Missions & Complexes

Wall-of-text warning ... proceed at your own risk.





if you're not into numbers, patterns of numbers, or have a short-attention-span then you should stop now and go to the incursion-hating posts in C&P forums. This will not be a thread for you.





You have been warned ....



IDK if this observation is useful to anyone else ... but it has saved me some scanning time recently. I don't even know for sure that it's an actual pattern, but figured I'd throw it up here for y'all to think about. Perhaps I just spend too much time scanning and am starting to 'see' patterns where none exist. Yeah, and I like numbers and their patterns anyways :-)

Since noticing this I have managed some pretty major reductions in my system scanning times. Rather than rescanning previous BMs to confirm locations I am now increasingly just scanning the few new sigs ... because I can identify which ones are new from their number-plates, whether they're in-sequence or not.

Start situation

If you scan a w-system where nothing new has spawned since DT you will have a semi-consecutive series of 'number-plates'. For example those locations may be something like:
ABC-NNN ... Ladar cosmic signature type-X;
BBC-NNN ... Your static wormhole;
CBC-NNN ... Cosmic Anomaly type-Y;
DBC-NNN ... Radar cosmic signature type-Z.
(Where 'NNN' can be pretty much any string of three digits)

After next DT - Option 1

If you wait 24-hours, over the next DT, and nothing despawns and nothing new spawns, you will have something like this:
DYZ-NNN ... Ladar cosmic signature type-X;
EYZ-NNN ... Your static wormhole;
FYZ-NNN ... Cosmic Anomaly type-Y;
GYZ-NNN ... Radar cosmic signature type-Z.
(Where 'NNN' can be pretty much any string of three digits, usually not the same digits as in previous example)

The pattern / observation here is that the new number-plates will be in the same alphabetical order as the previous bunch. So, without scanning further, you know that DYZ-NNN is the same Ladar location as ABC-NNN.

After next DT - Option 2

If after that next DT you have five sites, they will have number-plates in one of two orders.

DYZ-NNN ... Ladar cosmic signature type-X;
EYZ-NNN ... Your static wormhole;
FYZ-NNN ... Cosmic Anomaly type-Y;
GYZ-NNN ... Radar cosmic signature type-Z;
HYZ-NNN ... Cosmic Anomaly type-W.

or

DYZ-NNN ... Ladar cosmic signature type-X;
EYZ-NNN ... Your static wormhole;
FYZ-NNN ... Cosmic Anomaly type-Y;
GYZ-NNN ... Radar cosmic signature type-Z;
LMN-NNN ... Cosmic Anomaly type-W.

In the first of these the 'type-W' anom spawned prior to that last DT and has been incorporated into the sequential numbering pattern for the system at DT. In the second of these examples the 'type-W' anom has spawned after the last DT and so has been allocated an out-of-sequence numberplate.

Note, in the first example here, that the numberplates have kept their same alphabetical order with the new site being tacked on at the end. If you're stocktaking your system here you only need to scan-down the new site and, even after DT, you know which one it is. You only need to scan down HYZ to complete a stocktake of your system.

In the second example here, it's much more obvious. The new site has an out-of-sequence number-plate and all the others are still there, in the same alphabetical order. Again, you only need to scan down LMN to complete the stocktake of your system.

More complicated systems

I've been in systems with many sites and they have two or three alphanumeric number-plate sequences: ABC-NNN => ZBC-NNN; SYZ-NNN => ZYZ-NNN; and XMN-NNN => ZMN-NNN. I've not watched their changes with time but suspect that much the same happens.

Hypotheses

The alphanumeric number-plates, applied to cosmic anomalies and signatures, are allocated in an alphabetically 'sequential' pattern at DT. The oldest sites* are allocated the closest-to-AAA number-plate and the rest follow in chronological order.
Sites that spawn after DT are allocated an out-of-sequence number-plate, depending on where the database is up to at the time they spawn. Those sites are brought into sequence at the next DT.


Go for it. Shoot me down, lolwut the time wasting number cruncher, add to these observations, completely disprove them ... whatever, I offer this information for your entertainment and eve advancement :-)


* I may have this one reversed with older being closer to ZZZ, but you get the idea.

Question: Are you always dropping your probes from the same spot? I'm theorizing that if you're always dropping probes from the same spot, and you have your probing window sorted by Strength (which I do to keep all the un-probed sigs at the top, but IDK what others do), maybe the sigs are in the same order because of their respective strengths (even when the difference is too small to be seen in the two significant digits, it might be looking at the float value instead).

As to the similar names, that sounds like an extension of the bug/feature that was around post-crucible for a while where sigs that stayed in a system over DT would have predictable names.

Well, in the shortly-post-Crucible days, the fact that all sigs spawned pre-DT had similar IDs could be used to target the more valuable sites. Since WH, Grav, Ladar, and some Radar/Mag sites would get ignored due to less desirability, the non-ordered IDs would contain more valuable sites, such as combat sites, more often than not (because they are run and respawn more quickly than others).

Now, I don't know how this could be used in a WH, but I do know that it was handy when it was happening with k-space sigs and you were looking for the shiny new 3/10s and 4/10s.

Sounds feasible if you are that determined but I'm fairly certain this is simply an extrapolation of that bug that was introduced recently. A bug that was identified by CCP but has obviously yet to be fixed.

Enjoy it while you can I guess. Actually you probably needn't worry about it getting "fixed" any time soon given CCP's track record with minor bug fixes.

Yeah when was it - Crucible? IIRC they said the fixed it and for a while it looked like it, but i have been noticing those patterns pop up (again?) lately, too.

Many people probably see this as a 'feature' (same as "hey angels do not have a 6/10, so a-types in 4/10 are okay"), but seeing how easy scanning already is those patterns in the IDs are just wrong.

The new sig ID behavior patterns have been confirmed by CCP and are apparently not a bug that will be fixed, from a CCP Dev in a wormhole topic in General Discussion:



http://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=64131&p=3

Lack of content

Thank you,
Kreul Intentions

My post wasn't irrelevant you troll mod.

Its a dumb feature. It makes exploration easier. Things that make the game easier are dumb.

Good to see your reading comprehension is fantastic.

a feature huh? lets just make complexes static again...

I have to agree with this. It's been convenient, but it sure does feel like the system has been dumbed down rather than simply cleaned of unnecessarily annoying elements. In wormholes, even the smallest signature that can appear in w-space can be scanned down by a character with terrible scanning skills. I'm against making things too complicated for no reason whatsoever, but really, at this point you might as well just start putting up beacons for sites on the overview. If you can't be bothered with something as easy and minor as scanning for sigs in wormholes without having your hand held by various easymode game mechanics, gtfo, time to take a break from wormhole living and all of its aspects. L4's are nice and predictable, try those.

This ^^

In combination with the boost to the Sisters Probe Launcher from 5% to 10% (4.76% increase in overall Base Scan Strength) and now using 8 probes for detemining reported signal strength instead of 4 (+/-15% increase in reported signal strength) has made it significantly more easy (and faster) to get signatures to 100% Signal Strength.


Right now, exploration has been reduced to 'press the find button'.