Friday, December 5, 2014

Null Sec Detour

I'm on my way to Jita right now in the Orca laden with PI. Chock full, in fact. I could only fit like 1/3 of all we have stocked. I discovered a K162 from High Sec eight jumps from Jita, so figured I better make good on this one since the last one didn't go so well.

Nick had sent me a text, we had six connecting wormholes and were quite busy. This was an understatement. When I logged in, there was an Elite Destroyer Wreck, followed by numerous types of T3s and Stealth Bombers appearing on scan. Yikes, what was going on?

So I shipped up into a Purifier and checked siggy to see what we had......our B274 was open to WHERE?!?! PERIMETER????

Yep. Holy crap, no wonder everyone and their brother was in the hole. I headed over to scout it out, and found aforementioned SBs and a Proteus that cloaked in and out. Abruptly the hole shuddered and a Prorator appeared and stealthed quickly. Followed by another as the SBs tried to catch them. The blockade runners were the same corp as the dead destroyer. Guess he'd been defending his buddies. o7.

The hole shook again and yet another Prorator appeared and cloaked. The wormhole then contracted to half mass. Geez they'd been busy, as I would expect from a hole exiting into Perimeter. I warped over to the null sec hole I knew we had, and sure enough, I spotted a ship exiting that was from the shuttling corp. I decided if they were this busy, I would try a small ambush with my new Oracle. I had fitted it out with Tech 2 Tachyon Beam Lasers, and was itching to try it on a target.

I reshipped Forgotten into the Oracle, Nyslia in her Devoter and placed her on the null sec hole. I warped Forgotten at 100km off the wormhole and cloaked with an Improved Cloak. I logged in Jelloshot in her Onerios in case it hit the fan, and Firt in his Myrmidon fitted with Armor Links for some extra tank. Again, just in case.

I didn't have to wait very long. The wormhole belched forth another destroyer akin to the dead one, a Catalyst. Odd ship to be defending null sec loot shuttles....but I threw up the bubble and started firing with my Devoter's two medium lasers, which appeared to be just fine for the task, so I did not uncloak my Oracle. At some point in time, I had decided to swap to my Multifreq crystals in my Tachyons instead of the Microwaves, and was sitting at about 900 DPS, waiting for a worthy target.

A Prorator came through the wormhole again, and the Proteus uncloaked and made a microwarpdrive stab at it to try to catch it before it cloaked, but the Prorator was quicker and slithered back behind the safety of it's veil. The Proteus, on the other hand, was not so fortunate. I uncloaked and commenced firing with my Oracle as he started firing on Nyslia in her Devoter. She was in no danger, as he was fit for stealth combat. His armor melted rapidly and he decided discretion was the better part of valor and fled into the null sec hole.

I may not have gotten a kill, but I'll take driving off a T3 intent on his target. I called it a day and left the hole to the denizens of Perimeter.

Friday, November 28, 2014

Oops

So things have been going well lately. We managed to get some mining in, not as much as we would have liked, but at least we brought some ore in. Last Jita run brought in about 2 bil. So I decided to pick up twp Legions again for PvE purposes. I think I've learned my lesson on that.

So our corpmate Gnicklas has joined us in the hole now, so one of the Legions are fitted with missiles, and he does a horrendous amount of damage at closer range. I picked up a pulse Legion for my own use to make the combat sites go faster. We've also moved our PI a bit, and now we are only producing Robotics and Coolant. All Mech Parts and Consumer Electronics go towards Robotics.

Which brings me to a kill I made yesterday, which I'm not very proud of. Normally I'd say people who die in wormhole space get what is coming to them. Everyone knows the risks, and when death claims us, the new clone is no surprise.

A number of ships were in our wormhole scanning, and one actually jumped to a Data site in an Astero with Nick's combat probes on scan. We were in the site with him, cloaked, but didn't attack because surely this was a trap. No one is this stupid.

We were wrong. At some point in the next 30 seconds, he must have finally seen the combat probes,.and off he went. I tried to beat him to the hole he jumped to with my Devoter, but just missed him. I tried to catch him on the other side with my Pilgrim, but he cloaked up and was gone.

And then a Rupture appeared on scan, threw out some Core Scanners and went at it. Still with Combat Probes on DSCAN from us. What the hell was going on?

The Rupture ended up at our Z647 to a C1, which we hadn't scanned down, so the gent had way too much time to get away, and he jumped through as I landed in the Pilgrim. Rats, missed another one. I sat 10km off the hole and had some sort of banter with Nick, and about five minutes later I decided to jump through to see what was in the C1.

And there was the Rupture, 20km from the wormhole. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. And he wasn't trying to warp. ???

I got him pointed, webbed and tracking disrupted and Infi 2s out and attacking. His ship went down pretty fast, and I was pretty sure he was going to make the hole before he popped, but sure enough, his ship exploded.

Again, I fully expected his pod to warp off, but there it sat, I almost didn't bother, but I obliged him on to his next pod. Which is when I noticed local blinking.

"Leave me alone!" Vishera Fett says. Ah geez, sounds like something a newbie would scream as a cold blooded killer approached with a gleaming knife. And sure enough, guy was less than a few weeks old. And his cargo was full of data and relic site loot.

I had just blapped a noob.

So that was the first "oops".

Tonight, we had a hole close to Jita open, so I headed over in the Impel with a load of sellables. Managed half a bil, bought some fuel and headed back. As I warped, I pulled up Agents of Shield on Netflix. I got home, opened up the fuel bay on the POS and thought I filled it up. I got into Shield for a bit, and then started hearing sounds, which  kind of sounded like POS sounds. Like something Onlining/Offlining.

