Well it's been an interesting couple of weeks here in the ol hole, to say the least. After the whole ABC "removal from WH space" debacle post came up, our corp decided we needed to stockpile some isk, so we were going to put 10 bil in the corp wallet. To that end we mined and ran sites til we couldn't take the spod anymore and all the combat sites had disappeared.
So as we pondered what to do next, I realized our C3 had four gravimetric sites in it! A plan formed, in which we'd move eight Covetors over to it, along with four Orcas, and do a week or so mining vacation. That was supposed to happen last Monday, but, lo and behold, TWO grav sites spawned in one day in the C2. Well we couldn't leave those, now could we?
So more mining and a fast forward to today. We got our Mining Vacation plan items together and I scanned down the C3...to find a single grav site inside. Apparently over the course of the last week, numerous nullsec and higher class wormhole peoples had warped to them and despawned them. *serious tears* The alliance corp claimed "a third party came in and cleaned them out". Hope they got some kills on the huge amounts of mining ships it must have taken to "clean us out."
To top it off, the C3 needed fuel, and the high sec opened onto an island in low sec. This just couldn't get any better, could it? Oh! But it CAN! There's a Tengu on the high sec exit, and the best combat ship I have is either a Punisher or an Executioner, take your pick! I almost tried it just to see how long before I exploded, but common sense won out. Eventually he went away and 1 jump away there was some helium for huge amounts of isk, but I paid up.
Kids, learn the lesson here. Don't let your POS get down to one day's fuel and then wonder why that is the day the Eve gods deign your high sec will appear on an island.
So we are considering dropping the C3 altogether. The full PI is great, except I'm not doing anything with it except stockpiling P2, and I'm doing that rather infrequently. I would really need to be living in it to take advantage of all it has to offer. And while that is always an option, fighting everyday with nullseccers and C5-C6 corps running through is not my idea of fun.
So, very little accomplished there.
I and Freethinker had cleared all our combat sites earlier today, came up with 20 nanos for our trouble. Had 13 sites, so 20 isn't bad. Afterwards, he was looking to do something dangerous, so I said we could open up our static C3 and see what was in there.
Little did I know that it would lead me to a deadly game of hide and seek with a Goonswarm corp later on. But, back to the past.
We headed in and found a completely cleaned out system. Doh! However, on DSCAN we found a Small Minmatar POS. With no guns, no defenses of any sort. Wtf.
Warping over to it I found no arrays of any kind, only a Bestower and a Kestrel, both named for their pilots. Quickly checking their corp info revealed a corp of three members.
Really? A C3 and you're going to run a small POS AND only have three members?? I guess if it had worked up til then. Soulofchaos was on by then and we wanted some blood, or at least some sort of metallic tang, so we suited up in our POS bashing ships, and started shooting.
This was, to be honest, our first attempt at any sort of online POS. We had vague ideas of when it would go into reinforced, how long the stront may be on a small, etc etc, so it was a learning experience for all of us. So it was with surprise to us that it didn't go into reinforced at 50% shields, and we high fived that it must not have any stront and continued shooting.....until 25% ticked and *insert sci fi sound here* it went into reinforced for 1 day and five hours.
Rats.
Oh well, maybe this will teach them to not run a small POS where every Tom, Dick, and Forgotten gang wandering by will take a shot at it just cause they're bored. One of the ship owners logged in and I sent a helpful email about it being in reinforced, to see if he would log into the POS and our cloakys could get a shot at him, but no dice. No return email and no login.
Double rats.
So, after all the excitement of the POS shoot, everyone else logged to head to dinner, and so did I. I returned later, and everyone else apparently found better things to do. :p
So I screwed around with PI, floated around while looking to replace our C3 with something that wasn't going to try to kill us in our sleep, when Sisters Probes appeared on scan.
Oh? What is this! I quickly hopped into my Battle Anathema and laid a single probe of the same type out, and ascertained he hadn't come from any new signature. Warping over to the C3, I sat for a bit and was rewarded with seeing another Anathema cloak up. He sat there uncloaked for a bit and I thought I might get into warp disruptor range, but alas, he disappeared. But no wormhole flicker. Hmmm.
No more probes appeared, I had Nyslia logged in and watching near our POS for any signs of him, but nothing. Maybe he logged off in the system, thinking our cap ships would make a tasty morsel for some Goonswarm fleet, mayhaps?
As I floated in my invisible vessel 10km off the wormhole, I noticed Duncan McCloud came on, so I started a conversation with him to see how him and the wormhole we sold him was doing. You may remember Zombieland. *sigh* Never should have sold that wormhole.....but he's doing fine! /wave Duncan!
We chatted for a bit a,d I decided to call it a night on the Goon, when the wormhole flickered. I caught sight of a disappeared ship and surely it must have been the Anathema?
So I dropped cloak and afterburned over and jumped. Now, mind you, at this point in time I'm flying a Battle Anathema, fitted with a Warp Disruptor, Web, Tracking Disruptors, and a single light laser. I'm supposed to kill other cov ops.
I shimmered into the C3 system to find a Tengu uncloaked almost directly on top of me!
Where the hell did he come from!?
I sat motionless, hoping I would make the timer to jump back home and away from this ridiculous match-up.
Off to the right, the Anathema uncloaked, and the two warped away, apparrently not noticing my second wormhole pulse. I decided, what the hell, I'll play some games with these two gents. I headed back home and hopped into the Pilgrim, waited out my timer, left Nyslia in the Devoter on the C2 side, and jumped back into the C3 with the reinforced POS.
There were probes on DSCAN, and I was certain they hadn't entered this hole from my hole, so they probably used the static low sec of this hole to enter. I warped to it, having previously bookmarked it, at 20km. Nearly 5km away from me was the Anathema, uncloaked and scanning.
Wait, where's the Tengu......this doesn't smell right. Maybe they did hear me come through. But that is a cov ops with a possible sisters probe attached sitting at least 15km off the wormhole and safety........so I threw caution to the wind and dropped my cloak.
