Still one of my most anticipated reveals. Trade lanes in all their glory is what I am aching to see (yes I know Josh won't call them trade lanes but with this Freelancer player that's what they are).

Sorry if I shouldn't resurrect a slightly old thread but it was the most appropriate one I could find.

I was re-watching some of the old development updates (#11) and when Josh showed an interface of different systems and clusters in the node interface and it reminded me of how Endless Space (a turn based strategy game if you aren't familiar with it) and how the galaxy was split up into constellations. Within them travel between systems was fairly quick, however in order to travel between constellations wormholes were necessary, and while this can be frustrating when you want to expand, in longer term game play it works out nicely because it forces factions into a smaller area until they can finish the necessary research to get through a wormhole and so stopped you from just turtling in a quiet corner of the galaxy and made you interact.

If this sort of travel was applied to LT in the form of trade lanes and natural wormholes etc. I think it could make some interesting gameplay and especially if it was grouped not as constellations but in the form of different factions, because these trade lanes/highways would be built densely within their own territory and then to allied territories, this would create more trade lanes around capital systems and so create a large trading hub in a particular area, Endless Space also allowed for travel to non-connected systems, however it would take much longer and from what I have been able to gather this is the plan for LT also so the two ideas are compatible, it might also make natural wormholes act as less like a short-cut and more like a bridge to an otherwise almost inaccessible location.

I may have the wrong end of the stick and this is what is planned anyway but any thought would be appreciated.

Anonymouse:
i guess you are kinda getting the wrong idea (at least if i dont misinterpret your post...)
wormholes are the only means (besides of high-tech and big ship jumpdrives) to get from one system to another.
so wormholes cant be made to be only means of accessing an other wise unreachable region (well, if you turn it around they already are the only mean...)
but the point is: wormholes CANT be made something special, because they hold the world together.

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Ah, I understand now, will it be just 1 wormhole per system or does it lead to a network with multiple exits?

Anonymouse wrote:Ah, I understand now, will it be just 1 wormhole per system or does it lead to a network with multiple exits?

lots of 1:1 connections, multiple per system

Why not have wormholes that change their entries and exits?

We retain all the normal wormholes, but then add a new type: lapsing. These wormholes operate according to a timetable, and open different entries and exits at different times.

There's surely a large amount of fun to be had for people to determine the quickest route from A to B through the normal system... but also through overlapping windows of the lapsing wormhole system?

This kind of ties in with the tidal lay lines concept I talked about with Thymine here. Perhaps that would result in too much variation... but at the same time, piecing together a "run" that takes you through lapsing wormholes and tidal lay lines could be seriously entertaining. It would also be worth some serious $$$ you'd have thought.

Lapsing wormholes could leave you stranded in another system if you don't make it back to the wormhole in time, and then have to try and either make your way all the way home(think Star Trek voyager) or have to wait for it to reappear, but this assumes that one end is fixed.

What about the possibility of forcing the player to navigate through the wormholes, I'm not sure if the idea of them being like a tunnel on the inside has any basis in fact but waiting in one to ambush a ship could be an interesting experience, especially if their allies are completely unaware anything is happening and might add a feeling of continuity to inter system travel.

I think most of the issues around getting stranded are solved by having the wormhole be a detectable type: normal or lapsing. If the player wants to go through a lapsing wormhole without knowing its exit... then why stop them? That's a very deliberate risk they're taking, but one that some will undoubtedly enjoy. It would also be the easiest way to determine the wormhole's exit point; otherwise you'd need to spend time scanning each wormhole when it appears, and try to match it against a another wormhole already in your database (which also means that each wormhole would need a unique signature, but that doesn't seem like something Scanner 2.0 couldn't handle).

Maybe if there were frequency differences which would tell you what kind of wormhole it was rather than exactly which one e.g. a lapsing wormhole could be pulsating different frequencies on the scanner and as it gets closer to moving, the frequencies will be less stable and jump about all over the place so you could have a spectrum of how stable some wormholes are because some might only jump every hour or so, while others might jump every minute. A stable wormhole could have a fixed frequency on the scanner so you can tell what kind of wormhole it is, but not where it leads or which one it is, however if you go through it it will then show on your map where you are and where it leads with an estimated time until the next jump, but the ability to predict it could require specific censors or research.

This could let you exploit a slower lapsing wormhole, but equally this could make faster lapsing wormholes more of a nuisance than a potential use but they could be used to make a quick getaway just before it closes.

Actually, they can also be made safer by my single-use "return beacon" idea. These are devices that let you deploy them at any station you've already visited, and jump back to them just once instantly, then they're consumed and explode. There is some potential for abuse but you can mitigate it by scaling the cost of the beacons with the mass of the ship.

That idea could be adapted to make manipulating lapsing wormholes possible, at the expense of its stability so if you were to find yourself in a sticky situation and losing a battle, you could direct one end of the wormhole to a specific location, this would remove the "get out of jail free card" problem that a return beacon could come with because you will first need to be near a lapsing wormhole, and secondly wherever you direct it, you can be followed so while you cannot simply escape instantly but you can place yourself closer to friendly forces. I don't know about you but if I had just laid waste to an enemy fleet only to have the flagship disappear, or a pirate that had just looted one of my ships promptly disappear, I would be fairly annoyed, so I'm not sure whether a return beacon could be used in a balanced form without giving a certain amount of immunity to the ship equipped with it.

I dont see the point in making something safer that is more or less inteded to provide excitement and danger into the wormhole system.
(And this with an very gamey system imo)


If they always get generated in groups and randomly change connections inside the group.
This way there are never "orphaned" wormholes, but they have still dynamic.

May semi-one way wormholes would be interesting.
2 or more entries lead to an single exit.
If you travel from one of the entries to the exit you arrive where you want.
But if you fly into the single "exit" hole you can appear at any of the "entry" wormholes.

Are you saying that with two exits but one entrance, both are linked at the same time or that there is always a 1:1 link, but between 2 possible locations? If that is what you are getting at then that could make for some interesting situations, especially if the time between cycles was predictable e.g. 20 minutes at each "end point" but using the wormhole would make the end that specific cycle earlier and the mass of the ship passing through could then affect how much the time is decreased by. This could also create interesting situations if you were attacking a system because reinforcements would come in waves.

If it was simply a question of choice as to where you exit the wormhole then if you were being pursued by a ship and you enter at point A, can the enemy ship tell if you exited at point B or point C? If not then they could become very useful at creating a possible escape route. Not to mention creating a hub of traffic because if 2 points lead to just 1 exit then it stands to reason that twice as many ships would travel there so this could help create more busy systems for trade.

If it was simply probability then I'm not sure how much gameplay could be added because if you don't end up where you wanted to be then you can always just fly back in and try again until you end up where you want to be, but I really like the idea of a network of wormholes that change links, its almost like the stairs at hogwarts-and they sure looked like fun!

i thought of random exit point when you enter a multi-path wormhole

A and B both lead to C, but if you enter C you dont know where you come out

A->C<-B

A<-?C?->B

What if there were wormholes which are fixed at one end, but has a free end which moves around the universe but is attracted to certain "hotspots" e.g. certain nebulas or planets within a certain range which for whatever reason are more inclined to attract these free ends. This would mean you are left with a finite number of places where you could exit but from the free end, it is impossible to tell where the fixed end is so you keep some of the randomness of where you will end up.