So I checked around the screen. Hmmm, both Corp Arrays are offline. So is the Ship Maint Array. Wait, where's the shield?!?!

Ah shit.

Checking the fuel bay found it completely empty. Well, I'll just grab the fuel out of the wrong place I put it.....uh oh, I can't take stuff out of offlined Corp Arrays....and I don't have any other fuel just handy.

I quickly popped my Orca outside and found fuel four jumps away. I settled my Purifier I had jumped in before I accidentally offlined my whole station near the open wormhole and hoped no one with any serious firepower would float on by. I also put Nyslia in her Devoter next to the tower itself and turned on her bubble, maybe someone would think the bubble was the shield.....it was the only real play I had.

Ten minutes and eight jumps in an Orca later, I put the fuel I bought into the POS and started onlining it. Ah crap, I forgot it's 30 minutes to online the station! I had to run to get some chicken wings I had already ordered before the debacle, so off I went as fast as possible. I got backfour minutes before the shield came back up, no one in the system. Whew.

Now I'm  having to online each gun battery. Argh. Hopefully I'll learn from this snafu.


Forgotten Heathen out.




Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Phoebe and Me, Pop Goes Another Wormhole, Wartargets

The Phoebe patch released yesterday, and I was really interested to see these "null sec data/relic sites" they said would now appear in C1-3 wormholes. I don't usually mess with our data/relic sites, other than to kill all the NPCs. Years of crap loot for lots of wasted time have made me pretty jaded towards them. So what I found was pleasantly surprising.

I scanned for the day and found I had two of the new sites! I checked Eve Survival and found the NPCs looked quite hard, so I added a plate to my Zealot, and logged in Firt as Wing Commander for the small boost his skills gave my tank.I warped on over to the site and found......

Nothing. Just a floating bunch of boxes. Well that was a buzz kill. I found out through some more Googling that they had removed the NPCs a long time ago. Well, rats. I was looking forward to killing stuff. Honestly, though, it wouldn't have really gone with the lore of wormhole space....these sites being thrown in to appease the wormhole masses do feel a bit odd.

What I didn't realize is how hard these boxes are to crack. I failed quite a few of my first data ones, watching them explode in frustration. Okay, this isn't going to work, I don't know too much about this mini-game. So I read up on it, found that there are rigs for both relic and data to boost your virus, and fitted out two Anathemas, one for each.

Next site was 100% easier. I highly recommend you fit these rigs. My first site netted me about 15 mil in loot, from me exploding most of the containers and the fact that it was a Data site, which means mostly research crap. Not to put research down, but it's mostly worthless. Next site was a Relic site, and it netted me 37 mil in salvage! Now we're talking!

So, in the end, I'm "pleased" with the new sites in wormhole space. I just wish they fit in with the canon of the place instead of just some sites that spawn other places. But, in the end, I'll be happy with more content, but I hope they can mold it to better suit the eerieness that wormhole space deserves.

So after this I ran two of the actual wormhole Relic/Data sites, and actually got some melted nanoribbons, finally! I believe I ended up with 12, so I was pretty happy with that compared to the previous drought we had been having. Then I turned my attention to mining.

Which means I needed to close wormhole connections.

I got busy closing the few we had, and the last was a K162 to high sec with 2 bil mass. I decided to forego the afterburner, and just jumped the Orca back and forth a few times. Hole was at half mass when one more Orca pass popped it, with the Orca outside.

Well, at least it was high sec. I opened up the B274 and I was only 12 jumps away.

Straight through the Forge. Argh.

As many of you know, I was wardecced by an alliance that apparently just sits around on gates near Jita waiting for people who are unaware they are at war, or just have no clue about the mechanics. Last I saw, there were quite a few of them near Jita, and my only "safe" route was straight through those core worlds.

Alright, I figured I'd approach carefully, they should just be on the main gates into Jita. I was wrong. About three jumps out, I found a wartarget in local, but not on the gate I came in, so I quickly docked up.

My corpmate Gnicklas is back, so I had him use his special powers to find information. This gent had taken part in a kill only two hours ago, on a freighter, with five other wartargets. All of them in Proteuses and Phoboses.

Frack.

I decided I had better scout some and left the wormhole with Forgotten and headed over to Jita in my pod to put together a cheap PvP ship. If it was just this guy, he might be in something I could get the jump on, but probably not, who was I kidding? I was looking to give them a fight, I need some PvP experience anyhow.

So off I went and fitted out a Maller with a 30k buffer tank that I was pretty happy with and flew over towards where Firt was docked.

I got to one jump out and found the rest of the wartargets.

One Phobos and a Proteus were sitting on the gate immediately after Firt's location, and immediately attacked me. I actually managed to get the Phobos into 1/8th armor with my little Maller, and it lasted a couple minutes, my buffer actually held out pretty well. But it was only a matter of time, and I exploded and warped on over to dock, only to be told I could not dock due to an aggression timer.

Now this is what I'm talking about, needing PvP experience. I've never fought anywhere with docking, or stations, or any of this other nonsense. I have to say I panicked a little, waiting for my executioners to land and end my pod. Thankfully, I had the presence of mind to warp off quickly, and return once my timer expired.

So this whole getting Firt home plan wasn't going to work right now. I checked the Star Map and found I could go around, but would have to traverse a single low sec system. Not a problem, I can scout. Bought a shuttle and headed towards that, with my Orca in tow as I scouted. A single wartarget chased us up the pipe, but lost us when we turned.

