Gazz wrote:
Modification of the "straight charging by a ship" mechanic:
The wormhole is always open if the current charge is above the "working" level.
Any ship can pass without special equipment. No other conditions. KISS.
Trouble starts when a ship passes.
Depending on the ship's mass, the WH charge is depleted.
If the current charge drops below the working level, the WH starts to collapse.
This takes maybe a minute during which still any ship can pass.
A ship outfitted with a WH charger cannot directly charge the WH (preserving the strategic issue) but it can delay the collapse by a few minutes so a sizable fleet can pass reliably.
However, every transferred ship counts and such a transit drops the WH deep in the red, energy-wise...
If a WH is ever depleted below the working level, it recharges on it's own time, making some WH clearly more valuable than others.
so, why didnt i like that idea back then when it was new?
so, what gazz wrote +
maybe wormhole stabilisers can increase the maximum charge of an already existing wormhole?
so a jumpgate built on top of an already existing wormhole can increase the maximum size of ship that can pass through without destabilising the wormhole
(assuming a permanent self recharge as long as the WH is stable)
so a gate reinforced wormhole can manage bigger bursts of ship transfer without closing.
the total tonnage over time (without collapsed states in between, maximum sustained rate) doesnt change
but the maximum burst size increases, creating less downtime when something big gets through.
when the wormhole charges over its natural charge level the emissions of that wormhole increase strongly, proportional to the "overcharge" in it.
so you can detect when someone prepares a wormhole for a big burst entry
wormhole creating mechanisms could have 2 forms:
- they only create "collapsing" wormholes.
they get created and immediately start collapsing, giving you a small time window to use the connection until the connection closes again.
(maybe only seconds for "minimal" wormhole generators)
- they create "semi stable" wormholes
wormholes with minimal charge (1 maximal charge) get created and can be kept stable for a long time (indefinitely?) as long as the required stabilisation is present
it starts collapsing when the first ship passes, from there it goes through a normal collapse and vanishes afterwards
we could maybe allow to combine semi stable wormholes with overcharging wormholes to create expensively maintained artificial wormhole connections that collapse the second the maintaining constructs are disabled.
some new ideas on how to create wormholes:
- you have to map the position beforehand
you fly there, "attach" your wormhole generator to the position and can create a wormhole to the location
this attachment should be measurable at the attahed location, so you can know beforehand where a ship could appear
an used attachment is not reusable, you have to fly there again to open another wormhole
maybe the attachment even locates the attached object/wormhole generator, as a countermeasure to jumpdrive ships
- you can attach 2 wormhole generators to each other
you bring both wormhole generators near each other and attach them to each other
they can now create a single wormhole between their locations, when that connection collapses they have to reattach to each other again.
maybe allow to transfer this attachment from one generator to another, or from a smaller object to the generator (because it would be a pain in the ass to move your whole jumpgate assembly if the connection fails for whatever reason. this could maybe used as a feature, though, "jumpgate ammunition")
- big maybe allow attachement from a remote location (another system) but this creates a specific signature
at first it creates a very faint bubble of signal through the whole system, this bubble contracts over the couse of a few minutes towards the center of if, the soon to be attached location
so you may jump to a previously non-attached position, but everyone in the system is able to tell that you plan to do so a while beforehand.
(maybe even over interstellar distances, so you can tell when someone the next system over jumps in that way)
a small thing that bugs me on gazz idea:
any wormhole can accomodate any size of ship when its collapsing.
capital ships should require some kind of infrastructure to travel everywhere
maybe collapsing wormholes have a big, but limited, maximum transfer size which is quite a bit larger then the stable transfer capacity?
so some natural wormholes are not able to accomodate a capital ship unaided and are thus less strategically valuable.
this also extends to jumpdrives, not every wormhole generator can accomodate a capital ship.
(yes, im quite bored recently and am rehashing old threads)