Thursday, April 28, 2011

These Guys Make My Caps Look Bad

We've had a third wormhole sig for awhile, and since we've ran low on things to do, we opened it up yesterday.

I hit scan and about fell off my chair. Chimera, Chimera, Archon, Moros and a Revelation!

Did I mention this was a CLASS ONE?

I have a serious sense of deja vu.

They also had numerous battleships, including two Scorpions and a Rokh..

You have to admit, these guys are probably not going to lose their wormhole anytime soon. I have serious capital ship envy.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Eve Wormhole Profitability

It's been awhile since we "cashed out" in Jita. We've mined four grav sites, ran probably over a hundred combat sites, radars, mag, and ladar sites. What do we have to show for the work of about three weeks?

Roughly, 3.5 bil. In keeping with our normal operations, it comes out to be roughly 50-60% in minerals, and 45-50% in melted nanoribbons.

That isn't including any gas cloud fullerides, we're going to try to get back into the reacting business for those. And some of the minerals will be going towards our planned Archon and Revelation.

It's also not including any POS fuel I'll be selling off that I made above our needs, which will probably come to an extra 700 mil.

I am pretty satisifed with the return on our hard work. I'll post hard numbers when I get around to it, the price on buy orders for melted nanos has dropped too much for me to flood the market with the 200+ we have atm, so I'm watching the buy orders slowly rise again.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Capsules That Don't Say Hi

Logged on today and Freethinker told me he saw a capsule on scan that belong to a russian corp. It disappeared immediately. We didn't have any jumps at the time, so the guy is stuck in a capsule, or we had a K162 we couldn't see.

*shrug* Just another unexplained Eve-vent.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Class Three Incursions

No, not those Incursions.

We took down our second to last grav site, leaving a couple roids to try to spawn some ore at downtime, but no luck. Strangely the site lived to the full five days it looks like, which it shouldn't have, since when we warped to it, it had a 75k spod roid in it. To me, that roid meant the site had been warped to grid at least one downtime, so I assumed someone had warped to it and it had been open for a day, at the very least. Guess I was strangely wrong and it spawned with it.

Anyhow, that left us with a single mag site and two ladars. Which finally pushed us into looking at our C3 static. The last time I and Nick tried to do a C3, his Legion blew up. O.O

So with a certain amount of trepidation, I headed in and scouted around, finding a single large tower that belongs to a german corp. A helios appeared on scan, but I never saw him at their POS, he dropped a single combat probe, to which I responded with five. He then pulled his probe in and we never saw him again.

After checking with Wormhole Thingie, I decided to try out C3 sites without sentry guns to start with, so we headed to a Fortification Frontier Stronghold. First couple of waves were fine, but the third with the webber plus the nossing advanced sleeper BS almost made me have to warp out. Gave me quite a scare. This was repeated on the second site with Nyslia.

We only made it to three sites before we all had to call it a night. I felt a slight twinge at doing "other people's" sites, but like I've said before, you can only keep what you can defend, and we've been on the receiving end of this many times. I guess I don't really relish doing it because someone else lives here. I'm not going to be the ones saying "Stay in your POS noobs!".

But you have to do what's best for your corp and not theirs.

So fast forward to tonight. we ended up with a D382 that someone opened earlier today, no idea who, because it's EoL now. Unoccupied C2 with low sec static. Also no combat sites. Eight grav sites!!! Oh so tempting. But after running the math on a 20k arkonor roid being 320km3, I decided it just wasn't worth the effort. And living in a static low sec WH isn't going to happen again. So we're letting it go.

And we opened our C3 static again on accident, but what a wonderful accident it is.

We're currently inside it, an unoccupied C3 with static low sec, and tons of combat sites!

I decided to drop the two Heat Sinks Iis and go with a much more conservative tank. I noticed I had a 60% thermic resist, so threw on Centii A Type plating and closed the thermic hole, and replaced the other with another EANM II. Add in a fleet boosting Damnation and I've got 78/80/83/91.

The difference is night and day. I haven't even needed my second repper now. Course it's probably mostly the boosting ship with all three Armored Warfare links, but still no problems makes me happy. I think we're down five sites now.

