Jambe's Wormhole Primer

Wormhole Essentials:

wormholes are transient paired objects which allow ships to jump between the systems in which they appear, like temporary stargates
all wormholes must be scanned down with probes (except for Unidentified aka Drifter wormholes, on which more further below)
all wormholes have the following four characteristics, browsable here (see whtype.info for a nice visualization):
1. they have a Type of one letter & three numbers, visible in space & on the overview, e.g. H296, N944, V898
  - one wormhole of a pair is always K162; the "true" non-K162 Type always occurs on the originating side
2. they disappear or "collapse" after EITHER their total throughput mass is met/exceeded OR their lifetime expires
3. they pass only certain hulls based PRECISELY on the Type's individual throughput mass & IMPRECISELY on its Size (Small, Medium, Large, or Very Large)
4. they always lead to 1 of 4 categories of space:
  1. Known Space i.e. KS - 5,201 stargate-connected systems of 3 categories: High-Security (HS), Low-Security (LS), and Null-Security (NS)
  2. J-Space i.e. JS - 2,603 systems beginning with "J" and only accessible via wormholes, further grouped into 3 categories:
    1. Main JS - 2,573 systems in six groups from Class 1 through C6
    2. Tripnulls - 25 systems accessible only to capsules, corvettes, shuttles, frigates, destroyers or specially-fit HICs. aka small ship shattered or C13 systems
    3. Drifter space - 5 systems reached by dangerous "Unidentified" wormholes (detailed at link)
  3. Pochven - a region of 27 systems with a blend of JS & NS characteristics, connected in a loop via a separate gate network
  4. Thera - a big system with many wormhole connections and stations with jump clone & home station functionality (its holes are publicly mapped by EVE-Scout)
    - note: Turnur, a KS system in Metropolis, became a mini-Thera in November of 2022 and is also mapped by EVE-Scout
all wormholes reveal the above characteristics via their visual appearance and/or Show Info windows, so you can know these things before jumping, even at a K162
- KS region destinations can be identified before jumping, too, if you can recognize skyboxes (more on this in the Visual appearance ID guide further below)
you can jump a particular wormhole only twice every five minutes. you're polarized with respect to a hole you can't jump through due to recent transits
unlike stargates & Ansiblexes, you can jump wormholes with a weapons (combat) timer
wormhole jump range is 5 km, double that of stargates & Ansiblexes
- since wormholes also have a 3 km radius, they can be entered from anywhere within a 16 km-wide sphere centered on their icons
  - this is a skosh over half the spawn radius of the smallest stargates, so wormholes are much easier to interdict (bubble) than gates are
    - that is to say, a bubble placed at zero on a wormhole will require considerably more burning to warp away than even the smallest stargates
~40% of JS systems have 1 of 6 system-wide effects which alter the performance of ships & modules (you can filter for these with anoik.is/systems)
if you're in JS and can't recognize the skybox, determine the class by clicking the system name in the top left
- the first letter of the Region name indicates the Class: A = C1, B = C2, C = C3, D = C4, E = C5, F = C6, H = C13/tripnull, K = Drifter/Uni

visual appearance ID guide (separate page) - note: the only thing you can't tell from visuals is if a hole to Empire is HS or LS (gotta use Show Info or Type knowledge or jump in))

Show Info (text-based) ID guide (click to show/hide)

