Hmmmm.

So we appear to have gotten rid of our unwelcome visitor, as no more of our statics have been opening by themselves. We had a guy is a shuttle come in to look around when we had the high sec open for a Jita run, and he forgot to bookmark the exit, so I spoke with him for awhile, and then he ran into our POS, which promptly vaporized his ship. He then asked us to finish him off, so I said yeah, I'll be right there. His reply was "Oh, someone else is here....ZZZZT!" Nick had logged on and fried his pod with the POS guns. Ouch.

We are now up to four grav sites, and I'll a little bewildered. If I'm not mistaken, some of our spawns have occured while the statics were open. So my theory may indeed not be valid. Or it might be valid to a certain percentage chance or something like that.

Huge news, we have the Rorqual in production! Nine days left! We also bought a Legion to play around with, and I've finally trained Med Pulse Spec, and how retarded is that damage difference from beams?

We're not doing too bad for a corp of four total players, two of which are really active. Someone who came calling in the wormhole awhile back paid us a compliment after seeing all our ships on his directional.

"Whoa! Too many ships. Where there's an Orca and that many ships, there's an organized corp who has their shit together. I'm leaving!"

Experiment Continues

We've had someone who has been opening our statics lately, up til yesterday. I saw a drake named "Drake and Bake" on directional while I was scanning, but then he disappeared when I brought all the mining ships home. Disappeared as in logged off. Scanned everywhere, found no other wormholes, or deep safes. Next day I found 21 jumps on Dotlan, and found our B274 high sec static open and it had apparently had alot of visitors. But no combat sites were ran. We've got a couple Zealots, a Deimos, and a Moros that are visible on directional, so most people jump right back out. I sure would.

So I took the Orca and closed the high sec, the class 1 static was also open. Orca got stuck outside, so I decided to wait til the next day to see what happened with the statics and wether or not I caught our visitor outside. Apparently not, because there were jumps on Dotlan the next day, so I checked the B274, and sure enough it was already decaying. So I brought the Orca back in, critted the hole with it, managing to keep it inside this time. I had to run off a Thrasher destroyer with my Pilgrim, I guess he didn't check the hole's info to see it was critical, but he ran pretty fast while I was neuting him.

Past two days, so far no jumps. Over the couple days we had someone opening our statics, we may or may not have spawned a Ladar, it might have been from the previous days downtime. Other than combat sites, we got nothing. We lost a mag site I assume he warped to. And a damn grav site. I guess this guy is griefing us for some reason or other. But we got no substantial spawns while the statics were open.

The previous two downtimes, with the statics closed, we spawned multiple ladars and a radar. I've seen alot of evidence so far that leaving your statics closed has a large factor in wether or not you have significant spawns during the time they are closed.

Anyone else out there reaching any conclusions about wormhole spawn rate?

Another Day

Well, I've been home sick for awhile now, had to actually go to the ER for the stomach flu. I was in so much stomach pain they gave me morphine for it, and it did absolutely nothing. Oh well, I needed the fluids.

So, that means I'm playing Eve. Yesterday I continued keeping my statics closed and ended up with a ladar to show for it. However, I did have a K162 probe in to us, so I scanned it down, and lo and behold we were 4 jumps from Jita! Thanks to whoever that was!

I took the opportunity (wow that's a terrible looking word!) to sell off the load of POS fuel I've been stocking up for just this eventuality. Took two Impels to carry it, worth over 400 mil. While in Jita, I was gazing at our Providence when I had an idea.

I decided to buy about 300 mil worth of pyerite, tritanium and mexallon, and trucked it the four jumps to where our wormhole entrance was. I then shuttled it all in via Impels and two max rigged Iteron Vs. Didn't take all that long and now I have alot of high sec minerals to work on my Rorqual with!

Took the Providence freighter back to Jita where it resides for just this sort of reason, and hopped back in. One jump in and out with the Orca and the hole closed.

So, the effect on my experiment of someone probing an exit in? One ladar site spawned. Alright, better than nothing spawning. But does that mean K162s don't count against the "wormhole open/nothing spawns/low spawns" theory? Or did I just happen to get one of the "once a week no matter what" spawns? Only time will tell.

I also took the time to log on my mining fleet consisting of seven Hulks, one Orca, and one Iteron V to take care of the Unexceptional grav site we had a "visitor" warp to and start. We had started it a few days back, but the server crash had reset it, so we got an extra 10k Arkonor out of the roid than we should have, which is sweet, but I wish the server had waited til a little later, say, after we had done ABCs, to crash!

This fleet took only an hour to reduce this site to floating Veldspar and a single Spodumain I plan on taking care of today.

Seriously though, nine accounts running on one computer is really all I can physically handle. Between moving ore, hitting D-Scan, and warping the Iteron back and forth from the can to the station, you have no time to even get a drink! It's nice to have actual humans to take care of some of that, a little less OMG OMG hurry up, efficiency!