Anyone want to buy a C3 with low sec static? Cheap!

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Busy. Busy, Busy

We had another round of intergalactic wormhole highway yesterday AND the day before. When it rains scanning probes it pours them in here. Again, I suspect there's some sort of mechanic at work that is making this wormhole so much busier than our nice quiet Zombieland. I kept watching the DOTLAN tick up and up on the jumps while I was at work yesterday, frustrated at my inability to do nothing but watch. Thomas, who I was texting with about it said that he missed our nice quiet C2. *sigh*

Two days ago I managed to arrive home in time to find a PALADIN, of all things, poised to start stripping our system of combat sites. I spoke in local saying hi, and I got a convo from him immediately say "You shouldn't talk in local!" I replied that it was my wormhole, I think I might hold the right to speak in local, and that the carriers had both fighters and pilots. We then had about a half hour conversation about how I was too "passive" and should try to gank everyone. Hehe. I was called "too nice of a guy". I'm starting to hear that from alot of wormholers. I guess they're all used to people who want large numbers on their killboards, which I communicated to this gentleman that I wasn't interested in. I mean seriously, who likes spending 45 minutes combat probing someone jumping around the system just to have them jump out a K162 you didn't manage to find first? I sure don't.

In the wormhole, our two main conduits of isk are grav sites(minerals) and combat sites(melted nanos). I will, of course, fight to protect our sources of income. I told him it would have been a different story had I seen wrecks on scan or NPC kills on DOTLAN. Then I would have had blood in my eye.

So after a round of scanning, and Soulofchaos and Freethinker got on, all hell broke loose. Scanning ships briefly appeared on scan, probes were flying everywhere, it was insane! "Who's Iteron is that? Where'd it go? It freaking cloaked. I count 15 probes on scan. Who's Proteus is that? We don't OWN a Proteus!!"

The Paladin ended up being part of a wormhole corp that had just gotten set back up in a C6 that was connected to us, and they had been using us as a conduit for all their stuff. So in the end we had TWO K162s and both statics were open, and people were pouring in them like crazy. I'm incredibly lucky my corpmates got on, or it could have gotten bad.

Soul's Tengu, my Legion, and Freethinker in a Dominix held things down at a K162 while I poked Orcas through it and critted the first one, then closed the second one. Then I turned my attention to our open statics. I got them both closed with Orca Jesus power and we all breathed a sigh of relief.

Then they got to work on a grav site and I logged off to chill out.

And then day two of International "Screw With Forgotten" week kicked off.

By the time I made it home yesterday, we had 18 jumps in the last hour, with like 30 for the day. Argh.

Again, my corpmates came through for me and we camped the K162 we had, I burned it away, a Cheetah and a Helios appeared, and they decided to head out our C3 static while I was jumping Orcas through it, and managed to trap them on the C3 side. They may have lived there, I don't know. I didn't care. The ordeal was over.

We welcomed Freethinker's brother, Jared Knight, to the corporation yesterday. He had came into the wormhole the day prior, but had been in another corp, and had to wait 24 hours to drop roles. I thought I had set the POS correctly so it wouldn't shoot him, and he warped in. I had given him an incorrect forcefield password on accident, and as he sat in space outside the field, the POS started targetting him. In a few seconds, his hulk was scrammed, damped and noised to death.

I had shut all the guns off just in case I didn't know what I was doing. Imagine that.

Thankfully he lived through it, and I can turn all the guns back on again. Welcome to the corp guys!

Monday, April 18, 2011

BTW: MEGA SPOD!

I noticed we spawned an extra spodumain roid today....and it's a MEGA SPOD!!!1!!1!

It's a 100k size roid, one of hte biggest I've ever seen in here. We tend to get Spods as the spawn roid if we ever get them, in fact, I don't think I've ever seen a different type of large roid spawn. I wonder if it's based on the class of wormhole. Anyone get any different sized huge roids?

As a side note, do not warp squad to zero on one of these monsters, unless you enjoy watching eight hulks bounce off to 20km away....

Corp Mining Op & Russians!

