If you don’t believe me now
You’ll never believe me now – (TMBG)
Ok, it looks like I might have been a little to personally enamored with living in a black hole. Really though, who could resist the sheer, unrequited and unbridled draw from a purely science stand point. Here we stand on the brink of a natural phenomenon so powerful that the very fabric of time and space are subject to its whim. Why, the gravity of the situation alone should inspire the kind of awe to last a couple of eternities worth of exploration. Well, apparently, “not so much” as one of our pilots put it.
So, the real issue turned out to be less of the anomaly and more of an issue with being so deep. We had scouts scanning out double digit paths through class four and five wormholes to find any kind of exit into known space. I don’t mind taking a freighter full of fuel or supplies or ice cream to a place they can import from, but if they can’t even get an exit all the logistics in the world is still going to fall short for them.
So after just a few short days in the class 4 with multiple static class 4s, we have moved next door to a class 4 with a static class 3 that is much more likely to have some kind of route out to known space. This will appeal to both the mission and industrial minded pilots who want to be able to come and go for various reasons as well as the pvp oriented personnel who want better access to replacement ships and modules.
I sometimes wonder if wormholes are worth all the trouble. All the logistics that are required seem a bit inordinate just for exploring.
So far it has been worth it. Time will tell if it continues to be worth it, or how well it scales up. When we are in and settled, we can easily earn 50-80m per person per hour w/ anywhere from 3-7 ship teams. The major set back was the loss of several ships through a corporate theft. The loss affected our ability to run the logistics far more than the cost of the ships, but we had just made a major investment in new equipment so opted to push on versus liquidate the new venture and ‘sit tight’ for a while.
We’ve learned that 4-5 wormholes is too deep for our corporation and we’ve rectified that. The pilots are still charged and as excited about being out in the wormholes as you could possibly imagine. They are still learning the difference between either their former PvP or PvE interactions and the way that Sleepers act. While I think CCP is headed in the right direction with the Sleeper AI, it is still not PvP and a ship fit for PvP isn’t always the best bet. By the same token, it is also not PvE and it will grind up and spit out pilots who are looking for more mission running yummies.
i like this blog a lot. o hope you get an exit soo! btw who can i contact about possibly joining? i’d love to mine some in wh, and i also have orca for transporting.. let me know.
@luke: Send me a message in EvE if you are interested in talking.
My major bug-bear with the wormholes is the exit holes and how often they spawn.
“touch wood” – I’ve not gotten stuck in a wh yet (my corp is verrrry small and not up to setting up a base there so a couple of us visit occasionally when one appears… this is normally gas or roid mining but occasionally we will tackle a hacking site. My main fear is getting stuck in a hole for days on end with the only exits for far off regions.
If I enter a class 2 w/h from Tash will another exit spawn to the same region the next day? I dont want to take an Orca in and get it stuck there for weeks on end!
As far as we can tell, there’s no guarantees about where the wormhole will open up again. Originally the wormholes would move from constellation to constellation with in a region and occasionally jumping elsewhere. This was soon fixed and they can and do open up across the galaxy. Most wormholes have what could best be described as a usual exit. This will be an exit that goes to the same type of space each time. Most class 1 and 2 wormholes will have exit that spawn to another high security system when the first one collapses. This is often referred to as a static wormhole that will always be present in the wormhole system. Additional wormholes may also spawn, leading to other high, low and null-sec systems as well as into other wormhole systems. There are several sites out there that will give you the type of system from the wormhole ID.
Additionally, even though you can go both directions through a wormhole, each wormhole actually has a beginning and an end. The end will always be ID’d as K162 while the other will have one of several unique IDs that denotes the size, destination and mass-limit of the wormhole.