I launched my light drones and kept trying for the after cloak lock....when the Tengu slithered out from behind his own cloak and started launching missiles at me! I knew it!
I finally boxed the cov ops and started neuting him to death while my drones started chewing on him, as I hoped to make the kill before I had to hop out. I had him near structure as I tried to get some sort of transversal on the Tengu, but it just wasn't working, and I dipped into 25% armor.
Recall drones and JUMP!
I appeared in low sec, not quite on fire, but just barely not. Oh crap, I'm 1200 away from the WH, I can't cloak. I punched Keep At Range and pulse by AB, praying to get cloaked before the Tengu came back through to finish me off. As soon as I cleared 2k, the wormhole pulsed and I cloaked....hey wait. I shut the cloak off and repeatadly pushed jump and came back into the wormhole.
To find an Anathema, also almost on fire, sitting on the hole. I moved 2k away and started targeting ,but he quickly jumped back out. I moved off the hole a safe distance and waited a bit. And waited. As I suspected, the Tengu had a hole timer for this hole left, or he just didn't want to bother trying to find a cloaky that had the lead on him.
I decided that was enough for the night, headed back to the POS, repped my ship up, and called it a night. Please excuse typos, it's late, and like five people asked when I was going to write some more! Hope you enjoyed. Maybe next time I will explode.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Definite New Grav Mechanics
So we've been watching our grav sites very closely for the last few now, and I can safely say there's been some changes to the way they are operating. In what way you ask? I'll tell you!
In our entire time in wormholes, we have had very few of the "downtime spawn roids", asteroids that spawn in your "open" fields(those that you have warped to). And when I say very few, I mean like 5 total over our entire wormhole career. So it has been very interesting when almost every single day we warp in to find a new roid waiting for us. Not only that, but they are piling up! Lately, it is not uncommon for there to be two different spawn roids from two seperate days because we haven't been able to mine all the first!
And not just any roid, oh no. Up til now we've only had spodumain asteroids spawning as our downtime roid. But, about the time we started repeatadly having these roids spawn, crokite roids started spawning as well. 25-50k ones.
Shhh, don't tell the CSM! OMG more nullsec ores in wormholes! It'll destroy the game!
On top of these new downtime roids, we've been getting extra roids that spawn with the field. I've documented this over the past few months. Once, as readers will recall, we had a 250k spod spawn with the grav site. It, of course, promptly disappeared. But extra rocks with each site has been more than welcome.
Of course, there is alot of "are we done yet?" while you mine 90k spod. But it's also money in the bank. I'll deal with that while we can have stuff to mine.
So why, when the nullsec community obviously wants ABCs removed from wormholes, would CCP already have wormhole grav sites getting buffs? Obviously the grav changes have either been in the game, and were on some sort of lower setting, or they were already planned and on the table before any CSM whines were heard.
So what's going to happen now? Are these changes going to get reversed? Only time will tell. Hopefully CCP sees through the self serving bullshit of the nullsec CSMs and actually takes a look at it's own data. Or sleepers are going to mostly be the only thing found in wormholes again soon.
In our entire time in wormholes, we have had very few of the "downtime spawn roids", asteroids that spawn in your "open" fields(those that you have warped to). And when I say very few, I mean like 5 total over our entire wormhole career. So it has been very interesting when almost every single day we warp in to find a new roid waiting for us. Not only that, but they are piling up! Lately, it is not uncommon for there to be two different spawn roids from two seperate days because we haven't been able to mine all the first!
And not just any roid, oh no. Up til now we've only had spodumain asteroids spawning as our downtime roid. But, about the time we started repeatadly having these roids spawn, crokite roids started spawning as well. 25-50k ones.
Shhh, don't tell the CSM! OMG more nullsec ores in wormholes! It'll destroy the game!
On top of these new downtime roids, we've been getting extra roids that spawn with the field. I've documented this over the past few months. Once, as readers will recall, we had a 250k spod spawn with the grav site. It, of course, promptly disappeared. But extra rocks with each site has been more than welcome.
Of course, there is alot of "are we done yet?" while you mine 90k spod. But it's also money in the bank. I'll deal with that while we can have stuff to mine.
So why, when the nullsec community obviously wants ABCs removed from wormholes, would CCP already have wormhole grav sites getting buffs? Obviously the grav changes have either been in the game, and were on some sort of lower setting, or they were already planned and on the table before any CSM whines were heard.
So what's going to happen now? Are these changes going to get reversed? Only time will tell. Hopefully CCP sees through the self serving bullshit of the nullsec CSMs and actually takes a look at it's own data. Or sleepers are going to mostly be the only thing found in wormholes again soon.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Jita Run, Mag/Radar Sites, Pothole In The Superwormway
Well I'll start out with the last while it's fresh in the mind and finish with the first. I just got done throwing a roadblock in a C5 dwellers superwormway. I sat down to do some PI and what do I see? 32 jumps. I had both statics closed, so someone's connected to us.
I jumped on and saw a Mammoth on scan. Then an Impel, a Pilgrim, a Myrmidon and some pods. Yep, someone is using us for transit again. Normally I don't mind it, espicially since we didn't have much to defend as we'd done most of our sites, but I was in a mischievious mood, so I logged in dual Orcas, a Devoter, the Deimos, a Damnation, and a Tengu.
I quickly scanned down the offending new wormhole and watched to get a good count on any combat ships present. I saw the Mammoth and the Impel warp off, so I decided this was the time. The deadly K162 was at half, and I guessed it was probably more than that with 32 jumps. I flew back and jumped in my Pilgrim and got everyone underway from our Off Grid bookmark.
I'm going to guess that they saw us coming, because as soon as the Orca jumped through to their side, and the wormhole went crit, the Mammoth arrived back at th wormhole it had previously jumped out of, without time to have done anything. Obviously some sort of warning was had. I found out later there was an Anathema cloaked I hadn't seen, but I don't know where it was watching from, maybe at the POS.