I jumped into the low sec system to find a Drake sitting on the gate my Orca would need to use. That wasn't going to work. Oh, there's a cyno in system, I bet it's in use and they're guarding it. So I docked up and waited an hour, and sure enough, everyone had left. I got the Orca moving, headed to the next gate, and met a jump freighter coming in my from cyno. Bet he's glad I'm not a problem.

So I got around Jita, circled it, and made it home. Closed the B274 and got mining!

We've decided to switch to Procurers to mine instead of Hulks after looking at the yeild, cycle duration when boosted vs price of the ship, and I've never been real happy with using Hulks, other than their yield. Now, with the major changes to mining ships, having a 54k EHP tank on the Procurer matters more than the extra yield.

Here's my Procurer fit:

{Heavy Shield Procurer}

High Slot: One Strip Miner 1

Med Slots: Em Ward Field 2, 2 Adaptive Invul 2s, Med Shield Extender 2

Low Slots:2 Mining Laser Upgrades 2

Rigs: Core Defense Field Extender 1, Anti-EM Screen, Anti-Thermal Screen

Unboosted with modules running, it's 49,470k EHP. 54k when boosted by the Mining Foreman. I'm actually looking forward to getting jumped by some stealth bombers.

I got to work mining with three Procurers, swapping out to the Miasmos when I hit four full cans. We had started this site the previous couple of nights, but didn't get very far before we were interrupted, so I mined the rest of the ABC, and took down the Spodumain and Dark Ochre before calling it quits for the night.

Glad I decided to mine, because logging on today, the site is gone. So are all my gas sites, so I'm assuming someone warped to all of them. Means I need to get to the remaining ore site, pronto.

Forgotten Heathen out o/

Monday, November 3, 2014

Luckiest Guy In Eve: Didn't I Learn This Lesson Already?

I got really lucky yesterday. I mean REALLY lucky. Like I just won the Eve Jackpot Lotto lucky.

If you've read my blog for a long time, you know this has happened before. It's happened to almost all wormhole dwellers. That dreaded message. The one, where when it pops up, and you even knew when it was coming, it strikes fear right into your heart.

"The wormhole has collapsed behind you, are you trapped?"

At this point, we all pull a double check. Am I in the correct system? Whew, sigh of relief.

At that point yesterday, my eyes popped open wide in horror. My Orca was now on the wrong side of a closed wormhole. But the terror subsided a bit, as I knew I had a Core Probe Launcher in it's cargo just for this instance.......wait......didn't I unload all my cargo in Jita the other day? I would have had to specifically make sure I put it back.....and I don't remember doing that......

And I was right. It wasn't in my cargo hold. My Fleet Hangar, no standby Magnate in the Ship Maintenance Array for real emergencies.

Well shit.

I was in a C2 with static low sec, and one onlined POS in system. I hadn't seen anyone on DSCAN yet, but someone had to have been here, a K162 had opened into my wormhole, hence the whole reason I was stuck here. So SOMEONE must have passed through here.

I began calling for help in local after I cloaked up off DSCAN from the POS. A nice juicy Orca kill was not what I wanted my possible saviors to see before I received said help. Few hours later, no help was found. I mentally calculated my possible ISK loss in ship and implants, and it was close to half a bil.

Wormholes really do bite you when you stop respecting them. And the stupid thing is, it was totally my fault. I did four back and forth jumps with my AB running on a 2 bil mass wormhole. At 300mil per jump of mass with the AB going, that's 2.4 bil. I'm surprised it didn't close on me sooner. I didn't pay attention enough, and wormhole space was going to teach me a lesson.....again.....

This isn't the first time I've been stuck in the black, alone with no hope of rescue. When I first began exploring wormholes in Apocrypha, I tried my hand at mining the new ores I had never seen before. I hadn't learned about mass limits, or even checking the info on the wormhole to see if it was unstable.

So one time too many I rolled the dice and finally came up snake eyes. I was flying my first Hulk, and the hole collapsed in front of my eyes. I spent a few days asking for help in local, but back then, wormhole space was fairly empty, and no one ever came to my aid. So I said a fond farewell to my Hulk and left it adrift for someone to come upon and find my corpse floating next to it.

I figured that was the fate that awaited my Orca and it's pilot. However, with the changes to wormhole space, there are so many transiting wormholes that there is almost always someone coming and going in every system in W-space.

So I kept calling for help.

About two hours into it the next day, I saw a Tengu on scan. Argh. Since there was no convo attempt or any respond, I figured he was looking for me. So I tried to speak to him directly.

All of a sudden I got a fleet invite. Hmmm, I thought, he might be just trying to get a warp to me, so I asked for a convo in local, and the pilot obliged. He told me he was not the Tengu pilot, and that he was in a Buzzard and from a null sec connection. He said he was on the low sec hole, and to warp to him at 10km.

It was too good to be true, and I just couldn't trust him. It is Eve, after all, but what did I have to lose?

As soon as I fleeted up with him, and uncloaked and warped to the gent at 100, just in case this was all a trap, which again, this is Eve. As soon as I had uncloaked, I caught the Tengu on scan again. Hmmm.

I landed on grid, and sure enough, there was the A239 wormhole exit. A Buzzard  uncloaked and the guy said that was the prudent move, he didn't blame me, and GL, careful it's a low sec hole.

I was amazed, to say the least. I'm certainly nowhere near the bloodthirstiest person in Eve, but even I give very little quarter anymore after a long life in holes.

So I warped off and cloaked again, since the Tengu was still looking for me. About fifteen minutes later, I decided to go for it. Landed on the hole and cringed, figuring I had company waiting outside.

I arrived in low sec, no ships anywhere near, two jumps from Hek.

