Cloaked Warp Points...

[Trachmyr]

Just an idea, adding cloaking to warp points to make the WP invisable until you get your first sensor. Would force you to build up your home colony before exploration... just a thought. (or only some cloak, thus providing sneak routes for those with advanced sensors!)

[Suicide Junkie]

If Warppoints were cloaked, you could still get your ships to go through them by ordering them to move to each square on the edge of your system, and telling them to warp. if they do, theres a WP there
The ships would also automatically move through invisible WPs when pathing to get to a distant system.

It would not affect the AI at all, but could add some challenge for a human player.

[Trachmyr]

Good points... didn't think about that!
Perhaps then it would need to be a new ability, and a new componet ability to "see/use hidden warp points)... it could still have a few levels (i.e., you need level 2 to use small warp points, etc.)

[Suicide Junkie]

If you had that kind of a (component) ability, then you could easily have it built into the hulls of "ships", just like the ECM bonus for ES class ships.

You could also design a new, say 5KT "Warp drive" component for fighters, allowing them to go through warppoints on thier own!

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Hmm what I posted dosen't seem to relate to the hidden WPs.

As for hidden WPs, I think that from the way WPs are described, they already are cloaked. It's just that the non-neutral races have figured out how to detect them somehow. Since the WPs distort space to go from one system to another, they should not be hard to find when you know what you're looking for.

[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 17 April 2001).]

[Coal]

How about some warp points that are invisible until later in the game. Points that primative sensors are not strong enough to detect.
In the middle of the game, the tide of war can sudenly change when your enemy finds a shortcut into your core systems.

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Rules? What Rules?

[Trachmyr]

Exactly, a new tech field... "Warp Point Sensors" can be created. All non-neutrals start with level 1(you could mod it to 0 though), which would allow for a componet that sees/uses WP with one level of WP cloak (or perhaps it would just be an universal ability given to all your ships, kinda like active/passive sensor level 1 is universal), higher level WP would need better sensors... perhaps every ship needs a componet to use WP, but only the tech level to see them. A fighter Version would be available as well.