Jump Improvements?

Yes, we can tighten up the jump start range quite a bit. It was moved back to avoid collisions with arriving ships (the far more annoying EoC behavior). For now there is no traffic.

The first section of all jumps should be an entrance section with no objects to strike. If you are hitting things right away, we need to know!

We can set the entrance speed lower. Some of the long runs need you to move pretty quick to reach the exit.

Yeah, the transition seems to be rather flakey as well. Sometimes it works, other times I cruise right through it.

The transition speed between normal space and the capsule tunnel can be changed quite easily. The only reason I changed it was because when the player started at the same speed as he entered the tunnel at, the transition felt very jarring. We could reduce that speed for the next build. The flight models between normal space and the tunnel are totally different, mainly because we need the tunnel to feel very fast. So speeds are totally different. The flight model in the capsule tunnel is actually not the ship's thrusters, but a capsule bubble itself.

I too think the range for entering the capsule tunnel at the lpoint should be narrowed as well. It would feel more consistent. There is a speed window for it, just like in the original EoC. I think it is around 1000ms with an upper and lower range. Can't remember off hand. Exceed the upper or lower range and you don't jump.

Yeah, I just realized that the speed window is not obvious. Unless you know it exists, you would have no clue why your ship did not jump. There is no feedback.

We could handle this two ways. I could make the range wider, so you always jump. Or, I could add some feedback, so that if you zoom in and then out of range while at the wrong speed, Lori gives you a message telling you about the speed range. I kind of like the latter, because a narrow speed range makes the jump a point of pilot concentration (and if you are in combat at the lpoint, much more tricky).

Cambragol, did we ever find the Lpoint wire frame in the game? (I seem to remember we could never find the model). It would be nice to know just how wide that green ring is. I guess we could park a freighter in it and measure directly. Tricky, cause it won't show up on F3 view.

I am going to widen the range for during Alpha test and put in a feature request for the better version.

The disruptor effect can only be added in code. I don't know of any way to attach it to another object. What would happen is that if the player flys near a "disruptor" sim then the POG code will notice and disrupt the player for a few seconds. The length of time will be in the jump simulation INI file.

This effect could be used to have "invisible" areas that disrupt the player, but that seems a bit unfair. Unless I misunderstand the purpose.

It cannot be used give the tunnels a disruptor effect, because the "is the player near" function does not work when the player is inside the object. There is no "is the player touching" function. It is all based on distance between centers. What effect were you thinking about? Perhaps there is another way to implement it?

Another idea is if the bubbles were implemented as mines. When the player gets near they explode. I think mines could cause a disruptor effect.

Actually, I wasn't thinking of disrupting the ship, but rather using the disruption effects to add some effects to the capsule space simulation. However, very short bursts of disruption of the player ship could be good. Like in the order of a second or less. Perhaps that could be the price of passing through one of the lights.