Wormholes should become first class citizens

Edited 1/31 to remove my embarassingly wrong answer.

Simplicity I love your ideas about wormholes. I need to think more about influence flowing through them, but otherwise I think your ideas would be great additions to the game.

I would also like to add Stargates--but let them be easier to do than in GalCiv lore, due to new technology. Imagine building something like a shipyard, perhaps requiring several constructor modules to get the basic gate working. Perhaps more modules / higher techs allow access for larger hulled ships, or higher capacity fleets, or increase transit time. Transit time might be several turns, but on an Immense map it would be worth it. This would radically change strategic movement on really large maps. Creating and defending stargates, at both ends, might become a major issue. For an aggressive race going for a conquest victory on a gigantic or larger map, stargates would be extremely helpful in moving reinforcements to the front lines. 

To quote myself from an earlier post...

I understand that advanced stargates may be in the works for an expansion.  If this is the case having them be two way express routes to the far side of the galaxy are probably out.  However it would still be a neat, random feature.

I really think though there should be more to them than simply moving the survey ship.  We should get research.  Or the ship should just vanish forever... or perhaps be damaged, or duplicated, or any number of strange events should happen.     

I support the OP's terminology!  Wormholes as first-class values!  Then I can write a lambda function that returns a wormhole, remote-run it on your PC, and your entire call stack falls into the wormhole!

... but some programmers argue that this has already happened in the past.  From the outside, it's a Big Crash.  From the inside, it looks like a Big Bang ...

If this is the case, then the wormhole "artifact" should just be thrown out.  I can think of few situations where I want to send my (likely single) survey ship on a Lost in Space adventure.  

So what you're saying is, existence is merely someone backtracing from the crash to determine the root cause.  A noble goal.

Last stream Paul talked a bit about interstellar drifts and they did not sound like wormholes at all. And he made it sound like they would not be in the base game. So I hope the developers will consider the idea of some kind of permanent, two-way wormholes to make things even more interesting!

In a prior devstream (the one on Dec 12th), they talked about the possibility of players being able to construct things similar to Old School Stargates.  The caveat being that you have to truck a ship to where the end point of the stargate would be constructed.

Just like old times (in universe).

One of the ideas Paul threw out was the possibility of having to put the end points of the stargates on the edges of black holes, which might be where this idea of using rifts to travel came from.

This is just an idea up for consideration, however.

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As for wormholes, I love 'em.  When I purposefully decide to use them.  I use them to contact races long before I would normally run across them.  Mostly so I can farm them for techs.    But I also like to use wormholes to find other civs so I can plan out my colonization/conquest strategy.  It is quite valuable to know how much time I might have to build up my systems before worrying about would-be neighbors sniffing around my neck of the woods.

Then there's the added ability of mapping an area (even if only partially) before I get to it.  

Why, hello Class 21 planet.  Pleased to make your acquaintance.   Oh, what's that?  You're just sitting here, all alone, looking for some company?  Well tell you what.  You just sit tight and I'll design a special colony ship to get here ASAP so we can formally introduces ourselves to each other. 

So once I've researched the surveying tech, I will often send a couple of specially designed ships to fly into a wormhole and see if I get lucky or not.  

It's a strategy that's not to everyone's taste (obviously), but I love doing it, personally. 

I always wanted wormholes to have a random life span.  Could be 100 turns or 3.

BuckGodot, you have a good point there, using wormholes to try to find other races early to better prep and to trade. Think I will try that next time. Thanks!

I would love to see wormholes/jump gates/etc. but more realistically I think a better method might be:  

• Find wormhole but survey ship does not automatically use it
• simply jumping through the wormhole has a decent chance of destabilizing it (i.e. less than the current 100% chance)
• Build something over/around the wormhole to stabilize it up to a certain amount of logistics ships, anything above that just can't use it
• Make it one way at this low level, but allow the entry gate to be moved at the 1/1 that shipyards can move at (if possible)
• at a late game higher level, allow the exit end to be captured & moved around at the same 1/1 speeds
• Maybe at higher tech levels allow building of them

i like the idea of being able to stabilize a wormhole but i think it should be permanently locked in place. im not sure about the 1-way but that could be interesting as well

Honestly it would be nice if they were 2 way that your ability to travel would span a certain amount from origin... and that you would need to develop starbases that stabilize them on both sides.  I.e.  the worm hole is unstable unless secured when it collapses it leaves an anomaly but if you stabilize it you are able to travel it until the stabilizing star bases are destroyed 

Or maybe have some 2 way some one way... all depending upon how unstable they are

Personally, I would rather have both stable and unstable wormholes than only one or the other. However, if I cannot have both, I would rather have unstable wormholes. Do I like having my survey ship thrown halfway across the map and seeing it become unusable for however long it takes to get back? No, but it's one of the few things currently in the game that can actually impact early-game exploration in any significant way, and it can have amusing side effects, such as finding the guys on the opposite end of the map before you know who your neighbors are, or encourage you to build a secondary survey ship to replace the one stuck on the far end of the galaxy. It's one of the things that makes each game play out a little differently, and I don't want to see it go.

Yes when for some reason you have one ship that can survey then have to research a tech to build another... losing one can be detrimental especially on larger maps...

How does influence flow through a vacuum?

Worm holes, as naturally occurring objects, are not specifically formed or engineered for travel, safety, or communication.  They should therefore be  various degrees of hazardous intrinsically.  There may also be time dilation effects. Or something more weird, like you could be popped into another universe with different physics.

A range of persistence is certainly desirable, but you should be better of making your own.