Current Jump Drive Formula

[Page]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... lFQVGxTNkE

So I started looking at this formula whilst looking at the bug we thought was due to intragal warps and it turns out that they're not the problem at all, rather the size of the galaxy is.
Basically the formula is completely crazy (this formula is unchanged from 1.2) and means that if you are planning to jump more than 30 sectors within a single gal you should always jump in two sets of 15 and you should never really try to jump more than 20 + (level/10) sectors in a single intragal warp.


Anyway I figure some people will find it interesting/horrifying to look at and may be able to make some use of it for the remainder of this round, as it stands I'm redoing the entire formula to make it much saner anyway.

[Azool]

Overall I like the fix (for big gals), but for the shorter jumps it seems much better than it should be. Using jump is a major strategic advantage in some fights (when jumping less than 15 sectors you have 100% chance to hit the jump perfect). So that 15 turns used to jump 7 sectors is well worth the 8 lost turns.

Similarly, it is much safer to jump 4-6 sectors for a trade route than it is to walk along the route, so the turns used should be a bit higher IMO. Being able to jump everywhere you want and always come out ahead seems a bit too strong.

[JettJackson]

Overall I like the fix (for big gals), but for the shorter jumps it seems much better than it should be. Using jump is a major strategic advantage in some fights (when jumping less than 15 sectors you have 100% chance to hit the jump perfect). So that 15 turns used to jump 7 sectors is well worth the 8 lost turns.

Similarly, it is much safer to jump 4-6 sectors for a trade route than it is to walk along the route, so the turns used should be a bit higher IMO. Being able to jump everywhere you want and always come out ahead seems a bit too strong.

This was my exact same concern, which is why I suggested to Page that the min jump cost be 10.

[Meh]

Overall I like the fix (for big gals), but for the shorter jumps it seems much better than it should be. Using jump is a major strategic advantage in some fights (when jumping less than 15 sectors you have 100% chance to hit the jump perfect). So that 15 turns used to jump 7 sectors is well worth the 8 lost turns.

Similarly, it is much safer to jump 4-6 sectors for a trade route than it is to walk along the route, so the turns used should be a bit higher IMO. Being able to jump everywhere you want and always come out ahead seems a bit too strong.

Walking a 4x or even 6x route vs jumping it isn't a very good comparison. That's just wasting turns. Now I could see maybe doing it on a 10x+ route depending on how good of a route it is, and how safe comparably the route is.

I think Humans should have allowed to jump 2 gals away vs just 1. Gives the humans a unique jump advantage.

[Azool]

Overall I like the fix (for big gals), but for the shorter jumps it seems much better than it should be. Using jump is a major strategic advantage in some fights (when jumping less than 15 sectors you have 100% chance to hit the jump perfect). So that 15 turns used to jump 7 sectors is well worth the 8 lost turns.

Similarly, it is much safer to jump 4-6 sectors for a trade route than it is to walk along the route, so the turns used should be a bit higher IMO. Being able to jump everywhere you want and always come out ahead seems a bit too strong.

Walking a 4x or even 6x route vs jumping it isn't a very good comparison. That's just wasting turns. Now I could see maybe doing it on a 10x+ route depending on how good of a route it is, and how safe comparably the route is.

I think Humans should have allowed to jump 2 gals away vs just 1. Gives the humans a unique jump advantage.

My point is that with the new formula, jumping a 4x or 6x isn't wasting turns (jumping 4 sectors away with the new formula only costs 2 [avg 3] turns, jumping 6 sectors costs 4 [avg 5] turns). Even this 1-2 extra turns saved can make a big difference on small routes like that.

Page: Is there any galaxy limit to these proposed formulas? Still only 1 gal away?

[Meh]

Ah, apparently I misunderstood Page's formula, and why you were propose to jump back & forth on a short route. Minimum turn usage should be capped at 10. Anything less than that, and JD becomes overpowered imo.

[Page]

I don't plan to have a gal cap Azool, although the formula is still being worked on and not finalised at all. It is likely to use a 10 turn minimum cap as it's the easiest way of balancing out the fact that jump traders would become better than walk traders, obviously it would also be possible to drop the trade power of jump ships to balance that but the 10 turn min feels better to me.

[JettJackson]

the problem with the jumping short routes is that people hunting would like traders hitting as many sectors as possible as trading is already unbelievably easy to begin with. Plus short routes shouldn't be jumpable anyways it should be anything 10 or more.

[Azool]

I like the idea of a min turn usage, but it'd be nice to have a max turn usage as well and cap it at 1 galaxy.

The reason I think this is because I believe the JD should have situational usage where it is helpful, it shouldn't be strictly the best option for every single time you want to move. As the formula looks right now, you will never waste turns with a jump. For example, if you need to move 40 sectors, you can jump and it will cost 24 turns, and you have a max misjump of 16 turns. So at most you will use 40 turns (cut in reality, if you miss by 16 you probably just jump again for 13 turns and miss by at most 3, so you probably come out lower than 40 a very high percentage of the time). You never lose out. I haven't looked extensively, but I can't find any situation with the new formula that you use more turns (compared to the current formula where you can certainly waste turns with a jump). I agree that on average you should come out ahead with a JD, but that should be because on some jumps you hit perfect, but on other jumps you waste turns (but you hit enough more than you miss to make the math work out)

With a 1 galaxy away cap, then it also forces choke points for jumpers. This is extremely important as without any type of choke, the jumper could easily avoid most scouts (along with the fact that they would be significantly harder to find). I need to run the numbers more, but the reason for the max turn cap would be to still give jump trading some advantage. I'm not sure that trading a 20x route in a new jump ship (~1.25% extra efficiency) would make up for the significantly lower trade potential of jump trade ships (I'm guessing that it doesn't, but I/someone need to run some numbers on that)

Finally, how is the misjump calculated? Is there a x% chance for a misjump? Or every jump is it just rand(0,max_miss)?

[Incognito]

Jumping introduces the hazard of landing in a stack of mines though so there is some risk involved. IST's die all the time from landing in a stack of 50 and trying to get out.