Experiment Continues

We've had someone who has been opening our statics lately, up til yesterday. I saw a drake named "Drake and Bake" on directional while I was scanning, but then he disappeared when I brought all the mining ships home. Disappeared as in logged off. Scanned everywhere, found no other wormholes, or deep safes. Next day I found 21 jumps on Dotlan, and found our B274 high sec static open and it had apparently had alot of visitors. But no combat sites were ran. We've got a couple Zealots, a Deimos, and a Moros that are visible on directional, so most people jump right back out. I sure would.

So I took the Orca and closed the high sec, the class 1 static was also open. Orca got stuck outside, so I decided to wait til the next day to see what happened with the statics and wether or not I caught our visitor outside. Apparently not, because there were jumps on Dotlan the next day, so I checked the B274, and sure enough it was already decaying. So I brought the Orca back in, critted the hole with it, managing to keep it inside this time. I had to run off a Thrasher destroyer with my Pilgrim, I guess he didn't check the hole's info to see it was critical, but he ran pretty fast while I was neuting him.

Past two days, so far no jumps. Over the couple days we had someone opening our statics, we may or may not have spawned a Ladar, it might have been from the previous days downtime. Other than combat sites, we got nothing. We lost a mag site I assume he warped to. And a damn grav site. I guess this guy is griefing us for some reason or other. But we got no substantial spawns while the statics were open.

The previous two downtimes, with the statics closed, we spawned multiple ladars and a radar. I've seen alot of evidence so far that leaving your statics closed has a large factor in wether or not you have significant spawns during the time they are closed.

Anyone else out there reaching any conclusions about wormhole spawn rate?

Another Day

Well, I've been home sick for awhile now, had to actually go to the ER for the stomach flu. I was in so much stomach pain they gave me morphine for it, and it did absolutely nothing. Oh well, I needed the fluids.

So, that means I'm playing Eve. Yesterday I continued keeping my statics closed and ended up with a ladar to show for it. However, I did have a K162 probe in to us, so I scanned it down, and lo and behold we were 4 jumps from Jita! Thanks to whoever that was!

I took the opportunity (wow that's a terrible looking word!) to sell off the load of POS fuel I've been stocking up for just this eventuality. Took two Impels to carry it, worth over 400 mil. While in Jita, I was gazing at our Providence when I had an idea.

I decided to buy about 300 mil worth of pyerite, tritanium and mexallon, and trucked it the four jumps to where our wormhole entrance was. I then shuttled it all in via Impels and two max rigged Iteron Vs. Didn't take all that long and now I have alot of high sec minerals to work on my Rorqual with!

Took the Providence freighter back to Jita where it resides for just this sort of reason, and hopped back in. One jump in and out with the Orca and the hole closed.

So, the effect on my experiment of someone probing an exit in? One ladar site spawned. Alright, better than nothing spawning. But does that mean K162s don't count against the "wormhole open/nothing spawns/low spawns" theory? Or did I just happen to get one of the "once a week no matter what" spawns? Only time will tell.

I also took the time to log on my mining fleet consisting of seven Hulks, one Orca, and one Iteron V to take care of the Unexceptional grav site we had a "visitor" warp to and start. We had started it a few days back, but the server crash had reset it, so we got an extra 10k Arkonor out of the roid than we should have, which is sweet, but I wish the server had waited til a little later, say, after we had done ABCs, to crash!

This fleet took only an hour to reduce this site to floating Veldspar and a single Spodumain I plan on taking care of today.

Seriously though, nine accounts running on one computer is really all I can physically handle. Between moving ore, hitting D-Scan, and warping the Iteron back and forth from the can to the station, you have no time to even get a drink! It's nice to have actual humans to take care of some of that, a little less OMG OMG hurry up, efficiency!

I have to handle those four radars and the mag site today, they make me nervous not having them done, would hate for them to go into someone else's pockets.

Or I may take it easy and play something relaxing today. :)

Or maybe not.

Forgotten Heathen out!

Continuing Tests

Well, we've kept the statics closed for a few days now. Over that period of time, we've had three radars and a mag site spawn. That's fairly unusual for our hole.

Gone from 9 sigs to 12 in the past few days. Combats have spawned at a prodigous rate. Up to nine now.

I'll keep them closed as long as possible. I stockpiled ice product POS fuel for both POSes, so I can hold out. It'll depend on how patient I can keep my two other corpmates who are around.

Theory of Signature Spawning

So over the course of the last few months, I have noticed a trend. We're scanning our WH system every day, writing down what all the sigs are, and updated a MOTD in corpchat with them, so we have ready access to the number of sigs and what type were there the previous day.

I had mentioned in a previous post that we hadn't had a grav site spawn in months, and then all of a sudden, we had two. What I came up with as the common denominator was that both our statics were closed for three days. Now, I can't remember if we had any inbound K162s, but I'm positive we didn't exit our wormhole.

And in that time we had two gravimetric sites spawn. Coincidence? Mayhaps. I'm going to test the theory further in the coming weeks. This may not apply to all sig types, as it surely doesn't apply to combat site types.

Of course, it may not apply to any. Maybe this is what CCP meant by the spawn rate slowing down when people live inside a wormhole. If the door is open and people are coming and going everyday, maybe a very bare minimum spawns. But if you leave the door closed, there's a much higher chance.

Only time and a careful watch of all our sigs will tell. If anyone else has any theories, share them!

Common Perimeter Deposits

Cleared one over the weekend. It managed to spawn an awesome 75k spod, and I managed to mine it all out. No disturbances either. Nice and quiet.

Unfortunately, this was our last grav site, but a new one spawned today, Nick tells me. It's the first such spawn in weeks as we worked our way down. I hadn't intended to open the last grav, but we had a visitor who warped to it himself, so it was open anyhow.

Working on capital ship parts for the Rorqual. Got about 1/3rd of them done, going to buy about 90 mil tritanium and 30 mil pyerite next time we're near Jita.

Recycling Class 1s

Well, since we only have one grav site, no other wormhole to move to, I decided to start opening our class 1 static and start farming those.

We opened our first, ran a bunch of sites, and closed the hole. I had it down to a science.

Then after Incursion, I tried closing our B274 static high sec and it didn't close at 2 bil mass. Hmm, this was new to me. Did some searching and asked on the boards, and I guess there's always been a variance. Funny I have never ever seen it before. Very odd. The Orca is 250 mil, and 8 jumps and that b274 always closes, eve if only the Anathema, weighing in at only 1.1 million mass has jumped back and forth once. That means, up til this point, all my B274s have closed at 2.0002 bil mass. That's pretty much no variance at all.

But, the last few have varied wildly. Making it very hard to close the statics without getting someone stuck on the other side.

Anyhow, fast forward to us opening our Class 1 statics. I closed a few yesterday, and finally found a beauty. Thirty three combat sites, but almost empty of sigs. One radar, one mag site, one grav and no ladar. The Dotlan was completely clear.

Oh, it's a static nullsec. That's why. A Class 1 with a static nullsec. No ones gonna live in here. We had 16 hours to clean out the sites.

We did it in about five. 86 nanoribbons.

One of our static C1s had a high sec two jumps from Jita today. :)

Total haul in Jita today was 639 mil.

I'm closing a Class 1 static atm right now, I'm using three Retrievers fitted with warp stab, and two Impels. The static has a 500 mil mass limit. The Trievers are 20 mil, the Impels 19. All five together is 98 mil. I do them all twice, then two Retrievers back and through. That leaves me at 478.6 with a couple Anathema trips. Earlier today, I took three Retrievers through, came back, and still had to take a Retriever back through and had it close behind him. But I always probe down the static high sec before I chance that, and the Class 1 was actually three jumps from our Class 2 entrance....not much lost there.

Used a Pilgrim instead, 14 mil mass, ended up stuck too. 14 jumps back.

So, anyone out there want to share how they close class 1s now?

Whereon It Pays To Be Courteous

So we're down to one wormhole now, our Class 2 with Moros Dreadnought, or Zombieland, as I have termed it. We got sick of calling them C2-1 and C2-2, and mixing them up between us. So I called the one we live in now Zombieland, and Nick called the other C2, Pretoria. I think Johanesburg and a couple other South African cities were on the list. But anyhow, we are short one Pretoria.

Day had been going as any other, we ran down the combat sites, I opened our Class 1 static and found an unoccupied system. I jumped in my Zealot and Devoter and ran four of them, planned on coming back later. Did some PI, some fueling. Typical day.

Til later in the evening, I get a text from Nick says that there are structures in "Pretoria" that aren't ours. I jumped on vent and found out someone had put up a large POS in our system. Nick noted that this corp had tried to join our contact channel, but he was afk, so never responded.

So, we both get scanning, and the POS shield is up, and guns are being anchored. That's not so good. Nick runs down the corp with his awesome internet stalking skills and we find out the corp is made of 12 members, and Nick adds them all to his contact list, and finds only a few online.

Earlier in the day, I had actually thought about dropping this hole, in fact. It didn't spawn fast enough to even replenish what the wormhole vacationers took down, and I hadn't actually been looking forward to moving in once this hole ran dry. So we were presented with a couple choices.

Either we fight for the hole, or we pack it up and move out. We chose somewhere in between, and launched every character we had access to in whichever the most bad ass ships they could fly. Scanned down the exit, found only a drake watching it, and warped in my Zealot, the Devoter, an Onyx, a Dominix, an Armageddon fit for max DPS, and an Ishtar.

Somewhere in all this, they woke up to the fact that people were in system, and started talking with two characters. One didn't know very much about wormholes, or anything, really, and seemed to be in charge. She was to the point, and wanted to "be diplomatic". The second character was your atypical Eve pirate. Lots of "wure gunna buld 6 dreuds in thar and blows up ur PoS!"

After taking a look at all the characters, we noticed they were almost all, to the day, made back in May of this year. Hard to fly a dread and fight it well in that kind of time if they were doing any sort of other skills....so no, that threat wasn't going to work.

