Hilarity, and dead on. MAD MAX FTW!
Monday, May 30, 2011
Wormhole Topic of the Week: PvE Ship Fits and How They Work!
I do not claim to be an expert on ship fits, or even on most ships. What follows is my experiences with ship fits, mostly Amarr and lasers, that work within the confines of wormhole space.
Before I ever moved into wormholes, I ran level 4 missions in battleships. I had an active armor tank and the mission rats lined up to be killed, and never switched targets. I was not prepared to deal with sleepers.
The first major large difference between fighting Sleepers and mission rats are damage types. In missions, you can look up the damage types of which faction your mission is against and fit accordingly. Sleepers aren't so easy to deal with. They deal "omni" damage, meaning all types. If you have a "resist hole" meaning one of your resists is alot lower than the others, they will exploit this. You can have 80s in all your resists, and 50 in one, then that's what the sleepers will hit you with.
Your ship type is also going to heavily influence your ability to add more DPS over tank, depending on your starting resists. T1 Battlecruisers are going to need to mount some serious resist increasing modules to be able to stick around in Class 2 sites. Base starting resists are why T2 cruisers and T3 cruisers are so much better at survivability in wormholes. They are much easier to fit for more DPS because they already start with good resists which mean less holes to plug. A couple Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane 2s and you're mostly good to go. Plug in a third resist specific module for the harder sites or Class 3s. More DPS also means less incoming DPS because you can whittle down the ships shooting at you faster.
Generally, in the Class 2 hole, looking at it from a perspective of soloing the sites, I would not take lower than 60% in all resists. I'd prefer over 70s in everything. But, depending on your ship, you'll end up with something probably lower than the others, that's just the way it goes. Having 4 in all your resist related skills is very reccomended. Every resist percentage counts.
Another aspect to your tank is your reliance on either an active or passively tanked fit. With an active tank, you are using hardeners that draw on your ships capacitor supply to boost your resists. If you have excellent skills for both capacitor power and in your chosen tanking resist skills, you can certainly make an active tank work. You're probably also in a Tengu or a Legion with those kind of skills. For T2 or T1 ships, passive tank is, imo, the way to go. Why? Because with recent changes to Sleeper AI, Sleepers now use energy neutrailizers. Even with fives in all your energy skills, a single neuting Sleeper BS can drag your cap down to dangerous levels fairly quickly. If you're solo, this can be a death sentence as you wildly try to align to the nearest planet to get away. Throw in a sleeper frig webbing you, and you could be pod-bound very shortly.
Because of this, I rely on a passive tank, which draws no cap to boost my resists, and both, for me, a Damage Control 2 and Medium Armor Repairer 2. Along with a single Imperial Navy EANM II, my resists are 69/60/77/88 for armor. Along with using a "speed tank", which I will discuss in the next paragraph, my PvE Legion can tank entire C2 Radar site spawns and kill them before it is in any danger. Will an Advanced Sleeper BS break this tank? Yes, if it survives for long enough, this tank will fail, both from incoming DPS and because of the Sleeper neuting. When I do Class 3 combat sites, I replace one of my three Heat Sink 2s with a thermic resist module, another with a second EANM 2, and the third with a second Medium Armor Repper 2. Then the only danger to the Legion is losing it's speedtank.
In essence, speedtanking adds to the amount of incoming DPS you can manage. The faster you can go, without using a MWD, the better your speedtank is. Using this in direct correlation with managing your transversal(you'll have to look that one up, it's got videos all it's own for explanation) allows you to significantly increase your tanking ability by negating some of the incoming damage.
A Zealot with an AB II and good Navigation skills can get up to the mid 500s, while a Legion with the same can do mid 600s on speed.
The speedtank and transversal is what allows solo capsuleers to complete C2-C3 sites alone. The instant loss of the speedtank, through sleeper webbing, puts you in immediate danger and webbing frigates should be killed immediately, except where they are the remaining trigger. Triggering the next wave before you are ready for it can result in the inability to continue the site due to complete tank failure upon warp-in. Example, if you warp into a Sleeper Data Sanctuary, destroy the trigger and do not destroy the three Sirius guns, you will be webbed in place by the frigates and the three sentry guns and the battleship from the second wave will crush your tank.
Which leads to the next suggestion, Download Unknown's Wormhole Tool. Knowing the triggers on the different combat sites is crucial to your ability to take the incoming DPS. You only want to deal with as little DPS as possible if you are solo. If you're in a giant fleet, go ahead and shoot it all.
So, in the end, as long as your ship is:
Cap Stable
Resists over 60%
Using a AB to speedtank OR
Using a passive shield regen fit
You should be fine doing Class 2 combat sites solo. If your aim is to do Class 3 and above, you need to increase your tank, as I did by adding more resists and more repair amount, or by adding group mates to deal more DPS. It's quite hard to solo Class 3 sites, but it can be done. The amount of risk it involves is up to you to decide what is acceptable.
Before I ever moved into wormholes, I ran level 4 missions in battleships. I had an active armor tank and the mission rats lined up to be killed, and never switched targets. I was not prepared to deal with sleepers.
The first major large difference between fighting Sleepers and mission rats are damage types. In missions, you can look up the damage types of which faction your mission is against and fit accordingly. Sleepers aren't so easy to deal with. They deal "omni" damage, meaning all types. If you have a "resist hole" meaning one of your resists is alot lower than the others, they will exploit this. You can have 80s in all your resists, and 50 in one, then that's what the sleepers will hit you with.
Your ship type is also going to heavily influence your ability to add more DPS over tank, depending on your starting resists. T1 Battlecruisers are going to need to mount some serious resist increasing modules to be able to stick around in Class 2 sites. Base starting resists are why T2 cruisers and T3 cruisers are so much better at survivability in wormholes. They are much easier to fit for more DPS because they already start with good resists which mean less holes to plug. A couple Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane 2s and you're mostly good to go. Plug in a third resist specific module for the harder sites or Class 3s. More DPS also means less incoming DPS because you can whittle down the ships shooting at you faster.
Generally, in the Class 2 hole, looking at it from a perspective of soloing the sites, I would not take lower than 60% in all resists. I'd prefer over 70s in everything. But, depending on your ship, you'll end up with something probably lower than the others, that's just the way it goes. Having 4 in all your resist related skills is very reccomended. Every resist percentage counts.
Another aspect to your tank is your reliance on either an active or passively tanked fit. With an active tank, you are using hardeners that draw on your ships capacitor supply to boost your resists. If you have excellent skills for both capacitor power and in your chosen tanking resist skills, you can certainly make an active tank work. You're probably also in a Tengu or a Legion with those kind of skills. For T2 or T1 ships, passive tank is, imo, the way to go. Why? Because with recent changes to Sleeper AI, Sleepers now use energy neutrailizers. Even with fives in all your energy skills, a single neuting Sleeper BS can drag your cap down to dangerous levels fairly quickly. If you're solo, this can be a death sentence as you wildly try to align to the nearest planet to get away. Throw in a sleeper frig webbing you, and you could be pod-bound very shortly.
Because of this, I rely on a passive tank, which draws no cap to boost my resists, and both, for me, a Damage Control 2 and Medium Armor Repairer 2. Along with a single Imperial Navy EANM II, my resists are 69/60/77/88 for armor. Along with using a "speed tank", which I will discuss in the next paragraph, my PvE Legion can tank entire C2 Radar site spawns and kill them before it is in any danger. Will an Advanced Sleeper BS break this tank? Yes, if it survives for long enough, this tank will fail, both from incoming DPS and because of the Sleeper neuting. When I do Class 3 combat sites, I replace one of my three Heat Sink 2s with a thermic resist module, another with a second EANM 2, and the third with a second Medium Armor Repper 2. Then the only danger to the Legion is losing it's speedtank.
Speed tanking is a form of tanking (increasing the survivability of your ship), that relies on you moving very quickly. This allows you to outrun the explosions of missiles and dodge direct weapons (lasers, hybrids and projectiles) by 'overloading' thier tracking speed, I.E moving so quickly that the turret can't move fast enough to point at you
Read more: http://www.bukisa.com/articles/217446_eve-online-speed-tanking-guide#ixzz1Nsbx1Yex
In essence, speedtanking adds to the amount of incoming DPS you can manage. The faster you can go, without using a MWD, the better your speedtank is. Using this in direct correlation with managing your transversal(you'll have to look that one up, it's got videos all it's own for explanation) allows you to significantly increase your tanking ability by negating some of the incoming damage.
A Zealot with an AB II and good Navigation skills can get up to the mid 500s, while a Legion with the same can do mid 600s on speed.
The speedtank and transversal is what allows solo capsuleers to complete C2-C3 sites alone. The instant loss of the speedtank, through sleeper webbing, puts you in immediate danger and webbing frigates should be killed immediately, except where they are the remaining trigger. Triggering the next wave before you are ready for it can result in the inability to continue the site due to complete tank failure upon warp-in. Example, if you warp into a Sleeper Data Sanctuary, destroy the trigger and do not destroy the three Sirius guns, you will be webbed in place by the frigates and the three sentry guns and the battleship from the second wave will crush your tank.
Which leads to the next suggestion, Download Unknown's Wormhole Tool. Knowing the triggers on the different combat sites is crucial to your ability to take the incoming DPS. You only want to deal with as little DPS as possible if you are solo. If you're in a giant fleet, go ahead and shoot it all.
So, in the end, as long as your ship is:
Cap Stable
Resists over 60%
Using a AB to speedtank OR
Using a passive shield regen fit
You should be fine doing Class 2 combat sites solo. If your aim is to do Class 3 and above, you need to increase your tank, as I did by adding more resists and more repair amount, or by adding group mates to deal more DPS. It's quite hard to solo Class 3 sites, but it can be done. The amount of risk it involves is up to you to decide what is acceptable.
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Mining Ops & Wormhole Maintenence
We added another member to the corp this past week. A friend of Freethinker and Jared's; Raphid. They spent much of this week working an Average Frontier site, which we all hate and despise, but it's still ore.