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

I could not believe my luck as I docked up in system, but after checking local I realized the Orca might not be making it out of low sec. Local was full of flashies, as a gang of criminals warped in and out of system. Oh well, at least I am certain to get my pod out.

I decided to chill out for awhile, already having pushed my luck way way too far. I got onto my main and scanned our my B274 and found I was only 13 jumps from Hek, so jumped in my new stealth bomber to go outfit it and scout my way out.

About half an hour later, I jumped Firt and the Orca clear to high sec! All I had to worry about now was wartargets...oh yeah, I was at war.

But, none showed themselves, and my Orca is bathing in the wonderful black seas of home space. Hopefully I'll be a little more careful, at least, for a little while, I'm sure.


Forgotten Heathen out.







Saturday, November 1, 2014

Damnation Fight That Results In A Wardec?

Not too much has been going on lately, just PI and some mining. Managed a Jita run that should net almost 1 bil in returns. That included our first use of our Compression Array, which is stupidly easy to use. Why the hell did they make me go through building a Rorqual and all that compression time? Oh well, it's easy now.

I've mostly been trying to keep our wormhole connections as closed as possible, and in doing that, I invariably run into those who are looking for fights. And when said fight should result in little risk for me, I'll take part in it. But why would anyone be annoyed with their opponents using a wormhole to jump to safety as I assume is the reason for the wardec? That was his plan anyhow, and the whole reason he was running a buffer fit Damnation in the first place. Oh, and had two, TWO, Onerioses on standby.

So I'm sitting on our B274 to High Sec, and I'm running stuff out. My Devoter is on zero at the hole, and I'm in a Purifier, cloaked, at some range, which ended up obviously being too close. I also had an Onerios cloaked at 50km.

A couple Magnates and an Anathema jumped in, I hit both Magnates as they jumped out, and the Anathema flew off. Then the Damnation jumped in. He opened fire on my Devoter, so I decided to see what he had to bring.

I had never actually fought a Damnation before, and I have to say I was impressed. My Devoter is fit for tanking everything, with a passive over 100k EHP fit. It is also fit for closing wormholes, not for combat, other than the aforementioned tanking. It only has two medium lasers on it. I opened fire with these. My tank was fine. Then he must have bumped my Purifier sometime in the fight, and as it happens when you multibox, I didn't know it. I was far into armor before I realized it was under fire and unable to get away. It popped and I got my pod to safety. And then he started neuting the Devoter.

It's also fit with CCC rigs, so it wasn't in immediate danger, but I could see the tank would eventually fail. I had him about half armor with my two little lasers, so I decided to neut him back and jumped in my Pilgrim. This is when I found out my Pilgrim fit sucks.

I've never bothered with fits that use Cap Boosters, but my Pilgrim was never cap stable.Two Medium Neuts and a Heavy Nos, two Tracking Disruptors, and a MWD. In hindsight, these didn't all work together very well, and he popped out some Hammerhead 2s, which I didn't know Damnations had drones, and he really went to work on my Pilgrim. Oh well, it's obvious he wants a fight and he's going to jump to safety when I get him lower, so I uncloaked my Onerios and repped my Pilgrim back up. Then he sent his Hammerheads at my Onerious and jumped in his own.

Since it was obvious where this was going, I said good fight in local and jumped out, to find a second Onerios waiting to jump in. Hmmmm. Alright, well it's bedtime for me anyhow, so I docked up and headed to bed.

That morning, I logged in and found a notification that the alliance this gent belonged to had wardecced me. Stranger still, another corp wanted to ally with me for the war. What's up with that?

So the war started and I almost forgot about it, and I kind of assume that's the point, as I found some of the wartargets near Jita sitting on gates. Probably pretty easy to get corps who play casually to not notice they're at war with an alliance and get transport and easy kills.

So I guess we'll be staying in the hole for awhile.

Forgotten Heathen out.

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Break Even & Profit!

So as of yesterday's Jita run we are in the black! Corp wallet breached 4 bil, albiet briefly before I bought a month's POS fuel, but we're free and clear of what we put into this venture.

Did I mention this is an operation run by two guys? :)

I decided to consolidate PI a little bit by getting rid of Silicate Glass, Nanites and Biocells, and converting those planets over to the production of Mech Parts and Consumer Electronics, which will keep our Robotics production going full swing. I just trained up yet another PI alt, so we'll have a total of 11 characters running PI.

Before our Jita run yesterday, our B274 had opened up 38 jumps from Jita on a high sec pocket. I was able to roll the hole with the Orca and our new high sec was......ONE JUMP FROM JITA! I got everything loaded into the Orca and transported and sold as quick as I could, and quickly closed the hole again before it was noticed.

We also had two combat sites and two ore sites spawn, so I was in a hurry to get our statics secured so we could finally do a real mining op in relative peace. I got my mining ships ready to go.....when a new sig popped up.

CURSES!

So over I headed and found a K162 frigate only from a C3 with a null sec static. Sleeper wrecks were on scan, but no ships, or active POSes, cause let's face it, no one lives in null sec static wormholes. I hung out for a bit, but no one ever came to claim the wrecks on scan, so I'll never know what went down. So I came back through and put a bubble on it. Back to mining!

We hit a Common Perimeter Deposit, and it was the first time Thulium had seen asteroids of this size. I was calculating the value of each roid as we bit into it and he was really surprised. We happily chewed away with two Hulks and a Covetor while Jelloshot hauled in the Miasmos.

Until yet another sig showed up. Off we warped.

