Fast travel, and why I dont like it

Deon Beauchamp ●

I have travelled manually, the long route between sector stations and it does take an awfully long time, many hours. This method can be good for a single player when using SE2 as wallpaper whilst working on another machine or doing other things. If your time is limited or (WIP) are playing with other players, then long journeys where nothing much is going on can be a bad use of a players time. If a long journey is to be meaningful, it will have enough events along the way to make the experience worthy, then may be it could work. If fast travel is not available then a rapid travel system needs to be, something that can reduce journey time between sectors by at least a factor of 10.

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natec ●

I don’t think having just one big NPC station per sector is enough. There should be one or two “gate stations” in each sector that handle jumping or fast travel between sectors. Alongside those, there could be other NPC stations without jump capabilities.

Trading between those stations could offer bigger profits, but with higher risk. Traveling to them would take time and expose you to danger. Distances could go up to say 360 km, which is about 20 minutes of flight at max speed. That’s manageable, but it would be better if players had something meaningful to do during the trip, even 10 min is a long time of you have nothing to do.

One idea is an in-game news system. Random events could affect the economy and gameplay. For example, news about an incident at a nickel factory near Kemik could temporarily increase nickel and nickel-based component prices in that sector. On the other hand, news about a record grain harvest on Verdure could lower food pack prices there. Players could buy cheap food in Verdure and sell it in another sector with supply issues for a good profit.

A “sector network” can be used to check the price ranges in a sector you currently are. However, to see exact prices for all items, you would still need to visit specific stations. This keeps exploration and travel relevant, but give you basic information and something to do during the flight.

Pirates should also play a bigger role, especially along busy trade routes (where players travel the most). NPC pirate ships could intercept you and demand cargo, giving you a short time to respond before attacking. Unknown pirate ships should not automatically be hostile. You could choose to drop part of your cargo and try to escape while they are distracted.

Pirates should be able to scan your ship and decide whether to engage. If you are flying a powerful warship, they might ignore you. If you are lightly armed but carrying valuable cargo, they would be more likely to attack. If you are weak but have no cargo, they might still demand you to surrender and give up your ship.

Players should also be able to take on the pirate role themselves, demanding cargo drops or surrender. NPCs should evaluate their chances of winning and act accordingly. In some cases, if your warship is strong enough, they might even surrender (small) and hand over their ship intact, otherwise you need to "convince" them by attacking and damaging some key systems on their ship.

I don’t think having just one big NPC station per sector is enough. There should be one or two “gate stations” in each sector that handle jumping or fast travel between sectors. Alongside those, there could be other NPC stations without jump capabilities.

Trading between those stations could offer bigger profits, but with higher risk. Traveling to them would take time and expose you to danger. Distances could go up to say 360 km, which is about 20 minutes of flight at max speed. That’s manageable, but it would be better if players had something meaningful to do during the trip, even 10 min is a long time of you have nothing to do.

One idea is an in-game news system. Random events could affect the economy and gameplay. For example, news about an incident at a nickel factory near Kemik could temporarily increase nickel and nickel-based component prices in that sector. On the other hand, news about a record grain harvest on Verdure could lower food pack prices there. Players could buy cheap food in Verdure and sell it in another sector with supply issues for a good profit.

A “sector network” can be used to check the price ranges in a sector you currently are. However, to see exact prices for all items, you would still need to visit specific stations. This keeps exploration and travel relevant, but give you basic information and something to do during the flight.

Pirates should also play a bigger role, especially along busy trade routes (where players travel the most). NPC pirate ships could intercept you and demand cargo, giving you a short time to respond before attacking. Unknown pirate ships should not automatically be hostile. You could choose to drop part of your cargo and try to escape while they are distracted.

Pirates should be able to scan your ship and decide whether to engage. If you are flying a powerful warship, they might ignore you. If you are lightly armed but carrying valuable cargo, they would be more likely to attack. If you are weak but have no cargo, they might still demand you to surrender and give up your ship.

Players should also be able to take on the pirate role themselves, demanding cargo drops or surrender. NPCs should evaluate their chances of winning and act accordingly. In some cases, if your warship is strong enough, they might even surrender (small) and hand over their ship intact, otherwise you need to "convince" them by attacking and damaging some key systems on their ship.

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irreality.net ●

In SE1 the respawn selection was substitute of magic fast travel system, and it was balanced well. It allowed to change location quickly but without any survival advantage (and after Apex Update even with disadvantage of lost buffs).

