[Spaceships] Designing Hyperspace / FTL for space opera (and implications)

[vicky_molokh]

Greetings, all!

Both Space and Spaceships have some generic ideas regarding FTL drives and their use. Currently I'm wondering about the playability and gameworld-shaping properties of these FTL methods. For one, 'lighter' space games (such as space opera) should probably avoid scenarios where a one-hit kill will destroy a civilizations. Thus, fast sublight drives should be out of the question. Also, it should be impossible to just drop a planetbuster out of hyperspace/warp/etc. right onto the planet or enemy starbase. So, my opinions of the options presented in Spaceships:

• Jump drives, while theoretically neat, actually lead to too-easy blockading. Smugglers become broke, and warefare is dominated by being able to build the largest 'minefield' and have the most platforms at the choke points.
• Jump gates are even worse in terms of blockades, as they can be powered down if needed . . . or sabotaged by jumping a bomb from the other side, if their mechanism prevents shutdown somehow.
• Warp is a case where human pilots become useless, and speed is stealth (because sensors become all but useless against a warping target). Well, at least in deep space they do.
• Hyperdrives are complex, but probably can be turned into a balanced form of FTL. I'll look at it in more detail.

I think Hyperdrives can be very different:

• Whether the course has to be plotted ahead of time makes a big difference for retreating.
• Whether it is okay to diverge from a course while in hyperspace could change how tactics work - especially when hypercommunications become available (like in Master of Orion).
• Whether ships interact in HS or not changes some encounters. Notably, whether it is possible for two war parties to meet when Party A is hypering to B's Base and Party B is hypering to A's Base. If they don't interact, both bases will end up destroyed - another MAD scenario, under some setups.
• Assuming that ships mostly move at normal speed in HS, but HS distances are shorter than their realspace counterparts seems to ease many headaches. It does, however, create another one: will ships entering HS too close from each other end up colliding (or worse)?
• If it is possible to 'drop' out of HS, it is somewhat less scary to get lost, but still scary if HS is 'unmapped' and/or not even remotely aligned to points in realspace.
• Accessible points of entry and exit change a lot of things. For instance, entry/exit points too near to gravity wells result in more MAD scenarios. Setting them too far without providing a fast sublight drive makes raids too slow. Also, allowing HS entry/exit in places arbitrarily far from stars allows 'safewarps' of scary proportions - a pirate space station thus can be placed anywhere with no way of figuring out where it is other than by following someone (I'm not sure if it is good or bad, but it seems a bit unbalanced to me). I'm considering two ideas, both of which prevent normally entering/exiting HS both too close and too far from planetary systems:
  1. Lagrange points. I wonder if it's too close to the planets and/or too easily blockaded.
  2. A spot where the gravity gradient is exactly some number, i.e. the surface of a sphere around the star (or black hole!) of some radius (depending on mass/size). Allows attackers to come from any direction, gives some time to prepare, doesn't allow creation of arbitrary safewarp spots without some stellar object that can be noticed (either directly or from HS).

I'm sure there are more considerations. I'd like to ask you for your comments, observations, considerations etc. regarding FTL movement in space games, as well as to share any experience you had.
Thanks in advance to all who answer!