Somewhere in the posturing and "being diplomatic", our fleet arrived inside the wormhole and set up shop with a bubble. This really got their attention, and the bulldog dropped off the radar, no doubt soiling the radar as he fled. The "diplomat" then asked what we would like to do. I told her that since they had been "undiplomatic" by moving into an occupied wormhole, and assuming we were an industrial only corp, that we'd sit there til we managed to kill a few of their ships and pods as restitution. And then, if we wanted to, we'd sit inside and wait for their dreads to be built, all the while sniping and trapping them. Oh, and I was going to clear the hole of sigs, but I didn't mention that. These people didn't know much about wormholes, and I saved some backstabbing for later.

So she kept kindly asking us to move off the wormhole, to which we replied that that wasn't happening. I discussed it with Nick, and we said, okay, you give us the gun, and we'll give you the cornbread.

Wait, no, that's not it.

We demanded 100 mil to move away from the wormhole and to take our POS down. That didn't get mulled over very long before she countered with 50 mil. So these guys are broke from putting up this POS. Alright. So we agree. She then tries to get us to move away before she pays, for us to move out our POS before she pays, etc etc. She also says quite a few things that makes us realize she has no idea how long a POS takes to take apart.

Chock another one up for a noob corp. There's nothing bad about noob corps, sure, or noobs. We were all a noob at some point. But when you let a bulldog bark, you might want to make sure he can bite. And you probably shouldn't assume things in Eve, like what looks like a mining corp with mostly 3 year+ members can't fly nasty nasty ships. That puts you in a precarious position, one in which I think was that their scanner pilot was not inside the wormhole we were blockading, and she was starting to panic a bit.

But, that's what you get when you posture and bluster before you try the carrot.

So, eventually, she gets that we aren't going to move. "No wallet flashy", in fact. She ends up having to have some friend log in and send us the money. We were really shaking our heads at that. You shouldn't move into a wormhole unless you have plenty of capital to cover all your losses.

The money is sent, we head to our POS and start taking down modules. I sent Nyslia and Firt to get the Impels, and start hauling out the few ships we actually had in there, all while Nick kept watch on the hole from the outside.

At some point, a couple of spider tanking Dominixes show up, bluster outside the hole, and head inside. A Hyperion shows up....and fights one of his corpmates, showing Nick exactly how much DPS the BS is putting out. Sure, he could be trying to lull him into a flase sense of....skill superiority, but I highly doubt it. They start a discussion about ship fits, and all is peachy.

Then the wormhole goes to half mass, the "this wormhole has had it's mass disrupted". The couple of people we had been talking to either log or go afk, and we end up with an actual competent character. Sort of. He knows nothing about wormholes, and tell us that he needed to bring in his BSes before the wormhole collapses. We both kind of give a virtual grimace on vent, and inform him that there's half a bil of mass left, plenty of room for the BSes since our transports use up very little. Go ahead and pull em through, we tell him.

So we're done with modules, all the guns are in, and I pull the final fuel out of the POS and offline it. Nick waits at the POS for it to offline while I hop in the remaining Anathema. We then watch as the final corp member scans down our POS and comes in and uncloaks to bookmark it. And he waits.

Oh? Want a free POS huh?

So I drop my scanning probes.

And scan down and warp to every signature in system. Every Ladar, Gravimetric, Radar, and Combat. In a few days, every single site will despawn, and they will be left with a festering wasteland of nothing to do but a couple combat sites a day. I'm glad we got our money out of the system.

As a parting shot, I said "Enjoy the wormhole, it'll be great in about 3-5 days!" That got a response from the remaining corp member, who convoed me asking what that meant. Nick suggested I tell him something interesting, so I said you'll get a Class 6 wormhole every 3-5 days. The guy then asked if anyone lived in the C6. That threw me for a second, and then I had to tell myself he had no clue what he was talking about. I said no, no one lives in it, and if you make those six dreads you were talking about, you'll make tons of money. He said that they were planning on it, although, mind you, none were dread pilots. This guy was titled "Titan Pilot", however, and claimed to fly an Erebus. Yeah, right. So I ended the convo with "It's gonna be great in 3-5 days!"

So, in the end we were very happy with the outcome. Sure, I would have liked to catch a couple of their ships and blood them a bit, but we got what we wanted, and we promised them we'd get out of the system.

Everything else was just extra for being so courteous in dealing with us. Hopefully the next time someone tries that with us, it'll be in the system with the Moros in it.

Enjoy the wormhole Blood Legion, or whatever your WoW reference name was.

Taking Stock

Nick pointed out our corp asset page the other day, and it made me cringe. We have stuff spread out throughout the galaxy. Today is as good a day as any to go pick it up.

So I'm spending my day transporting things either to our wormhole or to Jita for sale. You really do accumulate stuff after living in Eve.\

Got another old corp member back in the wormhole yesterday. Will have to get him up to speed or he'll be getting acquainted to where his last clone is at.

Lost my Devoter to a radar site, too. Nick killed alot of combat sites, and I helped him with the last ones, then we went to radars. Three or four of them went fine, but something happened on the last one. Nyslia took alot of fire, and maybe we hit a trigger and there was just too much on her. I tried to warp, but no dice. She was also in the middle of a turn. She went poof and they started and almost got my Zealot, too.

Everytime I lose a ship I swear I'm going to mount Damage Control IIs instead of an extra Heat Sink.....so now I'm really doing it.

On the bright side, I'm picking up tons of PI material I left as our wormholes moved about!

Saying Goodbye to Class 1s.

Yesterday, we finally said goodbye to our low sec static Class 1. We had it listed with Raid'En, our trusted wormhole broker, for over a week, and no bites, so we decided we were done with the fueling runs through low sec.

It was a mostly uneventful op, with a small pirate corp attempting to catch our Impel at the last gate.(single point fit FTL) After screwing around with him and his obvious alts in local, we got on with the job. Using a Prorator, we lifted all our remaining guns and POS modules, then all the fuel and strontium, out into the local high sec area for retrieval later. All the while, the pirate and his alts obviously thought we were leaving through one of the two gates when we headed into the wormhole, since he manned them both instead of ratting like he had been when we arrived. /shrug. I guess it just proves you don't always have to be that intelligent to play EVE.

We self destructed the battleships, Hulks and Covetors, netting around 100 mil in insurance, and flew out all the stripped modules. After unanchoring the POS, we took one last look around. Only a single forgotten Mobile Warp Disruptor was all that proved anyone had ever lived here.

This hole was a fast site spawner, but it also proved to be a K162 magnet. This hole was responsible for more traffic, and more of our ship losses than I've sustained so far in Eve. I'll never bother living in a low sec static again unless it's purpose was to PvP. I don't care what everyone says, the low sec hole had more traffic than any of the high sec holes we've lived, or currently live in.

Not to mention that those who found our hole and came inside, were proportionally more experienced in PvP, and more bloodthirsty all around. Low sec, to me, means a higher percentage of prepared individuals or corps looking for killboard posts.

But, in the end, we came out WAY ahead in the ISK vs Loss ratio, and we are highly more experienced because of it. It may have cost alot of ships and ISK, but in the end, I'd say it was worth it.

But I'm still never living in a low sec static hole again. :)

Grav Site Spawn Rate?

So I was gone about a week from Eve, only logging in to change training or attempt to help fuel a POS or two. You would think in that time we'd get at least one gravimetric site to spawn.

I logged in and started some heavy mining with 8 accounts, 6 Hulks, 1 Iteron V, and an Orca boosting. Cleaned all the ABCs out of a field and found myself low on time, so I decided to scan out my system and count the remaining sites. My count came out one short. I showed four sites on my list, but only three in system.

So really, there hadn't been a grav site spawn since I pretty much bought the wormhole, over a month ago.

Sure, we haven't attempted to clear the hole out or anything, but I've been knocking a grav site or two off each week we've been living here. We've still got 12 or more ladar sites sitting there. Makes you wonder if there's some sort of site cap for the wormhole constellation you belong to, and if you let a large number of the other sites build up, sites of another kind won't spawn.

It's just a guess, and probably not even close, but no grav sites in over a month seems kind of odd. Guess I'll do some gas harvesting and see what happens there. I do always have a second C2 wormhole to exploit, so it's not a huge problem.

Lead Farmers Are Slow As Lead

I had a trap sprung on me today, to little effect to my side. Obvious trap was obvious, as they say.

I had a guy in a Helios come in just as I happened to warp to my B274 high sec static in a prorator, I was just checking to see if it was there. That could have went badly, and I guess it's a lesson learned that I actually didn't have to pay dearly for.

So I dropped and anchored two large modile warp disruptors on the hole and warped away.

So I engaged the Helios pilot in conversation, all he said was "oh hai". I told him that this wasn't a good wormhole to scan in, and to please vacate. I then checked his profile and noticed he had been a memeber of Eve University a few months prior. Being a former alumni, I told him that since he had beeen an Eve member, he was free to leave peacefully.

Two hours later, after leaving my few people logged in, so he must have assumed I was the only person logged on. I did some painting, cleaned the house, etc. I sat back down and noticed a Vexor on scan. I jumped in my new Pilgrim and headed over to the wormhole. Sure enough, the same guy was sitting there with Hammerhead IIs out.

Hmm. This smells funny.

So I headed back, popped into my Zealot, my Devoter, and my Myrmidon and warped over to the edge of the warp disruption field. I targetted him on all my characters and his response was to send his Hammerheads for me. Alright, game on I guess.

I settled in to a decent long range, barely inside the warp bubble, and quickly got the Vexor into armor, then a nudge into structure and he jumped out. Before he did, the WH pulsed and a Raven jumped in. Hmm, obvious trap is....small.

So I started to engage the Raven, while moving my ships back outside the range of the bubble.

The wormhole started pulsing like crazy with incoming ships. Yep, time to head out of here.

So I gang warped us away, with the Devoter slightly being warp scrammed, but either I slipped out of range or he was just too slow. Another Raven, an Armageddon, a Dominix, a Scorpion, an Abaddon, a Phobos, and the Vexor all jumped in. Not a single fast tackler amongst the fleet. Fail.

