Preamble:
Let's talk fast today. Faster even. Faster then Light!
Stellaris offers an interesting variety of FTL Drives, but then again it's kind of weird how a galaxy full of parallely sentient species never develops more then 3, later on 4 different types of FTL. There's not much variation in one FTL category, only upgrades. And I feel like that is an opportunity gone wasted!
Current State:
Stellaris currently offers 3 base FTL methods, which are all avaible from the beginning, and a 4th, avaible through late tech or exploration.
WARP permits ships to travel freely in short jumps from system to system, at the expense of being slow and having notable 'cooldown' periods after each jump, during which the fleet is unable to move, unless attacked, which makes it perfectly capable of moving and fighting.
HYPERDRIVE restricts ships to travelling along hyperlanes, albeit faster. That said, the 'faster' part isn't really that big, given Warp ships will be able to cross multiple systems in a single jump, especially later on, and don't end up that much slower, making Hyperdrive a 'worse Warp' according to some critical voices. And whilst it does have it's small advantages, you can argue they don't measure up to the unflexibility they bring with them.
WORMHOLE engine's are entirely different, in that they are not mounted on ships, but on buildable stations. Ships with this drive can 'teleport' between two systems, as the one system is in range of, and the second system has a station. Which makes for excellent long-range travel, once a network is set up, but the long time for the teleport plus it's growing length for larger fleets, plus the fact moving from one non-station system to another right next to it taking ages, makes Wormhole a situational option.
JUMP DRIVEs are the high-tech solution to all problems and permit ships to instantly jump across mediocre distances with no travel time, cooldowns or limitations attached. It's the default engine of the Fallen Empire's and can be obtained by chance, or by certain exploration events.
Past that, the only 'FTL research' boils down to upgrades to stat X, speed Y or range Z (including the 'Psi Jump Drive').
We can 1up that.
Concept:
The concept idea is to make FTL types more unique, by adding various, MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE, subtypes. Alongside that, we will alter the 'lategame' Jump Drive to NOT be avaible to every race by research default, but add new FTL technologies of equal technological supremacy.
To provide a basic overview, in this concept there will be 4 tiers of FTL technology, with 1 being the starting point and 4 being the rare-tech end-game technology FE's use. As a heads-up warning, we as well rebalnce FTL types to be initially weaker then they are currently, with the current FTL mechanics being, approximately equivalent to tier 1.5 in this concept.
The next tier of FTL technology is, respectively, in the next level of technology. Thus, each of the 3 basic FTL types is a 'initial tier' technology, which has a very low chance to appear to empires who started without it (thus, technically, allowing any empire to achieve any FTL type later on, albeit I underline the 'very low chance' here). As currently, those base techs are the prequesite for the next tier. However, different from current Stellaris, the next tier is not just a plain upgrade, but offers both an 'upgrade' or an alternative FTL variant. Once either of those is researched, the other becomes unavaible (or, rather, extremely unlikely. Albeit explicitely possible, if you 'research everything else'). At both tier 2 and 3, an alternative to the 'default' drive becomes avaible, letting an empire decide whether to improve on the already existing design, or try out something new instead. After researching their tier 3 choice and under requirement of other high-tier techs, there's a chance to trigger the according Tier 4 rare technology, which is different according to each of the three base types, yet the same for each 'subtrees' of an engine type. However, depending on what path you took (more precisely, which Tier III engine you used), you gain a 'legacy' bonus to your Tier IV engine, giving it special ability or modifier.
First off, we start with the WARP ENGINE tree.
Warp Engines are the abstraction of manipulating space (in space, hah!) to accelerate beyond what is physically possible. To do so, however, a ship needs to generate an excessive amount of energy to create 'warp bubbles' to transport it. The advantages of this kind of travel are the freedome of movement from system to system, as long as they are within a single warp jump's range. Additionally, there is no complex wind-up necessary, the ship merely moves to the edge of a system, activates it's engine and starts moving. The downsides are the excessive energy consumption and the, relative to other methods, slow travel speed. In return, they do however lose the absurd 'cooldown period' of the current implementation.
In numbers, Warp Engine's have a range of 40ly (slightly below current), take a single day to 'warm-up' (which is the most gameengine-friendly representation of 'instant') and then proceed to move at a speed of 1ly per day (50% of the current speed). However, Warp Engine's have a high energy demand on the ships they are installed, scaling with ship size to 5/10/15/20.
This makes Warp Engines the most 'simple' FTL travel in usage, well-suited towards any empire that wants to move and expore independently of foreign borders, even at the risk of being slow and inflexible at war. But if you are pacifistic-expansionistic and got no time pressure, this can easily be the engine type for you.
For Tier II, an empire can chose to research the 'Advanced Warp Engine', which provides a new version of Warp Engine with better stats: The range rises to 60, movement speed to 1.25. However, the energy consumption rises to 15/30/45/60 in return.
Alternatively, the empire can research the 'Warp Carrier' technology, which unlocks a new cruiser-module. This module comes without weapons and with very few auxiliary slots, but serves as 'amplifier': The issue with Warp Engine's is the energy requirement to uphold the Warp Bubble. However, large ships can still maintain their larger bubbles with a rather linear increase in power consumption, since the major factor here is the surface of the bubble. The Warp Carrier module contains an exceptionally large Warp Field Generator, which effectively encompasses multiple ships, thus reducing the overall energy consumption. This permits the fleet to move both faster and further, as long as it contains enough Warp Carriers to support it's current size (otherwise, the fleet is forced to use 'normal' travel according to the default Warp Engine.
Each Warp Carrier can 'transport' up to 40 fleet size worth of ships, additionally to itself. If this amount is provided, the range of the fleet increases to 160, with a travel speed of 1.4ly/d.