The Mammoth came back through as I furiously stabbed at the JUMP button for the Orca. I was pretty sure the Mammoth wouldn't make the hole close, but you never can be sure, even with accurate ship counts. But with an activation I was back through, and the hole closed. I warped as quickly as possible to the B274 I had already scanned down, threw up the bubble and made a mistake. My Orca was in slow warp far behind the HIC, so the Devoter brought the Orca out of warp 11km from the hole. So it had to slow boat on over.
In the meantime, an Anathema jumped through. Rats. Oh well, cov ops are hard to catch when they're on the ball.
I finally jumped the Orca out and back....and the hole only crit. *sigh* So, leaving the fleet on the entrance, I hopped in a shuttle and headed over to the nearest trade hub, which happened to be Rens, and bought an Armageddon, brought it home, and closed the hole, which I'm now scanning for our new B274 so I can have the loc for tomorrow.
Today we ran two mag sites and one radar site. Awhile back I had spoken to someone who had mentioned that they got Talocan ships in their mag/radar sites all the time. So I had hopes with our plethora of sites to at least find one in over a year of looking.
Nope. Not a one. My dry spell continues. I spoke with Nick about it to make sure the damn things aren't another object on the overview, and he says they are just hacking cans, so I should see the bastards. Argh.
But, in relation to a previous experiment, I can report an affirmative on the respawn of radar sites you leave open through downtime. The last one we left never did spawn any new Sleepers. This one we left did. So we picked through the wreckage of an extra radar site, three combat sites, and two mag sites....for a grand total of 17 nanos. I was hoping for more, but I'll take it. We've had a large dry spell of late on those too.
So onto the Jita run. I dropped off all our nanos and Sleeper loot, along with tons of PI, and all thanks to a handy K162 straight to high sec that opened up five jumps from Jita. Couldn't have asked for better timing.
I also located our cache of research and development items, and sold most of them off, everything on sell orders this time except the Sleeper loot. I sold that straight to buy orders.
So far the grand total for the sell orders and loot is 1.2 bil. Of course I turned right around and spent a few hundred mil on our Jita list I keep all week from everyone, and headed back to run the above mentioned sites.
I also took the time to go looking around for our BPO library, as we're going to start getting re-involved in equipment production, but I could not locate them. They must be on one of Nick's alts. I'll have to look into that later.
So onward to finish off my scanning for the night, and maybe run that PI before I was interrupted!
I jumped on and saw a Mammoth on scan. Then an Impel, a Pilgrim, a Myrmidon and some pods. Yep, someone is using us for transit again. Normally I don't mind it, espicially since we didn't have much to defend as we'd done most of our sites, but I was in a mischievious mood, so I logged in dual Orcas, a Devoter, the Deimos, a Damnation, and a Tengu.
I quickly scanned down the offending new wormhole and watched to get a good count on any combat ships present. I saw the Mammoth and the Impel warp off, so I decided this was the time. The deadly K162 was at half, and I guessed it was probably more than that with 32 jumps. I flew back and jumped in my Pilgrim and got everyone underway from our Off Grid bookmark.
I'm going to guess that they saw us coming, because as soon as the Orca jumped through to their side, and the wormhole went crit, the Mammoth arrived back at th wormhole it had previously jumped out of, without time to have done anything. Obviously some sort of warning was had. I found out later there was an Anathema cloaked I hadn't seen, but I don't know where it was watching from, maybe at the POS.
The Mammoth came back through as I furiously stabbed at the JUMP button for the Orca. I was pretty sure the Mammoth wouldn't make the hole close, but you never can be sure, even with accurate ship counts. But with an activation I was back through, and the hole closed. I warped as quickly as possible to the B274 I had already scanned down, threw up the bubble and made a mistake. My Orca was in slow warp far behind the HIC, so the Devoter brought the Orca out of warp 11km from the hole. So it had to slow boat on over.
In the meantime, an Anathema jumped through. Rats. Oh well, cov ops are hard to catch when they're on the ball.
I finally jumped the Orca out and back....and the hole only crit. *sigh* So, leaving the fleet on the entrance, I hopped in a shuttle and headed over to the nearest trade hub, which happened to be Rens, and bought an Armageddon, brought it home, and closed the hole, which I'm now scanning for our new B274 so I can have the loc for tomorrow.
Today we ran two mag sites and one radar site. Awhile back I had spoken to someone who had mentioned that they got Talocan ships in their mag/radar sites all the time. So I had hopes with our plethora of sites to at least find one in over a year of looking.
Nope. Not a one. My dry spell continues. I spoke with Nick about it to make sure the damn things aren't another object on the overview, and he says they are just hacking cans, so I should see the bastards. Argh.
But, in relation to a previous experiment, I can report an affirmative on the respawn of radar sites you leave open through downtime. The last one we left never did spawn any new Sleepers. This one we left did. So we picked through the wreckage of an extra radar site, three combat sites, and two mag sites....for a grand total of 17 nanos. I was hoping for more, but I'll take it. We've had a large dry spell of late on those too.
So onto the Jita run. I dropped off all our nanos and Sleeper loot, along with tons of PI, and all thanks to a handy K162 straight to high sec that opened up five jumps from Jita. Couldn't have asked for better timing.
I also located our cache of research and development items, and sold most of them off, everything on sell orders this time except the Sleeper loot. I sold that straight to buy orders.
So far the grand total for the sell orders and loot is 1.2 bil. Of course I turned right around and spent a few hundred mil on our Jita list I keep all week from everyone, and headed back to run the above mentioned sites.
I also took the time to go looking around for our BPO library, as we're going to start getting re-involved in equipment production, but I could not locate them. They must be on one of Nick's alts. I'll have to look into that later.
So onward to finish off my scanning for the night, and maybe run that PI before I was interrupted!
