Sunday, June 22, 2014

Free Warp

Purely a thought experiment....

What if we had a Free Warp button.  Instead of needing to align to some celestial object or a beacon or a Fleet member, we could just punch a button and dash off into space in that direction?  Then click again to drop from warp at your destination?

Earth and Beyond had this mechanic - you could warp freely, but at much increased capacitor use.  You warped until you stopped again or your cap ran dry.

In EVE, this would change how safe spots were made.  In some ways, it would make safes obsolete, since you could always warp in any direction to escape or lurk; a pre-prepared list of safe spots wouldn't be mandatory.

I think the biggest difference it would make is a sense of "driving" the ship.  Right now, I have no concept of the 3-D map of any system I play in.  I undock, warp to gate, warp to Fleet, warp to moon, warp to belt, all from the UI.  At no point do I need to have a concept of whether the station is ahead of me or behind me, or if the rest of my Fleet is to my left or to my right.

I click, I arrive, I shoot things, I click again, I depart.

I'm not proposing any sort of change here, just a question:  What would EVE be like if you had to remember which direction you had to fly to "get back to town."  


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