That what I thought I like everything about the game mechanics but I have always hated the battle rider idea.
It's an interesting point. When I was creating the basic game a lot of my thinking was influenced by the games of Starfire (and other sci-fi systems) I have played. While Aurora mechanics are very different, I was trying to avoid the Starfire situation that exists after about TL6 where warp point assaults become very static. The idea of the jump ships was to create a similar situation to Alkelda Dawn where groups of ships appear at distances from the jump point to add much more variety and uncertainty to jump point defence. However with Aurora's much lower density of populations and ships, the fundamental situation is very different to Starfire and I think I have only fought a couple of jump point defences compared to a lot of deep space combats and planetary attacks. So that raises a very interesting question.
Would Aurora be a better or worse game without the need for jump ships and jump gates? They were meant to add variety to jump point assaults but those seem rare anyway so am I adding unnecessary complication to the game with the jump ship requirement? Would the game be better if all ships could enter jump points at will? I would be very interested to hear players opinions on this.
Without the requirement for jump ships and jump gates, how would jump point assaults be affected and what other changes might be necessary? One option would be that all ships that enter a jump point on a combat transit end up scattered and each jump point is given a scatter radius. That would add a lot of micromanagement though as you would be dealing with individual ships instead of fleets. A second option would be to abandon the scatter idea entirely and let ships all come through at the same location, right on top of the jump point. This could result in a huge fleet coming through together, presenting the defender with a very different challenge than at the moment. Mines were introduced in v3.2 so they would be one defensive option but I am concerned about going back to the Starfire TL6 situation. That probably wouldn't happen though for a couple of reasons. Mines in Aurora have a finite lifetime and, unlike Starfire, manufacturing and deploying them is a lot of effort. It would be very unlikely that jump points would be mined as a matter of course, especially if I was to add IFF and a chance of failure.
One more thought that just occurred to me is that with no jump point or jump gate requirement, several things in the game would become a lot easier, especially in terms of the AI. It would make trading easier and it would also remove the problem that newly discovered Empires without jump point theory can be trapped in their home system for several years.
So back to the original question. Although it seems like a drastic change, would making every ship jump-capable make the game better or would it remove some of the unique flavour?
Steve