Wormhole space

A Pulsar in Wormhole Space

Introduced in the Apocrypha expansion, Wormhole Space consists of 2499 solar systems in unknown regions. These systems can only be reached through these regions' collective wormhole namesake. Inside of these solar systems are many planets, moons, and exploration sites but asteroid and ice-belts are not available. Wormhole Space systems follow the rules of 0.0 Space when fighting takes place; there is no security penalty for combat and no form of NPC protection from aggression.

Solar systems in Wormhole Space can contain unusual stellar phenomena that may alter the functionality of your ship, such as your shield amount, shield recharge rate, capacitor capacity, or other attributes.

Hidden inside of wormhole space are the Sleeper drones, enigmatic machines with powerful weapons and strong defenses. There are secrets yet to be unraveled about the contents of these solar systems. Functional information is provided below.

Wormhole Space Behavior

Wormhole Class

Wormhole Class is a numeric rating contained within CCP supplied data dumps. In short, Wormholes leading to "unknown space" could lead to a class 1, 2 or 3 Wormhole Space system. A wormhole that leads to "dangerous unknown space" leads to a class 4 or 5 system, while a "deadly unknown space" wormhole always leads to a class 6 wormhole system.

There are specific numbers of each class of wormhole, as determined from the API data dump for the Apocrypha expansion. Class 1: 348, Class 2: 525, Class 3: 495, Class 4: 506, Class 5: 512, Class 6: 113

Where wormholes lead

Wormhole Systems (Wspace) can be connected to any other type of solar system in New Eden. However, sometimes a wormhole system only leads to other wormhole systems; up to three wormhole star systems can be traversed before finding another wormhole back to known space (Kspace).

Wormhole Mass Limits

Different classes of wormholes have different mass limitations. For example, a Class 1 Wormhole System will not have a wormhole capable of allowing ships larger than Battlecruisers through.

Class 2 and other higher level wormholes operate on a mass restriction level. Sometimes, ships might be too heavy to traverse into wormhole space. Taking any equipped Armor Plates offline may reduce your ships mass sufficiently to allow travel. However, you will need time to re-online your modules if you do this.

Starbases

Player Operated Starbases behave as normal. However, Sovereignty cannot be claimed in Wspace; any structures that require sovereignty cannot be anchored in Wormhole Space, including Outposts and capital ship assembly arrays.

The moons in Wormhole Space do not have any minerals to mine.

The Various anomalies in Wormhole Space have no effect on Starbase Modules.

Relative Difficulty

Class 1 and 2 W Space encounters can be done alone with a Drake, Nighthawk or other heavily tanked combat ship. Class 3 solar systems require a very heavy tank to be taken on solo, while class 4, 5, and 6 systems should not be done alone; even a capital ship can be rapidly destroyed by an onslaught of Sleeper Drones.

Local

Other players do NOT show up in local unless they chat there; it is recommended that you keep your directional scanner open, at maximum range and set to 360 degrees, and scan often.

Depletion of Sites

The contents of wormhole space eventually wear out if you take up residence within such a system. Eventually, the wormhole count will dwindle to one static wormhole and one encounter site. Other sites will disappear as usual, but they will not regenerate at the 'normal' rate.

Asteroids and Ice

There are no asteroid belts to be found in Wormhole Space, but asteroid fields can be found in gravimetric signatures.

Wormhole Behavior

1. Wspaces can have up to 7 wormholes active at one time. Up to 4 outbound wormholes max with 3 inbound (K162) wormholes confirmed.

2. When a wormhole is nearing "end of life" another wormhole can appear before they finish despawning. When one despawns another one spawns immediately if it was the ONLY wormhole left. Certain wormholes ALWAYS immediately respawn no matter what. These wormholes are referred to as “static” wormholes.

3. Some Wspaces have TWO “static” wormholes.

4. The "color" of the wormhole indicates which type of wormhole you are going into, i.e. a red wormhole means you go into red space and a blue wormhole puts you into blue space.

5. All classes of Wspaces can open up to any class of Wspace, null sec, low sec or high sec directly.

6. Life cycle has not begun means you found it within 1-2 minutes of spawning.

7. “Probably won't last another day” means you have more than 25% of the wormhole's life left.

8. :Nearing the end of its life” means it has less than 25% of its life left.

9. Wormholes last for 16, 24, 36 or 48 hours.

10. “Has not yet had its stability reduced” means it has more than 45% of its remaining allowable mass left.

11. “Has had its stability reduced”, “but not to a critical degree yet” means it has less than 45% of its remaining allowable mass left.

12. "This wormhole has had its stability critically disrupted by the mass of numerous ships passing through and is on the verge of collapse." means it has less than 10% of its allowable mass left.

