Eve - Life in the Hole (and out)

100th Post - Accomplishing a Few Goals

2011-12-05T14:59:00.001-05:00

Well first and foremost, writing 100 posts and still having people read them is an accomplishment in itself.

But I did want to share another accomplishment with the readers.

When I decided to restart GWNE from its PI alt purpose to being a corp I actively ran and focused on PvP, I wanted to be in the Top 10k on Battleclinic as a corp. Why? Because I saw that as representing a level where it would show we actually knew what we were doing. We had more kills than losses, and overall I thought it would show we were not complete Carebears (despite my many indy related posts here would seem to confirm I am in fact a Carebear).

So it was with great satisfaction that GWNE did in fact crack the Top 10k in corps around Thanksgiving, and as of this writing sits at 8400.

Battleclinic Corp Standing

I wanted to take a few minutes and highlight a few of the more "special" kills to me.

The First - Noctis go Boom, with Melted Nanos

Always a special spot for my first. Was even a post here. It was a classic SB kill on a Noctis salvaging sites alone. I was disappointed there were no tears in local, but it was a blast and my heart was racing lining up this solo kill.

First Night In Low - Kill 1 & Kill 2

Again worthy of its own post. Killing a couple targets and forgetting probes to find way out did a lot to introduce me to my new alliance mates.

First Kill In Syndicate - Welcome to Syndicate

This was our first organized effort at a SB roam. We had probably 3-4 engagements through out the system and netted several really nice kills, while losing only a SB in return. That is until the Black Ops dropped us on a gate and evened the score for the night.

First Repeat Kill in under 30 minutes - Bound & Determined

Guess he really, really, really wanted to finish that site.

And from there its been a blur of kills and losses, but always more kills it seems.

I am proud in my corp in maintaining a solid efficiency and steadily climbed in points on BC.

So I am happy to say I have accomplished 2 goals recently in EVE. 100 posts (and people still reading) and taking GWNE to the Top 10k in corps on BC.

Thanks for reading, I hope you have gotten some enjoyment out of my stories.

Fly Safe,
Mick

PI Changes - The Week After

2011-12-05T14:14:00.001-05:00

Wow, what a week it has been.

Carebears all over New Eden were somehow taken by surprise with the raising of taxes on PI goods.

Tears flowed as thousands shut the doors on their High Sec PI, lacking even the most basic business sense to pass the increased costs onto their buyers.

On the other end of the spectrum, thousands rushed to get their Gantry BPC's to build their own CO's (or being too lazy to do that, simply bought the early ones at 50-70% over cost in Jita).

Small corps in W-Space cried for DPS and had none (or not enough to chew through the Interbus CO's in a timely manner).

Overall it has been an exciting week of price speculation, price gouging and thrilling tear watching.

Now at the end of that week, 2 of the 3 P3 materials I make have returned to being profitable, even with the 17% Interbus CO Tax.

Gantry supply has stabilized the price of the unit in Jita at a still very profitable level for those making them.

And the payback on installing a CO is far easier to figure.

I wanted to look at the two planet types we run for payback on the PCO

The first is the P1 to P3 planet. It takes 1,280 units of P1 and turns it into 12 units of P3 every hour.

Taxes are 1280 * 500 * 17% *.5 for import, and 12 * 70,000 * 17% for export per hour.

That is almost 200k isk per hour in taxes, or right around 5M per day.

PCO costs about 100M to build and upgrade (yes I know they are selling for 113M in Jita for the Gantry Only).

So I can justify installing a PCO on my 6 Factory Planets in 20 days, assuming I can recoup the full 17% tax at point of sale.

Okay, let's say I can't recoup the whole 17%, but rather just the 10% of High Sec. That would lower my "savings" to about 3M per day. Still a healthy 33 day ROI. I am fairly certain my PCO's are not going to get popped every 30 days.

My second type of planet is an extraction planet with 8 factories. At full load they produce 320 P1 every hour for a tax of about $27k, or about 650k per day. Wow, ROI on that is not going to be as pretty. Good thing I have multiple extraction centers per planet. At three on a planet though I am still looking at 50-60 day ROI. Not great, but not bad.

So looking at my totals.

I have 11 planets. The best case for a POC has 1 Factory and 9 Extraction centers. At full production would cost my corp over 10M isk a day. ROI for a PCO is under 10 days. Not bad.

Worst case has 3 Extraction Centers. At full production will generate a measly 1.8M Isk a day in taxes. ROI would be 55 days. Not great, but still don't see my PCO's going pop every 55 days.

