[GrimGriz]

Alrighty, let's try this again...

For those that don't know, in WoW there are items called hearthstones. You can go to any friendly town and tune your hearthstone to that town. Then, from anywhere else in the WoW world, you can activate the hearthstone (you can be interrupted while it does it's thing, which cancels it) and you are teleported to that town. That's the inspiration for this next idea.

Hearthstone Hyperdrives
I think every ship should have a hyperdrive engine that can fire once every so often. The every so often would vary based on ship type. Fighter craft could hyperdrive once every 45 min to an hour, and larger craft could hyper every 2-3 hours.

When a pilot engages his hyperdrive, it pulls up the map, and he can choose to hyper to one of the following locations:

• A home faction station
• A distress beacon in his home faction space
• A combat hyperdrive beacon anywhere

When using the mayday key, if the pilot has purchased a distress beacon and is in HIS OWN FACTION SPACE a distress beacon (tough but destroyable) is deployed. Any military craft IN THEIR OWN FACTION SPACE who activate their hyperdrives can choose that beacon as a destination. For example, if Dahalb is mining in Bronci Rift and 3 quants jump in and start shooting him, he can drop the distress beacon and Sol navy can hyperdrive in to save him (provided their engines are charged).

A combat hyperdrive beacon can be deployed anywhere, but has SEVERELY LIMITING DEPLOYMENT REQUIREMENTS that have yet to be determined (and hopefully will be discussed). For example, not in enemy station sectors, takes X amount of time to deploy and the enemy is notified you're deploying one. They are also destroyable. However, if a wing manages to sneak to Outer Depths and deploy one, the entire oct armada gets outerdepths as a hyperdrive option until it is destroyed.

[Jonboy]

Interesting.... I will say more later...

Basicly, it might be overpowered.

[Hornet]

Very interesting concept, but I agree with JB that it might be overpowered. Maybe it gets destroyed after 1 or 2 people hearth there. I'll have to think about it for more suggestions.

[Jonboy]

It's basicly a portable jumpgate....

I like the idea as a way of getting a miner some help really fast.

I don't like the idea as a way of smuggling a large group of fighters to an enemy position inside a civilian vehicle.

I don't like the idea as a way of teleporting a tug load of iridium inside a ranger.

If it was limited to only one mostly-unladen, civilian craft. Then you could use it as a personal escort, without the escort being terminally bored. It would be a very strong anti-pirate device. You can put further limits on use, e.g. time, weight, cost and size. The pirate-defense would be fairly fun, and PvP, rather than PirateVsAI.

hmmm...

[GrimGriz]

Originally Posted by Jonboy

I don't like the idea as a way of smuggling a large group of fighters to an enemy position inside a civilian vehicle.

I wouldn't like that either. When I was thinking of the combat hyperdrive beacons, I was envisioning something more along the lines of a heavy miner or freighter (with turrets of course) being the only ships that could deploy it. Since they had turrets in the vision, there were no tags, but if the tag system is implemented then one would have to be military tagged to deploy it. So, you'd have to sneak a killable freighter or HM deep into enemy territory to get away with it.

Further, only fighters would be able to hyperdrive to a combat beacon. You couldn't put one up and have 4 battleships hyperdrive in (though, that would be a point of debate I imagine).

I don't like the idea as a way of teleporting a tug load of iridium inside a ranger.

That's the reason behind suggesting larger craft only being able to use it once every 2-3 hours instead of once every hour like the fighters.

I think this sort of thing would really help the casual gamer as well, as he can go try to do a mission or whatever without having to worry about flying back..which is how I played WoW when I didn't have a lot of time. Since technically the hard core gamers would be able to do this once every hour, it wouldn't be an unfair advantage to the casual gamer either.

Even for fighters its use would have to be pretty strategic. Is the distress beacon in Narrow Canal just 2 quants picking on a miner while their main fleet is headed to Greater Locks?

[Ambrosius]

Sounds like it would be tremendously open to abuse to me. I think you'd have to put restrictions on it and perhaps even make it unreliable (i.e. it only works 33% of the time or something).