note: two things you can't do with Show Info alone:
1. differentiate C1/C2/C3 or C4/C5 (however, C1/C2/C3 has a partial tell from KS, as explained below)
2. discern the exact region of KS holes (gotta learn skybox visuals or jump in)
right-click a wormhole and select Show Info. the top two sentences are irrelevant
1. the third sentence, beginning with, “This wormhole seems to lead", narrows down the hole's destination:
  - plain "unknown" space is class 1-3 JS, “dangerous unknown" is C4-5, and “deadly unknown" is C6
  - High/Low/Null Security is KS, "Triglavian" is Pochven and Thera is, yes, Thera
  - if you're not currently inside a C1, you can differentiate C1 from C2/3; if the last sentence says "up to medium ships" will fit, it's a C1
  - to suss C2 from C3 and C4 from C5 you must either learn to recognize the holes visually or jump in and manually check the region
2. the fourth sentence indicates a hole's remaining life:
  - "This wormhole has not yet begun its natural cycle..." = max life ("fresh")
  - "This wormhole is beginning to decay..." = between four hours and max life (also "fresh")
  - "This wormhole is reaching the end of its natural lifetime." = 0-4 hours ("EOL" i.e. "end-of-life")
3. the fifth indicates its remaining mass:
  - "This wormhole has not yet had its stability reduced..." = over 50% of mass remaining ("stable" or "healthy")
  - "This wormhole has had its stability reduced..." = 10-50% of mass remaining (“destab", "shrunk" or “first shrink")
  - "This wormhole has had its stability critically disrupted..." = under 10% of mass remaining ("crit")
4. the last sentence indicates what Size the hole is:
  - "Only the smallest..." = S: destroyers, ZPME HICs and smaller (these are often called “frigholes", somewhat confusingly)
  - "Up to medium..." = M: battlecruisers, industrials, Nestors with no onlined plates and smaller (no other battleships)
  - "Larger ships..." = L: all other battleships, Orcas, and smaller (one type of L—Pochven's C729 reverse-static—can also fit Bowheads)
  - "Very large..." = VL: either all ships ≤ freighters & jump freighters or all ships ≤ Rorquals/carriers/dreads/FAXes (the latter group includes the former)

Exploring/Scanning Best Practices (make these habitual):

ABC: Always Be Cloaked. if you don't need to be uncloaked, be cloaked
bookmark both sides of wormholes
understand and use DScan to reduce the likelihood of being caught unaware
- DScan is useful in all space, but especially in JS/Pochven/Thera where local chat only lists pilots if they send a message
recall your probes ASAP when done scanning (or move them far away from accessible parts of the solar system and Analyze to hide them)
- probes show up on DScan; they betray your presence

Supplemental Facts:

total and individual mass are not consistent within the four sizes. smalls are uniform in those stats; mediums, larges and XLs are not
C1, C2 and C3 are often referred to as lowclass whereas C5 and C6 are highclass. C4 is one of those two or neither, depending on who you ask
small holes have essentially infinite total mass; they only collapse when their life timers end
the mechanics of wormhole spawning are fairly-well understood
most holes respawn 60 seconds after collapsing. the few that don't are: the 6 static VLs in Turnur (15 minutes) and Drifters/Unis (~30 minutes; this is poorly-investigated)
wormholes can be either static, wandering, or reverse static
- statics respawn in the same system
- wanderers respawn in a different system
- note: certain wormhole Types can include both static and wandering wormholes, but specific individual wormholes out in space are never both
  - e.g. a C5 system might have a static H296 and a wandering H296 simultaneously; those two wormholes are are distinct, unique entities
    - the static H296 will respawn in the same system after collapsing whereas the wandering H296 will respawn in another C5
- reverse statics are covered here (they are all bound to either Pochven, Thera, or Turnur)
this is semantic fluff of little consequence: click to show/hide
- instead of JS or j-space, some people say WS or w-space, for wormhole space. some also say they "live in a wormhole" or suchlike
  - to me, this unnecessarily muddles two distinct concepts: star/solar systems and wormholes
    - every "place" in EVE (apart from Abyssal Deadspace) is a system, and no system is also a wormhole (a wormhole is a transient gatelike celestial object)
      as I said, this distinction is of essentially no practical consequence, but I nonetheless value precision & distinctness in language

Mapping Tools:

the three popular & actively-maintained wormhole mapping tools as of March 2024 are:
1. GalaxyFinder (proprietary)
2. Pathfinder (open-source; repository)
3. Tripwire (open-source; repository)
I prefer Tripwire because it's what I learned on, but GalaxyFinder is very slick
I won't tutorialize these, although I do offer some AHK scripts which make TW a bit faster to use

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