Slowing Down Ships (Making universe bigger)

[Erio]

Hello! I've been playing DW a little bit, and the one thing that bothers me the most (and putting me off from playing it more) is that the universe feels way to small. So to fix that you could make the space between things bigger...or make ship hyperdrives slower. I would like something with the early hyperdrives going about 10-20% of their current speed, but as the technology gets higher and higher they would slowly reach up to about 70-80% of the current top speed hyperdrives.

Something like:

Early Hyperdrives 1000-2500 speed
Late-Early Hyperdrives 2500-5000
Mid Hyperdrives 5000-7500
Early-Late Hyperdrives 7500-10000
Late Hyperdrives 10000-20000
Late-Late Hyperdrives 20000-30000

Now, i've read that the technology and important things aren't moddable (Why, oh why? Why make a game with such possibilities then dangle it on a stick just out of reach? Do you get your kicks from making us suffer greatly, O Great Devs?) So, I was wondering if it would be possible to change these things with hex editing or memory editing the game while its running. Kind of like that memory edit that lets you play with a bunch more empires.

[Igard]

Welcome, Erio.[:)]

This has been my plan too to lower hyperdrive speeds, mainly because I don't like the short lived expansion phase of the game. Another thing I'd like to do is increase the cost of colonisation tech, to slow the rate of expansion.

Just be patient, Erio. Elliot is working on more support features for modding, he's done a great job so far patching the game.

[Fishers of Men]

I agree with Erio 100%! I would love to adjust the hyperdrive speed and/or change the fuel cell capacity to shorten the travel ranges. The galaxy does get small rather quickly, so much so that I have never built a resupply ship. I just never needed one. The galaxy should go back to "huge" like it was intended.

FoM

[Simulation01]

I agree that the galaxy needs to be bigger, or at least there should be options for galaxy sizes and star spacing.

[Foraven]

ORIGINAL: Fishers of Men

I agree with Erio 100%! I would love to adjust the hyperdrive speed and/or change the fuel cell capacity to shorten the travel ranges. The galaxy does get small rather quickly, so much so that I have never built a resupply ship. I just never needed one. The galaxy should go back to "huge" like it was intended.

FoM

Yeah, they are not that useful unless you travel halfway through the galaxy with nowhere to refuel in between. Still, i build one for each of my fleets, but i put construction cranes on them so they can be used as mobile spaceports (also much cheaper to have around than construction ships).

[tjhkkr]

That is also an advantage for one fleet over another... the far reaching ability of one over another.
Star spacing would be cool...
But I am so busy fighting pirates most of the time, that expansion for me is very slow.

I can hardly wait for the modability to increase.

[lordxorn]

Yeah one of the glaring limitation of the game right now is that, correct if I am wrong, that a 500 star game is as big as 1000 just crammed in more?

I love the idea of slowing things down, and opening them up more.

[Erio]

Is there any indication on where this is on their TODO list and how long it will take them to put out support for modding hyperdrive speed? The fact it takes no time at all to go from star to star is removing the "exploration" and killing the game for me.

I'd happily put the 100 star "tiny" galaxy on the 1400 star size area if I could just to slow things down...

Actually, I just realized I could do that myself by deleting all the stars on the map and putting in new ones...

Hmm...

[Foraven]

I think the biggest problem this game has is there is no drawbacks to colonization. If you can afford to send colonizers, there is no limits to how many worlds you can get (worlds cannot cost you to own, unlike games like Sword of the stars). Having colonies is much cheaper than having resupply ships and outpost starbases. 

[Igard]

Back when DW was released, it was quite slow. It had long loading times, some lag. So now that it's been patched and improved upon, there should be no problem making the map size larger.

There have been several requests for this, so let's hope it's high on the agenda. I can't imagine it being too hard to implement either.

[drillerman]

Yes, HERE HERE!!!
Great ideas! Physically make a 400 star galaxy smaller than a 1000 star galaxy instead of just putting the stars closer together and I agree, make the hyperdrives slower so interstellar travel is much longer.

[b0mber]

ORIGINAL: Erio
I'd happily put the 100 star "tiny" galaxy on the 1400 star size area if I could just to slow things down...

My english isn't nearly perfect and maybe I haven't understood you, but the size of the galaxy is the same whether you play a 100 stars galaxy or a 1400 stars galaxy. A 1400 stars galaxy just have more star density per sector than a 100 stars map.

Therefore, changing the hyperdrives speed depending on the number of stars it's a great idea.

ORIGINAL: Foraven
I think the biggest problem this game has is there is no drawbacks to colonization. If you can afford to send colonizers, there is no limits to how many worlds you can get (worlds cannot cost you to own, unlike games like Sword of the stars). Having colonies is much cheaper than having resupply ships and outpost starbases.

I feel the same and that's the reason why I'm trying planet quality at low now.

by3z!

[Erio]

Yeah, I found that out, unfortunately [:(]