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Wormhole Topic of the Week: Mining Fleet Setups!
As I gaze out my Hulk's bridge windows, I see a vast mining fleet destroying a millenia old crokite asteroid. What sights has this old rock been privy to? What battles have been fought near it, or even over it? If only rocks could talk.
But they can't, so I chuckle as the plethora of mining lasers break it apart into manageable sizes for my haulers to take back to the station deep inside my wormhole, all while I check Jita prices on my screen and mentally count my incoming isk.
So, while my Rorqual compresses and packages our various ores for shipment to high sec, let's talk about my mining fleet setups. I'd love for you all to leave comments about how and why you do things while mining.
To start with, I add my boosting ship to Wing Commander, either the Orca when the number of hulks and retrievers do not warrant the use of the Industrial Module on the Rorqual, or in the Rorqual when most of our members are on and mining with us.
Squad Commander has to have Leadership 5 so that they can boost the large numbers of Hulks that are on with the Rorqual. The Commander also has to not be an alt, as they are in charge of warping the fleet away at the slightest sign of danger. All fleet members are also directed to make a Recall Drones macro so that they can quickly attempt to call their drones back in the event of an emergency warp-out. If drones are left, so be it, the ships are far more important, and I'll bet some people have lost them attempting to let their drones get back aboard.
Each of our corporation hulks is outfitted the same. Three Strip Miner ones in the highs, Mining Laser Upgrade IIs in the lows, a Small Shield Booster II and an Invul II Booster in the mids along with a Cap Recharger. We fly with Low Friction Nozzle Rigs and Mining Drone Augmentor Rigs, for aligning speed and mining yield improvements.
Why Strip Miner 1s, you ask? I covered it in an old post, but I'll restate why I use them: Convenience. Every thing you need trucked into the wormhole is another piece of weight on the transport coming back in. Mining crystals do actually weigh a good bit, especially when you get a bunch stacked together. A fleet really going after gravimetric sites can burn through crystals at an astonishing rate. And if you want T2 crystals, those are an added expense and huge addition in training time. I decided that training Refining Eff V on all my characters was just too long of an investment to get those T2 ABC crystals.
The other reason has to do with those of us that mine with multiple accounts, but still lies under the convenience line. When a crystal breaks, you have to figure out which client it broke on. And then what do you do to get another crystal? Is your Orca in field with a load of them? Is your hulk going home to get more crystals? What happens when you need to switch to a different roid type? Yep, you've got to swap out all your crystals. And since all the ores except mercoxit are present, that's alot of crystals on standby, especially when you're fielding 10+ hulks.
Of course, I might find the time to get all these characters to Ref Eff V, and I might just start being anal about mining yields again. Maybe then I'll deem the expense of crystals to be worth the time saved. But right now, I'd rather it all be more convenient.
So you've got your booster, who should be sitting quietly doing something either afk or anything not involving warping, at the POS. You've got your haulers, either Iteron Vs, or Impels, or even transport fit Orcas. Whatever your choice of haulers, they should be quickly shuttling that ore back to the POS as quick as they can warp back and forth.
So you've got the operation going, but is it safe? Of course, in wormholes, your operations are never safe. An incoming K162 can spill nullsec PvP fleets onto your unsuspecting mining gang in 30 seconds or less. So you need someone to scan the whole wormhole down, every signature, and identify everything before you get started. Extra wormholes you don't know about can spell the death of all of you or even your POS, if you can't get back in.
I don't mine unless I have only two wormhole sigs in my system, which will be my known statics, and only if I know they are closed. At the least, an open wormhole will have to be crit and have a large mobile warp disruptor sitting on it, and at best, having someone in a cloaked ship sitting there to listen for wormhole activation.
After it's all scanned down and you are 100% sure there aren't any nasty visitors poking around, assume that there are. Designate a couple people as the DSCAN hitters. They need to have probes on their Overview settings, everyone already does have them cause you're in a wormhole, right? And they need to be hitting DSCAN as much as possible. Like as much as the game will let them hit it. This means they should be your lone miners, with no alts. You can't rely on the haulers, they are passing through too much of the system and may miss what goes on next to you while they are more than 14 AU from you. So it has to be one of your solo miners, banging away on DSCAN, because YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT!
If you don't believe me, you can reference my old post whereupon I lost three hulks, a Covetor, and all four pods.
Your hauler choice depends on how many mining vessels you have going at the field. If you have four or five, an Iteron V or an Impel, or your Deep Space Transport of choice for the 38k cargo space. Your hauler should neve hang out in the field, and should either be continually making hte back and forth trip to your X-Large Ship Assembly Array and the field, or waiting til there's a full can in the field.
I have been using our Orca to haul lately, and I know I cautioned against it before. I still caution against it. Unless you have multiple people hitting their DSCANs and enough mining ships crushing roids to start stacking up cans your hauler can't handle, then you shouldn't use an Orca. I have mine warp stabbed and a cloak.
I've been reading a certain stealth bomber blog lately and the pilot, Chessur, looks down upon wormhole denizens who jetcan mine. In this, I tend to agree, especially after reading his stories of popping the cans of miners after he's killed them. So I'm going to adjust my hauling capacity from now on to make sure I'm not stacking up cans, as I have done in the past. Hence one of the reason I've began using my hauling Orca in the field with us. If you don't have a hauler that can keep your cans empty, it's probably not a good idea to be mining in a wormhole at all.
The risk of losing both your ship and what you've mined are too great.
A note to close out this post. If you haven't heard the latest forum flame going on, it has come to light that there has been talk of taking the ABC ores out of wormholes. Whether this is true or not, I advise you all to weigh in on the discussion at this forum post about it. You can find my opinions on it there.
But they can't, so I chuckle as the plethora of mining lasers break it apart into manageable sizes for my haulers to take back to the station deep inside my wormhole, all while I check Jita prices on my screen and mentally count my incoming isk.
