How much time will it take for information to travel from one end of the playable space to the other since the communications do not travel at FTL speeds?asked by Pid
TL;DRChris Roberts says the time isn't fully defined, but in-game communication will move at in-fiction speeds: light speed within a system, then relay stations and message drones through jump points on a schedule.
It's not 100% defined yet because that's sort of a balance, playable thing.The way that the communications are gonna work is that it travels our in-fiction communication's speed. Which means that when you're in-system and someone beams a message, it gets beamed at the speed of light, and it gets beamed to a relay station, or a message station. This is in the structured universe where the UEE runs it and there's a lot of infrastructure. So one of these stations is right by a jump point so it gets all the information and then it will launch out a message drone or a messenger ship. It goes through the jump point to the other side, where there's probably another relay station, it's collected, then the data gets beamed across to another relay station and so-on and so-forth if it has to go multiple systems.Essentially the speed of communication is based around the speed of light and how long that message would take to travel in system, and then it's instantaneous in between system jumps, except for the regularity or the schedule of the message drones or the messenger ships that go through the jump points. So in a very populated core system, that's happening all the time, but in a backwater system, it won't be very frequent at all.In fact in some systems, there won't be any of that infrastructure. That's where inforunners and other people come in to account. Because they'll be taking missions to take information that's critical and as fast as they can. Especially if there's other people who want to stop that information getting there.So in terms of game time, it's kind of hard to quantify, but I think we would probably limit it within the limits that I gave there. How long it would take you to actually transfer to a jump point and what the regularity is.But obviously we recognize that people will be able to chat and talk to each other instantly, because if we don't provide it in the game, they're gonna be doing it outside the game anyway. So we're gonna provide it, but in terms of any goods or missions being accepted, missions being offered, all the in game stuff that we do control will all operate at the speed of communication in our universe.