I quickly calculated their mass displacement, and a single jump home for all of them was all the WH had left after 861 mil mass had gone through it. I did log in every single combat character I had, including the Moros dreadnought, which was already out and on scan. I figured they were lingering around just to see if I came back(why in the hell would I?).

They destroyed both my large warp disruptors in a fit of rage and exited the wormhole. I had Gnicklas outside in the Impel, waiting to come back in, so I taunted them a bit about better luck next time, and headed back to my home, with a critical wormhole behind me that will keep out anyone else for it's lifetime.

Thanks Lead Farmers!

How Many Licks Does It Take To Get To The Center Of An Arkonor Asteroid?

So I've got a full fleet of six hulks out atm, all on an arkonor roid. I am boosted by an Orca with good skills, not perfect, so I'm at a 135 second cycle time.

So how many cycles to fill a can?

......

ONE!

That's right, one cycle produces 1693 Arkonor with Strip Miner 1s with a mostly perfect mining fleet. Orca is still sitting in the POS shield. I can barely keep up.

Wow.

Back On Track!

Whew, I can feel Evelife simmering down to a decent level now.

Back to mining, did another Grav site, this time an Ordinary Perimeter Deposit. Cleared all the ABCDGHH, and left it to check the next day. And it respawned.

The whole site.

???

Anyone ever had this happen before? I'm a bit confused as I was expecting one roid, and got the whole site back. I'm not going to complain, jumping in a Hulk now!

One thing I want to make perfectly clear if you want to be left alone in your wormhole to do your thing, and I've verified it numerous times now.

Static wormholes(non K162) do not open unless you warp to them!

This is, by far, the best way to give yourself a couple of days alone without interruption by combat probes. Sure, you'll get a K162 opening from anywhere every now and then, which is either random or certain wormhole clusters have certain timers, but by managing your statics you can make sure all that wormhole isk is going into your pocket, and not that gank lolz squad that came in from the high sec opening you scanned cause you needed a skillbook. Don't open that static unless you need it.

So due to proper static management, I've managed a few days of unmolested mining, and last night, Nick blasted through over half our combat sites and cleared 50 nanoribbons, for a profit of over 300 mil! WOOT GO NICK! Coupled with the minerals I have sitting here waiting to go out, we have 500 mil awaiting Jita.

But I've got three days more on my lowest POS fuel, so I'm going to sit on it unless another POS starts screaming. It'll give me more time to mine without an over abundance of fear of combat probes.

Of course, I'm still scanning, there are still Russians out there.

Forgotten Heathen Out!

YAY Sweet Arkonor How I Missed You!

So back to mining! Taking in all the costly lessons I've learned the past while, my mining set up looks like this now.

One Orca as Wing Commander, boosting from POS.

One Armageddon as Squad Commander or in similarly scary ship

Four Hulks with shield tanks. Numerous Mining Drones.

One Iteron V flying back and forth constantly.

With this setup I cleared a Class 2 Common Perimeter Deposit of everything except high sec ores in two hours. My refinery is happily chewing away at it, and the minerals are piling up.This will be the first serious isk we've gotten out of the Class 2s so far.

Selling my Class 1 plus Orca for 400 mil. It's going to a fellow miner/industrialist, so I'm glad they'll get lots of use out of it! Hopefully this deal goes off better than my last one did!

Still doing a bit of the fueling dance, but hopefully I'll get rid of the low sec hole as well and be down to two holes again. Oh I long for those days when I thought I had it bad fueling only two POSes in two holes!

Sounds like rain at the window, better check all the windows.

Forgotten Heathen out!

Dude, Where's My POS Shield!?!

So I've been in the process of moving alot of my acquired gear out of the class 1 WH with a static low sec, and there's been ALOT of runing around fueling POSes. I haven't had a chance to mine to raise some much needed cash, so running combat sites to keep up is all I can do. Suffice to say, with four Large POSes, I'm falling behind. So fuel messages are nothing new.

But I've kept up on them and check in on each everyday to make sure I'm not missing anything. While I was heading to fuel the first Class 2, I get the following message.

"Your POS in JXXXXXX is under attack!"

Hmm, how interesting. That's my Class 1 with high sec static. So I logged in the caretaker scanner alt and found a solo Gila shooting at the POS. Alright, this won't last long......as I realized in horror that there was no shimmer POS shield between me and the attacker. I was too surprised that I actually checked the fuel bay to see what was missing. No Mechanical Parts.

Whoops, I'm being targetted. Oh yeah. So I warped off and started scanning down my static high sec. Within a minute I had a WH on scan, and warping to it....discovered a Dangerous Dead Wormhole.....hmm that's not it. The attacking pilot must be from there.

So I scan again. Yet another K162. Wtf. Another K162. Holy crap, my wormhole has been the go to location for wormhole vacations and I didn't know it! Next hole..a low sec. With MY Orca sitting next to it. Crap. That means she's blown my ship array. Great. And she can happen to fly an Orca.

Seriously. I get a pirate that can fly an Orca.

At least she's a boneheaded pirate who doesn't understand the concept of wormhole mass limitations.

About this time I see more of our ships appear on scan, and somewhere in between me scaning, she leaves in the Gila and uses my own corp's Drake to destroy the rest of the arrays.

Finally, I get the high sec static, and our corp fleet consisting of my Zealot, a Devoter and Nick in a Malediction get moving the 15 jumps. I notice a Bestower moving on directional, so she's hauling stuff out. /sigh.

We finally get there and warp to POS. If my Devoter pilot had finished the training for the Warp Field Generator, I would have sent her to the wormhole to catch her as she ran, but alas, she's a few days away yet.

We arrive at the POS to catch her and scram her in one of our own Bestowers. She won't eject, so we have to destroy it, and can't catch the pod. She heads out to low sec and never returns, and we camp her in a station for awhile.

We then spend the next few hours taking apart what's left of the station and getting our Orca pilot here and ferry lots of stuff out through the high sec static.

And then we realize, we never got any fuel warnings for this POS. We backtrack and yes, there's no warnings at all from this POS. Nick petitions and a GM says, yes, this is viable for reimbursement! I decide to not get excited and assume the worst.

We start mentally ticking off what we lost in the ship array, as there wasn't much more than some modules in the corp arrays. An Impel, a Malediction, a Retribution, two Harbingers, numerous rigged Itty 5s, Bestowers, an Anathema, and a Helios.

Oh, and five hulks and four Covetors.

Ouch.

So everything gets packed up except the tower, which gets offlined after we re-onlined it. We can't fit anything else in the Orca, and it's way time for bed.

Fast forward to next day. We head over with an array of industrials and clean out the Orca, get the POS unanchored, and leave the Orca and a scanning alt inside, list the WH with our trusted WH seller, and critical the wormhole so no one else decides to check it out.

We were literally beating people away from the hole, and were repeatadly asked if we were putting a POS up or taking it down. Of course, the answer was always "Putting it up." There was even a russian I had to run through a translator to respond that "Yes, this is our system." The couple of T2 ships and the POS still up at the time convinced people to stay out.

About 3am last night, I get a text message from Nick. We're being reimbursed for everything we lose due to the bug in the POS fuel reporting. Holy crap. Whew. They are sending it all to Jita for us. Great.

Log in next day, Nick is already checking it over, and we discover nothing that was ejected from any of the destroyed arrays was reimbursed. That's kind of crappy, as it never would have been destroyed had the bug not occured......but then Nick makes a huge discovery.

Remember those FIVE Hulks? Yep, they're in a ship array in Jita. Wow. They shouldn't have fit out through the class 1 wormhole. I'll take that over all the other stuff we lost! No complaints here anymore. I fly the Providence to Jita, then over to where our current new C2 is open to, fly the arrays in, anchor them, and we're in business with six Hulks in system plus our other Orca!

So, what looked like a terrible Eve occurance turned around thanks to the GMs actually being very helpful!

Sometimes you gotta wonder, what the heck is gonna happen tomorrow?

Forgotten Heathen out!



So I warped off and started to scan down the exit.

That Did Not Go As Planned....

So the seller of the class 2, let's call him Slim, finally paid enough attention to our chat window that he got online long enough to try our transaction. Up til this point I thought I had a good rapport going with him. I borrowed some isk from my corpmate, Thomas, to purchase the fighters with the carrier. The transaction came out to be 1.7 billion isk for the wormhole, carrier, dreadnought and POS.

So I managed to secure another third party for the transaction. Slim sent me a pack of bookmarks and I headed there with the corp capital ship alt. I arrived with a Small Amarr POS which I started setting up immediately. Slim started taking down his POS and let me drop the Moros in my force field. I noticed immediately that the alt couldn't shoot any of the guns and mentioned that the alt was only skilled enough to sit in the ship, and actually switched the alt's training so that he could at least fire the dread's guns in the future.

Everything else went fairly smoothly as we moved ships and POS modules, until we hit a speedbump. One of the POS guns wouldn't unanchor. Slim said it was due to a bug in that the crystal wouldn't come out. I was slightly suspicious, but like I said, I had a decent rapport with this guy, so we just went on.

Then the 3rd party said he had to log off. From here things went downhill.

It's no fault of the 3rd party, he said that we should send him an email to let him know the transaction was finished and he would then release the funds. Being the nice guy I am, I told him to go ahead and release the funds, as I had control of both capital ships at the time and was satisified with the transaction. The 3rd party actually cautioned me against this, but I went ahead and had him release the funds anyhow.

So fast forward an hour later when Slim tries to unanchor the POS. He can't do it because of the gun. He asks me to bring the carrier over and help kill it. Sure, I had no problem helping him out. I stress that I was helping him, because this is what came back to bite me in the ass. My helpful nature. It was not my responsibility to help him do anything.

So with him in a Deimos and my cap alt in the Thanatos carrier, we get the gun into structure, and then it just stops taking damage pretty much. I guess POS guns are practically invulnerable in structure to Fighters and Railguns. So SLim says to go get the Moros.