Whilst this makes a Warp Carrier fleet vastly more flexible (in terms of bypassing systems) and a fair bit faster, this does come at the cost of requiring the designated use of Warp Carriers, which take up fleet capacity and are mostly dead weight in combat (and will end up with a slow fleet if destroyed).
Upon hitting Tier III, empires which researched Warp Carriers will only be able to research 'Warp Flagships'. Doing so unlocks a Warp Carrier engine section for the battleship, with the same utility as a Warp Carrier cruiser. However, additionally the range of a Carrier-Supported fleet (including one only using cruiser-type Warp Carriers) raises to 240 and the speed to 1.8ly/d. Additionally, the option to merely 'weaken' battleships instead of completely gimping cruisers, means even the 'Warp Flagships' can be an integral combat force.
Alternatively, without the Warp Carrier tech, empires can again research an 'Enhanced Warp Engine', which has an innate range of 80 and a travel speed of 1.5, with an energy consumption of 25/50/75/100.
The third branch of Warp Travel, branching off from the 'Advanced Warp Engine', is the 'Precision Warp Engine'. Foregoing advanced power for more efficiency and precision, the Precision Warp Engine gains the unique ability to ignore system's gravity wells. This means, a Precision Warp equipped fleet can near-instantly warp from any position in the system, and appear precisely wherever they want to jump to in a target system, including atop of enemy fleets or planets. On the downside, the travel speed remains at 1.3 with a range of 65, yet raising the energy consumption to 25/50/75/100.
Whilst this makes the Precision Warp the undoubtly slowest long-range travel of any tier 3 travel technology, it provides the unique advantage of bypassing inner-system travel times. A fleet can warp straight away from a space dock and arrive in the flank of the enemy fleet next system, faster then any other travel tech possibly could.
The culmination of warp technology is the tier IV variant, the 'Transwarp Engine'.
As explained, Warp Engine's work by manipulating relative space around a warp bubble. Transwarp goes a layer further and warps space again, inside the warp field with another warp bubble. In theory, this would permit travel in FTL², but in practice, the enormous energy consumption leads to ships having practically no power for actual propulsion inside of the warp fields, which translates into significantly faster, but not insanely faster travel. However, a big advantage is the fact that, just as warp effectively reduces travel distance from lightyears to a couple thousand kilometers, transwarp can shorten several million lightyears to a few.
In numbers, the Transwarp Engine has infinite range, letting fleets jump between any systems in the galaxy with a speed of 2.2ly/d. This come with the hefty energy consumption of 40/80/120/160, however.
The legacy bonus for previously using the Enhanced Warp Engine is the discovery of methods to reduce the excessive power drain, reducing the energy consumption to 30/60/90/120, whilst boosting the speed to 2.3ly/d.
If you derived the Transwarp from the Warp Carriers, your legacy bonus will be to continue using Warp Carriers, who will provide you with a new top speed of 2.6ly/d as long as they are able to carry your fleet.
Lastly, the legacy bonus for Precision Warp Engines is the special pin-point jumping mechanism unique to these kind of travel.
This makes the Transwarp Engine the ultimate free-form travel, albeit it retains it's disadvantage of high power consumption and limited long-range travel speed to the very end.
Next up, is the HYPERDRIVE tree.
Hyperdrives come down to the discovery of a 'next' dimension, labelled 'Hyperspace'. Hyperspace is a seemingly parallel alternate dimension, which consists mostly of matter-destroying void, with a few sparse 'Hyperlanes' connecting gravitationally heavy points. These points happen to be star systems, indicating that the two dimensions are, on some level, connected. Albeit further details are still unknown, a Hyperdrive is able to open a local rift between normal and Hyperspace, letting it's ship shift between those. And, apparently travel in Hyperspace follows different laws of physics and permits ships to travel at speeds way beyond the border of lightspeed.
In game terms, there is a network of Hyperlanes connecting star systems. Hyperdrive ships can, after a short wind-up to transfer into Hyperspace, jump from the edges of one system to any connected one, moving exceptionally fast, but being forced to abide by the random nature of the network, possibly denying access routes which other empires can use. Note that, initially, the Hyperlane network is seperated in 'strong' and 'weak' links. Strong Hyperlanes can be used right away, whilst 'weak' ones are indicated by dotted lines and are not avaible (yet). To describe the generation, assume that there are clusters of ~15 systems guarantueed to be inter-connected by strong links, but may only be connected to other clusters with weak links, limiting early game mobility.
Hyperdrives have a relatively meager energy consumption of 2.5/5/7.5/10 and a brief wind-up of 6 days, after which they traverse at a speed of 3ly/d. However, due to the randomly generated nature of the Hyperlane-Network, moving from one system to the neighbouring one may take several jumps. On average, however, moving long distance is exceptionally fast, as long as a route of Hyperlane's exist.
This fact makes the Hyperdrive most suited to expansionistic empires, who can easily move about early on, unrestricted by the not yet existing borders, and will have an exceptional long-range movement later on to maintain control over vast numbers of planets. The relatively effective short-range travel makes them proficient at waging offensive wars, too.
On Tier II, empires can either opt to research an 'Advanced Hyperdrive', or instead research the 'Hypergate'.
With the upgrade to Advanced Hyperdrives, the afromentioned 'weak' Hyperlanes become accessible, as now the new Hyperdrives are accurate enough to use those. Additionally, the ships become faster with a speed of 4ly/d on strong lanes and 3ly/d on weak ones, with a wind-up of 5 days, whilst energy consumption rises to 5/10/15/20.