So we were very happy when two Ordinary Perimeter Deposits spawned! We planned and executed a mining op consisting of ten hulks, two Itty 5s and the Rorqual. We went full bore at it for a few hours and emptied the site of pretty much all the ore worth taking home. We're hoping it will spawn a decent mega roid and we'll get to mine that. Everyone had a good time, with me getting a bit frazzled with running three Hulks, both haulers, and the Rorq at the same time. That's alot of hauling!
So we shut it all down, and went our seperate ways, til near after midnight my time when I noticed jumps on DOTLAN. I had forgot I had accidentally opened a D382 sometime earlier while looking for the high sec exit. Loggin in I caught a Helios as it threw out probes and started scanning.
Well crap.
So I jumped in some combat ships, the Legion, Devoter, pulled out the Thanatos and assigned some fighters. Warped around looking for the Helios, hoping to bump into him, while I closed the D382 with dual Orcas. After that, he was still scanning.
Oh, I hadn't scanned the new B274 back down, guess I should do that. As I did that, I noticed the scan probes were clustered near it. So I jumped back into the Legion and warped the gang over to it and threw the bubble up as soon as I landed. Almost right after it went up, the Helios de-cloaked . I quickly locked him up and blew him away. His pod hung in space, not moving. I locked him up, but stayed my trigger finger.
"Nice kill. Can I leave with my pod?" he asked. I was quite surprised, and started to respond that that was the reason I hadn't killed him. As I hit enter he jumped out and quickly convoed me. His name was Sor'Val, and he thanked me for not podding him. He said he was surprised. I told him it was obvious he wasn't trying to find my sites and just looking for a way out, and he said yes, that's what he was doing. I figured the loss of ship for the trespass was quite enough.
So o/ to Sor'Val. Next we meet, say hi!
Oh, and the Archon is finished! My training to fly it finally lets me at the controls tomorrow! Support skills for another month. :P
So we were very happy when two Ordinary Perimeter Deposits spawned! We planned and executed a mining op consisting of ten hulks, two Itty 5s and the Rorqual. We went full bore at it for a few hours and emptied the site of pretty much all the ore worth taking home. We're hoping it will spawn a decent mega roid and we'll get to mine that. Everyone had a good time, with me getting a bit frazzled with running three Hulks, both haulers, and the Rorq at the same time. That's alot of hauling!
So we shut it all down, and went our seperate ways, til near after midnight my time when I noticed jumps on DOTLAN. I had forgot I had accidentally opened a D382 sometime earlier while looking for the high sec exit. Loggin in I caught a Helios as it threw out probes and started scanning.
Well crap.
So I jumped in some combat ships, the Legion, Devoter, pulled out the Thanatos and assigned some fighters. Warped around looking for the Helios, hoping to bump into him, while I closed the D382 with dual Orcas. After that, he was still scanning.
Oh, I hadn't scanned the new B274 back down, guess I should do that. As I did that, I noticed the scan probes were clustered near it. So I jumped back into the Legion and warped the gang over to it and threw the bubble up as soon as I landed. Almost right after it went up, the Helios de-cloaked . I quickly locked him up and blew him away. His pod hung in space, not moving. I locked him up, but stayed my trigger finger.
"Nice kill. Can I leave with my pod?" he asked. I was quite surprised, and started to respond that that was the reason I hadn't killed him. As I hit enter he jumped out and quickly convoed me. His name was Sor'Val, and he thanked me for not podding him. He said he was surprised. I told him it was obvious he wasn't trying to find my sites and just looking for a way out, and he said yes, that's what he was doing. I figured the loss of ship for the trespass was quite enough.
So o/ to Sor'Val. Next we meet, say hi!
Oh, and the Archon is finished! My training to fly it finally lets me at the controls tomorrow! Support skills for another month. :P
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Wormhole Planetary Interaction: Take One
Well, up til now all I've done PI-wise in my wormholes has been POS fuels only. With their prices absolutely in the tank,(doing the numbers, selling mechanical parts for 5500 is literally bleeding isk as opposed to selling P2s) I decided to look into P4 products that we can make inside Pretoria. We have Nano Factories, Organic Mortars, and Wetware Mainframes.
Looking over the prices, Wetwares are going for almost 1 mil each, so I've decided to give them a shot. To that end, I set up on the only Temperate planet we have and started production of the few materials I don't produce from POS fuel production: Bacteria, Biofuels, and Proteins.
Of course there's six new P3 products I don't currently make, so these go on another planet, and another Barren gets to be the P3-P4 production center.
Now hopefully my POS fuel production won't suffer, but the prices are so stupid low I can afford to just start buying the crap, honestly.
How much of a profit are my fellow wormhole industrialists making out there on PI? What have you found to be the most profitable vs time consumed?
Looking over the prices, Wetwares are going for almost 1 mil each, so I've decided to give them a shot. To that end, I set up on the only Temperate planet we have and started production of the few materials I don't produce from POS fuel production: Bacteria, Biofuels, and Proteins.
Of course there's six new P3 products I don't currently make, so these go on another planet, and another Barren gets to be the P3-P4 production center.
Now hopefully my POS fuel production won't suffer, but the prices are so stupid low I can afford to just start buying the crap, honestly.
How much of a profit are my fellow wormhole industrialists making out there on PI? What have you found to be the most profitable vs time consumed?
Thursday, May 19, 2011
New Gravimetric Mechanics?
I know I posted about this last week, along with the GM response, about the giant spod roid we encountered that subsequently disappeared. Well, we warped into a grav site this week and were happily mining our way down the list when we ran into a 35k bistot!
We are 100% sure we opened this site and it had not gone through a downtime. We've seen this a few times now, and this is the third I've documented. The GM claimed that the site mechanics haven't changed, but I've been doing grav sites for a long time now, and this is the only consistant time I've seen these roids occur with the site spawn.
Anyone else out there running into these yet? The bistot was not any bigger in actual size than the rest, so the only way we knew it was alot bigger was with a survey scanner.
We are 100% sure we opened this site and it had not gone through a downtime. We've seen this a few times now, and this is the third I've documented. The GM claimed that the site mechanics haven't changed, but I've been doing grav sites for a long time now, and this is the only consistant time I've seen these roids occur with the site spawn.
Anyone else out there running into these yet? The bistot was not any bigger in actual size than the rest, so the only way we knew it was alot bigger was with a survey scanner.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Wormhole Topic of the Week: Rorquals!
Over the past few months, I've gotten some questions about wormhole Rorquals. Wether it's worth it to build them, how to build them, how to use them etc etc. I, personally, have built two. So after Darth Normski mentioned I should write one, it seemed like a good topic for this week.
What Is A Rorqual You Ask?
The Rorqual. Ever since it was on the drawing board I've dreamed about owning and flying one. Big Mama Ore. The road to owning one in a wormhole you can't jump it in is very long and hard, frought with extremely hard work and peril. But at the end, is it worth it? Hell yes it is! Straight off the top you will earn 20-25% more for your minerals as opposed to refining them in the Intensive Refining Array.
A couple questions a corp should ask about wether it should decide to build a Rorqual or not. First would be, how long does the corp plan on staying in the wormhole? Building a Rorq can be a billion isk investment into the hole you're living in, and it can't be removed, only self destructed.(unless you live in a C5-6, in which case you're probably not reading blogs like this) You should plan on staying for 3-6 months to completely recoup your Rorq investment. If you're just hole jumping around, doing the nomad lifestyle, then this is not the choice for you.
Second question would be wether your corp can handle the logistics of building something larger than even a Dreadnought. The Rorqual takes MILLIONS upon MILLIONS of high sec minerals like tritanium and pyerite that you will never be able to mine out of your wormhole. It must come from outside. I already made my arguements about the two ways to build carriers, and they both apply here. Wether you bring the minerals inside and produce the components inside, or you build them outside and bring in components only, that's your decision. But is your corp up to it?
Why Should I Own One In A Wormhole?
So what does the Rorqual do to make it so indispensible to some wormhole types? It's foremost job is compressing ore. It does this by using a module called an Industrial Core module. While this core is turned on, the Rorqual can be used to compress ore.
A number of things about the Industrial Core. It's heavy, weighing in at 4k m3. As with all capital ship modules, be prepared for that. Also, make sure you know that it requires it's own skills on top of those required to fly the Rorqual, so just being able to fly the ship will not make you an ore compressing master of minerals. Requiring Mass Production V, Advanced Mass Production IV, this is some serious training in places your Rorqual pilot may not already be proficient, I know mine wasn't because you don't want your best miner flying this ship. He's going to spend all his time sitting at the POS, boosting and compressing. It really is best left to an alt or a professional Orca pilot.
When activated, the Industrial Core puts the Rorqual into "Siege Mode". It transforms the Rorqual into a non-moveable ore compression base for the duration of the cycle. Each cycle lasts five minutes. Notice I said "non-moveable". The Rorqual cannot move, to jump, to warp, to even ignite it's subspace engines, while in deployed mode. This, along with it being a massive slow cap ship, are the reasons to never take the Rorqual into your mining sites.
And when you activate the core, the Rorq "transforms", basically sitting up in a vertical position, switching it's storage bays and generally looking like an old toy I used to have from the Mega Force line. Loved those things.
The Industrial Core requires fuel, heavy water in the Rorq's case. You have the capacity to store 25k of heavy water in it's fuel bay. This will get you through 3 hours of boosting or compression time.
Initiating the Industrial Core also applies more mining bonuses for your boosted squad. With the core not engaged, cycle times with just the mining gang links going are 139.5 seconds and 22.593 range. This is on a character with Capital Industrial Command Ships IV. V takes a ridiculous 68 days 20 hours, so that's not on my training schedule.
With the Industrial Core engaged, the cycle time drops to 123.30 seconds and a range of 25.631. So it can save you alot of extra time with the core going, depending on how many mining lasers you are actually boosting.