I have to handle those four radars and the mag site today, they make me nervous not having them done, would hate for them to go into someone else's pockets.

Or I may take it easy and play something relaxing today. :)

Or maybe not.

Forgotten Heathen out!

Continuing Tests

Well, we've kept the statics closed for a few days now. Over that period of time, we've had three radars and a mag site spawn. That's fairly unusual for our hole.

Gone from 9 sigs to 12 in the past few days. Combats have spawned at a prodigous rate. Up to nine now.

I'll keep them closed as long as possible. I stockpiled ice product POS fuel for both POSes, so I can hold out. It'll depend on how patient I can keep my two other corpmates who are around.

Theory of Signature Spawning

So over the course of the last few months, I have noticed a trend. We're scanning our WH system every day, writing down what all the sigs are, and updated a MOTD in corpchat with them, so we have ready access to the number of sigs and what type were there the previous day.

I had mentioned in a previous post that we hadn't had a grav site spawn in months, and then all of a sudden, we had two. What I came up with as the common denominator was that both our statics were closed for three days. Now, I can't remember if we had any inbound K162s, but I'm positive we didn't exit our wormhole.

And in that time we had two gravimetric sites spawn. Coincidence? Mayhaps. I'm going to test the theory further in the coming weeks. This may not apply to all sig types, as it surely doesn't apply to combat site types.

Of course, it may not apply to any. Maybe this is what CCP meant by the spawn rate slowing down when people live inside a wormhole. If the door is open and people are coming and going everyday, maybe a very bare minimum spawns. But if you leave the door closed, there's a much higher chance.

Only time and a careful watch of all our sigs will tell. If anyone else has any theories, share them!

Common Perimeter Deposits

Cleared one over the weekend. It managed to spawn an awesome 75k spod, and I managed to mine it all out. No disturbances either. Nice and quiet.

Unfortunately, this was our last grav site, but a new one spawned today, Nick tells me. It's the first such spawn in weeks as we worked our way down. I hadn't intended to open the last grav, but we had a visitor who warped to it himself, so it was open anyhow.

Working on capital ship parts for the Rorqual. Got about 1/3rd of them done, going to buy about 90 mil tritanium and 30 mil pyerite next time we're near Jita.

Recycling Class 1s

Well, since we only have one grav site, no other wormhole to move to, I decided to start opening our class 1 static and start farming those.

We opened our first, ran a bunch of sites, and closed the hole. I had it down to a science.

Then after Incursion, I tried closing our B274 static high sec and it didn't close at 2 bil mass. Hmm, this was new to me. Did some searching and asked on the boards, and I guess there's always been a variance. Funny I have never ever seen it before. Very odd. The Orca is 250 mil, and 8 jumps and that b274 always closes, eve if only the Anathema, weighing in at only 1.1 million mass has jumped back and forth once. That means, up til this point, all my B274s have closed at 2.0002 bil mass. That's pretty much no variance at all.

But, the last few have varied wildly. Making it very hard to close the statics without getting someone stuck on the other side.

Anyhow, fast forward to us opening our Class 1 statics. I closed a few yesterday, and finally found a beauty. Thirty three combat sites, but almost empty of sigs. One radar, one mag site, one grav and no ladar. The Dotlan was completely clear.

Oh, it's a static nullsec. That's why. A Class 1 with a static nullsec. No ones gonna live in here. We had 16 hours to clean out the sites.

We did it in about five. 86 nanoribbons.

One of our static C1s had a high sec two jumps from Jita today. :)

Total haul in Jita today was 639 mil.

I'm closing a Class 1 static atm right now, I'm using three Retrievers fitted with warp stab, and two Impels. The static has a 500 mil mass limit. The Trievers are 20 mil, the Impels 19. All five together is 98 mil. I do them all twice, then two Retrievers back and through. That leaves me at 478.6 with a couple Anathema trips. Earlier today, I took three Retrievers through, came back, and still had to take a Retriever back through and had it close behind him. But I always probe down the static high sec before I chance that, and the Class 1 was actually three jumps from our Class 2 entrance....not much lost there.

Used a Pilgrim instead, 14 mil mass, ended up stuck too. 14 jumps back.

So, anyone out there want to share how they close class 1s now?

Whereon It Pays To Be Courteous

So we're down to one wormhole now, our Class 2 with Moros Dreadnought, or Zombieland, as I have termed it. We got sick of calling them C2-1 and C2-2, and mixing them up between us. So I called the one we live in now Zombieland, and Nick called the other C2, Pretoria. I think Johanesburg and a couple other South African cities were on the list. But anyhow, we are short one Pretoria.