So that is my story of PI and the PCO. If it helps you figure out your ROI than great. If it makes you want to find me and shave a big Z in my carebear fur, then that is great too.

Either way,
Fly Safe,
Mick

New PI trades

2011-11-30T10:09:00.001-05:00

I see some new trades coming out of the PI changes.

1) Mercs for hire to small WH corps incapable of destroying the Interbus CO's by themselves

2) Mercs for hire to rep WH and Low Sec POCO's in trouble

3) Pirate gangs ransoming WH and Low Sec POCO/PI access.

The first is probably the most interesting in the short term.

With almost 16M effective HP and a recharge rate of about 200HP/sec it is going to be near impossible for the small corp to take out multiple Interbus CO's in short order. The chance to kill these Carebears as the semi AFK pound these structures should add lots of possible targets to C4 and under systems.

More Caps will be build in WH space to accomplish this possibly.

Man would it be a great time for a group of SB pilots to hire themselves out to help destroy these CO's. ANd man would it be a great time for these corps to leave behind a few alts to wreck havoc on these WH Carebears for months to come.

Could be a very interesting dynamic.

The second service is already done for POS, but its a natural extension to more vulnerable targets.

The last is just an extension of asset denial to another soft underbelly of industry.

Oh the fun that might soon come to a WH near you due to PI changes.

Fly Safe,
Mick

New World PI Prices

2011-11-30T10:01:00.001-05:00

Wow, the whine off the forums of HS carebears is piercing.

"PI is no longer viable"

"Taxes are making PI worthless"

"I have a Burr in my fur and no scissors"

"I cant afford my mani/pedi at these profit levels"

So this morning I played a little hookie form work and looked at the numbers for me.

These are based on Worm hole tax rate of 17%. Lower the doom and gloom by 40% for high sec.

P1 to P3 planet - Import 4 products, 25k each, and export about 930 P3
Tax Increase - 15-16M per run of 930 P3 or about 16k per P3 unit
Ouch, better cancel my massage too.

Really? That will represent about a 25% increase in the price I need to charge, and guess what, the market has already moved more than that.

Extraction Planet - Raw material to P1
Tax Increase - 84 Isk per unit (1 Isk to 85 Isk)
So my good s might move from 525 -550 to 600-650 range to compensate

Combine the two factors and P3 goods need to rise 25K per unit to keep my profits the same PAYING the 17% tax.

Well, in the end, after I figure out the best way to destroy 11 Customs Offices, I am going to be pocketing that increase.

Sure, some asshat will inevitably look at his extraction as "free" and the real increase in price will eventually settle around the HS increase of 10% and maybe P3 products will rise from 50k average to 65k. All good, I make more.

Carebears will eventually figure out how to pass the increase on to other Carebears and the world will rebalance.

The interesting thing will still be Low Sec and the impact of limiting Ninja PI.

Ship Poor

2011-11-02T09:05:00.002-04:00

They say when you buy a new house and you overspend you are "House Poor".

I guess the EVE Equivalent is when you buy too many ships you are "Ship Poor".

For the first time in a long time I feel poor. In the last month I have bought a slick Incursion ride (and yet to fly it), I bought my first Carrier and fittings (man those fighters and capital fittings are huge), as well as my mini Jump Freighter (Rorq with cargo rigs).

Sure I "needed" each of these ships, but I think it is more the case of having too much liquid ISK and a desire to "have" things way more than the desire to have a fat wallet.

So now, an opportunity has popped up to acquire an asset that I have been looking for the last few months. A nice C2 with a Static C2 and Low Sec, perfect PI, and a capital already inside. The price is right, and the owner is motivated. But I am lacking the liquid ISK.

It is probably for the better, because if I did, I would be looking at several weeks to move my operations from my C1 to the C2. All for a "better" situation with statics.

So being Ship Poor and "missing" this opportunity has lead me to reevaluate what my goals really are for the near future in EVE. The goals of a C2 stem from my goals to build another W-Space corp that would be focused on PVP, mining and PVE within the C2 and Low Sec. But that is no longer the direction I am headed. The near future for me is now looking to be in NPC Null.

It is always funny to me how quickly life in EVE can change, based on a few decisions here and there. The decision to look for people to help mine the C1 leads to moving a combat character to Low Sec. This leads to some of the most fun in PVP I have had. Now this group is trying its hand in NPC Null.

As always seems to be the case, I like to be involved in the corps and alliances I have fun in. So fast forward just a few short months from looking for miners to help with Grav sites in my C1 and almost all of my game time is now dedicated to life in NPC Null. Not something I planned, but something I have enjoyed.