Finding the K162, it turned out to be a low sec entrance with only a 750k mass allowance. Piece of cake. Only two guys in local, one of which was probably the scanner. So I passed the Orca through twice with it's AB on, and the hole went crit. As the Orca passed back through, a HAC showed up on the outside. I was present in my Purifier stealth bomber, certainly no match for it. The Cerebrus sat around, so I warped in my Devoter fit for wormhole closing. Heading out I turned on both interdictor spheres, rendering the ship down to the mass of a small frigate. As Nyslia appeared outside, an interceptor joined the Cerebrus. But it appeared they couldn't decide what to do. I waited out the 4 minute polarization timer, jumped my bomber back inside,  I turned on the battleship afterburner and jumped the Devoter..

But the critical wormhole did not close.

Crud. I'm pretty sure my math skills were adequate. Oh well, we'll see if they come in. I cloaked all my ships and waited, watching the wavering event horizon in critical mode flicker. After the Devoter's timer went off, both spheres on and jumped back, right into the waiting arms of both ships, still sitting there.

I'm not sure what these guys were really planning on doing, but I decided to jump back quick, so turned on my AB and.....30 second timer? Somehow in all my jumping, my timer calcs were off, and now my Devoter was uncloaked and under fire from a Cerebrus and an interceptor. I turned on all my armor fittings and my EHP rocketed over 100k. 25 seconds to go.

The ceptor webbed me, but the DPS they had just wasn't going to break the tank, and they barely scratched the paint. Back inside and the hole closed, so we got on with our mining.

Couple hours later and we had all the ore worth mining, and it tallied up to 250 mil in ore. I onlined a compression array, and can't wait to haul it out next Jita run!


Thursday, October 23, 2014

You Get An Industrial Kill, You Get An Industrial Kill, EVERYONE GETS AN INDUSTRIAL KILL!!!!

So here of late, I've lost a few T1 industrials and killed a few. All of my losses have been to stealth bombers, as well as my kills. Mine have been intercepting them as they exit wormholes or tracking them through one when I know they still have a polarization timer. My losses have all been at POCOs.

Here's how yesterday's went down. Had my character in a Bestower. Was taking down a planet CC, had already put a Lava CC in my hold, cause the Epithal won't hold one when it's fitted with four Warp Core Stab 2s. Then I realized I needed to grab all the PI out of the POCO quick, so I just warped straight to the POCO and there uncloaked the Manticore. One volley and my Bestower was a wreck. My pod escaped. I came back with an Impel to pick up whatever was left.......as well as my cloaked Pilgrim waiting for the Manticore to take the bait.

It didn't.

This has happened to me a number of times now. Firt almost lost an Epithal yesterday. But he has crazy shield skills, so the first shot barely dipped into structure, and I always start warping to my next destination as soon as I drop out of warp, so there's never time for a second shot. I've lost other Bestowers and Itty Vs.

Here's how I assume they are warping to the correct POCO and get there before me since SBs warp way faster than an industrial. Stealth bomber pilot sees ships on scan. Uses DSCAN to find where POS is and warps to it at range. Finds targets in their ships. Uses Look At command and sees exactly which POCO the ship is lined up for, warps over, gets kill.

I'm not a professional SB pilot, that's for sure, so maybe someone who is can weigh in. I have some in system safes I try to remember to use, but sometimes I forget or I'm just lazy. Each loss is a reminder to use the damn things.

Guess I should also be mounting shield extenders on my industrials....any advice on anti gank fits is appreciated!


Forgotten Heathen out.

Saturday, October 18, 2014

Combat sites, finally! Sweet nanos, here I come!

The wormhole quieted down a little bit yesterday, enough that I felt safe enough to run some combats, relic and data sites that had popped up. I grabbed my Zealot duo and got to work.

After taking care of most of the sites, my corpmate Thulium got on, and we took his Harbinger out for a maiden wormhole voyage. He did well until a Sleeper battleship and two cruisers ganged up on him, and he heralded my advice to warp out when he got to half armor. I'm a little rusty and the cruisers outran me while I tried to kill one to down the DPS on him. No dice, and off he warped. So he needs some more Armor Tanking skills, but it wasn't too bad. I wouldn't drag him to a Relic or Data site, that's for sure.

So three combats, two relics and a data site. How many melted nanoribbons would you guess?

One.

A single one.

Being that this is my first combat sites in wormholes in over two years, I was a bit dismayed. I don't have enough data yet to decide wether this is typical now after some sort of CCP tweaking, or it's just RNG giving me the finger. Only time will tell.

Two ore sites popped up today, so hopefully there will be some mining in our future!

Friday, October 10, 2014

PI, PI, and more....what's that sound?

I was running PI on all my characters today, fairly carefree and alone......until I heard the unmistakeable sound of something decloaking. I aligned immediately, but it was too late for my Iteron V. I also didn't have anyone logged in to do any security, a mistake. My pod escaped. The assailant was a Proteus fit for cloak.

So I logged in my Pilgrim, Devoter, Orca with ECM drones, and my Onerios and set up a trap. I left the Onerios at 40km off the hole, with the Pilgrim and Devoter cloaked close in while the Orca went about trying to close the B274 that was 10 jumps behind nullsec.

All was going well until a new signature popped up. An existing K162 had popped, and a new one had appeared. I headed in to investigate and found a C2 with low sec and C2 static. I decided to hang out with the Pilgrim, and just a few minutes there, the Proteus came through and quickly recloaked.

So I flew my fleet over the C2 wormhole and tried to bait him out, but he was apparently off through another hole, as he never bothered my Orca.

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Tagged & Bagged

I logged in the other day to run my PI when I saw an Epithal on scan. I mostly ignored it, keeping an eye out for anyone that may have been with him. I found the incoming hole from nullsec he was using, and then he'd jump out my B274 high sec static. Jumped out myself and found only a few jumps from Jita. Saw him and found yet another Russian corp. They love Eve don't they?

