Ironfleet Towing And Salvage

There’s been a lot of discussion on the forums about the way the exploration mechanic tends to distribute content in wormhole space. Specifically, the content seems to accumulate in places where nobody is, as a result of the sites being cleared quickly when they spawn in populated w-systems and not-so-quickly (as in, never) if they spawn in w-systems where nobody goes.

Tonight I found an extreme example of this, in a w-system I choose to call Shangri-La, for reasons that may soon become obvious. It would appear to be a plain old “shallow” w-system (described simply as “unknown space”) discovered adjacent to high-security empire. In features, it has much in common with Greater Mars. The number of features, however, is enormous.

How enormous, you ask?

Let’s start with cosmic anomalies. As well we might — because there are an astonishing thirty-five of them.

How about cosmic signatures? There are a very respectable dozen of those. No structures, ships, or any other sign of pod-pilot incursion.

Obviously that’s a lot of ISK on the hoof. Perhaps, even enough to tempt me to move a POS in here and start farming for a few weeks, or however long it takes. But there are logistics and real-world considerations, and if I’m going to do that, it will be several days or a week or more (at best) before I can get going on it.

So, I decided to do some observational science. I decided to do a complete survey of the system, record its contents, and then park an observer who can update the survey from time to time. If the system should remain largely uninhabited and unexploited, will the huge numbers of sites remain? Or, will they ebb and flow as sites expire naturally and respawn elsewhere? It should be interesting to see.

Here’s the first survey report.

Shangri-La Survey Report: 5/29/09, 01:28

04x CA: The Ruins of Enclave Cohort 27
03x CA: Sleeper Data Sanctuary
19x CA: Perimeter Hangar
09x CA: Perimeter checkpoint
—
35x Cosmic Anomalies

01x CS: Wormhole to highsec space
01x CS: wormhole to unknown space
01x CS: Wormhole to dangerous unknown space
02x CS: Barren Perimeter Reservoir (ladar)
01x CS: Minor Perimeter reservoir (ladar)
03x CS: Ordinary Perimeter Deposit (grav)
02x CS: Unexeptional Frontier Deposit (grav)
01x CS: Forgotten Perimeter Habitation Coils (mag)
—
12x Cosmic Signatures

Update, a day later: All three wormholes gone. Two new wormholes spawned, one to high sec space and one to an “unknown” wormhole. Cosmic Anomalies are up to 37. All other sites: unchanged.

====

5:30/09, 01:06

05x CA: The Ruins of Enclave Cohort 27
03x CA: Sleeper Data Sanctuary
19x CA: Perimeter Hangar
10x CA: Perimeter checkpoint
—
37 cosmic anomalies

02x CS: Barren Perimeter Reservoir (ladar)
01x CS: Minor Perimeter reservoir (ladar)
03x CS: Ordinary Perimeter Deposit (grav)
02x CS: Unexeptional Frontier Deposit (grav)
01x CS: Forgotten Perimeter Habitation Coils (mag)
—
11 cosmic signatures

This entry was posted on Friday, May 29th, 2009 at 12:43 am and is filed under EVE Essays, Ironfleet Info. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.