On the alternative side, the research of Hypergates focusses on finding out more about the Hyperspace and how to manipulate it. For now, this research leads to the possibility of 'Hypergates'. Instead of being able to use 'weak' Hyperlanes, both 'weak' and 'fading' Hyperlanes will become conditionally accessible. 'Fading' Hyperlanes? Yes, whilst there are a fair amount of strong lanes, alongside quite a few weak ones, there are as well a number of 'fading' lines, which only become visible now and make the Hyperlane network even more accessible (but still leaving it restrictive at times). To use those dangerously weak and fading Hyperlanes, though, it requires a degree of stabilization technology ship engines simply cannot provide. Instead, empires with this technology can construct Hypergates, cheap stations which are build by constructors on the ends of any type of Hyperlane in their two attached systems. For strong lanes, this matter is trivial (the constructor can simply fly over and build there). For weak lanes, constructors can use a mix of Advanced Hyperdrive and buoy construction to build the target hypergate whilst moving through hyperspace (albeit increasing the construction time by 10x), or alternatively find a way around to work from the other side. For fading lanes, finally, the only way is to move a constructor to the far end by other means, which may pose a challenge depending on where it leads.
Once both sides of a Hypergate are complete, any ship of the same, or an allied, empire with a Hyperdrive can move along those Hyperlanes. It is not required for ships to physically move into Hypergates, as they can instead just open a local window to Hyperspace, and effectively instantly move over to the Hypergate's Hyperspace-representation. Additionally, the stabilizing effect of the Hypergate does not only make travel along otherwise unpassable Hyperlanes possible, it as well makes it faster. Travel on strong/weak/fading hyperlanes respectively is 5/4/3 ly/d respectively and alternatively 3ly/d on strong lanes without hypergates. And there is no increase in energy consumption for ships, or even the need to upgrade to a new engine type, as all the technological innovation resides in the constructed Hypergates.
For Tier III, a Hypergate-based empire can develope 'Advanced Hypergates', further increasing the stability of travel. This leads to even faster speeds of 6/5/4 ly/d (3.5ly/d for lanes without hypergates), whilst additionally permitting constructors to perform the same 'slow buoy approach construction' on fading hyperlanes, possible opening up ways previously unreachable.
Empires which preferred to stick with improvements of the actual Hyperdrive, the 'Enhanced Hyperdrive' offers no new lanes, continuing to limit these empires to strong and weak links, but further improves upon the speed and wind-up time, reaching a plain 5/4 ly/d speed with a windup of 3 days. Energy consumption increases to 7.5/15/33.5/30.
Instead, however, empires can focus their research on breaching past Hyperspace into another adjacent dimension known as 'Slipspace', mostly because of it's tendency to move ships by themselves 'slipping' them along what shall now be known as 'Slipway's. These Slipways are similar to Hyperlanes in that they are pre-defined passages that speed up travel, but differ in that they are unidirectional and speed up travel a lot.
In-game, there is a seperate 'Slipstream' network which becomes visible with this technology. However, a Slipway is always a loop, possibly multiple loops crossing, always flowing into a single direction, along several systems. Ships with a Slipstream Drive can, just like Hyperlanes, enter a Slipway to rapidly travel along it's flow, exiting at any system along the way (possibly skipping several). And since Slipway are always loops, a ship can effectively jump from any system in a Slipway to any other. Albeit there is still some travel time, and in worst case a ship will have to travel along the entire loop once to arrive in a system 'one step further up' from it's origin location.
Slipstream drives do require an increased energy of 10/20/30/40, but travel, within the Slipstream, with 12ly/d.
And whilst this permits an excessively fast travel along the flow of a Slipway, and can potentially permit no-delay invasions across large distances, and even moving 'upstream' doesn't take too terribly long, the big downside of this technology is the fact Slipways may be local loops and not permit long-range travel. In some cases, ships may end up forced to travel several systems along a slipway, then make a few seperate Hyperspace jumps, just to enter a different Slipway. Overall, it still permits incredibly fast, if situational, movement.
On Tier IV, the tech for Hyperdrives is the ultimate understanding of Hyperspace in form of the 'Hyperspace Manipulation'. After researching this technology, the empire's constructors are able to, with 2000 energy and 3 months of time, create new Hyperlanes between any two systems (requiring constructors on either side), regardless of the disstance between those systems. Additionally, due to specific modulation of the artificially created Hyperlanes, they are only useable by the same empire's ships, and only even visible to those who have researched Hyperspace Manipulation and allies of the empire which created the lanes (for strategic planning purposes). Furthermore, this allows the general usage of fading Hyperlanes. The default travel speed for those lanes is 6/5/4/3 for artificial/strong/weak/fading lanes respectively, at an energy consumption of 10/20/30/40.
If derived from the Enhanced Hyperdrive, the legacy bonus is a further travel speed bonus of +2/+1/+0.5/+0, making them the fastest 'basic' drive without special abilities.
For Hypergates, the legacy bonus is the ability to continue using Hypergates, which grant a travel speed bonus of +3/+2/+2/+3. And naturally they profit from the ability to use any kind of lane even without gates.
With the legacy bonus of the Slipstream Drive, ships of the empire remain able to use Slipways, which, despite the ability to create new Hyperlanes anywhere, are still faster if located in the right spot.
Being able to abandon Hypergates, and no longer restricted to hyper-fast travel by Slipstream, an empire which discovers Hyperspace Manipulation can easily create an intricate networks of private Hyperlanes between any two locations, making it the, by far, most efficient travel between two systems. Assuming a Hyperlane was previously created between those systems, that is.
For the third tree, we got the WORMHOLE GENERATOR.
As the name implies, this FTL Travel method relies on the exploitation of wormholes to connect two points in 3-dimensional space by bending space-time 4-dimensionally. Once a worm-hole is creates and maintained, it effectively allows any ship instantanous travel from and to anywhere. However, as fantastic as it sounds, there are severe limitations to it's practicability. First of all, the wormhole takes a fair amount of time to be created and stabilized, and even then only lasts for a few minutes, implying that, to move large fleets, large wormholes have to be opened to permit the entire fleet to traverse at once. Furthermore, the range of a Wormhole Generator is close to zero, albeit the very fact it creates a wormhole to another location lets it stretch this 'zero' to at least some distance. Most gravidly, however, is that Wormhole Generators are incredibly complex and energy-consuming and completely unfit to be installed on ships or even space stations.
