Wormholes, Wormholers,

And You

An In-Depth Exploration of EVE Online’s Spookiest Space

With Mark Resurrectus, WormholeCSMbtw

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Mechanics

PVP

PVE

Culture

01

03

02

04

05

Hardships

How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blue Loot

J-Space Mechanics and how they compare to K-Space

Wormhole PVP trends and unique characteristics

The Self-Realizing Blood Cult of the Game’s Most Paranoid Sociopaths

Some things that might be worth looking at.

WHerBTW

Who am I and why am I here

THIS IS ME

Mark Resurrectus

CEO: Holey Roamin’ Empire

Executor: TURBOFEED OR GLORY

SOME DEFINITIONS

Some definitions of very basic terms for the uninitiated

EVE jargon is weird and J-Space jargon is sometimes incomprehensible

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MECHANICS

01

J-Space works differently than K-Space, and

That’s a good thing AND YOU SHOULD NEVER CHANGE IT.

CONNECTIVITY - Wormholes vs Gates

Wormhole systems connect to each other via wormholes, not gates. Wormholes have some distinct advantages and disadvantages:

• Mass Limitations
• Inherently Temporary, destinations change often
• Not Aggro Restricted, only Time Restricted
• Jump Mass Restrictions
• Gates identify the destination on the map, wormholes rely on description of the hole (and intel gathered by jumping)

What You See

CONTROLLING

SPACE

Defense

Power Projection

No Stations

Sov Without Sov

Punching Up

Can’t make improvements

No stations other than those you anchor

Closest to Sov Null, without Sov

Only control what you can defend (can’t easily control multiple systems)

Connections are temporary and undefined

Large groups can’t be massive, small groups can defend against larger groups

ECONOMICS

• Combat anoms (green sites, sleeper sites) are similar to DED sites - ISK comes from drops instead of bounty payouts
• Many consequences:
• WH groups can’t directly tax members
• Income isn’t guaranteed until you drop off the loot
• Income can be lost entirely if your blue loot hauler gets ganked

ECONOMICS

• Moon mining isn’t profitable in J-Space because Asimakis killed our moons
• Greece should be outlawed
• The moons are all R4 - not worth the time spent mining them
• Ore sites spawn infrequently and it is difficult and often prohibitively dangerous to project large mining assets outside of your home
• The main form of mining in J-Space is gas huffing

INDUSTRY

• Mining sucks - but industry is pretty good
• Wormholes get nullsec industry bonuses
• Many groups anchor industry structures for numerous reasons
• Home Defense
• General Fleet Use
• Selling in K-Space
• T3 Production dominates WH industry, but groups do often manufacture capitals and battleship fleets as well
• Groups can’t mine their own ore so they haul that shit in
• PI also common due to wormholes having nullsec planetary PI

Cataclysmic

WEATHER

EFFECTS

Pulsar

Red Giant

Magnetar

Black Hole

Wolf-Rayet

ccplogibro.jpg

BIG NUMBA

Ships go nyoom

Phoenix go brrrrrr

The Best Effect

RLML go brrrrrr

BLACK HOLE

• + Speed
• + Missile Range & Application
• + Lock Range
• - Web Effectiveness
• - Agility

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Fights happen at greater ranges - brawling is significantly more difficult due to agility nerf and speed bonuses - missile doctrines favored - long range engagements preferred

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Notable BH Groups: Avanto (Hole Control)

CATACLYSMIC VARIABLE

• + Remote Reps
• + Cap Pool
• - Local Reps
• - Cap Regen
• - Remote Cap

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Fights favor fleet engagements of logistics heavy doctrines - local reps suffer greatly in higher wormhole classes - neuts are strong (hard to replace neuted capacitor) - fights won on EWAR rather than DPS

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Notable Cata Groups: X-Zest Voyage

MAGNETAR

• + Damage (excl. smartbombs)
• - Tracking (incl. drones)
• - Missile Explosion Radius
• - Target Painter Effectiveness
• - Lock Range

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Fights are quicker - groups often bring more application support to mitigate application debuff effects - fights become DPS races and alpha comps exceedingly strong, balanced by lock range debuff

