Wormholes

In 2+ years of wormhole stuff I've hardly ever seen an outgoing wandering hole spawn during doing PVE and only a handful of times had incoming k162s during sites and most of those were other people's statics. Off the top of my head we probably get 2-3 wandering outgoing holes spawn in any week on average.

Their spawns are as random as any other sig. I rarely get outbound random WH's. This week however I have gotten 2 within 48 hours.

I will get random incomings (like from HS LS or NS) peridically. And then there are the other incomings which is someone elses static.

Everything said so far is pretty solid.


In a sample of scans of a class 1 system (J125713) running from 4/18/2012 to 6/12/2012 (a 55 day span) in which 9 days of scanning were missed (for total of 46 data points), there were a total of 17 K162s (with no more than 2 on any given day in the sample) and 2 wandering wormholes (H121 and L614). Thus, in this sample, the odds of a K162 on any given day were a bit less than 37% and the odds of a wandering wormhole were about 4.3%. Other classes of system are likely to have different rates of formation, simply because of how quickly the sites are cycled. Since C1s are largely less populated than other areas, it's likely the rates will be a bit higher elsewhere (except maybe C6s).

However, as Jack Miton said earlier, these wandering wormholes (the H121 and L614 in the above case) only create a K162 when someone initiates a warp to them, so they aren't a security risk unless someone else is in your system and scanning.


You might want to consider that there are, on average, around 300-400 other w-space systems with statics that lead to where ever you are, and, on top of that, there are hundreds more wandering wormholes throughout k-space and w-space which could randomly lead to your system. Even big corps cycling holes as fast as they can could have trouble competing with the shear volume of possible random connections. So the odds are good that when someone finds you, it may not be a big corp at all.


All sites last at most 3 days once activated (by someone initiating a warp to them). Combat sites may despawn sooner if they are completed. Grav and ladar sites will last the full 3 days and can even respawn asteroids. If a site is not activated, it seems to last indefinitely.

I've lived in a couple of different systems for periods of several months, and the number of non-static wormholes varied considerably. Therefore I believe that there are indeed constellation or region statics which are very unevenly distributed.

For example I lived in a C2 for about a year and we got very few non-static outgoing holes, maybe 2-3 per month. Later I lived in another C2 where I had non-static outgoing C1 and C3 at least every week for several months. I theorize that those holes belonged to the constellation. When they despawned in my system they respawned in another system of my constellation, and when they were triggered there and despawned, there was a high probability they'd come back to me.

Sites despawn 72 hours after activation, but at the following downtime. So activated sites last for 3-4 days or until completed. Not sure about gravs, but ladar sites despawn when all the gas is harvested.

On constellation statics: not all the data is in yet, but I'm toying with the idea that these don't exist. I once found a post (and am not sure where it is now... shoulda BM'd it) from way back in the early days of wormholes, where a dev says something to the effect "we're going to increase the connectivity of the wormhole network". Surrounding posts, indicate that shortly there after Class 2 systems got there second static.... that is to say C2s didn't always have 2 statics. If that's the case and C2s followed the same scheme as most other classes of systems, then there were C2 statics to High Sec, and all other C2 wormholes were "wandering" wormholes to w-space. When this change happened, the second static was created and, we can see, that it is always to w-space. I posit, that, meanwhile, the C2 wandering wormholes were were not removed. From our perspective this means that from time to time an "extra" wormhole of the w-space static type would appear. These "extra" wormholes aren't "static" type at all, but the remnants of the C2 wandering wormhole network.

My supporting evidence of this so far is over 100 daily data points in C1 space (many of which are from systems that share the same constellation), none of which has an "extra" static. Meanwhile in just over 20 data points in C2 space, there is 1 "extra" static (which is the same, nearly 5% rate of occurrence I mentioned earlier for "wandering wormholes" in C1 space). I still need to examine other classes of w-space, but I suspect stories of extra statics in C3s may be in error (I haven't heard any stories of extra statics in c5 or c6s, and I have had someone with over 3 months of data state there were no extra statics in c4 space).

@Ashimat, There's probably a lot more "churn" in the wormhole network these days, so new holes are a lot quicker to cycle through. Also, there's indications that Quantum Flux Generators are very likely to create a variant of the N432 wormhole from null to c5, adding to the total number of N432s rather than pulling one from the existing network. Thus the odds of a N432 may actually be higher.

If you want to brush up on mechanics, you might take a gander at:
Wormhole Signature Strength List
List of All W-Space Systems
Anoikis Cosmic Signature List
Project Atlas

This is way off topic, but it sort of touches on a idea I have had for a long time. Explain in what way it is the "wrong attitude" to not try and do PVE activities as safe as possible?

What a load of horsesh*t. Using scouts, playing it smart, planning ahead IS done in an effort to make the situation as safe as possible. You are just playing with semantics to make it sound cooler.

Doing those things in an effort to make your ISK making as safe and successful as possible does not go against the pro PVP attitiude of wormholers. We all need to make isk to fly those fancy ships to their death.

Not really, just that as an option it's often the most fun one to take. Nothing quite like brightening an otherwise boring day of rerolling holes in hopes of finding someone actually active, and when failing that trying to force something to happen by doing something like that. With a properly planned fleet that has a hic on standby, a scout that watches over the connections while probe picketing, you can easily get enough intel about incoming pvp fleets to prepare for it, whether it's by pinging for more logistics, fitting or requesting some tackle or to deciding that it's way too much to handle and that you should make an exit yourself before the other fleet can even begin to gather intelligence on what you're doing.

It's actually quite surprising how well an escalation fleet can fend off an attack, or even destroy the opposition entirely with well placed vigilant webs followed by a moros blapping the opposition one by one. Despite being outnumbered otherwise.

Is that what happened here?