Living in Wormhole Space

Wormhole Space (W-space) is unique and very different from Known Space (K-space) in many different ways. Lack of local chat, randomness of exits coming out of a system, unique NPC ships (Sleepers), resources that are not available in high or low security space (High End Gas and Ore), and lack of Aggression timers are only few of the advantages. It is only natural that at some point short trips to W-space will seem less profitable then a long term operation from within a W-space System. Once you have set up your home (or if you're moving into someone elses) here are some tips on what you should do.

General Rules

Like most things in EVE, feel free to break these rules if you know what they're doing. You should probably consider them closer to guidelines.

Fly What You Can Afford to Lose

Any ship you bring into W-Space should be considered already lost, be it to theft or gank. Consider not flying that shiny HAC you just bought and sticking to battlecruiser hulls a little longer.

Local Chat

Or the lack thereof. Local chat does not exist in wormholes. Therefore, enemies are virtually invisible until they decide to be seen. Whenever you are out of the POS shield, you should be mashing D-Scan every chance you get. You should also keep an eye on chat and an ear on Mumble. If somebody states that there is an emergency, immediately warp to a safe spot if you have a cloak or bounce between safe spots if you don't.

DO NOT TALK IN LOCAL. You will show up and stay there for ~15 minutes giving everybody in the system free intel.

Living Out of a POS

In a wormhole a player owned structure (POS) will be your home. These are quiet different to living in stations. Here is a short introduction to Player Owned Starbases.

Ship Maintenance Array

An SMA can store 20 million m3 worth of assembled ships. There are no divisions within the SMA, as such all ships stored are accessible by everyone who has access to the structure.

• To store your ship in the SMA, right click the array and select Store Vessel.
• The Access Vessel button lets you view ships that are currently stored.
• To board a ship, right click and select Board Vessel. This will also store your current ship.
• To launch a ship for an alt, right click and select Launch Vessel.
• When boarding a new ship, the array will attempt to store your current ship which will fail if the cargohold contains assembled containers or the capacity of the array is surpassed leaving the ship floating in the field.
• If you do not have the required skills to use modules on the ship (namely T2 weapon systems) they will be offline upon jumping in, just replace the ship in the SMA.

NOTE: SMAs do not have restrictions on access further than the POS forcefield. In general if you are not okay with other people sitting in your ship, then - with the current mechanics - wormhole life is most likely not for you as "ownership" is a very relative term when living out of a POS.

Corporate Hangar Array

The CHA can store 1.4 million m3 worth of items including un-assembled ships. There are 7 divisions within the CHA, each controlled in the same way as station corporate hangers. Within EVE University this is done according to titles.

Containers

• It requires elevated privileges to remove assembled containers from a corporate hangar. Within EVE University only directors are able to do this.
• Even if you have privileges, you can't extract items from the containers without first removing the container from the Hangar into your ship's hold

Personal Hangar Array

The PHA is 50k m3 that only you can access. Directors can view but not take items from here.

Daily Activities: how to keep them safe.

So, you've found your system, set up a POS, moved the ships in, you've done all required logistics, and you have supplies that will last for a while. You're ready for action. What now? Well, as I said already, there are number of activities you can do in your System, such as Mining, Harvesting Gas, Killing Sleepers, Running PI. But first you need to learn how to keep yourself safe while doing those. You need to keep track of things, and you need to know your surroundings. First thing you'll always do from this day on, is:

Scanning

Each day new signatures and anomalies spawn in your system. Every downtime they change ID. You will have to keep track of every single signature ID and anomaly. You will have to keep track of them to know what kind of sites are there and what your system has to offer that day. Here's how:

• Scan your system as soon as you login into the game. Check the number of signatures, the number of anomalies.
• Scan each and every signature. Record them all (you should probably have this feature in your mapper).
• Bookmark the sites into corp bookmarks.
• Scout any connecting wormholes.
• Ignore all sigs in your probe scanner
• Check for new sigs appearing

Running Anomalies

Sleeper sites, also known as anomalies, are the most profitable sites in W-space. It's always worth running them and selling the salvage. If you decide to run them, make sure you know what the triggers are, what will spawn next, be ready. Use Eve-Survival to determine that information. Class 1 and 2 anomalies are soloable in a Drake, for Class 3's you will want

to have a small gang of drakes to kill the sleepers faster. For Class 4 anomalies and up you will want to use a fleet made of Remote Repair ships or gangs supported by logistics.