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Notable Mag Groups: Dropbears Anonymous, No Holes Barred (both formerly, not a popular home hole due to the damage buff, much more popular for farms)

PULSAR

• + Shield HP
• + Cap Regen
• + Neut Effectiveness
• - Sig Radius
• - Armor Resistance

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Shield comps very strong while armor fleets suffer - neuts are very powerful due to increased drain amount - capitals apply better due to sig bloom as well as having strong cap regen

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Notable Pulsar Groups: L A Z E R H A W K S, Space Mutts, We Forsakened Few

RED GIANT

• + Heat Effects
• + Smartbomb Damage & Range
• + Bomb Damage
• - Heat Damage (increased)

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Doesn’t affect comps due to no general weapon or tank effects, though specialized bomb comps can be found - primary effect is on how fights are fought, rather than what’s fighting - heat used sparingly but is very effective in crucial moments - smartbombs much more important in fights

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Notable RG Groups: TURBOFEED OR GLORY

WOLF-RAYET STAR

• + Armor HP
• + Signature Radius (decreased)
• + Small Weapons Damage
• - Shield Resistance

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Armor comps excel while shield comps suffer - reduced sig radius makes applying to ships more difficult, caps need a lot of application support - frig & destroyer comps very powerful, as well as any comps using light missiles (including RLML)

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Notable WR Groups: Singularity Syndicate, Little Red Riding Hole (LUPUS)

PVP

02

The reason we’re all here

PVP

• Mass limitations create natural restrictions to fleet sizes and comps - can’t push an unlimited number of ships through a hole (except for frigholes)
• Due to the nature of J-Space, PVP is rarely objective based (lack of objectives) and is primarily focused on holding an opponent down and forcing/maintaining a conflict instead of fighting at range.
• Exceptions to this include structure defense and local capital defense i.e. dread krabs, mining rorqs, rolling carriers, etc.

PVP

• Fights often occur on wormholes as they are high traffic chokepoints where people can more easily encounter each other and attempt to control the space on either side of the hole.
• This combined with the lack of aggression limitations to jumping a wormhole causes jumping holes during a fight to be a major part of the wormhole pvp meta (often called “hole tanking”)
• Jumping a hole mid-fight potentially puts you out of danger (or into different danger) and each jump puts more mass on the hole

PVP

• Fleet commanders must pay attention to how much mass is being added to a wormhole mid-fight in order to avoid rolling out and splitting their own fleet, or to induce this effect on their opponent
• Due to the galaxy brain math required to do these calculations on the fly, this often happens without anyone realizing it’s about to occur.
• Manipulating mass during a fight is a common tactic by wormhole groups to control the flow of an enemy fleet into or out of a system.

PVP

• A lot of PVP in J-Space is gank based due to an imbalance of intel between two groups.
• Many intel tools aren’t available in J-Space, like Locator Agents and Local Chat
• Intel gathering must be done manually over long periods of time, through exploration and careful observation of ships moving through wormholes
• Cloaked ships allow for stealthy intel gathering and allows for some fleets to be virtually invisible (because no local)

PVP

• Common practice to leave “seeds” (i.e. cloaky scanners) in wormholes to watch residents for long periods of times to monitor for schedules, fleet comps, and other movements to plan for ganks or fleet activity.
• Seeds often go completely undetected due to a lack of local and prevalence of scanners in J-Space
• Staging assets (capitals, haulers, fleets, etc) in someone else’s home can be done with relative secrecy as long as you are able to avoid being scanned or detected on d-scan, as assets or toons won’t appear in local chat

PVP

• Leaving alts logged off to hide numbers is commonplace and expected
• Batphones are powerful due a lack of local chat.
• Enemy fleets without high level surveillance of surrounding systems can be easily surprise by an undetected batphone until the moment they’re on d-scan
• Third parties also benefit from this
• Due to the small size of WH groups and the WH community, notable figures such as CEOs, directors, FCs, etc are often well known and become easy first targets during engagements.

