Wormholes

So you're saying that these wormholes were not K162's on your side?

The last several weekends have been incredibly busy for my wormhole. This last weekend was no different. I think it's caused by several factors. More people coming into wormholes, and more people playing on the weekends.

Sure, activity determines the number of opened wormholes in the game. That is indeed obvious because it's a direct consequence of well-known wormhole mechanics.

What is not so obvious and (afaik) still unknown is exactly how the target system for a newly opened wormhole is selected. When I scan down and warp to my static C2, it will lead me to one of the other 524 C2s in the game. But is the destination system really totally random, so I have a 1 in 524 chance to get some specific C2? Or does it work differently, with eligible systems sorted or pooled in some way?

It would actually make sense to implement it like this. If the system created temporary hubs with many incoming holes, this increases the probability of players meeting and shooting each other.

You seem to be misunderstanding the process to which you are referring. The mechanic is not that the K162 doesn't exist until it or the named side is *scanned*. The K162 does not exist (and therefore could not possibly be scanned) until the named side is *activated* (by someone initiating warp to it). Once that happens, the K162 is created and can be found (but does not have to be), and the timer (16/24 hours) on the connection is started.

The named side (all of those non-k162 wormholes you mentioned) can stay there for weeks (indefinitely?) without ever being activated. Scanning it down, even to 100%, does not activate it. Only warping (or starting warp) to it. That system probably had visitors, but they didn't feel like scanning everything down. Or they scanned, but when they saw 5 wormholes, they decided it wasn't worth the risk to run sites. In any case, they never warped to those wh, so they accumulated just like sites do.

Anecdotal story: I once had a scan alt camping solo in an empty wh that had static HS exit. The exit wh was scannable (and I had scanned it to 100% and bookmarked it from scanner window) for almost 2 weeks (never moved) before I finally had an incoming K162 wh spawn and people come in to use the system as a path to hs. The exit to hs turned out to be about 3 jumps from Amarr, and the system became very active that day with a lot of peeps from hs popping in to take a look, run sites, etc. That K162 in highsec obviously was not there until the guys from my k162 activated the hs exit.

EDIT:

Not enough CPU to prevent derplicate post.

I'm amazed there's still people arguing about the K162 thing... that discussion was settled about a year and a half ago among serious wormhole residents. The thread was not supposed to be about this stale stuff :p

But... the more ignorant people are, the better

Our corp was able to test these wormhole mechanics a few weeks ago. We found a system with a static C3, right before downtime. We closed the wormhole just before the servers went down. Obviously when the servers came back up the signature ID for the new static was a pre-downtime sig. We scanned down the new static and jumped through, observing that the signature on the other side of the wormhole was a post downtime one.

This ment that although the signature existed in the C2 before downtime, it did not exist in the C3. Thus when we scanned it down/warped to it, it was spawned in the C3 as a K162 wormhole.

er... read post above :O

sigh.... Been discussed over and over and over and .... But I'll feed one more post to the beast.

There is speculation (unproven, purely guessing) that when CCP added wh to the game, they "opened" a lot of connections into higher class wormholes via some manual mechanic for the first n days to get the ball rolling. Whether that is true or not, explorers would have very quickly found their way into a lot of high end systems via chains of connection. For example HS to a C2 (via random R943). Then that C2 could have static C5. That C5 could have static C6. (All of those statics exist.) In a matter of 30 minutes (or a lot less), a scanner could end up in C6 from highsec. You DO understand statics, right? Your post would lead one to believe that you don't.

Trinket's right about it being a nearly unprovable theory. The closest tests we can do are the ones like Frau related or the story I related about my wh being quiet for nearly 2 weeks. That K162 wasn't out in "some ass-end nowhere system that nobody is scanning from". It was in a very busy system about 3 jumps from Amarr. As soon as the guys came into my C2 from the C4 (or whatever it was) and opened my hs static, lots of people scanned down that K162 from the hs side.

And nope... Can't point you to a definitive dev post. So you can accept the behavior seen by those of us who have dealt with it for years, or you can be one of those people that Terrorfrodo mentioned. And as for collapsing incoming holes to be "safe"... yep. We do that to all holes (static, random, k162). Or wait for them to go away. Depends on how lazy we are and how dangerous the other side is relative to us and what we want to do that day. If someone wants to mine or do other stuff in relative safety, then we can use our understanding of that mechanic to our advantage. Has never failed us when properly applied.


There is no way to tell from the scanner if a wh is activated/open (or whatever term you prefer). If you (initiate) warp to it, it's open. Even if it is your static and you know that you have had no K162 for a while and that none of your group has opened it, you might have a camper that scanned/opened it while you were offline or not paying attention. Otherwise, it's largely a process of elimination to make an educated guess about the status.

For example, if you have a single static and it closes (time or mass), a new one spawns. That one is closed (for now) with no k162. If you see no other wh sigs, then you are safe (unless you have a camper). You can watch for a new wh and until one shows up, you have an isolated system. But when a new wh sig shows up, it might be a k162 (most of the time) which is open, or it may be a random outgoing (also closed with no k162 side).

Only that the experience of thousands of players over about a thousand days since the advent of w-space is not a small number of events.