I'm sure I've mentioned that I LOVE a good mining operation. This Friday, a few of us managed to get together and mine out most of an Unexceptional Frontier Deposit. We managed to pull in all the ABC ore, and our new corp member, Freethinker, managed to kill off a Dark Ochre roid all by himself the past couple of days! Overall it was a half a bil endeavor, thanks to our Rorqual making it so we no longer lose 25% of our minerals!

We've managed to keep all our statics closed, and our DOTLAN clear over the weekend, and no unexplained probes on scan, so I think we're back to being good again! No more Lokis lurking for us to do PI any more.

I think they've reset scanning back to pre-patch. I was having a hell of a time getting anything probed down. Now everything is back to giving me a Type after getting down to 2 or 1.0 AU. Wonderful. I can actually stand scanning the system down now.

I set up the last of the guns we had lying around from the five or six POSes we've had up over the last year, and we have a total of like 40 guns up now. Course there's only 10 online, along with all the ECM, but we look really scary! Going to buy a few more larges next time we are in Jita.

Had a Russian visitor named Tyranid Dady in the wormhole a few days back, running our radar sites. As soon as I logged people in, he warped off immediately. He then convoed me, and we had a neat conversation through Google Translator after I figured out which dialect he was using. He of course gave me the standard "I thought no one was running them, there were so many!" speech.

I asked him what his name was respresentative of, of which I was pretty sure already, and he said "I play Warhammer Tabletop". My main Warhammer 40k army is Tyranids. Seriously lol. So I wasn't going to really try to hard to get this guy if he really was leaving our hole.

But he gave me advice about leaving the carriers floating in the POS shield, and told me not to do it. He explained that it would lure certain corps or alliances in solely to siege the POS and get killmails on the carriers.

My first response was "Well if they want them that bad, then they're going to do it anyway.", but he had a point. But it runs counter to why they are here in the first place: to make most sane and rational people think twice about running sites in our system. And I think it does work. We've had alot of 1 or two jumps on Dotlan, and no sites run. I know if I peek into a wormhole and see type "Carrier" on Scan, I'm done looking at that hole. I can't fathom running sites alone and having people log in their carrier people. I guess I just don't have the guts or the confidence to do that yet. Of course it would be a russian that would. I swear they have a special PvP course for russians when they log in.

I've never met a russian industrialst, have you? o.0

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Russians and Wormholes

As anyone who reads this blog knows: I Hate Russians. Of course, I can't possibly hate all russians, just those that play Eve. So when I have a run in with one that doesn't end in either his or my bloodshed, I guess that's a good day.

I logged in after seeing NPC kills on DOTLAN to find a russian named Drake running our sites. I tried to get into some combat ships on a few people, but he had warped before I even had some in ships.

A conversation then ensued, through Google translator. Seems he thought we were georgian because of the name of our POS. Nick named it something in georgian russian I guess. I tried to explain in english that the guy who spoke russian wasn't on, so we tried the google translator when I couldn't understand him.

So here's a Привет! to Tyranid Dady, who I met today. He let me know, after heading for his wormhole, that we shouldn't leave our capitals in the force field, that it would cause people to try to kill the POS just to get them.

While he does have a distinct point, and those are the exact people we're trying to avoid meeting, having our two carriers out, (which DO have pilots, btw!) tends to make people rethink coming into our system and doing our sites.

Of course, it had no affect on this russian, because obviously he had his eye glued to the scanner. I guess it's a thrill for some people to steal sites and do them right under the owner's nose, but I've always strayed onto the safe side of things.

But in Eve, that's quite a grey area.

Keeping Statics Closed

Some more evidence to support my "Keeping Statics Closed" theory. Past couple of days we've managed to keep both of our statics closed. We've been without grav sites for about a week now, with only a couple ladars spawning. We kept them closed, lo and behold, we had two grav sites spawn!

Who knows, could be a fluke, but maybe not.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

POS Of Not-So Doom

It's been a busy past few days in the wormhole, but busy at alot of useless crap. I've ran six or seven people out of the hole in just the past three days. And on top of that the darn patch, or what I'm 89% sure was the patch, despawned both our statics, almost all our radars and mag sites and my two gravs sites, all at the same time.

