Missions & Complexes

IIRC they respawn by region instantly. IE if you are in Khanid a sig of equal type will respawn instantly somewhere in the vast swath of Khanid space.

I do not think that combat sites re-spawn "instantaneously".

I run combat sites in low sec. I routinely scan my entire constellation multiple times and have scanned all the region low sec a numerous times.

From my experience you find more combat sites when there are less users online (weekdays at strange times have lots of sites and weekends have zero sites).

Hypothesis 1 - Sites re-spawn instantaneously.
If this were true there would always be the same number of sites open at any given time. Therefore your probability of finding a particular combat site in a system would not be dependent on how many people were running sites in your constellation/region. Sure some sites may "pool-up" in lone systems but you should be able to find said system and that "lonely system" should always have more sites until people change their usage pattern.

Hypothesis 2 - Sites have a delay before respawning
If this were true there would be less sites open during heavy use times. Your probability of finding a particular combat site in a system would be dependent on how many people were running sites in your constellation/region.


From the experience I have collected over my exploration career Hypothesis 2 is the better explanation. I typically find 3x the number of sites on weekdays as on weekends. When my constellation is dead I scan the whole region and it is typically dead too.

Sure I could just be unlucky, RNG sucks, whatever, but if you prefer math to guesses my experience points to there being a delay between when a site de-spawns and when it re-spawns.

Short of CCP telling us how the system works, it would require a coordinated test across multiple regions to get the complete answer.

-FM

About a month ago I haf 3 sigs in system scanned down, one of them a relic. I completed the first, and another relic spawned instantly, completed it, and another spawned. Needless to say, I was quite happy, albeit a bit perplexed and wondering if I had found some bugged system. After the 3rd Relic site was completed in that system, it was over.