So, while my Rorqual compresses and packages our various ores for shipment to high sec, let's talk about my mining fleet setups. I'd love for you all to leave comments about how and why you do things while mining.
To start with, I add my boosting ship to Wing Commander, either the Orca when the number of hulks and retrievers do not warrant the use of the Industrial Module on the Rorqual, or in the Rorqual when most of our members are on and mining with us.
Squad Commander has to have Leadership 5 so that they can boost the large numbers of Hulks that are on with the Rorqual. The Commander also has to not be an alt, as they are in charge of warping the fleet away at the slightest sign of danger. All fleet members are also directed to make a Recall Drones macro so that they can quickly attempt to call their drones back in the event of an emergency warp-out. If drones are left, so be it, the ships are far more important, and I'll bet some people have lost them attempting to let their drones get back aboard.
Each of our corporation hulks is outfitted the same. Three Strip Miner ones in the highs, Mining Laser Upgrade IIs in the lows, a Small Shield Booster II and an Invul II Booster in the mids along with a Cap Recharger. We fly with Low Friction Nozzle Rigs and Mining Drone Augmentor Rigs, for aligning speed and mining yield improvements.
Why Strip Miner 1s, you ask? I covered it in an old post, but I'll restate why I use them: Convenience. Every thing you need trucked into the wormhole is another piece of weight on the transport coming back in. Mining crystals do actually weigh a good bit, especially when you get a bunch stacked together. A fleet really going after gravimetric sites can burn through crystals at an astonishing rate. And if you want T2 crystals, those are an added expense and huge addition in training time. I decided that training Refining Eff V on all my characters was just too long of an investment to get those T2 ABC crystals.
The other reason has to do with those of us that mine with multiple accounts, but still lies under the convenience line. When a crystal breaks, you have to figure out which client it broke on. And then what do you do to get another crystal? Is your Orca in field with a load of them? Is your hulk going home to get more crystals? What happens when you need to switch to a different roid type? Yep, you've got to swap out all your crystals. And since all the ores except mercoxit are present, that's alot of crystals on standby, especially when you're fielding 10+ hulks.
Of course, I might find the time to get all these characters to Ref Eff V, and I might just start being anal about mining yields again. Maybe then I'll deem the expense of crystals to be worth the time saved. But right now, I'd rather it all be more convenient.
So you've got your booster, who should be sitting quietly doing something either afk or anything not involving warping, at the POS. You've got your haulers, either Iteron Vs, or Impels, or even transport fit Orcas. Whatever your choice of haulers, they should be quickly shuttling that ore back to the POS as quick as they can warp back and forth.
So you've got the operation going, but is it safe? Of course, in wormholes, your operations are never safe. An incoming K162 can spill nullsec PvP fleets onto your unsuspecting mining gang in 30 seconds or less. So you need someone to scan the whole wormhole down, every signature, and identify everything before you get started. Extra wormholes you don't know about can spell the death of all of you or even your POS, if you can't get back in.
I don't mine unless I have only two wormhole sigs in my system, which will be my known statics, and only if I know they are closed. At the least, an open wormhole will have to be crit and have a large mobile warp disruptor sitting on it, and at best, having someone in a cloaked ship sitting there to listen for wormhole activation.
After it's all scanned down and you are 100% sure there aren't any nasty visitors poking around, assume that there are. Designate a couple people as the DSCAN hitters. They need to have probes on their Overview settings, everyone already does have them cause you're in a wormhole, right? And they need to be hitting DSCAN as much as possible. Like as much as the game will let them hit it. This means they should be your lone miners, with no alts. You can't rely on the haulers, they are passing through too much of the system and may miss what goes on next to you while they are more than 14 AU from you. So it has to be one of your solo miners, banging away on DSCAN, because YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT!
If you don't believe me, you can reference my old post whereupon I lost three hulks, a Covetor, and all four pods.
Your hauler choice depends on how many mining vessels you have going at the field. If you have four or five, an Iteron V or an Impel, or your Deep Space Transport of choice for the 38k cargo space. Your hauler should neve hang out in the field, and should either be continually making hte back and forth trip to your X-Large Ship Assembly Array and the field, or waiting til there's a full can in the field.
I have been using our Orca to haul lately, and I know I cautioned against it before. I still caution against it. Unless you have multiple people hitting their DSCANs and enough mining ships crushing roids to start stacking up cans your hauler can't handle, then you shouldn't use an Orca. I have mine warp stabbed and a cloak.
I've been reading a certain stealth bomber blog lately and the pilot, Chessur, looks down upon wormhole denizens who jetcan mine. In this, I tend to agree, especially after reading his stories of popping the cans of miners after he's killed them. So I'm going to adjust my hauling capacity from now on to make sure I'm not stacking up cans, as I have done in the past. Hence one of the reason I've began using my hauling Orca in the field with us. If you don't have a hauler that can keep your cans empty, it's probably not a good idea to be mining in a wormhole at all.
The risk of losing both your ship and what you've mined are too great.
A note to close out this post. If you haven't heard the latest forum flame going on, it has come to light that there has been talk of taking the ABC ores out of wormholes. Whether this is true or not, I advise you all to weigh in on the discussion at this forum post about it. You can find my opinions on it there.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Mines of Madness
Well we finally got back into the mining swing of things the past couple of days. We had a Common Perimeter Deposit and we cracked it open. Lo and behold, it spawned with an extra 50k Crokite roid!
We knocked that and all the ABCs, along with mining a bit of some of the higher ores before calling it quits, happy that we got as much as we did out of the site.
Next day, I checked the site. Not only had most of the site respawned, but a 75k spodumain roid had spawned along with it! Again we hopped into our hulks and chewed through most of the site again, and called it a day feeling pretty darn good.
The next day, I warped to the site again....and found both spod roids had respawned along with alot of the high sec ores....so we hopped back into our hulks and chewed away at it til we couldn't chew no more. Suffice to say we had our mining fix for awhile.
