One of the "tips" that flash on our screens says the storms last about 2 hours.
There is one in Divinia D-12 that seems to have been there for 24 hours....

[moved to Bugs]

The "couple of hour" storm is STILL raging in Divinia D-12 after 33 hours !!

And would it be possible to tone down the frequency of these storms? I know we have to test them, but I hit 5 cells going from Betheshee B4 to O2. That is just a bit eccessive.

What if we just made storms more fun, instead of less frequent? :) (Err, that's in regard to the usual "less storms" argument. I suppose, in your case, it's probably a bug that there are so many.)

Well then it is in my case also. Today I hit 5 storms in a row. It may have gone longer, but I finally succumbed to the bots in the fifth one. It seems that since the last update, storms only dump you in sector with bots. When I first started the new universe I would often run into the storms in sectors with no bots at all. Now I am always ALWAYS dumped into sectors with nasty bots. I believe there is some relationships between the sectors with bots and the storms, as I have been successful in navigating around the storm issue, by simply jumping around the sectors where there are bots. On RelayeR's advice I "hug" the edges of the system and get around that way.

I also noticed that storms only seem to catch you when you pass over a sector with bots. In most systems, it's sufficient to plot a course that doesn't go over these sectors. That's how I've survived since hitting 3 storms with bots.

Hmmm. I changed things so that storms don't occur in empty sectors, since I can't think of much more boring than flying through an empty sector. But if you stick to empty sectors anyway because they're safer... does that defeat the purpose?

Good thinking :) Having "empty" space as being that, unattractive to the interference of ions as well. There are still storms in sectors with asteroids but without bots, I take it?

Maybe add the warp timer back in. That way going the long way around .... would take longer.

OTOH the warp timer was annoying as hell and the 3000m thing seems like delay enough.

One of the things I have enjoyed most about this game is that it had a little something for everyone. If you were good at combat, you could concentrate on that. If you were not, you could trade or role-play or anything. Is the point of the storms to force us to work on our combat skills? Because faced with the choice of flying through boring empty space and trying to fight bots that we either don't have the skill or equipment to fight, I would pick empty space. And the opportunity to make that choice is one of the reasons I have enjoyed this game thus far.

Carmen

There are a number of goals we wanted to achieve by adding warp storms.

- The main purpose was so that long-distance travel didn't consist solely of clicking in the nav interface - we wanted to get more actual flight involved.

- We wanted players to experience more than just station and wormhole areas. Deep space isn't all that exciting yet, but we'll be improving things before release.

- We wanted to add some unpredictability to the universe. Following the same flight path again and again isn't particularly interesting, but if occasionally you get pulled out of a jump, you can temporarily avoid that path until the storm goes away.

- Yes, we wanted to add a little danger. Especially in non-nation territory. But it shouldn't be prohibitive to non-combative gameplay.

The only problem then is the fact that storms have become predictable in the sense that you are always dumped into a hostile territory. Unpredictable would be not knowing that you are going to hit a storm and not knowing if you'll end up someplace exciting or boring. :-)

Can I just take this moment to say that flying a stock bus into a storm with roids and bots everywhere, and the exit point 10,000 meters away, having only the worst weapon is NOT the funnest experience for:
A) Non-combative types
B) Newbies
C) Anyone who's trying to get anywhere.

I agree with Vlad and the reasons for storms.

But, you said it yourself, Vlad..."but if occasionally you get pulled out of a jump...". There is nothing "occasionally" with how many storms are generated. If the storms were way fewer in number, lasted 15 minutes and jumped somewhere else, the traveling public would not view them as potholes but rather as the adventure they were meant to be. Having the exit points in bot sectors @5000m and in empty sectors @10000m would be a good adjustment also, IMO.

BTW, I fly a vult with a top speed of 180m/s and i have no problems "scraping" the bots off my butt by flying close to roids and making them evade the roids. I almost never have to engage them.

Yes, I think the ratio of number of storms per system to number of available sectors for storms is now too high, which is causing a constant stream of storms; the code automatically simply lengthens existing storms if it generates a new one where one previously existed.

I say this without having even looked at the number of storms generated, though, or other possible reasons.

The storm exit point, by the way, isn't supposed to be 10,000 meters away. That's a placement issue we need to look at again.

Very good points RelayeR. I agree.