Welcome to Part 2 of this wormhole guide. This will cover wormhole statics, mass limits, polarization and wormhole mapping.

Statics

As mentioned in Part 1, every wormhole system in the game has what we call a “static” wormhole. If this wormhole ever closes, a new one of a similar type will spawn after about 60 seconds. What do I mean by “similar type”? All statics are also assigned a Wormhole Class or K-Space. This means that a wormhole system with a “Class 2 Static” will always have a wormhole leading to a Class 2. A “Highsec Static” wormhole will always lead to Highsec. The system the Static leads to obviously changes, but gives you an idea of where it will lead to.

If you ever get stuck in a wormhole, look for the Static. Want to know what Static your wormhole has? You can use a site such as Wormhol.es to check! Want to know if the wormhole you found is the Static? See if the Wormhole Designation matches Wormhol.es or check this list for reference. Here’s a handy tutorial:

I’m in a wormhole. Designation J121941. I need to find the Static, since Wormhol.es tells me…

Highsecs are good, so I scan down the first wormhole I find. I find this.

Whilst this obviously doesn’t match the static, we might be able to glean some information from this. Checking “K162” on here tells us it’s a generic Exit Wormhole. We could get more information from the wormhole itself, but it’s not what we were looking for. Best keep scanning.

The next wormhole is what we want.

Bingo.

Statics are not the only wormholes you can find, as we just discovered.

Inbound Wormholes & Roaming Wormholes

Say a friend jumps into wormhole. What does it look like in the system he jumped into? It’ll say “K162“. Wormholes that spawn in a system always get their unique Designation – N110 and E175 are two examples – whereas wormholes that do not originally spawn in your system are always labelled K162. That means someone found the other side. A K162 can appear at any time as wormholes shift every minute so keep an eye out! You can also find wormholes that are neither K162 or Static.

“Roaming” or “Random” wormholes are exactly what they say on the tin. Wormholes can (and will), spawn random connections. Roaming wormholes usually lead out to K-Space, but can lead to other wormhole systems too. These tend to be rarer than K162s, depending on your wormhole Class. Class 4s, for example, do not have kspace connections and as such tend to never have Roaming Outbound wormholes.

So, to recap.

Static Outbound – A wormhole type that is always present. Will always lead to a certain class of wspace or kspace depending on your system. Spawns a new one elsewhere in your system when it closes.

Random Outbound – A wormhole that can appear anywhere, anytime. Tends to lead to High, Low or Null. Fairly uncommon.

Inbound – A K162 wormhole that has been opened from the entrance side. Will be a Static or Random on the other side. Origin system varies.

Wormhole Spawning

I’ve mentioned wormholes “opening” on the entrance side. There’s a subtle science to this. What determines when the exit K162 wormholes appears in the destination wormhole? Is it just when the wormhole spawns?

No.

When a new wormhole “spawns” it has not actually spawned. When you scan a wormhole, it still has not spawned. The K162 has not appeared and the wormhole-time limit is not ticking down. Only when someone initiates warp to a new wormhole does it spawn. At that point, the K162 appears in the end system and the wormhole time limit starts counting.

This is especially important to note because this means you can “close off” a system by closing existing wormholes (more on this in a minute) and then scanning the new one but not warping to it. No Static wormhole. No inbound wormholes. Closed off. Mostly. K162s and Roaming wormholes could still appear and any enemy ships trapped with you could activate the Static instead. But it’s as close as you can get.

Wormhole Closing

So we know how wormholes open. They appear and you warp to it. So how do we close them?

Wormholes have two “attributes” that effect when they close. Time and Mass. This can be checked by getting the wormhole designation and checking on here again.

Time is fairly simple but not exact. It’s nothing we can change. A N110 wormhole has a 24 hour timer. Roughly 24 hours after opening, it closes. Simple. What happens if you didn’t open the wormhole and don’t have the open time? You can get an estimation, of course! Simply click “Show Info”. It will say one of three things;

“Life cycle has not begun” – Brand new wormhole. You’ve literally warped to it as it was spawning.

“Probably won’t last another day” – Normal life cycle. Means it has over 25% time left.

“Reaching the end of its natural lifetime” – Less than 25% of it’s time remaining

Mass is where Capsuleers come in. Like time, a wormhole starts with a mass “allowance”. As ships jump, the mass depletes. When the mass hits 0, the wormhole collapses. We can use this to our advantage. We can force wormholes to close (spawning a new static, perhaps) or get it to a point where anything jumping will collapse it, leaving them trapped. Like Time, this can be checked on that wormhole list (click the wormhole type). From here, it’s a case of “Maths”. Fortunately, there’s some awesome tricks we use to help with this. First you need a ship’s mass, which you can find in the Show Info window of your ship.

