Sig sizes

I said I would do this for Sugar Kyle.

With CCP looking at giving more lowsec wandering wormholes, a few lowsec residents have said this will make it more clustered and messy to find exploration sites. I've posted a couple times to say its not that bad if you use the sig sizes or know about them and how to use them, you can scan for what you want alot faster.

The basics.

All signatures have a size, this determines how easy or hard they are to scan down. Size 10 being really easy size 1.25 being very hard.
By launching probes and having them all in the same place (preferably centred on the sun) you can get a relative strength of all sigs eg

A  2.2%
B  2.1%
C  1.5%
D  1.1%
E  1%
F  0.5%

The highest a sig can be in wormholes is a size 10 so most the time the highest % sig will be that (not always as you may not have one in system) but assuming the easiest is a size 10 you can work out what the other sig strenght are as they will be in the same ratio. the above list would be.

A  10
B  10
C  6.6
D  5
E  5
F  2.5

Now if you know what size sigs are. you can look for that size of a sig and ignore the rest

Here is the table for wormhole sig sizes. Now I live in a C6 static C6 our static is a size 6.6 so the sig C will be our static wormhole I can ignore all the rest just scan that signature to find our static.

Now I want to move a capital in from lowsec. checking the table I know C6 to null is a size 10 and C6 to lowsec is a size 5. So in this case I would scan sigs A, B, D, E once at 25% it will say if its a wormhole, If it is I'll scan it all the way down. I would also scan C my static and then do the same in my static looking for these sizes.

I want to gas mine for ISK  I know the sites I want are the Instrumental and the Vital these are size 2.5. So I'd quickly check what F is. If its not a gas site I would scan my static C, then do the same in the static checking all the 2.5 sigs.

Its worth noting here that a C6 to hisec is a 2.2 and will often look just like a 2.5. Its very hard to tell the difference.

Now this won't always tell you what each signature is, but it will allow
you to ignore stuff that definitely wont be what you are looking for.

Below is a screen shot of our static.

The top 5 sigs, 1.2% to 1% are all size 10. The 0.6% to 0.5% are all size 5 and the last ones at 0.3% are size 2.5. This wormhole has a static C5, which is a size 10, so to find that I'd just go scan the top 5 sigs on this screenshot.

Here  is the lowsec signature sizes. Its worth noting the easiest sig is a size 20 so if you do a quick scan of that sig to see if its a size 20 or 10 you can then work out the rest.

With one probe out I get the result below.

A  4.2%
B  2.1%
C  2%
D  1.1%
E  1%
F  0.5%

I scan A its a rogue trial yard which checking on the table is a size 20. I can now work out the sig sizes.

A  20
B  10
C  10
D  5
E  5
F  2.5

If I want to try and find 5/10 DED sites I know they are size 5 so I scan D and E.
If I want 6/10 I know they are 2.5 so I scan F.
If I want to find a wormhole to other lowsec areas for PvP I know its a size 10 so I scan B and C.

This can be done with core probes at 32 AU but its alot easier and more precise using a combat probe at 64 AU. Its easier in smaller systems if your in a huge system you may have a bit more trouble. This helps alot more as the number of signatures increase.

For people wanting to find stuff in nullsec here is the link to sig sizes.

On another note, had great fun on Down the Pipe podcast. That should be out in the next day or so. So I'd urge people to go give that a listen. I'll put a blog up when it comes out.