Thursday, March 24, 2011

Things I Wish I Had Known About Wormhole Space

We've been living in wormholes for over a year now, starting in Class 1s, at one time running FOUR of them with our small corp, and moving up to our Class 2s.

A few lessons we have learned. Some are self explanatory, but are worth repeating.

- Hit DSCAN as often as you can.

- If you don't know what DSCAN is, jump back out of the wormhole and find out.

- Sleipnirs are ridiculous. Do not fight one.

- Players want to fight on top of your wormhole exits so that THEY can run away, not so you can. Use them to your advantage too.

- 4 minute Wormhole Timers can be your friend, espicially if some people don't know about them. You do know about them, don't you?

- Tracking how much mass your open hi sec static has had passed through it can come in handy if a gang of ships is inside waiting, and you manage to jump inside, and out, closing them inside your home, causing them to call you "Orca Jesus".

- If it looks like it's a trap, it probably is. Admiral Ackbar is completely appropriate.

- Yes, 15 Harbingers could be Prototype Cloaked at that wormhole and waiting for you. For hours. They were for us.

- You can only keep in wormhole space what you can hold onto. Capital ships in Class 1s are completely appropriate for how much you want to keep your home. Might as well use all that high sec ore for something, right?

- Low sec statics are for people that want a bit too much excitement in their lives.

- Null sec statics are for people who want to die. But they make great farming spots because no one ever lives in them. Ever.

- Just train for a Drake and a Tengu. You'll be disappointed when you compare whatever else you train to them.

- Interceptors need a special touch when you encounter them at your POS. Webbing them with your recently uncloaked Pilgrim so that your Anchoring V corpmate can hit them with all of your POSes small weapons works very well.

- People that say "Just stay in your POS noob" are afraid you'll come out of it.

- Apparently tons of people don't hit DSCAN and see your carriers sitting in your POS shield, and set up a Small POS anyway "to see what happens".

- Talking to people is 75% ineffective. Most people coming in your hole want to kill you or your sleepers. You have no choice but to kill them first.

- Or make them think you're coming to kill them with your combat probes.

- Moble Large Warp Disrupter 2s are an AMAZING deterrent to people even thinking about attempting to cross the up to 40km space of inability to warp "just to see what's in the system".

- People who say "We didn't think you wanted your combat sites" are lying. They were just hoping you weren't on.

- Honestly, who lives in a wormhole and never does their combat sites?

- Getting an email from your POS that it killed a Drake is funny. What's funnier is getting an email from the pilot asking you to kill him because he can't get out. Self destruct pod anyone? I guess that's not in the new tutorial?

- Always remember that the grav site is going to spawn sleepers....and they eat Mining Drone 2s for breakfast...oops...

- There are Ladar sites that spawn with FIVE sleeper guns.

- It is possible to drop combat probes and scan you down in the space of time between you hitting DSCAN.

- If you talk smack, you will pay the price for it sooner or later.

- Assume that you're going to need that scanning alt you've got in there for an emergency, sooner or later. You do have one, don't you? Your billions of isk venture can ride on it.

- When you leave your wormhole, always make sure that you leave a scanner, and ships the scanner can actually use.....

- Unless you or an intruder loads your wormhole system everyday by logging in or entering, your POS can run straight out of fuel and never send you an alert. Evemail alerts are not sent until the system is loaded, no matter how much fuel, or lack of fuel, there is! Confirmed bug!

- If you see combat probes, or someone in your comm channel says a very strong curse word, warp away immediately! You can always come back. You can't if the Tengu, Loki, Sleipnir, Broadsword gang lands on you because you were trying to figure out if the probes were yours or not...

- Fighters cannot hit even stationary frigate sized vessels.

- If you are actively running some sort of op in your hole with your statics open, placing a cloaked ship 70km away and "Look at" the wormhole will cause you to hear the wormhole activation very loudly, telling you that visitors have arrived.

- PI Ninjas, while appearing harmless, are letting people into your wormhole, who then steal your sites. Keeping your statics closed is one of the single most useful deterrents to getting ganked.

- Leave your Orca/Rorqual boosting at your POS. The ability to load the large amount of ore does not offset the amount of stupidity you will be cursing yourself for when it gets caught because of the immense align times they have. No matter how safe you think you are!

- K162s appear at the worst times. Be prepared, not complacent.

- Try to not let your fuel get down to less than one week left. You will invariably cut it too close one day, and your hi sec static will be behind 15 jumps of low sec....

- Do not put Cargo Expanders on your Orca, no matter how much cargo you need to pull in and out. Warp Core stabs ftw! If it saves your ship even once, you saved 400 million isk wiht a couple 3k isk modules. I know they've saved mine.

- If anything russian named appears on your scanner, you are probably about to die. They are not there to chat.

- If you leave your salvage vessel unprotected, it deserves to be ganked by a stealth bomber, because he's there, watching you. Waiting.

And the number one rule for wormhole space is:

If you can't afford to replace everything in your hole, you shouldn't continue living in wormholes, because you're doing it wrong.

As Star Defender says, "Fly safe-er!"

1 comment:

  1. Also, if you're a miner, rig your mining ships with Low Friction Nozzles and Medium Drone Augmentation. Cargo rigs are useless. You should have a hauler for hauling. Thanks to whoever pointed those rigs out on their blog!

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