To actually compress ore, you must have the Compression BPOs. I store mine inside the Rorq. You want four for each type of ore you'll be compressing, since the Rorq has only four production lines available. Ore to be compressed goes into the Rorq cargo bay. The more cargo room you have, the more ore you can compress at once. That is why I cargo rigged it and it has all expander IIs in the lows, giving me 126k of cargo room, which only allows me to do 7k arkonor, or seven "units" of compressed ark at a time. Each ore varies, so you'll have to check the BPOs to find out what the compression size actually is.
So with the core running, you fill your cargo with the ore you want to compress, right click your BPO and act like you're going to manufacture something from the BPO, which you are. Try to get the max amount of runs for the type of ore you have and it then takes five minutes to run the production. Run all four if you can, because you're eating heavy water to do this.
After you're done you can transport all your compressed ore out into k-space to your favorite refining station and refine it for 100%, or as good as you can get it. Generally we aren't picky and just hit the closest for a 5% tax loss. Compressed ore refines just like normal ore.
Doesn't The Rorqual Have Tractor Bonuses And Huge Storage?
Why yes, yes it does. It also aligns like an Endorian moon trying to get out of the Death Star's path.
Hint: it didn't make it.
So what's the proper way to use a Rorqual? It has tractor bonuses and that huge cargo bay, right? It can use mining drones and keep an entire mining fleet going. So should it be in the field? Short answer, hell no.
Long answer, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING GET BACK INSIDE THE FORCEFIELD NOW OMGWTFBBQ!
This is assuming you're in a wormhole, and you don't have a corp with 20+ members online at all times. If you can guard the miners full time, then sure! Go ahead and put the cap ship in the belt. As long as you are prepared to lose it, do what you wish with it.
If you're like me and mine, you don't have that combat fleet to keep the Rorq safe. So it's safety overrides all bonuses we may have for it being in the field. As such, we treat it like a big Orca. It stays in the POS force field at ALL times. At first, I tried looking up "Battle Rorqual" fits and such, and just found out if the Rorq engages anyone, it's most likely dead. It's not worth building another one to be lazy with this one.
To recap: The Rorqual does not leave the force field!
Logistics: Does Your Corp Have Them?
What does it take to build one of these suckers? To start, it needs everything that carrier I built needs. An X-Large Ship Assembly Array, Component Assembly Array if you're building the cap ship parts inside the wormhole, and TONS of minerals.
Here's what it takes in minerals:
It takes at ME4:
123 mil tritanium
28 mil pyerite
10 mil mexallon
462k nocxium
83k zydrine
36k megacyte
According to Eve Smith, it takes a current price of 1.3 BIL in minerals to make a Rorq. Over 600 mil of that is in high sec minerals that you cannot mine in sufficient quantities inside your wormhole. This entire thought process also applies to dreadnoughts you wish to make.
So, you need to be comfortable with the fact that you may possibly lose a 1.3 bil cap ship if you get invaded. For me, it's more of a question if I can pay for the Rorq in skills and experiences before I may be forcibly removed. So of course my answer was yes.
Everyone is going to come to their own conclusions on this subject, and a Rorq isn't for everyone. I probably wouldn't build one in a C1, but some people have and will do so again. If you've got deep roots in a system, no reason to not make them deeper.
What Is A Rorqual You Ask?
The Rorqual. Ever since it was on the drawing board I've dreamed about owning and flying one. Big Mama Ore. The road to owning one in a wormhole you can't jump it in is very long and hard, frought with extremely hard work and peril. But at the end, is it worth it? Hell yes it is! Straight off the top you will earn 20-25% more for your minerals as opposed to refining them in the Intensive Refining Array.
A couple questions a corp should ask about wether it should decide to build a Rorqual or not. First would be, how long does the corp plan on staying in the wormhole? Building a Rorq can be a billion isk investment into the hole you're living in, and it can't be removed, only self destructed.(unless you live in a C5-6, in which case you're probably not reading blogs like this) You should plan on staying for 3-6 months to completely recoup your Rorq investment. If you're just hole jumping around, doing the nomad lifestyle, then this is not the choice for you.
Second question would be wether your corp can handle the logistics of building something larger than even a Dreadnought. The Rorqual takes MILLIONS upon MILLIONS of high sec minerals like tritanium and pyerite that you will never be able to mine out of your wormhole. It must come from outside. I already made my arguements about the two ways to build carriers, and they both apply here. Wether you bring the minerals inside and produce the components inside, or you build them outside and bring in components only, that's your decision. But is your corp up to it?
Why Should I Own One In A Wormhole?
So what does the Rorqual do to make it so indispensible to some wormhole types? It's foremost job is compressing ore. It does this by using a module called an Industrial Core module. While this core is turned on, the Rorqual can be used to compress ore.
A number of things about the Industrial Core. It's heavy, weighing in at 4k m3. As with all capital ship modules, be prepared for that. Also, make sure you know that it requires it's own skills on top of those required to fly the Rorqual, so just being able to fly the ship will not make you an ore compressing master of minerals. Requiring Mass Production V, Advanced Mass Production IV, this is some serious training in places your Rorqual pilot may not already be proficient, I know mine wasn't because you don't want your best miner flying this ship. He's going to spend all his time sitting at the POS, boosting and compressing. It really is best left to an alt or a professional Orca pilot.
When activated, the Industrial Core puts the Rorqual into "Siege Mode". It transforms the Rorqual into a non-moveable ore compression base for the duration of the cycle. Each cycle lasts five minutes. Notice I said "non-moveable". The Rorqual cannot move, to jump, to warp, to even ignite it's subspace engines, while in deployed mode. This, along with it being a massive slow cap ship, are the reasons to never take the Rorqual into your mining sites.
And when you activate the core, the Rorq "transforms", basically sitting up in a vertical position, switching it's storage bays and generally looking like an old toy I used to have from the Mega Force line. Loved those things.
The Industrial Core requires fuel, heavy water in the Rorq's case. You have the capacity to store 25k of heavy water in it's fuel bay. This will get you through 3 hours of boosting or compression time.
Initiating the Industrial Core also applies more mining bonuses for your boosted squad. With the core not engaged, cycle times with just the mining gang links going are 139.5 seconds and 22.593 range. This is on a character with Capital Industrial Command Ships IV. V takes a ridiculous 68 days 20 hours, so that's not on my training schedule.
With the Industrial Core engaged, the cycle time drops to 123.30 seconds and a range of 25.631. So it can save you alot of extra time with the core going, depending on how many mining lasers you are actually boosting.
To actually compress ore, you must have the Compression BPOs. I store mine inside the Rorq. You want four for each type of ore you'll be compressing, since the Rorq has only four production lines available. Ore to be compressed goes into the Rorq cargo bay. The more cargo room you have, the more ore you can compress at once. That is why I cargo rigged it and it has all expander IIs in the lows, giving me 126k of cargo room, which only allows me to do 7k arkonor, or seven "units" of compressed ark at a time. Each ore varies, so you'll have to check the BPOs to find out what the compression size actually is.
So with the core running, you fill your cargo with the ore you want to compress, right click your BPO and act like you're going to manufacture something from the BPO, which you are. Try to get the max amount of runs for the type of ore you have and it then takes five minutes to run the production. Run all four if you can, because you're eating heavy water to do this.
After you're done you can transport all your compressed ore out into k-space to your favorite refining station and refine it for 100%, or as good as you can get it. Generally we aren't picky and just hit the closest for a 5% tax loss. Compressed ore refines just like normal ore.
Doesn't The Rorqual Have Tractor Bonuses And Huge Storage?
Why yes, yes it does. It also aligns like an Endorian moon trying to get out of the Death Star's path.
Hint: it didn't make it.
So what's the proper way to use a Rorqual? It has tractor bonuses and that huge cargo bay, right? It can use mining drones and keep an entire mining fleet going. So should it be in the field? Short answer, hell no.
Long answer, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING GET BACK INSIDE THE FORCEFIELD NOW OMGWTFBBQ!
This is assuming you're in a wormhole, and you don't have a corp with 20+ members online at all times. If you can guard the miners full time, then sure! Go ahead and put the cap ship in the belt. As long as you are prepared to lose it, do what you wish with it.
If you're like me and mine, you don't have that combat fleet to keep the Rorq safe. So it's safety overrides all bonuses we may have for it being in the field. As such, we treat it like a big Orca. It stays in the POS force field at ALL times. At first, I tried looking up "Battle Rorqual" fits and such, and just found out if the Rorq engages anyone, it's most likely dead. It's not worth building another one to be lazy with this one.
To recap: The Rorqual does not leave the force field!
Logistics: Does Your Corp Have Them?
What does it take to build one of these suckers? To start, it needs everything that carrier I built needs. An X-Large Ship Assembly Array, Component Assembly Array if you're building the cap ship parts inside the wormhole, and TONS of minerals.
Here's what it takes in minerals:
It takes at ME4:
123 mil tritanium
28 mil pyerite
10 mil mexallon
462k nocxium
83k zydrine
36k megacyte
According to Eve Smith, it takes a current price of 1.3 BIL in minerals to make a Rorq. Over 600 mil of that is in high sec minerals that you cannot mine in sufficient quantities inside your wormhole. This entire thought process also applies to dreadnoughts you wish to make.
So, you need to be comfortable with the fact that you may possibly lose a 1.3 bil cap ship if you get invaded. For me, it's more of a question if I can pay for the Rorq in skills and experiences before I may be forcibly removed. So of course my answer was yes.
Everyone is going to come to their own conclusions on this subject, and a Rorq isn't for everyone. I probably wouldn't build one in a C1, but some people have and will do so again. If you've got deep roots in a system, no reason to not make them deeper.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Leaving The Caretakers
I spent the better part of the past couple of days arming my new Large Amarr Control Tower with 20 ECM batteries, energy neut batteries, warp disruptors, etc etc. I think I have a total of eight guns online, small beam, small pulse, small arty, medium pulse, etc etc. I've got my scanning/industrial caretaker alt in system and have just loaded another week or so of fuel into a corp array. I'm ready to head home.
In the next week or so the plan is to train up a number of PI/industry alts to head into this wormhole and actively PI. Depending on how much time I find myself with will decide wether I'm going to go for P4 products, or do full on production of PI end products like POSes and such.
