ThymineC wrote:Question for you guys:

A wormhole is comprised of two endpoints, and "charge" is a property of endpoints. Charge is depleted when matter passes through one of the endpoints and pops out the other end, right? How should that work, exactly? I don't think that endpoints should necessarily have the same level of charge, because you can form wormholes using pre-existing endpoints, and if endpoints always had to have the same charge that would mean the newly-formed endpoint would jump instantaneously to the same level of charge as the other endpoint when it was created (although maybe you could make the pre-existing endpoint's charge halve and then set the two endpoints equal to each other).

So, how should charge be consumed when a ship passes from Endpoint A to Endpoint B? Let's say it takes X units of charge to perform the transit.

The simplest thing to do I guess would be to check that A's charge >= X, and to decrease it by X when the transit is made. This is simple but it means there's no connection or dependence between each endpoint's level of charge for any single transit, and a capital ship could pop out of a very weak, unstable endpoint if the transmitting endpoint is very stable. Alternatively, it may be the receiving end that bears the brunt of a transit.

In days of yore when people used pay phones, it was generally the person making the call at the pay phone that paid money. Makes sense that the transmitter be doing the "word" with regard to energy expenditure, since the receiver is just there as a target.

ThymineC wrote: Another possibility is to make A and B both contribute a certain share of charge to a transit. A would contribute a certain amount Y to the transit, and B would contribute X - Y units of charge to the transit, where 0 < Y < X. In this case, should the distribution of burden be based upon whether the endpoints are transmitting or receiving, or if they have higher or lower levels of charge than their partner endpoint, both or something else?

But this also makes sense, since we can consider the telephone metaphor with regard to electrical rather than bandwidth costs, and both the receiver and transmitter expend some electricity to connect a call. Additionally, if one side has insufficient power for a jump, then the ship won't be transported (the call won't connect).

Cornflakes_91 wrote:i'd say that there should be some slow permeating from the higher-charge wormhole to the lower-charge one.

I was thinking of something like this too and prima facie it's quite nice, but I'm not sure if it would work when taking into account the following:

• It should not be possible to charge U-type wormholes
• It should, I reckon, be possible to form connections between U-type endpoints and other types of endpoints.

However, we could get around this by:

• Not actually allowing U-type endpoints to connect to anything other than other U-type endpoints.
• Not allowing charge to permeate to a U-type endpoint from another type of endpoint.

Cornflakes_91 wrote: the charge needed for the jump gets drawn from both ends.
full charge.
so if you have a ship that needs 100 charge to jump this 100 charge gets deducted from both ends.

Personally I prefer to think of it as the ship needing 200 units of charge to transit and there's just a 50/50 split in burden between the transmitting and receiving endpoint but it really makes no difference.

I'm leaning more towards the thought that both ends of the wormhole should contribute a measure of charge towards transits (I'm not decided on whether this should be 50/50, progressive, regressive or whatever yet), because it's possible that you may only want to use wormholes to travel in one direction. If only the transmitting or receiving endpoint bore the burden of a transit, then upgrading one of the endpoints of these wormholes would be pointless if you're only using them for one-way travel, and the thought of investing credits in a way that achieves nothing bothers me a bit, and may confuse the AI.

i'd personally like to make no difference between the types of wormholes.

U-Types should just be wormholes like any else.

if you are there before it collapses and manage to charge it, let it be so.

especially as you are most likely able to use jumpdrives when you are at an technological level to charge wormholes (well, its the same level...)

so when you are on a level to be dependent un U-types you dont have charging capacity and vice versa.

i dont think that charging U-Types would be a big balance problem

Cornflakes_91 wrote:i'd personally like to make no difference between the types of wormholes.