I fly off to my POS to get the Dread, when he mentions that he'll need the carrier there too to online the fittings that went offline when I put the alt in it. So at this point he is ackwoledging that modules are offline due to the alt not being able to fly them. This is important for later accusations.

So of course, I say sure, and start warping back with the carrier, actually planning on leaving the carrier there, going back to get the Dread, and hoping back in the carrier. Yeah, I'm that trusting. He could have used the dread to blow my POS to smithereens.

So on the way back in warp with the carrier he says "TENGU!" in our chat. I'm already in warp, nothing to be done about it. I land and launch as many fighters as I can, which is 8. I start in one a Hurricane and take it's shields down quickly. Now remember, this is my first time even sitting in a carrier, let alone fighting anything, let alone PvP! The Hurricane warps off with my fighters chasing it in warp. The Tengu kills Slim and Slim's alt and warp scrams me as I'm trying to align for warp.

I call back my fighters, and two Curses arrive and start neuting me. I look down and read chat. Slim tells me to turn on one cap armor repper and log off. That's it. That's all he tells me. One armor repper and log off.

So instead of trying to fight to get out of scramming, I follow his advice and log off. Slim says I'll be fine, the carrier can tank these guys fine. Okay.

Five minutes later there's a Gallente Elite Carrier wreck. So what happened? He asks me if all the modules were online. I say no, of course they weren't, the alt didn't have the skills. So I send him the killmail because he can't understand why the carrier died. Slim says he'll see what he can do about restitution and he logs off and I wait to see if the gang attacks my small POS or tries to put up their own. They laugh about the kill in local and that's all that happens. Standard Eve practice.

I log in the next day, Slim convos me. He then proceeds to tell me the carrier dying was my fault. I told him he knew the alt could only sit in the capitals, and couldn't fight them. He then claimed that I had actually taken modules off the carrier. And that's why the carrier got killed.

I was pretty stunned and I was mad. I mentioned that he had been the one who told me to leave only he cap armor repper going and log off! I even asked him again if he meant only the one armor repper when I logged the alt off!!

So he took no responsibility for what happened. Sure, the gang was probably not a bunch of mercs he hired to get a kill and some of the modules back from the caps. He had been pressuring me pretty good about paying extra for all the stuff, and I relented on the fighters, having to borrow money against a corpmate for them. He said he wanted another 100 for some faction modules, which he then said he'd throw in for free. There were no faction modules on either cap ship that I saw.

And it just so happened that one gun needed both the capitals there to kill to unanchor the POS.

Honestly, no, I don't think he orchestrated the whole thing and it turns out to just be a fluke of Eve. A random event that makes you think something else entirely is going on.

So after the arguement about him not taking any responsibility for the carrier loss, I said, forget about the carrier. There's a large POS that I need unanchored, that I paid for. And I would hate to have to post that it looked like he hired a bunch of mercs to get capital ship modules back. He then decided that our business was concluded because I got my money's worth out of just having the dreadnought.

So there's probably an alt of his logged off in here, and someday I can assume that his POS is going online unless I get some combat ships in here to take it down.

So much for any honesty in eve. Again, yet another expensive lesson I learn from Eve; never ever trust anyone. Ever.

And when you do wormhole transfers, if you buy a POS or anything, let them do all the work so they are responsible. It's the seller's responsibility to see that you get everything you paid for in the agreement. And always listen to the 3rd party and his suggestions. It could have saved me alot of money and alot of grief.

Thanks Slim, for griefing me. I guess you showed me.

Waiting Game

Well, after a week and a half of getting the asking price, the person I am buying the Class 2 off of sat ingame while I and my 3rd party tried to get him to respond. For two hours. Oh well.

He messages me later and tells me he can't do the transfer today. I had already scanned down my WH exits for the people I needed to help with the transaction, and I was out all day today, so it's scheduled for Monday.

Looking forward to consolidating everything down to a couple wormholes, then I won't be running around fueling POSes so much! So here's hoping the deal goes through tomorrow.

Forgotten Heathen Out.

In Which We Need A Cap Pilot ASAP!

So we've been in discussions with another corp to purchase their wormhole, including a Thanatos carrier and Moros Dreadnought. Well, I obviously wasn't thinking ahead enough: we need a cap pilot for the transfer!

For some reason I thought the ship could just be left in a POS Ship Maintenence Array and we could anchor our POS around it, but that's silly, we couldn't open the array except to blow it up! So I started freaking out, and contacted a number of cap third party pilots, and quizzed my corpmates if they knew someone who could fly said capital ships.

Lo and behold, Thomas, our third corp member, has been training an alt of his just for Gallente cap ships. Whew. All he needs is the Cap Ships and Gal Dread skills...ouch. That set us back 450 mil, so we'll have to make that up on our goal to 1.5 bil for the hole.

So with that crisis averted, I switched to our other new C2 and started farming with my Zealot, Nick's Zealot, and my alt in a Devoter.

And then I got the Zealot destroyed. Whoops.

I guess I had my music up too loud, and he either got caught on something and that killed his speedtank, or he just was head-on with the BS I was fighting. I tried to warp him out as soon as I noticed he was about to go into hull. No dice.

Oh well, I'll replace that later, I have a spare in the other C1. He has all the skills to fly the Abaddon that's in here, so I'll stick him in that for now.

The melted nano drop has been wretched the past couple of days, but I guess I've been spoiled. Only about 100 mil worth per day the last couple, with lots of dry sites. I'm also impatient,I must say, trying to get the cash together for our next major corp purchase.

Looking into T3 ship production next, so throw any ideas out on that, if anyone is actually reading. Thanks if you are!

Forgotten Heathen Out!

Vacation and Empty Wormholes

Well, I recently made a 8 hour trip to see a friend of mine who lives in Europe who is visiting the states, leave my three wormholes mostly un-attended since my corpmates log in nowhere near as much as me or as they used to. So fueled them up and headed out.

While at the hotel, I checked the DOTLAN on them, and found a Ship kill and over 70 sleeper kills! What in the heck had occured? A Russian fleet invasion, another Hulk loss?

I got home the next day and found out we had a high sec opening into our low sec static wormhole. It opened into Dodixie, of all places. There were even Sleeper Wrecks and cargo containers on my scan. WTF.

So, in the end, we'll probably never know what happened. A huge influx of carebears and pirate oppurtunists came in and cleaned us out, and some of them got cleaned out on their way, it seems.

And the floating BSes and HACs didn't seem to disturb any of them, if they even bothered to hit scan.

Sheesh.

Forgotten Heathen Out.

New C2-S

Well, we went and bought a new Class 2 wormhole with Static High Sec and Static C2. We paid 300 million isk for it and I've already made most of it back in doing the combat sites. This is the wormhole we always wanted. Easy to get to high sec, a standby hole to do other sites when ours run low, and all POS fuels in one WH. What a great place to move on to from our low sec static class 1 where all my grief seems to come from.

And then a new Class 2 comes on the market. Static high sec, no static to another wormhole, which we can live without since it does bring in more unwanted guests. The PI in it is a ton better, with 4 P4 products, 15 P3s, and all the POS fuels, of course.

So what's so great about this hole that is has me writing a blog about it?

It's my dream wormhole.

Interred inside this Class 2 are a Thanatos Carrier AND a Moros Dreadnought.

But, you might say, Forgotten, isn't that overkill?

My response is: HELL YES IT IS!! Only the most dedicated Russian fleet is going to dig you out of this wormhole kicking and screaming. And they're going to take some damage as well.

And the asking price is dirt cheap, pretty much mineral cost. Throw in the large POS they are using along with a months worth of fuel? I'm sold.

Just got to work my butt off for the next week or so to meet their asking price. After that we'll probably be moving completely out of the C1s and into the C2s only.

Moving on up!

Forgotten Heathen Out!

Ouch

So.....when you don't respect the wormhole, it bites you. Hard.

I was mining with four hulks, two covetors and a boosting battlecruiser. I made the mistake of leaving the squad commander at the POS while he was boosting. BIG mistake.

I was hitting Scan, but as told in many wormhole horror stories, someone slipped in between them. I was outfitting ships or moving the hauler back and forth. My attention was not fully focused on the wormhole, and it taught me a lesson I thought I had known.

Obviously I had forgotten.

The first notion I had something was wrong was when something moved up my overview, denoting something closing the distance on me. Focusing on it I saw a yellow highlighted name. I believe the words "Oh no, shit shit shit, oh no no no!" came out of my mouth repeatadly.

I began switching screens, hitting warp. I managed to get two ships free, but four ships, three hulks and a Covetor got caught and destroyed by a Russian gang that only wanted passage to low sec. On top of that, their extremely fast targetting Arazu caught all the pods. So all four of my characters were podkilled.

And then they asked where the low sec exit was.

"Gee, I can scan it down for you." I said, hoping to lure them into some sort of trap I could prevail against a Broadsword, Arazu and a Drake. One of my corp mates logged in and they didn't take the bait, so we spent the next hour sneaking Retrievers back the way they had come. It was fairly obvious they were making some sort of kspace run. We finally managed to pop their C5 entrance back from whence they came, at least adding some grief for the huge amount they had visited upon us.

A Gallenete shuttle kept trying to give a Drake a can, what we assume was for a wormhole bookmark, and Gnicklas kept torpedoing it with our Purifier stealth bomber. We sure got a kick out of that. But it was little consolation.

In the end, they shot all the wrecks and destroyed all my jet cans of ore.

It made me think of something a friend of mine said when I told him about the game.

"They should just call that game BASTARDS!"

So true.

In the future, we're currently moving into a new Class 2 wormhole. Adventures in it to come soon!

First Ship Loss

Well, I had my first ship losses today: two Retrievers. Not that much of a loss, considering I almost lost a pod.

I had a group from a Class 2 adjacent come in and start running a combat site while I was at one in my Zealot and my new Devoter. I started talking to them in local, and they said they were heading out since it was occupied, which I knew that was bullshit, since they had to have seen my POS. But they were on their way. Or so I thought.