Instead, a nation with this FTL method starts with a 'Wormhole Generator' building on their capital world. This generator can generate a wormhole in the planet's orbit to let a single fleet pass, requiring (200+fleetSize)/11 days of time to do so (this is the current timing). The generator can create a wormhole to any system in a radius of 200, letting either a fleet teleport from the edge of the target system to the planet's orbit, or vice versa. Additionally, the generator itself has an energy maintainance cost of 3 energy per month. Additional Wormhole Generators can be built on any planet with an Tier 2 Administration (aka 5 pops) for 400 minerals. On the plus side, there is no need to install any special FTL engines on ships, only some safety systems for passing wormholes, meaning ships never need to upgrade their engines and dont have engines consuming energy.
Whilst this technology seems to be extremely limiting at first glance, you have to realize it actually permits ships quasi-instanous travel, at the only cost of a wind-up period (which, if necessary dictates, can always be interrupted to send the fleet elsewhere, a luxury other engine types cannot afford). Furthermore, whilst the construction of Wormhole Generators takes up planet space and is expensive, the first generator alone is likely enough to ensure any early expansion you need, due to it's excessive range. This makes the Wormhole Generator FTL method excellent for any empires striving to quickly set up a small, centralized empire, albeit later expansion with technological advances is certainly possible, as long as you keep in mind that moving larger fleets takes more time, regardless of distance.
On Tier II, the 'Advanced Wormhole Generator' signifies an improvement in size and capability. It unlocks the same-named building, which is an upgrade to the previous generator, consuming 4 energy instead. However, it as well has an extended range of 300 and generates wormholes in (175+fleetSize)/15 days.
Alternatively, instead of increasing size and power, the empire can instead focus on the opposite direction and miniaturize the planetary generator into an space-borne variant, the 'Wormhole Station' alongside the 'Wormhole Module'. Former is built into space at any location or system, whilst latter is built as part of a space dock. Either has a maintenance cost of 1 energy per month and a range of 150. And, opposed to current Stellaris, either generates wormhole's on it's own position, towards another system's border (potentially permitting fleets to easily jump out and into space docks).
The big advantage is, undoubtly, being unrestricted from colonys to build planetary generators on, and thus being easily able to extend the empire's reach. Albeit the construction of space-borne generators naturally poses a security risk, whereas planetary generators are near-perfectly safe from sudden destruction.
At Tier III, 'Advanced Wormhole Stations' pose an automatic upgrade to the capabilities of the space-bound Wormhole 'Generators, granting them a range of 175 and a faster generation time of (175+fleetSize)/13 days (still making them slower then the planetary Tier 2 equivalent).
In a similar fashion, the 'Enhanced Wormhole Generator' is another upgrade to planetary structures, with a new energy maintainance of 5, but an excessive 400 ly of range and an even faster wormhole generation of (150+fleetSize)/18 days.
An alternative, however, is the research of 'Dual Wormhole Generation', which is the technology advancement of generating wormholes from both sides, instead of 'tunneling' from one point to a far distant. By researching this, already established Wormhole Generators can create womrholes from any one planet to another (assuming both have generators), regardless of the distance, at HALF the charge up time of the previous Advanced Wormhole Generator. This makes for an insanely fast long-range travel, albeit limited to the own borders (and even more precisely, own controlled planets with Generators built). The downside of this branch is the fact it doesn't make travel outside of your own empire any better.
On Tier IV, we finally reintroduce the dreaded 'Jump Drive'. Posing the pinacle of wormhole generation research, this tech finally permits the installation of wormhole generators on mobile ships. However, size restrictions still apply, thus limiting this new 'Wormhole Generator' engine to cruisers and above only, with an energy consumption of -/-/50/50 respectively. Now, any fleet with these ships can generate it's own wormholes, with a base range of 150 and a generation speed of (50+fleetSize)/count_of_ships_with_Wormhole_Generator_Engines.
However, whilst this engine type provides flexibility beyond measure, and reverses the previous disavantage regarding fleet sizes (as now a larger fleet with more wormhole-generating ships makes travel faster instead), it technically can still end up less effective then the already well developed generator network an empire may have established.
Accordingly, the legacy boni for this engine type are the respective Wormhole Generators themselves.
Additionally, the technology 'Enhanced Wormhole Generators' increases the range of the Jump Drive to 200,
'Advanced Wormhole Station' reduces charging time to fleetSize/count_of_ships_with_Wormhole_Generator_Engines and
'Dual Wormhole Generation' enables Jump Drive fleets to generate wormholes to planetary generators with infinite range (albeit only in that direction).
Whilst this travel method appears notable less impressive then the other Tier IV variants at first glance, you have to consider it allows medium-range travel in relatively small time periods, without any range constraints to established networks, which was previously the limiting factor of the otherwise very powerful engine tree.
Conclusion:
As you read, this concept takes our already implemented engine types, but adds new twists and concepts to them, to offer more diversity and playstyles to the various empires. Additionally, the introduction of engine types like Planetary Wormhole Generators offers a new advantage to fully-defensive empires, which can use this technology for great transportation within the empire, whilst disregarding the disadvantage of being unable to properly attack or reach other empires, which may make blobbing a bit less desireable or effective.
That said, with all the new hyperlanes, mechanics, buildings and the Slipstream, this is a rather optimistic and wide-reaching suggestion and I would be surprised to see it implented as is in the near future. Yet I feel like the thoughts behind this concept are worth being shared and discussed, in the hope they may provide some inspiration to the devs.
If you enjoyed this concept, you might as well enjoy the previous and next entry of my series:
< Trade - Life blood of all empires <
> Playable Non-Empire - Nomad Fleet >
Let's talk fast today. Faster even. Faster then Light!
