Why FTL Drive

[Last Soviet]

What is its purpose ? As I can understand a Map ingame will never encompass more then a single star system, which means sublight travel is more then feasable..

FTL drives are always quite space magic that often allow for huge logic holes (e.g. strap ftl drive on asteriod and you don't need to build battle ships at all cause you have a planet destroying device now)..
But since the game scale doesn't even ask for FTL drives, why they are included ?
Isn't it more interesting to have traveling ships at sublight speed accross the system ? Ships can have different speeds etc... It would give plenty of options of strategical play, if say ships needed a couple of days till they can reach a specific celestial object, instead of just instantly jumping there
Especially otherwise the game seems to be rather Hard Scifi then High fantasy sci fi..
So I guess jump drives have a good reason to be ingame .. I just don't see it at a glance?!

[ForrestFox]

Easy answer: No gamer in hell would want to spend 43 minutes waiting for their sublight traveling ship going from one planet to another planet. :)

I'm using 43 as the number, as that is how long it would take the light from the sun to reach Jupiter. Now imagine if you are on the other side of the system near Uranus, and you want to travel your ship past the sun over to Jupiter. With FTL that travel could be instant, or almost instant, or a bit delayed (all depending on what would be the most fun and balanced for a game), but unless there is a really good "fastforward" button, at least I aint gona sit and stare at the screen waiting for my ship to travel from one planet to another :D

[Last Soviet]

the game isn't real-time in a sense of time scale, it seems to be that a day passes every 5 seconds, so probably any distance between stellar objects could be traveled within 5 seconds with just a fraction of light speed, even without a fast forward button, which seems to be present

[StutterFoxStudios]

Originally posted by Rasta Slav:

What is its purpose ? As I can understand a Map ingame will never encompass more then a single star system, which means sublight travel is more then feasable..

FTL drives are always quite space magic that often allow for huge logic holes (e.g. strap ftl drive on asteriod and you don't need to build battle ships at all cause you have a planet destroying device now)..
But since the game scale doesn't even ask for FTL drives, why they are included ?
Isn't it more interesting to have traveling ships at sublight speed accross the system ? Ships can have different speeds etc... It would give plenty of options of strategical play, if say ships needed a couple of days till they can reach a specific celestial object, instead of just instantly jumping there
Especially otherwise the game seems to be rather Hard Scifi then High fantasy sci fi..
So I guess jump drives have a good reason to be ingame .. I just don't see it at a glance?!

Without a jump drive it takes hours of real world time to traverse the star system. The story of Falling Frontier also isn't just limited to our Solar System. The player will visit other star systems also.

There are strategic advantages and disadvantages to using a jump drive. It's up to the player to determine whether or not they want to use it.

[Magic]

Actually in reality it will just take too much time and too much complexity. First you have to wait years for proper launch window, than you have do at least 2 manœuvres - accelerate and deceleration, also the transition stage will take years. Then you have to make a rendezvous avec target, which keep in mind is spinning at several kilometers per second, and this will also require two-stage deceleration, one for rendezvous point, one for stay near the target. To add more complications the rocket can be affected by any planet pass by and therefore does not have a steady orbit. At last imagine this happens every time you duck a ship…Unless you treat the interplanetary travel like surface travel and the gravity doesn’t exist… Well fair enough that’s much more illogical.

[Last Soviet]

Originally posted by magic:

Actually in reality it will just take too much time and too much complexity. First you have to wait years for proper launch window, than you have do at least 2 manœuvres - accelerate and deceleration, also the transition stage will take years. Then you have to make a rendezvous avec target, which keep in mind is spinning at several kilometers per second, and this will also require two-stage deceleration, one for rendezvous point, one for stay near the target. To add more complications the rocket can be affected by any planet pass by and therefore does not have a steady orbit. At last imagine this happens every time you duck a ship…Unless you treat the interplanetary travel like surface travel and the gravity doesn’t exist… Well fair enough that’s much more illogical.

Tbh, I don't know what youre talking about
I didn't say the spaceships should use technology that is available today, I'm just saying space magic like FTL drive isn't necessary for planetary travel.
The transition stage wouldn't take years, if you accerlate at 1g a year long you will be traveling at lightspeed, but before you reach the speed, you will have left the solar system for quite a while already.. For convenience you make up technology like inertia dampers and boom you can accerlate even at 20g and more.. It is still some sort of space magic, but a million times more grounded then teleport jump drive..

You can deaccelerate as fast as you can accelerate.. And you don't need to wait years for launch windows, because the journey wouldn't take years.. Why would you wait 12 years for a perfect launch windows if you can travel the distance now and only wait 7 months until arrival ?