Had an interesting run in with a Russian in a Heron. I sent the Devoter home earlier today, and my Anathema was the only ship with any combat modules on it. I have it fitted to catch other Cov Ops ships, warp scrambler, web, target disruptor, and a Rocket Launcher 2. Unfortunately, my corpmate Gnicklas also uses this ship, and he has much better missile skills than I do.
The Russian came in, warped off, and proceeded to start scanning. I hopped around looking for him, then dropped some combat probes at the outer planet, out of DSCAN range. Very quickly had the planet range, so got a hit very fast and brought the probes in and pounced on him. Uncloaked in transit, had all my modules up and running.
Except my missiles weren't shooting. What do you mean I don't have the skills for those.....oh. There were T2 missiles loaded in the launcher that I couldn't use.
So I told the Russian he should probably leave now. He of course responded in russian, so I google translated. He got the point when I told him to leave in Russian. I unpointed him, he warped to the WH and sat there.
Я смотрю вы I said.
And then he jumped out.
No huge combat fleet came in, and he left local quickly. I'm now on my way back to our C2 with the cov ops and the orca I brought with. Can't wait to do some scanning, the static has been closed for days, so we'll see if anything spawned.
In the next week or so the plan is to train up a number of PI/industry alts to head into this wormhole and actively PI. Depending on how much time I find myself with will decide wether I'm going to go for P4 products, or do full on production of PI end products like POSes and such.
Had an interesting run in with a Russian in a Heron. I sent the Devoter home earlier today, and my Anathema was the only ship with any combat modules on it. I have it fitted to catch other Cov Ops ships, warp scrambler, web, target disruptor, and a Rocket Launcher 2. Unfortunately, my corpmate Gnicklas also uses this ship, and he has much better missile skills than I do.
The Russian came in, warped off, and proceeded to start scanning. I hopped around looking for him, then dropped some combat probes at the outer planet, out of DSCAN range. Very quickly had the planet range, so got a hit very fast and brought the probes in and pounced on him. Uncloaked in transit, had all my modules up and running.
Except my missiles weren't shooting. What do you mean I don't have the skills for those.....oh. There were T2 missiles loaded in the launcher that I couldn't use.
So I told the Russian he should probably leave now. He of course responded in russian, so I google translated. He got the point when I told him to leave in Russian. I unpointed him, he warped to the WH and sat there.
Я смотрю вы I said.
And then he jumped out.
No huge combat fleet came in, and he left local quickly. I'm now on my way back to our C2 with the cov ops and the orca I brought with. Can't wait to do some scanning, the static has been closed for days, so we'll see if anything spawned.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Well That Did Not Go As Planned II : Lack Of Hitting Scan Returns; The Final Wormfail
You really figure after awhile you've got this all figured out and no one is going to get the drop on you. Whoa boy howdy did I just get the rug pulled out from under me.
As I have mentioned lately, I've been looking for a C3. My priorities for it were it had to have a high sec static and all PI available.
Well enter a sale for this wormhole.
I was in love. Full PI, a single static meaning a single WH only most of the time to babysit, and if it turned into something really nice, it's a C3 with mercoxit in the grav sites. And he only wanted 300 mil for it.
I finally got in touch with the seller this morning, but I had a trip scheduled with my fiance's family, and he said he'd most likely have it sold by then. Oh well, no problem, I'll be back by 2100 game time, I'll look you up then. Kthxbye.
Our trip ended up taking much longer than expected due to a dead battery on the car I rode in, so I figured, surely the WH sold. And, yes, the seller said when I managed to get home and on, it had sold. Alright, np, good day to you sir.
Close convo. 10 seconds later another one pops up from the seller. "Wait." he says. "No, the C3 hasn't sold."
!!!!
SELL IT TO ME!!!!
So I bought it, transaction went smoothly, and I was in anchoring a medium temp POS and off I went to buy a large POS since I didn't have one sitting around like I thought. I bought a new Impel for the hole, and filled up the fuel on medium, but no strontium, the local trade hub didn't have practically any. No matter, I'll head back to my C2 and grab some of my extra, but I'll do that later.
What was that? Oh, that was nothing except my hopes and dreams being crushed, pay no attention!
I pick up some White Noise Generators and head back to the wormhole. I had my Anathema with combat probes out, my Devoter at the high sec hole side, Firt in the Impel setting up ECM, and Jelloshot in an Itty V with a corp array, ship array, and some more ECM.
My mistakes started piling up. I was too estatic. I had that "new wormhole" smell.
And that's when they struck. As Firt slowly flew around the outside of the POS shield setting up ECM, ships started appearing on his overview. WTF!? Well, it's an Impel, I can make it.....except that's a Broadsword and it just dropped a bubble.
Shit.
I started yelling on vent, and got two corpmates to log on, but they were both in the other wormhole with no bookmark out. I warped the Devoter away from the hole as soon as they finished Firt's pod off. Full Standard implant set plus Mining Foreman Mindlink. *sigh* Oh well.
So now the Itty and the Devoter are in the shield, and more people are arriving. A Hound, a Malestrom, a Tempest, an Armageddon. They start attacking my offline, as of yet not onlined ECMs, three in all. At some point in time I opted to anchor the corp array, but had not onlined, so did not have anything inside the POS to lose except all the fuel. And no strontium.
Okay, well whatdoidowhatdoidowhatdoido. My mind raced. Bring our combat fleet in? No, Nick counseled, they're fit for PvP only, and probably have massive DPS, and we aren't set up to deal with that in here. He's right. So I decide to ignore the ransoms in local and the attempts at convos, and warp the Itty and Devoter to the far side of the system and logoffski. This goes according to plan.
Except the part where I realize I've left the wormhole with Forgotten, the only person with a scanning ship in there and have travelled 17 jumps to Pretoria, where I had planned on getting my combat Legion. They have battleships in the C3, and could close the high sec at any time if they realize this.
OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG.
So I log on one of the scanning alts, and me and him head back the 17 jumps to the C3. The hole is still there. Whew. But the Broadsword is probably sitting at the hole, cloaked, waiting. So my plan is to jump in with Peturbo, the scanning alt in the Magnate, get him agressed, and cloak and head off with Forgotten in the Anathema.
K, one two jump!
And no one is there to witness my awesome plan. Very well. Get the scanning alt logged off and I proceed to find out where these fuckers came from. Yep, there's the K162 from another wormhole. A Typhoon shows up on scan and I get the warnings that Starbase Is Under Attack!
Oh well, have fun. I figure out there are no other wormholes and go play something else for awhile.
Fast forward a few hours. POS is gone. They actually expended the time to kill it. All I wish is that I had had the prescence of mind to yank as much of the fuel out as I could have. Oh well, my mind didn't work as fast as it could have.
So I can't put up the large POS I have in the itty's hold as there's only one anchoring attempt allowed per corp per day. So, the plan is to come back with an Orca full of my gear, it has warp stabs and a cloak. And more POS fuel. I am going to crit the hole, or get close to it. And try again tomorrow.
Crap, I need to buy some Oxygen.
As I have mentioned lately, I've been looking for a C3. My priorities for it were it had to have a high sec static and all PI available.
Well enter a sale for this wormhole.
I was in love. Full PI, a single static meaning a single WH only most of the time to babysit, and if it turned into something really nice, it's a C3 with mercoxit in the grav sites. And he only wanted 300 mil for it.
I finally got in touch with the seller this morning, but I had a trip scheduled with my fiance's family, and he said he'd most likely have it sold by then. Oh well, no problem, I'll be back by 2100 game time, I'll look you up then. Kthxbye.
Our trip ended up taking much longer than expected due to a dead battery on the car I rode in, so I figured, surely the WH sold. And, yes, the seller said when I managed to get home and on, it had sold. Alright, np, good day to you sir.
Close convo. 10 seconds later another one pops up from the seller. "Wait." he says. "No, the C3 hasn't sold."
!!!!
SELL IT TO ME!!!!
So I bought it, transaction went smoothly, and I was in anchoring a medium temp POS and off I went to buy a large POS since I didn't have one sitting around like I thought. I bought a new Impel for the hole, and filled up the fuel on medium, but no strontium, the local trade hub didn't have practically any. No matter, I'll head back to my C2 and grab some of my extra, but I'll do that later.
What was that? Oh, that was nothing except my hopes and dreams being crushed, pay no attention!
I pick up some White Noise Generators and head back to the wormhole. I had my Anathema with combat probes out, my Devoter at the high sec hole side, Firt in the Impel setting up ECM, and Jelloshot in an Itty V with a corp array, ship array, and some more ECM.
My mistakes started piling up. I was too estatic. I had that "new wormhole" smell.
And that's when they struck. As Firt slowly flew around the outside of the POS shield setting up ECM, ships started appearing on his overview. WTF!? Well, it's an Impel, I can make it.....except that's a Broadsword and it just dropped a bubble.
Shit.
I started yelling on vent, and got two corpmates to log on, but they were both in the other wormhole with no bookmark out. I warped the Devoter away from the hole as soon as they finished Firt's pod off. Full Standard implant set plus Mining Foreman Mindlink. *sigh* Oh well.
So now the Itty and the Devoter are in the shield, and more people are arriving. A Hound, a Malestrom, a Tempest, an Armageddon. They start attacking my offline, as of yet not onlined ECMs, three in all. At some point in time I opted to anchor the corp array, but had not onlined, so did not have anything inside the POS to lose except all the fuel. And no strontium.
Okay, well whatdoidowhatdoidowhatdoido. My mind raced. Bring our combat fleet in? No, Nick counseled, they're fit for PvP only, and probably have massive DPS, and we aren't set up to deal with that in here. He's right. So I decide to ignore the ransoms in local and the attempts at convos, and warp the Itty and Devoter to the far side of the system and logoffski. This goes according to plan.
Except the part where I realize I've left the wormhole with Forgotten, the only person with a scanning ship in there and have travelled 17 jumps to Pretoria, where I had planned on getting my combat Legion. They have battleships in the C3, and could close the high sec at any time if they realize this.
OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG.