Day had been going as any other, we ran down the combat sites, I opened our Class 1 static and found an unoccupied system. I jumped in my Zealot and Devoter and ran four of them, planned on coming back later. Did some PI, some fueling. Typical day.

Til later in the evening, I get a text from Nick says that there are structures in "Pretoria" that aren't ours. I jumped on vent and found out someone had put up a large POS in our system. Nick noted that this corp had tried to join our contact channel, but he was afk, so never responded.

So, we both get scanning, and the POS shield is up, and guns are being anchored. That's not so good. Nick runs down the corp with his awesome internet stalking skills and we find out the corp is made of 12 members, and Nick adds them all to his contact list, and finds only a few online.

Earlier in the day, I had actually thought about dropping this hole, in fact. It didn't spawn fast enough to even replenish what the wormhole vacationers took down, and I hadn't actually been looking forward to moving in once this hole ran dry. So we were presented with a couple choices.

Either we fight for the hole, or we pack it up and move out. We chose somewhere in between, and launched every character we had access to in whichever the most bad ass ships they could fly. Scanned down the exit, found only a drake watching it, and warped in my Zealot, the Devoter, an Onyx, a Dominix, an Armageddon fit for max DPS, and an Ishtar.

Somewhere in all this, they woke up to the fact that people were in system, and started talking with two characters. One didn't know very much about wormholes, or anything, really, and seemed to be in charge. She was to the point, and wanted to "be diplomatic". The second character was your atypical Eve pirate. Lots of "wure gunna buld 6 dreuds in thar and blows up ur PoS!"

After taking a look at all the characters, we noticed they were almost all, to the day, made back in May of this year. Hard to fly a dread and fight it well in that kind of time if they were doing any sort of other skills....so no, that threat wasn't going to work.

Somewhere in the posturing and "being diplomatic", our fleet arrived inside the wormhole and set up shop with a bubble. This really got their attention, and the bulldog dropped off the radar, no doubt soiling the radar as he fled. The "diplomat" then asked what we would like to do. I told her that since they had been "undiplomatic" by moving into an occupied wormhole, and assuming we were an industrial only corp, that we'd sit there til we managed to kill a few of their ships and pods as restitution. And then, if we wanted to, we'd sit inside and wait for their dreads to be built, all the while sniping and trapping them. Oh, and I was going to clear the hole of sigs, but I didn't mention that. These people didn't know much about wormholes, and I saved some backstabbing for later.

So she kept kindly asking us to move off the wormhole, to which we replied that that wasn't happening. I discussed it with Nick, and we said, okay, you give us the gun, and we'll give you the cornbread.

Wait, no, that's not it.

We demanded 100 mil to move away from the wormhole and to take our POS down. That didn't get mulled over very long before she countered with 50 mil. So these guys are broke from putting up this POS. Alright. So we agree. She then tries to get us to move away before she pays, for us to move out our POS before she pays, etc etc. She also says quite a few things that makes us realize she has no idea how long a POS takes to take apart.

Chock another one up for a noob corp. There's nothing bad about noob corps, sure, or noobs. We were all a noob at some point. But when you let a bulldog bark, you might want to make sure he can bite. And you probably shouldn't assume things in Eve, like what looks like a mining corp with mostly 3 year+ members can't fly nasty nasty ships. That puts you in a precarious position, one in which I think was that their scanner pilot was not inside the wormhole we were blockading, and she was starting to panic a bit.

But, that's what you get when you posture and bluster before you try the carrot.

So, eventually, she gets that we aren't going to move. "No wallet flashy", in fact. She ends up having to have some friend log in and send us the money. We were really shaking our heads at that. You shouldn't move into a wormhole unless you have plenty of capital to cover all your losses.

The money is sent, we head to our POS and start taking down modules. I sent Nyslia and Firt to get the Impels, and start hauling out the few ships we actually had in there, all while Nick kept watch on the hole from the outside.

At some point, a couple of spider tanking Dominixes show up, bluster outside the hole, and head inside. A Hyperion shows up....and fights one of his corpmates, showing Nick exactly how much DPS the BS is putting out. Sure, he could be trying to lull him into a flase sense of....skill superiority, but I highly doubt it. They start a discussion about ship fits, and all is peachy.

Then the wormhole goes to half mass, the "this wormhole has had it's mass disrupted". The couple of people we had been talking to either log or go afk, and we end up with an actual competent character. Sort of. He knows nothing about wormholes, and tell us that he needed to bring in his BSes before the wormhole collapses. We both kind of give a virtual grimace on vent, and inform him that there's half a bil of mass left, plenty of room for the BSes since our transports use up very little. Go ahead and pull em through, we tell him.

So we're done with modules, all the guns are in, and I pull the final fuel out of the POS and offline it. Nick waits at the POS for it to offline while I hop in the remaining Anathema. We then watch as the final corp member scans down our POS and comes in and uncloaks to bookmark it. And he waits.