Stellaris offers an interesting variety of FTL Drives, but then again it's kind of weird how a galaxy full of parallely sentient species never develops more then 3, later on 4 different types of FTL. There's not much variation in one FTL category, only upgrades. And I feel like that is an opportunity gone wasted!
Current State:
Stellaris currently offers 3 base FTL methods, which are all avaible from the beginning, and a 4th, avaible through late tech or exploration.
WARP permits ships to travel freely in short jumps from system to system, at the expense of being slow and having notable 'cooldown' periods after each jump, during which the fleet is unable to move, unless attacked, which makes it perfectly capable of moving and fighting.
HYPERDRIVE restricts ships to travelling along hyperlanes, albeit faster. That said, the 'faster' part isn't really that big, given Warp ships will be able to cross multiple systems in a single jump, especially later on, and don't end up that much slower, making Hyperdrive a 'worse Warp' according to some critical voices. And whilst it does have it's small advantages, you can argue they don't measure up to the unflexibility they bring with them.
WORMHOLE engine's are entirely different, in that they are not mounted on ships, but on buildable stations. Ships with this drive can 'teleport' between two systems, as the one system is in range of, and the second system has a station. Which makes for excellent long-range travel, once a network is set up, but the long time for the teleport plus it's growing length for larger fleets, plus the fact moving from one non-station system to another right next to it taking ages, makes Wormhole a situational option.
JUMP DRIVEs are the high-tech solution to all problems and permit ships to instantly jump across mediocre distances with no travel time, cooldowns or limitations attached. It's the default engine of the Fallen Empire's and can be obtained by chance, or by certain exploration events.
Past that, the only 'FTL research' boils down to upgrades to stat X, speed Y or range Z (including the 'Psi Jump Drive').
We can 1up that.
Concept:
The concept idea is to make FTL types more unique, by adding various, MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE, subtypes. Alongside that, we will alter the 'lategame' Jump Drive to NOT be avaible to every race by research default, but add new FTL technologies of equal technological supremacy.
To provide a basic overview, in this concept there will be 4 tiers of FTL technology, with 1 being the starting point and 4 being the rare-tech end-game technology FE's use. As a heads-up warning, we as well rebalnce FTL types to be initially weaker then they are currently, with the current FTL mechanics being, approximately equivalent to tier 1.5 in this concept.
The next tier of FTL technology is, respectively, in the next level of technology. Thus, each of the 3 basic FTL types is a 'initial tier' technology, which has a very low chance to appear to empires who started without it (thus, technically, allowing any empire to achieve any FTL type later on, albeit I underline the 'very low chance' here). As currently, those base techs are the prequesite for the next tier. However, different from current Stellaris, the next tier is not just a plain upgrade, but offers both an 'upgrade' or an alternative FTL variant. Once either of those is researched, the other becomes unavaible (or, rather, extremely unlikely. Albeit explicitely possible, if you 'research everything else'). At both tier 2 and 3, an alternative to the 'default' drive becomes avaible, letting an empire decide whether to improve on the already existing design, or try out something new instead. After researching their tier 3 choice and under requirement of other high-tier techs, there's a chance to trigger the according Tier 4 rare technology, which is different according to each of the three base types, yet the same for each 'subtrees' of an engine type. However, depending on what path you took (more precisely, which Tier III engine you used), you gain a 'legacy' bonus to your Tier IV engine, giving it special ability or modifier.
First off, we start with the WARP ENGINE tree.
Warp Engines are the abstraction of manipulating space (in space, hah!) to accelerate beyond what is physically possible. To do so, however, a ship needs to generate an excessive amount of energy to create 'warp bubbles' to transport it. The advantages of this kind of travel are the freedome of movement from system to system, as long as they are within a single warp jump's range. Additionally, there is no complex wind-up necessary, the ship merely moves to the edge of a system, activates it's engine and starts moving. The downsides are the excessive energy consumption and the, relative to other methods, slow travel speed. In return, they do however lose the absurd 'cooldown period' of the current implementation.
In numbers, Warp Engine's have a range of 40ly (slightly below current), take a single day to 'warm-up' (which is the most gameengine-friendly representation of 'instant') and then proceed to move at a speed of 1ly per day (50% of the current speed). However, Warp Engine's have a high energy demand on the ships they are installed, scaling with ship size to 5/10/15/20.
This makes Warp Engines the most 'simple' FTL travel in usage, well-suited towards any empire that wants to move and expore independently of foreign borders, even at the risk of being slow and inflexible at war. But if you are pacifistic-expansionistic and got no time pressure, this can easily be the engine type for you.
For Tier II, an empire can chose to research the 'Advanced Warp Engine', which provides a new version of Warp Engine with better stats: The range rises to 60, movement speed to 1.25. However, the energy consumption rises to 15/30/45/60 in return.
Alternatively, the empire can research the 'Warp Carrier' technology, which unlocks a new cruiser-module. This module comes without weapons and with very few auxiliary slots, but serves as 'amplifier': The issue with Warp Engine's is the energy requirement to uphold the Warp Bubble. However, large ships can still maintain their larger bubbles with a rather linear increase in power consumption, since the major factor here is the surface of the bubble. The Warp Carrier module contains an exceptionally large Warp Field Generator, which effectively encompasses multiple ships, thus reducing the overall energy consumption. This permits the fleet to move both faster and further, as long as it contains enough Warp Carriers to support it's current size (otherwise, the fleet is forced to use 'normal' travel according to the default Warp Engine.
Each Warp Carrier can 'transport' up to 40 fleet size worth of ships, additionally to itself. If this amount is provided, the range of the fleet increases to 160, with a travel speed of 1.4ly/d.
