Sean Vanstroll -- Representing Wormholes [CSM 21]

Council Of Stellar Management CSM Campaigns
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My Story

My journey in Eve Online first started at the peak of World War Bee 2, when we had Goonswarm in a bottleneck at their home system of T5ZI-S. However, my journey into Eve didn’t truly start until six years ago after the war when I decided to leave Pandemic Horde and join my first wormhole corporation. Since that time, I’ve learned the nuances of wormhole life and how the dynamics of J-space affect the whole of Eve Online, from being the backbone behind the massive Jackdaw fleets still dominating nullsec to funding your cloaky Loki solo shenanigans.

My Knowledge

Wormhole Industry – The majority of industry from wormhole space comes from Tech 3 production and from PI manufacturing. As most of the lucrative PI from nullsec is usually used within the alliance for their own production, this leaves an opportunity for wormholers to sell PI to highsec in order to give others the opportunity to build as well. However, as much as Tech 3, high PI, ore buffs and hybrid drones all help to put J-space on the map, it’s in my belief that more can be done.

New Players and Wormholes – From when I first started in wormholes, it took a few months for me to “get” what I was going into. From bookmarking to ratting to using third-party mapping tools, it was all a bit confusing for me. The question I want to answer in this regard with the help of the wormhole community is on how the “newbro experience” can be improved when it comes to wormholes.

Wormholes & Nullsec – It’s not uncommon for a wormhole alliance to call upon nullsec to help with the defense of their home in the case of an eviction from a rival wormhole corporation. However, with the advent of the War in Heaven, wormholes have been in an interesting standpoint when it comes to their relation with nullsec. Skyhook raids, ESS robberies, third partying and blops fleets originating from wormholes have become sparse in recent times, and questions are coming from the wormhole community about how to bring back this content. The answer that comes from the community is the answer I will relay into the CSM.

What I advocate for

The following is a list of items that I wish to advocate for when it comes to Eve Online:

Industry:

  • R8, R16, R32 and R64 ore added into J-space via rock popping RNG
    • Has a random chance to upgrade R4 rocks to R8, R16, R32 and R64 rocks, with R64 being the the rarest rock type
      • Would only happen to a few rocks, not the entire batch.
      • “Jackpot pops” give higher chances for rarer rocks to appear.
    • Can only happen via Athanor/Tatara rock popping, not through Metenox drills, thus encouraging players to undock and mine.
  • Grade II, III and IV ores added into non-updated A0 asteroid fields in K-space and J-space
  • Shattered Gas Fields added to shattered wormholes
    • Counts as a Level 4 scanned signature
    • Will have a mix of all types of gasses
    • Encourages players to harvest in Shattered wormholes
  • Scannable Nullsec ore anoms added to low-class wormholes
    • Gives a slight industry boost that makes low class wormholes more lucrative to live in, but not as lucrative as a C5/6

Gameplay:

  • Previously scanned signatures saved after logoff
  • Temporary warp core strength + warp disabling when activating a CMJD/CMJFG
    • Because a single scram from a frigate could stop a carrier from booshing or MJD’ing, it makes these modules effectively useless. By giving a temporary warp core strength bonus while also disabling warp during spooling, we can actually see these modules used in combat as intended.
  • Extra 24 hour reinforcement to M-structure armor timers and L/XL-structure hull timers
    • Matches what’s already given to lowsec and nullsec, and gives defender advantage during eviction ops. This is mainly intended so that newer corps establishing in wormholes have a better standing chance against eviction when moving into J-space.
  • Return of the Gala, with VIP combat and exploration sites returning to wormholes
    • This event temporarily brings content to not only J-spacers but to everyone in Eve when it comes to wormholes, and was overall a net negative when the event was removed from the game.
  • Buffed loot in Unsecured/Forgotten sites in J-space via T2 Trig materials in Relic sites and Trig datacores in Data sites
    • Offsets the expensive cost of building T2 Trig ships by injecting materials into the market
  • Buffed loot in regular data/relic sites found in C1-3 wormholes
    • With Detected sites being added to NS, it’s more enticing for day trippers to stay in NS and avoid wormholes because the former has a chance of giving better rewards. By giving more out of data and relic sites in wormholes, it encourages players to day trip more often while still adhering to the risks wormholes have over NS (i.e.: No local)
  • Shattered Drone Fabricators exclusive to shattered wormholes
    • Higher than normal loot drops at the cost of being located in a shattered wormhole
    • Will be a regular combat sig, thus not requiring scanners to locate and making it an easier ganking target
  • Slightly buffed loot to C1-4 Sleeper rats
    • Some sites are simply unbalanced when it comes to risk vs. reward, especially when the loot is not on par to what exists in the current economy
      • i.e.: A C2 Perimeter Hangar gives a payout of 15.6 million ISK, the equivalent of around a week’s worth of rewards won by dailies, despite one wave dealing over 400 dps

Overall:

  • Higher integration between J-space and K-space
  • Better systems put in place for newbros to adapt to wormhole life
  • Giving wormholers more chances at being able to contribute to the economy

Plus…

A NEW STRUCTURE ADDED: THE UPWELL ASTRONOMICAL FRACKER (UAF)
A static nullsec wormhole generator.

