An idea to improve realism

[netshaman 1]

As you already know, reeal Mars missions are suffering of the delay due to the distance bet ween Earth and Mars.

It takes about 20 minutes for a signal to reach Mars and vice-versa.

In the game it is silly to implement such a feature because that will make the game absolutely boring like hell, we all know that !

But , i had an idea that will allow the game " simulate" these famous 20 minutes without making the player bored .

In the options, we can have a turn by turn option : enabling this makes the game behaving like a turn based one.

Simple: you want to go to this strange crater you see here ?

So you need to tell the probe to go to the destination you wish making some waypoints and when your route satisfies you , then you send the signal and this triggers a timer in accelerate mode that simulates the time radio signals takes to reach the probe, in real time it takes like 1 minute max and you can see on the game clock that the game time is accelerated for a while and when the clock stops then the probe starts to move to the destination programmed.

This hybrid mode between "real time" and " game time " allows the game to be more challenging, because you need to think and analyse what the probe will do before sending it your orders.

So if you make a mistake, you can see in real time what happens to your preciuos probe, so you become very carefull ans not send the probe where it cannot go without problems.

Cheers !

[felthat 1]

and how is this improving realism? also something similiar was suggested earlier (checkpoints etc)

[netshaman 1]

Come on, please, read another time, all is explained !

[felthat 1]

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?165789-programmable-waypoints-for-rovers

how u like this?

[OlympusMons 10]

I believe that time delay WILL be implemented. You will be able to set it to change the length of the delay, Somthing like 1x for full time delay, 0.5x, 0.1x or 0 for no delay

[dram 14]

I believe that time delay WILL be implemented. You will be able to set it to change the length of the delay, Somthing like 1x for full time delay, 0.5x, 0.1x or 0 for no delay

Yes it will be implemented (optional), and vehicle programming is planned.

[Demongornot 10]

Yes it will be implemented (optional), and vehicle programming is planned.

I hope the optional will permit to manually set a low delay in seconds and not only a realistic of 6 to 40 minutes one, something like a 3 or 6 seconds can be nice for non-programming side, some people prefer direct control but want to feel a delay without need to care about if it is a realistic one or not.

A box in options where we can manually set the number of seconds for the delay will be a really nice things in plus of the realistic fixed one for programming !

[dram 14]

I hope the optional will permit to manually set a low delay in seconds and not only a realistic of 6 to 40 minutes one, something like a 3 or 6 seconds can be nice for non-programming side, some people prefer direct control but want to feel a delay without need to care about if it is a realistic one or not.

A box in options where we can manually set the number of seconds for the delay will be a really nice things in plus of the realistic fixed one for programming !

Depending on where Mars is relative to Earth, the delay is anything between 4 to 24 minutes. Remember that this is one way, so when you send it a sequence, it will take twice that amount for you to see the results, meaning at worst it can take 48 minutes to see it respond. We will of course have a slider that influences this. This means at the lowest setting it will be immediate, then slowly increment up to 1x (so from 0.0x then 0.01x, etc).

In short, yes, you will be able to reduce the delay :)