Here my Proteus has 11,341,000 Mass. We’ll shorten that to 11.3. That means we’d need to jump it around 265 times through a N770 wormhole to close it, since a N770 has 3 Billion Mass (3000). That’s fine, because a Proteus is a Cruiser and has small mass. An Orca will have about 250,000,000 mass (250). That takes 12 jumps. Then you turn on a Propulsion Mod (Afterburner or Microwarpdrive). This takes the Proteus to 16.3. An Orca goes to 300 with a MWD. Down to 10 jumps with an Orca, or 5 “Return” jumps. Getting somewhere. We can’t jump constantly due to Polarisation (explained shortly), but it’s do-able. We can add Battleships to the mix as well. To make sure you don’t lose anyone, you want to jump the big ship back last to strike the “killing blow” and close the wormhole. How do you tell when to jump the big ship back? Just like Time, you can find Mass approximations in Show Info.

“Has not yet had its stability significantly disrupted” – Over 50% mass left.

“Has had its stability reduced, but not to a critical degree yet” – Known as “Halved”, the wormhole has under 50% mass remaining.

“This wormhole has had its stability critically disrupted by the mass of numerous ships passing through and is on the verge of collapse.” – Known as “Crit”, the wormhole has less then 10% of it’s mass.

Keeping track of the wormhole when jumping gives you clues on your progress or the mass of ships that came before. When you think you’re getting close to “Crit”, you’ll want to use smaller ships. It’s a good idea to keep an Orca (or Carrier!) on the far side of the wormhole, then jumping back when the wormhole Crits. This will normally collapse it, since the Orca’s mass is more than the 5% the wormhole has left when it Crits.

But what if you’re unsure, and the wormhole is really close to being Crit? Or what if your big ship didn’t close the wormhole so it’s really close to death? There’s an amazing trick. Amazing, I tell you. This tip is free of charge! It’s a little bit advanced, but fairly simple at the end of the day.

You need a Heavy Interdictor with 2 Warp Disruption Generators. These reduce mass when active by a lot. Here’s a Phobos normally.

19.2 Mass before MWD. We could jump it through an almost-collapsed wormhole, but it’d be risky. Let’s activate both bubbles.

A much easier 1.1. We can jump out with little fear of collapse (though it can happen) and jump back with the MWD on, hopefully collapsing it!

To recap;

Time Limits – Cannot be changed by Capsuleers. Can be estimated based on wormhole limit and “Show Info” display.

Mass Limits – Generally limits the amount of ships that can use a wormhole. Can be manipulated to close a wormhole or leave it so close to collapse that noone jumps.

You can find even more in-depth information about collapsing wormholes on Tiger Ears here.

Polarisation

Jumping into a wormhole has a nasty little effect. Wormhole jump range is 5,000m. You tend to end up anywhere from 200 to 7000 meters from the wormhole when you load system. What then is in place to prevent constant jumping in the face of a hostile fleet? Polarisation.

If you jump the same wormhole twice within 5 minutes, you are polarised and cannot jump that wormhole any more until 5 minutes after the initial jump. There is no onscreen timer unless you try jumping when Polarised. Be aware.

Wormhole chains & Mapping

A wormhole can lead to a wormhole system. This wormhole can then lead to another wormhole. Then another. Maybe a kspace. Maybe another wh. The link between these systems, however temporary, creates a “Wormhole Chain”. We can then use several tools to map it for easy reference. You can do it manually or use one of many tools to do so. Siggy is one such tool.

Mapping a chain depends on your corp. Some use Siggy. Some use a Google Document. Naming schemes vary too since calling every sysem by it’s actual name would get tiresome. Say your static is a Class 4. That wormhole is now C4a. The next one is a Class 3, so that’s C3b. The next is another Class 4 – C4b. So on.

Take our chain yesterday for example;

We use Siggy, so this is what you’d see if you used it. Obviously it can differ. Just for demonstration purposes, you can see this is a fairly basic chain. The C1 has not been custom named, hence it displaying as such. Chains can get a lot more complex. Take this old one from a few months ago.

This is a good example of how many wormholes you can actually find. One leads to many. There are two C3as, but that’s because one was mislabeled when I created it. Always have a way of mapping – imagine trying to navigate that chain without a guide! If you’re looking to try Siggy, check their info page here.

To recap

Chains – Refers to the current link of wormholes to your location. Can be just a couple, can be a lot!

Mapping – Refers to a diagram or list of current wormhole connections. Vital for navigation and reference.

That’s all for this post. As usual, notify me via EVE Mail or comment if you notice a mistake or have a suggestion for a future post. The next post will cover Scanning, Anomalies and Directional Scan.