So I log on one of the scanning alts, and me and him head back the 17 jumps to the C3. The hole is still there. Whew. But the Broadsword is probably sitting at the hole, cloaked, waiting. So my plan is to jump in with Peturbo, the scanning alt in the Magnate, get him agressed, and cloak and head off with Forgotten in the Anathema.
K, one two jump!
And no one is there to witness my awesome plan. Very well. Get the scanning alt logged off and I proceed to find out where these fuckers came from. Yep, there's the K162 from another wormhole. A Typhoon shows up on scan and I get the warnings that Starbase Is Under Attack!
Oh well, have fun. I figure out there are no other wormholes and go play something else for awhile.
Fast forward a few hours. POS is gone. They actually expended the time to kill it. All I wish is that I had had the prescence of mind to yank as much of the fuel out as I could have. Oh well, my mind didn't work as fast as it could have.
So I can't put up the large POS I have in the itty's hold as there's only one anchoring attempt allowed per corp per day. So, the plan is to come back with an Orca full of my gear, it has warp stabs and a cloak. And more POS fuel. I am going to crit the hole, or get close to it. And try again tomorrow.
Crap, I need to buy some Oxygen.
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Wormhole Topic of the Week: Wormhole Carriers!
As I mine, I like to peruse the eve forums, and frequently come across questions or topics I would like to see covered in a manner that doesn't tend to draw trolls or get stuffed with people who claim they are experts but offer up no solid basis for their opinions.
Therefore, I'm going to do a weekly wormhole related topic and cover it to the best of my ability. Of course, everything is from my point of view and from my experiences only. I can only claim to know what I have been through, and my proof is therefore most likely contained in the pages of this blog, so should be easily referenced.
So, since the topic has arisen on the eve forums and just so happens to coincide with our own building of another corporate wormhole carrier, our Archon, I thought I would start it out with this topic.
There's alot of opinion on the eve boards about which type of carrier is good for which wormhole and if you should even build carriers inside a wormhole at all. Everyone has different answers, and not everything fits into a nice shiny box with a bow on it that works for everyone.
A corp should really ask what they want a carrier in their wormhole for as a leadoff into all the other questions that could possibly arise following the answer to this one simple question; why?
Is it for defense? Carriers are really the biggest and best answer to defense, be it for a fleet in your wormhole or for your POS. But in the form of logistics; remote repping shields and armor and energy transferring so other ships can do the same. Carriers are not first and foremost a DPS defensive tool. A single carrier can kick out 1000 dps on a target, and with a gang who can't flee or can't remote rep the target, it can be certain destruction. But in wormholes, you aren't normally going to be facing gangs of ships who can't or aren't prepared to tank a single carrier's DPS output.
So you unfortunately have to put the thought of your huge new shiny capital ship hot dropping onto targets, guns blazing away while little fighters slash their way through shields and armor. Because it doesn't happen like that, and carriers don't have guns.
I admit, I thought carriers were the end all be all for ultimate spaceship battles, but, it turns out, they are really just the uber clerics of Eve. They allow other ships to do what I stated above without exploding. They make it silly stupid hard to attack POSes when the defenders have them, and in wormholes, they are HUGE force multipliers since the opposing force can't bring them with to do the same thing you are. You give yourself real home field advantage with them.
Yes, they are huge, they are shiny and sexy. They make people pale when they see them on scan. But they are the space healers of Eve.
So now that we know what they are used for in defense, what else are you wanting to do with them?
You want to run sleeper sites with them. Well, depending on which class of wormhole you live in, that runs the gauntlet from "That's a good idea" to "That's a terrible idea" and back to "Gallente Elite Carrier Wreck".
Of course, this also depends on how large the corp you have supporting said carrier in said sleeper sites, so I'm going to assume that your corp size depends on the which class it is you're living in.
Starting in a Class 1, you've got less than 10 members, probably more like 3. There is no reason to bring a carrier, if you build one in your class 1, to a combat site. The sites consist of frigate and cruiser sized sleepers, neither of which do very much damage to a decently skilled character in a battlecruiser or up. Your remote repping skills are not needed. Nor can your fighters really even find their targets, let alone hit them. There is very little point to being there in a carrier. Along with that, we're assuming you don't have any support along. Someone combat probes you down and scrams you.
You're scrammed, you've got no support, and most likely, without divine intervention, you're going to be that wreck I talked about earlier.
Class 2s! Now carriers here at least have targets in the battleships in the sleeper sites. Fighters rip sleeper battleships to shreds, really helping out with the turnover on the sites if you have alot of them to do, and not all that many people to help out doing them. But, here again, your carrier does not belong in the site along with your fighters. You should have your fighters assigned to the shooters in the site. The carrier itself should be sitting, lazily sunning itself, barely outside your POS shield. At the slightest notion of trouble, it can lazily move inside.
Class 3s and 4s are really the same boat. You get enough people to support the carriers, you can take them into the sites if the pilots have the skills to keep them alive. Barring huge russian combat fleets, you should be able to get your carriers out to safety as you should have the support to see the trouble coming.
5s and 6s are where you actually need the cap ships, and having them along actually contributes to the payout of the sites through escalation, meaning you get six additional advanced sleeper battleships to spawn when you bring capital ships into Clas 5 and 6 sites. Since I haven't lived in one or been part of running in these classes of wormhole, all I can claim is from what I've read, amnd that is that you need them and want them in these class sites.
So, for sleeper sites, most people want to not take their giant, slow aligning, non DPS producing carriers into the combat sites. Therefore, do not produce carriers with the notion that they are for killing sleepers, unless you can support them with numbers and keep them alive. I don't, so they don't go to combat sites.
What else do you want to build carriers for? Regular readers will know what my favorite reason for my carriers are: psychological affect. I could call it the "Holy Shit" affect. Cause when you go in and hit D-scan, that's what comes out of your mouth.
It's the part of the equation that gets added in a gang or corp's mind when they are deciding wether to come in and gank you, or wether they should set up a ninja POS. When people are considering invoking harm on you, they have to weigh that huge beautiful hulking piece of naval technology in their plans, and the majority of them time they come to the conclusion you want them to: "It's Not Worth It."
Wether that means they aren't willing to invest the time to take down your POS, the ships that might get killed while attacking your POS while guns and the shields get repped, the possibility of meeting a fleet of yours supported with your carriers, none of those matter to you. Only the outcome does. They decide to go back the way they came.
It is my personal opinion that the carriers I have floating in my POS shield defend my wormhole sites while my corp is not logged in. And I have hundreds of DOTLAN readings that show two jumps from a K162 I find later. One in, and one right back out. The fact that while those intruders are going about their business in your hole, those sleeping giants may stir, and they may find them guarding their way back home when all is said and done.
That's my "psychological affect".
If you're a PvP corp, you're not building them for that reason, and you're also not looking at mine for that reason. They aren't going to stop you from running my sites because you know how to deal with them, and have the numbers as well. But the majority of Eve players don't, and I feel like it stops a large majority of people from running my sites, and therefore, it saves me money in that I still get to run those sites.
And the last reason to build carriers in a wormhole? Because you can! Carriers are bad ass, period. It's just cool to have a carrier, and to have one in a place that most likely, you are the only person who ever will? That's just got a cool factor all it's own to it. Is this a good reason? Heck no. But if you want to learn the ropes on carriers, this is a good place to do it. This was another of my reasons.
So now you've decided, we want carriers. But how much do they cost? How much trouble is it going to be to make these suckers?
Since you're in a wormhole and most people have at least one dedicated industrialist in their corps, I'm going to assume you have one. They're going to need the Capital Ship Construction skill, which takes some serious dedication to production skills. You need level 3 in it, level 4 if you want to build a Rorqual. Assume you want to build a Rorqual. If you're going to mine seriously, you need a Rorqual. See other posts about that.
So now you need your BPCs and your POS arrays. Best way to start is by buying a BPC pack for your carrier of choice, which will include the carrier BPC itself, along with all the capital ship component BPCs, like Capital Drone Bay BPC, Capital Jump Drive, etc etc.
To build a Capital class ship at a POS, you need a X-Large Ship Assembly Array. These are great, as they also double as great ore storage bays, since they can hold 18+ mil of space.
To actually start building the ship, first you need all the finished components. There are a number of trains of thought on how to get these components into your wormhole to begin production.
You can buy or produce the components outside your wormhole and truck them in with Orcas, or, if you live in the larger wormhole classes, with freighters. You should note, however, that capital ship components are HEAVY, most weighing 10,000m3. For most carriers, you need 100+ components. That's ALOT of mass going in the wormholes, and you'll go through alot of them to get enough components inside.
The method I use is to build the components at your POS. You need a Component Assembly Array for this. I keep the carrier BPC handy and keep track of what you need to build next. It will take a couple days to produce all the required components. You should anchor the Component Assembly Array near the X-Large Ship Assembly Array for easy transfer of the components, otherwise you'll be slow boating huge amounts of components across your POS shield.
The other thing you have to take into account is where the minerals for your ship are coming from. If you're making the components inside the wormhole, you are going to have to bring in the high sec minerals. Wormholes do not spawn enough of the high sec ores to even come close to having enough for you produce all your components. Plan on bringing in huge amounts of tritanium and pyerite, and depending on how much you are mining and how many grav sites you get, mexallon and isogen.
How much? Use Eve Smith to find out exactly how much. It's alot. But it's alot less trucking than if you were bringing in components from outside. ALOT less.
So you've spent days making the components, and you've got enough to start. How long do carriers take to make? You're looking at close to nine days until it pops out of the oven.
In the end, how much does your carrier actually cost you to make?
Using Eve Smith, our new Archon carrier clocks in at 647,091,659 mil isk.
But, iskwise, I probably only spent 200 mil on the trit and pyerite. The rest of the minerals came from corp mining ops inside this wormhole. And honestly, it's mostly not worth trucking out the trit, pyerite, isogen or mexallon to sell due to their mass. So you might as well be using them to make cap parts! I am constantly producing capital ship parts, and plan on popping out carriers and dreadnoughts as I end up with enough parts to make. A veritable used car lot of carriers and dreads.
