Wormholes

I promise I won't constantly spam the forum with links to my blog, just doing it this once.

Meta Shakeup

For those who want the TL;DR of that blog post, essentially, the K162 delay is a terrible idea, but here are some alternative ideas for discussion to shake up the meta.

Make Wormholes Bigger
This is the first thing that could be done, simply by expanding the diameter of the hole, and thus increasing the volume of space that you may occupy on jump through. Right now, sitting at the exact centre of the effect puts you within web and scram range of the edge of jump distance. But, if the hole was bigger, so that the edge of jump distance was more like 15-20 km from the centre of the wormhole, then kiting might become a much more viable tactic, and kiting strategies would gain viability. Some things would be easier, like scouting, or traveling, some things would become harder, like hole control and interdiction.
I do believe though, that this change would allow a lot more variability in ships fielded.

Make Wormholes Spawn Themselves
This was the other thing we considered. Many many wormholes are unoccupied, and thus their statics are never spawned, and thus they remain disconnected. This can be seen very clearly on the test server, where it is almost impossible to gain access to wormhole space due to the lack of K162s spawned. This could be fixed by having the wormholes spawn themselves. Suddenly wormhole connections will be much more frequent, everywhere. Wormhole space will grow in complexity as all the systems begin to interlink in much more elaborate ways that they do now.


Both these changes would have very profound effect on the wormhole meta, and how pvp is conducted, so I’m very interested in hearing the feedback of other wormholers on it. These changes would not necessarily be made together, so if you like one, or the other, I'm interested in your feedback.

are you suggesting that a player has to be within 15-20km to jump, or once you jump through you are spawned 15-20km from the wh? like k-space gates?

I think you misunderstand, it would not be like stargates, you wouldn't be 15 km from jump range when you came in. Jump range would remain 5km from the wormhole, but the size of the wormhole itself, and thus the effective jump range, would increase. Its like, when you fit a smartbomb to a battleship, it has a much smaller AOE then if you fit it to a titan, simply because of the size of the titan itself. The area where you are 'at zero' to the wormhole would increase as the wormhole increased in size, so that sitting at the centre, the edge of jump range would be outside of web/scram range. No slowboating of dreads needed.

+1 for K162 delay being a horrible idea (if we go back to the old way with probes, no loss either tbh, making it impossible to scan is silly).

Making wormholes bigger is an interesting idea but I do like the fact that I can bump people out of jump range, and what would the point of a HIC be? As it is, it isn't too difficult to burn out of a bubble - I may as well just fit an infinity point.

I'd rather we get more tools (i.e. mobile depots, SOE ships minus the nestor, POS revamps) so that we can continue to mold W-space.

Yeah the HIC/bubble implications would throw quite a spanner in the works but its an idea I don't think should be dismissed without more examination of the potential.

tell me why? what exactly u wanna do in wspace? what kind of activity u hunger for.

How are pos's broken? They seem to be working, don't fix them?

If it ain't broke don't fix it I says.

On a serious note, pos's can use much improvement. I can understand CCP's hesitation to re-write the code seeing how many players vs real world moneis ccp stand to make. So they have to focus on the big stuff, like making monies off of ship painting etc.

Seriously? Another let's add stuff before we fix what's broke post?

Just leave them alone. Don't touch the connections, don't expand the wormholes. Instead put pressure on CCP to do what is right and fix what they broke or never bothered to fix.

- Instant sigs

- Instant Gravs

- After DT warp-in points

- Black holes

- POS'

If we keep feeling around for new stuff rather than fixing what is old broke stuff we all lose out. You can't expect this or any other idea to work out properly and the way you think it will until you have the confidence in CCP to fix what they have been told thousands of time is already broken. Until there is a precedent for benchmarking fixes please STOP asking for more as it just potentially leads to broke things on top of the broke things and thus the cascade continues.

All agreed, the only good thing to do would be to make black holes hubs, with their connections extra to current, 10 additional wandering holes 5 into and 5 out of each black hole would be sufficient, there's your additional traffic and interest. other than that please no more silly ideas like delayed visibility spawns. Autospawns are equally not a good idea.