Wormholes
Wormholes are numbered sector bodies that transport a ship to a linked point in another sector. Most have a return terminal, but some are one-way. Their locations and destinations remain fixed once their sector records are created, so discovered routes can be mapped.
Entering and surviving
A ship must move close enough to the wormhole's center to cross its event horizon. The game gives gravity warnings as the ship approaches. The classic documentation recommends roughly one-quarter impulse; in practice, about impulse 25 is a useful target. A much faster ship can pass across the narrow capture area between movement updates and miss it completely. A much slower ship can emerge too close to the return terminal to escape its pull. It may then travel back and forth between the two ends, taking damage on every transit until it is destroyed. Heading and the exact approach still matter; impulse 25 is a practical guideline, not a guarantee.
Each successful transit adds 5.5 damage points directly to the ship's overall damage. Shields do not absorb or reduce it. Transit can therefore finish off an already damaged ship, and repeated oscillation is dangerous even when the shields are fully charged. The ship retains its movement after emerging, which is why enough impulse speed can carry it away from the destination wormhole.
Wormhole travel also relocates the ship out of its former local combat situation. Torpedoes and missiles aimed at it should not follow it through. Classic bug: Wormhole projectile cleanup documents a classic cleanup mistake and its correction in ge-next. In ge-next, transit also clears active jamming on the traveling ship.
In classic GE, the same Cybertrons that were pursing a ship before it travels through a wormhole will continue to track that same ship. This causes them to travel across the galaxy to the new location and (depending on distance) lines them up on the same bearing for the user ship, making them easy to be picked off with phaser fire. This is a common method of farming in classic GE. ge-next instead reassigns Cybertron pursuit on a ship traveling through a wormhole to nearby Cybertrons in the destination area; the Cybertrons that were tracking a ship prior to the wormhole travel drop their claims and stay near where they were until they decide to do something else.
Scanning and polarity
A sector scan shows a wormhole as a numbered body; scanning that body gives its bearing and distance. In ge-next, a ship with enhanced scanners also sees a Polarity field, provided it is not heavily jammed. This is a two-character directional hint: each character is +, -, or 0 according to the sign of the destination sector's X and Y coordinate, respectively. It does not reveal the destination's exact coordinates or whether a return portal exists. Classic GE does not show this field.
Creation and direction
Sectors are generated when game logic first requests them, not all at the beginning of a game. The MAXPLSE setting controls the maximum number of planets and wormholes initially chosen for a newly generated ordinary sector. A chosen body can be a wormhole according to WORMODDS; its destination is then selected elsewhere in the galaxy.
getsector() first calls xgetsector() to load or create the requested sector and records any newly generated wormholes. It then loads or creates each destination sector and attempts to place a return portal there. The second xgetsector() call disables random wormhole generation in a newly created destination. Otherwise, one new wormhole could create another destination wormhole, which could create another, causing a generation cascade.
A return portal is appended to the destination sector's existing bodies. Consequently, a sector can end up with more bodies than MAXPLSE specifies. The actual sector table holds at most nine bodies. If the destination already has nine when the return portal is attempted, there is no free slot: the originating wormhole remains usable, but no corresponding return portal is created there. This is the specific way a one-way wormhole arises; it is not a separate random wormhole type.
ge-arena
During arena staging and tiebreaker countdowns, wormhole transit is blocked to keep players in the confined sector. The Enforcer Planet applies damage and pushes the ship off the wormhole's path instead of transporting it. Outside those periods, normal wormhole travel applies.
See also
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