The choice of which carrier to produce or what to fit on it are really outside of my purview, as I haven't the knowledge of using carriers in any settings other than wormholes. It all depends on your pilot's skills and if your wormhole has any sort of bonuses or negatives on it. Then it's pretty easy to figure out.
So, if you're an expert, or just want to chime in on what I've spewed, feel free to comment!
Therefore, I'm going to do a weekly wormhole related topic and cover it to the best of my ability. Of course, everything is from my point of view and from my experiences only. I can only claim to know what I have been through, and my proof is therefore most likely contained in the pages of this blog, so should be easily referenced.
So, since the topic has arisen on the eve forums and just so happens to coincide with our own building of another corporate wormhole carrier, our Archon, I thought I would start it out with this topic.
There's alot of opinion on the eve boards about which type of carrier is good for which wormhole and if you should even build carriers inside a wormhole at all. Everyone has different answers, and not everything fits into a nice shiny box with a bow on it that works for everyone.
A corp should really ask what they want a carrier in their wormhole for as a leadoff into all the other questions that could possibly arise following the answer to this one simple question; why?
Is it for defense? Carriers are really the biggest and best answer to defense, be it for a fleet in your wormhole or for your POS. But in the form of logistics; remote repping shields and armor and energy transferring so other ships can do the same. Carriers are not first and foremost a DPS defensive tool. A single carrier can kick out 1000 dps on a target, and with a gang who can't flee or can't remote rep the target, it can be certain destruction. But in wormholes, you aren't normally going to be facing gangs of ships who can't or aren't prepared to tank a single carrier's DPS output.
So you unfortunately have to put the thought of your huge new shiny capital ship hot dropping onto targets, guns blazing away while little fighters slash their way through shields and armor. Because it doesn't happen like that, and carriers don't have guns.
I admit, I thought carriers were the end all be all for ultimate spaceship battles, but, it turns out, they are really just the uber clerics of Eve. They allow other ships to do what I stated above without exploding. They make it silly stupid hard to attack POSes when the defenders have them, and in wormholes, they are HUGE force multipliers since the opposing force can't bring them with to do the same thing you are. You give yourself real home field advantage with them.
Yes, they are huge, they are shiny and sexy. They make people pale when they see them on scan. But they are the space healers of Eve.
So now that we know what they are used for in defense, what else are you wanting to do with them?
You want to run sleeper sites with them. Well, depending on which class of wormhole you live in, that runs the gauntlet from "That's a good idea" to "That's a terrible idea" and back to "Gallente Elite Carrier Wreck".
Of course, this also depends on how large the corp you have supporting said carrier in said sleeper sites, so I'm going to assume that your corp size depends on the which class it is you're living in.
Starting in a Class 1, you've got less than 10 members, probably more like 3. There is no reason to bring a carrier, if you build one in your class 1, to a combat site. The sites consist of frigate and cruiser sized sleepers, neither of which do very much damage to a decently skilled character in a battlecruiser or up. Your remote repping skills are not needed. Nor can your fighters really even find their targets, let alone hit them. There is very little point to being there in a carrier. Along with that, we're assuming you don't have any support along. Someone combat probes you down and scrams you.
You're scrammed, you've got no support, and most likely, without divine intervention, you're going to be that wreck I talked about earlier.
Class 2s! Now carriers here at least have targets in the battleships in the sleeper sites. Fighters rip sleeper battleships to shreds, really helping out with the turnover on the sites if you have alot of them to do, and not all that many people to help out doing them. But, here again, your carrier does not belong in the site along with your fighters. You should have your fighters assigned to the shooters in the site. The carrier itself should be sitting, lazily sunning itself, barely outside your POS shield. At the slightest notion of trouble, it can lazily move inside.
Class 3s and 4s are really the same boat. You get enough people to support the carriers, you can take them into the sites if the pilots have the skills to keep them alive. Barring huge russian combat fleets, you should be able to get your carriers out to safety as you should have the support to see the trouble coming.
5s and 6s are where you actually need the cap ships, and having them along actually contributes to the payout of the sites through escalation, meaning you get six additional advanced sleeper battleships to spawn when you bring capital ships into Clas 5 and 6 sites. Since I haven't lived in one or been part of running in these classes of wormhole, all I can claim is from what I've read, amnd that is that you need them and want them in these class sites.
So, for sleeper sites, most people want to not take their giant, slow aligning, non DPS producing carriers into the combat sites. Therefore, do not produce carriers with the notion that they are for killing sleepers, unless you can support them with numbers and keep them alive. I don't, so they don't go to combat sites.
What else do you want to build carriers for? Regular readers will know what my favorite reason for my carriers are: psychological affect. I could call it the "Holy Shit" affect. Cause when you go in and hit D-scan, that's what comes out of your mouth.
It's the part of the equation that gets added in a gang or corp's mind when they are deciding wether to come in and gank you, or wether they should set up a ninja POS. When people are considering invoking harm on you, they have to weigh that huge beautiful hulking piece of naval technology in their plans, and the majority of them time they come to the conclusion you want them to: "It's Not Worth It."
Wether that means they aren't willing to invest the time to take down your POS, the ships that might get killed while attacking your POS while guns and the shields get repped, the possibility of meeting a fleet of yours supported with your carriers, none of those matter to you. Only the outcome does. They decide to go back the way they came.
It is my personal opinion that the carriers I have floating in my POS shield defend my wormhole sites while my corp is not logged in. And I have hundreds of DOTLAN readings that show two jumps from a K162 I find later. One in, and one right back out. The fact that while those intruders are going about their business in your hole, those sleeping giants may stir, and they may find them guarding their way back home when all is said and done.
That's my "psychological affect".
If you're a PvP corp, you're not building them for that reason, and you're also not looking at mine for that reason. They aren't going to stop you from running my sites because you know how to deal with them, and have the numbers as well. But the majority of Eve players don't, and I feel like it stops a large majority of people from running my sites, and therefore, it saves me money in that I still get to run those sites.
And the last reason to build carriers in a wormhole? Because you can! Carriers are bad ass, period. It's just cool to have a carrier, and to have one in a place that most likely, you are the only person who ever will? That's just got a cool factor all it's own to it. Is this a good reason? Heck no. But if you want to learn the ropes on carriers, this is a good place to do it. This was another of my reasons.
So now you've decided, we want carriers. But how much do they cost? How much trouble is it going to be to make these suckers?
Since you're in a wormhole and most people have at least one dedicated industrialist in their corps, I'm going to assume you have one. They're going to need the Capital Ship Construction skill, which takes some serious dedication to production skills. You need level 3 in it, level 4 if you want to build a Rorqual. Assume you want to build a Rorqual. If you're going to mine seriously, you need a Rorqual. See other posts about that.
So now you need your BPCs and your POS arrays. Best way to start is by buying a BPC pack for your carrier of choice, which will include the carrier BPC itself, along with all the capital ship component BPCs, like Capital Drone Bay BPC, Capital Jump Drive, etc etc.
To build a Capital class ship at a POS, you need a X-Large Ship Assembly Array. These are great, as they also double as great ore storage bays, since they can hold 18+ mil of space.
To actually start building the ship, first you need all the finished components. There are a number of trains of thought on how to get these components into your wormhole to begin production.
You can buy or produce the components outside your wormhole and truck them in with Orcas, or, if you live in the larger wormhole classes, with freighters. You should note, however, that capital ship components are HEAVY, most weighing 10,000m3. For most carriers, you need 100+ components. That's ALOT of mass going in the wormholes, and you'll go through alot of them to get enough components inside.
The method I use is to build the components at your POS. You need a Component Assembly Array for this. I keep the carrier BPC handy and keep track of what you need to build next. It will take a couple days to produce all the required components. You should anchor the Component Assembly Array near the X-Large Ship Assembly Array for easy transfer of the components, otherwise you'll be slow boating huge amounts of components across your POS shield.
The other thing you have to take into account is where the minerals for your ship are coming from. If you're making the components inside the wormhole, you are going to have to bring in the high sec minerals. Wormholes do not spawn enough of the high sec ores to even come close to having enough for you produce all your components. Plan on bringing in huge amounts of tritanium and pyerite, and depending on how much you are mining and how many grav sites you get, mexallon and isogen.
How much? Use Eve Smith to find out exactly how much. It's alot. But it's alot less trucking than if you were bringing in components from outside. ALOT less.
So you've spent days making the components, and you've got enough to start. How long do carriers take to make? You're looking at close to nine days until it pops out of the oven.
In the end, how much does your carrier actually cost you to make?
Using Eve Smith, our new Archon carrier clocks in at 647,091,659 mil isk.
But, iskwise, I probably only spent 200 mil on the trit and pyerite. The rest of the minerals came from corp mining ops inside this wormhole. And honestly, it's mostly not worth trucking out the trit, pyerite, isogen or mexallon to sell due to their mass. So you might as well be using them to make cap parts! I am constantly producing capital ship parts, and plan on popping out carriers and dreadnoughts as I end up with enough parts to make. A veritable used car lot of carriers and dreads.
The choice of which carrier to produce or what to fit on it are really outside of my purview, as I haven't the knowledge of using carriers in any settings other than wormholes. It all depends on your pilot's skills and if your wormhole has any sort of bonuses or negatives on it. Then it's pretty easy to figure out.
So, if you're an expert, or just want to chime in on what I've spewed, feel free to comment!
Monday, May 9, 2011
Grav Site Respawned and GM Response!
I got a response from a GM about the spod roid. Here it is.
A bit cryptic, and seems to point to some sort of radar/mag site function where you need to keep a character on grid or it disappears. I am requesting clarification and will share.
Also, I am timestamping that our grav site respawned all the ore today, to see if the timer will also be reset along with the ore. Will post a response when I find out.
Hi,
I checked the configuration of this site, and when the asteroid disappeared it's by design. When you enter the site, there is a very good chance that the asteroid will despawn. Hence mining it is rather tricky.
Since this is normal game mechanics we are unfortunately not able to reimburse you for this asteroid. I'm sorry about that.