What target you talk about that spins several kilometers a second and how does not having FTL drives even relate to that ?
And how is interplanteray travel treated differently then surface travel in the game ?

[Last Soviet]

Originally posted by StutterFoxStudios:

Without a jump drive it takes hours of real world time to traverse the star system. The story of Falling Frontier also isn't just limited to our Solar System. The player will visit other star systems also.

There are strategic advantages and disadvantages to using a jump drive. It's up to the player to determine whether or not they want to use it.

Mh.. But it beeing hours to traverse the star system is kinda fast, given ingame a day passes every 5 seconds.. So you mean real time hours.. But thats then the limited speed you gave the spacecraft to travel at sublight.. But even at something like 10% lightspeed most of the travel, even to distant objects would be achievable within a few seconds of game time...

[Revan1977]

Originally posted by Rasta Slav:

Originally posted by StutterFoxStudios:

Without a jump drive it takes hours of real world time to traverse the star system. The story of Falling Frontier also isn't just limited to our Solar System. The player will visit other star systems also.

There are strategic advantages and disadvantages to using a jump drive. It's up to the player to determine whether or not they want to use it.

Mh.. But it beeing hours to traverse the star system is kinda fast, given ingame a day passes every 5 seconds.. So you mean real time hours.. But thats then the limited speed you gave the spacecraft to travel at sublight.. But even at something like 10% lightspeed most of the travel, even to distant objects would be achievable within a few seconds of game time...

From gameplay vids i have watched over the last year, it takes more then a few seconds to cross the system. Si some kind of ftl is actually needed. And with it costing fuel you have to keep your ships supplied with, you cannot just FTL jump anytime you want.

[cylentstorm]

Originally posted by ForrestFox:

Easy answer: No gamer in hell would want to spend 43 minutes waiting for their sublight traveling ship going from one planet to another planet. :)

I'm using 43 as the number, as that is how long it would take the light from the sun to reach Jupiter. Now imagine if you are on the other side of the system near Uranus, and you want to travel your ship past the sun over to Jupiter. With FTL that travel could be instant, or almost instant, or a bit delayed (all depending on what would be the most fun and balanced for a game), but unless there is a really good "fastforward" button, at least I aint gona sit and stare at the screen waiting for my ship to travel from one planet to another :D

Have you ever heard of Elite Dangerous? Many of its long term players have thousands of hours logged. On average, more than half of those hours were accrued in "SuperCruise" mode, which is that game's version of FTL travel. Seriously.

So: one less unnecessary timesink in a game with so many moving parts? Give me insta-warp space-magic.

[Bubba Fett]

Another consideration to lack of FTL drives is that you can't really respond to situations.
Suppose you're in orbit around earth and an enemy fleet arrives at your Jupiter outpost. You immediately start heading out and by the time you pass the moon the battle is over and the enemy fleet is leaving the area. By the time you get to Jupiter, weeks have passed and you've got no idea where the enemy fleet moved onto from there.

[APOSTATE]

Originally posted by Rasta Slav:

Originally posted by magic:

Actually in reality it will just take too much time and too much complexity. First you have to wait years for proper launch window, than you have do at least 2 manœuvres - accelerate and deceleration, also the transition stage will take years. Then you have to make a rendezvous avec target, which keep in mind is spinning at several kilometers per second, and this will also require two-stage deceleration, one for rendezvous point, one for stay near the target. To add more complications the rocket can be affected by any planet pass by and therefore does not have a steady orbit. At last imagine this happens every time you duck a ship…Unless you treat the interplanetary travel like surface travel and the gravity doesn’t exist… Well fair enough that’s much more illogical.

Tbh, I don't know what youre talking about
I didn't say the spaceships should use technology that is available today, I'm just saying space magic like FTL drive isn't necessary for planetary travel.
The transition stage wouldn't take years, if you accerlate at 1g a year long you will be traveling at lightspeed, but before you reach the speed, you will have left the solar system for quite a while already.. For convenience you make up technology like inertia dampers and boom you can accerlate even at 20g and more.. It is still some sort of space magic, but a million times more grounded then teleport jump drive..

You can deaccelerate as fast as you can accelerate.. And you don't need to wait years for launch windows, because the journey wouldn't take years.. Why would you wait 12 years for a perfect launch windows if you can travel the distance now and only wait 7 months until arrival ?

What target you talk about that spins several kilometers a second and how does not having FTL drives even relate to that ?
And how is interplanteray travel treated differently then surface travel in the game ?

Lmao, this is incredible. You're saying so much, but you're not saying anything at all either.