Well this is a nice transit point for him, isn't it? I reshipped into my Purifier.

I caught him on the nullsec side of my wormhole and reduced him to a isk quantifiable piece of rapidly cooling metal. His pod warped off, I figured that was the end of that.

Until I saw the same pod transiting my wormhole again. This is odd. Again, the pod flew across my wormhole.It almost seemed like the guy was being botted to shuttle PI from nullsec. So I logged in Nyslia in her Devoter.

The next time the pod jumped to nullsec, I took his corpse home. A buddy of his in a Probe appeared, and he reshipped to a Hawk Assault Frigate.......but would not stick around to fight.

So I'm plugging away at PI, trying to find the sweet spot between P2 and P3 manufacturing.

Forgotten Heathen out.

Saturday, October 4, 2014

Interesting Developments: Law of Percentages

Well, I and the POCO owners worked out an amicable settlement that didn't involve me hiring a merc corp and their people staring at the endless void of our wormhole. I got a 3% tax rate out of the deal, and I'm happily pulling in tons of PI resources.

But before that occured, I and their corp were playing cat and mouse games all over the system. I was mostly the mouse, but I tried to be the cat a couple times. No ships were lost, but my Pilgrim and Onerios got a little singed, but so did their Sleipnir.

I logged in the other morning and hit DSCAN. "Small Caldari POS??" Aw cmon! I thought the POCO owners had decided I needed to leave, so I got out my cloakies and investigated. There were also sleeper wrecks on DSCAN, so they must be running my sites to piss me off. I found the wrecks and a Mobile Tractor Unit at one of the Data sites.

Hopping over to the POS in my Anathema scanning ship, I found a lone Iteron V, or whatever the new name for it is. I'm going to keep calling it that, dammit! Anyhow. The gent was in a different corp than the POCO owners guard dogs, but I figured it was just an alt, especially since the corp name was like "Russian Corp of Alts" or some other nonsense.

While I was busy scoping out the POS and the open wormholes, I found numerous members of the enemy corp around, especially my Sleipnir buddy. If you'll remember, one of my rules is DO NOT FIGHT Sleipners. Of course I broke the rule, but I did it sitting on top of the B274 wormhole, so I was safe. But the enemy corp was flying all over the system, and a Caldari Cruiser wreck appeared on DSCAN. Hmmm.

At this time, the POS had no defenses, and I considered dropping some damage on it, but then the Russian Alt unanchored the ship maintenance array!. He then scooped it up and offlined the shield.

I quickly reshipped in my Purifier and headed back over. He started the unanchoring process and logged out. The 15 minute timer counted down.........

Well this is weird, I thought to myself. I expected more competency from these guys. There was no one on guard duty, and I never did see any of the enemy pilots at the POS......

So fifteen minutes later, I had Nyslia in the Prorator waiting cloaked for the POS to finish unanchoring. Right on time, the Itty 5 pilot logged back in and headed towards the unanchored tower. I uncloaked, and one volley of torpedoes blew him in half. Again, I was a little startled, thinking there'd be at least a shield mod of some sort. Off shot the pod and I scooped up the small POS, money in the bank.

I figured the enemy fleet would arrive.....but nothing happened. I decided to chance it with the Prorator again, and lo and behold, the Ship Maint Array survived, along with fuel and stront and Sisters probes.

Scooping that up I quickly got out of dodge. Then the enemy fleet dropped off scan for awhile, so I grabbed my two Zealots I pulled out of high sec to replace my Legion for the time being, and went and cut the Mobile Tractor Unit in half. I gather he hadn't been able to do much of the site, as there wasn't much in there and another wave spawned when I killed a couple of the sleepers.

So later, during discussions with the POCO owner, I found out that the small POS was not theirs, and they had destroyed the ship that had been running the data site. I guess it's all risk versus reward, and the risk caught this gentleman this time. Law of percentages.

Forgotten Heathen out.

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

The Eve Universe At Work

Well, in typical Eve fashion, my return to wormhole space is marred by losing both my Legion and my pod, along with Nyslia in a Harbinger and her pod.

I had returned to finish off the POCO we had reinforced with the same fleet, when a Devoter appeared on DSCAN. I started squad warp immediately, but the Dominix was the only ship that got away. I didn't get a shot off as I was jammed the entire "fight". So that'll be the last T3 I buy, more than likely. That's the breaks when you try to go it alone or in a small corp in Eve.

I then received an Evemail from the owners of the POCOs, that they had dispatched the fleet to stop me. I had already put these individuals on my watch list to try to buy the POCOs, and they were never on, and their corp had 6 members, and I figured it was a dead corp.

Say it with me now. "Assuming in eve...."

So, gritting my teeth, I asked if they would sell me the POCOs. Their response was I owed them 800 million in "fleet" fees, and then we could talk about lowering the taxes to 3%.........

So now I'm considering hiring a merc corp to remove all these POCOs for me. Anyone have any recommendations? It's been awhile since I knew any, if they even still play.

Sunday, September 28, 2014

POCO bashing

As I sit here, I've got a fleet tasked with putting POCO number one into reinforced. I've got a PvE Legion fit to 647 DPS, a Dominix with Garde 2s, and a Harby doing 611 DPS and some Infiltrators.

This thing is going down slower than a nun in high heels.

Basically it'll be two hours to reinforce one POCO. Not too bad, really. I'll kill them one at a time and replace them as I go. Ought to be easier on my nerves. Spamming DSCAN as quick as it'll let me.