Best regards,
GM Zerat
EVE Online Customer Support
A bit cryptic, and seems to point to some sort of radar/mag site function where you need to keep a character on grid or it disappears. I am requesting clarification and will share.
Also, I am timestamping that our grav site respawned all the ore today, to see if the timer will also be reset along with the ore. Will post a response when I find out.
Ingame Chat Channel
I decided to start an ingame Eve chat channel for anyone who wishes to discuss wormholes, mining, or anything else going on in Eve that pertains to our wormholegoing brethern. Find me at Wormholesroidsprofit! in Eve!
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Disappearing MEGA Spod!
I warped to our new Uncommon Core Deposit to spawn the sleepers so my corpmate could mine it out when I found the single biggest roid I have ever seen. I warped out and put a Survey Scanner on my Legion to find out how big it was: 250,000 units!!!!!!
That's TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND UNITS!!!!11!!1!
It dwarfed all the other roids in the site, and was stupid big. I told Jared about it and took some screenshots. I'll post them later as soon as I find somewhere to put them.
I hung around, killed the spawned sleepers, warping in a Noctis, salvaged, and on the way of warping both ships out, I saw the roid DISAPPEAR!
WTF!?!
I warped back, and it was truly gone.
I've petitioned it, but am pretty sure we'll not see it's like ever again.
I know I've had roids in the sleeper combat sites disappeared when I approached them, but this was something different.
Anyone had this happen to them with a grav site?
That's TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND UNITS!!!!11!!1!
It dwarfed all the other roids in the site, and was stupid big. I told Jared about it and took some screenshots. I'll post them later as soon as I find somewhere to put them.
I hung around, killed the spawned sleepers, warping in a Noctis, salvaged, and on the way of warping both ships out, I saw the roid DISAPPEAR!
WTF!?!
I warped back, and it was truly gone.
I've petitioned it, but am pretty sure we'll not see it's like ever again.
I know I've had roids in the sleeper combat sites disappeared when I approached them, but this was something different.
Anyone had this happen to them with a grav site?
Heretical Innovations and Our Recruitment Status
Well, I have had a recurring theme pop up here of late, so I figured that maybe I would address it best on this medium. I have had a few of you readers out there,(thanks for reading!) contact me in Eve and say that it sounds like a wonderful adventure, and that you'd love to join the corp. In fact, two of our new members are, in fact, readers who had done just that.
To say I am flattered is an understatement. Some of you people want to follow me out into the black. My first notion is that you lot need your heads examined. :)
The next one is that, of course, I would get you all killed. Repeatedly. Without a doubt you would end up with wrecks as ships, pod goo freezing in space, and probably lots of posts about it on Crime and Punishment.
Most of the people interested in joining have probably read about the large amount of isk that it is possible to be made in wormholes, and it is all true. The vast majority of them have been from new players. I hate to say it, but new players have very little business being in a wormhole, even with veteran players by their side. The lethality of sleepers, PvP, collapsing wormholes; the ways to die in here are really endless. And extremely lethal. The only reason us veteran players live through it all(and we don't always make it!) is that we understand the game mechanics to the point we know what is going to happen. And we still die!
Here's the real short explanation: If you can't tank at least a sleeper battleship in whatever class of ship you can fly, be it battleships or even frigates, there's very little for you to do in a wormhole except mine.
Of course, that's nothing against miners, but what happens when there are no grav sites? You can't mine, and you can't help kill the sleeper sites. And you end up bored to tears, and might even end up hating Eve because of it.
The two I did accept into the corp were both 30 mil + SP point players. Both can fly ships that can now tank sleeper battleships. And both were well told repeatedly that there would be days when we couldn't do anything except planetary interaction. And they could accept that with the knowledge that I knew they had at least a vague sense of what they were getting into.
This is certainly not meant to discourage new players from playing Eve. It's more of a statement that wormholes are higher end content, and that we are focused on them.
I have led "guilds" in many different games for over ten years now. I have always held to the ideal and motto that "No One Is Left Out". It has always been a hallmark of the groups of friends that I have led in many different games, that one thing that is different about our "group" than others, even among those who say they do the same thing. My members have always said "You guys are different than other "guilds"" and my two new corp members have already said the same thing.
Have I finally run into a physical wall where the new players cannot be included? I mean, short of attaching a remote rep carrier to them, there's no way to keep a low SP player alive in a wormhole. Every wormhole guide says "You must have scanning skills, you must be able to tank X amount of DPS, etc etc" and I have to agree with all of them. Eve is much different from telling some new player "Now stand back while we whack the dragon, and when he does kill you, we'll rez you."
Okay, so in this analogy, when the new player gets whacked, he loses a ship. And as long as it's an NPC, he can climb into a new ship. If it's a player he gets podded by, a whole new scenario ensues. We have to open the static and he has to fly to us, but only after we run off or kill the players that killed him. And that's assuming there aren't more coming, or more cloaked and waiting.
Because in Eve there always are. You have to assume that.
Honestly this conversation with myself is mildly disturbing.
But then in Eve, we have to throw in the trust issue. In other games, you don't give these new players access to your guild vault. Pretty simple. In Eve, there are tons of permissions to set, tons of things to have go wrong. And if you do something wrong, remeber, this is EVE we're playing here, even normally honest people may decide to jack that Orca or steal all those BPOs, because this is Eve, and this stuff happens all the time.
So, on top of that, we live in a wormhole, where we basically live out of freeze dried astronaut food and a space tent. We are floating, alone, in a black void. If said new player logs in, and is the only person on, he is alone. He can't go group with someone from another corp, barring him using a scanning ship and opening our wormhole,(which I'd kill him for!), he can't head to a dungeon to solo, he can't even head to the closest village to see what's for sale. he can, however, head to the nearest sleeper combat site his onboard scanner can find him, and get promptly blown out of the sky because he most likely is flying a frigate, or maybe even better, a cruiser. And he's probably trying to both armor and shield tank. O.O
Do we see the dilemna I have? I don't want to turn people away, but I have all this psychology of the game to deal with in regards to it.
Maybe I should turn my other corporation into a Class 1 wormhole learning center?
I guess in the end, the easy answer is: this is Eve, and we have to play it as such.
To say I am flattered is an understatement. Some of you people want to follow me out into the black. My first notion is that you lot need your heads examined. :)
The next one is that, of course, I would get you all killed. Repeatedly. Without a doubt you would end up with wrecks as ships, pod goo freezing in space, and probably lots of posts about it on Crime and Punishment.
Most of the people interested in joining have probably read about the large amount of isk that it is possible to be made in wormholes, and it is all true. The vast majority of them have been from new players. I hate to say it, but new players have very little business being in a wormhole, even with veteran players by their side. The lethality of sleepers, PvP, collapsing wormholes; the ways to die in here are really endless. And extremely lethal. The only reason us veteran players live through it all(and we don't always make it!) is that we understand the game mechanics to the point we know what is going to happen. And we still die!
Here's the real short explanation: If you can't tank at least a sleeper battleship in whatever class of ship you can fly, be it battleships or even frigates, there's very little for you to do in a wormhole except mine.
Of course, that's nothing against miners, but what happens when there are no grav sites? You can't mine, and you can't help kill the sleeper sites. And you end up bored to tears, and might even end up hating Eve because of it.
The two I did accept into the corp were both 30 mil + SP point players. Both can fly ships that can now tank sleeper battleships. And both were well told repeatedly that there would be days when we couldn't do anything except planetary interaction. And they could accept that with the knowledge that I knew they had at least a vague sense of what they were getting into.
This is certainly not meant to discourage new players from playing Eve. It's more of a statement that wormholes are higher end content, and that we are focused on them.
I have led "guilds" in many different games for over ten years now. I have always held to the ideal and motto that "No One Is Left Out". It has always been a hallmark of the groups of friends that I have led in many different games, that one thing that is different about our "group" than others, even among those who say they do the same thing. My members have always said "You guys are different than other "guilds"" and my two new corp members have already said the same thing.
Have I finally run into a physical wall where the new players cannot be included? I mean, short of attaching a remote rep carrier to them, there's no way to keep a low SP player alive in a wormhole. Every wormhole guide says "You must have scanning skills, you must be able to tank X amount of DPS, etc etc" and I have to agree with all of them. Eve is much different from telling some new player "Now stand back while we whack the dragon, and when he does kill you, we'll rez you."
Okay, so in this analogy, when the new player gets whacked, he loses a ship. And as long as it's an NPC, he can climb into a new ship. If it's a player he gets podded by, a whole new scenario ensues. We have to open the static and he has to fly to us, but only after we run off or kill the players that killed him. And that's assuming there aren't more coming, or more cloaked and waiting.
Because in Eve there always are. You have to assume that.
Honestly this conversation with myself is mildly disturbing.
But then in Eve, we have to throw in the trust issue. In other games, you don't give these new players access to your guild vault. Pretty simple. In Eve, there are tons of permissions to set, tons of things to have go wrong. And if you do something wrong, remeber, this is EVE we're playing here, even normally honest people may decide to jack that Orca or steal all those BPOs, because this is Eve, and this stuff happens all the time.
So, on top of that, we live in a wormhole, where we basically live out of freeze dried astronaut food and a space tent. We are floating, alone, in a black void. If said new player logs in, and is the only person on, he is alone. He can't go group with someone from another corp, barring him using a scanning ship and opening our wormhole,(which I'd kill him for!), he can't head to a dungeon to solo, he can't even head to the closest village to see what's for sale. he can, however, head to the nearest sleeper combat site his onboard scanner can find him, and get promptly blown out of the sky because he most likely is flying a frigate, or maybe even better, a cruiser. And he's probably trying to both armor and shield tank. O.O
Do we see the dilemna I have? I don't want to turn people away, but I have all this psychology of the game to deal with in regards to it.
Maybe I should turn my other corporation into a Class 1 wormhole learning center?
I guess in the end, the easy answer is: this is Eve, and we have to play it as such.
Friday, May 6, 2011
Archon Carrier Production Commenced!
