Jump Drive
This is a reminder of two major issues we had in SE1 related to the Jump Drive mechanics.
The first issue is travel pacing. Long-distance journeys often required multiple jumps, and between each jump you may be forced to wait up to 7 minutes doing absolutely nothing while the drive recharges. This isn’t engaging gameplay—it’s just frustrating downtime that breaks the flow of exploration and logistics.
The second issue was combat balance. In combat, Jump Drives currently act as an almost guaranteed escape button. A ship can jump away at maximum speed and constant rotation, with no meaningful commitment or counterplay. This makes disengagement trivial and undermines tactical combat.
The goal is to limit Jump Drives in combat, while at the same time improving them for regular travel.
Instead of requiring Jump Drives to be pre-charged in advance, a jump would always start charging from zero when activated. The maximum power input could be increased significantly so that a full charge takes around 20-30 seconds. During this charge-up phase, the ship would need to remain relatively stable—moving faster than, for example, 10 m/s or rotating aggressively would cancel the jump and dump the stored charge. In addition to energy, a jump might also require a "zone chip"/"jump chip", but that is debatable.
This change would make combat jumps a risky commitment rather than an instant escape. You would need to create a window of safety to jump out, giving attackers a chance to interrupt or capitalize on pressure.
At the same time, this system would greatly improve long-distance travel. Instead of waiting several minutes between jumps, you will still need to use a lot of power but wait relatively small time (providing you have enough power generation to max out the input). Travel becomes faster and more interactive, without removing the strategic cost of jumping, and allow you to build less jump drives overall.
With these changes in place, Jump Drives would remain powerful but more balanced, clearly separating their role in combat from their role in exploration and logistics.
For players who want an even more structured and infrastructure-based way to travel long distances, Safe Zone Jumps could serve as an alternative method of travel.
Thx for reading.
I like this feedback
What I like to do is jumping when I'm flying at maximum speed, that you have to gain speed before you can jump and then you have to slow down again at the destination (or continue flying). So that requirement for a stable position is unsuitable for my play style, and I'm sure I won't be alone in that.
Yeah, cancel charging with rotating aggressively, I agree with that, because another thing I like to do is manually turn to the direction I want to jump, and then just blind jump to the distance I set on the hotbar, I don't use waypoints for jump drive at all.
So the way I would limit this is to fly at a constant speed (0 to max) in a constant direction and without any sideways movement (so just forward), with some tolerance for slow changes in speed and direction, that way you're still an easy target, not doing evasive maneuvers.
Another thing it might require is that you have to turn off weapons, at least the main bigger ones, something like personnel turrets would be fine and possibly shields if they ever add those. Something like having to reroute power from weapons and shields.
What I like to do is jumping when I'm flying at maximum speed, that you have to gain speed before you can jump and then you have to slow down again at the destination (or continue flying). So that requirement for a stable position is unsuitable for my play style, and I'm sure I won't be alone in that.
Yeah, cancel charging with rotating aggressively, I agree with that, because another thing I like to do is manually turn to the direction I want to jump, and then just blind jump to the distance I set on the hotbar, I don't use waypoints for jump drive at all.
So the way I would limit this is to fly at a constant speed (0 to max) in a constant direction and without any sideways movement (so just forward), with some tolerance for slow changes in speed and direction, that way you're still an easy target, not doing evasive maneuvers.
Another thing it might require is that you have to turn off weapons, at least the main bigger ones, something like personnel turrets would be fine and possibly shields if they ever add those. Something like having to reroute power from weapons and shields.
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