EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hey guys!

I've been looking into Exploration and so far I'm loving the idea and whatnot.

However, I had a few questions that all the guides and Videos didn't answer. I'm stuck at work for the next few days, so I figured I'd ask here! :)

-How much do the Rats scale difficulty wise in Magnetometric, Ladar, and Radar sites?
(As in: How many average would be at these sites and when Battlecruisers/Battleships begin to spawn)

-In a Cosmic Anomaly Combat Site, how do you know if there is an 'Escalation' and what do you do about it?

-When do the Exploration sites change? Is it like Asteroid Belts that get replenished with downtime?

-Is there ALWAYS something to find in a given Solar system?

If these questions were answered somewhere obvious, I whole-heartedly apologize!

Thanks,
Teseer

Huzzah! Thank you Kahega!

One thing though: When I say scaling in difficulty, I mean as you go down in Security Status. I currently hang out in 0.3 and 0.2, I'm just assuming at this point that BS rats would be there.

Huzzah again! I shouldn't need to change my fitting much after all.

I really appreciate the quick and precise answers :)

I did some low sec exploring last night actually.

The rats I came across included destroyers, three different types of frigate and one cruiser.

I was in a 0.4 system and I took them all down without loosing any drones.

Whilst I'm quite inexperienced with low sec systems and exploring them, I'd imagine the closer you get to null sec, the more powerful the ships become.

There are 2500 w-space solar systems. If you have a J- number for one, you can look it up in www.staticmapper.com, to see some of its characteristics and, more importantly, if any activity has been reported recently.

The w-space solar systems connect to each other and to high, low, or nullsec via temporary wormholes. You can see an index of the wormholes here, but they never link to exactly the same system.

The process usually is: you scan the wormhole, look up its A892 number to see what class it potentially links to, then if you're interested in the class you go through and once in the w-space you jot down the J- number, look it up, and d-scan for POS towers etc. to determine occupancy.

Some people are working on w-space mapping apps, but the apps look more like flowcharts, because what's important is what path you currently can take to reach anywhere, and the path changes all the time. Would be cool to have an online, real time map of the links, but such information is a risk to the w-space dwellers.

Old map.

In regards to wormholes: http://www.tigerears.org/2011/04/24/wormhole-colours/

I also wanted to mention that site spawning is somewhat mysterious, not a lot is known though observations have been made by many players. Here's what I've learned

-Sites de-spawn minutes after you've hit the de-spawn trigger and left the site
-Sites re-spawn in the same type somewhere else in New Eden, not necessarily the same constellation or region
-There's no limit to how few or many sites can spawn in a particular system, sometimes you'll find none, sometimes you'll find five.
-There's a set number of total sites in the whole game
-Untouched sites and non de-spawned sites de-spawn automatically after 72 hours

So note that, sites can accumulate in isolated wormholes, I've found fifteen profession sites in one before and they're worth doing if you think the WH is relatively safe. Also there are wormholes that lead to lowsec and null. You should be able to easily do any profession sites with the right equipment and relatively low amount of skill points so you might as well make full use of wormholes, both for doing WH profession sites and low/null sites.

When you kill the escalation trigger (can be a ship, or a structure), you may get lucky and get an escalation (it seems to be random, and a rather small chance).

You will know because you'll get a pop-up that usually says that a bunch of ships have escaped to elsewhere. You also get a link in your missions journal, in the Exploration tab, with the solar system where the escalation is. You can right-click it and set autopilot.

When you get to the solar system, the link changes so you can "Warp To" the site. You should actually bookmark your location as soon as you arrive, just in case the link goes away.

The escalation can escalate, too, but again the chance is small. If the Evelopedia says a site has 4 escalations in a row, you're not guaranteed to get all 4; you have to be very lucky with each one to get the next.

The tab in the Journal is called Expeditions.

Sorry, that's the only useful information I can add to all these great posts.

I've exhausted an entire constellation before so that's certainly not the case. It is possible they spawn on a regional basis though no one has gone out to collect any quantifiable data that I know of. A region is just far too large to gather any data on anyways, It would be impossible to ascertain a single fact. It would make sense though because different regions have different types of rats... and there seems to be a balance of sites across the board in each region.

Don't ignore the wormholes man! Go in and make isk happen.