Today this site despawned, to my dismay. I was hoping to see a continuation of events, but alas, it was not to be. Now we're left with a mining dryspell again.
Has anyone else seen this behavior before? I thought we were incredibly lucky to get the 50k crokite roid to start, but then the site partially respawning AND the 75k spod spawn. I've never had a site "partially" respawn. By that I mean it didn't respawn the arkonor, bistot or crokite. Everything else.
Maybe a new mechanic to make wormholes more profitable for the industrialist again? We'll have to see if this continues on a regular course. I'll be keeping track, that's for sure!
We knocked that and all the ABCs, along with mining a bit of some of the higher ores before calling it quits, happy that we got as much as we did out of the site.
Next day, I checked the site. Not only had most of the site respawned, but a 75k spodumain roid had spawned along with it! Again we hopped into our hulks and chewed through most of the site again, and called it a day feeling pretty darn good.
The next day, I warped to the site again....and found both spod roids had respawned along with alot of the high sec ores....so we hopped back into our hulks and chewed away at it til we couldn't chew no more. Suffice to say we had our mining fix for awhile.
Today this site despawned, to my dismay. I was hoping to see a continuation of events, but alas, it was not to be. Now we're left with a mining dryspell again.
Has anyone else seen this behavior before? I thought we were incredibly lucky to get the 50k crokite roid to start, but then the site partially respawning AND the 75k spod spawn. I've never had a site "partially" respawn. By that I mean it didn't respawn the arkonor, bistot or crokite. Everything else.
Maybe a new mechanic to make wormholes more profitable for the industrialist again? We'll have to see if this continues on a regular course. I'll be keeping track, that's for sure!
Friday, July 8, 2011
/eyeroll
*This is not to be interpreted as a general bitch against Eve, the time it takes to fully play the game, or the people in it! It is more indicative of the plethora of situations and people you can have and meet in Eve!*
Aaaahhh, so finally I can get down to the business of exploiting our wormhole like we should be doing.....maybe I'll just take a break and do something non Eve related for a couple days.....what is this? A text message from Soulofchaos. There's someone in our wormhole doing our sites. Well that's no bueno.
And so began a cat and mouse game that we had lost before it had started because I had put off getting onto Eve that day. You don't take a break from Eve, Eve takes a break from you!
So we saw a drake on scan, wrecks also. But no combat sites were coming up. The visitor was at one of our radar or mag sites. I threw out some combat probes and placed them on one of the two sites close to where the wrecks were, and presto! 100% hit, and off I warped the fleet!
And the fleet landed at the radar, with the drake already warping away. Curses, he must have saw the probes. I should have bubbled instead of tried to grab the target lock with the focus on the Devoter. Oh well, you learn from every experience.
Except for our visitor who decided to mouth off in local. Who was in a one man corp with no alliance. I guess that's probably why, so he can be an eve troll. But, as stated, he got away, and took our sleeper loot with him.
If I had scanned for the day, I could have knew which sig was the K162 he came from and could have bubbled it and got him. But, oh well, you can't play Eve all the time.
So, next day, we decided to take care of the few remaining radars that had been hanging around that "we were going to get to", and decided to try out the "if you clear it of sleepers and leave it through downtime, they will respawn". Well, 16 hours later, no respawn, just the site and cans are still there. Can I call the theory busted yet? No, will wait til 24 hours an dthen it'll be busted. Will let you know. Finished off the combats and called it a night.
Next day, SSDD. Took out the few combats we had with Freethinker, then Jared Knight got on and we decided it was time to do some mining. So we opened our Common Perimeter Deposit and found a 50k Crokite asteroid! Added to the 20k Crokite it normally spawned, we siphoned all the ABCs off this evening and earning an easy 350 mil. Can't wait to get that refined and out to sell. In the meantime, all of our precious metals have sold on sell orders in Jita for a good amount, which I should really keep better track of in the future.
Aaaahhh, so finally I can get down to the business of exploiting our wormhole like we should be doing.....maybe I'll just take a break and do something non Eve related for a couple days.....what is this? A text message from Soulofchaos. There's someone in our wormhole doing our sites. Well that's no bueno.
And so began a cat and mouse game that we had lost before it had started because I had put off getting onto Eve that day. You don't take a break from Eve, Eve takes a break from you!
So we saw a drake on scan, wrecks also. But no combat sites were coming up. The visitor was at one of our radar or mag sites. I threw out some combat probes and placed them on one of the two sites close to where the wrecks were, and presto! 100% hit, and off I warped the fleet!
And the fleet landed at the radar, with the drake already warping away. Curses, he must have saw the probes. I should have bubbled instead of tried to grab the target lock with the focus on the Devoter. Oh well, you learn from every experience.
Except for our visitor who decided to mouth off in local. Who was in a one man corp with no alliance. I guess that's probably why, so he can be an eve troll. But, as stated, he got away, and took our sleeper loot with him.
If I had scanned for the day, I could have knew which sig was the K162 he came from and could have bubbled it and got him. But, oh well, you can't play Eve all the time.
So, next day, we decided to take care of the few remaining radars that had been hanging around that "we were going to get to", and decided to try out the "if you clear it of sleepers and leave it through downtime, they will respawn". Well, 16 hours later, no respawn, just the site and cans are still there. Can I call the theory busted yet? No, will wait til 24 hours an dthen it'll be busted. Will let you know. Finished off the combats and called it a night.
Next day, SSDD. Took out the few combats we had with Freethinker, then Jared Knight got on and we decided it was time to do some mining. So we opened our Common Perimeter Deposit and found a 50k Crokite asteroid! Added to the 20k Crokite it normally spawned, we siphoned all the ABCs off this evening and earning an easy 350 mil. Can't wait to get that refined and out to sell. In the meantime, all of our precious metals have sold on sell orders in Jita for a good amount, which I should really keep better track of in the future.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
ORCAS......ON FIRE.