Lore wise, it’s run on reverse engineered World Ark Trig technology. It can be deployed in any wormhole where you can anchor structures in. It literally fracks space and time to generate a wormhole, but the sheer power and specialty of the unit means it needs to be anchored to the sun, and must use Fracking Cores to feed into it in order to power it.

How does one get a Fracking Core? By running Rampant Drone Sites. For every 25 waves completed at a Critical level only, you get a more powerful Fracking Core which comes with more charges. They go as follows:

  • Type C Fracking Core - 5 charges (25 waves)
  • Type B Fracking Core - 10 charges (50 waves)
  • Type A Fracking Core - 20 charges (75 waves)
  • Type X Fracking Core - 50 charges (100 waves)

You can either load the cores into your UAF or sell them on market. One charge lets you activate the UAF in order to generate a nullsec wormhole for you, but it can only generate you one at a time. You can roll the hole and then generate another one, but that’s gunna cost you another charge should you choose to activate the UAF again. The hole appears on both the home and nullsec side as a scannable Fracked Wormhole, letting everyone know what’s about to go down.

The UAF is a no-timer anchored structure, but once it reaches 50 charges (Max 200 charges inside), it gets upgraded with a 24 hour armor timer +/- 1.5 hours. Whatever hole the UAF generated before reinforcement stays up. When it’s destroyed, it drops an Unstable Fracking Core which contains all of the charges it would have had if it were still standing. It can’t be sold on the market, but it can be sold on contract, loaded into another UAF, or stored for later.

The UAF itself would cost around 10 bill to buy but can be brought into hole with an Upwell ship or a DST. Makes sense to put some charges in it if you don’t want something worth 10 billion ISK destroyed right away, right? It’s also owned by the corp that deploys it, which means if you plan to evict, you can’t use the other corp’s UAF; you need to destroy it and build your own.

With more input from the community, everything listed above will be updated with further items and adjustments.

Why Represent J-space?

For the reasons stated above, I want to step into the CSM to speak on behalf of those living in wormholes. Though we are considered by some to be a “small” community in Eve Online, we are nevertheless a community that still remains a part of Eve Online. I believe that wormholes now more than ever are set to have a greater impact in Eve than in any point in the past, and in that sense, I wish to help pave the way to see wormholes represented in a way which make us matter.

As a player, even if you don’t live in wormholes, you may see an impact from the discussions I have with Fenris. For those of you who do live in wormholes, you won’t just see the impact – you’ll feel it like a wrecking blow from Arithmos Tyrannos himself. :smiling_face_with_sunglasses:

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Be careful what you wish for. That would backfire badly.

Good luck anyway with our campaign!

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Better moons is not necessarily bad if it’s done right. The second best PI in the game to wormholes is nullsec, and the majority of what’s produced out of PI in nullsec stays within those regions to help build more. Because PI in wormhole space is the best in the game, it can be directly sold into highsec to sort of “inject” a bit of the similar indy nullsec has into other markets in the game.

This is the same idea with adding better moons to wormholes. It spreads the market so that materials made from moon goo isn’t forced to be consolidated into one or two places. For places as small and disconnected from the rest of Eden like wormholes, there isn’t as much incentive to self-manufacture ships. Instead, that material gets sold in highsec and now more opportunity is made for industry to be done by independent players or players who don’t have the resources to get any of the more expensive moon goo materials.

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I have a couple of observations as a day tripper.

J-space to me is the most EVE-like experience. Not knowing who is lurking with you in a system, where the connections go, and where you’ll end up today as you scan down the chain encapsulates the excitement and mystery I want from my spaceship game. The first time I stumbled in to Thera I said “so this is Thera!” And promptly got blown up outside Station 4. It was brilliant.

I understand why a resident would want more content and resources, but I think it’d be a great shame just to make it nullsec without local. So for me you’re pushing in the wrong direction with adding R16-64. I’d be looking for avenues that make J-space more different to K-space rather than attempting to integrate it.

But as I said, I don’t live there.

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There’s a few things already being done to make J-space more different, such as adding in Rampant Drone Fabrication sites as well as buffed ores. However, you do make a great point in that there needs to be a way to have J-space more unique. From a day tripper’s standpoint, what would make you more interested in exploring J-space from a solo perspective?

