Wormholes

Hello everyone! As we mentioned on last week's o7 show, we are planning a set of changes to the way capital escalations work in our Citadel expansion at the end of the month.

I want to start off with an apology for not getting this thread up a bit sooner. We've been a bit swamped here lately with prep for the expansion and early Fanfest prep, and I underestimated how long it would take to get some of this communication together.

The original sleeper capital escalation mechanic introduced way back in Apocrypha was (like many of the mechanics that ended up becoming staples of wormhole space) a bit of an accident. The escalation spawns were intended to provide extra challenge to prevent the sites from being too easy when farmed with capitals, but in practice they ended up becoming the major moneymaking source in the sites. There are several issues with the meta that emerged from the original escalation content, including the very unintuitive mechanics that encourage people to not complete the site so they can farm it repeatedly across downtimes.

With our big changes to capital ships coming in the Citadel expansion, we knew this would be a great opportunity to start building a more intentional form of capital PVE in high-class wormhole sites. We decided to create a new set of NPCs for the escalations so that we can balance and iterate on them without having to mess with the other uses of Sleepless Guardians in the basic site spawn groups. We also decided that we wanted to preserve a good chunk of the income from the sites while removing the incentive to leave sites uncompleted across downtimes. This led us in the direction of placing much of the loot that had been in the escalation spawns into a new Drifter NPC that will spawn once the site is completed.

Many of you will remember this "put the loot in something at the end of the site" concept as it's something we've been discussing with players at Fanfest roundtables for a few years now. We've also been discussing the concept with the CSM (especially Corbexx) and we're working hard to get our latest designs ready for public playtesting.

The basics of the new system are:

• The old capital escalation spawns have been replaced with smaller numbers of new NPCs that are intended to provide more engaging content for capital ships. These new escalation spawns are sleepers using the existing sleeper AI, have large signatures to ensure that they can be engaged fully by capital ships, and will perfer to shoot at capitals when available.
• These new escalation spawns come in up to three waves, one for a dread, one for a carrier and one for a force auxiliary. There are 3 NPCs in each wave in C5s and 4 per wave in C6s.
• The new escalation spawns are worth ~38m per wave in C5s and ~51m per wave in C6s.


• Most of the value of the former escalation waves is being moved to a new Drifter NPC that can be spawned once the site has completed.
• Spawning the new Drifter is optional, and is done by shooting a structure that decloaks when the site is completed.
• The new Drifter is worth about 350m, mostly in blue loot but including salvage as well.
• This new Drifter is completely independent of the site, and will warp off if not pointed. Our current design gives it 3 points of warp core strength, but that is open to change. Once it has left the site that spawned it, the Drifter can live in the system for many days, warping between celestial locations just like a normal Drifter. It is not removed by downtimes.
• We intend the Drifter to be probable with combat scanner probes, as well as visible on d-scan. Full disclosure: we've run into some technical roadblocks with the probing and d-scan part of the feature. We are confident that we can get it working and there's a good chance that it can be ready for the initial expansion release, but it's possible that it might slip to a point release.
• This new Drifter NPC spawns at the end of the site even if no capitals have been used. It is designed to be very challenging but to be doable both with and without capitals. It will however be much easier to kill using capitals.
• Multiple Drifters can co-exist in the same wormhole system and will come to each other's aid if one gets attacked.

Both of these NPCs will "evolve" occasionally as we tune them to provide interesting and fun challenges for wormhole residents. As new functionality is added to the Drifter AI over time we plan to keep adding those features to these Drifter NPCs. The Drifters are an advanced and adaptable foe: those of you who have some experience with the early weeks and months of the original Drifters will understand what I mean.

The fact that the new mechanics encourage people to complete sites is intentional. We think this brings better gameplay than simply clearing escalation spawns and leaving the base site for days. It's important to remember that the spawn rate of new sites is connected to the completion rate of existing sites so as players in all wormhole systems start to complete their sites faster we expect new sites to repopulate faster as well.

We do hope to eventually put a smaller version of this Drifter "boss" into some lower class wormholes as well, especially C4s.

We're really interested in hearing your feedback. I'll do my best to answer questions and we'll update this thread as we get newer versions of the NPC balance onto SISI.

Yes. There will be one wave for each capital type.



They will have neuts, but they will be balanced separately from the player capital-sized neuts.



No, these will use the older AI just like other Sleepers. At some point in the future we hope to move more NPC groups (like sleepers) to the newest AI, but for now it is limited to specific NPC groups like Drifters.



There will be up to three waves: one for a dread, one for a carrier, one for a force auxiliary.



~38m per wave in C5s and ~51m per wave in C6s



That depends a bit on how you run the sites, but in most cases no. You will be able to run more sites in a day however, especially if you expand to running sites in your static.



Yes. It will have a similar breakdown of value between blue loot and salvage that other high-class NPCs have.



Yes. The version that is on SISI now is spawning the right NPCs (although the drifter has the wrong character piloting it) with the right loot, but the balance of them isn't in great shape. We plan on getting that closer to a release candidate asap so you folks can give it a shot.



I'm definitely open to making tweaks to high-class WH connection mass if the community likes the idea. I encourage people to contribute to Corbexx's thread here where he asks that very question. I can go either way with this topic, depending on what the consensus in the WH community ends up being.

Reserved

Maybe instead of making them visible on dscan and scan probes - they can be lured by putting some ship on the system POCOs.
Scanning is fun, but baiting NPC in indy ship sounds much better.

Can this boss NPC leave wormhole after few days instead of despawning? Let say he will upon leaving he will create some special type of wormhole to Thera. Big mass but very short time of life.

Maybe this NPC can even patrol Thera for 2-3 days - providing income for Thera people and some additional content.

Edit : Just to clarify.
Total mass allowing for large number of jumps of subcapital ships.

Neat.

I concur.

I would highly support a faster turn over for sites that are not run. Say 4-5 days would be ideal. Keep the sites flowing through c5/c6 sites more evenly.

Glad to see CCP has finally pledged to take action against the downtime respawning of contemporary capital escalations.

So wait, can these things be hell spawned and then you end up with the wormhole from hell?

Could you clarify this? You mentioned sub will be able tun run the sites, but if we lose a battleship each times theres no money in it.

I agree, it is kinda stupid.

I see that they want it to be more complicated and have the sleepers hunting around for people, but they are making it more work for themselves then it should be.