Wormhole oddity in trunk (r5569)

[Cody]

On two occasions just now, I was about to hitch a lift when the NPC wormhole collapsed too soon (ie before the timer ran-down). This was going from Esusale to Cecees (G8) - yep, a zero-distance double! This pic was following a Boa plus four - the wormhole collapsed soon after, long before I could reach it.

[cim]

The underlying cause is almost certainly that the time taken to travel through the wormhole (0.01 hours) is less than the lifespan of the wormhole.

I'm thinking that the more reliable solution is for wormholes to always collapse at the entry end before anything can exit the other end - and so treating this as a bug in the time display, rather than in the wormhole collapse. Otherwise, you could end up with a situation where a heavy ship like an Anaconda should be able to jump, jump back, and then re-enter its own still-open wormhole which hasn't yet collapsed. (With a really heavy ship, this wouldn't even need a zero-distance double to work...)

[Cody]

I see this is fixed in r5575, but how is it handled now - has the ETA been adjusted to match the wormhole's duration (or vice versa)?
I've been having a look, but in normal game-play it can take ages (even using TAF) for the right ship to jump - fairly high hub-count at Cecees/Esusale.

[cim]

Duration adjusted so that the entry wormhole always closes at least one second (and usually far more, of course) before the exit wormhole opens. The wormhole scanner readings are then accurate for the adjusted duration. So you get wormholes that only last ~30 seconds.

[Cody]

<nods>

Digressing slightly - I've just been followed through my wormhole by a bunch of bandits that were not locked-on to me (condition yellow) when the jump froze the display. I had thought they would only follow the player if locked-on. Not so - or was it a last-second lock-on that was not displayed?

[cim]

They'll follow you if they were paying attention when you left. They only go red when they're in weapons range.

The difference, perhaps, is that in 1.76 weapon range was determined by the main entity, falling back to 32km if no lasers were fitted, while in trunk subentities are included in the calculation. For Griff's ships, where most of the NPCs only have guns on subentities, this means that their range is now calculated as 12.5/15km in trunk, instead of 32km.

[Cody]

Okay - they took me by surprise that time, but now I'm aware of the possibility, I'll be prepared in future.