Warp Points Sizes and Warp Bubbles

[Eldred]

On my last turn I noticed that an explorer ship with a warp bubble of 12 managed to successfully navigate a warp point which was only a size 10. Somewhat puzzled I referred to the rulebook and was a bit surprised to discover that this is perfectly normal!

 

As I understand the situation, warp bubbles and warp point sizes don't matter unless combat occurs - when the computer checks how many ships at a time will arrive through the warp point. It also says at least one ship will always get through regardless of warp point size.

 

I can just about imagine a warp point "stretching" a little to accommodate a single ship (like its giving birth!) , but allowing any size of warp bubble to fit through any size of warp point seems a bit strange It also seems a bit of a waste of time having warp bubbles in the game in the first place - how can warp bubbles become critical when combat happens and then be effectively ignored for the rest of the game! IMHO it would be a vast improvement if warp points were allowed to stretch a little (say to 1.5x or 2x normal size) with anything above being impassable to ships with larger bubbles. I think this would add a bit of realism to the situation.

 

There is obviously no point in having multiple jump drives on a ship unless you wish to go to war! Perhaps everyone else realised this ages ago and I should have RTF Manual a bit earlier!

[AKO]

I agree with your remarks, and luckily all my non-warships have only 1 jump drive. They do not need anything more. Cheap and effective. My only reason to upgrade engines on non-warships is if they make multiple warp jumps possible or to reduce fuel, otherwise: stay with the cheapest solution on transporters, scouts etc.

[hobknob]

Well, on the old board Pete and Russ discussed some of the basis for they warp point thing so you may want to scour that before it goes down. From a practical point, the WP size is a defensive artifact put in the game to give the defender the edge in defending a warp point. A small warp point will generally require ships to come through in single file which will be easier for the defenses to pick off one at a time. For non combat ships it hardly matters since time is generally irrelevant to everything except combat. WP size also goes hand in hand with the design idea that bigger ships are better than smaller ships. Pete has commented on numerous occasions that bigger is better - size matters.

[Eldred]

Thanks. Have tried to find the stuff on the old board, but the search function appears to be totally useless. Still, I get the gist of what your saying.

 

Can't think of any good reason to keep sticking multiple Jump Drives on non combat ships - I suppose you could say they would be slightly less vulnerable if they came through in 2s or 3s (one gets blown up and in the confusion the other gets away - but not sure if it works like that!) So bigger is better, back to the drawing board! Anyone want to buy some Jump Drives (1 careful owner)

 

Can't help thinking tho' that the whole concept of warp point size is a bit lacking. One turn your squeezing fleets together to get through a WP to fight a battle, the next a monster transport ship goes through the same WP without any problems despite having a warp bubble maybe 100 times bigger than the WP size.

[Balagor]

The key is not how big can get through, but how fast. Sure that monster can get through, but the next ship might have to wait several minutes before the warp point is ready to accept it (sort of like the Wormhole functions in Weber's Honor Harrington series).

 

Taking a half hour to pass 10 freighters is not a big problem. But in combat, if only one ship gets throught every 3 minutes, the defenders will laugh while they destroy your fleet in detail. You need to get combat teams in quick, hence for Jump Drives for small Jump Bubbles.

[hobknob]

The main problem with the search function of the old board is that it only searches the threads listed on the current page. Since there are 15-20 pages it makes the search less than optimal. The number of pinned threads really messed up the search too. IMHO

 

It would be nice if there were going to be enough details on a battle print out so you could make heads or tails of the entire issue. So far the reports that have been posted and others that I have seen are really lacking in some areas. Maybe it needs some bigger fleets going head to head before the details will start to show up.

 

[ShadowKitsune]

The only reason I could think of having more than one Jump Drive on a non-combat ship would be on explorer vessels, since you could 'blindly' jump into a Solar Flare Zone or some other spacial phenomena that could damage your ship. If your Jump Drive were damaged you couldn't jump out of the region.

 

The way I understand Warp Bubble and Warp Size is this.

1. You can always send one (1) ship through a Warp Point in a single impulse.

2. You can send up to the Warp Size in ships through a Warp Point in a single impulse, because the minimum Warp Bubble is 1.

3. You can send more than one ship through a Warp Point in a single impulse, if the combined Warp Bubbles of the ships is less than or equal to the Warp Size of the Warp Point.

[Eldred]

Had a trawl through the stuff on the old board, but couldn't find much on this - must be looking in the wrong place! I did see though, a suggestion by Pete that ships exiting a warp point may have some of their electronics not fully functioning (in the event of combat I suppose). It did not seem to be clear as to whether this was linked to warp bubbles/WP sizes, etc. Anyone know what this is all about?

[Cargus10]

All I know is that I have ONE (1) Warp Point in my home system, and on my side its a Class E, Size 1

 

Natually, the other end, (coming INTO my system) is an "A".

[hobknob]

I believe the idea is that ships exiting a warp point will be vulnerable as they require a bit of time to bring up all of their systems. During this time a WP defender gets to blast them with increased efficiency. My understanding is that the dfender will likey get a free volley. Hence the suggestion that ships be really big, so they can withstand the defenders free shots.

[ShadowKitsune]

I keep seeing the final battle sequence of the movie "Wing Commander" everytime I think of Warp Point combat in this game.