Comments on: Space-time drilling

By: LegacyWorlds Beta 6 » Blog Archive » Travel and distances (3/5) : special objects

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 11:33:09 +0000

[...] 4 units away from a supergate. These rules affect both the universe generator and the use of the space-time drilling [...]

By: ju

ju — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 13:21:03 +0000

This idea of drilling station bays doesn’t make sense in the context. The largest ships aren’t designed to land on planets.Moreover they are massive. How could they get into bays which are part of a ground structure and fit inside this structure?

By: wiles9

wiles9 — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 10:04:14 +0000

I love the idea, sounds complex enough not to be abused.

How about surrounding ships?

Just a suggestion for ‘warnings’ etc. If all ships within a certain distance were pulled automatically into the Drilling stations bay due to the forces of the BH preparation.

So.. to explain better: The drilling station has a bay, were all ships are pulled, and locked safely into, and as soon as the drilling is complete, the ships are pulled through.

Anything is pulled into this. The alliance building this must ‘ground’ all ships that aren’t meant to go, and all ships they want to go must already be at the gate. This means more preparation before use, more time and organisation, less abuse.

Also. As for alerts. If an enemy allaince happened to be scouting, could they also be pulled into the bay accidently, hence be alerted. Even a full scale attack could be diverted by accident if the attacking fleet got sucked into this?

I am not sure if this has much potential, but its an idea anyhoo. Spying is good, always like ‘ingame spying’ and not ‘real player spies’

By: Lemorsa

Lemorsa — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 19:08:46 +0000

I think the whole spy thing just took care of that…

By: ju

ju — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 08:44:52 +0000

Given the cost and time involved i don’t like the idea of a probability of failure even in the absence of interferences. In this context, interferences means destruction of the drilling ships or loss of the planet hosting the control center, that is to say successful attack by someone else or a successful sabotage mission by a foreign spy. If you can come up with a logical reason for the process to fail other than mere chance, feel free to suggest one, though.

By: Lemorsa

Lemorsa — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 22:07:04 +0000

It would be cool, however, if the players scientists could determine the possibility of it failing by adding the different factors, letting the player know what he’s risking.

By: Lemorsa

Lemorsa — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 22:05:35 +0000

yeah, definitely. however losing your black hole other than by being attacked will be a possibility, correct?

By: ju

ju — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 09:11:40 +0000

Usually we don’t use that kind of predefined probability.The probability is always linked with something else. Here it would be some technologies and perhaps the difficulty of the drilling process given its particular settings (distance of destination, number of ships involved, size of the origin system, etc…).

By: Lemorsa

Lemorsa — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 02:37:37 +0000

that would be cool, like a 85% chance that it will work. odds are that it will, but you never really know…

By: Builtom

Builtom — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 21:29:56 +0000

A possible thing that could also discourage overuse could be failure of the space-time drilling, in which all the money/time invested would be lost, however the system would remain intact due to the black hole not forming; not sure if the drilling ships should get sucked into a small wormhole/something malfunctions and the ships explode to stop the process from starting immediatly after it fails.

@rimtosser: well there could be some form of probe/beacon that would have to be positioned in the surrounding systems to try to mask the drilling, but once it gets to a certain point even the most blind fleets would realise there is something wrong where they are.