Oh? Want a free POS huh?

So I drop my scanning probes.

And scan down and warp to every signature in system. Every Ladar, Gravimetric, Radar, and Combat. In a few days, every single site will despawn, and they will be left with a festering wasteland of nothing to do but a couple combat sites a day. I'm glad we got our money out of the system.

As a parting shot, I said "Enjoy the wormhole, it'll be great in about 3-5 days!" That got a response from the remaining corp member, who convoed me asking what that meant. Nick suggested I tell him something interesting, so I said you'll get a Class 6 wormhole every 3-5 days. The guy then asked if anyone lived in the C6. That threw me for a second, and then I had to tell myself he had no clue what he was talking about. I said no, no one lives in it, and if you make those six dreads you were talking about, you'll make tons of money. He said that they were planning on it, although, mind you, none were dread pilots. This guy was titled "Titan Pilot", however, and claimed to fly an Erebus. Yeah, right. So I ended the convo with "It's gonna be great in 3-5 days!"

So, in the end we were very happy with the outcome. Sure, I would have liked to catch a couple of their ships and blood them a bit, but we got what we wanted, and we promised them we'd get out of the system.

Everything else was just extra for being so courteous in dealing with us. Hopefully the next time someone tries that with us, it'll be in the system with the Moros in it.

Enjoy the wormhole Blood Legion, or whatever your WoW reference name was.

Taking Stock

Nick pointed out our corp asset page the other day, and it made me cringe. We have stuff spread out throughout the galaxy. Today is as good a day as any to go pick it up.

So I'm spending my day transporting things either to our wormhole or to Jita for sale. You really do accumulate stuff after living in Eve.\

Got another old corp member back in the wormhole yesterday. Will have to get him up to speed or he'll be getting acquainted to where his last clone is at.

Lost my Devoter to a radar site, too. Nick killed alot of combat sites, and I helped him with the last ones, then we went to radars. Three or four of them went fine, but something happened on the last one. Nyslia took alot of fire, and maybe we hit a trigger and there was just too much on her. I tried to warp, but no dice. She was also in the middle of a turn. She went poof and they started and almost got my Zealot, too.

Everytime I lose a ship I swear I'm going to mount Damage Control IIs instead of an extra Heat Sink.....so now I'm really doing it.

On the bright side, I'm picking up tons of PI material I left as our wormholes moved about!

Saying Goodbye to Class 1s.

Yesterday, we finally said goodbye to our low sec static Class 1. We had it listed with Raid'En, our trusted wormhole broker, for over a week, and no bites, so we decided we were done with the fueling runs through low sec.

It was a mostly uneventful op, with a small pirate corp attempting to catch our Impel at the last gate.(single point fit FTL) After screwing around with him and his obvious alts in local, we got on with the job. Using a Prorator, we lifted all our remaining guns and POS modules, then all the fuel and strontium, out into the local high sec area for retrieval later. All the while, the pirate and his alts obviously thought we were leaving through one of the two gates when we headed into the wormhole, since he manned them both instead of ratting like he had been when we arrived. /shrug. I guess it just proves you don't always have to be that intelligent to play EVE.

We self destructed the battleships, Hulks and Covetors, netting around 100 mil in insurance, and flew out all the stripped modules. After unanchoring the POS, we took one last look around. Only a single forgotten Mobile Warp Disruptor was all that proved anyone had ever lived here.

This hole was a fast site spawner, but it also proved to be a K162 magnet. This hole was responsible for more traffic, and more of our ship losses than I've sustained so far in Eve. I'll never bother living in a low sec static again unless it's purpose was to PvP. I don't care what everyone says, the low sec hole had more traffic than any of the high sec holes we've lived, or currently live in.

Not to mention that those who found our hole and came inside, were proportionally more experienced in PvP, and more bloodthirsty all around. Low sec, to me, means a higher percentage of prepared individuals or corps looking for killboard posts.

But, in the end, we came out WAY ahead in the ISK vs Loss ratio, and we are highly more experienced because of it. It may have cost alot of ships and ISK, but in the end, I'd say it was worth it.

But I'm still never living in a low sec static hole again. :)

Grav Site Spawn Rate?

So I was gone about a week from Eve, only logging in to change training or attempt to help fuel a POS or two. You would think in that time we'd get at least one gravimetric site to spawn.

I logged in and started some heavy mining with 8 accounts, 6 Hulks, 1 Iteron V, and an Orca boosting. Cleaned all the ABCs out of a field and found myself low on time, so I decided to scan out my system and count the remaining sites. My count came out one short. I showed four sites on my list, but only three in system.

So really, there hadn't been a grav site spawn since I pretty much bought the wormhole, over a month ago.

