Wormholes
The UK version of Frontier: Elite 2 (the first one to be released) suffered a maths overflow during the calculation of distances for hyperspace, which wasn't noticed during testing. This happens when the jump distance is 655.36 light years, and since these distances were calculated using 16 bit maths this calculation was overflowing and would allow a jump. Essentially, you had a 'wormhole' to a faraway system. You could traverse vast distances of the universe in no time at all, using minimal fuel. Since 'wormholes' were a mistake, later versions of the game for PC and Amiga did not allow the player to do this. This was a shame as it was a harmless enough feature that didn't allow any major cheating, and it allowed the player to explore the universe without tediously creeping forward before drive failure put paid to any Captain Kirk fantasies.
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| A possible wormhole route to sector 163,0 which is 1313.85 light years away. To jump that distance using three tonnes of fuel is quite an achievement. No doubt the ship is a brand new Toyota Hybrid. Simply add another '655' light years to your destination to find another wormhole. |
On the Files page you'll find the UK version of the game. This has the wormhole bug present. The other versions do not. There is also a Wormhole calculator for download which acts as a rudimentary route navigation aid. You can input your required destination and it will tell you how to get there using the wormholes.
Wormhole Routes
Christoph Tietz's reference site that dated from 1994 and disappeared sometime in 2003 contained, amongst other things, a useful list of routes to the more interesting systems. This list does in fact allow you to cheat since it uses the wormhole bug to full effect by using the far out destinations as waypoints to navigating around the core systems. Using wormholes can help in almost every area of your Frontier game by making assassination missions, military duties and passenger trips much faster and cheaper.