I can probably see scientific arguments being pulled out saying that a wormhole can be opened the opposite way you're headed and still end up where you want to be. But I'm not interested in the plausibility of the suggestion, so much as what it would do for gameplay.

Basically, make an arc (90 degree?) with the halfway point directly away from the system it's pointing to, at least on the map. If one wants to use a wormhole, one has to be within the 1000 meters AND pointed towards the wormhole within the arc.

Exiting would be revised similarly. Make the ships exit pointing away from where they came within the arc of exit (90 degrees again).

Why do I suggest this? Because it would enhance the ability of bottlenecking, pirating and plain old battles. Mining wormholes, like in DS9, could actually happen like this. Granted, it's still a large space to cover but there's only one angle they can come from.

Some pictures to illustrate (I'm a visual sort of guy):

How the current wormhole marker would look, sort of



The arcs, visually

Ewww. No!

Why make travel through wormholes more of a hassle than it'll already be for newbies? When they start out, they'll have to earn their right to fly out of their starting system and into others, and eventually out of nation space.

Then there's the problem of adapting the AI/NPCs to handle this. Too complicated.

"Wormhole Areas" are precisely what they sound like. They're (spherical) areas where a wormhole to another WA can be formed. What's the point of making almost all of the WA completely and utterly useless?

This is not DS9. This is VO. This is also science fiction, so whether you can or cannot activate a wormhole from any direction and still end up in one place in the real world is a moot point. Partly because we haven't ever found a wormhole, and partly because this is a game. The gameplay doesn't have to mold to the real world's laws and rules.

In case it wasn't obvious, no. I don't want this. There's such a thing as *too* complicated.

As an addendum, for someone who would post something like this this, this suggestion is rather pirate-friendly.

Nice barb. Not confident enough in the argument you made?

Seems like Itani and Serco have at least a big a game-play interest in bottle-necking as pirates, probably more so.

Not sure if this is the way to do it, versus merely decreasing the size of the wormhole area...

hmm, not a bad idea. Simpler than my idea, at the very least. 500m?

no.

I dunno. It would be ideal to test such a thing one or two wormholes at a time. I can't think of any reason they should all have the same 1000m sphere.

Perhaps we could see how 500m works in Sedina and Odia, while 750m could be tested in Bractus and Latos. The worst that happens is Gray is a little nastier until a evaluation period is up; little to no objectionable effects on the nooblets.

Yes to smaller WAs, no to entry angles. How would you give the users feedback about how they are approaching the WA anyway? A giant cone in space where they should approach from?

Changing the size of the WA radius makes sense, has been suggested before, and does not change gameplay mechanics at a fundamental level--it's still just "aim nose at indicator on HUD and hit turbo".

Making the central greyspace wormholes smaller would be a good testbed.

Smaller WHs sounds cool, you could possibly also make thier sizes variable depending on the mass of your ship vs its engine capabilities, and possibly even have current in system ion storm activity effect it.

tosh, look at the illustrations?
Anyway, I like the idea in theory, but in practice I think it would be tedious.
Making the WA smaller, however, seems like a very good idea.

Smaller WA's sounds ok... perhaps a bit annoying in a pinch, but ok. However i think it would be easier to simply constrict the exiting area so that you get some consistency in where the ships are popping in....

Demonen, you do realize that in VO, we have to navigate in threedimensional space, while the illustrations are two-dimensional, do you not?

I was specifically wondering about the feedback the game gives to the user as to how he is approaching the WA. Not about how I have to imagine it how the idea as such is supposed to work.

toshiro, please note that the first illustration is sort-of-3D



The black line is the center of a sphere, pole to pole straight through it.
The red part is the outside "skin" of the sphere, much like the skin of an apple, or the earths crust.
The blue part indicates a 90 degree wedge that has been cut from the sphere.

The bottom illustration is pretty much the same thing, viewed from exactly above the wormhole, but in stead of the wedge being cut out, it's fully visualized.

Get it?

It ain't broke... don't fix it.

Demonen, I am loathe to repeat myself, but it seems it is unavoidable that I do.

I have no problems understanding the idea. I want to know how people would imagine a visual representation of the current angle of entry would look like in-game. I called that feedback, since it feeds back your current movement vector, relative to a wormhole area, to your HUD.

So far, the only representations were two-dimensional (sorta-3D is, while fun, not sufficient). That will not do, we need a 'truly' three-dimensional representation that does not obstruct the HUD too much. It also has to be a 'good' feedback that allows you to quickly adjust your movement vector, since you might be hard-pressed by enemy ships to do so, which does not allow you to gaze at a specific area of the screen for too long. Keep in mind that we also have to somehow keep it easy, so as not to alienate new players overly much. The learning curve is still quite steep at the moment, at least from what I gather when playing and answering questions from new players.

If you have a good idea, I'm very much interested in it, since I fail to find a satisfying one, but that might be due to my own stupidity.

It's possible to glimpse a 3-D image with even one eye, if you use your brain, or third-eye, or whatever you use to be imaginative. But that doesn't explain why the entry angle is traingular... or whatever we want to call that shape. Wouldn't a conic section make more sense? And even then, that's only if you're headed *directly* towards the center of the WH. Since you can jump though the sphere at different positions, the region of "okay to jump" would be variable, depending on your angle. Of course, as everybody with half an education knows, WH's magically bend your flight path pending your entry into the conic section, so it all works out anyways.



As for displaying that on the HUD, notice how I made a 3-D conic section out of a sphere with two 2-D circles. Neat stuff.

So whenever I am in a sector with a wormhole, I'm going to have a huge conic section hanging around in space? Even wireframe will be obtrusive. And no, just two circles won't do, since you wouldn't necessarily know the attitude.

As if we did not have enough on our HUDs already.

Let's just stick with decreasing the WA's diameter.

The visualizer doesn't need to be any larger than the current wormhole marking.

While I understand why this suggestion is being made (most self-appointed "pirates" are too inept to shoot down targets unless said targets are forced to come within 100m of them, and ninnyness does the rest), I'm slightly unconvinced of the claimed reasoning that you must "point toward" your destination system to open/use the WH.

If you say that you must "point toward" your destination, I reply that, with the distances involved, your only chance is to travel on a very specific line. No cones, no sphere splices. Only a single straight line. Diverge by a thousandth of a second of an arc, and you will entirely MISS the target system. If you allow a cone, or a sphere splice, or a triangular prism, or any reduction of a spherical volume, you're just "not pointing toward" enough to make a difference.

So, at least from a geometrical point of view, entering the wh from any direction that isn't the exact vector toward the target system is the same, be it the opposite direction in a sphere, or a along a up-down vector going thru the axis of the "blue triangle" that Demonen drawn.

[Stamp of what about improving your aiming instead of whining?]