Sure, we haven't attempted to clear the hole out or anything, but I've been knocking a grav site or two off each week we've been living here. We've still got 12 or more ladar sites sitting there. Makes you wonder if there's some sort of site cap for the wormhole constellation you belong to, and if you let a large number of the other sites build up, sites of another kind won't spawn.

It's just a guess, and probably not even close, but no grav sites in over a month seems kind of odd. Guess I'll do some gas harvesting and see what happens there. I do always have a second C2 wormhole to exploit, so it's not a huge problem.

Lead Farmers Are Slow As Lead

I had a trap sprung on me today, to little effect to my side. Obvious trap was obvious, as they say.

I had a guy in a Helios come in just as I happened to warp to my B274 high sec static in a prorator, I was just checking to see if it was there. That could have went badly, and I guess it's a lesson learned that I actually didn't have to pay dearly for.

So I dropped and anchored two large modile warp disruptors on the hole and warped away.

So I engaged the Helios pilot in conversation, all he said was "oh hai". I told him that this wasn't a good wormhole to scan in, and to please vacate. I then checked his profile and noticed he had been a memeber of Eve University a few months prior. Being a former alumni, I told him that since he had beeen an Eve member, he was free to leave peacefully.

Two hours later, after leaving my few people logged in, so he must have assumed I was the only person logged on. I did some painting, cleaned the house, etc. I sat back down and noticed a Vexor on scan. I jumped in my new Pilgrim and headed over to the wormhole. Sure enough, the same guy was sitting there with Hammerhead IIs out.

Hmm. This smells funny.

So I headed back, popped into my Zealot, my Devoter, and my Myrmidon and warped over to the edge of the warp disruption field. I targetted him on all my characters and his response was to send his Hammerheads for me. Alright, game on I guess.

I settled in to a decent long range, barely inside the warp bubble, and quickly got the Vexor into armor, then a nudge into structure and he jumped out. Before he did, the WH pulsed and a Raven jumped in. Hmm, obvious trap is....small.

So I started to engage the Raven, while moving my ships back outside the range of the bubble.

The wormhole started pulsing like crazy with incoming ships. Yep, time to head out of here.

So I gang warped us away, with the Devoter slightly being warp scrammed, but either I slipped out of range or he was just too slow. Another Raven, an Armageddon, a Dominix, a Scorpion, an Abaddon, a Phobos, and the Vexor all jumped in. Not a single fast tackler amongst the fleet. Fail.

I quickly calculated their mass displacement, and a single jump home for all of them was all the WH had left after 861 mil mass had gone through it. I did log in every single combat character I had, including the Moros dreadnought, which was already out and on scan. I figured they were lingering around just to see if I came back(why in the hell would I?).

They destroyed both my large warp disruptors in a fit of rage and exited the wormhole. I had Gnicklas outside in the Impel, waiting to come back in, so I taunted them a bit about better luck next time, and headed back to my home, with a critical wormhole behind me that will keep out anyone else for it's lifetime.

Thanks Lead Farmers!

How Many Licks Does It Take To Get To The Center Of An Arkonor Asteroid?

So I've got a full fleet of six hulks out atm, all on an arkonor roid. I am boosted by an Orca with good skills, not perfect, so I'm at a 135 second cycle time.

So how many cycles to fill a can?

......

ONE!

That's right, one cycle produces 1693 Arkonor with Strip Miner 1s with a mostly perfect mining fleet. Orca is still sitting in the POS shield. I can barely keep up.

Wow.

Back On Track!

Whew, I can feel Evelife simmering down to a decent level now.

Back to mining, did another Grav site, this time an Ordinary Perimeter Deposit. Cleared all the ABCDGHH, and left it to check the next day. And it respawned.

The whole site.

???

Anyone ever had this happen before? I'm a bit confused as I was expecting one roid, and got the whole site back. I'm not going to complain, jumping in a Hulk now!

One thing I want to make perfectly clear if you want to be left alone in your wormhole to do your thing, and I've verified it numerous times now.

Static wormholes(non K162) do not open unless you warp to them!

This is, by far, the best way to give yourself a couple of days alone without interruption by combat probes. Sure, you'll get a K162 opening from anywhere every now and then, which is either random or certain wormhole clusters have certain timers, but by managing your statics you can make sure all that wormhole isk is going into your pocket, and not that gank lolz squad that came in from the high sec opening you scanned cause you needed a skillbook. Don't open that static unless you need it.

So due to proper static management, I've managed a few days of unmolested mining, and last night, Nick blasted through over half our combat sites and cleared 50 nanoribbons, for a profit of over 300 mil! WOOT GO NICK! Coupled with the minerals I have sitting here waiting to go out, we have 500 mil awaiting Jita.

