- 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...
- I think in hindsight the term "Short-Jump Drive" is a bit of a crap name, rather they should be called "Long-Jump Drives" instead.
- I like the "spin-up" mechanic, but think it might be better to tie it to jump range rather than ship size. I also think that it should affect Jump Shock instead of being a separate "spin-up", with the delay a function of said Jump Shock. The "Assault" and "Escape" ranges would be separate fields and I think that by tying it to the "Assault" range only would be ideal. So an offensively orientated drive would make a worse drive if all you want is a retreat function due to having a long cool-down between when you jump in and when you can both start shooting & jump out.
- I do not like the idea of allowing squadron jumps with these, however, as I think that's a little to OP. The idea of these "Long-Jump Drives" is to be a smaller and more specialized form of the regular Jump Drive. They'd be smaller to allow you to fit them onto ships more easily, but you trade away the squadron jump ability for it. So you are more or less given the choice of maximizing mission tonnage by using the normal Jump Drives and their Squadron Jump feature, or using the new drives to gain the ability to jump away and/or jump deep into enemy territory, but needing to mount one on every ship you want to do it with.
- As well, I think a Commercial version would be good as well. The Commercial "Long-Jump Drive" would lack the "Assault" option, and instead would rely on a Standard Transits, but also have the "Escape" function as well. It's important to stress that both of these would be not only self-jump only, but also be much smaller than a standard Jump Drive of the same variant for any given tonnage. Lore-wise, the concept would be that the Long-Jump Drive propels the ship through the wormhole more powerfully, but cannot stabilize more than it's own space in return. Likewise the Long-Jump Drive takes long to shake off the effects of such a violent jump, but also retains a form of temporal imprint that allows it to return through the Jump Point it came out of from a greater distance. Jumping through a new Jump Point resets this "imprint" and the 'Escape' function essentially only works if you go out the way you came in.