My high sec static led to systems behind low sec again today, so no gear runs. I did manage to get more White Noise Generators and Energy Neuts in and set up, so we at least look like a PITA to attempt to take out.

And our first mining site, an Average Frontier Site, popped up today! Can't wait to get at those roids again.

Forgotten Heathen out.



Friday, September 26, 2014

Forgotten Reloaded : Return to Wormhole Space!

I finally did it, I'm back home! I moved into a C2 with C1 and high sec static last night!

Everything, of course, was not so smooth. The seller and third party were fine, I just had Eve luck.

After finding out the system, I was only 11 jumps away, but the seller said the hole was EoL. Crap!

I jumped into my Anathema as fast as I could, followed by my Prorator with the new tower in it. As I jumped into the system, the seller said the wormhole collapsed.

Doh!

He probed down the next one and it was 28 jumps away.....on a high sec pocket behind 2 jumps of low sec.

Double doh!

Oh well, I know how to scout, shouldn't be a problem, and it wasn't. Got my tower anchored and onlining. Seller noted a Helios from Outer Ring, a wormhole corp, coming out into the high sec. Alrighty, ought not to be an issue.

I probed down my area, and had three wormholes, one leading to dangerous wormhole space, so a C4 or more. Checking the C1, it had a low sec static, so no real help there. Looks like I'd have to wait to get the majority of my gear in. Figured I'd online the tower and get some fuel in it and be done for the night.

Tower online, force field up. Done.

Fast forward three hours and I was done gaming for the night so I decided I'd check on the tower before I headed to bed. And found three people shooting it......

Oh FFS. An Ishtar with Garde 2s, a Nemesis, and a Hyperion. Well either they have more coming, plan on packing a lunch, or are trying to just bait me out. I voted it was for bait.

Well, I wasn't going to combat them with what I had in the hole, and I had no guns or ECM with me, so I tried the age old bluff. It didn't work, references to my corp killboard were made. Oh well. I know our killboard sucks. Hey, at least it has SOME kills.

So I snuck the Prorator out and over to Amarr for some heat shield hardeners and at least a bit of stront.

Got back, anchored and onlined the heat shield hardeners. This effectively killed the Garde's DPS. The Nemesis swapped out for a Phobos and bubbled the high sec entrance. Well, I guess I'm done with trying to run in stuff. The Hyperion joined the Phobos on the hole as I watched them with my Anathema.

Hmm, so an hour into this and there's these three visibles and a Buzzard from the same corp. After the onlined hardeners, they weren't going to be hurting the shield anymore with the Gardes, so they'd have to come up with more firepower to crack the shield, so I was no longer worried.

Decided to log everyone off except Forgotten in the Anathema and loaded up Netflix to watch some Fringe while I waited for them to give up, move the Phobos off the hole so I could get in with more shield hardeners for the EM hole, or for them to muster up an actual POS bash fleet, which this wasn't one.

About an episode in they all disappeared off DSCAN, I'm assuming back into the dangerous wormhole. All their bluster for nought.

I got the Prorator back in and managed to scout in a load of guns, fuel and stront in an Itty 5, got the guns, neuts, webs and scrams set up so I was no longer just a wormhole pinata and called it a night.

Logged in today to find no sign of intrusion, but three more inbound and one outbound wormhole! Sheesh, I hope this isn't a normal occurance in this wormhole constellation.

I can't wait to get my equipment in and start in on PI! This wormhole has perfect full PI, so I'll be exploiting that to the best of my ability, which should generate a steady income of isk.

The POCOs are all set at 7.5% tax, and are owned by an extremely small corp, so I'll either try to buy them, which I'm not sure how that works, or I'll fit up some bash battleships and get rid of them one at a time.

Looking forward to wormhole exploits again!

Forgotten Heathen out.

Monday, September 22, 2014

Wormhole Sellers MIA

So I've decided to get back into the wormhole business. I, at first, was going to go with a C1 with good PI, which was the bulk of my profit when I last did WHs.After doing some checking on the eve forums and wormholesales.com, I found that empty C2s are going for near the same price.

Except I can't get anyone to respond to my Evemails. I've got cash in hand, but no one wants to sell the wormholes they have advertised. I don't get what changed while I was gone.

Usually, people selling wormholes want to do it very quickly.. They either have a scanning alt in the system and are not actively holding the system, or they are a corp wanting to get out of the system as fast as possible. Every tick of fuel is worth isk, so getting out quickly is paramount.

So why am I not getting return eve mails? I ponder.

Low Sec Mining

Well, I've been poking around low sec a bit to see what has changed since I was gone. The system I do PI in is very quiet, with almost all pass through traffic. So I was pretty astonished when I found a Large Spodumain and Crokite Mining Site!

Honestly, I've never spent much time in low sec, certainly never scanned out grav sites. Now everyone can see what mining sites are there with their ship scanner. These sites may have been there all along, but I thought it was a weird site for a .4 system.

So I decided, what the hell, why not mine it. I fitted out some Retrievers and a Miasmos with a cloak and got to mining.

And now I know why these sites are never mined.

First off, there's no security from people having to at least put out probes to find you. I'm not sure how loud or how hard the Wormhole CSM screamed about this change not going in, but I have to assume this has mostly ended wormhole mining. Cloaked ships could show up in belt with you and you would have NO warning. Not even spamming the directional scan button is going to help you there.

Second, since I normally mine in Hulks that are outfitted for max yield, these Retrievers were miserable. I had one Warp Core stab in the lows, so lost space for Mining Laser Upgrades. I guess I should have just treated the ships as expendable.

