Wormholes

Wall of text, suck it up! Short version... Spawn the wh's at the same time always and forever.

Under the current system when warp is initiated the k162 shows up. This gives a user warning, and allows them to get out because their environment changed. I've always found this setup to be odd, but useful in my over three years of wormhole life. I don't see the current system, of waiting for a jump to show the k162 as much of a benefit as the guy doing the stalking.

I agree, and have often thought, that the wormholes should spawn the exit when they spawn the entrance. Further, it should be more than the sig spawning, but the actual hole. The count down timer should start as the sig/hole appears in the game/database.

I see the arguments for the “draw on the server” if all the holes just spawned right away, and I really think this is a silly argument. I'm sure if this is seriously a problem, a few of us could throw an old Pentium IV together to dedicate the wormhole database to. :P

With the current system, the user in the sites gets a chance to warp out of his site. He then has to probe the sig, and by the time he gets to the signature he has no clue if a ship has entered his system, or not. Did they simply warp to the sig and look at it and fly away, or did they jump through? No idea, so he's more prone to just go back to work after a short amount of time. I've amassed several of my kills across many toons as a result of this mechanic.

With the new system, if signatures shows up, I am guaranteed that a ship jumped in my system. This makes me a lot more patient. I'll now wait even longer for someone to leave if I'm trying to run sites. I'm not going to go to work clearing sites again until I am virtually positive that I've out-waited my opponent. And if I feel like it's killing too much time to out-wait people, perhaps I'll find levels fours to be better isk.

Now this, as I see it, is one of the best parts of wormholes – the patience game. It is a different fighting style, and one that is not available any other place in New Eden and it's fantastic! It means that the smaller, patient group, can gain a tactical advantage over the huge rolling wall of alpha. This new solution doesn't destroy this aspect, but it certainly does inadvertently give the pilot on the receiving end more Intel than he had before since we're now sure someone actually entered.

The extra Intel in and of itself doesn't really “destroy” too much in terms of protecting a diligent player. My group of guys would still notice a hole appear, and get our crap out on time 99 times out of 100. Which is good, as mentioned above you can't shift the game to badly in the favor of the aggressor that the defender has no chance at survival or they'll just leave w-space, and perhaps the game. (I suggest the game too because for me, wh life is all that's left. If I get bored with it, I'm done at this point. There isn't really anything left I find interesting in New Eden after playing since 2008).

The benefits of spawning wormholes all the time far outweigh the pitfalls. The pitfalls as I see them is the inability to “lock down” a system unless a k162 spawns. And, while laughable, lets just say that ccp programmers are seriously inept at handling a few thousand database entries on the resources they have in order to spawn them. Very unlikely, but I'll give you that as a down side.

Both of these things are negligible and both are able to be dealt with.

In terms of not being able to lock down a system, people will adjust. Some small groups might actually move out, but others would move in because there are fair ways to deal with open wormholes. A k162 can not be dealt with before it spawns. Under the currently proposed system This actually borders on giving the aggressor the advantage. They don't spawn a sig in the defending system until they jump, and all combat sites and mining sites are 100 percents. In the situation where there is only one or two sites in the system currently, the fleet jumps in, warps one or two places, and done. That's hard to beat. But in a system where the holes are all spawned on both sides, both sides have equal time to deal with them.

So... something I just realized.

Say you live in a C6-C5. You're always going to have a connection to C5 space. You're probably going to have connections to C6 space. But what about K-Space? A lot of K-Space residents will just see "deadly unknown", shrug, and turn around. Nullsec ratters will actively avoid jumping through any wormholes now, reducing the chances of K-Space ganks too. Direct highsecs will be a lot more uncommon. Even down your chain, you're going to find many less K-Space outs.

Really, this removes quite a bit of :content: in a weird way.

I love this idea for W-Space->W-Space connections. That's fine. But a lot of K-Space livers just don't want to go through wormholes, and so we're going to lose a lot of K-Space connections. I honestly get more content out of K-Space than I do W-Space these days, so that's a problem.

W->W? That's a great idea. W-Space residents will jump through holes all day long.
W->K? No sir, I don't like it.
K->K? Ehh. Still seems like a bad idea, but not as big a deal as W->K.

Why not have all K162 sides spawn a certain time after a new wormhole has spawned? Even if no one has probed and warped/jumped the outbound side. Say 30 minutes to an hour.


This would:
1. Stop unspawned "outbound" wormholes from building up in deadend systems in k-space and w-space. (Have you ever opened up 20 fresh wormholes that have built up in the drone regions? I have).
2. Give an open connection to every w-system in the game, which would mean more traveled systems and less systems with 50 sigs/anoms piled up.
3. Create more opportunities for more player interactions everywhere. Always good.


Even if this cannot be done with ease at the moment, I strongly suggest you looking at doing this, it would be amazing.

Ok lets reword this and try to put forward something that everyone will agree to or if not, will understand the reasons for the suggestion.

It seems that everyone understands that if a static is not jumped through now then a K162 is not formed, and we all seem to agree that if K162s do not appear there will be a lot fewer incoming holes and access to K space.

so we need a mechanism to ensure that people do not just warp to holes, look and go "no thanks, let it stay shut".


