The QuickDrive (Fastdrive)
By Incoming
I don't like nav. Hyperspace or any kind hyper/fastdrive two in one system as it would take the feeling of distances out of the game they were one of the things that I really enjoyed about FE2 and FFE. I know some people don't like that. They say it's boring to wait for a ship to reach a planet, and things should be faster.
So after some thought I decide to make a compromise and I came up with a new drive system, the QuickDrive. I posted the idea quite some time ago, some of you may not remember, or even heard about it, and since the issue of a new drive is up again, I thought it was time to post it again. (At the time of the first post there was some discution but, if I recall it right, nothing was defined.)
The "QuickDrive" is a modified hyperdrive for insystem travel, wich means there are entry points and exit points just like the hyperdrive and it is possible to use hyperspace analyser to find out where the ship is going to and folow it. But it needs a new type of fuel and, there can't be a "QuickDrive" and HyperDrive fited on the same ship.
At the beguining of the game the player would have to use the Newtonian Drive and JumpGates wich were placed in most populated systems in strategic places to travel within systems, but as the game progressed and the new drives became available it would become possible to travel faster. It also opened new possibilities such as having a big mother ship equiped with standart hyperdrive and a newtonian drive, with several small ships in it's hangars that would be deployed to explore the system using the "QuickDrive".
This way pirates would be able to jump directly to a point near a ship flying to a planet and atack it, the same way as the police could jump in to help. The Jump is not instantaneous, it takes time, there is also a limit into how far you can jump and you can't jump too close to a planet. The safe jump distance from a planet would the proportional to the planets size and gravitational field. I haven't made any math's but thats basicaly the idea.