Signature probe window - to skewed towards safety (in wormholes)

[Nicholas_Sharkozy]

Hi all.

I would consider myself an experienced wormholer having lived in a few in the last 10 years of my eve career.
I had a shamefully short conversation about this and other mechanics of the game with CCP_Nomad (effin legend) on Saturday of Fanfest but was dragged into another conversation leaving him hanging … So! SO! sorry for that.

TLDR: Make wormholes more dangerous by reverting “Probe scan window” from the flash and immediate signature spawn. And how wormholes are spawned.

Over the years attention to new scan sigs have become more and more apparent. Changing from you needing to actually scanning for new signatures as they would not pop up in the probe window to what it is today, New signature pops up automatically and flashing to bring the attention even more to that window.

This mechanic has made hunting in wormholes increasingly difficult bringing unfair advantage to what ever may be in the new connection. I understand that this might be good and useful in High sec, especially in starter systems where new players are but in wormholes this is borderline lunacy due to the fact that wormholes should be the most unknown and dangerous space in EVE.

I’m not sure how the mechanic works today but a few years ago it was:
a) you roll your static starting a timer, it’s new K162 doesn’t appear or spawn for at least 4 hours, after that it had a chance to spawn randomly until it’s EOL timer started forcing it to spawn 100%
b) Your ship lands on a newly spawned static, it’s K162 starts a 1 minute timer to spawn
c) You jump through a newly spawned static and the K162 instantly spawns.

How I (and many, many, MANY pvp oriented wormhole pilots would like to see this mechanic changed, to would look something in the vicinity of:
a) roll the static and the K162 doesn’t spawn for 4 hours. random chance to spawn every 30 minutes after that.
b) Your ship lands on a newly spawned static, random chance K162 spawns every 30 minutes, forcing spawn after 4 hours
c) you jump through a newly spawned static and the K162 is created but doesn’t spawn as a signature for 1 minute. Remove the flash when the signature spawns and have them 1 second fade when it appears in the probe window.

What this kind of change would accomplish is make wormholes the mysterious, unpredictable and dangerous space it was meant to be. Not knowing when you are being hunted, not knowing too much.

It would make hanging out in space for any reason (fight already happening, sitting on a wormhole, mining, gas huffing, exploration) more dangerous and unpredictable
It would make ratting in wormholes more risky
It would create complications for hole control during evictions.

I hope for cool responses from the community, good and bad.

[HogansHero]

After many conversations with CCP / ISD and many forum posts.

I have come to understand that the current static mechanic for a HS N110 24 hour wormhole to be as follows: (and over the course of the past 3 months of monitoring for traffic into the wh I use)

1. Roll Static, new signature spawns. Its ok to scan the signature, but you already know the static designation (i.e. N110 or B274) because if you live in that wormhole you just know.
2. If you DO NOT WARP to the new signature, then your static will remain undiscoverable for 9 hours after which it has a chance to spawn in its connecting system every minute.
3. If you warp to it, it immediately becomes discoverable on the connection side and anyone in the K162 side can scan it down.

This mechanic makes mining and ratting your wormhole very safe. … unless a new cosmic anom spawns and leads to another WH.

Which leads to another aspect of Wormhole spawns/cosmic anomalies(CA). A connecting WH may have a static that randomly lands on your wormhole. If that CA spawns in your system and you scan it down to find its a K162, it could mean a couple things…

1. The static in the new connection was scanned and warped to.
2. Reached its timer for random discoverability.

With either of those its highly possible that you are no longer the only players in your wormhole.

Since I do not live in any wormholes with connections less than 24 hour I do not know the specific “safe” time of not warping to those types of static.

There is also a deviation possible with regards to wormhole EOL. For Example a 24 hour wormhole can and often does not die directly at 24 hours. The wormhole I am familiar with often takes 15minutes to an hour extra to finally EOL.

The information I have provided above has proven to be 100% accurate to the wormhole space I live in. Other wormhole space mechanics will be different and apply according to lifespans and types of static connections. Not all wormholes will behave the same.