Kieselguhr Kid
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Posted - 2009.11.24 04:17:00 -
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This is going to take a little background. In early 2008, the devs released this blog. In that blog, CCP Greyscale, the man in charge of exploration, made the following post (excuse the terrible formatting):
Quote: CCP Greyscale
Quote: Originally by: Marlona SkyExploration: Is there a way to make exploration sites spawn at random times instead of just after down time? Really sucks big time for US time zone based players who get whats left over from the Euro time zone players.
Unless of course someone has told me a horrible lie about when the exploration sites are spawned...
I think someone's told you a horrible lie tbh... Downtime currently has no effect that I'm aware of on any aspect of the Exploration system*.
Nobody corrected Greyscale at the time because it wasn't in their best interest and before Apocrypha, probing mechanics sucked so much it was impossible to be sure. However, what Greyscale said was wrong. Non-wormhole exploration sites only respawn at downtime.
The following was a closely guarded secret for a long time, but Dominion is about to break the entire thing and, before it does that, I'm going to go public in a last ditch effort to stop it. Here's how 0.0 (no clue re: hisec) exploration really works:
-there are a set amount of each site in each "NPC area" (for example, all of Blood Raider space, including Delve, Querious, and PB. This may or may not also include lowsec; no idea.) For example, at the start of each day, D/Q/PB contains a total of 3 10/10 plexes, something like 8 total 6/10s - although some might be in lowsec so this number could be higher - and a truckload of Blood Raider Bases.
-when a site is run, it does not respawn until the following downtime. The only exceptions are wormholes, which do spawn throughout the day.
-if a site is not run in a given downtime, it stays around for another few DTs until finally vanishing ~96 hours later. This means that if no one ever jumps into a system to scan it for a few weeks while every other system in the region is regularly run, it's sure to contain a whole lot of sigs. My personal observed record was 22.
A few professional explorers know this; the rest probably assumed that when they ran sites, they would just respawn somewhere else. But the test to prove plexes do not respawn is very simple. Take a covops and scan down as many systems as you can at 8 AM EST; then scan them again at 8 PM. The only new sigs will be wormholes. I know of someone who has done this in over 100 systems with 0 new sites, so if sites are respawning in the middle of the day, they're doing it in Jove space.
So far, so good, but here's where Dominion screws things up. We've tested some of the outpost upgrades on SiSi and found out that the exploration "upgrade" does 1 of 2 things [we do not yet know which]:
1)It attracts every plex of a certain type in the game (for example, a 6/10) into an upgraded system;
2)It just continually spawns more plexes.
If it just keeps spawning plexes, the first part of this post doesn't matter, because every rifter in the game will be using Corpum A-Type hardeners in a year and the entire economy will blow up no matter what.
If it attracts 6/10's, any alliance that installs the pirate upgrades will be putting about 5b isk's worth of sites into one system. Remember, once run, plexes do not respawn until downtime, and they come up promptly at 7 AM EST, the start of Russian prime. If you are Russian, Dominion will be fantastic for you; if you are a US player, you can forget about running a valuable plex ever again. On the bright side, since players do not currently run 100% of possible plexes and the upgrades guarantee that they will, the economy will eventually explode anyway.
I hope all of you see why Dominion is going to drive 0.0 explo off a cliff. I'm hitting the char limit so I'll just stop here. Bye!~
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