Just played a match on a map that started all players about as far away from the Sun as you can get in a system that had one other planet, placed extremely close to the Sun. All teams rushed to get their commanders over to the other planet's moon, and pretty quickly we'd all launched. However, based on my back of the envelope calculations, the flight time for the commanders was somewhere between 60-120 minutes. I don't think that's realistic, so perhaps we can defy physics and get those transports to move faster?
We launched our commanders about 10-15 minutes into the match. At the 30 minute mark our commanders were less than 10% of the way to the moon. At the 45 minute mark the game crashed.
Well most systems for smaller games probably wouldn't have such a crazy distance to traverse...... and games that did would be upwards of the twenty player Mark I assume so you'd be sacrificing a nice piece of your life anyways....
I think your problem was the distance. You can place planetoids really far away from the sun, so your travel distance will be really ridiculous because of the distance. If you were closer it would have taken much less time. The speed should be increased, but if you decide to make it take as long as possible(great distances) and then complain about it there's not too much constructive or helpful in it. Hopefully the update to the speed will make it take 20-30 minutes to reach that far.
Travel times may need some tweaking. As it stands, most of the time, you don't have enough time to mount an offence to counter planet engines once you spot the first one just barley starting to go up.
Travel times are already defying physics; you'll notice that when you engage your engines, asteroids speed up dramatically. That being said, the exact amount by which we are bending time was very much a guesstimation about what would feel right. This number is subject to change. I expect there may actually be a per-unit-type modifier. And for planets there *might* be a more engines = faster travel kind of deal.
Fair enough, but I wasn't the one who made that map. I just joined a game and only saw the immense distances afterward. It would be great if there were a way to see a quick minimap of the solar system in the game lobby so that it would be possible to leave games that are poorly organized in terms of planet placement.
I think maybe they should uniform distance. One way I would suspect they could do it, is by making the orbital get lots of speed around it's own planet first and make that a set amount of time so that time will always be uniform. Then, make the slingshot to another gravity really fast around 5-45 seconds depending on distance. Also, that "fast" slingshot part should apply to the curve around a sun if necessary so moving to a moon or another planet aren't so different in times. Lastly, the orbital should enter orbit at the end, less of a delay if possible on it's entry. That way, the time delay between space travel is closer to one set time, which does need to exist btw because being able to travel things too fast means there is less tactical importance on what you send. Do you want to send a t2 fabber and build slow at first and fast at end, or a t1 and build faster earlier and a more complete build chain.
Or you could shift the rules of how orbits work so that they are determined relative to the 'parent' body. Slingshotting around the sun should only be necessary for travel between satellites of the sun (planets or other formations which orbit relative to the sun). Moving from a planet to its own moon or other bodies (asteroids) orbiting it should only really require using the planet for its arc.
It actually isn't that hard to calculate an orbit which lets you travel from one planet to the next and not need to get closer to the sun at all.
That's cool. To be clear I didn't mean "should only be necessary" in real physics (I have no expertise in that area at all), just as a suggested simple rule of thumb for transits in this - slingshot around the 'parent' body. Point is there are ways to address travel time from a planet at the edge of a solar system to its own moon without dramatically tweaking travel times.
You are right that moons obviously shouldn't require the sun to travel to it. However, the travel times in general do need tweaking otherwise. They are too inconsistent and at other times impossible. Again, don't get me wrong, travel time is necessary to stop a player from moving their ENTIRE army at once. This way, within a 2 minute timeframe they have to choose 1 t2 fabber, 1 t1 fabber, or their commander. Often times, you don't want to risk your commander if your enemy started early on planet, and t2 won't get you all blueprints but it does build pretty fast especially the bot fabber.
The travel speed between planets should really be increased, currently it can take really long if planets are moving inconveniently.
