Escalating

Due to maximum jump mass limits on wormholes it can be tricky to move high mass ships around. Ships of Battleship size and larger can be unable to jump through certain wormholes. Wormholes with higher maximum jump mass limits tend to connect to the higher class wormholes. The practical outcome of this is that those living in class one wormholes may find bringing in Battleships tricky. And those inhabiting wormholes from class one to three will find bringing in Carriers and Dreadnoughts all but impossible.

But for corporations in the higher level wormholes, it is a much easier matter. Having Carriers and Dreadnoughts becomes not only possible, but also advisable, because if you can bring a Carrier into your wormhole, there is nothing stopping somebody else bringing one into your wormhole. A scary thought perhaps. Our corporation lives in a class five wormhole, and we are lucky enough to have both Carriers and Dreadnoughts in system.

Carriers in particular have many uses. For example they are great for forcibly closing wormholes. But one other ability they have is to 'escalate' a Sleeper combat site. Basically, if you warp a Carrier onto grid in a Sleeper combat site that still has active Sleepers, it will trigger an extra spawn of Sleepers to fight. This is a nice bonus that can be exploited to get the most out of your combat sites in your home wormhole.

For an added bonus Sleeper sites can be escalated more than once! The first Carrier to warp into a combat site will trigger a spawn of six Sleeper Battleships. The second Carrier will trigger an extra spawn of eight Sleeper Battleships. After this second spawn, warping in extra Carriers will do nothing. But this is where the Dreadnoughts come in handy. Warp in a Dreadnought and a third spawn of a further six Battleships will be triggered.

Now at this point I have to turn from practical experience back to theory. As a corporation we have done combat sites with three escalations before, but that is where we have stopped. You see, from all the reading I had done on the subject, I was told that the fourth and final escalation of eight more Battleships would be triggered when another Dreanought warped in. This would mean that you could trigger a total of twenty eight extra Battleships by escalating each single combat site.

A couple of days ago we finally had enough pilots and a large enough fleet to test this fourth escalation for ourselves. The first, second and third waves were triggered and dealt with without incident. But when we warped in our second Dreadnought - nothing happened!

So we were left scratching our heads and wondering what had gone wrong. Maybe there is something extra about the mechanics that we are not aware of. Maybe it might be something to do with living in a class five. Until we get the chance to do a bit more testing we're not sure exactly what happened.

Anyway, that is a bit of a rough guide to escalations. It would be great to hear from readers about your experiences of escalations and especially if you can tell me more about triggering that fourth and final escalation.