Thursday, March 19, 2009

Wormhole Classification

I knew someone, somewhere, would not stand at rest and lest wormholes not be classified in some coherent manner such that pilots can figure out what they are getting into. After all, 0.0 space has its true security rating to determine the quality of rats even if its not displayed in the game itself.

Sure enough, here we go. Heck, they've even got a map. Allow me to explain...

Some pilots working with the data and eve client, and perhaps some help of friendly devs in IRC channels have determined that there are nine classes of systems. Classes 1-6 represent the wormhole space systems, and class 7, 8, and 9 represent high, low and null sec respectively in k-space.

The six classes of wormhole systems go from easiest difficulty at 1 to hardest at 6. Each of the general descriptions from wormholes covers two classes: Unknown means 1 and 2, Dangerous Unknown means 3 and 4, and Deadly Unknown means 5 and 6. Obviously the difficulty of the Sleepers and the resulting rewards vary depending on the class of the wormhole.

So far so good?

Well there is more. If you look at a wormhole you will see it has a name like K162 or N110. These names are not random. A wormhole of a certain name will always lead to the same class of space. If you are running around High sec and find a wormhole named Z457, if you look at the handy chart in the map linked above you will see that it leads to a class 4 wormhole system (better put your mouthguard in).

Note: there is the line about the K162 wormholes that is not clear. What I think that means is that if the wormhole's name is K162, it leads to a system of the same classification that you are currently in, so its not always set in stone.

Update: Looks like I was wrong about K162 wormholes. From the Scrap Heap Challenge thread, 5th page:
"If you read the map K162 are exit wormholes. There are two kinds of wormholes, ones that spawn inside the wormhole system itself and lead to wherever(therefore making an exit wormhole(k162) on the otherside) and those that spawn in known space and lead into wormhole space(these have the designation)"
End Update

So this chart allows you to look at a wormhole name and determine at a glance if you are entering easy Unknown space or slightly harder Unknown space. Not a huge deal for a prepared gang perhaps, but very important for a solo pilot looking for some easy anomalies.

You'll also notice on that map how the w-space systems are grouped into distinct regions. As soon as someone figures out how to tell the constellation and region IDs of a system, expect them to start mapping systems to the locations. Eve players are obsessive like that.

P.S. The white systems on the map, before anyone asks, are Jove systems. No, there are not any wormholes that lead there.

15 comments:

  1. Anonymous2:21 pm

    OK, I'm confused now. The other night, I tracked down a K162 wormhole in Assiad system, which is highsec. So does that mean, if I had entered it, I would have landed in a Class 1 or Class 2 W-space system? That seems to be borne out by the wormhole's description ("unknown parts of space"), but am I reading this correctly?

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  2. I'm not 100% on the K162 wormholes yet either.

    I'll do some more investigation and see what I find out.

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  3. From the Scrap Heap Challenge thread:
    "If you read the map K162 are exit wormholes. There are two kinds of wormholes, ones that spawn inside the wormhole system itself and lead to wherever(therefore making an exit wormhole(k162) on the otherside) and those that spawn in known space and lead into wormhole space(these have the designation)"

    Odd way of doing it, but it explains what you ran into.

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  4. Anonymous7:07 pm

    OK, so that basically means, if you run across a K162 wormhole, you have NO IDEA where the frak it leads (unless you've just popped OUT of it, obviously). Other than that "unknown" vs. "dangerous unknown" vs. "deadly unknown" description thing. Oh, spiffing!

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  5. Thanks for this - I'd seen the initial stirrings of all of this on the forums, but I'd not been keeping track of it to any great deal, its nice to see that its looking a bit more coherent now.

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  6. Am I the only one that is kind of sad with this? I -liked- the idea of w-space being completely unknown and vast and scary... You know... like space?

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  7. I can see where you are coming from Nhi. On the upside, there are system effects from spatial phenomena that have drastic impacts on your ships. And you never know what other pod pilots you are going to run into out there.

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  8. Anonymous3:14 pm

    http://www.eve-metrics.com/wormholes/ may be of interest to you. I'm working on getting the systems section of the website up and running, which will include anomaly data and search features, etc.

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  9. @James
    Wow that is a useful site James.

    @Kirith
    I do not understand the effects thing. How do I tell what type of a system I am in and what level of change I will receive?

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  10. Right now I think you get a popup sayig things are weird with your ship without specifics, and then I think you have to look at the show info of the star. Not sure though, re-read the SHC thread for details.

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  11. Yesterday, a team of our corporation entered a wormhole. I made a snapshot of a peculiar star:

    http://www.koinup.com/SeredWoollahra/work/131997/

    Any idea what which kind of star this might be? The system also contained a normal star at the center btw.

    Tnx,
    Sered

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  12. Not sure, but if you noticed a change on the attributes of your ship, we can nail it down pretty quickly (i.e. more shields, more armour resists, more speed, etc).

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  13. @Sered

    That my friend, is a Red Giant.

    Look it up in this chart, and click on the name of the name of each type down in the list to see a picture!

    1. http://ombeve.co.uk/blog/?page_id=563
    2. http://www.flickr.com/photos/21727993@N06/3370677172/

    Doesn't seem to be too useful though.

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  14. I'd have to ask the others! I certainly didn't notice any improvements.

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  15. I just found a K162 and entered it last night. Showed up as a -1.0 space. I scnned in there and tracked down a astroid field with the biggest rocks I have ever seen. Best part about it...no rat spawns. I was flying arond this little area for about 35 mins. No rats.

    http://i1107.photobucket.com/albums/h396/TitaniaDawn/CRAZYSPACE01.jpg

    http://i1107.photobucket.com/albums/h396/TitaniaDawn/CRAZYSPACE04.jpg

    Found some rare blue crystal astroid but it never showed in my scanner. I was wondering if it can still be mined. In the second pic I am about 70KM away and look how big they are. lol

    There was about 9 different anomolies in the zone but server was getting ready to go down so I had to get out. I will be searching this hole down again.

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