Improving Wormhole Invasions

[Dominus Arbitrationis]

I've noticed quite a few players complain about the way Wormhole Invasions currently work, so I'd like to get the community's thoughts on what we can do to improve Wormhole Invasions and make them more fun for players. Ideas we've come up with so far are:

• Difficulty gating it (Difficulty has to be 7+, for instance)
• Requiring the player to say "I want those" like they do with Astro Trains and the like
• Adding structures that function as  "Wormhole Generators", which will eventually spawn a Wormhole Invasion
• Similar idea is to have Wormhole Generators increase the Wormhole Invasion budget for as long as they are alive. Over time, this would result in the invasion still occurring, even if you quickly destroy the generator, since the budget doesn't decrease on its own.
• Stop Wormhole Invasions from spawning within X hops of your homeworld

[zeusalmighty]

Currently in the lobby UI for the Sentinels players can choose to have things like Hunter waves as on/off. Perhaps this is the route to go since there is apparently interest in having these optional.

I like this mechanic for the most part, intrigued by the idea of having this feature more interactive by something like a "wormhole generator"

I do think that at the very least this should be gated behind difficulty (7 seems appropriate)

***I can imagine scenarios where even when one is "prepared" for the wormhole invasion, it pops up right next to your command station and there's no real chance of defending it. So if wormhole invasions were restricted from popping up in a certain radius around command stations that would be ideal, imo

[Lord Of Nothing]

I think having it spawn on your homeworld should definitely be difficulty gated regardless of any other changes, perhaps to diff 8+

***I can imagine scenarios where even when one is "prepared" for the wormhole invasion, it pops up right next to your command station and there's no real chance of defending it. So if wormhole invasions were restricted from popping up in a certain radius around command stations that would be ideal, imo

I actually had this happen with my home command station in my second game. If it hadn't been early in the game I would have been doomed.

[Draco18s]

These are the exogalactic ones that spawn on a random planet?

My main issue with them is two fold:
1) I'm not properly alerted to them being spawned. The incoming waves notification bar is quite clustered with notifications ("that one's going at the nanocaust, that's just an alert that there are 2 spaceplanes I can't find, that one's a wave coming to a border world, I can ignore that...")
2) They stick around for a while. I can't blow them up, they don't vanish after disgorging their initial units, and may spawn more units at an unspecified time in the future, locking down my mobile military to take care of it.

Any or several of the suggestions look good to me (ie it could be both user-enabled and difficulty-gated).

[zeusalmighty]

These are the exogalactic ones that spawn on a random planet?

No, these are special event waves--a wormhole appears on any of your planets, more likely to hit a weakly defended planet. You only get about 30 second heads up when the wave starts and you can expect the wormhole to produce about 3 waves before it "collapses" (disappears)

[AnnoyingOrange]

I think they're incredibly boring gameplay-wise and strategy-wise.
I see the notification pop up, I pause, I go to the planet, I build 10-20 engineers, then the defensive structures, then I pull back my fleets from any missions and wait for the wormhole to disappear, 99% of the time the wormhole waves are instagibbed by the stack of ambush turrets and no fleet intervention is required.

Giving the player the ability to disable them completely would be a good bandaid, but I see zero reasons to ever have them enabled in the current state: there is no way to plan long term around them, unlike all similar long range waves in the first game, you can only react to an RNG roll.

[zeusalmighty]

Giving the player the ability to disable them completely would be a good bandaid, but I see zero reasons to ever have them enabled in the current state: there is no way to plan long term around them, unlike all similar long range waves in the first game, you can only react to an RNG roll.

I tend to agree with the assessment. At least in classic, "warp relays" were optional and even when they were on the players had opportunity to shut them down before they became an issue. Having a similar ability here would go a long way to make these wormhole invasions interesting... requires an instigator base to do... a special AI unit has to get into position and to initiate the invasion... something along these lines

[Draco18s]

These are the exogalactic ones that spawn on a random planet?

No, these are special event waves--a wormhole appears on any of your planets, more likely to hit a weakly defended planet. You only get about 30 second heads up when the wave starts and you can expect the wormhole to produce about 3 waves before it "collapses" (disappears)

That would be the one I was referring to. The wormhole that spawns calls itself an "unstable exogalactic wormhole."

[BadgerBadger]

Some changes:
 Wormhole invasions are no longer allowed to spawn on player homeworlds.
On difficulty < 9, wormhole invasions are not allowed to spawn on planets adjacent to the player homeworld.
Wormhole invasions are only unlocked for difficulty >= 7
 AIP requirements to start wormhole invasions are now higher

[Pat]

I liked the surprise effect of the first wormhole invasion. But facing these invasions 10+ times in the same game was, indeed, boring... and frustrating everytime I had to scrap remote fleetships to deal with it (too few ambush turrets I guess?) --> reducing their frequency could help

[BadgerBadger]

I can make them less frequent, sure.