Whilst this makes a Warp Carrier fleet vastly more flexible (in terms of bypassing systems) and a fair bit faster, this does come at the cost of requiring the designated use of Warp Carriers, which take up fleet capacity and are mostly dead weight in combat (and will end up with a slow fleet if destroyed).
Upon hitting Tier III, empires which researched Warp Carriers will only be able to research 'Warp Flagships'. Doing so unlocks a Warp Carrier engine section for the battleship, with the same utility as a Warp Carrier cruiser. However, additionally the range of a Carrier-Supported fleet (including one only using cruiser-type Warp Carriers) raises to 240 and the speed to 1.8ly/d. Additionally, the option to merely 'weaken' battleships instead of completely gimping cruisers, means even the 'Warp Flagships' can be an integral combat force.
Alternatively, without the Warp Carrier tech, empires can again research an 'Enhanced Warp Engine', which has an innate range of 80 and a travel speed of 1.5, with an energy consumption of 25/50/75/100.
The third branch of Warp Travel, branching off from the 'Advanced Warp Engine', is the 'Precision Warp Engine'. Foregoing advanced power for more efficiency and precision, the Precision Warp Engine gains the unique ability to ignore system's gravity wells. This means, a Precision Warp equipped fleet can near-instantly warp from any position in the system, and appear precisely wherever they want to jump to in a target system, including atop of enemy fleets or planets. On the downside, the travel speed remains at 1.3 with a range of 65, yet raising the energy consumption to 25/50/75/100.
Whilst this makes the Precision Warp the undoubtly slowest long-range travel of any tier 3 travel technology, it provides the unique advantage of bypassing inner-system travel times. A fleet can warp straight away from a space dock and arrive in the flank of the enemy fleet next system, faster then any other travel tech possibly could.
The culmination of warp technology is the tier IV variant, the 'Transwarp Engine'.
As explained, Warp Engine's work by manipulating relative space around a warp bubble. Transwarp goes a layer further and warps space again, inside the warp field with another warp bubble. In theory, this would permit travel in FTL², but in practice, the enormous energy consumption leads to ships having practically no power for actual propulsion inside of the warp fields, which translates into significantly faster, but not insanely faster travel. However, a big advantage is the fact that, just as warp effectively reduces travel distance from lightyears to a couple thousand kilometers, transwarp can shorten several million lightyears to a few.
In numbers, the Transwarp Engine has infinite range, letting fleets jump between any systems in the galaxy with a speed of 2.2ly/d. This come with the hefty energy consumption of 40/80/120/160, however.
The legacy bonus for previously using the Enhanced Warp Engine is the discovery of methods to reduce the excessive power drain, reducing the energy consumption to 30/60/90/120, whilst boosting the speed to 2.3ly/d.
If you derived the Transwarp from the Warp Carriers, your legacy bonus will be to continue using Warp Carriers, who will provide you with a new top speed of 2.6ly/d as long as they are able to carry your fleet.
Lastly, the legacy bonus for Precision Warp Engines is the special pin-point jumping mechanism unique to these kind of travel.
This makes the Transwarp Engine the ultimate free-form travel, albeit it retains it's disadvantage of high power consumption and limited long-range travel speed to the very end.
Next up, is the HYPERDRIVE tree.
Hyperdrives come down to the discovery of a 'next' dimension, labelled 'Hyperspace'. Hyperspace is a seemingly parallel alternate dimension, which consists mostly of matter-destroying void, with a few sparse 'Hyperlanes' connecting gravitationally heavy points. These points happen to be star systems, indicating that the two dimensions are, on some level, connected. Albeit further details are still unknown, a Hyperdrive is able to open a local rift between normal and Hyperspace, letting it's ship shift between those. And, apparently travel in Hyperspace follows different laws of physics and permits ships to travel at speeds way beyond the border of lightspeed.
In game terms, there is a network of Hyperlanes connecting star systems. Hyperdrive ships can, after a short wind-up to transfer into Hyperspace, jump from the edges of one system to any connected one, moving exceptionally fast, but being forced to abide by the random nature of the network, possibly denying access routes which other empires can use. Note that, initially, the Hyperlane network is seperated in 'strong' and 'weak' links. Strong Hyperlanes can be used right away, whilst 'weak' ones are indicated by dotted lines and are not avaible (yet). To describe the generation, assume that there are clusters of ~15 systems guarantueed to be inter-connected by strong links, but may only be connected to other clusters with weak links, limiting early game mobility.
Hyperdrives have a relatively meager energy consumption of 2.5/5/7.5/10 and a brief wind-up of 6 days, after which they traverse at a speed of 3ly/d. However, due to the randomly generated nature of the Hyperlane-Network, moving from one system to the neighbouring one may take several jumps. On average, however, moving long distance is exceptionally fast, as long as a route of Hyperlane's exist.
This fact makes the Hyperdrive most suited to expansionistic empires, who can easily move about early on, unrestricted by the not yet existing borders, and will have an exceptional long-range movement later on to maintain control over vast numbers of planets. The relatively effective short-range travel makes them proficient at waging offensive wars, too.
On Tier II, empires can either opt to research an 'Advanced Hyperdrive', or instead research the 'Hypergate'.
With the upgrade to Advanced Hyperdrives, the afromentioned 'weak' Hyperlanes become accessible, as now the new Hyperdrives are accurate enough to use those. Additionally, the ships become faster with a speed of 4ly/d on strong lanes and 3ly/d on weak ones, with a wind-up of 5 days, whilst energy consumption rises to 5/10/15/20.
