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/

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!

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/

Revenge of the Cov Ops

Here lately I've found little time to play Eve, real life does indeed come first. But a few things happened before I started logging in less.

The day after our wormhole acquisition, I logged in and hit DSCAN, as I habitually do. To my surprise, a number of wrecks and three Drakes appeared on scan! This did not make me happy, so I hopped in my stealth bomber to go check out what was going on.

I quickly found them running a combat site, and they seemed to be fairly standard Drakes, and exhibited all the signs of being run by a single person behind the curtain. I decided to find out where they came from, and rapidly found an incoming K162. It was guarded by a Brutix, and a character I had met before, Gillopi. I believe he was part of this post, an attempt to bait me onto my B274 and jump in numerous battleships, but a large mobile warp disruptor I had anchored ruined those plans.

So he had surely seen my probes looking for his hole, but he didn't react at all to it, and his alts continued to run sites. Unfortunately, I didn't have the kind of firepower at my disposal in this hole to take care of a trio of Drakes. I could, however, gank a salvaging ship when it showed up.

As Chessur has pointed out in his stealth bomber blog, leaving a salvaging ship unescorted is a bad idea. Even worse is when you've seen probes on scan. Ever MORE worse is when my corpmates started arriving, and their ships were appearing on their DSCAN. By the time the Noctis did finally show up, as I knew it would, I had two Dominixes, a Harbinger, a Devoter, and my Purifier. I felt like I had enough to challenge them, especially now that I was sure they were all being run by, at the most, two people.

So I stalked the Noctis, trying to get into point range, and missed it on a couple combat sites, knowing it was just doing our work for us. For the first few sites, no combat ships showed up to support the Noctis, til the third site, when I decided to pounce, and right before I uncloaked, the Brutix warped into the site.

It was strange timing, to be sure. The Noctis left the last three wrecks and warped out. I have no idea if one of my comrade's ship finally spooked it, or there was a disturbance in the Force. I'll never know. But they didn't listen to that ESP like they should have. I found it salvaging a radar site.

The fleet was ready so I crept in, called for the warp in on me, and uncloaked and pointed the Noctis.

80 kilometers off, one of the Drakes sat, unable to do anything to me at range. I fired off my torpedos and had the Noctis in half armor when the Brutix showed up. I turned and burned, unwilling to sacrifice the bomber with my fleet already showing up within seconds. My fleet landed and the Noctis exploded. Unfortunately I was out of point range of the Brutix as our two Domis tore into it with Ogres and Hammerheads, as the Devoter got stuck on some POS module, and arrived late to the party. *Mental note, assemble fleet at POS away from all modules before calling for a warp-in....* I also neglected to remember one of the Domis flown by me had a Warp Disruptor on it. Oops.

The Brutix warped away and so did the Drake. I gang warped the squad to the K162, and all three Drakes jumped ahead of us. I jumped through on the SB to try to point one, but all three had warped quickly away before my fleet showed up. So we sat on the WH contemplating what to do, as we were not going to charge across what looked to be not their system, when a Nemesis uncloaked and jumped.

My entire fleet followed.

I was already sitting on the other side in my Purifier, and I hit my MWD and uncloaked as he did, getting the point and stopping his cloak from going up.

I don't think he even got a torpedo off.

And with the Devoter there this time, the pilot had no chance for his escape pod to escape.

Karma is a bitch of a mistress.

So we cleaned up the system, unfortunately losing a good number of wrecks to the time we had to spend going to buy a Noctis and fitting it, and then closing the open wormholes. A little while later we were up 100 mil and two more kills on the board.

We managed to take care of the ABCs in one grav site, the Average Frontier Deposit, which we despise, and most of the AB on a second. I bought the modules and items needed for producing Hulks, and set one in the oven.

Next day, I logged in to find Freethinker Zun telling me both the grav sites we had previously been working on had vanished. With a sinking feeling, I started to scan. I was pretty sure what had happened, as I had in fact done it before to some other invaders who decided they would live in what was our home. Four out of the six grav sites that were there the day before were now gone. The former owners cov ops had been hanging around, and obviously had been sowing its mischief. The two remaining grav sites had actually spawned after we had seen the cov ops last, so we hope they are safe.

