Constructive Criticism on current Warp Engine mods.

[MedwedianPresident]

1. Warp is not as fast as you think. With warp 1 Dr.Zephram Cochrane took about 10 seconds to fly one million kilometers away from earth. So you would need about one minute to leave the kerbolar system.

2. Star Trek mods should ALWAYS include resources. The warp engines should run on matter/antimatter reactors with matter/antimatter resources.

3. Warp travel includes warp fields. They should be run by energy-consuming machines. Should the warp field be deactivated, the vessel immediately exits warp. This means, it "brakes" to an "normal" Speed. It's Not like normal vehicles where only Gravity and Drag influence the speed of a vessel with its propulsion deactivated.

4. More Star Trek Parts & Resources should be the part of a good Star Trek mod. Maybe star-trek style ship bodies with bridge IVA's. Shuttles. And of course, different types of warp engines.

Post your comments and ideas here!

[electronicfox]

I think warp mods could be balanced with the weight of their resources, and their resource consumption. For example, the resources could weigh as much as a rockomax tank and the engines last maybe a minute or so with a single tank, while the warp field is generated with huge amounts of electricity. These would be very early, primitive warp engines so theyd likely be very inefficient, but if you could get them to space then you deserve to use them anyway.

[MedwedianPresident]

Actually most interstellar spaceships were launched from orbit, don't think the NCC-1701 was brought into space using a monster booster. You really should assemble the ships in space. Or use HyperEdit...

Also, the warp speed should be shown in warp.

[Bluegobln]

To have a balanced "realistic" warp, even though they're only theoretical right now for us of course, you need a fuel source that would generate immense power to generate the field. To the point of inefficiency. I imagine that the early forms of it (the ones we can envision) would actually be so backwards compared to our current methods of travel it wouldn't be helpful. However, the key lies in the improvement of that technology over time. As it gets refined and made more efficient it would become competitive with other propulsion, then surpass, then eventually far surpass as speeds began to increase and/or efficiency increased (through better fields, better parts, more effective fuel sources, etc..)

Personally, I wouldn't touch warp unless it was a novelty propulsion, literally a worse method of traveling than others (by that I mean more difficult, such as having to launch MORE fuel into orbit than other methods, or it burns 100x the fuel mass per distance traveled or something). Then it not only has the futuristic appeal, it also has the hardcore appeal rather than the cheat appeal. If you make it "hardcore" then you can pretty much fudge the numbers all to hell on the realism front and nobody will complain (except the people who want it easy).

Heck, if you get people wanting it easier, release a more easy version too. Just change a few values and presto, less hardcore.