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!

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.