After you are done with each site, Bookmark the wrecks as you would do with mission wrecks. Come back later to salvage them or have someone following you in a dedicated salvager. Always keep aligned when running sites, and always, for the love of god, check the damn directional. It's very important, if you see any ship that is not supposed to be there, even for a split second, warp out, get to safety. Go to the POS and investigate. Don't start asking in Corp chat who that was, just leave. Believe me, I make a living from killing people like you, don't be stupid. Just warp off. There's no fleet that can't be ganked in W-space.

Even if you are running a Class 6 anomaly in battleships with logistics support you cannot feel safe. Someone can and will come to gank you, as shown here: Youtube - Class 6 Wormhole Gank

• Perimeter sites are generally Low difficulty.
• Frontier sites are generally Medium difficulty.
• Core sites are generally High difficulty.

• For Class 1-2 expect to see Perimeter sites.
• For Class 3-4 expect to see Frontier sites.
• For Class 5-6 expect to see Core sites.

Gravimetric, Ladar and class 5 Radar sites are exception from this; also named sites (The Line & Solar Cell for example) do not fall under this convention.

Mining 

Gravimetric sites in W-space often spawn rare Ore that cannot be found in HiSec or even LoSec. Those are Arknor, Bistot and Crokite. Always mine those first. They are the most profitable. Use cheap mining barges such as Retrievers and Covetors. They are affordable and won't ruin you if you lose them. 

Everyone in W-space will gank a mining op if they see one, so when mining, always make sure that there are no incoming wormholes in Your system, always watch directional, or even have a scout at any wormhole exit. You cannot mine aligned, but you can make it a bit harder for someone to find you. Unlike anomalies, that can be scanned down without use of probes, Grav sites have to be probed down. Keep an eye out for probes. Combat probes especially. Try not to use jetcans for mining, as they can be bookmarked to provide warpins on you. Haul in a cheap industrial ships, as often as possible. Don't use an Orca for picking up ore. Orcas draw attention of gankers. Warp out at any sign of unknown ships and probes on directional. Better to be safe then dead.

Ladar sites are no exception here, same rules apply.

Gas Huffing

Gas sites in W-Space are relatively common and can be extremely profitable to clear. At time of writing, Instrumental sites containing C320 / C540 gas can net a huffing team something in the order of 150mil ISK per hour, which makes it extremely worthwhile. Unlike Ore sites, gas sites remain signatures, and thus require any potential hostiles to probe down the site before they can engage huffers, giving you more of a safety margin as there's usually time to pick up the probes on Dscan.

It's important to be careful with Gas sites, as the sleepers that guard them are not present initially, but spawn a short time (approx. 15 minutes) after the site is first warped too. Activate the sites first, and return in combat ships to clear the sleeper guardians - once done it should be safe to huff without NPC intervention.

Ventures are an excellent choice for Gas Harvesting due to their cheapness, low SP requirements, sizeable Ore/Gas bay and hull bonuses, all of which makes them an extremely efficient and cost-effective choice of ship.

For more information, see Gas in W-space

Planetary Interaction in W-Space

Wormhole space, as already mentioned, is very similar to Nullsec. In that matter, Planets that are present in W-space are mostly unoccupied, and far better then any highsec or lowsec planets. You will find various types of planets, and given that you took that into account when you chose your system, you can make quite a fortune from Planetary Interaction.

The biggest advantage of PI in W-space is the ability to make some of the POS fuel on the site, it saves you hauling that fuel in, less logistics stress. See this forum post by Seamus Donohue. You can also make various items, that you can export to K-space and sell for profit. 

What's dangerous about PI, you ask? Well, managing PI itself doesn't involve any risk (yet), but hauling the goods can be tricky.

