Journey/Travel Time

[Random Redshirt]

Ummmm, how you gonna simulate sunrise and sunset.....on a STARSHIP? I hope space isn't getting light when daybreak occurs, then getting dark once again when the sun goes down because that would be some pretty freaky psychadelic space my friends!

:P

[Starbear]

Lol you get the idea, a galactic clock if you will probably based on earth time. Also that means that planets would wall have their own time cycle though thats a whole differnt beast of a topic on its own... but if you spend alot of time on Risa you'd get used to the days being longer or shorter.

[Crazyfist]

Im hoping in STO, there will be player manned crews and loads to do on the ship.

In this case, long distances and long travel times. Realistic canon trek ftw.

[Bajoran Berrie]

i think crazyfist hits the nail on the head. i dont mind being on the ship for a couple of hours if theres an opportunity to do repairs, research, training, design and implementation of systems, and of course R&R.

but if this content was minimal. 'rapid transit' hubs, or transwarp, slipstream, coxial warp etc would cut the time right down, but i dont want any instant traveling, from the edge of teh known universe to earth should never take shorter than 30 mins, but i know some people would want it longer. i fear that if the travelling is too long, any urgency in missions might get a wee bitty diluted.

i dont want a situation where a borg cube is heading for earth, its gonna be there in 30 mins, u have to travel 1 hr to help clean up the mess.
but then this gives rise to problems with continuity in inter-species technology capabilites, or poss the sensor net is just really good. but now i'm rambling ...

[Zach]

I suppose it depends on how seriously you take the game.

If the borg are attacking and you are too far out to help - 'censored' happens, you know. I am sure many starship captains in first contact and  wolf 359 felt the same.

I think 'they' would probably give a fair amount of notice for major events.

[SpeakThoseWords]

I think there should be so much stuff to do on the ship that lengthy travel times aren't a serious problem.

That said, I don't think early-mid game game players should be asked to travel more than 17 minutes of real time... if the mission is all that's on your mind, you should be able to get to it while its still hot on your mind. 

In late game, when you're talking about traveling from Earth to another end of the Galaxy, on a mission of raid-like importance and scale, One week of real time travel seems... acceptable somehow. 

It is important to note, in these cases that A) Travel time should continue while player is offline if they so choose.  Not so important on lower levels, quirkily useful when travel times get in excess of 30min as you advance.  B) Players who wish to leave the group (transfer) should get an escape pod and a transport ship en route to pick them up bringing them back to the nearest starport/station/base area with travel options within 7 minutes tops.  Not sure how to reconcile with that with the two-week long crusades, but it seems cool.  Perhaps this could be the only place where insta-travel would be an acceptable loss, to me.

I don't believe hubs should be too common.  I think a single experimental hub and a working wormhole would be a slick and interesting way to open up sections of the galaxy to lower-level players... but I don't think it should be overdone... let stargate be stargate.

[Zach]

I have to admit actually, ive been playing EVE Online recently, and i have had some missions where i have had to make 6 or 7 jumps to get to the mission area - about 30-40 minutes travel time and to be honest, there is nothing to do while you are travelling, so it get very boring and i just end up minimising to do other stuff.

What would be really good for Star Trek Online, is for them to create such an immersive experience, that even when  you are travelling, there is still plenty for you to do, and not HAVE to minimise to do something else.