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/

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.

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!

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.

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.

First Second Impressions

Well I've been back a day now, and I must say, a number of things have certainly improved! I haven't played Eve since 2011, and I started back in 2007, and things have come a long way! I'm impressed with how more stable and quick the game engine now is. I espicially love the new accurate space backgrounds, along with the ability to actually see your path laid out on the actual stars themselves!

My first day consisted mostly of looking around at my assets and where they were located, and wether I wanted to take the time to have them couriered to my home system in Yuzier. I managed to get every single ship and item out of the hole, and some of it just got dumped where-ever the hole exited at the time. I did use Red Frog Freight, which I can't say enough good about it, and had most of it moved to Jita.

So I'm spending some time with the corp freighter I built way back when and moving it around. I also moved the aforementioned Paladin to a level 4 agent and tore into some rats. And forgot to move a Noctis nearby, so that's what I'm doing right now. 28 jumps to go.


Forgotten Heathen out.

Hesitant Return

Hello fellow travelers! I have indeed reopened a couple of my accounts. To what end, I'm not really sure. My plan as of right now involves scanning down some grav sites and hauling in some ore. I want to check out the new DUST equipment system and see how that is working out.

So I'll continue in my normal writing style with brief  synopsis of my play times.

I do not forsee myself returning to wormholes anytime soon. I logged back into the game to find that someone took the time to terminate my residence, although quite a few guns remain. I also found quite a large load of isk and ships in our corp hangars, scattered about the galaxy, so one of the first things I need to do is collect and organize.

But before all that I hauled a Hulk out of storage and got to work filling my Orca. It's good to feel the hum of the mining lasers beneath the deck again!

Oh, and I also bought a Paladin and decked it out. Always wanted one!


Forgotten Heathen out.

All Good Things

Must come to an end. Yes, this is a farewell post. I did not expect to be writing it, but as all of you know, real life can rear it's head and the world of serious business of internet spaceships is the first to fall.

After some pretty serious thought about what is going on in my personal life, I have made the decision to cease playing Eve Online, and therefore, my presence in wormholes is at an end. So I planned to pack everything up and move out of our home and get everything safely back to Empire.

Or so I thought. Plans never survive contact with the enemy, and everyone is your enemy in Eve. As I was letting my close associate Soulofchaos know about this decision, he informed me he had been contacted by one of our corp members.

"The POS is under attack by Russians."

"Ha ha, very funny." I replied.

"No, really, it's being attacked right now."

"FFS."

I logged on to find no less than 18 ships in the immediate vicinity, with more on scan, most likely watching the wormhole exits.

I began logging on POS gunners.

Eight accounts logged in, and I took stock of the sitation. Most of my ECM, Energy Neuts, and Warp Disruptors were incapped. The enemy consisted of mainly battleships, a few battlecruisers, and five Basilisk logistics ships. It appears they had moved on to taking out my guns, so I started out by onlining any remaining ECMs and Neuts that were still anchored. I offlined any of the storage facilities, as I had plenty of time to re-online them in case I did indeed need to GTFO.

As many of you know, I have had alot of practice in running many accounts simultaneously. Normally that involved moving very little between most of the screens. This pretty much took the cake for information and screen management overload. I tried not to tip my hat that I was now about to control 32 POS guns and modules, so put most of my characters into transport ships and tried to appear scared and disorganized, while assigning a single ECM to four of the Basilisks, and the single remaining neut I had to the fifth.

I then picked a target. One of the group was flying a Harbinger, not exactly the best shield tanking ship out of the bunch. I then locked him with roughly 20+ guns and a webber and prepared to fire.

Switching screens eight times while making sure you don't turn off modules you already have going is a serious PITA.

The Harbinger exploded brilliantly, the Basilisks who did manage to start repping him could not keep up with the damage. I had announced my presence. Unfortunately, this group proved to be fairly adequate to the task, as time would tell.

As soon as the battlecruiser exploded, the enemy fleet commander shifted his fire back to Warp Disruptors, and I was quickly left trying to keep one online ahead of the firepower.

I examined the fleet and found a Talos, one of the new Tier 3 battlecruisers. I knew two things about this ship; it was most properly armor tanked, and that it was supposedly a glass cannon. Both turned out to be true.

I re-targetted my guns on the Talos and let fly the beams and projectiles of my turrets. The Talos' shields quickly failed, his armor melted, and he dipped into structure....and his shields began to re-appear. As more of the Basilisks began to rep him, his structure dipped and pulled leftward....but the Basilisks pulled him back from the brink and began to keep his shields at maximum. Curses.

I began retargetting my small guns onto the Basis, but they were far too close and too small to be touched, even when webbed. That surprised me, as even small artillery wasn't hitting them. So my only real option of stopping this attack was with my already smoldering ECM and Energy Neut platforms, which apparently the attacking force already knew.

And since I hadn't been logging in regularly for the past few days because of my situation, the perfect storm had developed. I would normally have been logged in at the time of the attack and would have stood a good chance with all my ECM and Neuts intact.