• Wormhole weather effects must be taken into consideration during the pre-staging of a fight. Armor heavy fleets avoid pulsars, shield comps avoid wolf-rayets, etc.
• Fleet Commanders will often attempt to influence where a fight will take place due to the weather effects present between them

PVP

• No death clones in J-space means podding is extremely punishing in WH fights
• Podded pilots often are removed from the fight entirely until after it has concluded
• Careful scouting of high sec entrances to the WH chain can mitigate this
• Mass restrictions limit the use of capital ships to no more than 3 on either side (plus a fleet) unless a fight is in a group’s home, in which case lmao cap blob

PVE

03

The thing that gets Angry Mustache all worked up every time a new MER drops

PVE

• Primary PVE in J-Space is centered around combat anomalies (“sleeper sites” or “green sites”)
• Dangerous combat sites that scale in difficulty with hole class
• C1 sites are easy and pay out less than 15m ISK/site
• C6 sites are extremely difficult and pay out in excess of 500m ISK/site
• Payouts are completed by turning in the dropped loot (blue loot) to NPC buy orders in K-space.
• As mentioned earlier, payouts can be lost if your bloot hauler gets ganked.

PVE

• A unique ecosystem of “farming” exists in J-Space
• Sleeper Sites don’t immediately respawn in system
• To krab more frequently, groups establish structures, krab ships and krab alts in other holes to farm abroad
• Farms in higher classes with more favorable weather effects are highly valued and fought over - often only held by groups that have the strength to control them.
• C5/C6 farms are most common - most groups have at least one farm

PVE

• Blue loot remains one of the best sources of direct income in the game
• It is an integral part of the wormhole ecosystem, its value allowing for the high stakes, high cost fleets often fielded by wormhole groups
• Blue loot is also attractive to groups outside of J-Space, leading to many null groups or CCP Community Team members establishing farms in J-Space
• These farms occupy otherwise empty space, and often serve as content for groups rolling or roaming for content.

PLEASE DON’T NERF BLUE LOOT

As much as the econ guys froth at the mouth about the prospect, blue loot is the blood that runs through the veins of J-Space. Without something substantially valuable to replace it, nerfing the price of blue loot would kneecap J-Space or, in a worst-case scenario, outright kill it.

Just getting this out of the way:

CULTURE

04

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Yet his shadow still looms. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives; who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves?

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-Nietzsche

SMALL GROUPS

LARGE GROUPS

Engage in all the aforementioned content, as well as “arranged” PVP (connecting to another group and asking for a fight) and more strategic types of wormhole content like evictions and wars

• Prioritize opportunistic PVP content over other kinds of content (ganking, baiting and escalation, skirmishing)
• Fleets are generally more mobile and can make a speedy egress if numbers turn against them

WH BUSHIDO

• Large groups place a lot of cultural emphasis on obliging requests for arranged PVP
• PVP is seen as the raison d’etre in WHs - denying requests in WH space is viewed very poorly
• Will often lead to many groups harassing you further, rather than leaving you alone due to a lack of content
• In more extreme cases, groups have been evicted due to a perceived pattern of denying content
• “Get Good or Get Out”

B R A W L I N G

• Most WH PVP is not objective based, so kiting doctrines are disfavoured
• Groups tend to prefer close range doctrines with lots of tackle
• Ensure that once a fight starts, fleets can keep each other locked down to kill as many ships as possible
• Bias towards EWAR platforms that either work better at close range or force engagement to be fought at closer ranges (i.e. neut/nos, webs, weapon disruption and damps, scrams > points
• Due to heavy use of neuts, capless weapon/tank platforms are favored. Missiles often preferred / armor tank

EVICTIONS

• Evictions/wars are the primary objective-based PVP in J-Space
• Evictions occur when one group invades the home system of another group in order to destroy (or take) their shit and kick them out
• Wars are evictions over multiple WH systems and generally involve multiple groups
• Eviction fleets start to resemble fleets in null, with an emphasis on DPS+tank over utility
• Long range weapon systems play a greater role as the primary objective is to destroy structures rather than ships

EVICTIONS

• Evictions can be contentious cultural moments in a group’s history
• Some people feel very strongly about where evictions exist in the meta
• They are, however, the largest single objective any groups can fight for/against

C.R.E.A.M.

