I was thinking about the way "Jumping" insystem works now and I had a thought. Currently, it's like a devwarp- you go all by yourself. What I instead reccommend is that Plotting a Course creates a temporary wormhole at your current location. This serves several purposes:

1. Instead of havign the "jump destination" announced, people can follow other ships simply by flying into their wormholes.

2. When ships can only travel limited distances per jump, this will allow bigger ships to open wormholes for smaller ships and encourage caravaning.

3. It makes it seem slightly more realistic

The way I see it, these should create a spherical wormhole about 200m in diameter that lasts for about 30 seconds. So waddya all think?

Sounds good to me, could encourage teamwork. It might also fit in with Silent's suggestion earlier today about huge Dune Guild style transport ships.

I like the idea of trying to escape a pirate who dives into my wh in chase.

I like the idea, tho I'd like to see how it would work in the game first and probably the time the WH is open would need tweaking.

In terms of gameplay it sounds cool, but it *might* cause a few inconsistencies with the storyline. i.e. if wormholes can be created at random, why not just open a wormhole back to Earth?

My guess is that the "long range navigation system" is not yet complete, and the wormhole animation we see is just a stand-in until the true version is designed.

Point #2 could be practically achieved if smaller ships could dock with larger ships for a long distance jump, and then undock once they reached their destination.

I don't mean long range. I mean this to be short-range only- to replace the current system. After all, your arguement about "wormholes at random" is just the same with our current jump system. Why don't we just "Jump" back to Earth?

I'm not proposing the ability to create intersystem wormholes, just insystem ones.

I like this idea a lot, though it does leave a perfect trail for attacking pirates. Still, I like this idea a lot.

<<<Why don't we just "Jump" back to Earth? >>>
<<<why not just open a wormhole back to Earth?>>>

2 questions. same answer. And i'll even put it into something that would fit right into the game context.

After studying the wormholes for many years, scientists discovered that with the application of a sufficient amount of power they could mimic the effects of a wormhole on a localized scale. Given sufficient power an engine with the appropriate modifications could create and stabalize a temporary "tear" in the fabric of space, a mini-Wormhole if you will.
Unfortuntately for mankind the amount of power to generate a wormhole was found to increase on geometrically as the distance to be traversed increased. While a short jump of several light days is feasable from the amount of power generated on a ship, to create a wormhole with a distance larger than 1 light month exceeds the power capacity of most space stations. To generate and stabalize a wormhole between stars that are 10 light years apart has been calculated as being aproximately equal to the total energy output of Helios over 2 years. Thus while mankind now has the technology to make transiting the inner reaches of a stars solar system simple and efficient, we still must rely on naturally occuring wormholes to transit between stars.

Exactly Spellcast. Yeah. That's exactly what I meant...

F no. You CAN follow people.

I was flying with baccaruda (sp?) a while back and we had each other targeted, and he jumped just ahead of me, and text came up on the screen that said "baccaruda has jumped to Odia M-14". (which was our decided destination anyway, but the fact that it showed up is more important.)

We were not in a group. I do not know if it is same team only, so I suggest you all go out and start testing this. Try being within 500m when one of you jumps to another sector.

I know that you can now. But this would make it easier and get rid of those annoying green thingies.

Celkan: I have never seen this personally, but it is a regular feature of the game.
I have read in other posts a few things that lead me to believe that all that is required is to be "close" to someone when they jump. I do not recall that it was tied to members of a team, or group, a nation, or even that having the other ship
targeted was required. I don't recall if "close" was defined.

You have a message where the ship has warped (i mean ANY ship) if you are within 1000m range from it. It's normal. But if you are 1001 while he dissapears.. no trace..

I likea roguelazer's idea. For example small ships (like we have now) could jump up to 8 squares (depending on it's battery and engine). Bigger ships could even be able to jump over whole system (battlecruisers)

Well unless the wh would stay open for longer then it takes to fly a ship 1000m, I see no point.

All it would do is make it easier then hitting n. And since I would think the wh would be really temporary -ie a couple of seconds- it would infact be harder for somebody to follow the pilot.

Trading will take longer with limited jumpiing capabilities, and it's already too futzing slow leveling up. This will make it take even longer.

The "limited jump capacity" wasn't the suggestion at hand here. That was kind of a given. I believe one of the devs mentioned it way back in 3.5.0.

And Durgia, 30 seconds is plenty of time to fly 1000m. At 200m/s, it only takes 5 seconds to fly that distance. So you could be going 34m/s (lower than even the bus engine) and still make 1000m in 30s.