What followed was a game of trying to make sure I had as many Basilisks ECMed or neuted while trying to alpha ships. I managed to almost destroy a Hurricane, a couple of Drakes, a Dominix, and had the Talos on the brink of destruction again before he returned in a sturdier ship.

In the end, I slowly onlined all of my shield hardeners as my final ECM and neuts were silenced. No warp disruptors remained to hold any ship I took down into the red of structure. I took stock of my situation and was not very dismayed.

I had actually been removing alot of the material we had spent the past year and a half accumulating. All regularly sold items including all nanos, profitable PI, etc, had already been removed to high sec in the previous days. We stood to lose a few hulks that weren't able to make it aboard the Orcas, and a Proteus I had no one to fly. Numerous T1 and some T2 cruisers were going to be left in the hangars, to take their chances when the ship array exploded. Also in storage was a grav site's worth of ore that I hadn't gotten around to compressing.

So, as I've said before, everything in the hole is paid for. If you don't have the isk to replace everything, then you shouldn't be in here. So I started chatting in local.

A few of my corpmates logged in and we continued perfectly the bug out plan, and I got the invaders talking. They said they were in it for the fun, no one hired them, and they were looking for fireworks.

Fireworks, eh? I and my corpmates decided if they wanted fireworks, then maybe they were after something specific. So I flew over to the hulking behemoth of our Revelation dreadnought and boarded it. Immediately I was greeted with hope that I was bringing it out to play with them.

"Nope." I said as I set the self destruct sequence.

The tone of the conversation immediately changed to questions about why I would do that. I answered with the truth, that I was going to be doing it anyhow, we were already planning to move out. We were certainly playing on a hunch here, and it paid off.

The Revelation exploded in a flash of light, its lifeless corpse slowly doing a barrel roll as it lazily floated off center. The poor ship had never fired a shot in anger, and I had been looking forward to using it's weapons on the villianous Interbus customs offices before my decision to end my Eve life.

This really got their attention. The tone turned to trying to rationally explain that I had all the reinforcement time to try to save them, that the shield wasn't even past 90% yet. Again, I responded with the truth, that we might as well have the fireworks now since we were, truthfully, moving out.

I didn't bother to inform them I had stripped all the fittings prior to the self destruct.

My pod slowly moved over to our Archon carrier, my personal favorite carrier out of all of the ones I had built. Its sleek Amarr lines always greeted me at login, a sign that all was well in the wormhole and its power was always at my fingertips.

Now they wanted to fight my carrier, to at least let my ships go down in a fight. It was cowardly to self-destruct them inside the shield! But by now it was apparent why they were here. For the love of killmails, they had been driven to spend hours and hours of their lives in the vain hope of being one of many to strike off an armor plate from my capital ships. They had hours of striking the shield, plus 1 day and 17 hours worth of reinforcement time to wait through. Surely I would rather force them to go through that? In all, days would be devoted to the destruction of my creations. Wouldn't that be punishment enough for them?

"No." I said as I set the self destruct on the leviathan. Two minutes later its glittering shards of cooling metal were spiraling off the insides of our starbase shield.

All that remained inside was the mighty Rorqual. This graceless ship had paid for it's construction many many times over. My pilot had sat at it's controls for hours, watching over the assembly lines of sparkling arkonor as it rolled past on the compression lines.

Firtilis settled his pod in and began the self destruct sequence. By now the invaders had ceased to fire at the station, waiting for what they thought was the inevitable conclusion of their endeavor and thoughts of their capital ship killmails fell apart. In the end it all worked in our favor. These three ships were destined to be destroyed before they ever set their plan in motion.

After all three capital ships were orbiting wrecks, the russian invasion fleet retreated to a medium staging POS they had erected. I hadn't even noticed it since I had been insanely busy performing my impression of an ant colony. A medium POS? Any decent sized corp could have torn this invasion apart.

We began watching them, and they were being very careless in their movements with both ships and pods, so we set up an ambush, and caught an Iteron hauler as it came into the system and started to align too soon. Their entire fleet responded, and security tightened after that.

The next day, I surveyed our still smoking POS. 59 modules were incapacitated. The only ships destroyed were the capital ships we self destructed. What the attacking force did not know was that I had sold our Chimera carrier to a corp who we allowed in to share our system. Also, our Thanatos had been logged out, and kept logged out, during the whole ordeal. This carrier was subsequently sold to the same corp.

We saved everything else. All the ore, PI, ships and POS modules were carried out of the wormhole to Empire, where they were couriered by Red Frog Freight to Jita, for sale or storage.

I decided to leave the POS anchored, all guns and modules where they fell or stood. Until they day they are either destroyed, or I return to claim them.

Thank you all for reading the story of my journey. I do indeed hope to someday return to the universe of Eve Online. On that day my story will continue.

If you happen upon my POS, Omissa Spe, nod and smile, because you know that the Sleepers aren't the only thing that waits in wormhole space to awaken.

