- What about a Jump Range Mechanic? Maybe have it be a function of squadron jump distance? Perhaps a "Short Jump Drive" which is like a regular drive, but smaller and single ship only, where instead of Squadron Size and Squadron Jump Radius it's just "Assault Radius" and "Retreat Radius" with one being effectively the same as Squadron Jump Radius sans the squadron and the other being unique to the Short Jump Drive in that it can be used to jump through a Jump Point from farther away?
Well, the distance would need to be big enough to matter... so, long enough to escape enemy active scanning range most of the time.
I could also see it as a function of the jump drives so you jump a squadron that way. The distance should be quite far but you should be able to sett the distance (and vector) and then it will be somewhat random distance and vector based on that, each squadron in a fleet could potentially end up in different places. You would essentially open up a micro wormhole and instantly travel to a point perhaps a few hundred million to a billion or two km away, depending on technology. It might start a 50 million km at low tech and go up from there to a few billion at the highest tech. Time to initiate the jum could be a function of technilogy and size of the ships jumping. Larger ship and it takes longer time.
You should be effected by jump shock as normal as well.
The time to initiate a jump need to be at least like 20-60 minutes or so as to not be too abusive... if you are surprised you are not likely to escape before being attacked at least one time from a large missile strike or a long series of missiles strikes from rapid firing launchers. If you are caught in beam combat it will be a bad day... but in most situations you should be able to jump away from a threat if far enough away.
While the drives are spinning up your ships can't move at all.
There probably are many different issues with such an idea but it might have some merits. It is still expensive to cover all ships in a fleet with jump capable ships, so it is a pretty expensive overhead and you might not always use it either. You also would have to pay extra for this capability and it's range. So both expensive to research and build as well as taking extra space on the ship.
It should only be a function of military jump-drives and not commercials as they are not accurate enough. Covering a support force with such drives would thus be expensive. Every such jump could also be a high chance for a maintenance failure on the engine (also based on technology) which could make such jumps both expensive and limited in use.
On a different note this mechanic could also be used offensively by beam fleets to drop in very close to an enemy fleet by proper scouting and surprise them really good. Sure you are likely to end up millions of km from the enemy fleet, but still that can be quite scary.
So it could be an asset for every beam fleet out there...