Now A timer would resolve this, If the hole is not jumped through after a period of time, then it opens regardless.
this would lead to even more opportunities for people to meet than currently as not every hole is currently warped to.
The length of timer has no bearing on the number of open holes, if they opened, they are open.

The disagreement, as such, is the length of timer, some would like it instant or so short it may as well be instant.
Others would like the time to be longer, why is this?

Currently people can choose never to open their static, this gives near unlimited time to do the things they want, some will say "but farmers must die" but everyone needs to fund their operation and replace losses.

Now not all corps, particularly in C4 holes and below have the luxury of large numbers of players on all day in all timezones. they need to be able to earn an income to replace ships, fuel POS, etc.etc.

They can not roll holes at will, at any time and picket holes continuously, and so they rely on Dscan and fast reactions to do any PVE and the window of opportunity of their static expiring.

Currently small corps in Lower class wormholes cannot keep their players in their holes and they "escape" to Kspace to supplement their income when there are only a few online.

If there is no opportunity to PVE while their static is closed this situation will be far far worse.

A four hour delay was suggested so that when their static expires there is still a short window of opportunity to earn an income in Jspace, they still have significant risk, and C4 wormholes will have to deal with additional challenges with their second static. and all have extra challenges with the new frigate holes. Incoming wormholes will still open into them as well. These on their own will seriously impact the ability to earn from PvE.

Removing all opportunity with a zero or short timer will not lead to additional PvP, It will simply ensure that people are forced to run missions in Hisec or do incursions for their income or other Kspace activities, and they will only come home to log off.

so the question is do we :-

A. want more interaction and life in Jspace, or do we
B. just want to drive off anyone who wishes to earn, live and die in sub C5 Jspace?

If you ask for short timers, you are arguing for the latter.

Struck a nerve did I? Get over it. if they're gonna ruin W space, might as well hit all aspects of it.

Are you on your own? or with one or two others? because many low class residents out of TZ or mid week, have to deal with this reality. tell me how learning to wormhole will help them when they never have a closed static? and I don't mean 2 or 3 players with 5 alts each.

not everyone is fortunate enough to have a decent sized group to play with all the time unless they sit in the POS for a few hours waiting for them to come online.

fair enough, Jspace is only for those who have 3 toons. I understand.
Unfortunately that is pretty much the reality, so that will really add up, So it is a good thing to try to keep them playing?

Actually 30.00 would be 2 toons. I can tell you j-space wasn't intended to do with a single toon... Well maybe it was, but only so the rest of us had something to shoot at.

You do well, it is impressive to do that on your own or with just another to help, as running sites on your own must get pretty lonely, I think you will agree that more people staying in wormhole space rather than just overnighting should give everyone more to do.

I am not suggesting easy mode, in fact the timer suggestion will make it even harder for them, than CCP's original suggestion, but it prevents wormholes never spawning at all, and that would be an issue.

I hope CCP will Balance sub C5 income to make it possible for people to still earn enough to replace their losses and fuel their POS otherwise it is all just academic.

Sort of... Assuming the small wormhole corp is all in one timezone and everyone in that corp works about the same hours. This however is most often not the case. I think I like the idea of the wormhole not opening at all as CCP suggested, and to counter that they are adding more random wormholes. So small wormhole corp daily activity flowchart would look something like this...

europe corp guy scans down home system and bookmarks everything
No other corp guys on so he logs off without jumping into systems
american time zone guys get on scans everything down to make sure new wormholes did not pop up
new wormhole so he then assumes the other two previously unjumped wormholes are "popped open" to the other side
assuming all this, he then jumps through and scans them all down, does PvP then PvE and gets POS fuel
???
profit

If the static wormhole to such a small corp has almost no activity, and no other K162's going in, the person doing the scanning can (safely?) assume that the statics have not been popped open, so he does not jump through while the other guys go in to run sites. Or even run sites a few hours later when people are getting online or whatever.

If there are a lot of K162's such a small corp will either foolishly try to still run sites or they will not run them at all, because of the lack of scouts. Standard site running procedure is to have a cloaked scout on every wormhole with at least one of them having a set of probes out. More incoming wormholes just makes site running that much more difficult for people who take it seriously.



Reflecting on the other changes (the effects of wormholes), I think they are mostly indifferent to people who live in wormhole space... I think it will change how many ninja-run such sites, but little else.

The thing that will change wormhole life the most (at this point) is... drum roll...
fixing the POS permissions.

By "at this point" I mean some of the other big changes have already been done, namely: scanning does not suck, and corp bookmarks.


Got a little sidetracked there, but there isnt a thread for overall thoughts on all of the changes. I made this post here cause the change that will affect wormholers the most is the wormhole link not actually opening until the first jump, and the number of wormholes randomly spawning.

I lived in a C4 wormhole with a static C3 for a little over a year in Legio Prima Victrix. The main reason for the corp dieing after living in that same wormhole for years was inactivity, due in part from not being able to get that extra one pilot needed to keep eyes on all the wormholes. Adding more wormholes spawn randomly will make this more of an issue, but possibly balanced in a way with the K162 link not opening until the first jump.



My only question I guess would be:
Can somebody scanning a random system be able to tell if that static wormhole has had its first jump?