On the alternative side, the research of Hypergates focusses on finding out more about the Hyperspace and how to manipulate it. For now, this research leads to the possibility of 'Hypergates'. Instead of being able to use 'weak' Hyperlanes, both 'weak' and 'fading' Hyperlanes will become conditionally accessible. 'Fading' Hyperlanes? Yes, whilst there are a fair amount of strong lanes, alongside quite a few weak ones, there are as well a number of 'fading' lines, which only become visible now and make the Hyperlane network even more accessible (but still leaving it restrictive at times). To use those dangerously weak and fading Hyperlanes, though, it requires a degree of stabilization technology ship engines simply cannot provide. Instead, empires with this technology can construct Hypergates, cheap stations which are build by constructors on the ends of any type of Hyperlane in their two attached systems. For strong lanes, this matter is trivial (the constructor can simply fly over and build there). For weak lanes, constructors can use a mix of Advanced Hyperdrive and buoy construction to build the target hypergate whilst moving through hyperspace (albeit increasing the construction time by 10x), or alternatively find a way around to work from the other side. For fading lanes, finally, the only way is to move a constructor to the far end by other means, which may pose a challenge depending on where it leads.
Once both sides of a Hypergate are complete, any ship of the same, or an allied, empire with a Hyperdrive can move along those Hyperlanes. It is not required for ships to physically move into Hypergates, as they can instead just open a local window to Hyperspace, and effectively instantly move over to the Hypergate's Hyperspace-representation. Additionally, the stabilizing effect of the Hypergate does not only make travel along otherwise unpassable Hyperlanes possible, it as well makes it faster. Travel on strong/weak/fading hyperlanes respectively is 5/4/3 ly/d respectively and alternatively 3ly/d on strong lanes without hypergates. And there is no increase in energy consumption for ships, or even the need to upgrade to a new engine type, as all the technological innovation resides in the constructed Hypergates.
For Tier III, a Hypergate-based empire can develope 'Advanced Hypergates', further increasing the stability of travel. This leads to even faster speeds of 6/5/4 ly/d (3.5ly/d for lanes without hypergates), whilst additionally permitting constructors to perform the same 'slow buoy approach construction' on fading hyperlanes, possible opening up ways previously unreachable.
Empires which preferred to stick with improvements of the actual Hyperdrive, the 'Enhanced Hyperdrive' offers no new lanes, continuing to limit these empires to strong and weak links, but further improves upon the speed and wind-up time, reaching a plain 5/4 ly/d speed with a windup of 3 days. Energy consumption increases to 7.5/15/33.5/30.
Instead, however, empires can focus their research on breaching past Hyperspace into another adjacent dimension known as 'Slipspace', mostly because of it's tendency to move ships by themselves 'slipping' them along what shall now be known as 'Slipway's. These Slipways are similar to Hyperlanes in that they are pre-defined passages that speed up travel, but differ in that they are unidirectional and speed up travel a lot.
In-game, there is a seperate 'Slipstream' network which becomes visible with this technology. However, a Slipway is always a loop, possibly multiple loops crossing, always flowing into a single direction, along several systems. Ships with a Slipstream Drive can, just like Hyperlanes, enter a Slipway to rapidly travel along it's flow, exiting at any system along the way (possibly skipping several). And since Slipway are always loops, a ship can effectively jump from any system in a Slipway to any other. Albeit there is still some travel time, and in worst case a ship will have to travel along the entire loop once to arrive in a system 'one step further up' from it's origin location.
Slipstream drives do require an increased energy of 10/20/30/40, but travel, within the Slipstream, with 12ly/d.
And whilst this permits an excessively fast travel along the flow of a Slipway, and can potentially permit no-delay invasions across large distances, and even moving 'upstream' doesn't take too terribly long, the big downside of this technology is the fact Slipways may be local loops and not permit long-range travel. In some cases, ships may end up forced to travel several systems along a slipway, then make a few seperate Hyperspace jumps, just to enter a different Slipway. Overall, it still permits incredibly fast, if situational, movement.
On Tier IV, the tech for Hyperdrives is the ultimate understanding of Hyperspace in form of the 'Hyperspace Manipulation'. After researching this technology, the empire's constructors are able to, with 2000 energy and 3 months of time, create new Hyperlanes between any two systems (requiring constructors on either side), regardless of the disstance between those systems. Additionally, due to specific modulation of the artificially created Hyperlanes, they are only useable by the same empire's ships, and only even visible to those who have researched Hyperspace Manipulation and allies of the empire which created the lanes (for strategic planning purposes). Furthermore, this allows the general usage of fading Hyperlanes. The default travel speed for those lanes is 6/5/4/3 for artificial/strong/weak/fading lanes respectively, at an energy consumption of 10/20/30/40.
If derived from the Enhanced Hyperdrive, the legacy bonus is a further travel speed bonus of +2/+1/+0.5/+0, making them the fastest 'basic' drive without special abilities.
For Hypergates, the legacy bonus is the ability to continue using Hypergates, which grant a travel speed bonus of +3/+2/+2/+3. And naturally they profit from the ability to use any kind of lane even without gates.
With the legacy bonus of the Slipstream Drive, ships of the empire remain able to use Slipways, which, despite the ability to create new Hyperlanes anywhere, are still faster if located in the right spot.
Being able to abandon Hypergates, and no longer restricted to hyper-fast travel by Slipstream, an empire which discovers Hyperspace Manipulation can easily create an intricate networks of private Hyperlanes between any two locations, making it the, by far, most efficient travel between two systems. Assuming a Hyperlane was previously created between those systems, that is.
For the third tree, we got the WORMHOLE GENERATOR.
As the name implies, this FTL Travel method relies on the exploitation of wormholes to connect two points in 3-dimensional space by bending space-time 4-dimensionally. Once a worm-hole is creates and maintained, it effectively allows any ship instantanous travel from and to anywhere. However, as fantastic as it sounds, there are severe limitations to it's practicability. First of all, the wormhole takes a fair amount of time to be created and stabilized, and even then only lasts for a few minutes, implying that, to move large fleets, large wormholes have to be opened to permit the entire fleet to traverse at once. Furthermore, the range of a Wormhole Generator is close to zero, albeit the very fact it creates a wormhole to another location lets it stretch this 'zero' to at least some distance. Most gravidly, however, is that Wormhole Generators are incredibly complex and energy-consuming and completely unfit to be installed on ships or even space stations.
