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.