The Flame Wars Have Begun, They Have

So as we all know, Crucible came out yesterday. And I'm sitting here running numbers on these Interbus Customs Offices, and I'm pretty appalled. According to the screen, it's a 17% tax, and from what I'm reading on the forums, that's on market value of what you're moving. So as someone who normally has extraction and separate production planets, we're going to be taxed 34% of the item's market value before it even can become the final item....or, god help you, if you need to move it to yet another planet for P3-P4 production......yeah, that was me you heard screaming in anguish.

So PI is about to skyrocket in price. This is both a good and bad thing. Good for those of us who can replace these terrible Customs Offices with our own and get rid of this ridiculous tax, bad for those stuck in high sec who I hear are paying a 10% tax, which is still fairly heinous. So the prices raise to compensate. But wait? What's this? The tax is raising based on market prices? So you can never keep up. And high sec, and probably low sec, PI producers are going to be run out of business either by inflating prices on the tax end, or the competition who doesn't have to pay these taxes in null areas who can undercut them by leaps and bounds.

I thought CCP employed an economics expert?

So after only a single day of watching it cost me 4 mil just to move my robotics offplanet, I decided I needed to get moving on these damn offices. I bought 10 BPCs from a gentleman who was taking pre-orders, so they're already sitting in Jita waiting for me. And after doing a bit of math, it's going to cost near 100 mil per office I need to put up. So I have an extra PI character I haven't gotten around to putting anything down on, so I'm going to tool him up some planets to produce all the P3 and P4 products I can't either already produce or can't buy for decent prices. I also put some buy orders up for P4s, but the .001 isk pirates are having at them, and I don't have the patience to play that game anymore.

Short term plan: buy P2 products my wormhole does not produce. Set up chain for production of these P2-P3s, then all eight of the P4s. I want a production line ready in case someone does manage to kill one of our customs offices.

I also just contracted a freighter run worth near 1 bil to Jita, but I think I'm going to sit on it for now and see where prices go while we're not hurting for isk.


EDIT: While looking at Dotlan and seeing no jumps, but finding an extra wormhole, I assumed either jumps hadn't shown up yet, or the extra WH was an outbound. Then, while screwing around with PI on Eve-eye, I found this underneath where it counts jumps.

Jumps have been removed from API and are unavailable
for wormhole space after CRUCIBLE expansion

How did I miss that in the patch notes?

NO62

Not too much of note has been going on, of late. Mostly we've been plugging away at PI, we've cleared through probably 6 bil in POS fuels in the last month or so. Hopefully the prices will stay where they are at, and I forsee them doing so til the new POS pellets blow over, and then maybe they'll return down to near before inflation prices.

We've finally moved out of our second Class 2 wormhole. We've had some nice grav spawns in our main C2, but they've been de-spawning mysteriously. We saw a russian Anathema in-system a week or so ago, but today I found out three ladars have gone missing, meaning someone de-spawned them no less than three days ago. And our last grav de-spawned a day early. So it appears we have someone screwing with our sites. I understand a scorched earth policy, but this is kind of ridiculous.

Today also marked a strange occurance, we spawned a NO62 wormhole exit. This is a Class 5 connection, with a 3 bil mass limit. This is the first time I've ever seen this hole in our Class 2, and we've lived here for over a year now. So I popped through, found two Revelations, a Chimera, and a Thanatos on scan, but no one moving about, so I called in the Orca crew. 8 minutes later and the hole went critical. I decided not to screw with it further, as the C5 had a C4 static. The critical hole will keep for now.

Moving On!

So when your comments start just reading like the eve online forums, it's time to end the discussion. We've moved on.

All losses have already been replaced. Apparently we had enough "hideous isk" from "being terrible at wormholes" lying around to take care of everything. Slight haha he he. Oh yeah, and we learned some stuff too.

I used both Orcas to start closing our high sec connection when a Buzzard jumped through and spewed probes out before cloaking. I happened to be sitting in a stealh bomber and noted he was too far away from the wormhole to jump back out, so I toodled on over and gave him a bump.

Then I shot him with torpedoes.

I managed to get him deep into armor before he made it back, but in all the burning for the hole, he left his russian named sisters probes sitting in space.

I hopped outside to check to see who was there, and found the pilot outside. He threw up a gf, and I saluted him. I got eyes on the inside wormhole and resumed my Orca jumps when a Tengu from his corp uncloaked inside our C2 as an Orca landed.

So the Orca jumped out and headed to the station to see what else would appear. Another corpmate of theirs jumping into the system with a Hurricane. After checking their killboard *INSERT LEARNED LESSON HERE* I found both large null sec roams and smaller wormhole roams with his corpmates. Since both had far too many ships for me to guard against, the aforementioned wormhole closing operation was over for the time being.

As has been mentioned before, some people have a serious ability to do nothing for hours on end for a stupid killmail, so a few hours later and no activity from our holes, I resumed closing the holes with my new warp stabbed orcas. To quote Mr Duncan, the warp stabs are permanently welded into the lows. Along with that, they contain some additional upgrades incorporating, yet again, lessons learned previously.

