Ripcord mechanics

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If you just hit R to rip, without selecting a target - you will just rip to the closest receiver capable of receiving you.

Otherwise you will rip to the target sector (you clicked on in the minimap).

Bases

You can rip to the following bases which your commander may have built, bases have effectively infinite energy so as many people can rip in as possible.

  1. Teleport receiver
  2. Special Refinery (if you are the GigaCorp faction)
  3. Teleport Refinery (if you are the Omicron Hive faction)

Ships

The following ships are also Rip receivers so you can rip to them in another sector. These ships have limited energy, so you can only rip a certain amount of ships to them before they have to recharge.

Piloted Ships

  1. Rix SR Scout. - If you are the Rixian faction, you can buy SmallRip scouts which allow other small ships to rip to you
  2. Attack Carrier - basically a piloted version of the Normal carrier with the addition of Turrets. Allows small ships to rip to it.
  3. Assault Ship - large capital ship to which any other ship can rip

Unpiloted ships (AKA Drones)

  1. Carrier - Allows small ships to rip to it, and also allows them to dock and resupply in the field.
  2. Technoflux Miners, are also Small rip receivers

Other Tech

Teleport Probes. Occasionally your team will research Teleport Probes, which are special probes which when dispensed allow any ship to rip to it for 30 seconds. There is no power limit, although the time to use them is short. Often used in endgame to surprise the opposition with an unexpected battlefleet and/or massed Bombrun.

Advanced

Rip target Selection Process

Note This description will be outdated with release of FAZ R6. You will ripcord to closest available teleport (station, ship or probe) next to your currently selected target.

What happens when you rip? Where will you go? Can you control where you'll rip to? The answer is, not really, but sorta... Read on for details.

A ripcord has been triggered, either because you hit the ripcord button, or because an autopilot event of some sort has been triggered. First off, did you have a target in mind? You have a target if you have either a) have something currently targeted, b) you have a target as your current mission. If that target is visible to you and is in the destination sector, then you will attempt to rip as close to it as possible. Keep in mind that you can see anything that your team can see.

Now the search for a rip receiver begins. We start with stations, if there is a base or rip which we can rip to, we'll try to rip to the closest rip to our goal, or the first one we come across if we have no goal.

If we didn't find a station to rip to, then we search rip probes. Only probes which will be active when we expect to rip in will count (we will rip in after the probe goes live, but before it expires). We will rip to the probe nearest to our goal, or the newest probe if we have no goal.

If we didn't find a probe to rip to, we now check for ships which function as rip recievers. We will only look at ships which will accept our ship's class (i.e. 'normal rip' ships will not rip to 'small rip' receievers, but 'small rip' ships can rip to either small or normal rip receivers). We search through the rip receivers in the sector, looking for the one with the least 'rip deficit', and in the event of a tie, the ship closest to our goal, if we have one.

If we still couldn't find a rip receiver in the target sector, we start doing a breadth first search of the adjacent sectors (i.e. we try all the sectors 1 aleph away, then 2, then 3, then 4...), until we either find a rip, or we run out of sectors.

Now assuming we've got our rip target, and assuming that the rip receiver is not destroyed, docks, or runs out of energy when our ship's rip countdown ends, then we will successfully teleport to that receiver. Now, where we end up when we rip depends on what we ripped to. If it is a teleport, then the ship will rip in in the sequence of "to the right", "above", "to the left", "below". Never in front or behind. So if you're camping a tele, and you're paying attention, after the first one, or at most two ships rip in, you'll be able to guess roughly where the subsequent ships will rip in.

If the rip target was a probe or a ship, the destination will be some random position with 25m of space between you and the rip receiver.

So, back to the question of controlling where you rip to. No matter how close the objects are to your goal, the order of ripping is always stations, probes, ships. So if there are multiple teles in a sector, you'll rip to the 'best' tele, but if there are probes or ships closer, you won't ever rip to them.

So what about multi tp drops? Well, if you simply rip to the sector, you'll rip to the newest probe. If you want to rip to a specific probe, you must target it. If you want to rip to the closest probe to a target base/ship/waypoint, you must target that base/ship/waypoint. In the case of rip ships, it will be harder to control where you end up, because even if you target a rip ship, you may end up at another rip ship if someone else started ripping before you (rip deficit trumps proximity). This is done to maximize the chance of ripping to a ship that still has enough energy to support your rip.

Keep in mind, that in order to target a specific probe/base/waypoint in another sector, you will either have to be docked to give yourself the order, or you will have to rely on someone in the target sector or in base (commander) to relay the target to you.