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Old 05-10-2021, 04:01 PM   #21
Calvin
 
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Default Re: [Space] Space Strategy: FTL Bottlenecks

I'm very fond of the jump points dynamic. Stellaris used to have three FTL modes, and you could select one for your empire.

Warp drive worked by giving you a jump range. Any system within X lightyears was reachable, and you'd stop in the system to recharge for the next jump.

For Wormhole FTL you had to build wormhole stations which would allow you to jump from them to any system in the wormhole station's range. It would also create wormholes to allow you to make a return trip.

And finally, there are/were hyperlanes. Which is just a system of jump point pairs. Systems can have multiple points, and each one links to a single specific other system.

It wasn't long before serious players, especially in MP, were running with hyperlanes only. Warp drive and wormhole stations are cool, but it makes strategy very difficult. Warfare devolved into who could create the largest blob of ships to throw at the enemy force. This has since been enforced by the developers, who removed wormhole stations entirely and made warp drive a very late game tech.

With hyperlanes it's possible to have fortified border worlds. Borders in space also make a lot more sense since both sides will naturally seek to have as few external hyperlinks as possible. Nations tend to colonzie only as far as the next chokepoint, and in cases where that doesn't happen the stray systems are usually the first targets to conquer.
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Old 05-10-2021, 04:55 PM   #22
Anthony
 
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Location: Berkeley, CA
Default Re: [Space] Space Strategy: FTL Bottlenecks

In general I think you should design your FTL based on the tactical and strategic results you want in your game, rather than starting with a FTL design and analyzing what tactics it will produce.

IME warp point defense produces fairly bad game play. In general space strategy is going to depend on the balance of mobile forces vs static defense:
  1. Your primary fleet can rapidly overwhelm any viable static defense. This generally results in either a Mahanian Decisive Battle that decides the war, or MAD, depending on how practical it is for mobile forces to intercept each other.
  2. Your primary fleet can overwhelm static defenses, but it takes a while. This usually results in a Decisive Battle.
  3. Your primary fleet cannot practically deal with top end static defense, but static defense is limited enough that you can still raid other targets of interest. This generally produces more interesting skirmishing than the above options.
  4. Your primary fleet cannot practically deal with top static defense, and everything can protected. This results in extremely stagnant game play.
Jump point designs that allow for fortifications usually result in either (1) or (4), possibly varying depending on economies (for example, mass limits on jump points usually result in (4) once fleets are large enough to be affected, but might be something else early on). Something like 'mass limits but not practical to interdict' might usefully force large numbers of small fleet actions.
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Old 05-10-2021, 06:46 PM   #23
David Johnston2
 
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Default Re: [Space] Space Strategy: FTL Bottlenecks

For gaming purposes I would say the important issue is how easy you want to make it to suppress piracy and smuggling., In the Starfire setting piracy is just impractical because the movement of ships is too easily controlled. You can do a bit with gates that are undetectable on one end but it won't last long before the traffic reveals its location and they put a sentry on it.
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Old 05-10-2021, 07:08 PM   #24
Prince Charon
 
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Default Re: [Space] Space Strategy: FTL Bottlenecks

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Originally Posted by David Johnston2 View Post
For gaming purposes I would say the important issue is how easy you want to make it to suppress piracy and smuggling., In the Starfire setting piracy is just impractical because the movement of ships is too easily controlled. You can do a bit with gates that are undetectable on one end but it won't last long before the traffic reveals its location and they put a sentry on it.
That also depends on whether cloaking devices are part of the setting (and how rare/expensive they are if they exist), and whether a cloaked vehicle becomes visible or otherwise noticeable when jumping/transiting the wormhole/whatever.
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Old 05-11-2021, 04:18 PM   #25
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Default Re: [Space] Space Strategy: FTL Bottlenecks

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A relative of this is limited jump geography, where you can't actually directly block the jump lines, but from any given system you can only directly get to a limited number of other systems, and between jumps you have to do something that is susceptible to harassment or interdiction.
This is what CJ Cherryh uses in her Union/Alliance/Chanur books. You can jump from most anywhere outside a jump limit of the star, but have to end at somewhere on the the jump limit of some star or other large mass. But the possible jump range is short enough that the possible routes from mass to mass are quite limited. And knowing a dark mass point that no one else does is a great advantage
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Old 05-11-2021, 04:41 PM   #26
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Default Re: [Space] Space Strategy: FTL Bottlenecks

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Originally Posted by David Johnston2 View Post
For gaming purposes I would say the important issue is how easy you want to make it to suppress piracy and smuggling., In the Starfire setting piracy is just impractical because the movement of ships is too easily controlled. You can do a bit with gates that are undetectable on one end but it won't last long before the traffic reveals its location and they put a sentry on it.
If I wanted a piracy friendly setting I'd use a warp drive system, not any sort of jump point, because what you really want is a way for ships to be engaged from outside of communications range with law enforcement, and it's fairly practical to tune warp drives for that, just make it possible to intercept while in warp (you could in principle design your jump drive so you can intercept other ships in jump, but it's more work and winds up looking like a warp drive where you can only enter hyperspace in specific locations).
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Old 05-13-2021, 11:46 AM   #27
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Default Re: [Space] Space Strategy: FTL Bottlenecks

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If I wanted a piracy friendly setting I'd use a warp drive system, .... just make it possible to intercept while in warp
I didnīt like that as I didnīt want to go into FTL weapons. So I went with a jump drive, instantaneous jumps, limited by jump limits much larger than Travellerīs 100D, about 24 AU for Sol, jump increments of 0.1 pc, and recharge times between jumps of 1-2 hours. So ships spend most time in normal space far away from planets and stars and interact only in STL.
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Old 05-13-2021, 12:05 PM   #28
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Default Re: [Space] Space Strategy: FTL Bottlenecks

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I didnīt like that as I didnīt want to go into FTL weapons.
You don't need ftl weapons. My preference is that ships in warp can't get close enough to one another for their warp bubbles to merge, and only then is combat possible (and as a bonus, boarding actions make sense).
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Old 05-14-2021, 11:31 AM   #29
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You don't need ftl weapons. My preference is that ships in warp can't get close enough to one another for their warp bubbles to merge, and only then is combat possible (and as a bonus, boarding actions make sense).
I donīt understand. "canīt get close enough"? Shouldnīthat be that if they get close enough their warp bubbles merge and they can use weapons as if at STL speeds? Or: their warp bubbles collapse and they can only go back to FTL if either the distance has increased sufficiently or one warp generator is destroyed?
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Old 05-14-2021, 11:34 AM   #30
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Default Re: [Space] Space Strategy: FTL Bottlenecks

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I donīt understand. "canīt get close enough"? Shouldnīthat be that if they get close enough their warp bubbles merge and they can use weapons as if at STL speeds?
Yeah, I typoed. I meant that.
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