But one could benefit of fast travel only after completing engineering challenge of setting up outpost in the remote location, first travel there, collect or deliver resources, build grid, make sure it is powered, and in case of hostile NPCs or players hide it or defend. And they could move only 'consciousness' but not any physical items.

But on multiplayer servers where quantum hangar plugin was not implemented and not limited to place of grid save point that respawn mechanics lead to situation that there was no incentive to build any cargo ships, play courier contracts or solve any problems related with transport of large mass over huge distances.

Just respawn and take out ship or huge cargo container out of nowhere. Then save it to hangar and respawn back home.

People were "living" in single-player/faction bubbles thousands kms from other players surrounded by infinite asteroids with infinite resources. No reason to travel anywhere. And even if they wanted to move something somewhere they did it just by respawn+hangar combo.

So why bother at all? Why to play the game where building vehicles is one of primary tasks?

Why to be masochist who travels by jump drive, who build powerful cargo ships when everyone around is just teleporting?

No challenges. Game becomes boring quickly.

In vanilla game jump drives were "sci-fi magic" rapid travel devices but they had to be built and they had their in-world rules related with mass, power consumption, charge time etc. They allowed fast travel but within game rules.

It was not bad solution. Good compromise.

There are also ideas here how to improve them for SE2: https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers2/pc/topic/52412-jump-drive

What we have in SE2 now is the bare "stargate" model where external infrastructure is provided to teleport vehicles. It is not bad, there are games with that mechanics. But if we can jump from any place to any place just by pointing place on the map then the map size becomes pointless. The space and distance in between does not matter.

The problem is that implementation it is not only magical but it is immersion and lore breaking. We were supposed to colonize Alamgest system - and it is not only already full, but also filled with ultimate transport infrastructure.

Also similar to respawn + quantum hangar - in long run it removes motivation and introduces boredom because Space Engineers is about solving such problems with machinery.

Then comes another question - why travel over to another planet can't be a long journey? First, in SE there is no real reason to travel anywhere - everything is available everywhere, space and randomly spawned infinite asteroids are everywhere identical. The only places which should be unique are planets and moons, but they are avoided by true SPACE engineers anyhow. Sadly, except landscapes planets are identical as well. There are no unique resources, NPCs or points of interests. But at least they are some sort of waypoints which justify travel. If we remove travel from equation there is not much left.

So my point here is first make travel to matter, and then work on journey to matter. That reaching remote location is sort of accomplishment and exploration adventure. In SE2 we have this just one time - when we want to visit and "colonize" new sector. But when we do it - there is no single reason to repeat this journey.

I recommend great video about this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SM3Sltc4yD8

I'll just put one quote here for thought "if the world is not worth exploring you want to skip it".

In SE1 the respawn selection was substitute of magic fast travel system, and it was balanced well. It allowed to change location quickly but without any survival advantage (and after Apex Update even with disadvantage of lost buffs).

But one could benefit of fast travel only after completing engineering challenge of setting up outpost in the remote location, first travel there, collect or deliver resources, build grid, make sure it is powered, and in case of hostile NPCs or players hide it or defend. And they could move only 'consciousness' but not any physical items.

But on multiplayer servers where quantum hangar plugin was not implemented and not limited to place of grid save point that respawn mechanics lead to situation that there was no incentive to build any cargo ships, play courier contracts or solve any problems related with transport of large mass over huge distances.

Just respawn and take out ship or huge cargo container out of nowhere. Then save it to hangar and respawn back home.

People were "living" in single-player/faction bubbles thousands kms from other players surrounded by infinite asteroids with infinite resources. No reason to travel anywhere. And even if they wanted to move something somewhere they did it just by respawn+hangar combo.

So why bother at all? Why to play the game where building vehicles is one of primary tasks?

Why to be masochist who travels by jump drive, who build powerful cargo ships when everyone around is just teleporting?

No challenges. Game becomes boring quickly.

In vanilla game jump drives were "sci-fi magic" rapid travel devices but they had to be built and they had their in-world rules related with mass, power consumption, charge time etc. They allowed fast travel but within game rules.

It was not bad solution. Good compromise.

There are also ideas here how to improve them for SE2: https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers2/pc/topic/52412-jump-drive

What we have in SE2 now is the bare "stargate" model where external infrastructure is provided to teleport vehicles. It is not bad, there are games with that mechanics. But if we can jump from any place to any place just by pointing place on the map then the map size becomes pointless. The space and distance in between does not matter.