Nothing else to be done, except to try to catch the bastard if we see him, but catching cov ops ships is very hard. I hope he has already grown tired of the game, as he can see we are not going to pick up shop and leave just due to a few missing sites.

Definite New Grav Mechanics

So we've been watching our grav sites very closely for the last few now, and I can safely say there's been some changes to the way they are operating. In what way you ask? I'll tell you!

In our entire time in wormholes, we have had very few of the "downtime spawn roids", asteroids that spawn in your "open" fields(those that you have warped to). And when I say very few, I mean like 5 total over our entire wormhole career. So it has been very interesting when almost every single day we warp in to find a new roid waiting for us. Not only that, but they are piling up! Lately, it is not uncommon for there to be two different spawn roids from two seperate days because we haven't been able to mine all the first!

And not just any roid, oh no. Up til now we've only had spodumain asteroids spawning as our downtime roid. But, about the time we started repeatadly having these roids spawn, crokite roids started spawning as well. 25-50k ones.

Shhh, don't tell the CSM! OMG more nullsec ores in wormholes! It'll destroy the game!

On top of these new downtime roids, we've been getting extra roids that spawn with the field. I've documented this over the past few months. Once, as readers will recall, we had a 250k spod spawn with the grav site. It, of course, promptly disappeared. But extra rocks with each site has been more than welcome.

Of course, there is alot of "are we done yet?" while you mine 90k spod. But it's also money in the bank. I'll deal with that while we can have stuff to mine.

So why, when the nullsec community obviously wants ABCs removed from wormholes, would CCP already have wormhole grav sites getting buffs? Obviously the grav changes have either been in the game, and were on some sort of lower setting, or they were already planned and on the table before any CSM whines were heard.

So what's going to happen now? Are these changes going to get reversed? Only time will tell. Hopefully CCP sees through the self serving bullshit of the nullsec CSMs and actually takes a look at it's own data. Or sleepers are going to mostly be the only thing found in wormholes again soon.

Sleeper Clearing Vengeance

After dragging through all the PI I could stand for one day, I and Soulofchaos opened up our C3 connection and found a sleepy system. According to DOTLAN at least. Warping around I found an Amarr Control Tower with a Buzzard and an industrial sitting inside the shield. It was undergunned for my tastes, with only 14 guns. Oh well, we're not equipped to go POS hunting. Yet. *insert evil laugh here*

So upon scanning for combat sites....ZERGOMGWTFBBQ!? Over 20 combat sites appeared on scan. What does this look like to any Mad Max Wormholer with decent ships and skills?

LUNCH BUFFET!!

It was time to go Return to Thunderdome on these sites. I hopped in my two Legions, popped in a second medium repper and a faction thermic resist plating to close the hole, and with Soul flying his Tengu and a cloaky Noctis, we headed in.

Two hours later and over 300 NPCs killed, we flew home with 553 million isk in loot!

Boy are they going to be mad when they log in......

But you can't complain if you don't run your combat sites and someone swoops in and takes them. You weren't there to defend them.

Speaking of that, we seem to have ten combat sites of our own sitting here....

Wormhole Topic of the Week: PvE Ship Fits and How They Work!

I do not claim to be an expert on ship fits, or even on most ships. What follows is my experiences with ship fits, mostly Amarr and lasers, that work within the confines of wormhole space.

Before I ever moved into wormholes, I ran level 4 missions in battleships. I had an active armor tank and the mission rats lined up to be killed, and never switched targets. I was not prepared to deal with sleepers.

The first major large difference between fighting Sleepers and mission rats are damage types. In missions, you can look up the damage types of which faction your mission is against and fit accordingly. Sleepers aren't so easy to deal with. They deal "omni" damage, meaning all types. If you have a "resist hole" meaning one of your resists is alot lower than the others, they will exploit this. You can have 80s in all your resists, and 50 in one, then that's what the sleepers will hit you with.

Your ship type is also going to heavily influence your ability to add more DPS over tank, depending on your starting resists. T1 Battlecruisers are going to need to mount some serious resist increasing modules to be able to stick around in Class 2 sites. Base starting resists are why T2 cruisers and T3 cruisers are so much better at survivability in wormholes. They are much easier to fit for more DPS because they already start with good resists which mean less holes to plug. A couple Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane 2s and you're mostly good to go. Plug in a third resist specific module for the harder sites or Class 3s. More DPS also means less incoming DPS because you can whittle down the ships shooting at you faster.