I woke up and checked my DOTLAN to find jumps yesterday. I headed out in my scanning Anathema and found it, a deadly unknown wormhole.
Hmmm. That's not good. I had 17 jumps. Probably using my hole as a transit point. My high sec was probably also open. Checking the other side found only a Buzzard and an industrial somewhere nearby. Well, time to log in the Orcas and get this sucker closed!
Got my two Orca pilots fleeted and jumped into my Pilgrim in case of trouble and headed back to the deadly connection. I cloaked and settled up 11k meters off the wormhole, near my optimal for disruptors and my neuts. I jumped both Orcas through.
Uh oh, it went to half. Hmmm.
Upon arriving on the other side, I saw a ship cloak quickly, too quick for me to see the ship type.
Double uh oh. I better log on some help. I boarded the Devoter and sent the Chimera and Thanatos to their out of shield bookmarks and assigned fighters to the Devoter. I also logged on my Oneiros pilot and prepared to warp her in 60k off my Pilgrim, also assigned with fighter support.
The Orcas both dropped cloak and three ships immediately dropped cloak along with them. I recloaked one Orca, as they both are fit with prototype cloaks, but the other was too close to the wormhole.
Facing me were two Nemesis' and a Hyperion battleship. Time to bring the Orcas home and hope they don't have multiple points on those ships, as both Orcas are double warp stabbed for just this such event.
I initiated warp on the Oneiros and had the Devoter sitting on the wormhole. I recently refit the Devoter for a maximum tank fit with dual reppers and an active armor tank. She also had no guns. So my firepower was going to consist of 15 fighters or the drones on the Pilgrim, and the modules on the Pilgrim. I was fit with multiple neuts and range disruptors, so the Hyperion wouldn't be too much of an issue for the Pilgrim, at least. It was the Devoter and the Orcas I had to worry about.
As the Orcas jumped through, I dropped cloak on my Pilgrim and aligned both carriers towards the fight just in case it went extremely badly. Right behind them came all three pulses of the enemy ships. No more. At least for now I knew what I was facing.
The enemies sat in cloak while I aligned both Orcas and obviously sized up the situation. Did I mention they were Russian? The wormhole had five russian POSes in it.
As one they dropped cloak and opened fire. The Hyperion started shooting at the Devoter, and he was fit with blasters. I immediately had all her tank turned on and orbited at 2k, going about 400m\s. I went ahead and hit the bubble, as I was prepared for a longer duration fight. Both Orcas are fitted with active shield tanks and can take a generous amount of damage, so I had both of those going.
Both stealth bombers launched bombs at the same Orca, and timed them quite well. They blew through all of the Orca's shields, so they must have been shooting torpedoes as well. I quickly turned on all the large armor reppers on the Oneiros and kept the Orca easily at full armor.
At the same time, I set all 10 fighters onto the Hyperion, decided to range and tracking speed disrupt, in case he switched targets, which at about that time, he did, to the Orca that had taken the most damage. I sent my five Acolyte 2s at one of the Nemesis', and it dropped into half armor and fled through the wormhole. The other flew back towards the wormhole, as it had flown out of range trying to keep on the Orcas.
All this time the Firbolgs and Dragonflys ate at the Hyperion's armor while my multiple neuts must have brought his cap lower and lower, until finally, realizing he wasn't going to crack the Orca, with his armor falling rapidly past 50%, the Hyperion and his Nemesis buddy, who was himself into hull, both faded back into the wormhole from whence they came.
Leaving me, two Orcas, and a swarm of buzzing fighters looking for targets.
Hmm, this wormhole had already lost a bunch of mass. I brought two more Orcas back and it didn't go crit. The chances are that they were heading for reinforcements. Doing the mental math on the wormhole, I decided it must have gone to half with the second Orca jump, meaning I should have enough mass left to put an Orca through and back one last time. If not, I and it's pilot were in trouble. This Orca had an Anathema in it, so if he did get stuck, the pilot could get away.
Probably.
So I took down the bubble, sent the wounded Orca home and jumped the other one back into the fire.
Upon re-coalescing onto the enemy side, I at first found no one waiting. The wormhole had gone to critial mass, and one jump home remained for me. As I waited out the timer, I realized that the Hyperion could go back if it were here, stranding me on purpose, because it most likely already had my high sec bookmark!!!!
I kept clicking jump, and it counted down from 14 seconds. At about 7 seconds, an enemy fleet arrived and the Hyperion uncloaked about 5k away from my Orca. One of the Nemesis had returned, along with a Tengu, a Hound, a Broadsword, a Typhoon, and a Thanatos of their own!
Come on come come on come on come on ohshitohshitohshit!!!!!
3.....2......1.....JUMP!
With a huge sigh of relief, the wormhole spasmadically closed behind me, shutting in the face of the russian fleet that was ready to rip apart my insolent industrial command ship.
Orca Jesus strikes again!
I headed quickly over to the B274 and found that it looked untouched. Hmm. I'll close it just in case someone is outside and they decide to launch a vengeance fleet. :)
So that hole closed, and I decided it was time to take some stuff to Jita to sell. Hopping back into the scanner, I headed outside and found I was only six jumps from Jita!
I loaded up the Orcas with our PI, most of it Precious Metals, Cryoprotectant and Biotech Reports, along with some Melted nanos. The haul was about 446 mil. Of cours,e I had to immediately spent 100 mil on POS fuel, and added to the 200 mil I spent on POS fuel for the C3 POS, we were only net 100 mil.
But, it looks like our bill for fuel will be going down significanly. Jared Knight has an alt he is spending alot of time on ice mining with, and has contracted over 173k helium to the corp, which will save us over 100 mil in POS costs. Thanks Knight!
Oh, and the Revelation is finished.
Hehe. I took it out on it's maiden flight, visiting Freethinker while he was doing a combat site. This thing is HUGE. And it's easily one of the best looking Amarr ships. Now I just need to buy some giga lasers for it.......WHAT! 50 mil PER laser!?