The problem is that implementation it is not only magical but it is immersion and lore breaking. We were supposed to colonize Alamgest system - and it is not only already full, but also filled with ultimate transport infrastructure.

Also similar to respawn + quantum hangar - in long run it removes motivation and introduces boredom because Space Engineers is about solving such problems with machinery.

Then comes another question - why travel over to another planet can't be a long journey? First, in SE there is no real reason to travel anywhere - everything is available everywhere, space and randomly spawned infinite asteroids are everywhere identical. The only places which should be unique are planets and moons, but they are avoided by true SPACE engineers anyhow. Sadly, except landscapes planets are identical as well. There are no unique resources, NPCs or points of interests. But at least they are some sort of waypoints which justify travel. If we remove travel from equation there is not much left.

So my point here is first make travel to matter, and then work on journey to matter. That reaching remote location is sort of accomplishment and exploration adventure. In SE2 we have this just one time - when we want to visit and "colonize" new sector. But when we do it - there is no single reason to repeat this journey.

I recommend great video about this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SM3Sltc4yD8

I'll just put one quote here for thought "if the world is not worth exploring you want to skip it".

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1

natec ●

There are (or might be) several reasons to visit other sectors.

Uneven resource distribution or unique rare resources in sectors.
Different NPC factions. Different factions might provide different sets of unique items and abilities otherwise unobtainable in survival.
Trading. As I've described in my previous comment in here. Also trading with other players and factions in multiplayer.
Contracts. Certain contracts might require you to travel far away in distant sectors.
Politics. This is a consequence of n2. Your reputation might be ruined in certain sectors due to your actions or some events, so you have to move elsewhere, or you might intentionally be pirating in one sector and "live" in another.
Exploration. There might be differences in what encounters can spawn in different sectors. You would not be able to find everything in one sector. Ideally, there has to be some powerful end-game items you can obtain only in specific sectors, things like rare suit modules or production modules.
Campaign. Obviously, the colonisation campaign is all about visiting many places in the star system and "colonising" them, whatever that mean. The fast travel is blocked until you finish colonising a given sector. The variety of colonisation "contacts" will most likely be increased, as for now it feels quite boring and repetitive, but it will change for sure.

So, as you can see, there are plenty of reasons. Of course, it depends on developers to make these factors real and significant from the gameplay perspective. And to maybe add more. Besides sectors, I'd like to have reasons to travel to different biomes on planets and increase the importance of knowledge-based gameplay.

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irreality.net ●

I fully agree, but none of that was implemented in SE1, and none of that is yet implemented in SE2 or even no teasers that this will ever happen.

I would love to see everything as you described!

But so far this is just our wishlist and my post above was about how it is, not how it could be.

And so far nothing was improved since SE1. There is just engine and no world building. Space is empty. Planets are just for nice views but without unique features. Things are equally distributed including spawns of resources, asteroids and encounters (currently unknown signals).

Last two sectors even had identical station models and just two contracts pushing colonization by 50%, so I really don't see a point of adding more and more sectors at this state of game engine.

In SE1 there are mods or customized worlds which aim to change it but they were developed by individuals as their hobby time and in my opinion now it is time to have them as part of core game - in sequel after 10 years of gaining experience about what was missing in previous part.

Colonization campaign - I agree, this is a way to visit places. But they are all identical with identical quest types. There is no story line, campaign or story quest.

The campaign could involve the player in actual building of stations, gather resources and build fast travel network. I can imagine that it could be even implemented in phases and tiers when first some kind of medical bay is built (just respawn), then upgraded to starport station with can take shuttle player and his inventory, next the carrier (player + ship) eventually leading to full stargate technology after progress in research or discovering some artefacts. All we need is just scenario, few blocks and cut scene. And suddenly it becomes meaningful and immersive experience.

The stargates could be implemented as real grids and connect just two systems, maybe they could be raided by pirates (quest to defend them), broken (quest to repair or refuel them). Gates then work as navigation ports, points of interests, maybe gatecamping... There is a lot of potential for emerging and enjoyable gameplay around just this aspect. But as I said, this is all our wishlist. Nothing out of it is delivered so far.

So I really hope that point-and-click interface and magical teleport is just a placeholder and things will change.