A guide to wormhole.

Its a small guide of wormholeing in a rather easy way. Also some tips that will come handy when inside one.
The mechanics are subject to change since Astrox is an Early Access game.

How to detect

Look into station news feed for wormhole generation event. Also there are times when traveling through a sector a message may pop up about a wormhole being charged. Tag the sector with a bookmarks to look for it later.

Now, in order to detect there are 3 options. I personally recommend number 2

• Mount a active scanner on the ship and keep it running. This way you will get a popup every time
  a scan is complete displaying distance from the wormhole. You have to adjust the distance and keep scanning until you get close enough
  to see it on HUD.
  
  
• Hire a Recon merc. If you already scanned every major structures in the sector already then the merc will go directly toward the wormhole and scan it. It's the most easiest way.
  
  
• If space traffic (Background effect) turned on, then you can see them going towards the
  unexplored wormhole. Depending on the skybox, it could be easy or difficult. This option is not
  recommended unless you really want to make life hard.
  
  
• Passive scanning. You have to set scanning filter to warpgates only for this purpose. Although I never used this process to locate one at the time of making this guide. Credit to @Amphos

Edit:- Passive scanning works just fine. Although this may change in future.

What to do before traveling inside a wormhole.

You can take whatever ship you want to. But in my experience taking a very fast shuttle or recon ship with loads of life support is very helpful. Lock you're mercs in the tightest formation and keep them close. If you have a clocking device mounted, now its time to turn them on.

I'm inside, Now what?

You RUN!

No,Seriously - most of the wormholes has very low security. In my experience the most powerful raiders spawn near the other end of wormhole. They are equipped with EMP devices, If they disable you're engine, you'e doomed. The worst part is that they will kill you're fleet before they kill you.

If you followed my guide up until now then you should be able to outrun them easily. Don't be shy using afterburners. Don't expect to kill all of the raiders in first chance. They are heavily armed with the biggest ships in the game so,keeping distance is the best option now.

Look for whatever resources available there, make markers etc etc.

Returning from Wormhole

When leaving a wormhole, having a warp drive can come handy. If you don't then don't worry, you can return though the same wormhole you came in.

But if you forgot to scan the gate for some reason or deleted it from the HUD then you can double click the sector the wormhole spawned in the first place. You're Ship AI will automatically find it and put it in the HUD.

Battle in Hell

Okay, one might think having a lot of mercs will give you an upper hand.

This is a BAD Idea

You're mercs will be killed very quickly. If you have high level of "Merc Combat Defense" Skill,they will last for quite a while but, still, they will die. Basically you have to kill the bigger ships before letting the mercs fight anything. Keep them locked in formation until the large ships are down. This has another advantage - merc's cargo can be used to carry extra ammo for you're ship since they are with you all the time.

Ships and weapon of Choice

Take a dreadnought, or a ship with a lot of active slots and ample cargo space. Mount All but one slots with 60mm Guns, the bigger the better. Use the one empty slot to mount a clocking device. Having some extra emergency life support, armor repairing nanobots and energy bomb can be helpful, not mandatory though.

Do not forget to take a warpdrive with you. If things are not going in you're way, jump!

Tactics

Keep you're mercs in a locked formation. A triangular formation with maximum formation distance is recommended so that you're own weapon doesn't kill them, yes that can happen.:(

Speed is very essential in this kind of fight. Most of the raiders will be slow so hit and run will serve you well.

The raiders will try to gang up on you, hitting from every direction. If you see yourself getting cornered, you can let one of you're merc engage. The merc will die most likely but you will get some room to squeeze out. Not the most reliable method but sometime it works.

Have at least 4000 Rounds of ammo (if using 60mm guns ) before engaging. Radiated core, Explosive core ammo are the best options.

Take at least one pirate merc, he can pick up all the cargo dropped for you.

If using drones then mount attack drone in the ship. Defense Drones are not really useful here. They will prevent you from getting hit but they also stops you're weapons from hitting the raiders.

Here is a video of me fighting.

When the dust settles....

Wormhole sectors are some of the best mining and salvaging locations in the game. You can set up a mining silo and assign a merc for harvesting. The venture could be very profitable. In future there will be option for building station. So, this could be a nice spot to make one. Building some defense system is completely optional as they are not very reliable.

Verdict

Wormhole can be really fun place to hang around if you can handle it. I know you might think they always lead to dangerous locations, which is not true. Sometime they lead to really great locations.

But being prepared for the worst couldn't hurt.

[Xinny]

Wormholes are no joke.
Managed to fend off 25 raiders alone in an imperious titan with 5 60mm Oaken, 6 Blaster x10 laser, 12th being a salvage collector to pick up resources. 25 defense drones to nullify missiles, 25 salvage drones to quickly scoop up free money.
Most of the baddies use missile launchers that will easily erase you if you're not careful. about a quarter use propulsion ECMs, some derp up your modules and targetting.
Truly requires high level skills to be trained on ship and weapons.

[Tavore]

Last time when I tried with defense drones - they used to deflect enemy and player weapons equally. If you have them orbiting around your ship, they will prevent you from hitting enemies as well.

[agnichatian]

Why do my drones make me miss the raiders ?

[Tavore]

The mercs by default do not engage anyone - even if they are getting bombed. What I can recommend is to train merc defense skill which will prevent getting hit harder and another skill(Forgot the name) that helps mercs to engage more efficiently.

[IvanTheTerrible79]

wow great guide! I was wondering in the part about the mercs you make it seem like there is a way to make it so that the mercs wont get attacked? does their engage status somehow change if the enemies will target them? Ive wanted to take a transport ship with me on combat missions to carry all my loot but I'm too afraid it will be shot to death instantly.

[Tavore]

That's a great idea. I'll add it the guide. Thanks!

[Captain Tips]

Great guide. Should add that you can build a warpgate generator to stabalize the wormhole. They are a pain to build and kind of obsolete once you have a warp drive, but a fun side project.

[Tavore]

Any suggestion to improve this guide will be very much welcome. Also, English is not my first language so if I made any mistakes please excuse them.