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I’m happy playing as both prey and predator in explo sites, but as you know the NS spawn changes made J-space much less attractive for that and consequently less populated. I’ll still do some hacking, but hunting has dried up. Net result for me is that low-class WHs are a safer way of getting into NS to do the same thing there.

Edit: forgot to answer your question. Explo rewards reflecting the risk of being in J-space.

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I don’t what to ruin your campaign topic, so I don’t want to start a discussion about it. I just think you miss my point: Having a normal R64 moon in your system neither will make you “participate more in the economy” nor “rich”. It will get you evicted and some blob will claim your hole as a moneygrinder.

So, as a recommendation: If you want to push for your idea, consider making those rare moon ores “temporal spawns” which you can find on your moons, harvest them for a few weeks but then they vanish again. So they “wander” around JSpace, you can extract them if you pay attention to checking your moons on a regular basis, but they don’t make particular systems extremely valuable which will only lead to them being claimed by some of the already most powerful groups. With a bit bad luck even by some Nullsec cartel, which can’t be in the best interest of JSpace.

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I like the idea of ephemeral moon goo simply from a thematic point of view. That’s precisely the sort of “keep J-space different” idea I’m talking about.

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another player representative who lists a bunch of buffs they want and no way to communicate with them :expressionless:

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Skyhook raids, ESS robberies, third partying and blops fleets originating from wormholes have become sparse in recent times, and questions are coming from the wormhole community about how to bring back this content.

There is a constant talk about wormholes being blue to each other. I have very little knowledge of it’s denizens but why are you looking for content in Nullsec, instead of mechanics that help content in wh space?

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Thank you for this recommendation! I decided to take what you’ve said and put it in my proposal.

I like the idea of giving higher value moon ore via RNG instead of just simply giving buffed moons, because as you’ve stated, it would indeed offset the value of certain wormhole systems compared to others and make them eviction targets instead of mining fleet targets, and the latter is what I would rather go for.

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I’ve thought about your point and I just wanted to say that yes, I feel like with all the buffs recently to adding Detected sites in nullsec which give out chances at hacking escalations, there needs to be some equilibrium involved with wormholes. With that being said, I wanted to say that I updated my list to include better loot drops from regular Data/Relic sites found in C1-3 wormholes thanks to your input!

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Wormhole culture works on a sort of bushido. Everyone is grey to each other unless certain things call for others to come on and assist each other – in other words, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. For example, you’ll see two groups come together to defend a star system from eviction and then gank one another’s ratters a week after the defense. So to answer your message about wormholes being blue to each other, it’s more of “blue when convenient”.

To answer your question, I want both content in null and better mechanics to help J-space. I’ve included wanting a push for a further sig radius bloom reduction for MWD’s as well as RLML buffs added to some vessels for that reason. In nullsec and even now in wormhole space, the common fighting tactic has been n+1 blobbing, and nanogangs aren’t in a position that’s viable enough to counter that tactic. With these two changes added to the game, hopefully we can then give people a chance to fit their doctrines differently so that we can avoid blobbing as the be-all-end-all.

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Well, but then why want increase the maximum mass for nullsec holes? Those holes are, if used, mostly content exits for roamers. Using mostly small and fast ships and small gangs. Increasing their mass makes it harder for the wormholers to re-roll them for a better exit location on one side, and easier for the nullseccers on the other side to infil large fleets into JSpace.

Both not really desired imho to make Jspace more attractive.

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One thing that I have been thinking about is how in Kspace each tier of space has a specific identity and ecosystem. HS is a place to live to do HS things it is not a steppingstone to LS and similarly LS is not designed nor intended to be a steppingstone to NS. However, in Jspace the different tiers of space do seem to be just a step leading up to the next. Instead of it being a scale of c1 and c2 is the lesser in quality of everything and c5 and c6 is the better it could be made into a scale of harvesting on one side and combat on the other with c1-2 space on the harvesting side and c5-6 on the combat side.

I am not a developer, and I am not saying this is how it would have to be arranged but as an example of what I mean is maybe c1-2 has a chance to spawn every type of gas and ore site. from there remove the lowest tier of sites going up. With c5-6 still only getting Rare and Exceptional. The same sort of thing could be done with gas sites. This way low-class holes get a chance at high-quality harvestables and high class is not bothered with low-quality sites.

I believe this would have two major outcomes. First, it would make all classes of jspace useful for something with low class being more useful for mining and industry type things and high class more useful for combat type things with their upgraded avengers and drifter battleships. Secondly, it could encourage more day tripping. HS and LS groups finding wormholes could possibly find a jackpot in their common low-class connections encouraging them to take the risk of no local and no advance warning for the reward of valuable resources to gather. While us jspace folks get more targets in space.