The corp has stepped up their PI production in the face of both these losses and the insane price inflation of POS fuels, which we are set up to produce in large quantities. Prepare the isk faucet, I'm gonna make it rain up in hea. Alright, seriously, why are the prices so high? I saw the Goonswarm attempt at controlling Gallente ice, and some sort of market manipulation attempt, but this is kind of ridiculous. But I'll profit from it, either way.

It's nice to be home.

Well That Was Unfortunate

This is going to be one of those "lesson learned" posts about wormhole space. There will be lots of second guessing and head banging. I'll get the nasty part of it out of the way to begin; we just lost a Tengu, a Legion, and a Noctis, plus all three pods.

So on to the why. We had poked around in our static C3 and found the inhabitants asleep, but with a Chimera on scan, and a few jumps 6 hours previous. I normally wouldn't mess with a wormhole with a semi-active DOTLAN and a carrier on scan, but I wanted to let our Tengu pilot try out his new fit on C3s, not to mention see how my better fit Legions could take them as well. So off we went!

We had a member in a Helios scan down the entire system, and only our connection and the high sec connection were found. We also scanned down our C2 system before we left, found nothing beyond what should have been there. So now we had the Helios sit on the high sec hole, while our cloaked Noctis would sit at our C2 connection while we were running sites. I thought that this was sufficient, and, in a normal case, it would have been on par with good security measures.

So we ran a few sites and were progressing on through a fourth when the C2 connection pulses. I called activation and warped the fleet over to a near moon. A Pilgrim uncloaked, I got the name and corp. Here's where I made a mistake. No one followed the Pilgrim through, so I assumed he was alone. It's a decent assumption to make. What I really should have done was immediately check his kills. If I had, as Fernando did later, I would have found that he had taken part in some kills an hour earlier as part of a fleet. That surely would have influenced my decisions to follow.

But since I didn't, I assumed this was a solo Pilgrim that had come out of a new K162 in our home. I was, at least, partly right. But, you know what, let's not assume he's alone. We sent the Helios pilot back through to our C2 and found.....nothing. Nothing on scan and nothing at the hole.

Alright, it's probably a solo Pilgrim then, we all concurred. It's getting late, we've got enough loot for now, we decided to head home. I fleet warped us to the hole, uncloaked the Noctis and burned it over to the hole, and we jumped. On the C2 side we found a Devoter.

Wut.

Where did that come from? The Helios pilot started yelling, more ships, more ships, a Sleipnir, Machariel, Loki.....

Final enemy fleet composition was:

Machariel; Tengu; Sleipnir; Loki; Nemesis; Devoter; Devoter; Pilgrim; Hurricane

I called for a jump back to the C3, knowing we would be stuck there, but we didn't have a prayer of answering all of this firepower. We jumped....to find yet another Devoter. When we jumped to the C2, they had uncloaked and jumped a Devoter. Now both sides of the wormhole were bubbled. Great.

At this point, I'll say this was a well executed gank. It was done with great precision and they were very patient, and it paid off for them.

So we were in a bubble, with an enemy fleet coming after us. "ALIGN AND BURN!" I yelled, turning on all my modules and aligning for the quickest planet I could just click on before the rest of the enemy fleet started applying DPS and webs.

We managed to get all four ships out of the bubble. The Tengu was pointed, and went down first, because it bore the brunt of the fleet's firepower. The Legion was also pointed and collapsed into a burning ball of plasma next. However, both my Legion and the Noctis managed to get clear and warp away from the trap. Both other pods also warped away.

Here's where my actual mistakes are made. I called for a logoff. Everyone logoff. I attempted logoffski.

I had other choices, I could have warped the fleet around planet to planet til they either caught us or grew bored, the catching us part being highly likely with their numbers. I should have warped the Noctis to a moon and cloaked him. He would have been safe. I should have gotten the static high sec bookmark from the Helios pilot and warped the fleet there. Hell, I could have warped us there to begin with and it all never would have went down, but honestly, I saw a Pilgrim.

Of course, they scanned down the pods and the Noctis and blew them away. Only my Legion escaped. I have tried to gain more experience in PvP in my time here in WH space, but obviously not enough of it. It came down to what choices do I have, and it was a very short list.

I made the choices, so we'll be paying the price. All in all it's probably near a 3 bil loss, including ships and implants. We hadn't had a loss like this for a long time, I guess it was time to pay the piper. It'll take us quite a while to recover from based on our pilot count and activity levels.

But if you can't take it, you can't live here.

Some Explosions and OH NO! But Not Really.

I logged on today and busied myself with some mundane Eve business and started some scanning during breakfast.

When an Imicus and a Merlin appeared on scan. What the hell do they think they're doing here? Another round of bait thoughts ran through my head as the Imicus dropped some probes.