To me that's too much of a coincidence, with no jumps on DOTLAN and no NPC kills. So we just got screwed royally. Luckily I finished running all 62 of those combat sites before this happened. Sitting on over a bil worth of sleeper material atm.

Anyhow, enough tears. We had someone warp to the POS and shot a Sensor Dampener today. Turns out we had a D382 and didn't know it, and someone opened it. Like I said, it's been REAL busy.

Logged on, had a Raven on scan, but he disappeared as soon as the combat probes came out. Found the D382 to his wormhole with two carriers in it, just like ours, and critted it.

Not sure what kind of ship he was in when he warped in range of the POS, but he was in range to shoot it. If he bothered opening up on it, he must have been in range of it, and it must have fired at him. I had 11 guns online, along with 3 sensor dampeners and white noise generators. That's in addition to the small arty pieces I set up, but Nick pointed out I had the wrong ammo in them. Whoops.

It was a mix of smalls and mediums, so if he got scrammed, which is a big if I guess, he should have taken some damage. I leave the larges off for an emergency since they suck so much power.

Nick determined the pilot in question could also fly a Claymore, so maybe he MWDed away, but geez. I always thought it would be pretty deadly to warp to our POS in anything below a BS, and even then it'd be a bitch to get away in that.

So I hopped in a Condor and tried it out. I set the defenses to "Attack if Aggressed" and proceeded to shoot one of my guns while flying away.

The POS started locking a few guns, boy does it take forever! Everything was missing since I was such a small target and ABing away, but one small and one of the arties got a hit and I exploded. All my modules survived, interestingly enough.

Anyone reading this with lots of POS experience?

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Drone/Fighter Correction

Well, after having to warp one of my Legions off since I hadn't turned on the AB, I found that the sleepers finally went after one of the fighters. So it would appear that they are DPS based maybe? Going after the target doing the most damage.

And looks like the nano slump is over and it was just bad luck, got 19 nanos for five sites!

Resources!

After having sold our original class 2, we've managed to move almost all of our gear into the new-ish wormhole, Pretoria. I no longer have to worry about if the particular ship I need is in this wormhole or the other one, or if our carrier pilots are here, or if one of them is being a dread pilot in the other one. No longer are we spread out across the galaxy.

And in doing that, we don't have to open our static high sec cause we need something. Which means alot less visitors. And with two Orcas in this one explicitly used to close wormholes and haul stuff, wormhole management has never been easier.

So, we've been clearing the hole of those aforementioned 62 combat sites. Managed to get them down into the 20s. Nano drops have been rather stingy, with only 76 achieved so far. That's less than 2 per site. Couple that with the lowering in prices for nanos, and I think I'll sit on these for awhile.

In doing all the combat sites, I have realized a couple things. First, Scorch ammo is really as fragile as they say! We have burned through 20+ crystals in running the 40 sites we've done so far. Since this is probably going to become a common occurance, as 30km seems to be the standard range for most of the spawns in this class of wormhole, I considered getting a Scorch Ammo production run going.

And then I saw how much fullerides were. In doing my math, I saw there was very little money to be saved by setting up a whole production run inside the wormhole, other than to save me jumps. Which of course, can be the stuff of life in here, leaving the door open for thieves of all types, so I may reconsider that decision in the future.

So, we've come up with a decent system of running our combat sites and getting some use out of the carriers we have in here. We're running with the two PvE Legions, both with Heavy Pulse 2s and an active armor tank, of course. At the same time, our two carrier pilots are warped to a point just outside the POS shield, where they launch their fighters and assign them to us. So we merrily do our combat sites with 10 fighters swarming around us.

If you've never used fighters before, they are pretty much a comparion in damage to sentry drone 2s. But they can't hit the sleeper frigates, or player frigates for that matter, at all. Their best use is in helping take down the sleeper battleships, but they do a decent number on the cruisers as well.

And for some reason, the sleepers aren't shooting at them. At all. I'm not sure if there was some sort of code change which made drone boats more viable in wormholes, but since moving in here and trying out drones, we've seen they aren't being aggressed. Wierd.

I hope to be done with all the combats this weekend and move on the the 9 radar and mag sites we have waiting for us, and then! Back to Mining, and mayhaps we can start looking at our C3 statics!