Personally I've ganked multiple industrial ships that were not paying attention to directional, and just went off to pick up their goods, getting killed in the process. You have to assume that you are never alone in W-space. Always watch for hostile ships. Be prepared to run for your life. Don't slow down your industrial ships by fitting cargo expanders, fit nanofibers instead. They will align faster. Fit Warp Core Stabs, they will get somewhat immune to Warp Disruptors, and if you can, use Transport ships, fly cloaky, cloaky is safe. Never stay at the Customs office longer then you have to.

PvP in W-Space

Wormhole Space is an unique environment to fight with other players in. The lack of local chat and mass restrictions on wormholes as well as nullsec-like mechanics allow to do things that would not work in Known Space. Players often scan down so called 'rabbit holes', chains of wormholes connecting multiple systems to find other players to kill. It's common to see multiple cloak-capable ships in one fleet, hunting down and killing pilots that are not paying attention to directional scanner. 

W-space is also full of dead POS's that ran out of fuel because their owners either didn't log into the game for a while, or just lost access to their home system. People often destroy those POS's for loot. There are many PvP opportunities in W-space. Wormhole corporations often compete with each other over the best systems, or just for the sake of killing each other. It's getting more common to see one corporation invading a home system of another. Some people even hire mercenary corporations to attack or defend wormhole systems. 

Directional scanning plays a huge role in W-space PvP, giving Intel and warning of hostiles. Directional Scanner and CovOps ships are the most useful tools in W-space. PvP in W-space is also a source of ISK, simply because it's sometimes more profitable to kill that faction battleship running sleeper sites in the wormhole next door than to run your own sites.

I won't give out any of our secrets about how to be successful in PvP in W-space, but be aware that it plays a major role in W-space, and no one can feel safe out there. If you want to see how PvP in Wormholes looks like, be sure to check out the link below and watch the PvP videos. Perhaps one day we will meet out in the unknown :)

Unwanted Wormholes

Most of the time, your static exit(s) to either K-space or another W-space system will be the only exit, and that is what you count on. It keeps you safe, It keeps things predictable. But W-space is far from being predictable. Very often a wormhole will open up in the system, an incoming wormhole, that you wish wasn't there. It might give you some opportunities, but It might as well bring trouble. How to handle these wormholes, how to take control over the traffic in a system and how to close unwanted wormholes? Well, let me explain:

Unwanted K162's

Remember how I told you to keep track of the signature ID's in the system? Well, this is how you find out if there's a new incoming wormhole. You scan your system and find a signature ID that wasn't there before, it shows up as an unknown, and later it turns out to be a K162 incoming wormhole. We don't want that. We want it gone, and now. This is what you need to do to close it:

• Jump to the other side, check for hostiles, and check the ID of the wormhole on the other side. For example it might be C427.

• Check the mass remaining on the wormhole (is it critical? what does the description say?). Jump back.

• Check the Wormhole ID on Eve Metrics, it will tell you it's maximum mass restrictions. 
• Do the math.

Now you know what kind of wormhole you are dealing with, and you know the max mass that can go through it before it crashes. Well, if the wormhole is not in critical mass stage yet, there's a good chance that you are able to close it. What you need to do is take some heavy ships, preferably Battleships and/or Battlecruisers, and start jumping them back and forward, keeping an eye on the status of mass of the wormhole. Keep one battleship on the far side while doing this. In this example it's a C427 Wormhole which, at it's critical state, (about 10% of total mass limit) allows to jump another 100.000 tons of mass. That's one battleship worth of mass. Keep track of the number of ships you've jumped trough so far (jump one at a time), and as soon as it gets into Critical stage, jump back the battleship from the far side. If you've done everything right, the unwanted wormhole should close.

Taking control over the exits, maintaining the system clear of incoming wormholes by successfully closing each unwanted wormhole is the key to safety in W-Space. You need to be aware that each wormhole that you leave opened, and not use yourself, is a potential threat, and might eventually get you (and your corp members) killed.

Related Links

http://www.tetrr.com/wormhole/

http://www.staticmapper.com

http://evemaps.dotlan.net

http://www.ellatha.com/eve/wormholelist.asp

http://eve.allakhazam.com/wiki/Wormholes

Asayanami Dei's Wormhole PvP Videos

YouTube

WormholeFundamentals.com