Hmm. Well I can't let them just have at it. So I hopped in my Anathema and went looking for them. After some retardedness on my part, which a bit continued, I got a warpin and switched to the Purifier for some reason, and warped over with the Devoter and a Domi in tow. I landed, got the point on the Imicus and proceeded to blow it away. The Merlin thought about trading blows, but as soon as the bubble on the Devoter came up, he headed away as fast as he could, and I lost the long point I had with the Devoter. Oh well. The pod exploded as the Merlin headed out the high sec entrance.

Well crap, I didn't know the B274 was open.

So I got a couple guys in Orcas and went about closing it. After checking the high sec side to make sure no one was there, I sat cloaked on our side and proceeded to have the Orcas warp to the hole.

I jumped both Orcas outside when I noticed a ship uncloaking near the wormhole. A russian Loki appeared. Ah crap.

So now both Orcas were outside with a hostile Loki sitting here. I didn't have enough DPS ships that I cared to run solo to run him off, and our allies in the hole had a Pilgrim alongside me watching, so we pondered what to do. While we did that he warped away.

So he's a cloaky Loki, so slightly less DPS output, I could grab my PvP Legion, the Devoter, and the neut Domi....hmmm....

While I thought it over, my ally at the hole reported that the Loki had jumped back and went through the hole to high sec.

Interesting. I already had warped both Orcas to a near station. Four minutes and this hole could be closed. I decided to jump my Purifier out and see where he had gone. He was nowhere to be seen, and there was no Loki on scan. So maybe he's cloaked. Well let's test that.

So I decided that both Orcas jumping in should be enough to tempt him to either uncloak or jump back inside if he were here, and my Orcas would be able to jump right back out, leaving a final jump home for each of them to close the hole.

So the Orcas arrived and I jumped them inside. No Loki uncloaked or followed. Interesting. I jumped the Orcas back outside and cloaked them in high sec.

As the time ticked down til they could rejump, I noticed russian named scan probes...had the Loki forgotten to BM the hole? One minute remained on the polarization timers.

20 seconds.

8 seconds.

JUMP!

all three ships made it back through and the B274 collapsed behind us, trapping our russian Loki friend outside. Now to figure out where he came from.

As the Orcas returned home, I scanned the system, and sure enough, found a K162 leading to a Class 4. I jumped through and found a single POS with a Moros and a Chimera on scan. The wormhole was an N766, so a 2 bil mass limit. Hopefully I can get this closed before any of the russian's friends come to avenge his stranding in high sec.

After checking the wormhole's limitations on Unknown Eve's tool, I neglected to check the info on the wormhole itself. There were very few jumps on DOTLAN so surely no one had come through this hole, and I hadn't seen it when I was scanning earlier.....but I forgot I hadn't actually completed my scan.

So I stayed inside the C4 with my Purifier and warped both the Orcas over to begin closing the hole. Only one made it through the hole before it closed behind it, stranding us inside the C4.

!!!

Wow, this could be bad. But, seeing as I have always planned for this eventuality, I was in a Purifier with a scan probe launcher, and the Orca ship array contained a T1 scanning ship as well. So I cloaked the Orca up and went to scanning.

The C4 had a beautiful C2 static, so it was only a matter of time, at worst a couple days, before I would get out to somewhere in empire space. But, as luck had it, the first C2 had a low sec and C2 static, and the next C2 had a high sec entrance, which I slipped out of and found myself 31 jumps from my wormhole. Oh well, lesson hopefully learned.

Except I've done this before. Thankfully this time it didn't cost me anything except the time spent in scanning down the exits.

31 jumps later and my ships were home. So, the lesson for the blog today is?

ALWAYS SHOW INFO ON EVERY WORMHOLE BEFORE YOU GO THROUGH!!!

Two Posts In One Day!?

It's Christmas, right?

I found a little bit of time to login and check what was going on it Eve, and hitting DSCAN...sleeper wrecks? Drakes named after their pilots? What the.....

Re-checking DSCAN, not only were a bunch of our battleships floating in the POS shield, an afk alliance Loki pilot was sitting inside as well. I double checked, no, none of other corp we shared the wormhole was on. I hopped the Anathema and logged in both the Devoter and Dominix, which was, in hindsight, probably a bad idea for two more ships to appear on their scan, but this didn't seem to matter to them at all!

Hmm, a couple more geniuses, or maybe bait ships. I seem to be assuming everything stupid I see lately as bait, which is still probably a good idea. It was easy to quickly check these guys and find out they were in a 5 man corp, unless, of course, their ships were named after some newbie corp. Alas, my mind overshot what they truly were by leaps and bounds.

I jumped on Teamspeak and told the alliance there were people running sites in the hole, and I had an immediate fleet both in-system and pilots on the way to assist. Still these, quality individuals, continued to run the site they were at.

I soon figured out why, as I tooled through all the combat anoms, they must be in a mag or radar site. About that time an Anathema named after it's pilot dropped some probes, then both an Imicus and a Manticore both named X dropped more probes. It appeared they had other people searching for them as well, and they had also figured out they may be in a site they needed to scan down. Still no real reaction from the site runners.

