Player Features and Ideas Discussion

For nearly three years now Sansha's nation has been using their unique wormhole-control technology to place themselves, at will, anywhere on the map. Aside from the fact that one thinks they might give up after being defeated so many times by heroic capsuleers, it seems likely that much effort would have been expended in reverse engineering their wormhole control. I think it is time for this effort to bear fruit, in the form of wormhole control for capsuleers. This is a first draft of the idea, which has been bouncing around in my head for a while--comments and suggestions would be welcome.

I propose a POS module that, after being anchored and onlined, could be configured to generate wormholes from the system it is anchored in to any target system in New Eden. I would expect this module to be expensive, but not out of reach for a small corp--on the order of a few hundred million isk. Since the empire factions might not like capsuleers messing with their systems, it would probably be anchorable only in nullsec and lowsec systems, though they could target systems in hisec. Jove space would be excluded for obvious reasons, and W-space would be excluded because it is (lore-wise) unmappable, so you wouldn't be able to target anything.

Mechanics

The wormholes generated by this module would be just like existing wormholes, with a named WH entrance in the system they originated in and a K162 entrance in the destination system. They would be generated randomly, perhaps once a week on average (i.e., there would be approximately a 1/7 chance of a new wormhole spawning each day if the previous one wasn't still in existence). In addition, the destination of the wormhole would also have some randomness, probably dependent on the distance between your system and the target system: one could reliably generate wormholes to a near-by system in the same constellation, but if you targeted your wormhole generator at a system on the other side of New Eden you might end up in a different region a dozen jumps away.

There would be a limit of one module per POS, and multiple modules in the same system would interfere with each other, either entirely (no matter how many WH generators there are in a system, you still only get an average of 1 WH per week) or with a stacking penalty with a rapidly-declining marginal increase, like the stacking penalties on some modules already. When a wormhole is generated in a system with multiple WH generators, its target would be chosen at random from the generators which did not already have a WH in existence.

Anticipated uses

I would expect these modules to be popular for logistics for small low-sec and null-sec entities (point your WH generator at hisec, get an easy connection to market hubs), and to carry out surprise attacks with small-to-medium gang warfare (mass limits would prevent huge fleets from passing through).

They would not replace existing tools for either of these purposes. They do not have the dependability or capacity of jump freighters and jump bridge networks for serious logistics on a large scale, or the flexibility of Titans, Black Ops, and other jump-capable ships for large-scale warfare.

Because large sov nullsec alliances already have tools for logistics and force-projection in combat which are far superior to random wormhole connections, I would expect most wormhole generators to be set up in lowsec and by small groups in NPC nullsec. They would make living in these places easier logistics-wise and more interesting combat-wise for small and medium-sized groups, since you would have access (at random times) to fights which would otherwise require burning many jumps, something nobody enjoys.

That's all I've got. Once again, I would love to hear what you think. Love it? Hate it? Should I just go biomass myself already?

isn't there also a 0.0 SOV upgrade that already does this?

Yes, I talked about jump bridges and how this is different from jump bridges in my post.

You didn't read it, did you?



The quantum flux upgrade increases the number of wormholes in the system, but is quite different in concept.

Maybe. It's hard to predict the future, and I am considerably more uncertain about my conclusions than you seem to be. If you filled an entire region with WH generators all targeted at the same location then you would be practically guaranteed to have wormholes pointing there from your region at any given time, but you would still have to scan them down, and mass limits would still prevent large fleets from passing through. Since wormholes go two ways, it would also allow whoever lives on the other side to access random systems in your space easily--it doesn't have the same asymmetry as JBs and Titans. I'm not sure a large nullsec alliance would consider it worth the cost to put 50 of these up (and yes, I've lived in large nullsec alliances).

One option would be to make the WH generators interfere with each other over ranges larger than a single system (on the constellation level, say), so that you're more limited in terms of how many wormholes you can get.

Also, not everyone in nullsec is a risk-averse nullbear who docks up when a neut is reported in intel.