In eight days, 21 hours and 18 minutes, our Archon will roll off the assembly line!
According to Evesmith, it took 57 mil trit, 14 mil pyerite, 5 mil mexallon, 820k isogen, 232k nocxium, 41k zydrine, and 18k megacyte, for a grand total of 648,280,376 isk worth of minerals. That's pretty cheap for a carrier.
I guess I hadn't looked too closely at the Dreadnoughts, since the Revelation that I want to make is double that! I was going to get started on cap parts for it right away, but I'm not really wanting to dump half a bil on tritanium right now when we don't have any other large revenue gathering resources at hand, so that's on hold for a bit. I guess I shouldn't have been that surprised, I did build our last Rorqual, which is even more taxing.
In the meantime, I'm still looking for a summer home for us to exploit for a bit til this hole regenerates. Not much luck atm.
According to Evesmith, it took 57 mil trit, 14 mil pyerite, 5 mil mexallon, 820k isogen, 232k nocxium, 41k zydrine, and 18k megacyte, for a grand total of 648,280,376 isk worth of minerals. That's pretty cheap for a carrier.
I guess I hadn't looked too closely at the Dreadnoughts, since the Revelation that I want to make is double that! I was going to get started on cap parts for it right away, but I'm not really wanting to dump half a bil on tritanium right now when we don't have any other large revenue gathering resources at hand, so that's on hold for a bit. I guess I shouldn't have been that surprised, I did build our last Rorqual, which is even more taxing.
In the meantime, I'm still looking for a summer home for us to exploit for a bit til this hole regenerates. Not much luck atm.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Cycling O477s
Yesterday I managed to clear out our combat sites and the three radar sites we had acquired. This netted us 32 melted nanos. Not too shabby. 192 mil at todays prices.
Today's scanning yielded no new sites, and two comat sites. So we are down to a Ladar site I accidentally warped to yesterday, and two mag sites. I'd say this hole is about bottomed out. This is, of course, the time I start looking for a "vacation" hole to spend some time in til this one builds back up. I am trying to resist the urge, but with nothing to do but stare at the blackness of space and hope someone scans in so i can attempt to kill them, the mind wanders....
And mine wandered onto our Static C3 connection. So I warped over to it with our entire combat fleet, including two carriers, an Onerios, Ishtar, Damnation, and two Legions, and took a peek inside.
I found a fairly large fleet of ships, some of which were running combat sites. I'm definitely not up to attempting to gank combat ships with just me at the controls, so I got two Orcas, and cycled the hole. Another C3, this one with a Gila running sites. I pooped some combat probes at an outer planet, got ready to jump with a couple ships, and off he ran. He warped back and forth a couple times, no idea if he actually saw my probes or he was warping out and back from the DPS at his combat site. Oh well.
Cycled to another system. Found a POS with no ships on scan and no activity for 16 hours. I started researching the C3 combat sites. We haven't attempted ones with any of the sentry guns in them yet, not to mention these hold ships that scram, so I disregarded those. That left me with a single combat site. Argh. Not worth screwing up the mass on the WH with combat ships, I'll cycle to another.
And the damn hole didn't close. It went critical with over 2 bil mass through. It must have been a +10% mass one. So I pondered what to do. The C3 had a static hi sec, so if I jumped through and it closed, I could escape back to high sec without losing the ship or my pod. Although mental note, I should really put a probe launcher on a battleship for this. *foreshadowing*
I grabbed our Apoc, the lowest mass BS we had, and jumped through. Of course it closed, but you already knew that, didn't you? So I warped on over to the hi sec I had already scanned out.( Hey, look, I do learn from my mistakes!)
I had Gnicklas open our B274 and.....33 jumps?!
That wouldn't do, out came the Orcas, next B274......12 jumps behind low sec??! Really, which CCP dev was screwing with me.
Third times a charm. 24 jumps, and seven from Jita. Alright, I guess that'll do. 24 jumps later I was home, and done with that adventure for the day.
On to othe things. I am down to just Cap Drone Bays remaining before the Archon can starting building! I should double check before we lose this wormhole if I have enough minerals!
Today's scanning yielded no new sites, and two comat sites. So we are down to a Ladar site I accidentally warped to yesterday, and two mag sites. I'd say this hole is about bottomed out. This is, of course, the time I start looking for a "vacation" hole to spend some time in til this one builds back up. I am trying to resist the urge, but with nothing to do but stare at the blackness of space and hope someone scans in so i can attempt to kill them, the mind wanders....
And mine wandered onto our Static C3 connection. So I warped over to it with our entire combat fleet, including two carriers, an Onerios, Ishtar, Damnation, and two Legions, and took a peek inside.
I found a fairly large fleet of ships, some of which were running combat sites. I'm definitely not up to attempting to gank combat ships with just me at the controls, so I got two Orcas, and cycled the hole. Another C3, this one with a Gila running sites. I pooped some combat probes at an outer planet, got ready to jump with a couple ships, and off he ran. He warped back and forth a couple times, no idea if he actually saw my probes or he was warping out and back from the DPS at his combat site. Oh well.
Cycled to another system. Found a POS with no ships on scan and no activity for 16 hours. I started researching the C3 combat sites. We haven't attempted ones with any of the sentry guns in them yet, not to mention these hold ships that scram, so I disregarded those. That left me with a single combat site. Argh. Not worth screwing up the mass on the WH with combat ships, I'll cycle to another.
And the damn hole didn't close. It went critical with over 2 bil mass through. It must have been a +10% mass one. So I pondered what to do. The C3 had a static hi sec, so if I jumped through and it closed, I could escape back to high sec without losing the ship or my pod. Although mental note, I should really put a probe launcher on a battleship for this. *foreshadowing*
I grabbed our Apoc, the lowest mass BS we had, and jumped through. Of course it closed, but you already knew that, didn't you? So I warped on over to the hi sec I had already scanned out.( Hey, look, I do learn from my mistakes!)
I had Gnicklas open our B274 and.....33 jumps?!
That wouldn't do, out came the Orcas, next B274......12 jumps behind low sec??! Really, which CCP dev was screwing with me.
Third times a charm. 24 jumps, and seven from Jita. Alright, I guess that'll do. 24 jumps later I was home, and done with that adventure for the day.
On to othe things. I am down to just Cap Drone Bays remaining before the Archon can starting building! I should double check before we lose this wormhole if I have enough minerals!
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Cashed Out
The nullsec crew that flew through our hole opened our B274 yesterday and I wasn't aware of it. I thought it had more time on it, but it's EoL now. We're seven jumps from Jita, so I've been busy hauling minerals, fuel, various skillbooks, and ship equipment in the Impels, and 259 nanoribbons. I am compressing ore in the Rorqual right now. I've decided to cash out everything except the minerals, I'll take them to market once I know I don't need the large part of the sellable zydrine, megacyte and noxcium.
In the end, this is what I sold:
Robotics: 5526 units = 241 mil
Enriched Uranium: 12,940 units = 96.4 mil
Mechanical parts: 17,726 units = 102.8 mil
Sleeper Loot: 456 mil
Melted Nanoribbons: 259 units = 1.567 BIL
Total: 2.463 BIL
Prices on minerals have been falling, so this is another of those times where I have to decide wether to sit on them or sell. I haven't decided which to do yet.
In the end, this is what I sold:
Robotics: 5526 units = 241 mil
Enriched Uranium: 12,940 units = 96.4 mil
Mechanical parts: 17,726 units = 102.8 mil
Sleeper Loot: 456 mil
Melted Nanoribbons: 259 units = 1.567 BIL
Total: 2.463 BIL
Prices on minerals have been falling, so this is another of those times where I have to decide wether to sit on them or sell. I haven't decided which to do yet.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Oops
Well, my internet has been sketchy of late, going down multiple times an hour, sometimes more. So I haven't been able to play Eve much. I scan everyday, and today I got a 3rd wormhole, and then jumps appeared on DOTLAN, so I jumped in and found out I had a nullsec connection.
750 mil mass capacity, so one orca back and forth and it was at half. So I "should" have had some to play with, and didn't assume anyone had jumped a battleship through, so I grabbed our Hyperion and jumped through, figuring 106 mil mass and back would crit it.
And it closed behind me, stranding me 32 jumps from the nearest high sec location in Wicked Creek.
Well shit.
Did I mention I did this with Firt, the only character with a 200+ mil mining foreman implant in his head?
Double shit.
So I did the only thing I could do. Start warping.
I made it through the only blockade that was set up, almost killed one of the ships, until I was one jump before low sec. And ran into a nastier blockade with a Dramiel, Machariel and a Vagabond. 40 km off the gate, tried to MWD to the gate, but was webbed, so threw the drones out and waited for my pod. Managed to get away, with the Vaga chasing, warped a couple planets, ran into another warp disruptor....and lost internet.
NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Came back up, I was warping, bookmarked a spot, ended up back in the disruption field. Slow boated out in my pod, warped to my bookmark and logged off.
Hopefully they won't be there when I log in later.
As always, lessons in wormholes are expensive.
750 mil mass capacity, so one orca back and forth and it was at half. So I "should" have had some to play with, and didn't assume anyone had jumped a battleship through, so I grabbed our Hyperion and jumped through, figuring 106 mil mass and back would crit it.
And it closed behind me, stranding me 32 jumps from the nearest high sec location in Wicked Creek.
Well shit.
Did I mention I did this with Firt, the only character with a 200+ mil mining foreman implant in his head?
Double shit.
So I did the only thing I could do. Start warping.
I made it through the only blockade that was set up, almost killed one of the ships, until I was one jump before low sec. And ran into a nastier blockade with a Dramiel, Machariel and a Vagabond. 40 km off the gate, tried to MWD to the gate, but was webbed, so threw the drones out and waited for my pod. Managed to get away, with the Vaga chasing, warped a couple planets, ran into another warp disruptor....and lost internet.
NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Came back up, I was warping, bookmarked a spot, ended up back in the disruption field. Slow boated out in my pod, warped to my bookmark and logged off.
Hopefully they won't be there when I log in later.
As always, lessons in wormholes are expensive.
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