Sunday, August 9, 2009

This space occupied...

Well, I feel like I am all dressed up with nowhere to go.

Just some background on what I have been doing and the respective results.

I am in a border region comprised of a mix of high/low sec systems where I have established a route that takes me through 7 Low-Sec (.1 to .4) systems and 9 High-Sec (.5 to .7), 16 total systems in all. I have been jumping online and running this route probing for Class 2 and 3 WH entries for the better part of a week now. After the first 2 "runs", I began keeping a log of what I found, and here are the grand-totals over the last 6 days:
  • Total systems visited: 132
  • Total wormhole entries found: 39 (23 Class 2, 11 Class 3, 5 class 4+)
  • Total occupied WH systems: 33
  • Total empty (already farmed) systems: 6
Of the above, in 8 cases, I proceeded into the WH system anyways to see if there was a suitable WH system entry within the WH space. I am calling these "Sub-space" entries:
  • Total "sub-space" entries found and explored: 11
  • Total occupied sub-space WH systems: 11
I think you can get an idea on why the name of the post topic...

Most of the occupied systems had large, established, single or multiple POS present (mixes of Medium and Large POS), with lots of ships around. I chatted up a few after scanning down some ships running sleeper and mining operations and pretty much all were in relatively established WH corps or at least a significant size group that decided to break off from their normal corp roles to occupy WH space for the last few weeks or months.

It is amazing to me that literally 100% of the 50 W-space systems I explored had significant presence or the system had already been cleaned out (likely via an adjoining WH entrance/exit).

Although this is still a limited sample of the more than 4,000 reported WH systems, just purely from a probability standpoint, it indicates an extremely high population rate. At least with regards to Class 2 and Class 3 WH space.

If there was any "trend" in what I have seen, it is that the most "populated" WH systems (i.e. largest POS buildouts, most pilots, etc.) were found from High-Sec space, which continues to support my theory on Class 2 WH "subclasses" that High-Sec exits in Class 2 space will respawn consistently to HighSec, where other Class 2 systems will consistently respawn exits to low-sec.

As such, I am going to change my route to focus solely on low-sec systems.

Are the days of solo WH occupation a thing of the past? Will large, corporate presence be required to maintain POS bases, even in Class 2 WH space? Time will tell, but all of the early indications are there...

Any similar experiences or thoughts?

5 comments:

  1. I agree on the most part with your observations mate. We have observed a simillar occupation pattern on the class 2&3 systems, but fewer C4 and C5 are occupied. At least yet.

    You should be looking on the signatures of wormholes that spawn within a system. Don't look at it's PVE sites as a sign of "fertility" these will grow again as time passes.. Be on the lookout for womholes that lead to other wormholes - ie what is commonly known as the "hub" wormhole. Each wormhole is a hub to either k-space or w-space and each day it gets the same type of wormhole. Ie if you see one that has a N062, it's propably gonna spawn N062s every single day.

    I admire your passion and dedication to scan all those systems.. It took us about 2 weeks with 5-8 systems scanned each day to find the wormhole to Planet Risk... and that was 2.5 months ago.. most where either occupied or didn't meet our criteria.

    I wouldn't go to say that solo colonization is not possible anymore, but as more info comes out to the public, more and more capsuleers will want to try their luck in wspace colonization. We have seen too many destroyed and/or abandoned POSes and we have helped bring down a few as well. I guess that most wormholes you see are the ones that spawn hubs to k-space. you might want to risk going a level deeper to find a nice hub that spawns daily class 2's - that would be the ideal for solo-very few people in a corp.

    my 2c,
    QP

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Quiv - yeah, my references to "sub-space" WH systems equates to your "hub" nomenclature. My new plan is to probe purely from lowsec and continue to probe within those W-space systems for good adjoining "hub" systems. Thanks again and gl in PR.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Even in my little corner of space, finding unoccupied class 1 and 2 wormholes is becoming difficult. I think that as more information comes out about what to expect and what is needed, more players and corps are going to go into wormholes seeking their fortunes.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi Star,
    fantastic blog! You'd inspired me and 2 weeks ago i setuup a small POS in a WH. My WH was a Class 3 (virgin). I planned to stay there for 2 wks but after 1 wk i realized that the most profitable sites in my class 3 were too difficult in solo. BTW every day i probed exits and this is what i realized:

    1) Every day 2 exits. 1 in Low sec - 1 in Empire if in the WH there are Mining sites

    2) If there is 1 or more Hacking site no exits spawn.

    BTW also i saw an increased population in WHs, class 1 or 2 are all occupied.

    Best wishes!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks for reading Hyks!

    The recurring (respawning) exits is normal. If you look up your wormhole exit(s) in the eWormhole tool (linked on right bar), you will see information on respawn period (typically 16 hours for Class 2 wormholes, shown as "Maximum Stability", for example). Every W-Space system has at least one, but typically 2 "static" wormhole exists that respawn elsewhere in the same W-Space system as they close.

    ReplyDelete