I located the wormhole entrance they had come from, and put two retrievers through it while I watched it with my Cov Ops. As soon as I entered, all their ships showed back up on my side. They started smacktalking, which I'm still not sure why. But who knows why in Eve. They proceeded to close their wormhole. I was then aghast to realize the hole was End of Life anyhow. What a mistake I had made!

So I tried to get the two retrievers back through, but they put up a warp bubble on their side and trapped the retrievers in it. A Purifier then proceeded to slowly destroy one, then attempt to kill the pod. He got close, but I got through because I didn't lose my head. Pod escaped the other side as well.

My other Retriever went through to be shot to hell, and I was slow to get the pod moving, but got it out anyhow.

So more smacktalk ensued, of course, none of it making much sense. I realized then that English was not the primary language of some of them, and one of them told me he hoped I learned my lesson.

I'm a bit confused by this, of course. Did they think I was mining in their system with two retrievers? I mean, they were pretty newbish, and only one of their characters had over a year ingaame, but honestly, what did they think I was doing other than trying to close their hole?

Oh well, I'm going to replace the Retrievers with a couple Hulks anyhow since I have the new Dead Cat, Needs Home. Got to also go salvage the wrecks they left behind....they were in an awful hurry to get out of there for the huge amount of smacktalk they were doing.

But that's Eve!

On my way to Jita now to dump 100 mil worth of Melted Nanos and other parts!

Forgotten Heathen Out!

Experiment Successful and Surprise!

So there's a day left on the fuel in my Class 2 Amarr Small Control tower. Yesterday I cashed in everything I had earned so far......and made 251 mil! 50 million into the profit margin! Woohoo!

Today I came up with another 100 mil or so in more loot, so no complaints about this hole atm. I'm calling this experiment successful.

We had two surprises in our wormholes happen yesterday. First was the ambush and subsequent destruction of Nick's Damnation, the first ship we've lost since we began our wormhole endeavor.

Nick noticed three Buzzards scanning in our hole, scanned down the wormhole they came from, and headed over in the Damnation to see about getting it to critical. On his flight there, he saw a Legion on his directional, and as soon as he landed, he tried to get back to the POS. No dice, and 13 ships uncloaked and smashed him. Apparently they had actually been lying in wait for him, and the scanners were bait? It was a strange situation. They had Prototype cloak fitted Harbingers for heaven's sake.

That's an awful lot of trouble to go through to just get a Damnation kill, but they didn't do any of ours sites, and the hole closed with no further encounters. Nick picked up a Sacrilege to replace the Damnation, so he'll work with that for now.

The second interesting set of texts I received from Nick while at work begain like this.

Nick: There's an Orca in the high sec hole(meaning the high sec static hole)
Me: WHAT? How? How did it get there???
Nick:Don't know, I have to get combat scanners to find it.
Me: Is there a POS set up?
Nick:No new POSes in system.

As I completely wracked my brain to figure out where he came from, Nick texted "There's a corpse next to it, the Orca is named "Dead Cat: Needs Home".

Yeah, that sounds like he was stuck. He probably missed us being logged in by a couple hours, even half an hour.

On my way out of work, it hit me how I thought he was there. My hypothesis was that he belonged to the corp that we had bought the wormhole form, but he hadn't been logged in since we had bought it, and he had been forgotten. Because there's no way to fly an Orca into a Class 1 wormhole, it had to have been built there.

So we pulled our new found Orca into our POS, and today the frozen corpse logged on.

Upon being asked if he had lost a dead cat, he explained what had happened.

Turns out he had been with a group of people that had found an abandoned POS in the wormhole we now inhabit. In this POS was an Orca that this group of friends had asked him to come fly out of the wormhole. Well, those of us that live in wormholes know there's no way out. So this guy logged out six months ago, thinking he'd get back to this character holding onto this wealth. He logs in six months later, can't find a way out, and decides to call it time to head to the next clone.

And we got a free Orca out of the deal!

Only in Eve would you find a crazy story like this.

Forgotten Heathen Out.

Fluctuating Coolant and Class 2s No One Wants

Well, had a really busy week around the house, so alot less Eve playing.

Got back in and found the price of coolant has dropped significantly, so the whole coolant run is mostly over. We're continuing to produce for whatever we can get for it.

we had a Class 2 WH entrance open up the other day and lo and behold, it was empty! I and Nick headed in and scanned it all down, and found a SECOND unoccupied Class 2 wormhole. The first WH had a static high sec, and the second one had a static low sec and class 2. The second one also had 18 combat sites. So I decided to try an experiment.

I spent 200 mil on ships and a small POS, ship maint, and corp array. I bought a Harbinger, salvage dessie, and a hauler.

I didn't want to risk too much, so I brought along a week worth of fuel to see if I could recoup my investment in that time on the combat sites. So far I've been a bit frustrated by how random the salvage actually is, since melted nanos are about the only thing worth any actual money anymore.

I'm Salvaging 5, using Salvager IIs, with three small salvage tackle rigs. I've killed 30+ ships in one site, gotten 2 nanos. I know it shouldn't be really super easy, but these sites are also kicking my ass alot of times. I'm going with an Omni tanked, 70s in every resist, dual armor repped, focused medium beams Harbinger. It's what I'm trained for, so it's what I use. But after reading for better fits, it seems I really already have the best wormhole harby fit.

I don't understand the disparity that Eve allows in alot of the racial ship differences. A armor tanked Harbinger cannot touch the resilience of a shield tanked Drake to solo wormholes. It's along the same lines as the Iteron V can carry as much as a T2 Impel.

Oh well, still having fun in wormholes.

Frustrations and Profit!

Well, we managed to finally get a decent low sec hole open that we could escape with our loot. After the nanoribbons, zydrine, megacyte, and all the other sleeper stuff, we netted over 800 mil! This brought us back up to our starting total, so we've paid off our investment! Everything from here on out is profit!

This is all well and good, but our second wormhole has slowed the spawn rate severely. Coupled with people having jumped to a number of my grav sigs for probably no good reason other than to be assholes and make them despawn, we're left with yet another wormhole short on signatures.

We've kept a decent watch over our high sec static wormhole, and I was excited to find 12 combat sites! I told Nick about it, and checked DOTlan, and no jumps or NPC kills. Fast forward two days, and 12 hours ago someone cleared every single one of them, including a Radar site.

Huge bummer at a time where we're looking for stuff to do. Oh well. We're trying to get some PI going to make sure we're only buying ice products, espicially since the price of coolant just went through the roof! It's selling for 20k or more most places! See if I can't get in on this inflation.

Forgotten Heathen Out.

Profit, but no exit.

Well, I've had alot of peace and quiet lately since I read about a theory concerning your wormhole exits. That theory is that if you don't warp to them, they won't actually open to the outside. Of course, this doesn't take two things into account. One, that people can open entrances on their own by scanning. And two, you can't know which WH is your static, and which is a wormhole with tech 2 cruisers spilling out of it.

But, I've bookmarked a single wormhole for the past five days, and it's stayed right where it started, and it's the only one, so I know it's my static low sec WH.

I went ahead and warped to it yesterday, hoping to have a few jumps to some trade hub, since I'm sitting on a growing pile of 600 mil worth of minerals. No dice, over 30 jumps to any trade hub. So I ran Retrievers through it til it went critical. No one has come through since.

One thing to note that is in favor of the "warp to" theory, when I did warp to the hole, it was still "will not last another day", which is what this static starts at. So it seems that WHs only start their life cycles when someone warps onto the grid with them. Five days of watching it on a scanner almost prove this. I'll be keeping track of the next one I leave alone.

So more mining. I was always so engrossed with the more profitable ABC ores(Arkonor, Bistot, Crokite) that I didn't notice that the high sec ores are severely under-represented. To the point that building battleships, as is our goal, is almost impossible. Veldspar roids are only in the 200k, at most, and far apart. I've got 350k zydrine, but only 5 mil in trit. Enough for one BS, and some of that was trucked in.

So I'm wasting time mining out the high sec ores, really. I've decided my time is better spent getting the more expensive ores, and buying and hauling the other materials I need, although having only a static low sec restricts my hauling to our blockade runners, or scouting. Which, as my previous Impel loss points out, is not fool proof.

Oh well, good with bad in wormholes.

Forgotten Heathen Out.

Nudists Move In

Well, today was a good and bad day for us in the wormhole.

I had a great start on mining today, finishing ABCs on one field and starting on the rest since I'm going to be manufacturing Battleships, even more so now.

I almost filled the corp array and had to online the second one I put up, but I was rudely interrupted by some Sisters scanner probes on my directional. I packed up and headed to the POS to see what was going on.

So, I started scanning and trying to chat with the newcomers in local, but to no avail. All my talking was ignored as they blissfully scanned. I ended up scanning down our new Low sec static, and found a stealth bomber at it. So I guessed that they had been looking for an exit. So they must be from another wormhole. I scanned it down, and found a Loki, a Cormorant, and a Manticore.

Hmm, two stealth bombers, not exactly what you use to run sites or make a run into empire.....my hunches proved right when I jumped into their system to find more ships waiting, with a mobile warp disruptor. It really is time for us to pick some of those up...

I jumped back into our wormhole and they attempted to lock me, but I cloaked first. They then proceeded to run almost all of our combat sites....

Luckily, Nick did half of them last night, netting us 44 melted nanoribbons which I had already been to Jita to sell, leaving the corp wallet back up near half a bil. Woot. But I digress.

There ended up being seven active ships and two stealth bombers guarding our exits, which left my only travel to cloakers.

I managed to get a Retriever in under their noses as they did the combat sites, and ran down their mass allowance a little, but it was 500 mil, which is a tough job for a lone retriever, and they chased Nyslia off anyway, but I was warp stabbed.

I decided to head to Jita to do some more shopping for a more PvP appropriate ship, coming back with a Retribution, and finding a massive battleship fleet PLUS a carrier guarding the gate into our low sec system. I waited patiently, which they were not, and when I saw them jumping on the cloaker, I undocked and flew through right under their noses as they jumped the wrong way.