*BPCs purchased*
Hmmm. That's not good. I had 17 jumps. Probably using my hole as a transit point. My high sec was probably also open. Checking the other side found only a Buzzard and an industrial somewhere nearby. Well, time to log in the Orcas and get this sucker closed!
Got my two Orca pilots fleeted and jumped into my Pilgrim in case of trouble and headed back to the deadly connection. I cloaked and settled up 11k meters off the wormhole, near my optimal for disruptors and my neuts. I jumped both Orcas through.
Uh oh, it went to half. Hmmm.
Upon arriving on the other side, I saw a ship cloak quickly, too quick for me to see the ship type.
Double uh oh. I better log on some help. I boarded the Devoter and sent the Chimera and Thanatos to their out of shield bookmarks and assigned fighters to the Devoter. I also logged on my Oneiros pilot and prepared to warp her in 60k off my Pilgrim, also assigned with fighter support.
The Orcas both dropped cloak and three ships immediately dropped cloak along with them. I recloaked one Orca, as they both are fit with prototype cloaks, but the other was too close to the wormhole.
Facing me were two Nemesis' and a Hyperion battleship. Time to bring the Orcas home and hope they don't have multiple points on those ships, as both Orcas are double warp stabbed for just this such event.
I initiated warp on the Oneiros and had the Devoter sitting on the wormhole. I recently refit the Devoter for a maximum tank fit with dual reppers and an active armor tank. She also had no guns. So my firepower was going to consist of 15 fighters or the drones on the Pilgrim, and the modules on the Pilgrim. I was fit with multiple neuts and range disruptors, so the Hyperion wouldn't be too much of an issue for the Pilgrim, at least. It was the Devoter and the Orcas I had to worry about.
As the Orcas jumped through, I dropped cloak on my Pilgrim and aligned both carriers towards the fight just in case it went extremely badly. Right behind them came all three pulses of the enemy ships. No more. At least for now I knew what I was facing.
The enemies sat in cloak while I aligned both Orcas and obviously sized up the situation. Did I mention they were Russian? The wormhole had five russian POSes in it.
As one they dropped cloak and opened fire. The Hyperion started shooting at the Devoter, and he was fit with blasters. I immediately had all her tank turned on and orbited at 2k, going about 400m\s. I went ahead and hit the bubble, as I was prepared for a longer duration fight. Both Orcas are fitted with active shield tanks and can take a generous amount of damage, so I had both of those going.
Both stealth bombers launched bombs at the same Orca, and timed them quite well. They blew through all of the Orca's shields, so they must have been shooting torpedoes as well. I quickly turned on all the large armor reppers on the Oneiros and kept the Orca easily at full armor.
At the same time, I set all 10 fighters onto the Hyperion, decided to range and tracking speed disrupt, in case he switched targets, which at about that time, he did, to the Orca that had taken the most damage. I sent my five Acolyte 2s at one of the Nemesis', and it dropped into half armor and fled through the wormhole. The other flew back towards the wormhole, as it had flown out of range trying to keep on the Orcas.
All this time the Firbolgs and Dragonflys ate at the Hyperion's armor while my multiple neuts must have brought his cap lower and lower, until finally, realizing he wasn't going to crack the Orca, with his armor falling rapidly past 50%, the Hyperion and his Nemesis buddy, who was himself into hull, both faded back into the wormhole from whence they came.
Leaving me, two Orcas, and a swarm of buzzing fighters looking for targets.
Hmm, this wormhole had already lost a bunch of mass. I brought two more Orcas back and it didn't go crit. The chances are that they were heading for reinforcements. Doing the mental math on the wormhole, I decided it must have gone to half with the second Orca jump, meaning I should have enough mass left to put an Orca through and back one last time. If not, I and it's pilot were in trouble. This Orca had an Anathema in it, so if he did get stuck, the pilot could get away.
Probably.
So I took down the bubble, sent the wounded Orca home and jumped the other one back into the fire.
Upon re-coalescing onto the enemy side, I at first found no one waiting. The wormhole had gone to critial mass, and one jump home remained for me. As I waited out the timer, I realized that the Hyperion could go back if it were here, stranding me on purpose, because it most likely already had my high sec bookmark!!!!
I kept clicking jump, and it counted down from 14 seconds. At about 7 seconds, an enemy fleet arrived and the Hyperion uncloaked about 5k away from my Orca. One of the Nemesis had returned, along with a Tengu, a Hound, a Broadsword, a Typhoon, and a Thanatos of their own!
Come on come come on come on come on ohshitohshitohshit!!!!!
3.....2......1.....JUMP!
With a huge sigh of relief, the wormhole spasmadically closed behind me, shutting in the face of the russian fleet that was ready to rip apart my insolent industrial command ship.
Orca Jesus strikes again!
I headed quickly over to the B274 and found that it looked untouched. Hmm. I'll close it just in case someone is outside and they decide to launch a vengeance fleet. :)
So that hole closed, and I decided it was time to take some stuff to Jita to sell. Hopping back into the scanner, I headed outside and found I was only six jumps from Jita!
I loaded up the Orcas with our PI, most of it Precious Metals, Cryoprotectant and Biotech Reports, along with some Melted nanos. The haul was about 446 mil. Of cours,e I had to immediately spent 100 mil on POS fuel, and added to the 200 mil I spent on POS fuel for the C3 POS, we were only net 100 mil.
But, it looks like our bill for fuel will be going down significanly. Jared Knight has an alt he is spending alot of time on ice mining with, and has contracted over 173k helium to the corp, which will save us over 100 mil in POS costs. Thanks Knight!
Oh, and the Revelation is finished.
Hehe. I took it out on it's maiden flight, visiting Freethinker while he was doing a combat site. This thing is HUGE. And it's easily one of the best looking Amarr ships. Now I just need to buy some giga lasers for it.......WHAT! 50 mil PER laser!?
*BPCs purchased*
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