U-Types should just be wormholes like any else.

if you are there before it collapses and manage to charge it, let it be so.

especially as you are most likely able to use jumpdrives when you are at an technological level to charge wormholes (well, its the same level...)

so when you are on a level to be dependent un U-types you dont have charging capacity and vice versa.

i dont think that charging U-Types would be a big balance problem

U-types have a very specific role, and you don't ever progress beyond the need for them. They're used for covert operations such as spying, sabotage, smuggling and tunnelling, and as I've written previously even ships capable of operating fleet-level WHM will need to make use of them. The high value of U-type wormholes and a lot of the balance comes from the fact that they cannot be charged and therefore no one can control where they appear and how long they remain stable for, and they no single wormhole can be used to send more than one or two ships.

i still think that it would not make much of an difference if you can charge them or not
(in addition to that unelegant split in wormhole types )

Cornflakes_91 wrote:i still think that it would not make much of an difference if you can charge them or not
(in addition to that unelegant split in wormhole types )

If you can find a U-type wormhole and keep it charged, you can slip your whole fleet through into an enemy's system with virtually no chance that they could notice it, vastly shifting balance in favour of the attacker. Borders would become extremely vicissitudinous and no factions would be able to maintain large territories, and it would make the political aspect of the game boring as Flatfingers said.

ThymineC wrote:

Cornflakes_91 wrote:i still think that it would not make much of an difference if you can charge them or not
(in addition to that unelegant split in wormhole types )

If you can find a U-type wormhole and keep it charged, you can slip your whole fleet through into an enemy's system with virtually no chance that they could notice it, vastly shifting balance in favour of the attacker and unbalancing the system.

and if you get in at the right time you simply send an tunneler ship through and archieve the same effect

Cornflakes_91 wrote:

ThymineC wrote:

Cornflakes_91 wrote:i still think that it would not make much of an difference if you can charge them or not
(in addition to that unelegant split in wormhole types )

If you can find a U-type wormhole and keep it charged, you can slip your whole fleet through into an enemy's system with virtually no chance that they could notice it, vastly shifting balance in favour of the attacker and unbalancing the system.

and if you get in at the right time you simply send an tunneler ship through and archieve the same effect

Yes, and that's the point - you get the tunneller ship through and he's got to be the one to establish a wormhole, except that the process takes time and during that time the tunneller has a much higher chance of being noticed by the defenders. This gives them a good opportunity to spot the tunneller as he's generating the J-type wormhole and eliminate him. Since a ship capable of generating a wormhole powerful enough to transport a whole fleet before the defender notices has to equip a beefy WHM, it will be pretty expensive to produce one and the attacker risks a considerable amount every time they try to pull this off. This system makes it a lot easier to balance attackers and defenders, allowing for a more interesting political environment in which some factions can claim a large amount of territory, but there's still room for some factions to conquer the territories of others.

ThymineC wrote: Yes, and that's the point - you get the tunneller ship through and he's got to be the one to establish a wormhole, except that the process takes time and during that time the tunneller has a much higher chance of being noticed by the defenders. This gives them a good opportunity to spot the tunneller as he's generating the J-type wormhole and eliminate him. Since a ship capable of generating a wormhole powerful enough to transport a whole fleet before the defender notices has to equip a beefy WHM, it will be pretty expensive to produce one and the attacker risks a considerable amount every time they try to pull this off.

i dont think that getting an tunneler through and press "on" and then connect and charge a wormhole would make much of an time difference

actually i think with a tunneler ship it would be faster as you have charging ships on both ends

Cornflakes_91 wrote:

ThymineC wrote: Yes, and that's the point - you get the tunneller ship through and he's got to be the one to establish a wormhole, except that the process takes time and during that time the tunneller has a much higher chance of being noticed by the defenders. This gives them a good opportunity to spot the tunneller as he's generating the J-type wormhole and eliminate him. Since a ship capable of generating a wormhole powerful enough to transport a whole fleet before the defender notices has to equip a beefy WHM, it will be pretty expensive to produce one and the attacker risks a considerable amount every time they try to pull this off.

i dont think that getting an tunneler through and press "on" and then connect and charge a wormhole would make much of an time difference

actually i think with a tunneler ship it would be faster as you have charging ships on both ends

It's not just turning it on, though, it's charging the wormhole to a high enough level where it can carry a whole fleet.

