[Suicide Junkie]

What you might want to consider first, is doing almost the same thing within the current SE4 system.

Check out my FTL map.

"The basic idea is that it is a component which will allow the ship to create a temporary warp point that leads into a sort of alternate reality of the game."
This one is tough, but you could either ignore it, or you could mod ships into fighters, and then have massive jumpships as true SE4ships used to carry the fighter "ships" into hyperspace.

"The idea is that once your ship enters this alternate reality, it can travel across the map by going through the empty spaces between stars, and when it enters a system space all you see is a cool background graphic (something I can create with my artistic skills) and a warp point in the middle. Going through the central warp point would have the ship emerge from hyperspace in a random location in the system."
That is pretty much what the FTL map does. Each sector in hyperspace corresponds to one galactic map square. Where a normal space system intersects a hyperspace sector, 12 warppoints lead down to positions around the edge of the starsystem.

"It should also be possible for ships to encounter each other in the hyperspace reality and fight it out in deep space."
This happens. I also have random movement ability on the hyperspace systems to prevent blockading of the jumppoints, but that can be removed at will.

"Also, it should be impossible for ships with "open warp point" abilities to open warp points in hyperspace. It should also be impossible to close warp points in hyperspace (doing so would render a system completely unreachable)."
Simply disable those components, and remove the random events, and no worries.

IOW, combine a mod with my FTL map (or similar), and you've got what you want.

[ June 08, 2002, 04:07: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]