As the fleet grew in number, one of the Drakes dropped off scan, while the other was found circling the B274 high sec connection. Both me and a pilot flying our Purifier watched as he lazily circled about. Then the Imicus uncloaked, and was not fired on.

Hmmm.

The second Drake then appeared at the hole, he may have been Proto cloaked, I wasn't sure, and then both Drakes warped off, the Imicus jumping into high sec, right into arriving alliance pilots who jumped in system. If the Imicus was warning the Drakes, we couldn't tell. They went about their business, with four Core Scanner probes from someone not in the alliance attempting to find their site.....which would take forever to find a radar or mag with four probes.

So the entire fleet settled on top of the B274, Devoter threw up the bubble and we waited. And sure enough, the Drakes warped straight to the hole, actually one at a time. They were annihilated in turn. Both pods turned to goo. Their Anathema snuck out, as well as two stealth bombers belonging to Red vs Blue, who were probably stalking them as well.

With hopes that a RvB fleet was on it's way, the FC said the hole owner, me, could have the loot. Upon opening one of the wrecks, I found four Caldari Navy Heavy Missile Launchers. Sweet, that'll pay for the four Large Mobile Warp Disruptor IIs the Small POS owners managed to down.

Who runs sites like that, in a ship fitted like that? Chalk up another lesson in Eve basic common sense for the day.

Seriously? Who Does This?

Well yesterday was an interesting occurance in the wormhole we share with another alliance corp. A small POS appeared at the outer planet in the time span between both our playtimes.

I started the day out by logging in and restarting my PI, having a good chat with the guys who share our second C2 home with us. We mentioned we were scheduled to come back to the hole from our main C2 this weekend, and everyone was looking forward to trying to run joint C3 ops and hanging out. After I ran my PI, I headed out to get my day started.

In the afternoon, I logged back in to do some more Planetville jostling. I decided we really needed some better POS Bash fit battleships, and started inquiring on our alliance boards for the best ship and fits, to which I received some good responses. From those and after talking to a couple of my corpmates who logged in, it was decided to get some more characters cross trained into Ravens for serious POS bash fun. Until then, I sorted through our available battleships, no less than seven Armageddons are sitting in this hole due to me using them for hole closing. I checked out two Armageddons, an Apoc, and an Abaddon, and made sure all were properly fit for maximum DPS output or as PvP gank BSes.

I logged in later and happened to check DOTLAN for both wormholes and noticed a large numbers of shipkills in the second C2, 6, and 4 podkills. Ouch. Someone just had a bad day. I logged in the scanning alt, who wonderfully is in an Anathema now, lessons learned. Scanning around, there was a hostile Legion on DSCAN.

Hmmm. Better go check the outer planet.....that's not our small POS. I headed in and found a small Minmatar POS, two small arty batteries, one medium arty battery, three ECM, two warp scramblers, and an online explosive hardener. The Corp had been created only days earlier, and the pilot appeared on numerous low and high sec killmails of various, mostly T1, ships.

Hmmm, either these guys aren't the smartest, or this is a bait POS. Either way, I got the alliance warned, and a fleet gathered up immediately.

I logged in Forgotten in one of the max DPS Armageddons, Nyslia in the Devoter, and Firtilis in one of our Dominixes fit for remote armor rep and Sentry 2s and rolled out of our home towards the growing alliance fleet. I also managed to get my mic working, so was overjoyed to be able to effectively communicate with the fleet on Teamspeak. Nothing replaces the ability to effectively communicate immediately with those you are PvPing with.

After an interesting look through the C3 where a Rorqual and Orca, plus two Mining Drone 1s wer on scan, it was concluded after I took a look at the POS that it was some bait for their guns and we got back to bringing down the wrath.

We staged out of our POS, and managed to make myself useful dealing out some serious damage in the first assault as we took out both Warp Scramblers first. Forgotten and Firtilis dished out some hefty DPS numbers that I was really happy with, while Nyslia tagged along with an alliance Loki as it watched the C3 connection.

As we banged down the few modules the invading corp had erected, the Loki went into the C3 connection to look around. After a few minutes, a warning was raised from the Loki; a hostile fleet was inbound on him inside the C3 consisting of numerous T3s and supporting Guardians. As well, an Arazu had been watching him at the hole, and he barely jumped through ahead of him with time to escape. Nyslia also headed into warp and both got back to our POS safely ahead of the hostile fleet.

The alliance restaged into our POS and we gathered intel, learning that this was a group the alliance had run into before, and had dealt with handedly, although most of our ships were not fitted for PvP at the time. I dug through our Corp array and handed out numerous Disruptors and Webbers for our plethora of battleships. I then hopped back into the Anathema and watched the C3 entrance, finding both an Arazu and an Anathema that dropped combat probes. Most likely finding our fleet waiting, they gathered their probes and headed back to whence they came. After that, I stayed in the Anathema and banged on DSCAN inside the C3 to give us plenty of warning if they decided to come back. They never did.