13. The largest "to high sec" wormhole allows a ship of 1,000,000,000 kg mass to fit through.

14. Capital ships can get into a class 4, 5 or 6 wormhole only but may be build directly in lower classes.

15. Nothing stops you from jumping through a wormhole, not scrams not webs, nothing.

16. Jumping through the same wormhole twice (inside of 4 mins) starts a 4 minute timer during which you can not jump back through.

17. There is also a 15 second Session Change timer that starts when you jump through a wormhole. You can not jump until that Session Change timer is up.

18. The wormhole graphic physically gets SMALLER when you make it pass the 50% and the 10% allowable mass values. It's been suggested there's a total mass fluctuation of around +/- 10%.

19. The maximum allowable mass for a wormhole not only takes into account the mass of your ships themselves, but ALSO THE MODULES ON THEM. 1600mm plates tear a wormhole a new one and will throw off your mass count!

20. “This wormhole is stable and looks like it could last more than a day” means it will last longer than 24 hours or until its allowable mass is spent.

21. Wormholes collapse when the allowable mass is reduced to ZERO or LESS THAN ZERO (negative). So, if the wormhole has 1kg of mass left you can jump through it with any ship that "fits" (fit meaning ship type for class 1 and mass cap for class 2) in the wormhole. It will collapse when you are on the other side.

22. When a wormhole collapses it takes 5 seconds from the destructive jump till the wormhole finally vanishes. It is possible to jump through a collapsing wormhole during that time, so if a gang jumps through a wormhole simultaneously, all ships will get through, no matter how much you exceed the mass limit with that group jump. Players who jump through the wormhole while it is collapsing will reappear in a random location at the destination system.

23. The "polarity" timers that are 4 minutes long on wormholes are PER individual wormhole. So, if you jump two times back to back through wormhole XXXX you can not jump back through it for 4 minutes, BUT, if you jump through wormhole XXXX twice and immediatly head for wormhole YYYY the timer will NOT exist and you may pass through wormhole YYYY twice before incuring a 4 minute timer for wormhole YYYY.

24. Wormholes that are close to the end of their life will have a more active graphic, it will be more energetic looking.

All Sites In Wormhole Space

1. Normal despawn rate for an UNTOUCHED site is about 3 or 4 days. Untouched means you found it, maybe warped in but did not engage anything or interact with anything.

2. Clearing out a Gravity or Ladar site of NPC Sleepers in a Wormhole Space (WSpace) cleans it out permenently. The NPCs do NOT respawn.

3. Bringing a capital ship (Carrier or Dreadnought) to a combat site in a Wspace will spawn 6 additional battleships PER CAPITAL SHIP! This only happens in C5 or C6 systems.

4. Magnetic and Radar sites will respawn complete Sleeper waves after a downtime to include the reset of the capital ship “additional 6 Sleeper battleships” trigger!

5. Magnetic and Radar sites are rare. Ladar and Gravimetric sites are extremely common.

6. Assigning Fighters to someone who then goes to certain sites will also cause 6 additional battleships to spawn. This also only happens in C5 and C6 systems.

7. The class of the system does NOT affect the difficulty of the sites. It only determines what KINDS of sites are likely to spawn in the system:

'Perimiter' sites are "easy"

'Frontier' sites are "medium"

'Core' sites are "hard"

There also exist 'Quarantine' at unconfirmed difficulty.

Thus a site with the same name will be equally difficult no matter if it is in a class 1 Wspace or class 6 Wspace. The difference is that 'Core' sites seldom appear in the lower classes (although they certainly can spawn there as well).

8. Orcas do NOT spawn the additional 6 battleships at any site or encounter.

Sleeper Data

1. NPC warp scramble ability starts at Class 3 and above. At class 5 EVERY NPC webs and warp scrams, ALL OF THEM.

2. Tentative resists: armor is 70/70/70/70 with hull being 0/0/0/0

3. NPCs in wormholes DO get SOME wormhole effects applied to them.

4. The large ADVANCED Sleeper wrecks require Salvaging to level 5. Most other Sleeper wrecks you can do with level 3 or 4. You can do all Sleeper wrecks with Salvage skill to level 4 and using Salvage Tackle rigs (at least one).

5. Use any racial ECM jammer you want, Sleepers don’t care which you use, they said so.

6. The amount of DPS a common class 5 magnetic site is in the range of 1250 with 76 resist per battleship per volley. You do the math.

Magnetic Sites

Some known magnetic sites:

Forgotten Perimeter Coronation Platform (3 cans)

Forgotten Perimeter Habitation Coils (5 cans)

Forgotten Perimeter Power Array (4 cans, 1 frigate)

Forgotten Core Information Pen site. Class 5 Wspace. (15 cans)

1) Using Carriers OR Dreadnoughts WILL spawn 6 additional Battleships if you use them on Magnetic sites. (Confirmed)

2) They are tougher to clear out than other sites.

