Brainwave. This is harking back to a discussion we had about wormholes before. What if for the purposes of the game, wormholes were no more then 'ships'. I know that's going to sound kind of wacky at first glance, but in actuality, you could use the method I'm about to describe for a number of other stellar phenomenon.

So, it you have wormhole as being a class of ship (unavailable to build, obviously) then you have a means to make them move, either in a set regular pattern, zip around at random or have them stay still (for stable ends) or a mix of all three for really chaotic apertures. You could also cloak them, so that they don't show up until you stumble right on top of them. Then, when you encounter one you could set some code up to say that when ever a ship is in the same sector as the wormhole and can detect it, then 'Enter Wormhole' is added to their list of commands.

That particular wormhole 'ship' will be twined with another wormhole so that when you enter one, the ship is moved to the other wormhole and visa versa. Too add still more danger, if you have a worm hole that shifts, you could have it stay still (at either end) for 2-5 turns, then move. If a ship enters while either side is on the move, then they are destroyed as a result or heavily damaged.

For added wackiness, have a triplicate wormhole where three wormholes are linked. So when you enter you leave from one of the other two, then when you re-enter the one you just left from, you exit from the third. And a again, you could set up some sort of 'chaos engine' that says which one you'll actually exit from. It might not be the one you exited from the first time you tested it.

Also, you could have ones zipping around that lead nowhere that simply eat ships. Like in the original BotF. That way there's more chance that (as useful as wormholes can potentially be) they are actually quite dangerous and unpredictable. This makes it so you don't have to worry about the game being ruined by giving some an unfair advantage.

And again, you could make it so that a feature of the highest class science ship can attempt to stabilise a wormhole at a certain research level and/or with certain other support vessels.

I for one really enjoyed having wormholes in the original game and would love to see them in supremacy.



Going back to using the same method for other formations. What about the 'Ribbon' that sends people to the 'Nexus'? Make that a specialised ship and you've got a moving ribbon gallivanting across your galactic map, just like the Crystalline Entity is basically a specialised ship, or Gumtu or any other number of things. Like that weird giant orange ball of… what ever it was that slips in and out of subspace.

Anywho, just a thought.

Mike has already said that Wormholes would both be in the game, and will have the ability to move. Some will also destroy your ships as well, although Mike described what was happening as the ships will actually get stranded off the edge of the map and you will therefore be unable to control them because you can't see them to issue orders to.

...So there's no need to program some special circumstances for the Wormholes because they're going to natively doing all this as part of their programming.

Stablising Wormholes and having triplicate end points isn't something he has discussed with me though. To my knowledge, triple-Wormholes aren't a canon idea either. It's therefore anyone's guess whether Mike has even considered these features, let alone even made a decision about whether to include them.

I've also included the Nexus as one of the random events, but we don't know for sure yet how the randoms exactly will work. The Crystalline Entity, Gomtuu, the Chodak, the Husnock, the Doomsday Device, Echo Papa 607, Giant Amoeba, the Calamarain, Species 8472, and Space Pirates are also in my list.

and Q?

Q 2?

Curses! Another good idea, far too late. =P

Edit: Sorry for the mix up, for some reason I'd thought that Wormholes had been considered and rejected because no one knew how to implement them. I figured making them a 'ship' of sorts would solve it. My bad. ^_^'