Heading back in, the stealth bomber there decided he didn't want any of the Retribution, and I logged off at the POS for awhile.

Upon returning an hour or so later, I found no one but my corp in the hole, so I quickly reconned the other side of the hole and found it quiet. I brought the Retriever back and quickly jumped it through a couple times, and it was already at "Has had", and jumped my battlecruiser as well. An Osprey arrived and jumped through, saw what he was chasing, and headed back home. One more jump in the Retriever and the hole went critical....and an enemy jumped in behind me! I was praying for the hole to close on him so I could pummel him to death for their insolence, but no dice. He jumped back through, and the hole sits at critical now.

I'm feeling like I broke even today with the ore and salvage haul, but then with these jackasses poaching in our wormhole.No one has any honor in Eve, and I need to get used to it. I didn't lose any ships today, and that's a good day.

Forgotten Heathen Out.

Much Ado About Scanners

Well, I was all nice and happy mining away on rich roids yesterday when five Sisters probes popped onto my Directional. So got everyone safe to the POS, got out my combat ships and both of us scanned with combat probes...and got nothing. He was in a cloaked Buzzard. We finally managed to catch sight of him and Nick correctly concluded he was German and said "Guten tag" in local.

This got a reaction from the prober, who convoed him,(he wouldn't talk in local, he said later, as I had tried to speak to him in English). Nick used Google translator and got that he was from a wormhole next door, so we hurridly scanned down his WH exit. It ended up being a Class 4 with a Carrier and active pilots. This did not look good.

The pilot kept claiming he was "practicing" on probing out all our sites, as we could see the probes moving about on our directional but there was nothing we could do about it. Sure you are buddy. If he chose to warp to every sig and make all our sigs pop, we could see no option.

So I told him to tell him we were going to close his WH and he ought to get back into it. We dragged our Ishtar and Damnation to the hole and sat on it, while I drove a Retriever, a Myrmidon and a Harbinger through it til it went critical.

He never came back after that. So I guess that option worked.

So how does everyone else deal with rampant scanners that might screw you out of all your sigs?

*breathes deep* Ahhhhh!

Smell that? Yep, that's the smell of sweet Arkonor. I have two Hulks and a Covetor currently mining out an Unexceptional Frontier Deposit, and boy does it feel great! Looks like our operation is back on track.

Managed to also get the Large Ship Array in and got some BPCs for a bunch of battleships that I'll get to work on as soon as these minerals roll in!

And I'm hitting SCAN religiously :)

Forgotten Heathen Out.

2nd POS, 2nd Wormhole!

Well, forget that isolated core crap. We moved into a new Class 1 with a Cataclysmic Variable and Low Sec static.

We got lucky and the exit was in Otou, one jump from Hek. So we pounced! Our new Amarr Large Control Tower is set up and we're rolling!

Nick has requested battleships to spawn the rare Talocan ships, as he got one last night, so I'm jumping back to get the Large Ship Assembly Array before our exit pops! It's a race.

We've kept the other POS up as it's got weeks worth of fuel in it, see if it respawns enough sigs to make heading back there for awhile worth it. Might be able to make this a regular switch. Only time will tell.

More as it happens.


Forgotten Heathen Out.

Isolated Core Deposit Take Two

So, after doing some testing, it looks like a Class 1 Isolated Core Deposit hits for 500 damage. And that the damage is EM based.

So, I rigged my Covetor with two medium CCCs, a Small Armor Repairer, and a Cap Recharger II. I'm fairly inexperienced with the Covetor, as a sensible miner I bypassed it and went straight to the Hulk. Now, unwilling to strand a hulk in a Class 1 atm, I'm stuck with the Covetor.

So.....the cap on the Covetor.....is useless. You can't even run three Modulated Strip Miner IIs. Wtf. I can perma run the Small armor repper fine, but the three strip miners wastes the cap.

And fitting the retriever out to tank is pretty pointless. Taking off both cargo expanders, which you need to not overfill your hold every time your lasers cycle, you can't sustain cap at all, even with some CCC rigs.

I guess I'll screw around with EFT, I must admit I'm not very good at coming up with fits, but it looks like I may not get to mine this, my only site atm.

Isolated Core Deposits....

So we left a Ladar site, didn't warp to it, because people say it's best to leave at least one site so your wormhole doesn't go completely dry and will spawn more sites easier. Well, turns out someone must have come into our hole and warped to it, cause it's gone.

And in it's place spawned a grav site....except it's an Isolated Core Deposit that damages ships. It's reported it hits for 1000 dmg. I'm about to go see in a cruiser how much it is in a Class 1......I'm crossing my fingers that the reported 1k damage is for a higher class wormhole, cause no way my Retrievers, or maybe even my Covetors can tank that.

Will report.

Wormhole Space.....Or Lack Thereof

Well, we've been in this wormhole for about a week now....and there's nothing to do. We have a wormhole high sec exit and a Ladar site we're leaving. That's it. Everyday we get a couple combat sites, but we're in a Class 1, so they're extremely easy. I've just been plugging away at PI and POS fuel, and scanning and hoping for another grav site.

I've come to the conclusion that either this wormhole was cleared out before the seller sold it to me, or his client cleared it out before he left. Oh well. It had ten sites when we got here, but that includes wormhole exits.

So while scanning out a low sec exit we had the other day, we happened upon another wormhole. It's a Class 1 with Cataclysmic Variable. Upon entering, I ascertained there is no POS inside, and it has over 20 combat sites, NINE grav sites, and numerous others. So, what we're planning is to leave this POS in our POS fuel producing hole and start up another large POS in the other. So far it looks like all it has is a static low sec, but I did see a high sec one day, so we'll just have to make sure we use our high sec spots well.

Took down the Large Ship array and the Refining array and shuttled a bunch of gear out from a wh that was six jumps from my base in Yuzier.

Hopefully this new wormhole will be more interesting. We've recovered about 300 mil of our 1 bil investment so far. We'll be sinking a further 200 mil or so into another large POS. It certainly hasn't turned into a money fountain like it used to be for people, but I'm optimistic.

Forgotten Heathen Out.

Holy Giant Roids Batman!

Well, I got out the Retrievers yesterday and started by mining out the Arkonor and Bistot. It took me many hours, so I'm thinking of putting some Hulks in here with me, even if they can't get out. Ran the Intensive Refining Array, had no idea you can only do one ore type at once! No wonder no one mines out entire sites, it would takes days to refine!

So I came in today to finish off my Crokite roid, and lo and behold, found a new Spodumain. Hmm, I don't remember two.....wtf it's 70k! I guess it's one of the rare spawning roids things that happens that I've read about. Well I can confirm it. I'm busy mining it, and it'll probably take all day just to do it, if I even finish it!

I had ALOT of wormhole traffic yesterday, so I scanned down my new entrance and found....Rayeret??? Rayeret is the first system in which the static high sec was when I bought the hole. The chances are pretty astronomic that it just happened to spawn here again. Could I have a revolving static wh entry???

I got tired of seeing ships on scan, so I gathered all my largest ships on five accounts and headed to the WH and got it to critical. No more visitors. :)

We had two Class 2 wh entries two days in a row, so I thought maybe it was a static, but no joy on that, it's gone and nothing replaced it today. Oh well.

Rearranging PI to get the most efficiency I can out of it. I've never had the trouble of having too many raw materials before!

Back to mining my massive Spod.

Forgotten Heathen Out.

Completely New Experiences

Well, we've done it. We have a Large Amarr POS setup inside our wormhole. I've used the past few days to jump in my combat ships and just returned with some Retrievers to get started mining. We've got an Intensive Refining Array and a Large Ship Assembly array set up, and I can't wait to get them going.

I also brought in a bunch of Advanced Command Centers and am in the process of setting them up to do POS fuels.The amounts I'm pulling are almost all in excess of 3k, the highest I've seen is 3571, on a five hour rotation. I won't be doing five hours after this initial kickstart, but those numbers all look phenomenal. I aim to supply my POS and make extra enriched uranium for sale outside the hole to finance the rest of the fuel.

Did one combat site yesterday, and they aren't kidding you can't use drones. They are immediately targetted. So our sentry drones are kind of useless. Good thing we are well trained in guns.

Only two melted nanoribbons so far, but the majority of my isk output will be coming from mining operations, and I can't wait to start those. These are some of the biggest asteroids I've ever seen.

Oh, and found a WH to a Class 2 today, inhabited. Will have to keep an eye out for WHs to sell.

Forgotten Heathen Out.

And Wormholes!

So I finally got fed up searching for a wormhole when one of the wormhole merchants came up with this wormhole: J102849. So I bought it!

The fact that it had all the planets needed for POS fuels is what really hooked me. Yeah, it's a C1 with a low mass limit. That works both for and against me. For in that people won't be bringing in battleships, while I plan on manufacturing some for us to use in the hole for protection, which may be overkill. Against me in that I can't bring my Orca or rigged Hulks into the system, and any ships I make will not be able to get out of the hole.

I see alot of people selling wormholes with ships trapped in them. It does add to the flavor of the wormhole, but everyone is trying to get the price of the ships out of the wormhole too, and this isn't right, in my opinion. I'm going to pull together the minerals to make the ships in the wormhole itself. I'm going to use the ships, they're not for sale, so really I'm paying myself for them and they are paid for when I make them. It's not the "minerals you mine are free" arguement, because I don't believe they are, I'm just saying you expect these ships to stay with the hole, they belong to it after you decide to make them, and expecting full price for them along with the hole is ridiculous.

It has a static high sec exit, which is nice, but I'll have to take care of everyday to keep any poachers out. I've got my scanning alt inside to make sure I can't be kicked out, and I'm deciding what kind of a POS I will put up!

I'm extremely excited!

Forgotten Heathen out.

Some of that Asteroids Profit thing I mentioned!

Well, spent some time mining yesterday. I normally mine a couple belts in my home of Usroh, and yesterday was no different.