3) Forgotten Frontier Quarantine Outpost (7 cans, remote repair, webify, can drop some malfunctioning rather than just wrecked sections).

4) Consider tanking the spawns while opening the cans, there are WAVES of spawn. The second wave could be the web/scram OR the RR variety. The RR variety allows a FRIGATE to TANK 10 FIGHTERS.

5) Magnetometric and radar sites, as well as anomalies, all seem to have four waves. The trigger for the next wave is usually the last of a type of frigate or cruiser. Be careful you don't kill it early.

6) Opening cans (or the attempt to open) can cause additional spawns for mag sites in Wspaces.

Radar Sites

Some known sites:

Unsecured Perimeter Amplifier (4 cans, occasional frigate)

Unsecured Perimeter Comms Relay (8 cans, occasional frigate)

Unsecured Perimeter Information Center (3 cans)

Unsecured Perimeter Transponder Farm (? cans)

Unsecured Frontier Database (9 cans, 6 cruiser and 5 frigates, all web and scramble)

Unsecured Frontier Enclave Relay (15 cans)

Unsecured Frontier Receiver (7 cans)

On a small sample size it looks like:

Perimeter cans contain 0-3 items:

1-10 Datacore 1-4 racial Hybrid Tech Decryptor 1-2 RAM Hybrid Technology

Frontier cans contain 0-3 items:

1-9 Datacore (I assume 10 is possible) 1-4 racial Hybrid 1-3 RAM Hybrid

1) You can loot the cans while under fire from the spawn.

WARNING: When you tamper with a can and you leave the site, the ENTIRE site will DESPAWN in under a minute!

2) Magnetometric and radar sites, as well as anomalies, all seem to have four waves. The trigger for the next wave is usually the last of a type of frigate or cruiser. Be careful you don't kill it early.

3) Radar sites can have an Abandoned Talocan Battleship/Cruiser present (the source of T3 hull BPCs). The same site can spawn with or without the abandoned hull, this includes temporary despawns: they may appear or disappear over DT.

4) When an abandoned BS is present, the initial spawn defending the site will have one more Advanced level Sleeper BS guarding it. An equivalent extra guardian is likely present for abandoned cruisers.

Gravimetric Sites

1) Gravimetric sites seem to be the most common exporation site spawn.

Gravimetric sites

Infrequent

Isolated

Ordinary

Uncommon

Average

Unusual

Unexceptional

Exceptional

Rarified

2) Ore types present are dependent on the type of site, i.e. Average or Rarified. It is NOT dependent on the class of Wspace it spawns in.

3) The size of the asteroids (obtained by using a Survey Scanner) in a grav site will be larger in a Wspace system with a high rating. Wspace systems with low ratings will have the same kind of asteroids, just not as big.

To clarify, if you were to compare the same type of Average gravimetric site in a Class-1 Wspace system with a Class-4 Wspace system, the types (and number?) of asteroids present would be the same - they would just be larger sized rocks. Based on note #5 below, the number of asteroids can vary somewhat due to spawning.

4) Using Capital ships on these sites do NOT spawn additional npc ships.

5) The NPCs in a gravemetric site are the easiest to deal with.

6) Additional rocks WILL spawn in over the lifetime of the field.

7) Average lifetime of a field is 3-5 days.

8) An Exceptional field has ALL ore types including Mercoxit. The field is HUGE, 20 Hulks going at it for 24 hours WILL NOT clean it out. It’s freaking HUGE.

9) The lower the site the less of each ore type it has per rock.

10) Some ore fields have an environmental effect that will deal about 400 damage each tick to all ships in that field. A average equipped ship can tank this damage, but a scanning frigate might get destroyed after a few ticks.

Ladar Sites

Types of gas and quantities:

Barren has 3000 C50 and 1500 C60

Token has 3000 C60 and 1500 C70

Minor has 3000 C70 and 1500 C72

Ordinary has 3000 C72 and 1500 C84

Sizeable has 3000 C84 and 1500 C50

Bountiful has 5000 C28 and 1000 C32

Vast has 5000 C32 and 1000 C28

Vital has 500 C320 and 6000 C540

Instrumental has 500 C540 and 6000 C320

1) Order from worst to best for Ladar sites: Barren, Token, Minor, Ordinary, Sizeable, Bountiful, Vast and then Instrumental.

2) Ladar sites can have ships AND/OR sentry towers as defence.

3) They always have two gas clouds.

4) Despawns within one hour of being completely drained.

5) Using a capital ship on these sites does NOT spawn additional npc ships.

6) Upon initial arrival there will not be NPCs, they take a little while to spawn in. There is a spawn that can be there on arrival: 5 sentry towers in a circle, so be ready!

7) A well tanked battleship (Megathron in the test case) can solo these sites in a class 5 Wspace.

8) Competes with gravity sites as the most prolific.