But I've got three days more on my lowest POS fuel, so I'm going to sit on it unless another POS starts screaming. It'll give me more time to mine without an over abundance of fear of combat probes.

Of course, I'm still scanning, there are still Russians out there.

Forgotten Heathen Out!

YAY Sweet Arkonor How I Missed You!

So back to mining! Taking in all the costly lessons I've learned the past while, my mining set up looks like this now.

One Orca as Wing Commander, boosting from POS.

One Armageddon as Squad Commander or in similarly scary ship

Four Hulks with shield tanks. Numerous Mining Drones.

One Iteron V flying back and forth constantly.

With this setup I cleared a Class 2 Common Perimeter Deposit of everything except high sec ores in two hours. My refinery is happily chewing away at it, and the minerals are piling up.This will be the first serious isk we've gotten out of the Class 2s so far.

Selling my Class 1 plus Orca for 400 mil. It's going to a fellow miner/industrialist, so I'm glad they'll get lots of use out of it! Hopefully this deal goes off better than my last one did!

Still doing a bit of the fueling dance, but hopefully I'll get rid of the low sec hole as well and be down to two holes again. Oh I long for those days when I thought I had it bad fueling only two POSes in two holes!

Sounds like rain at the window, better check all the windows.

Forgotten Heathen out!

Dude, Where's My POS Shield!?!

So I've been in the process of moving alot of my acquired gear out of the class 1 WH with a static low sec, and there's been ALOT of runing around fueling POSes. I haven't had a chance to mine to raise some much needed cash, so running combat sites to keep up is all I can do. Suffice to say, with four Large POSes, I'm falling behind. So fuel messages are nothing new.

But I've kept up on them and check in on each everyday to make sure I'm not missing anything. While I was heading to fuel the first Class 2, I get the following message.

"Your POS in JXXXXXX is under attack!"

Hmm, how interesting. That's my Class 1 with high sec static. So I logged in the caretaker scanner alt and found a solo Gila shooting at the POS. Alright, this won't last long......as I realized in horror that there was no shimmer POS shield between me and the attacker. I was too surprised that I actually checked the fuel bay to see what was missing. No Mechanical Parts.

Whoops, I'm being targetted. Oh yeah. So I warped off and started scanning down my static high sec. Within a minute I had a WH on scan, and warping to it....discovered a Dangerous Dead Wormhole.....hmm that's not it. The attacking pilot must be from there.

So I scan again. Yet another K162. Wtf. Another K162. Holy crap, my wormhole has been the go to location for wormhole vacations and I didn't know it! Next hole..a low sec. With MY Orca sitting next to it. Crap. That means she's blown my ship array. Great. And she can happen to fly an Orca.

Seriously. I get a pirate that can fly an Orca.

At least she's a boneheaded pirate who doesn't understand the concept of wormhole mass limitations.

About this time I see more of our ships appear on scan, and somewhere in between me scaning, she leaves in the Gila and uses my own corp's Drake to destroy the rest of the arrays.

Finally, I get the high sec static, and our corp fleet consisting of my Zealot, a Devoter and Nick in a Malediction get moving the 15 jumps. I notice a Bestower moving on directional, so she's hauling stuff out. /sigh.

We finally get there and warp to POS. If my Devoter pilot had finished the training for the Warp Field Generator, I would have sent her to the wormhole to catch her as she ran, but alas, she's a few days away yet.

We arrive at the POS to catch her and scram her in one of our own Bestowers. She won't eject, so we have to destroy it, and can't catch the pod. She heads out to low sec and never returns, and we camp her in a station for awhile.

We then spend the next few hours taking apart what's left of the station and getting our Orca pilot here and ferry lots of stuff out through the high sec static.

And then we realize, we never got any fuel warnings for this POS. We backtrack and yes, there's no warnings at all from this POS. Nick petitions and a GM says, yes, this is viable for reimbursement! I decide to not get excited and assume the worst.

We start mentally ticking off what we lost in the ship array, as there wasn't much more than some modules in the corp arrays. An Impel, a Malediction, a Retribution, two Harbingers, numerous rigged Itty 5s, Bestowers, an Anathema, and a Helios.

Oh, and five hulks and four Covetors.

Ouch.

So everything gets packed up except the tower, which gets offlined after we re-onlined it. We can't fit anything else in the Orca, and it's way time for bed.

Fast forward to next day. We head over with an array of industrials and clean out the Orca, get the POS unanchored, and leave the Orca and a scanning alt inside, list the WH with our trusted WH seller, and critical the wormhole so no one else decides to check it out.

We were literally beating people away from the hole, and were repeatadly asked if we were putting a POS up or taking it down. Of course, the answer was always "Putting it up." There was even a russian I had to run through a translator to respond that "Yes, this is our system." The couple of T2 ships and the POS still up at the time convinced people to stay out.

