Wormholes

from Stardock Forums
I play this game off and on and keep current with the updates. However first I have a quick question, out of all the games I have played (BTW I don't submit to Metaverse) I have never run into a "permanent" wormhole..is this even possible?

If it is not, doesn't that make wormholes kind of trvial? Right now I tend to avoid them, especially early in game as usually is just a hassle for me. Does anybody else think that there should be temporary and permanent wormholes? That would open up new strategies, perhaps a new starbase type that would let you create ultra-warp gates of some kind.

It would:

A) Create more trade depth
B) Create more military strategy
C) Create more territorial strategy
D) Maybe some extra special events such as a Wormhole implosion. Or if it was too close to a planet it could have a radiation problem event that would affect it in some way. Etc Etc you get the idea.
261 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Similar ideas been suggested before. Gnerally some sort of Star Gate upgrade for Starbases to speed up large endgame movement.

The problem is it is very, very hard to get the AI to use these sort of things sensible.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
How is it difficult. Supposedly the pathfinding capabilities of the AI should be able to track on a worm hole and be able to calculate off the new location should it run across one. As a programmer I could probably figure something like that out myself. Too bad I can't seem to break into the computer game industry :-(

SeanB.
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Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
The problem is, the pathfinding is too simple to account for wormholes (seeing how space has no terrain). Once you give a ship a destination, it moves diagonally toward that point until it has either the same x or y coordinate. Then it moves in a straight line to its destination. As is, pathfinding doesn't even take into account the +Speed starbase modules, most likely because its a greedy algorithm.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
It's not so much that. Lets say I write an AI in this game. I want it to goto planet X which is 12 sectors away as the crow flies, but lets say there's a wormhole about 1 sector south that will take me there. You could write the pathfinding AI to search for the quickest way to the planet (which isn't necessarily a straight line). The pathfinder would then go through its thing. The only problem I see is that it might slow the game down a bit. Depends alot on how you handle the pathfinding, but it can be done. There are books out there that go over how to deal with pathfinding in games. It's just a thought though.

SeanB.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
It is quite akward to actually get those path finding algorithms working, especially if you still want to have certain sectors with speed bonuses.

Also, a human player could use wormholes to avoid to avoid conflict zones, even if it was a bit of a longer route. Trying to get the AI to do that sort of thing as well would be pretty hard.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
But if you constructed a travelled node network, so that you only added segments to the network to get from a new place or go to a new place, and only did a recalc of the 'star lanes' every 50 or 100 turns or so (whenever a new star speed tech is discovered, for instance), then pathing calc time wouldn't be too bad, would it?

And I've seen the AI path in S curves plenty, when there was nothing in the way. Even add to its distance for travel, by going directly sideways before heading off on a 'straight line' travel, so it isn't doing a simple straight line or Reduce/Increment X until = X of Destination, Reduce/Increment Y until = Y of Destination.