Let's put down some numbers.

Say your ship can allocate on average a net of 10 GW of power to its WHM (i.e. on average the gross charge rate of the wormhole minus the decay rate is 10 GJ/s). Say that it can sustain a J-type wormhole with a 10 TJ equilibrium level of charge and a 2 TJ transit threshold. Say that it takes 1 TJ of charge to transit a capital ship and 500 GJ to transit a cruiser. In that case, it would take 1000s (= ~17 minutes) for the ship to charge the wormhole to its equilibrium level, about 5 minutes to provide enough charge for the first capital ship to cross (transit threshold + capital ship transit cost), or a bit over 4 minutes for the first cruiser to transit. If it spends 17 minutes reaching its equilibrium level, it can transit 8 capitals or 16 cruisers or a mixture of the two types before the wormhole shuts down and would then have to wait about 13 minutes and 20 seconds for it to fully recharge again (the tunneller could of course not drain all the charge in one go, nor does he necessarily have to wait until the wormhole is fully charged before he starts transiting again).

you'd likely still have an time advantage if you have to use an tunneler ship.
as you wont have 1x10GW for charging but 2x10GW for charging.

1.4x the max equilibrium level and twice the charging speed.

you'd only have 10GW charging for the minimal U-Type variation and only an bonus of already having some charge in there.

Cornflakes_91 wrote:you'd likely still have an time advantage if you have to use an tunneler ship.
as you wont have 1x10GW for charging but 2x10GW for charging.

Why two? Do you mean because there's two paired vessels with WHM? Each endpoint would have an equilibrium level of 10 TJ, because they have their own charge levels, and each vessel would be charging one of those endpoints at 10 GJ/s.

Cornflakes_91 wrote:you'd only have 10GW charging for the minimal U-Type variation and only an bonus of already having some charge in there.

It doesn't matter how slowly or quickly you can charge a U-type wormhole, because you'd be doing this outside of an enemy's system and in a way they can't possibly detect. You wouldn't be risking any ships because you wouldn't need to send any inside the system to establish a wormhole connection, so from a gameplay design perspective it makes no difference whether it takes 4 seconds or 4 minutes to charge a U-type endpoint enough to transit a whole fleet. From the defender's point of view, they'd just be going about their business until a whole fleet came charging at them from an arbitrary direction that they didn't stand a chance of noticing.

ThymineC wrote:

Cornflakes_91 wrote:you'd likely still have an time advantage if you have to use an tunneler ship.
as you wont have 1x10GW for charging but 2x10GW for charging.

Why two? Do you mean because there's two paired vessels with WHM? Each endpoint would have an equilibrium level of 10 TJ, because they have their own charge levels.

oh, right.
was still thinking in my model

ThymineC wrote:

Cornflakes_91 wrote:you'd only have 10GW charging for the minimal U-Type variation and only an bonus of already having some charge in there.

It doesn't matter how slowly or quickly you can charge a U-type wormhole, because you'd be doing this outside of an enemy's system and in a way they can't possibly detect. You wouldn't be risking any ships because you wouldn't need to send any inside the system to establish a wormhole connection, so from a gameplay design perspective it makes no difference whether it takes 4 seconds or 4 minutes to charge a U-type endpoint enough to transit a whole fleet. From the defender's point of view, they'd just be going about their business until a whole fleet came charging at them from an arbitrary direction that they didn't stand a chance of noticing.

that depends on the ratios of how many emissions wormholes/ships/WHM's generate.
if the main "detection factor" of an tunneling operation would be the ship, then yes.
they would come from an unknown direction.

but if the main emission factor of an tunneling operation is the wormhole then the emissions should go up on the attacked side too
providing a "beacon" for the defenders to detect.




other thought: what about "dormant" wormholes, S1 types which have a really low self charge, not enough to even transmit the smallest working ship design
but chargeable.
so they'd only useable with an WHM equipped ship/station.
may as a "level gating" method, containing some "grand menace" style faction

Cornflakes_91 wrote:that depends on the ratios of how many emissions wormholes/ships/WHM's generate.
if the main "detection factor" of an tunneling operation would be the ship, then yes.
they would come from an unknown direction.

but if the main emission factor of an tunneling operation is the wormhole then the emissions should go up on the attacked side too
providing a "beacon" for the defenders to detect.

