There was a lengthy discussion on channel 100 this evening about warp killing. I figured I would post to get a broader opinion...

Should warp killing be possible in it's current form? It seems to me that both parties should be killed. The ship should not be invincible while warping, it makes no sense.

I think that warp killing should be fixed in a future update, and it should be made that both parties are destroyed.

Discuss....

So what exactly is warp killing?

IMHO Warpkilling is cheap and probably an exploit.

Shape it's where you fly at a queen and then hit warp. Your ship continues on that path madly accelerating and collides with the queen.

Queens can apparently be killed with 2 good warphits and your ship takes no damage from it.

IMO warpkilling Queens is boring, so I don't do it. Also, at least from what I've heard, it doesn't count towards the Hive Queen medal.

I do agree that as it should be taken out, but I'd prefer it to be by making it so the warping ship does not cause any damage, rather than also taking damage itself. There's a very good reason your ship is invulnerable during warps: during the jump & WH animations, you cannot control your ship, and are therefore vulnerable. Granted, it's not a very long period, but it can be enough to spell the difference between exploding & escaping.

Also, everyone eventually has the experience of coming out of a jump & bouncing off a 'roid. Because you're invulnerable, you just laugh at your ship getting spun around. If you weren't, I can guarantee you'd hear a lot of complaining about it.

It's really annoying if you're not invul while warping. Trust me on that one.

I think Beolach's suggestion is the best idea. Everyone should be invulnerable.

<< It's really annoying if you're not invul while warping. Trust me on that one. >>

Why? i am curious. really.

Let's say that you've shot some swarm missiles, and the person dodged them and started stepping back. The missiles then return from far a front, and the person decides to jump when he steps back into 3000m range. Player warps into a face full of missiles. It could happen, but the bigger issue is at wormholes. Now if you shot swarms while they were still in a wormhole, thats just plain wrong.

Perhaps make it so a ship in warp can neither take nor deal damage?

I've always found it odd that your ship just goes straight forward into warp, even if you are pointing directly at a planet or if your destination is the other way.

I suppose you could either only allow warps if your ship is pointed in the correct direction, or make the autopilot turn it in the correct direction before warping. That would make it a lot harder to use as a weapon, but would also make escaping from bots a bit trickier.

tela-warping, vary cool stuff. I think it's fine the way it is. You really are never gonna use it to kill a person. (and if you can kill some one with it they most likly deserved it :p) Your only ever really gonna use it one any thing other then queens.

I can see it being used against cap ships. If-ever they make a come back.

Damn right, im serco, and will have to defend that thing (at first)..

The best suggestion i have seen is make it like a station/roid (ie, you cannot jump into the queen, you telling me it is not a large object?)

Same with capitol ships, if you can warp kill it? how will we defend? even if its not as big as a station area/roid area, i think ships as big as that should count as a no warp area.

I personally would like to see it so that you are veunerable during a warp-OUT, but remain inveunerable during a warp-IN.

While it is true that you are not in control during the animation, you ARE in control of when you choose to activate the animation.

Remove the invincibility during the Warp-OUT, that will give 3 things,
1. It will make Wormholes more of a choke point, because you wont want to try a warp there while in combat, making wormhole jumps in unmonitored space more dangerous.
2. Warpkilling will become far less possible.
3. the trick of wormhole hopping to avoid combat will dissapear.

Well, we could get into a long-winded discussion of non-Euclidian geometry and Einstein's Theory of (special) Relativity, but the premise of a warp is usually that time and space are "warped" from a flat plane into a wrinkle wherein point A and Point B are suddenly closer together. Imagine taking a sheet of paper and writing "A" on the top margin and "B" on the bottom margin. A and B are about 10 inches apart. Now fold the paper horizontally and Point A and Point B are right next to each other. In this instance we could disregard nearby objects, since they would only be an obstruction if the ship was travelling in a straight line on a flat plane.

There's also Quantum Drive, wherein particles disappear from one spot and appear in another.

I wonder if the queen takes damage because its mass is so great that it doesn't go spinning away?

hmm. a long time ago, verdandi and I were playing with warpkill. he killed me once with warp, but afterwards, when I tried it on bots or other people, nothing happened. (I would see the animation of them spinning off at insane speeds, but that apparently is just an animation, since the people I warped into reported that nothing interesting happened)

The queen does go spinning away. It's quite funny to watch. She takes damage because everything takes damaage. You can kill bots that way, but you need to aim well.

Martin: Warping works as it should...ships take damage as they should...ships in warp take no damage as they should. Warp-killing is not an exploit.

Is it cheap?
Let's imagine possible real-life applications of warping as future scientists and pilots would apply them.
Or creators (the Devs) have created a universe that allows a warping object to damage other objects in it's path without causing damage to itself. Our scientists (curious pilots) have confirmed this.
Facing the possibility of damage from an enemy and knowing you would not be damaged but your enemy would if you warped at him with him in your path, I believe every pilot would put that tactic in their arsenal in the eventuality that the opportunity presented itself (this would save on ammo and time).

My conclusion is that it is not cheap. It is merely our adaptive nature using the tools the creators gave us.

Should it be changed for optimum game play? *THAT* is the question.

Forum Moderator :

No no no no no! You baited me!

(a) We don't live in an Euclidean spacetime, we live in a locally Minkowski spacetime! Curved spacetimes are pseudo-Riemanian. Don't get me started about it being actually Riemanian......

(b) Einstein's theory of General Relativity prohibits the formation of causality violating situations such as warping as seen in the game. Wormholes is not warping....

(c) Also, GR allows the formation of wormholes....at the cost of having to postulate exotic stuff in the universe that violates some Energy Conditions. ( I don't care much about Energy conditions, but some physicists, like Stephen Hawking, do.) Things that violates energy conditions you can't really build spacecraft with.

Finally, don't get me started about Tachyons (and Quantum drives for that matter)...

people warping in system (which is the only way warpkilling is possible) are visble as they warp out, which means they are not moving anywhere near faster than light for the duration of the animation, nor on some other plane of existance/dimension, which means if you smack into a queen sized object at 50% the speed of light, you go boom. things moving at sublight speeds that hit each other arnt really down with the not having any effect thing, they tend to explode violently. Look at those particle accelerators and rail guns.