The Dropship: no more flying alone

· M8 · The realm under siege

The Prospector used to jump from pad to pad on its own. I wanted a ship to carry it instead, and now one does: you build a Landing Pad, call the Dropship, walk up its ramp and watch the flight to the other side of the world, with no loading screen and no fade.

The Dropship banking through cloud, the ringed gas giant filling the sky behind it
The second banking turn, with Ringshadow filling the sky.

Landing Pads

Flights go only between Landing Pads that pilots have built, and only to regions you've already been to. A Landing Pad is a building from level 1: its blueprint is 80 ore at the Citadel's shop and it costs 60 ore to build. A region can have two, and like every building they're the realm's, so any pilot uses any pad. The pads in the region files are where new pilots arrive; nobody flies to those.

A flight costs 10 MH plus 5 for each step across the map's grid, so 15 MH to the next region over. From a Spacedock, the big pad, it costs half. With the Ringwalker skill it's free and 30% faster. The old Homing beacon skill, which flew you home, is retired: pilots who had it get their points back and a Landing Pad blueprint.

The flight

Stand on a pad and press M to pick the pad you're going to. The Dropship comes down onto your pad, seen from a low camera, and the Prospector walks up its ramp. It lifts off in a ring of dust, banks twice with the ringed giant filling the sky, dashes through streaking cloud, swings wide onto the target pad, and you step out. The whole trip is 16 to 20 seconds; a longer trip only makes the dash longer.

The change of region happens during the approach, and drawing it takes 1.6 ms. Frames through the whole flight run 10.8 ms at the median and 12.2 ms at the 95th percentile.

Prospect Landing to Cold Fork

  • The world map at a Landing Pad, Landing Pad 1 in Cold Fork picked, FLY for 15 MHOn a pad, M: Landing Pad 1 in Cold Fork, for 15 MH.
  • The Dropship descending on its thrusters, the gas giant behind itThe Dropship comes down.
  • The Dropship on the pad in a cloud of dust as the Prospector boardsBoarding.
  • Lift-off in a ring of dust, the giant and its rings behindLift-off in a ring of dust.
  • The Dropship banking hard in front of the giantBanking under the giant.
  • The Dropship dashing through bright streaking cloudThe dash, through cloud.
  • The Dropship swinging wide on its approach between cloudsThe wide approach.
  • The Dropship settling on the pad in Cold Fork in a cloud of dustDown on the pad in Cold Fork.
  • The Prospector on the pad in Cold Fork, the region banner COLD FORK, THE RIDGEStepped out: Cold Fork.

What isn't right yet

The first call in a session still stalls once, for 522 ms, the first time the ship is drawn. That's in the editor build; it hasn't been checked in a packaged one yet.

Every test suite passes: 496 core, 254 server and 85 network.