Wormholes

would that depend on what one considers the "best part"

having thought about it some more, I don't think this type of delay will make a noticeable difference, in terms of gameplay or in the books.

I'm thinking of the surprisingly frequent occasions when I will scan a sig and have eyes on the k162 in time to see a scout jump in from the originating end and pop probes to scout.

There's no telling what takes them so long to jump through a hole they should know they opened... maybe it's admin stuff, like udpating siggy and creating bookmarks according to a naming convention. they might be passing through, and have no knowledge of what holes are new. but it happens a lot, and most of the time it is a resident of the originating system.

there's also the fact that bigger ships warp slow. things will reduce the benefit of a delay.

There are ways to maximize the benefit of a delay, like pinging as close as possible to an unopened static, with all the things that mean to use the hole (and not just the scout)..

that leaves a handful of situations that I can think of, in which a signature delay would make a difference, even if only under some very specific circumstances...

but I think that over time, in practice, the majority of those cases will yield no noticeable difference in their average outcome... not that you could determine such a thing.

so yeah, I've had some time to put my rabble aside and take another look at what it would really do. ...and I don't see a delay yielding your desired result, or even a result that you will see in the numbers.

I hope you do something like add depth to the game by improving signature mechanics, instead of a band-aid like a delay on one specific signature.

Lol, rly? No 162? Can some one tell me, for what? I think it's not rly good idea =) Do something thats rly need ingame, or dont do anything plz

Good deal Fozzie. I am a bit surprised with the suggestion even being floated, though to have an open discussion, you have to talk about everything, good or bad.




I get the concept, but basing a system on complete randomness, a mechanic that cannot be countered or defeated in anyway does not make compelling or good combat. This is still very one sided.

My issue is that this does not promote any good gameplay (just more paranoia with no way of adaptation (aka you cannot learn how to counter it, it just "happens"). Its a more advance play on cloaking, now you can be invisible AND your method of entry is completely unknown.

Its clunky, does not promote pvp, provides a bad mechanic for people to learn and/or counter.

There was someone that suggested preventing ships from self destructing in a POS. Nathan Anderson suggested this in his run for CSM last year, heck he announced it in the CSM wormhole podcast, and he was heckled, yelled at and basically called a complete moron for even suggesting it (this also was one of the many issues for his loss at CSM).

Now someone suggests it here? It was a bad idea, it is STILL a bad idea, but people want to back it because.. well at least I get a ship kill out of it?

I feel there are two factions here at work (3 actually).

Those who believe wormholes are fine as they are.
Those who believe wormholes are falling apart and want to return to the old system
Those who want to kill ships and people, and want the system to provide them every method of ganking them.

None of the above addresses the real issue. How to get people to fight, how to get good combat, and how to really see more wormhole pvp (both large gang and small gang).

People are mad that whenever they roll into a hole, the residence pos up.

" Lets change it so that if we siege them, they can't self destruct their ships.. that'll be fun!! " (NO)!

People are mad that whenever they roll a hole, the residence know immediately.

"Lets change it so that we get a special Super Cloak Mass Hole that nobody can detect, so we can see what they are doing and setup our gank!!!". (NO)

Nobody is addressing the problems. Either because they don't know what the problems are, or they don't want to acknowledge that there is a problem in the first place.

I just wanted to add my voice to the "Remove overlay, no delay and actively scanning with probes can see WH as they appear" side of the argument.

Fozzie, about the fact that you're trying to balance something here. Forget the specifics of the change, the real problem is the code responsible for wormholes. it must be pretty unwieldy if applying just one change involves enough dev time that you are able to say with certainty it will not, couldn't possibly be launched until after summer.

What will you do the next time you want to balance something in here?

Can you re-purpose cyno code to replace the existing wormhole code? they're system connections, after all. start with a cyno, and alter it one attribute at a time until you have a modular thing that looks and functions as a K162. do it again for a M273. again for a E175... and on until wormholes are individual things that you can work with.

want K162s invisible initially? too easy, they're covert cynos at heart.

tbqh i think it's a brilliant solution, you're welcome.

if I've suggested something that would work, being awesome is what I do... sometimes. if I'm wrong and wormhole code is enough of a spaghetti mess that it will always be clunky, I'm sorry and I expect you will be forced to nerf wormhole ISK in the future (since playing with the code is impractical).

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about the delay... I think it's very optimistic of you to expect most players will make use of it. I think the kind of impact you're trying to make using this strategy of denying intel would require that K162 are simply not probe-able, and locating one would mean probe scanning something on grid with it.

yes, i'm serious, wormholes are supposed to be different and scary, correct?

and yeah, if someone warps away from this version of a K162 without making a bookmark, they've caused themselves a problem.

I just don't see 2, 5, 10 minutes making a difference. if you think it's a good idea to provide players with a new opening move (the choice of ship they decide to put through the hole, rather than entering warp to a virgin wormhole--often unknowningly)... why not be consistent about it and extend it to roamers?

what's beautiful about this scenario is you've balanced these ships for years; cloaky, not cloaky, big, small... they have the option to use the wormhole sneaky-like, or trade the intel benefit in scaled increments of big, heavy, in-the-face dps.

furthermore, if you're trying to drive conflict and make changes that matter, make the head of wormholes default-warpable. ie straight from overview. (I think wormholes could move closer to the concept of gates, and should/could be disassociated from signatures altogether)

it's fair; now that the tail of the hole is worth preserving, make the head easier to assault.

as it is, probing is a time sink in wormholes, and wormhole PVP. you know, the not-ISK side of the equation.

I think it's pretty significant that you're willing to preserve the ISK part. after all, throttling NPC buy orders would be the easier way to do this, so I take it you have your reasons.

One thing that is suspiciously absent from this thread is anyone thanking you for not nerfing the ISK. I'll break the ice: in exchange for not touching that part of the equation, I'm willing to see wormholes get pretty damn scary.

This is very posh verbalization however it doesn't actually say anything at all.

There is such a thing as using too many methaphors.

CCP is smarter than that. They may have made a bunch of really stupid decisions in the past but they are bright enough not to look at the most dangerous area, hardest to access, hardest logistics area of space and go "Hm, let's make it so that people lose more money than they are likely to make in this space"

you know what i'm saying, though. the concept is the same. whether you're a miner or working the combat sites, in those moments you are the monkey



actually, I... believe the exact opposite, but I don't think it's a matter of intelligence.

quick point,

It seems strange to me that d-scan allows me to see on sensors anything within 14.3 AU of my ship, yet when entering a system my survey scanner picks up all anomalies regardless of distance. A neat compromise on this issue may be have it set so that you can only see anomalies/wormholes on your survey scanner at the range of whatever d-scan criteria you've set to a maximum of 14.3 AU.

This would mean that on entering a wormhole system you wouldn't have full knowledge of everything that is out there in terms of anomalies as you could only see what is relatively near to you to a maximum of 14.3 au. Likewise defenders would have to do regular patrols around the system to build a map of where the anomalies are and check them out for intruders which may involve some prove scanning work and so on.

I wouldn't mind seeing this in empire space to, it might return some of the buzz of exploration I used to feel back when I started and had to warp around the place to detect complexes prior to odyssey.

I don't live in wormhole space and havent spent that much time there so forgive me if I am barking up the wrong tree here. I just had an idea and thought it might be worth sharing it.