• Due to the limited size of engagements in WH Space (less than 40 characters on each side generally) and the infrequency of larger PVP fights (often once a week), groups tend to fly more expensive doctrines
• Each character can have a greater effect on the outcome of a fleet fight rather than flying cheaper, expendable doctrines
• The higher cost of WH doctrines is the root cause of much of the farm system
• WH group creates expensive doctrine to keep up with other groups > members lose expensive ships in fight > members krab to replace expensive ships > members have more money because blue loot is still pretty good > WH group realizes its members have a lot of money > WH group creates expensive doctrine, etc

CAPITALS

• Caps used to be more popular for PVP engagements
• Used to
• Recent balance patches have reduced the use of caps in WH PVP engagements
• Due to many factors, chief among them being the cost of capital hulls, reduction in resistance module effectiveness (Surgical Strike) and for FAX specifically, the limitation of 1 capital cap injector per fit
• Capitals became a less attractive option as a force multiplier
• Phased out in favor of just massing marauders - which do everything >:(

WORMHOLERS ARE

FUCKING CRAZY

WH > SOV NULL

• Wormholers pride themselves on their identity as wormholers and the distinctions between J-Space and K-space
• Obstacles that K-Space groups might find frustrating, like the lack of a static map, local chat, or easy access to staging systems, are considered commonplace in J-Space and celebrated as part of its unique identity
• Wormholers generally reject opportunities to partake in bloc-level fleet content
• Many wormholers are former nullbois who didn’t like null and wanted to do something else
• Comparisons between WH groups and null blocs are considered unfavorable

TOTAL ASSET LOSS

• Significant part of the WH mentality centers around the potential total asset loss possible upon the destruction of citadels - since WH space does not have asset safety, any assets that are contained in a citadel will be ejected from the structure upon the structure’s destructions
• Players are innately aware that any assets they bring into a WH are inherently temporary, or as temporary as the players’ ability to protect them
• This is both a point of significant pride and severe anxiety for many groups
• Wormholers often consider J-Space the only space that experiences “true” loss and is therefore the only “true” EVE
• Threat of total asset loss leads wormholers to spend significant time building up home defense fleets to hand out to members and friends in the event of an eviction
• Wormholers are not able to ever dismiss attacks on their structures, as every structure-based engagement must be given their full attention, lest the engagement turn into an eviction that would forfeit their assets entirely
• For this reason, and for the lack of local/lots of cloaked ships, WH space has earned the moniker of “spooky space”

SUPERSTITIOUS BULLSHIT

• Wormholers are outlandishly superstitious
• Can be attributed to the randomly generated nature of the connections in J-Space, as well as some of the more arcane mechanics of the region
• Hole rolling has been one of the more opaque systems in the game, and is often difficult for new little wormholers without years of experience and familiarity

THE AFOREMENTIONED BLOOD CULT

• Because of the obscurity of these systems and the rabid nature of WH PVP, many wormholers still hold true to their belief in a divine power within Anoikis - that being the omnipresent, omnipotent entity “Bob”, that guides and protects all the good little wormholers, except for the ones who are naughty and don’t fight, upon whom Bob inflicts shit hole rolls or turbo feeds
• Some wormholers (though not a majority) will go so far as to make ritualistic sacrifices to Bob for good fortune, such as sacrificing ships on their undocks or leaving corpses at the sun

HARDSHIPS

05

Some things worth addressing

THREE PRIMARY

POINTS OF INTEREST

Marauders

J-Hubs

Capitals

Have consumed the PVP meta because they’re just better at everything than everything else

High Value, Low Stakes objectives for WH groups to fight over to kill the eviction meta

We need more of them because they’re fun to fly and they’re fun to shoot

MARAUDERS

• Marauders have supplanted much of the variation that used to exist in J-Space fleet comps by having near-dread DPS, near-dread EHP, and no 5-minute lockdown timer.
• They are the meta choice for basically everything, especially krabbing, where their presence as an invasive species has nearly resulted in the extinction of the ratting dreadnought in wormhole space
• I’ve bitched about this all week so I won’t belabor the point - kill the marauder plate/extender bonus and start there

J-HUBS

• Regardless of whether or not CCP ever intended capsuleers to be able to live in wormholes, that boat has sailed. Wormholers have been living in Anoikis for as long as wormholes have existed, and a rich and nuanced culture has flourished in that space
• J-Space is the greatest single example of emergent gameplay in EVE Online. CCP created a region of space intended to be inherently inhospitable to capsuleers, and the capsuleers said “fuck that” and lived there anyway
• Wormholers deserve the ability to plant their flag in their home system and “claim” it in some small way
• This is not an advocation of sovereignty mechanics in J-Space - I don’t want wormholers throwing eggs at my house. Instead it is an advocation of a system to provide high value, low stakes targets for groups to fight over instead of just shooting citadels for objective fights

wtf is a J-HUB?

