Greetings,

I am making this (my first) post at the request of Matress of Evil, so any and all blame for its lack of being very interesting is placed squarely in that direction.

So, wormholes. Forgive me if this has been covered but I haven't seen it else where as yet, but then my search skills are rather feeble. I was just wondering if there were going to be wormholes in Supremacy at all? I assume so, but as I haven't seen any in the game yet, I thought I'd ask, and offer a suggestion if I may;

I was thinking that maybe wormholes shouldn't be displayed on the map as being a wormhole, but as being some sort of anomaly. I mean you could do that with other things too; Black Holes... umm... other anomalies... Have a default symbol to tell you that your scanners have picked something up, like the question mark you get for ships of races you've not encountered before. I mean the Bajoran Wormhole (that I know of, it's been a while since I watched DS9) wouldn't open until you were right on top of it.

Anywho, I'd love to get feedback on this one (or a link to somewhere this may have been discussed before ^_^'), so feel free.

Good question that, I think Mike can answer this one. In the mean time welcome and thanks for giving the recordings a go. I am anxious to hear your work.

I wasn't rying to force you or anything mate, I just meant that you've been lurking for the last two years and might want to come out of the shadows. But anyways, you're here now, someone has replied, and you're still in one piece. I said we wouldn't bite.

Wormholes are a feature that has been talked about on-and-off for a long while. I've discussed them with Mike, although not recently, so I know that they will be in the game eventually. This is the gist of what we discussed:

• Wormholes will be hidden until they are discovered. Encountering Wormholes may be a chance encounter, or may be found if you specifically look for them. (IE. perform intensive scans) An average map will have approximately one Wormhole per Quadrant.
  
• You will only know if a Wormhole is passable by using it. Some Wormholes will go off the edge of the map; if they do, any ship that enters such a Wormhole will be lost. (Basically the same as dead-end Wormholes in BOTF)
  
• Wormholes that actually lead somewhere may be unstable; one end may randomly shift to another random location. Sending a ship through or finding the new location of the other end will be the only way to find out where it has gone.
  
• Some Wormholes may be unstable at both ends.

Since they haven't been discussed much lately, now is as good a time as any to discuss them further.

Not forcing me, eh? Then what's with the phaser, hmm? =P

Anywho, I deffinately like the idea that wormholes could be unstable. Adds a bit more spice to things rather then just 'Well on one hand it could kill me, on the otherhand it could send me to a far off magical place'. It would also be cool to have the option of sending a science vessel out to the entrance to an unstable wormhole, and have them attempt to stabilise it. That leads to a few other options;

1. The Wormhole doesn't respond and the rest of the fleet laughs at your science vessel for their faliure.

2. The 'singularity' explodes, destroying your vessel and closing the wormhole for good.

3. Their attempts get them sucked through the wormhole and they are either destroyed or lost somewhere out in the Galaxy.

4. I'm sure there was a forth at the very least... but it has escaped my memory. *ponders* Oh! Duh! The manage to stabilise the wormhole then scoot off back to their home system in time for tea and medals.

Nice Stargate SG-1 reference in the title.

Actually there are two Stargate references, one of them is kinda hidden though. And there's a Blackadder reference, but you'd have to know the lines in Goes Forth to find it.

See if you can find them all!

So yeah, any other thoughts on wormhole mechanics?

So if you sent a colonyship in you might be able to metastasis across the map? (Even if the ends move you could setup shop where you came out.)

Matress covered my wormhole plans pretty well. The idea of stabilizing them is interesting, but it would mean introducing some kind of special ship ability. It wouldn't make sense if just any science vessel (particularly an early Enterprise-era design) could do it, since none of the empires had that kind of technology at the time. It would be a lot of work for an ad hoc feature. I'd rather leave the player at the mercy of the wormholes' natural states.