[Hornet]

I definitely like the ideas so far. A hyperdrive of some sort would make complete sense in the space-arena, its just a matter of balancing it so its usable but yet not abusable. Do you guys think it would need to be purchased equipment or standard on all ships? Maybe lower level ship can only hyperdrive to a home station...or can only jump you X sectors because its lower powered then regular ones...hmm.

[netburnr]

How about instead of something you drop, its based kind of like the MT Map. If the beacon the sector you are in is tuned to the faction color, and you are MT tagged, if you put out a distress, then it shows on the map, and people can then jump to the beacon to assist?

that way only MT people can use, and will give tows more of a reason to be military based instead of running around civ all the time

[GrimGriz]

Originally Posted by Hornet

I definitely like the ideas so far. A hyperdrive of some sort would make complete sense in the space-arena, its just a matter of balancing it so its usable but yet not abusable. Do you guys think it would need to be purchased equipment or standard on all ships? Maybe lower level ship can only hyperdrive to a home station...or can only jump you X sectors because its lower powered then regular ones...hmm.

My thought was that it would actually have to be tied to your pod, to prevent people from changing ships in order to get a recharged hyperdrive and avoid the wait-time.

Originally Posted by netburnrol

How about instead of something you drop, its based kind of like the MT Map. If the beacon the sector you are in is tuned to the faction color, and you are MT tagged, if you put out a distress, then it shows on the map, and people can then jump to the beacon to assist?

that way only MT people can use, and will give tows more of a reason to be military based instead of running around civ all the time

I intended the distress beacon to be something purchasable so that the price of the thing would discourage abuse of it, though I'm certainly open to other methods of preventing it's abuse.

As I haven't heard any tag news one way or another about Jumpgate Evolution, I'm operating under the assumption that all formerly civilian ships will be redesigned to exist in a galaxy at war, and therefore there will be no civilians (and also no easy prey)

[ilk]

I'm loving this idea. As others have said, balancing nightmare - but that's what Beta's are for

[ELPIRATA]

I was going to suggest what Net said, that a distress beacon should be deployed only:

1st by military craft ONLY
2nd by a military ship doing a recon mission.

Another problem I forsee is what happens if there are multiple distress beacons available? the 3rd option would have multiple choices, and going randomly wouldnt be fair IMO.

If a miner has the ability to jump away when he spots problems coming, then they dont need buy-able distress beacons and such. ATM if Im arti hunting, I can spot any fighter before they spot me, even if Im in a tow.

I guess what Im saying is that a big radar (and somebody being alert while mining - which doesnt fit the description of the many - who go watch tv while doing it) is good enough way to see if ur in danger, then, start the clock and get out.

This brings an interesting subject that should be dealt in another thread, which I'll do.

I like the ideas so far.

Hummm, how about having an specific fighter craft that can respond to this situations and still appeal to those folks who dont have much time to go look for fights?

ELP

[GrimGriz]

My personal intention wasn't for a ships Hyperdrive to be a get out of trouble free card, though it wouldn't truly surprise me if some players chose to use theirs that way. Still, with the limitations on the the non-fighter hyperdrives (namely the increased time limit) I don't see why the also limited (have to be in your home faction space) distress beacon would be a problem.

I see no reason why a fighter would warrant a distress beacon, as fighters are typically quite expendable. Similarly, the nature of recon missions is to try and sneak into someplace dangerous, learn what you can, and make it out alive...and if you're sneaking into someplace dangerous, a distress beacon probably wouldn't work as you wouldn't be in your own factions space.

Or were you guys talking about the combat beacons? To me, those are too powerful to let small recon type ships deploy. I was thinking more along the lines of large ships, or perhaps multiple medium sized ships...not expendable fighters, but battle barges (turreted freighters and the like) being required to deploy the combat beacons.

Adding these on the casual gamer station defense craft to respond to distress calls is a good call though (and these could be an option for tiered payments plans...i.e. you can play a station defense ship with no stats for free, but to make a character with any freedom $$)