Furthermore, it'd make big capships and carriers more useful and powerful as strategic weapons without overpowering them in pvp combat. Simply making any ship 'linked' to a carrier jump is a whole lot simpler then docking to it like a station.
So, if a player goes through the effort to buy a carrier, and goes through the player interaction to get a hyperdrive and enough fuel for it, then yeah, he's probably earned the right to haul a bunch of fighters around. It opens a lot of RP possibilities.
Military carrier task force moving a strike wing into position to soften up an enemy defensive fleet or create a diversion before a main group attacks. Expeditionary force blindly and boldly jumping into a new system. Or someone with a secondhand ship making a hyperspace taxi service for profit:P
'Course, there have to be a few systems you can't jump into.
Systems like Iota, the Shrine, Omega-58, Omicron-82, etc because of the implications of such
Systems like Omicron-85, Omega-41, 11, etc with massive gravitational anomalies (Black Hole, supermassive stars, etc) would also prevent jumping into or out of.
Systems like Bastille.... well, you'd be able to jump in... but not out :)
I will examine this thread later on and probably give a larger opinion about it. However, for now I would really love to see something like that implemented.
Here is something for everyone who simply wishes to act responsible and kill ideas, such as this one, with the simple "abuse" word.
If this is ever created and implemented, it would most likely be done like this.
10 devices of this kind (or any random number the Dev. Team comes up with), admin given to the Order High Command.
10 to the LN HC..... etc
And this process repeats itself until all factions who will have the RP ability to create such items are given them. Afterwords, it is the leaders of those factions who you contact, via RP, to get your hands on one of the Jump Drives.
The only thing remotely close to a hyperdrive in the Freelancer Universe would be the Hypergate... but since that thing was built by the Dam'Kavosh, is bigger than half the planets in Freelancer and is in a single static location, I don't see how it's feesable that human scientists could recreate that technology to fit inside a mobile spaceship.
"Because it's cool and I like it" is almost as bad as "GOD DID IT LOL"
Yet the Jumpgate is huge, static and probably takes a lot of energy to boot up. So Watsas covered the power concern, but I don't see how humans could recreate that tech to be a piece of internal equipment that can fit inside a capital ship. Tradelanes, Jump Gates, we got that tech from Valhalla 1, a library left behind by the Dam'Kavosh.
I think that would suggest that if the Dam'Kavosh couldn't do it, we can't either.
But, again, how do you think caps get around in vanilla?
They can't use the Jump Gates, and considering how long it's supposed to take to travel between systems without them, going on cruise isn't really viable.
Then again, I'm not sure whether they had cruise in the Colonisation era:D