About 3am last night, I get a text message from Nick. We're being reimbursed for everything we lose due to the bug in the POS fuel reporting. Holy crap. Whew. They are sending it all to Jita for us. Great.

Log in next day, Nick is already checking it over, and we discover nothing that was ejected from any of the destroyed arrays was reimbursed. That's kind of crappy, as it never would have been destroyed had the bug not occured......but then Nick makes a huge discovery.

Remember those FIVE Hulks? Yep, they're in a ship array in Jita. Wow. They shouldn't have fit out through the class 1 wormhole. I'll take that over all the other stuff we lost! No complaints here anymore. I fly the Providence to Jita, then over to where our current new C2 is open to, fly the arrays in, anchor them, and we're in business with six Hulks in system plus our other Orca!

So, what looked like a terrible Eve occurance turned around thanks to the GMs actually being very helpful!

Sometimes you gotta wonder, what the heck is gonna happen tomorrow?

Forgotten Heathen out!



So I warped off and started to scan down the exit.

That Did Not Go As Planned....

So the seller of the class 2, let's call him Slim, finally paid enough attention to our chat window that he got online long enough to try our transaction. Up til this point I thought I had a good rapport going with him. I borrowed some isk from my corpmate, Thomas, to purchase the fighters with the carrier. The transaction came out to be 1.7 billion isk for the wormhole, carrier, dreadnought and POS.

So I managed to secure another third party for the transaction. Slim sent me a pack of bookmarks and I headed there with the corp capital ship alt. I arrived with a Small Amarr POS which I started setting up immediately. Slim started taking down his POS and let me drop the Moros in my force field. I noticed immediately that the alt couldn't shoot any of the guns and mentioned that the alt was only skilled enough to sit in the ship, and actually switched the alt's training so that he could at least fire the dread's guns in the future.

Everything else went fairly smoothly as we moved ships and POS modules, until we hit a speedbump. One of the POS guns wouldn't unanchor. Slim said it was due to a bug in that the crystal wouldn't come out. I was slightly suspicious, but like I said, I had a decent rapport with this guy, so we just went on.

Then the 3rd party said he had to log off. From here things went downhill.

It's no fault of the 3rd party, he said that we should send him an email to let him know the transaction was finished and he would then release the funds. Being the nice guy I am, I told him to go ahead and release the funds, as I had control of both capital ships at the time and was satisified with the transaction. The 3rd party actually cautioned me against this, but I went ahead and had him release the funds anyhow.

So fast forward an hour later when Slim tries to unanchor the POS. He can't do it because of the gun. He asks me to bring the carrier over and help kill it. Sure, I had no problem helping him out. I stress that I was helping him, because this is what came back to bite me in the ass. My helpful nature. It was not my responsibility to help him do anything.

So with him in a Deimos and my cap alt in the Thanatos carrier, we get the gun into structure, and then it just stops taking damage pretty much. I guess POS guns are practically invulnerable in structure to Fighters and Railguns. So SLim says to go get the Moros.

I fly off to my POS to get the Dread, when he mentions that he'll need the carrier there too to online the fittings that went offline when I put the alt in it. So at this point he is ackwoledging that modules are offline due to the alt not being able to fly them. This is important for later accusations.

So of course, I say sure, and start warping back with the carrier, actually planning on leaving the carrier there, going back to get the Dread, and hoping back in the carrier. Yeah, I'm that trusting. He could have used the dread to blow my POS to smithereens.

So on the way back in warp with the carrier he says "TENGU!" in our chat. I'm already in warp, nothing to be done about it. I land and launch as many fighters as I can, which is 8. I start in one a Hurricane and take it's shields down quickly. Now remember, this is my first time even sitting in a carrier, let alone fighting anything, let alone PvP! The Hurricane warps off with my fighters chasing it in warp. The Tengu kills Slim and Slim's alt and warp scrams me as I'm trying to align for warp.

I call back my fighters, and two Curses arrive and start neuting me. I look down and read chat. Slim tells me to turn on one cap armor repper and log off. That's it. That's all he tells me. One armor repper and log off.

So instead of trying to fight to get out of scramming, I follow his advice and log off. Slim says I'll be fine, the carrier can tank these guys fine. Okay.

Five minutes later there's a Gallente Elite Carrier wreck. So what happened? He asks me if all the modules were online. I say no, of course they weren't, the alt didn't have the skills. So I send him the killmail because he can't understand why the carrier died. Slim says he'll see what he can do about restitution and he logs off and I wait to see if the gang attacks my small POS or tries to put up their own. They laugh about the kill in local and that's all that happens. Standard Eve practice.

I log in the next day, Slim convos me. He then proceeds to tell me the carrier dying was my fault. I told him he knew the alt could only sit in the capitals, and couldn't fight them. He then claimed that I had actually taken modules off the carrier. And that's why the carrier got killed.