Here's my standard mining op. I ran an Orca, three Hulks and two Retrievers. Normally I have access to another Hulk, but Nick has been off somewhere running some missions so we can all have access to jump clones.

I fill the ore hold and cargo bay, which amounts to 142km3 of space, I start jet canning with the hulks, and let the 'trievers finish the Orca off, then join them in on cans. Once I have an amount of cans in space I'm not comfortable with sitting there, I swap out a Hulk for a rigged Iteron and start hauling back to our POS. Once all the cans are down to one, I jump him back into the Hulk and start again. Rinse, repeat.

Today was really no exception, and after a couple of hours or so, I closed down the op, went and got my freighter, and jumped it all to my manufactory at Yuzier, three jumps away.

Total amount was near:

40 million Tritanium
4 million Pyerite
1 million Mexallon
500k isogen
200k Nocxium

So I put that in with all the minerals I already had and ran a bunch of manufacturing jobs I had to hold off on due to Hulkageddon, and decided to check mineral prices.

Prices weren't terrible, Pyerite had fallen, Trit was up .20 or so. Mexallon had also fallen. Well rats. So I took a trip over to Rens to see the mineral market there.....and was pleasantly surprised.

Isogen has gone up quite a bit since I looked at it last, and trit was priced pretty nice.....so I loaded up the freighter with the majority of my trit and isogen and sold roughly 40 mil trit and 1.5 mil isogen for 170 million isk!

That's certainly my record for a mineral run, for sure.

I decided to head to Alakgur and try my hand at mining out the omber in all the fields, and ended up a 2 hour op, including jump times on all my ships, and sold all the minerals for about 50 mil. The difference in isk earned are due to a number of things, first, I spent less time mining and more time moving ships. Second, all the asteroids in this area of space are mined out alot, so they spawn very small. I was burning roids after just a couple cycles. That was the majority of my difference right there.

So I've concluded that I'll stick to my corner of roidspace, as I'm pretty happy with it. It respawns every day huge and happy, and almost no one contends me for it.

On a side note, I moved alot of my POS gear to Rens to sell, it's just not moving in Yuzier very fast, so I'll go for volume over price for a bit and see how that goes. We also saw the Corp Wallet breach the 1 billion mark! I've only seen it once before, when I spent 700 mil on the first Orca way back when.

Yay, now to see how long I can resist from spending it all!

Forgotten Heathen out!

Law of Averages

Well, again Murphy's Law caught up to me. Investigating a couple class 2 WHs today, one looked like it had a mining corp in it, so I decided to swing by the POS and get their corp name to maybe see if they would mind a second small mining corp in there with them.......

And I ran smack into a Warp Disruptor and got decloaked, right in front of tons of guns placed right around the Warp Disruptor. I survived two volleys with my Microwarpdrive going and a shield booster, but to no avail, and my trusty Anathema blew sky high. I winced, because I didn't know if POSes would pod you, and no one was on the turrets, so I managed to get away.

I guess I won't be asking Triton Manufacturing Corp if they would care for a neighbor. It's obvious they don't.

Back to Mining!

Yay, Hulkageddon is OVER! It's with a great relief that I can return to part of the game I love: mining. I know most people hate it, but I love the relaxed atmosphere. Of course that atmosphere can become a nightmare pretty quick, but for the most part, I enjoy the ballet of it. The different ships mining different asteroids, the hauling of cans back and forth, the command of a great endeavor. Okay, maybe it's not all that, but I still enjoy a well controlled mining op!

My alt account is finally in a Retriever, so bye bye to the Miner 2s on the Navitas. It's fun for a bit to use that little ship, but when the option to outmine it is present, efficiency demands the change! So with Gnicklas in a far off system earning corp standings so everyone can have jump clones, I've got; two hulks, two retrievers, an orca and one more hulk pilot who spends alot of time hauling in a rigged Iteron V.

So what do I love more than a full Orca? A full Corporate Array! I think I had it figured out to roughly 120 million isk per Providence load, so a full corp array is worth near 150-175, I'll price it when I do a freighter run today.

Honestly, I couldn't have imagined I'd be running seven accounts on one computer, which wouldn't be possible without my corpmate allowing me to use his, and vice versa, thanks Nick! I am in awe of how far I've come since mining in a Tormentor. The reward is very sweet!

Did some ice mining yesterday with my two Mackinaws, fueled up the POS for another couple of weeks. Considering switching my entire PI operation over to production of one high priced P2 product only, like enriched uranium, but still considering that prospect, as my arrays and POSes are selling slowly. Time will tell on that.

Anyway, back to hauling!

Forgotten Heathen out.

Amarr Small Control Tower

Just got enough Integrity Drones for the first run of my Small Amarr Control Tower! I continue to sell a Ship Array every day or so, here's to hoping people need small towers in my region! Price History shows them selling, so I'm looking forward to these BPOs paying for themselves!

More BPOs and Wormholes

Since Hulkageddon is still going on, although it does finally end this weekend, I've been doing alot of scanning. In that scanning I've come across many wormholes, every one of them with at least one occupant.

We're a really small corp, there's just two of us running, at the moment, seven accounts, so we're not really set up to fight with people that already live in these wormholes. In no way are we helpless, with numerous battleships and HACs between all of us, but we'd prefer to either have no neighbors or co-exist with a friendly corp.

So yesterday found me in a Class 2 Pulsar, excitedly finding my directional scanner clear. I zoomed out and thought, wow, here's an empty one! Wait, there's another planet track, so I zoomed out some more and flew to the next farther planet. Scanned.....Nothing! YAY! Wait, zoom out some more.....wow this wormhole was HUGE. Turned out there was yet another planet, the wormhole was like 200 AU across! And of course, there was a POS at the lsat planet. And a Catalyst cleaning up some Sleeper wrecks.

I tried to get the guy to speak in local, he ran back to his POS and got into a Drake. I tried to convo him, but he rejected. I guess everyone is super paranoid, with good reason. I scanned down his POS, and got yanked out of warp by a Mobile Disrupter Field. Luckily, I stumbled into one of several, all the others had Secure Containers in them to decloak people so the POS could light them up.

Ah well, I decided to give up and said in local I might be back with a POS, which I wasn't really planning on doing. No sooner do I head back to K-Space than I get a convo invite from a guy saying he didn't speak english very well, and that I could talk to the other guy in his corp later.

Didn't make alot of sense, as he wrote english certainly well. It sure felt like a ploy so he could close the WH, but I came back later and it was still there. *shrug* Oh well, I wasn't going to move in with a decidedly hostile looking corp already there. I know Eve is a nasty game, but setting a trap like that for cloakers is just below the bar for me.

So, BPOs. I decided yesterday that I need to be able to fling a POS into a wormhole pretty fast, and I've built 10 Corp Hangars and multiple Ship Maintenance Arrays in preparation for heading into one. I've got POS fuel and a fleet of Iterons, Bestowers and cheap scanning vessels at the POS, ready to go.

I also wanted a Large Ship Array so I could produce some battleships inside the WH with the huge amount of materials I was going to be getting. After looking at their prices in my region, around 130 mil, I decided to go look at a BPO instead. I have a large cache of High Tech commodities for building the corp and ship arrays. So I travelled to Rens.

After arriving, I found that it was just 25 mil more for the BPO than for an array itself, so I looked around for the BPO, and almost every single one was in lowsec. Six jumps away was a high sec station. Right. After arriving, I noticed a large amount of low sec status people outside. Great. I'm in a shuttle. After perusing the BPOs for awhile, I decided to also pick up a Small Amarr Control Tower BPO as well. With the stockpile of materials I had, I could almost build 10 small control towers!

The people outside convinced me I had to buy a better ship, and the only thing at the station not priced 1000x normal price was an Executioner.

So after being chased a few jumps back to Yuzier with like 250 mil worth of BPOs in the bay, I breathed a sigh of relief and went about setting my PI up to make stuff for the new BPOs.

Still looking for that wormhole! Since Star Defender has noted that there are more unoccupied that lead to lowsec, I might head down there and scan a bit looking for the elusive empty hole.

Forgotten Heathen out.

PI and BPOs

When PI was coming out, I and my corpmate, Gnicklas, decided to purchase a number of the new POS related BPOs that we thought would be in relatively high demand.

We purchased:

* Ship Maintenance Array BPO

* Corporate Hangar Array BPO

* Advanced Mobile Lab BPO

That was to the tune of 300 million isk. We felt pretty good about those purchases and I've made about half of the isk back so far in selling the produced items themselves. I haven't managed to make any of the Adv Mobile Labs yet, as they take insane amounts of almost every Advanced PI good there is. But, I started making the missing commodities two days ago, so we'll see how it works into my existing production lines, which were set up for Ship Maint Array and Corp Hangars.

I am curious how all the other intrepid industrialists are doing their supply chains, so here's mine.

I currently own three accounts, all with Command Center 4 and Interplanetary Consolidation 4. (btw would love to hear from anyone who has CC V and how many extractors you can fit!)

My corpmate has two accounts, one with Command Center 4, the other with Three. We both have 10 planets each, all in a nearby lowsec pocket. We use his alt as a processor for all the raw materials, each planet of his processes four of the materials each. One of my alts has two planets for taking Processed Materials and turning them into Refined Commodities. My other alt then has two planets where I turn the Refined(Precious Metals, Silicon, Biomass, etc) into Specialized(Biocells, Livestock, Polyaramids, Transmitters) and then into Advanced Commodities.(Broadcast Nodes, Integrity Response Drones, Nano Factory, etc)

This system is of course turning out far more Advanced Commodities than I can use atm. I've run into small snags where I need more of one material over another, or run out of Proteins or Precious Metals, but overall I'm pretty satisfied with it and it's efficiency.

Of course, the one glaring issue is that all the raw materials are in lowsec. Everything else is in my home of Usroh. As you may have read, lowsec isn't going all that great due to my inexperience with it, and just terrible button pressing. So Star Defenders newest post caught my eye: Putting all the raw materials in a wormhole.