The second idea I had was inspired by the new RDF sites. Jspace could get its own version of mobile phase anchors. These sleeper phase anchors would slowly ramp up as a ship with an active industrial core was linked to it. The “waves” instead of being ships to shoot would be greater and greater quantity of special ores or gasses. Like and RDF the waves would start out with minuscule amounts of special ore or gas, depending on the site you linked to, slowly increasing to a max quantity of harvestable after some long duration. Again, encouraging groups to keep at porp, orca, rorq on grid with its core active to keep the site ramping for a dangerously long duration. The site could even have tiers similar to the RDF, where linking a porp gives the smallest ramp up and a rorq gives the greatest ramp up

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High class wormholes are strictly meant for high class activity, which includes ratting, mining and huffing. Moving high tier activities down to the lower tiers would ruin that equilibrium already established.

The other thing is that although I like the idea of having a Mobile Phase Anchor made for wild card gasses, those higher-class ships linking to the Anchor are at best glorified links because those ships themselves have no way of harvesting the gas unless gas harvesting drones were added to the game. If we’re simply talking about more targets to shoot, having RNG moon mining would give that opportunity because in those cases, you actually would have a mining command ship on grid because they would be able to actually harvest ore with their mining drones like the rest of the fleet. It wouldn’t be there just to link to something and provide bursts.

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I’m not suggesting taking anything away from high class wormholes. The risk and difficulty of living in that space warrants the highest reward.

I would just like to see c1 and c2 space be more than just a way for high class space to find a Kspace route to sell their blue loot.

While scanning the chain I regularly find low class wormholes with no active structures and double-digit quantities of sigs and anoms. The quality of those sites are so low that I can’t, in good conscious, even suggest people populate those empty systems. If those systems at least had a chance at spawning worthwhile content, then maybe low class space could be more than just some old timers solo PI farm.

Just like how each Kspace area has its own identity and worthwhile game play. I would love to see the different classes of wormholes have their own identity other than 1-2 are the ■■■■ systems we use to get to Kspace, 3-4 are for the tiny corps with their 6 active pilots that can’t hold down a 5-6, and 5-6 is real Jspace.

Again, I am not a developer, and I am not saying my previous example is how it would have to be arranged. The important part of what I was suggesting is expanding identity and usefulness of the lower tier areas of jspace.

As a side note. I just want to say really appreciate these discussions. I also really appreciate the CSM and folks like you that are willing to spend their free time working to improve this game we all love so much.

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The point is: smaller corps simply can’t defend their wormholes. The removal of the second timer for M-structures broke their neck. M-structures can be reinforced by a handful of Kikimoras/Oracles over night when the owner is offline. Without any resistance. They don’t even shoot back. And when the owners log in the next day they, face an all-or-nothing-timer. Means they need to do a full evac on the station, since they don’t know who will come to the timer and if they can defend it.

This is horrible for any small group, especially when some bored multiboxer can reinforce their stations over and over without much effort until they get tired. And then they lose everything.

And L-structures are way too expensive to be worth it in these holes for a small group. The amount of money you can grind there is so small, highclass citizens can’t even imagine how piss poor lowclass groups really are.

So yeah, I agree with the idea that all sites can spawn in all classes, just with a highly reduced probability the lower you get. So, lets say a new Gas site in a C6 has a 10% chance to spawn as a Vital Core Site, it has 5% in a C5, 2.5% in a C4, 1.25% in a C3, 0.625% in a C2 and 0.3125% in a C1.

Same for all the other sites and anomalies that can spawn, just the lowest ones not spawning in the higher-up holes. So you can theoretically have the very rare Scenario to find a C6 data/relic site in a C1 hole and it would probably a whole corp-project to do it. Nice content opportunity imho.

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Structure defense is a whole other issue to tackle. I agree with your sentiment.

The isk making potential in c1/2 is abysmal. A c1 site might net you 3 days of fuel for an Astra if your salvage is good.

it would take upwards of 200 combat sites to pay for an Astra.

If you had the incredible luck of getting more than 3 new sites every day it would still take 2 months to farm the isk for an Astra if you play every single day.

You might actually be able to make more money farming in your Kspace static.

I think it’s worth mentioning in the past when melted nano ribbons were worth several million ISK the salvage in a C1 site was worth nearly as much as the blue loot. Sites back then were worth 150 to 200% of what they are now.

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I’ve read what’s been said from both of you and I’ll emphasize again that CCP increased loot drops within Rampant Drone Fabs in lower class wormholes to fairly substantial amounts, more than what’s given to higher class Rampants. As I’ll also re-emphasize, those smaller wormholes are meant as stepping stones to eventually get into higher class wormholes.

The issue is that by returning hull timers to Astras and medium structures, it would have to be done across the board, not just J-space. Also, by making lower class holes spawn high-tier gas, it would encourage evictions to be done by larger groups on them just to keep those holes as huffing holes, and there’s nothing that could be done to stop that.