Generally, in the Class 2 hole, looking at it from a perspective of soloing the sites, I would not take lower than 60% in all resists. I'd prefer over 70s in everything. But, depending on your ship, you'll end up with something probably lower than the others, that's just the way it goes. Having 4 in all your resist related skills is very reccomended. Every resist percentage counts.

Another aspect to your tank is your reliance on either an active or passively tanked fit. With an active tank, you are using hardeners that draw on your ships capacitor supply to boost your resists. If you have excellent skills for both capacitor power and in your chosen tanking resist skills, you can certainly make an active tank work. You're probably also in a Tengu or a Legion with those kind of skills. For T2 or T1 ships, passive tank is, imo, the way to go. Why? Because with recent changes to Sleeper AI, Sleepers now use energy neutrailizers. Even with fives in all your energy skills, a single neuting Sleeper BS can drag your cap down to dangerous levels fairly quickly. If you're solo, this can be a death sentence as you wildly try to align to the nearest planet to get away. Throw in a sleeper frig webbing you, and you could be pod-bound very shortly.

Because of this, I rely on a passive tank, which draws no cap to boost my resists, and both, for me, a Damage Control 2 and Medium Armor Repairer 2. Along with a single Imperial Navy EANM II, my resists are 69/60/77/88 for armor. Along with using a "speed tank", which I will discuss in the next paragraph, my PvE Legion can tank entire C2 Radar site spawns and kill them before it is in any danger. Will an Advanced Sleeper BS break this tank? Yes, if it survives for long enough, this tank will fail, both from incoming DPS and because of the Sleeper neuting. When I do Class 3 combat sites, I replace one of my three Heat Sink 2s with a thermic resist module, another with a second EANM 2, and the third with a second Medium Armor Repper 2. Then the only danger to the Legion is losing it's speedtank.

Speed tanking is a form of tanking (increasing the survivability of your ship), that relies on you moving very quickly. This allows you to outrun the explosions of missiles and dodge direct weapons (lasers, hybrids and projectiles) by 'overloading' thier tracking speed, I.E moving so quickly that the turret can't move fast enough to point at you

Read more: http://www.bukisa.com/articles/217446_eve-online-speed-tanking-guide#ixzz1Nsbx1Yex

In essence, speedtanking adds to the amount of incoming DPS you can manage. The faster you can go, without using a MWD, the better your speedtank is. Using this in direct correlation with managing your transversal(you'll have to look that one up, it's got videos all it's own for explanation) allows you to significantly increase your tanking ability by negating some of the incoming damage.

A Zealot with an AB II and good Navigation skills can get up to the mid 500s, while a Legion with the same can do mid 600s on speed.

The speedtank and transversal is what allows solo capsuleers to complete C2-C3 sites alone. The instant loss of the speedtank, through sleeper webbing, puts you in immediate danger and webbing frigates should be killed immediately, except where they are the remaining trigger. Triggering the next wave before you are ready for it can result in the inability to continue the site due to complete tank failure upon warp-in. Example, if you warp into a Sleeper Data Sanctuary, destroy the trigger and do not destroy the three Sirius guns, you will be webbed in place by the frigates and the three sentry guns and the battleship from the second wave will crush your tank.

Which leads to the next suggestion, Download Unknown's Wormhole Tool. Knowing the triggers on the different combat sites is crucial to your ability to take the incoming DPS. You only want to deal with as little DPS as possible if you are solo. If you're in a giant fleet, go ahead and shoot it all.

So, in the end, as long as your ship is:

Cap Stable

Resists over 60%

Using a AB to speedtank OR

Using a passive shield regen fit

You should be fine doing Class 2 combat sites solo. If your aim is to do Class 3 and above, you need to increase your tank, as I did by adding more resists and more repair amount, or by adding group mates to deal more DPS. It's quite hard to solo Class 3 sites, but it can be done. The amount of risk it involves is up to you to decide what is acceptable.