figure out how to make it look like they have circa Wing Commander 3, but only in a very specific set of circumstances that isn't really widely applicable and that isn't going to fool you anyway once you know the jump point is still there.
 
Really, the only way to 'jam' a jump point would be to blockade it with so many heavily armed ships as to insure the destruction of just about anything coming out. Even then, that's not a true jamming, the jump wormholes still work, and it won't stop the blockader's enemies from finding a way to defeat that trick.
 
Yeah, but it would be considerable more difficult to jump in and we haven't seen any such fights in Wing Commander, so that leads me to my suggestion, that there are secondary or tertiary jump nodes further away from the in-system jump nodes...
 
Actually, tractoring asteroids or placing minefields at the jump-in point is a great way to 'jam' jump points. :)
 
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