• A structure, like an I-Hub in Sov Null, that can be anchored in wormhole space to provide passive benefits to the value of the hole that increase over time, while increasing in innate value to provide a juicy target for groups that would want to kill it
• Benefits could include increased ore anomaly spawns, increased gas site spawns, increased data/relic site spawns, etc.
• Groups that wish to invest heavily in heavy mining assets (like exhumer/rorqual fleets) to mine in J-Space would anchor an “ore J-Hub” that would increase the spawn rate of ore anomalies while decreasing the rate of combat anomaly spawns
• Initial benefits could be a relatively small percentage that increases significantly over the course of several months. At the highest end, the J-Hub would give much greater benefits and be an asset the locals would be willing to fight and defend

wtf is a J-HUB?

• At the same time, the structure itself would become more valuable over time to provide a legitimate target for aggressors
• I.e. the initial core for the structure costs 2b ISK, and increases by 1b ISK each time the benefits increase. At max level the core is now worth 10b isk, which is a lot for aggressor fleets
• Defenders would still want to defend the structure, as it’s worth even more to them in ore/gas/data/relic spawns (because they live there and have access to the increased spawns every day)
• Destroying the structure would cause disruptions to the local space - significantly decrease all anomaly spawns while significantly increasing roaming wormhole spawns, a considerable inconvenience to the locals, further incentivizing defense of the J-Hub

wtf is a J-HUB?

• Lastly, the J-Hub would allow wormhole groups to append the name of their system’s J-Tag
• Many groups “name” their home systems, but these are informal systems that mostly exist within 3rd party mapping software
• Having a way to self-identify a system using a J-Hub would provide groups with something to fight over that is a point of group pride - losing this J-Hub would be akin to a Roman Legion losing their Eagle Standard
• Other details to discuss later - this is a very loose framework of a system intended to give an alternative to just shooting citadels

CAPITALS

• Capitals are big targets that generally hold themselves down and are fun to pilot and fun to shoot
• FAXes were gimped by the Surgical Strike nerfs of ages past - the abundance of Bhaalgorns that exist in wormholes makes undocking a FAX a near certain expensive killmail for little benefit
• Allowing combat refitting for triage specifically would allow FAXes to manage their caps like the triage carriers of olde - dramatically raising the skill ceiling for good FAX pilots and letting triage toons have their time in the sun
• Reworking High-Class PVE sites to further incentivize dreads, carriers and FAXes as a mainstay instead of just swarms of marauders would provide big ole juicy targets worth killing again, instead of marauder fleets that - due to a lack of scram spreading by the rats - can generally escape scott free as long as they’re using even 2% of their brain
• This could also be done by outright removing HAW guns and adjusting how many Upgraded Avengers spawn with each new capital type warp-in
• Or idk any number of things
• CAPITALS ARE FUN AND GOOD AND WE SHOULD HAVE MORE OF THEM

IN CLOSING

• Wormhole space is a unique ecosystem full of some of the most bloodthirsty sociopaths I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing
• It’s very cool and if you’ve never gone out there you should
• If J-Space is healthy, EVE is healthy
• Idk I love wormholes
• Thanks for listening :)

JUST KIDDING,

PLEASE GIVE ME MORE ZIRN SKINS

• THE ZIRN IS THE BEST SHIP IN THE GAME
• WHAT THE FUCK GUYS
• THERE ARE ONLY 2 SKINS
• I KNOW YOU HAVE MORE BACK THERE
• GIVE THEM TO ME
• FUCK

• THIS IS LITERALLY IT
• JESUS CHRIST