I was thinking of this too, actually; the emissions and hence detectability of a wormhole endpoint will increase as its charge level increases (reference). So yes, you have a point; however, there's still the issue that the attacker won't be risking anything unless they send a ship through. This can possibly be resolved by making transits need charge from both endpoints, so that a WHM ship needs to be sent through to the other end to keep it charged.

For spies, saboteur and smugger-like gameplay, though, I still prefer the idea that U-type wormholes only last a while from the moment they're discovered and agents can't just keep them open indefinitely. Otherwise they'd just become like S1 endpoints. This would promote a constant demand for recent information on U-type endpoints and hence different kinds of black markets. In addition, a major issue is that a sufficiently powerful faction could just hunt down these U-type endpoints and keep them all charged indefinitely. This would mean that either:

• U-type wormholes keep increasing and the system becomes swamped with them, putting a lot of strain on the computer and just becoming silly. However, this probably couldn't happen since I propose a soft cap on the number of wormholes per system.
• U-type wormholes increase in number until a soft or hard cap is hit, at which point the faction could potentially plug all the holes in their territory without any more forming, allowing them to isolate themselves and prevent anyone from displacing them even with great effort.

I would really like U-type endpoints to not be chargeable. This does not seem inelegant to me as it's not introducing unnecessary elements into a design, all it does is make endpoints have different flavours from one another in a way that supports gameplay:

• S-type endpoints form naturally, have inherent self-charge and a moderate decay rate, and are therefore stable by themselves. They can be charged.
• U-type endpoints form naturally, have no inherent self-charge and a moderate decay rate, and are therefore unstable. They cannot be charged.
• J-type endpoints form artificially, have no inherent self-charge and high decay rate, and are therefore highly unstable by themselves. They can and must be charged.

Cornflakes_91 wrote: other thought: what about "dormant" wormholes, S1 types which have a really low self charge, not enough to even transmit the smallest working ship design
but chargeable.
so they'd only useable with an WHM equipped ship/station.
may as a "level gating" method, containing some "grand menace" style faction

Maybe. I can't think of any reasons for it or against it at the moment, so I'm neutral. What do you mean by level gating?

ThymineC wrote:

Cornflakes_91 wrote: other thought: what about "dormant" wormholes, S1 types which have a really low self charge, not enough to even transmit the smallest working ship design
but chargeable.
so they'd only useable with an WHM equipped ship/station.
may as a "level gating" method, containing some "grand menace" style faction

Maybe. I can't think of any reasons for it or against it at the moment, so I'm neutral. What do you mean by level gating?

level gating: "you cant go through here until you are this strong"

ThymineC wrote: For spies, saboteur and smugger-like gameplay, though, I still prefer the idea that U-type wormholes only last a while from the moment they're discovered and agents can't just keep them open indefinitely. This would promote a constant demand for recent information on U-type endpoints and hence different kinds of black markets. Otherwise they'd just become like S1 endpoints. In addition, a major issue is that a sufficiently powerful faction could just hunt down these U-type endpoints and keep them all charged indefinitely. This would mean that either:
U-type wormholes keep increasing and the system becomes swamped with them, putting a lot of strain on the computer and just becoming silly. However, this probably couldn't happen since I propose a soft cap on the number of wormholes per system.
U-type wormholes increase in number until a soft or hard cap is hit, at which point the faction could potentially plug all the holes in their territory without any more forming, allowing them to isolate themselves and prevent anyone from displacing them even with great effort.

or they could defend them until they collapse, to prevent permanent resource usage from defending the wormhole.

smugglers wont likely have enough resources to put up an jumpgate installation on the other end