Instead, a nation with this FTL method starts with a 'Wormhole Generator' building on their capital world. This generator can generate a wormhole in the planet's orbit to let a single fleet pass, requiring (200+fleetSize)/11 days of time to do so (this is the current timing). The generator can create a wormhole to any system in a radius of 200, letting either a fleet teleport from the edge of the target system to the planet's orbit, or vice versa. Additionally, the generator itself has an energy maintainance cost of 3 energy per month. Additional Wormhole Generators can be built on any planet with an Tier 2 Administration (aka 5 pops) for 400 minerals. On the plus side, there is no need to install any special FTL engines on ships, only some safety systems for passing wormholes, meaning ships never need to upgrade their engines and dont have engines consuming energy.
Whilst this technology seems to be extremely limiting at first glance, you have to realize it actually permits ships quasi-instanous travel, at the only cost of a wind-up period (which, if necessary dictates, can always be interrupted to send the fleet elsewhere, a luxury other engine types cannot afford). Furthermore, whilst the construction of Wormhole Generators takes up planet space and is expensive, the first generator alone is likely enough to ensure any early expansion you need, due to it's excessive range. This makes the Wormhole Generator FTL method excellent for any empires striving to quickly set up a small, centralized empire, albeit later expansion with technological advances is certainly possible, as long as you keep in mind that moving larger fleets takes more time, regardless of distance.
On Tier II, the 'Advanced Wormhole Generator' signifies an improvement in size and capability. It unlocks the same-named building, which is an upgrade to the previous generator, consuming 4 energy instead. However, it as well has an extended range of 300 and generates wormholes in (175+fleetSize)/15 days.
Alternatively, instead of increasing size and power, the empire can instead focus on the opposite direction and miniaturize the planetary generator into an space-borne variant, the 'Wormhole Station' alongside the 'Wormhole Module'. Former is built into space at any location or system, whilst latter is built as part of a space dock. Either has a maintenance cost of 1 energy per month and a range of 150. And, opposed to current Stellaris, either generates wormhole's on it's own position, towards another system's border (potentially permitting fleets to easily jump out and into space docks).
The big advantage is, undoubtly, being unrestricted from colonys to build planetary generators on, and thus being easily able to extend the empire's reach. Albeit the construction of space-borne generators naturally poses a security risk, whereas planetary generators are near-perfectly safe from sudden destruction.
At Tier III, 'Advanced Wormhole Stations' pose an automatic upgrade to the capabilities of the space-bound Wormhole 'Generators, granting them a range of 175 and a faster generation time of (175+fleetSize)/13 days (still making them slower then the planetary Tier 2 equivalent).
In a similar fashion, the 'Enhanced Wormhole Generator' is another upgrade to planetary structures, with a new energy maintainance of 5, but an excessive 400 ly of range and an even faster wormhole generation of (150+fleetSize)/18 days.
An alternative, however, is the research of 'Dual Wormhole Generation', which is the technology advancement of generating wormholes from both sides, instead of 'tunneling' from one point to a far distant. By researching this, already established Wormhole Generators can create womrholes from any one planet to another (assuming both have generators), regardless of the distance, at HALF the charge up time of the previous Advanced Wormhole Generator. This makes for an insanely fast long-range travel, albeit limited to the own borders (and even more precisely, own controlled planets with Generators built). The downside of this branch is the fact it doesn't make travel outside of your own empire any better.
On Tier IV, we finally reintroduce the dreaded 'Jump Drive'. Posing the pinacle of wormhole generation research, this tech finally permits the installation of wormhole generators on mobile ships. However, size restrictions still apply, thus limiting this new 'Wormhole Generator' engine to cruisers and above only, with an energy consumption of -/-/50/50 respectively. Now, any fleet with these ships can generate it's own wormholes, with a base range of 150 and a generation speed of (50+fleetSize)/count_of_ships_with_Wormhole_Generator_Engines.
However, whilst this engine type provides flexibility beyond measure, and reverses the previous disavantage regarding fleet sizes (as now a larger fleet with more wormhole-generating ships makes travel faster instead), it technically can still end up less effective then the already well developed generator network an empire may have established.
Accordingly, the legacy boni for this engine type are the respective Wormhole Generators themselves.
Additionally, the technology 'Enhanced Wormhole Generators' increases the range of the Jump Drive to 200,
'Advanced Wormhole Station' reduces charging time to fleetSize/count_of_ships_with_Wormhole_Generator_Engines and
'Dual Wormhole Generation' enables Jump Drive fleets to generate wormholes to planetary generators with infinite range (albeit only in that direction).
Whilst this travel method appears notable less impressive then the other Tier IV variants at first glance, you have to consider it allows medium-range travel in relatively small time periods, without any range constraints to established networks, which was previously the limiting factor of the otherwise very powerful engine tree.
Conclusion:
As you read, this concept takes our already implemented engine types, but adds new twists and concepts to them, to offer more diversity and playstyles to the various empires. Additionally, the introduction of engine types like Planetary Wormhole Generators offers a new advantage to fully-defensive empires, which can use this technology for great transportation within the empire, whilst disregarding the disadvantage of being unable to properly attack or reach other empires, which may make blobbing a bit less desireable or effective.
That said, with all the new hyperlanes, mechanics, buildings and the Slipstream, this is a rather optimistic and wide-reaching suggestion and I would be surprised to see it implented as is in the near future. Yet I feel like the thoughts behind this concept are worth being shared and discussed, in the hope they may provide some inspiration to the devs.
If you enjoyed this concept, you might as well enjoy the previous and next entry of my series:
< Trade - Life blood of all empires <
> Playable Non-Empire - Nomad Fleet >
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