I’m not a WH expert. I have read a lot of things about how signatures don’t exist, or don’t show up, until you warp to them, blah blah. I have some questions on this.
Let’s say you are trying to stay on top of the signatures in your system because you’d like to do ratting or mining or whatever, so you want to know who or what is potentially coming or going. So you’d like to not disturb the outgoing signatures - statics and what not - because you’d like the hole to stay ‘closed up’ as much as possible. However, you do want to be aware of incoming signatures, because you don’t want to get ganked while running sites or doing whatever.
How do you know what a signature is (outgoing, incoming, etc) without warping to it? You don’t want to warp to it if you don’t have to - you want the hole to stay ‘closed.’ But you need to know if it is an incoming signature or not.
I guess I’m wondering if there is something I’m ‘not getting’ with all this ‘it doesn’t exist until you warp to it’ business.
It is actually quite simple. Wormholes have statics, meaning that they always have the same connections. I.e. a C2 with a C3 static will always be connected to a C3.
If you roll the C3 static closed, another one will pop up immediately. Assuming you have all of the signatures scanned down already, when it pops up you know without even needing to scan it that the new signature is definitely a C2 -> C3 connection.
EDIT: Also, the “it doesn’t exist until you warp to it” is a bit misleading. While that’s true, there is also a timer that begins when the hole has 15 hours of life left that gives it a random chance to become visible from the other side every few minutes. By the time the hole’s natural life is up, it will have always spawned a K162 that is visible from the other side.
In fact since some holes have a lifetime of only 16 hours (depending on the type of static) you only get an hour of time with those ones during which you know for sure it hasn’t spawned a K162 on the other side.
So what’s the way to close off the hole as much as possible?
Scan every sig in the system. Make note of them.
Warp to every sig in the system (this will cause any wormholes to spring into existence, and give a chance for any outgoing WHs to materialize on the other side).
Try to close every wormhole, including statics.
If new sigs spring into existence after closing statics, assume those are new statics.
Only the sig that appeared after you closed the static will be a new static. Any other new sigs that appear after you’ve closed all connections are probably a pvp corp rolling into your wormhole and preparing to shoot your shiny rattlesnake.