Third, since people can ambush you with no warning, I was jumping the fleet out to a safe spot every time someone came in system. This becomes tedious very quick.

I have to wonder, why was the grav mechanic changed?? Was this supported opposed to removing ABC ores from wormholes? I'll investigate.

Forgotten Heathen out.

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Providence BPC

Just picked up a Providence BPC pack from Jita, was surprised to find it was only 40 million. I could have swore these were much more expensive, so either I remember incorrectly, or competition has really brought the price down.

I had a lot of left over BPCs from making all the cap ships in the wormholes, so I've been turning them into parts as we've been clearing out belts and I ship the minerals to our manufactory. All we actually have left to build are Capital Cargo Bays. But there's a TON of them, 77 to be exact.

We're running out of trit and pyerite regularly, so we're out in the fields with three Hulks, an Orca and a Miasmos. What a gem this new ship is. I noticed it after hauling in my Iteron 5 from the empty system to one jump over as fast as I could to keep up with mining. My fully rigged Itty is only like 32K space. I was going to buy another one for some reason, and I saw all these new Gallente ship types.......why would anyone train anything other than Gallente Industrial now?

My Itty pilot has rank 5 in Industrial, so gets a 50% bonus to the ore hold on the Miasmos, making it a 63k ore hold. Holy crap! I wish I had one of these in the wormhole!

So I'm still discovering things that have changed in Eve.

Forgotten Heathen out.

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Wormhole Planetary Interaction is BEST Planetary Interaction!

So I've been screwing around with some low sec PI in a pocket close to our base of operations. This is the first time I've seriously done any PI other than wormhole PI in YEARS.

AND IT SUCKS!!

It doesn't just suck, it blows. Horrendous chunks. Like after you've drank WAY too much. If there's anything that is going to make me run screaming into the next wormhole I see and collapse it after me, it's this.

The extraction rates are garbage. Compared to low sec, high sec is a barren wasteland. Compared to wormholes.....there is no comparison. The only analogy that comes to mind is trying to go fishing in the Sahara.

 The existing player POCOs (Player Owned Customs Offices) are set on ridiculous taxes. The lowest I've found is 13-15%. I move my items up from the planet, 15%. I transport them down to my High Tech planet, 15%. I bring the finished product up, 15%.

I seriously considered going and getting my battleships and blowing the ever loving snot out of the low sec POCOs, and SERIOUSLY considered war deccing the high sec ones. Really. I was that annoyed.

I'm seriously running numbers in my head every single time I do a transfer and compare it to how much extra I'd have in a wormhole with my own POCOs. I am just jettisoning isk into space at this point.

But can I maintain even a Class 1 wormhole mainly by myself and still maintain a casual Eve playstyle? The answer I continue to give myself is a resounding no.

At this point, I've been logging in an average of every other day for PI running and a mining op. Last night I and my corpmate Thulium mined out an entire belt so I could continue to produce cap ship parts for our eventual Providence production. In the amount of time I didn't log in for 24 hours, my POS could have been sieged and coming out of reinforced as I logged back in.

I guess this is why I quit Eve last time I tried to play it casually: you can't play Eve casually if you have a knack for only doing things the most efficient way possible. I feel like I'm playing Eve wrong if all I do is run high-low sec PI and mine high sec asteroid fields.

My other option is to join a wormhole corp. There are probably a lot out there that would have me. But, is there room in serious wormhole corps for casual players? I know I made allowances for them, but I'm not a normal Eve corp director. And honestly, I think I just want to make things run smoothly too much, I'd just annoy whoever was actually in charge.

Well, it's something to consider, anyhow. I'll keep on keeping on.

Forgotten Heathen out.

Saturday, September 6, 2014

Ooops Incursions

Logged in yesterday to my corpmate letting me know he lost his Hulk. I was confused when he said belt rats killed him.....until I logged fully in and found a Sansha Incursion going on.

"Oh." I said.

I don't have any experience with Incursions, so I figured I'd go check it out. I hopped in my PvE fit Legion and went to the belts to find some.

JFC!

These guys are not kidding around.

I managed to get into half armor in the first belt I warped into. There were four frigates, a cruiser, and a battleship. I figured, heck, ought to be a piece of cake.

Mind you, this ship is what I soloed Class 3 wormhole sites with. It's not exactly a wilting flower.

Except it was, and I got the hell out of there.

I decided I must have had my transversal wrong, or it was the webber that was hurting so bad, so I tried again. Managed to get the web frigates dead and killed everything.

Well that wasn't so bad, just gotta get the hang of it.

I hear some of my readers more experienced with Incursions snickering.

On to the next field! I landed and was promptly alpha-ed by eight ships. Alarms screamed, I was aligning as I landed. Structure! LOTS OF STRUCTURE!

I warped out at 18% structure remaining. One more shot would have killed me. I almost lost a 1 bil plus ship on day three of my return.......

So, moral of the story is! DO NOT SCREW WITH INCURSIONS SOLO!

Today, no more Incursion, so we're out mining.

o/


Wednesday, September 3, 2014

A New Beginning?

As most of you probably noticed, my last foray back into Eve did not hold me. I had no purpose other than to raise my isk numbers. Of course, isk is all well and good, but I crave more than that. So I'm giving it a try again for awhile with a couple of friends.

So far the plan is to mine the ever loving snot out of Ammatar space, and use the minerals to produce Orcas and Providence freighters. I've also secured some decent low sec PI spots, even though that didn't go so well for me last time I attempted it. But, I am much older and wiser than I once was, so mayhaps I will not make the same mistakes.

I'm constantly fighting the urge to look for a new wormhole.......we'll see how long I can last. :)