I re-shipped Nyslia into a Zealot and the fleet returned to flinging ordnance at the hostile POS. More alliance members showed up and the shield quickly fell to 25% and it went into reinforced, which actually greatly surprised me. If you ignore the two Large POSes from a well established wormhole alliance, why bother stronting up?

After incapping all the guns, most of the alliance logged inside our friendly POS, waiting for the POS to come out of reinforced.

Today, the owner of the POS attempted to contact the alliance, and wanted the chance to move everything out, to which his response was "Not a chance." This is another clear example of people not treating wormhole space with the proper thinking. He didn't try to contact either of our corps, nor our alliance, before moving in. Because he "assumed" our POS was for shipbuilding, due to the Advanced Medium Array, no doubt, and that no one was active because there were no NPC kills for 24 hours. There were some within 48, however, so I'm not sure how that translates to "inactivity".

This is the third time this has happened to us, a Small POS appearing in our system without any warning or contact, and the people who put it up are "surprised" by the reaction it garners. The last time this happened, our carrier showed up as they were onlining the tower, and their response was "We wanted to see what would happen". What?! Really?

This guy was extremely surprised we were so hostile. I'm completely baffled by this, as how can putting up a POS in a system without contacting the people living there be construed as anything but hostile?

The Small POS comes out of reinforced in a matter of time, and the alliance will be there to blow it to smithereens. Another example of poor planning, no common eve sense, no attempt at previous intel, and an obvious attempt by too few to do too much. In the end it's costing them alot of isk, so there's a lesson there in itself, as many of you reading this will either already know, or will learn from this example entirely.

Of course, the real lesson to draw from this is don't expect a Talocan United wormhole to allow you to do stupid things, like this.

Seriously? Who does this?

Thanks to all those who came out to defend, I hope I can repay when the call goes out to defend your home.

Consistancy and I'm a Bad Bomber Pilot

After watching another week of terrible combat spawns, we're up to four, and after both talking with other alliance corp members as well as someone else actually posting on our alliance boards, we can safely say something is not quite right with combat anomaly spawns.

I spent today sitting in my Purifier after seeing jumps on DOTLAN. I scanned it down, headed on through and found two Helioses jumping back and forth. That stopped when my Devoter arrived on our wormhole side. I tried numerous times to catch both of them, but to no avail. I find I have much to learn about cloaky ship combat.

So, deciding I wasn't going to catch the cov ops ships, I called in both Orcas and started closing the hole, with my Purifier sitting on the hostile side of our exit. I was speaking with a member of the corp we share our other C2 with, and managed to close the hole before I hopped the Purifier back through! Whoops!

Thankfully my SB fit comes standard with a Core Probe Launcher. I watched DSCAN for a bit, seeing both Helioses had their probes out and were looking again, so I figured they had better scanning equipment, I bet where-ever they cluster is where the new D382, C2 static is, since this WH was a low sec static. Lo and behold I scanned it down and was sitting off of it before one of the Helios ever found it.

While I was sitting cloaked about 10km off of it, I heard it activate, and a Helios appeared. I excitedly clicked my Warp Disruptor and MWD as I hit approach, but strangely, targetting did not work. Hmm I said as it warped off. Guess it would help had I actually decloaked. Rats.

After heading through to the next hole, I found yet another C2 with static low sec, so again scanned down the next WH and after another narrow miss at a Helios again, finally found a C2 with high sec static.

And it contained SEVEN grav sites.

Argh!

I know there aren't a ton of people who move into WHs to mine, but do everyone a favor and despawn your gravs if you're not using them! It'll help you from scanning them down, and it'll help those in your constellation who actually do mine.

So after a few hours of screwing around, I made it back home and closed all my doors. Not an entirely exciting set of events, but hopefully I learned a number of things from them that I didn't have to pay for.

Combat Site Strangeness

Over the past couple of days, I noticed we had very few combat sites. Then none. And now, a day later, still none. I asked in alliance chat and some responded that they had the same issue along with lowered nano drop amounts.

No combat sites in almost two days is bizarre wormhole behavior. This hole has consistantly spawned 2-4 sites a day, on average. So what's going on?

Anyone else out there notice this?

War!

Well after helping defeat a large Starbridge force in an allied wormhole, Talocan United has been wardecced by Cosa Nostra, what I hear is the high sec griefing arm of Starbridge. So I took the early warning, fueled up both wormholes with a month of fuel, and prepared to weather the assault in our home wormhole.

Being a wormhole based corp, I expect the war to pass us by without much to get excited about. We've mined out the majority of our existing grav sites, and have a large stock of ore to compress soon. We also took the time to analyze our profit potential for our PI planets, and have been banging away on keeping the planets churning out materials. We're still focusing on Cryoprotectant and Biotech Reports, Biocells, and the full run of POS fuels. We were also looking to start trying to produce Nanite Repair Paste, but our system doesn't contain the Biomass needed, so we may have to truck those in. We'll start experimenting, and I expect I'll see what I can do with it soon.