I was pretty stunned and I was mad. I mentioned that he had been the one who told me to leave only he cap armor repper going and log off! I even asked him again if he meant only the one armor repper when I logged the alt off!!

So he took no responsibility for what happened. Sure, the gang was probably not a bunch of mercs he hired to get a kill and some of the modules back from the caps. He had been pressuring me pretty good about paying extra for all the stuff, and I relented on the fighters, having to borrow money against a corpmate for them. He said he wanted another 100 for some faction modules, which he then said he'd throw in for free. There were no faction modules on either cap ship that I saw.

And it just so happened that one gun needed both the capitals there to kill to unanchor the POS.

Honestly, no, I don't think he orchestrated the whole thing and it turns out to just be a fluke of Eve. A random event that makes you think something else entirely is going on.

So after the arguement about him not taking any responsibility for the carrier loss, I said, forget about the carrier. There's a large POS that I need unanchored, that I paid for. And I would hate to have to post that it looked like he hired a bunch of mercs to get capital ship modules back. He then decided that our business was concluded because I got my money's worth out of just having the dreadnought.

So there's probably an alt of his logged off in here, and someday I can assume that his POS is going online unless I get some combat ships in here to take it down.

So much for any honesty in eve. Again, yet another expensive lesson I learn from Eve; never ever trust anyone. Ever.

And when you do wormhole transfers, if you buy a POS or anything, let them do all the work so they are responsible. It's the seller's responsibility to see that you get everything you paid for in the agreement. And always listen to the 3rd party and his suggestions. It could have saved me alot of money and alot of grief.

Thanks Slim, for griefing me. I guess you showed me.

Waiting Game

Well, after a week and a half of getting the asking price, the person I am buying the Class 2 off of sat ingame while I and my 3rd party tried to get him to respond. For two hours. Oh well.

He messages me later and tells me he can't do the transfer today. I had already scanned down my WH exits for the people I needed to help with the transaction, and I was out all day today, so it's scheduled for Monday.

Looking forward to consolidating everything down to a couple wormholes, then I won't be running around fueling POSes so much! So here's hoping the deal goes through tomorrow.

Forgotten Heathen Out.

In Which We Need A Cap Pilot ASAP!

So we've been in discussions with another corp to purchase their wormhole, including a Thanatos carrier and Moros Dreadnought. Well, I obviously wasn't thinking ahead enough: we need a cap pilot for the transfer!

For some reason I thought the ship could just be left in a POS Ship Maintenence Array and we could anchor our POS around it, but that's silly, we couldn't open the array except to blow it up! So I started freaking out, and contacted a number of cap third party pilots, and quizzed my corpmates if they knew someone who could fly said capital ships.

Lo and behold, Thomas, our third corp member, has been training an alt of his just for Gallente cap ships. Whew. All he needs is the Cap Ships and Gal Dread skills...ouch. That set us back 450 mil, so we'll have to make that up on our goal to 1.5 bil for the hole.

So with that crisis averted, I switched to our other new C2 and started farming with my Zealot, Nick's Zealot, and my alt in a Devoter.

And then I got the Zealot destroyed. Whoops.

I guess I had my music up too loud, and he either got caught on something and that killed his speedtank, or he just was head-on with the BS I was fighting. I tried to warp him out as soon as I noticed he was about to go into hull. No dice.

Oh well, I'll replace that later, I have a spare in the other C1. He has all the skills to fly the Abaddon that's in here, so I'll stick him in that for now.

The melted nano drop has been wretched the past couple of days, but I guess I've been spoiled. Only about 100 mil worth per day the last couple, with lots of dry sites. I'm also impatient,I must say, trying to get the cash together for our next major corp purchase.

Looking into T3 ship production next, so throw any ideas out on that, if anyone is actually reading. Thanks if you are!

Forgotten Heathen Out!

Vacation and Empty Wormholes

Well, I recently made a 8 hour trip to see a friend of mine who lives in Europe who is visiting the states, leave my three wormholes mostly un-attended since my corpmates log in nowhere near as much as me or as they used to. So fueled them up and headed out.

While at the hotel, I checked the DOTLAN on them, and found a Ship kill and over 70 sleeper kills! What in the heck had occured? A Russian fleet invasion, another Hulk loss?

I got home the next day and found out we had a high sec opening into our low sec static wormhole. It opened into Dodixie, of all places. There were even Sleeper Wrecks and cargo containers on my scan. WTF.

So, in the end, we'll probably never know what happened. A huge influx of carebears and pirate oppurtunists came in and cleaned us out, and some of them got cleaned out on their way, it seems.

And the floating BSes and HACs didn't seem to disturb any of them, if they even bothered to hit scan.

Sheesh.

Forgotten Heathen Out.