SO I got a map today that had me sealed off in a little cluster linked to the rest of the galaxy through a series of wormholes. Cool. But wouldn't it be cooler if I could bring down the Iron Curtain? Mine wormhole exits to damage ships coming through, interrupt the flow of the wormhole to slow enemy ships down, even build new ones or block them off completely. Of course, for any of this to be worthwhile as game mechanics, they would have to be available at the same time or shortly after you first get wormhole tech, because warp drive would make all of this obsolete.



But I rather like the idea of being reclusive, and forcing races like the Cravers and Hissho to spend research on the south tree before they can reach me.



I don't think it would be too challenging to put in the game, what say you?

I don't want to have to deal with mines.

Mines don't make much sense in space. Space is vast. Mines are not. Evading them should always be pretty easy - even if you blunder into the minefield itself. My intuition is that they don't make much sense near wormhole exits either. Sure the wormhole exit is this one single point, but isn't everything in space constantly moving at tremendous speeds? Amounts of drift that are trivial when you're staring at a galactic map must be rotten to account for on the local level.



This also assumes that you can't scan the other end of the wormhole before you go into it. Pre-scanning makes mines pretty pointless too. If they're close enough to the exit that they'll reliably hit thing going through, they're close enough to the exit that the exiting ships will have pre-prepared targeting solutions to hit the mines immediately on wormhole exit.



Now automated defense drones are another issue. So if anything like 'mines' are implemented in the game, how about they're made into defense drones? They make marginally more sense to me fluffwise while still serving the same strategic role: Defense drones can operate on much larger scales, are able to seek out enemies so said enemies don't have to be stupidly unlikely to find them, and while they're unlucky to seriously hurt warships, they can slow them down and cause attrition as they try to move through your space.

I do like the Wormhole manipulation ideas in general, but as you say the Warp Drive will nullify a lot of them and being able to close or build wormholes is too powerful a tech to get before Warp Drive. Unless of course Warp Drive were to be moved further down the tree.

Maclardal wrote:
I do like the Wormhole manipulation ideas in general, but as you say the Warp Drive will nullify a lot of them and being able to close or build wormholes is too powerful a tech to get before Warp Drive. Unless of course Warp Drive were to be moved further down the tree.

If not taken out compleatly? yeah.



and seeng as wormholes travel the entire distance on one move, it can often be hard to predict when a enemy is going to attack, i just think we need more longer range wormholes that can cross the entire map, but require more advanced engines.

That would make good sense. Rather than using Warp Drive remove it completely and replace with the ability to make a Wormhole anywhere (expensive!). Then you would have to have different level WH engines to traverse different lengths. There should then probably be a cap of 1/2 galaxy length, or maybe even smaller, so you don't just get fleets popping out at your homeworld, despite how much fun that would be

Well i dident mean making them, i ment like natural ones.



Besides there already is a technology that allows between any system with a wormhole that you own.

If the Warp Drive is removed, then the galaxy building algorithms need to be re-worked. I've played at least one game where there was a section of planets not connected to any others by warp lanes, and without wormholes as well.

Platescale wrote:
Mines don't make much sense in space. Space is vast. Mines are not. Evading them should always be pretty easy - even if you blunder into the minefield itself. My intuition is that they don't make much sense near wormhole exits either.

Putting mines over the exit to a wormhole worked well enough in Star Trek: Deep Space 9. You just need to add replicators to the mines, so that the mine field replenishes itself.





I do find it odd that wormholes are all very short range. They're things that definitely feel to me like they should span half a galaxy, rather than the distance of a single turn's travel on any ship.

The wormholes seem way too short. I almost feel like they should be connecting to each other entirely at random, instead of adjacent.

In some SF universes wormholes go halfway across the galaxy. I suppose the devs tried this, and pre-alpha users complained that it made the map too nonlinear and hard to defend. I like the implementation as a short hop which splits the map into chunks, but doesn't really change the geography.



Maybe the map generation xml/library they mention in the modding thread will allow us to experiment with this.

Tavar wrote:
If the Warp Drive is removed, then the galaxy building algorithms need to be re-worked. I've played at least one game where there was a section of planets not connected to any others by warp lanes, and without wormholes as well.

That is actually a known bug and I'm pretty sure there are plans to fix it. Though my idea also included making new wormholes, so you would be in the same position as you are now with the type of map you suggest. e.g. You would have to be able to see a system outside your own constellation and then could wormhole to it rather than warp drive to it.