Wormholes

Hey everyone. Team Five O has been working on a few concepts for improvements to wormhole mechanics and we wanted to run one idea by you all to start some discussion in the community. This idea has already been discussed with the CSM, and we don't currently have specific plans to implement it but we think it's at least worth getting discussion started.

:Edit: Quick clarification, when I say we don't have any specific plans to implement a change I'm not lying. Nothing on this scale would be in the cards for the summer expansion, we're not going to start changing things on this scale without giving them the discussion and feedback time they deserve.

We have been thinking about and discussing the way that the Sensor Overlay has affected Wormhole life, mainly in the ease with which players can now observe new wormhole signatures appearing (which often indicates that the entry of hostile players may be imminent).
We investigated what would be involved with delaying the appearance of signatures on the sensor overlay, but that solution is somewhat unsatisfactory since players could always return to the old trick of spamming probe scans to check for the new sigs. Basically, the Sensor Overlay had only made the existing problem more visible, and it would be better if we could get right to the source.

The potential change would be to delay the appearance of the signature beacon when K162 dungeons spawn. This would prevent the dungeon from appearing on probe scans or the Sensor Overlay for up to a few minutes.

This change would make life in wormholes a bit less safe, and increase the sense of real danger that unknown space should include. The flipside is that actively hunting for pvp in wormholes should present more targets that have a slightly shorter notice to your arrival.

The delay could take a few potential forms, either a set timer of a couple minutes, a timer that has random elements or even one that is variable depending on the amount of mass that passes through the wormhole.

This would obviously be a very significant change to wormhole mechanics, and we think it may be a very good opportunity to shake up wormhole life and further encourage the best parts of the wormhole experience.

I'd like to repeat that this change is currently not planned for any specific release, but we would like to start community discussion on the idea and see where it goes.

Let us know what you think in this thread, and we'll be watching closely.
Thanks!
-Fozzie

Yes, it's very possible, but (as talked about at the summit) it doesn't potentially handle the problem as comprehensively as this.

To clarify, delaying the appearance in just the overlay and delaying it in both the overlay and probe scans would likely take a similar amount of development time.

This is a rather drastic change to the balance equations and the way wormhole space is navigated, no longer could K162s be reliably expected as methods of travel, system security would become a nightmare, wormhole travel 'direction' would become one way, down the chain.

One suggestion that I think would balance it decently: Make the signature appear when someone warps to the site. This means, if a scout K162s in, they can warp off the wormhole without the wormhole being detected, its when they go back that a signature is generated.

To me this potential change reaks of another hi-sec type nerf to discourage "safe" areas of resource gathering and sig farming. IMHO, there is enough danger presented as there are always WH entrances and exits that need to be scouted/monitored while doing anything basically.

I dissaprove.

UTM

This is good. I approve.

While you're at it, how about making ships that enter a null or low sec system from a WH in that system have a delayed appearance in local?

Sounds like a good change to me. Right now, many groups are farming wormholes nearly risk free. I'd like to see it based on time and on the number of ships that have passed through the hole. So maybe it takes 5 minutes +/- 2 minutes to show up, or when 2 (or maybe 3) ships jump through, whatever happens first. Perhaps the base time might be scaled on wormhole class, so C5/C6 residents have to wait longer for the K162s to show up, while the lower classes would have a little more warning time.

Something has to be done. But just when miners were getting excited about the possibilities of wh mining again based on compression arrays, now they will flee because their ore is all in anoms. I love ganking me some miners, but it hardly seems fair to leave them as sitting ducks for 2 minutes. They might as well warp to anom and set the self destruct timer.

It would present more gank targets for sure. I'm all for the idea of making unknown space a bit more so, but asynchrony of information will lead to combat only when it heavily favors the party with the information. So in most cases that will lead to more dead ratters. Not entirely opposed to the idea, I just want to be honest about what kind of conflict it will create.

Perhaps there are other conflict drivers to consider? Though that is almost certainly outside the scope of this proposal.

I think you've drastically missed what this change is talking about. K162s will still exist, can still be probed, and can still be navigated. There's just some undecided amount of delay before you can do so. Probably irrelevant in most cases except in the if a hostile fleet is already formed up on the other side.



Wormhole space is not highsec and should not be anything like it. There are other areas of space that offer varying degrees of safety, but wormhole space was never billed as being anything other than the most dangerous of space.

The problem is not in the mechanic in and of itself - but in the fact that there is no good counter at all. Which is why the earlier suggestions of not allowing them to be passively detected - but allowing active detection seems to be better.