Missions & Complexes

Does anyone know where and when exploration sites respawn?

E.g. Once a site is completed and despawns:

1. Does it respawn immediately / after some interval / after DT?
2. Where does it respawn? Same System / Constellation / Region?
3. Does sec status play a role? E.g Can a site that despawns in Hi-Sec respawn in Lo-Sec?

My own experiments are inconclusive. On quiet days I can clear all Radar sites in a constellation and then keep flying the same loop, visiting all systems in the constellation, without finding another radar until I give up. These constellations typically are completely hi-sec. This leads me to believe that that either the respawn is not immediate, or not in the same constellation.

Other posters here, Emperor Salazar iirc, have noted that they do find the same site over and over by looking at the ID. So it seems to me that there is some empirical evidence, but the details elude me.

Any help appreciated.


-- Fly Reckless --

Some of this is knowledge while some is simply theory. I'll try to make it as clear as possible.

1. Fact: sites respawn immediately.

2. Where they respawn, is up in the air. Sites like hacking ladars respawn in the same region for sure. This is because hacking ladars are tied to specific regions. H-PA Blue Pill Distribution is tied to the Forge. Simple as that.

Combat sites (and likely radars/mags) are theorized to follow this doctrine as well. I myself believed this until recently.

I have been hunting the new Gurista DED 5/10 of late, a site with signal strength of about .11% with my current fit/skills/implants. I have primarily been searching Lonetrek and The Forge. Forge low sec is extremely easy to cover fast using the DSP method. While I cannot confirm this 100% of course, my findings no longer support the "spawn by region" theory. There have been times when I have found 1 DED 5/10, then scoured the rest of Forge low sec and found none. Other times I have found up to 3 of them (they may have been respawns of previous ones). While my luck may just be bad and I may be "just" missing them as someone else has completed them, I think a safer theory is that sites are simply not tied by region, but by faction and security.

3. System security does play a role. DED 4/10 and DED 6/10 are the only combat sites that spawn in multiple securities, the former being high/low, the latter being low/null. DED 1, 2, 3 all only occur in high sec (the first 2 being static - fix this CCP). As for unrated plexes, Hideout, Lookout, Watch and Vigil all spawn in high sec; Provisional Outpost, Outpost, Minor Annex and Annex all spawn in low sec.

Specific security seemingly plays no role in site spawning. What I mean by this is .5 security systems do not have a better chance than a .9 security system simply because it is lower. I used to hit noob systems simply because the locals there aren't experienced enough to find and/or complete the sites that may spawn and thus they often stockpile there.

My final note: the reasons I hunt specific signature sizes. The first is to ignore K162s. In high sec they are abundant, and ignoring K162 signature size means ignoring Lookouts and 3/10s, not a big loss in my opinion. In low sec K162s are not as bad so this signature size is a bit safer to probe without getting constant wormholes.

The second reason I hunt signature sizes is that some sites are simply better than others. Going after the DED 5/10 signature size means Minor Annex as well (and Drone 5/10 but I skip that). DED 5/10 and Minor Annex are both great sites and easy to do in little time.

The final reason I hunt signature sizes is because it allows you to cover a lot of ground fast. I can keep a record of which IDs are not what I want (radars/mags/gravs/ladars) and come back later to see if a DED 5/10 or Minor annex has respawned there. Efficiency is everything, and this method is extremely efficient.

Hope this answers your questions and more.

If a highsec Angel Radar site despawns, i.e. Local Angel Mainframe, it will (I assume) respawn another Local Angel Mainframe in the same region (or at least another Angel region), in a highsec system, since high-sec Radars have the prefix Local and low-sec has the prefix Regional.

IMHO the deal with weekends is that the sites have a higher churn rate: they get run and respawned and thus moving around more often, and also they pool up in harder to reach systems.

Thanks for the replies.

Correct me if I am wrong then:

1. Exploration sites can't be farmed the same way that anomalies can be farmed. This is a good thing, IMO.
2. Reward is tied to efficiency, more than effort
3. All else being equal, scanning in areas WHERE others are not scanning is likely to be more rewarding.
4. All else being equal, scanning in areas WHEN others are not scanning is likely to be more rewarding.



-- Fly Reckless --

1. Yes
2. I guess so. Work smart, not hard.
3. I guess. But, I used to scan in Lonetrek high sec (Caldari space - considered heavily populated) and I got tons of sites. DSPs at work and lots of respawns because people doing sites = sites respawning more rather than sitting dormant somewhere.
4. Same as 3.