Otherwise, it's been pretty quiet. We had some Rooks and Kings in here the other day, snooping about. We've kept on top of all our combat related sites, so they had nothing to bait us out with, so they resorted to uncloaked at the POS to try to coax those online outside the shield. Since only two of us were on at the time, and I was not one of them, everyone stayed safe and no one exploded. And other than a C6 connection, we've had little traffic to either kill or close. I did find our B274 had moved today, so that was a little odd......

And is there really anything worth any actual isk inside radar and mag sites, other than Caldari Decryptors? I still haven't seen a Talocan Derelict in over a year now, so all the money appears to be in the form of nanos from the wrecks. I've had very limited success with the respawn at downtime trick, so I've been leaving mag sites to try to spawn new waves, and hacking radars to try to get caldari decryptors. I ean, seriously, are they ever going to fix the other T3 ships so any other race's T3 salvage will be worth anything???

We've had a ton of ladars spawning, so maybe I'll have to actually try to react them again....argh what a PITA.

The Power of Perception

I just had an interesting encounter I thought warranted a post of some sort. After checking DOTLAN today, I saw we had four jumps showing. I had previously scanned so I was fairly sure we were secure. So I logged in and jumped into my Anathema and saw.....nothing.

Hmmm. A quick check of my sigs turned up one new wormhole, which I promptly headed over to see what it was. I hopped in my Purifier and headed through...to find a Loki and a Proteus on the other side. I checked the locus and found it was a Class 4. Also on scan were two combat probes and a Moa. Interesting.

I jumped back through to see what they would do and to start to kill my timer, and they followed me through. I quickly recloaked and they tried to catch me with a MWD on the Proteus, but I also have a MWD and had pulsed it before cloaking. I quickly headed back to the POS and hopped into the Pilgrim, logged Nyslia in on the Devoter, and boarded our neut Dominix with Firt. I also logged in Jelloshot in the Oneiros. I squad warped us to within 10km of the WH and waited for the fireworks.

I landed with my Pilgrim and moved off the warp in, and the two T3s were still there. My Devoter landed behind me, about 7k off the hole and started towards it. I put up the Warp Field Generator and started to orbit the WH, while they started to target her. I uncloaked and turned all my systems on the Proteus. The Dominix was in warp.

And they jumped back through before the Domi ever landed. Puzzled I jumped through after them in my Pilgrim. They warped away quickly. What the heck was going on? Maybe they had a spy at the POS? So I hung out for a few minutes to see what happened, and when no one showed for ten minutes, I jumped back through.

Oh well, I thought, guess I'll close this quick. I took the Domi back to the POS and swapped out for a double warp stabbed Orca Jesus, and logged in another Orca pilot. I cloaked the Onieros at near 80km off the hole and left the Devoter sitting on the wormhole.

I poked my Orcas through, and the Moa disappeared off scan, but the two combat probes were still there. *shrug*

On the second jump into the C4, both the T3s were there to greet my Orcas. This was puzzling to me, until I realized that they probably weren't aware of the mass limit and weren't experienced hole closers. I patiently waited out my cloak to see if they would get impatient and head back through before me as I hoped, but they sat waiting for my Orcas to show themselves. One uncloaked and they started targetting, so I took him home. The hole went crit right on schedule, so I decided to linger with my second Orca and see what kind of damage they could dish out. I have a decent shield tank on both Orcas, and they let er rip. I was hoping I could lure them back with thoughts of an easy kill, but alas, they were too spooked or they were too savvy. One more jump and the hole closed behind me.

I then got to spend an hour opening and closing our B274 looking for a good Jita connection. After three tries, I settled on 16 jumps away. I loaded up both Orcas, then realized all my PI would never fit through the single wormhole's mass. Whoops. So I moved out the expensive stuff and a chunk of it, went and got my Providence freighter from Jita and am slowly piloting 16 jumps there and will take it all 16 jumps back.

WTB web!

Back At It!

I had my first full amount of playtime since being away, yesterday! We cleared three combats, three radars and a mag site. Nano drops were pretty dismal, but thankfully, Caldari Decryptors came through and we found 11 of them! At around eight million each, they made up for the salvager's failure. I'll have to tear them apart to see what the heck is wrong with them......

So what's been going on in our systems? Short answer: Not Much. As I took my time away to travel to see family, my corp members also took the opportunity to take a break from Eve as well. All except Soulofchaos, who kept the hole clean of combat sites. WTG Soul. So due to his hard work, we have a collection of 100+ nanos waiting to go to Jita.

Interestingly enough, when I left, we had two grav sites in system, with plans to mine them out. That didn't happen, but I still have two grav sites now, three weeks later. And they're the same ones I bookmarked before I left. So, three weeks, no grav site spawns. Too much ABC ore coming out of WH space huh, Eve devs?

I'll be getting back into the swing of things here soon, so expect more!