I'm still a fair wormhole newb, having never lived in one, only mined or did sites with my corpmate. I don't have any alts training up on scanning and PI, but now I'm considering it.

What with all the Hulkageddon going on, I'm spending alot of time scanning, looking for that perfect wormhole.

Forgotten Heathen Out.

Hulkageddon 3: Summer of No Mining

Well, I got my Orca back just in time to......NOT UNDOCK IT. Thus began Hulkageddon 3, a player run event that, while I am the express target of, is actually kind of cool. I've watched lots of macro miners go down, while Hulk and mineral prices continue to climb. And all the while I've been selling destroyers, frigates and fit modules to all the participants. So it's pretty profit for me!

Alas, I had scanned down a couple very nice Grav sites right before it went live, so I'll have to watch them despawn until after the festivities. I also won't be using the Orca to haul PI materials from my hisec lowsec drop off point. I lost one damn Orca to stupidity, I won't lose another to some random gang who just wants to kill any Orca they find.

I do find the hypocricy of the whole event interesting. I sit in the chat channel for the event all day, and see people lament about all the macro miners, and how great it is to kill them, and that if the Hulk moves if it's targetted or if it warps out, it's not a macroer. But is there a distinction drawn between Macroer and Non-Macroer? Not a chance. Miners are miners, and therefore, all targets.

So all my mining vessels, all four hulks and various retrievers, associated haulers and the Orca, are all docked up and safe til this event is over.

Favorite quote on the Hulkageddon channel so far:

"We should do this all the time!" random noob ganker

"Then you wouldn't have any ships to fly, moron." Me.

Oh, and a o/ to Dwarf Paladin, who I saw in Hulkageddon chat doing much the same thing I was. Had a nice chat with him, and want to say thanks for serving our country! Stay safe!

Orca Reborn

Well Nick came through with alot of cash he had lying around, liquidated it, and I bought an Orca BPC pack. What that entails is Blueprint Copies of enough components to create an Orca, plus the actual BPC for the ship itself. Cost me 140 mil. I burned through almost all of my existing stock of minerals, and had to fly a mining op to Alakgur in Minmitar space for the larger amounts of mexallon and isogen.

A single night of that and I'm...yes...just clicked the install button on the Orca blueprint! 5 days and sixteen hours til it's replaced, and at considerably lower prices than I thought I had lost. And I'm going to rig this one with Large Cargohold Optimization 2's. So if I have to do something over, I may as well do it better this time!

I've also been looking into wormholes again. I've scanned for months, and have only come across occupied C1-3s. Only unoccupied WHs I've found are 4s and up, which are not useable by me and my corp, as we don't have the ability to either defend from what can come in, and the Sleepers are just too much for us in those classes.

So I'm looking into buying a wormhole. Corps that are done with their WH at the moment and are looking to get out of the WH with some isk. Some want way too much, some are probably shady. The post that caught my eye was a corp selling a C1 wormhole, plus the three hulks stuck inside it. Obviously, this was my issue with a C1 WH, but one with three already in it? Awesome.

But they want 600 mil for the WH and the Hulks. That's a bit steep, and would break us at the moment. Til I get mining up and running, we won't have another large cash infusion short of selling more gear, which I don't want us to have to do.

So what is a WH actually worth?

RIP Orca

Well I have not had a good month on Eve, it seems. Was doing a lowsec run with my Bestower with a shuttle scout. Got two chars done, saw a heavy interdictor show up with a russian pilot, who always seem to be negative standings no matter what. So I decided it was time to cut it short. Got everything loaded into the Orca on high sec side, and started jumping people home.....

Except my orca, who I accidentally clicked jump on a lowsec gate I was sitting next to. Right into the arms of the heavy interdictor and every tom dick and harry flying by. I had a chance to get back to the gate, but of course, the lame ship bump is alive and well.

I tried to ransom, but everyone wanted the killmail on a ship that can't fight back, go figure. You'd think people with balls would want to kill stuff and have a good fight. Nope, appears large industrial ships are what everyone respects.....

I'm sure it was over a 500 million isk loss. This is certainly enough to make me quit. The Orca was the lynchpin in my entire mining operation, and of course, I never intended for it to go to low sec. Nick is going to see if we can come up with the cash from equipment lying around, but this may be it for awhile.

And So It Happened....

Running my low sec planets for raw materials yesterday, I finally got caught at a gate and lost my 90 million isk Impel. Nothing in it, no reason to kill it. He got nothing out of it except a killmail. It's hard for me to reason why people get their jollies off on killing a defenseless ship, espicially with two battleships, but it's Eve.

I had scouted, but they jumped to the gate as soon as they saw me appear in local, so they caught my Impel as it jumped through and came uncloaked.

So now I have to work the loss off. Got started selling Corp Hangars and Ship Maint Arrays, so I'll get it back pretty fast, but the loss still stings for such a small operation.

Looks like I'll be pulling my operations out of Futzchag and looking for another lava planet.

Planetville!

My corpmate Nick sent me a text the other day, that he was playing PLANETVILLE. I about fell off my chair, because that's exactly what we're doing.

Ever since Planetary Interaction released, we've been babysitting our planets; in my case, it's 11 planets across three characters. We've built spreadsheets to keep track of all the raw materials we're collecting, who is processing it all, and what High Tech products we're going to produce. It's right up my alley of being the most efficient industrialist I can. Except my efficiency involves doing one thing I don't generally do: Go to Lowsec.

I am your proverbial carebear, I don't PvP because I can't stand losing isk. If I had the mountains of isk I would need to PvP efficiently, I'd do it all the time, no prob. But my character, even though he has fairly good ship combat skills, is also a hulk pilot with the skills that go along with it, first. Meaning I have expensive mining implants in my head. Yes, I have a jump clone and could go that way. But again, it comes down to having money for the ships. Maybe I'll get around to tricking out some frigate or cruiser to go PvP in, but, at heart, I'm no pirate.

Anyhow, so Nick did some checking, and discovered that low sec and lower planets have significantly higher concentrations of all raw materials. So much more so that to put our Command Centers onto planets in high sec would be a complete waste of time. So on to low sec we went.

At first, it wasn't so bad. We put most of our PCCs in Mifrata, and in Jaymass. We stayed a single jump into lowsec. When we couldn't find Autotrophs or Felsic Magma worth using, we had to go four jumps deep, through a major hub system. I guess you go where the scans take you. But, like I said, at first, it wasn't so bad. But then, the local pirates and thieves figured out what was going on, and the gatecamps began.

Like I said, I'm not a PvPer, but that doesn't make me stupid. I'm an accomplished scanner, and I've trained up to the Anathema and Cloaking. I always check my gates with either a shuttle. or someone that can bust a gatecamp with cloak and microwarpdrive. Anyone is waiting on the other side, my Impel does not come through. I leave my Orca on the high sec side to await the resources.

So this takes ALOT of time. Dodging low sec scum, all the jumps back home, reprocessing all the materials, combining them, and finally producing all the High Tech end items; it all takes a huge amount of time and resources. Which of course, is what the developers want, and I congratulate them on making both sides happy. Industrialists now have control over another aspect of the game with control towers, POS fuel, etc. And now carebears like me are venturing into low sec and worse, in search of the better and more efficient way to break through the profit margin into profitability.

So I guess I will get popped one of these days. And then I'll have lost my 100 million isk Impel, with it's three 40 million isk cargo rigs, and near 20 million in cargo expander 2s.

Hopefully I'll pull enough raw materials out to justify it's loss.

Ice and Omber

Well I must say today has been a pretty good day. I managed to set up my two Mackinaws and Orca in Thiarer and mine a month of POS fuel. We own a medium Amarr POS in Usroh, our own small corner of Ammatar space. It's pretty quiet out here, no stations, very few neighbors. It's perfect for my mining operations. No stations means very few people. The roids are pretty huge, I don't get any pirates, can flippers, or loot thieves. Pretty much we're left alone to our mining and research.

I bought another Mackinaw today. Finally broke down and spent 85 mil on a contract. But it'll come in handy the next time our fuel supplies get low. I don't like having to pay for anything, and try to be as self sufficient as possible. We've got a bunch of planets set up to produce the rest of our POS fuel, so that should payu off pretty nicely.

I, by myself, run an Orca and two Hulk setup when I mine. With Nick's two accounts, I can run four Hulks with the fleet boosting Orca. It's a setup I've dreamed of since I started Eve way back in just a Tormentor running to the station every trip, or jet canning and hoping no evil can flipper came my way so I could get my Bestower.

I and Nick have had aspirations of wormhole living for some time now, it just scares the bajeezus out of us to lose so much in the process if it all goes wrong. We've made many incursions into WH space, we've raided a few offline POSes, each a story in themselves. I've left a Hulk in J112420, if anyone found my wayward ship, please treat it well, it was my first Hulk, and a good ship. We've lost a T3 ship in a C3, alpha striked before any chance of escape. So we've been quietly watching for an empty C1 or C2 WH to call our own.

So far, we haven't found one. All are inhabited, and setting up a POS and having it taken apart in 24 hours is not something we're interested in experiencing either.

Scanned down a Large Kernite/Omber site, taking it apart at the moment. Found an empty C4 today, I was very surprised. No way we could take even one combat encounter in there. I'd love to mine it out, but would leave Nick bored to tears. Will keep looking.

Forgotten out.

Eve Online Ramblings

Hello there fellow traveler of the stars. Somehow you've found the jumpgate to my home here in blogspace.

My name is Forgotten Heathen, and I've plied the Eve Online trade routes for the past three years. I've seen alot, but know that there is far more left to be seen. Most of my skills lie in the industrial and mining realm, but my combat skills are far from unimpressive. I've spent my time running a couple of joined corps, Heretical Innovations and Heretics Inc., with my friend, Gnicklas. I figure I have some stories to tell, and they might even be interesting. So I'll fill the space beyond with my musings and day to day activities.

I may even one day want to look back at what I've done.