So I will pass on the "dream starter wormhole" and let that dream settle onto a back burner while I now focus on learning more about Cyno Alts, Logistics in Null Sec, and debating the merits of Blackbirds versus Falcons in small scale Null Sec PVP.

Fly Safe,
Mick

Persistence Pays Off - For Us

2011-10-31T10:01:00.000-04:00

It began as I logged into Comms while running myPlanet Goo business and heard the rumblings of some activity with StealthBombers in Null. So needless to say, therestarting of extractors could wait and I quickly logged on to my combat characterin Null.

I guess to start I should mention that I loveStealth Bombers. I mean I downright Lovethese little beasts. I assume it is aside effect of living so long in a Wormhole, where stealth is king, and bombsare Queen. To top it off, I get greatsatisfaction watching people in the Stealth Bomber when I know they are goingto die, and they don’t yet.

So I log in, jump into the Purifier, and head offfor the target system.

As I am warping to the system, I hear on Comms thereis a Command Ship in a site with wrecks. Oh Sweet Lord of Eve, let it be true.

As I hang on the last gate to avoid another +1 spookingthe prey, I hear our fleet has grown to 3 Stealth Bombers and a Falcon. We all figured if it was a trap we werewilling to lose 3 SB’s for a shot at a Command Ship, but we were fairly certainthis was not a trap.

Our scout lands on grid with the Nighthawk andconfirms he is just merrily ratting away. The order is given to assemble on grid, so I jump and warp to 10km offthe lead scout. Sure enough, theNighthawk is finishing a site with Fighter escort. I am sure he felt with Fighters he was morethan safe enough to handle the 4 reds in system.

When we confirm all 4 cloakies are in position, theorder was given to launch the attack. With the unknown of where everyone was, we decided against bombs andwent straight for the torps.

The initial volleys hit their target and the shieldsmade no effort to recover. The Falconpilot happily reported the target was jammed, and the SB’s proceeded to poundthe target into submission, which didn’t take long. A look at the KB later confirmed the bufferfit. We waited on grid for any responseand covered the SB looting the wreck. Wethen warped to safes and warped back in at range to look for the response fromhis almost 20 friends in local. Nothingcame.

As we waited on grid for something, anything, tohappen we received notice on Comms from our scout watching their station thatour friend had undocked in a Raven. “Heis aligning towards you” quickly followed.

With the Command Ship kill already under our belt wewere playing with house money at this point so we held on the field and waitedfor our friend to arrive in another ship. He did not disappoint as he landed on grid with his Raven about 20km offmy position.

I quickly confirmed everyone was in place, andsatisfied we were ready, I uncloaked, primed the Warp Disruptor and Torps, andlocked the Raven. Again the Falcon pilotreported the target was jammed.

As the Raven melted, a Manticore uncloaked about60km off me, locked me and started to launch torps. About the same time the Fighters reappeared onthe scene. My Neocom screeched at me asmy shields melted and armor started to vaporize. I aligned quickly and hit the warp button tomy safe. I landed and continued to listento the situation as a drake and another ship landed to aid their friend.

The order was given to warp to safes, and about thattime I suddenly had a fleet of fighters land on me. I was not happy to see them, but as I warped toa second safe I was happy I had pulled them off the field. I remembered to cloak this time.

The fog of war played in here as we did not know ifwe had succeeded in the kill of the raven or not. As we warped back in at 100km we saw theRaven wreck, but we never did get a Killmail for it. On the shame.

So we were sure the night was done and the fourth SBon the field was lamenting his bad luck at missing the fight and our scout onthe station had left to find other targets. I guess the target also thought the night was over, because after about5 to 10 minutes, in warps a Cormorant.

We laughed, got into position and proceeded todispatch the cormorant in plenty of time before they could “spring the trap”again. As the Calvary arrived, we wereall in warp to safes and laughing in Comms at the persistence of these people.

Now we are sure they have learned their lesson andare not stupid enough to try again to trap our merry little gang of SB’s (whichhas grown to 5 now), but our scout (now back on their station) reports aPilgrim undocking. Say it isn’t soJoe. Guess Forrest was right, “Stupid isas Stupid Does”.

Sure enough, the Pilgrim lands on grid. One of our SB’s is fit to hit from almost80km and we decide to let him fire a couple of volleys from that range and seewhat happens. The rest of us closed to within point range. Nothing happens except the Pilgrim starts tobleed shields.

Since we are still playing with house money, wedecide to go for another kill. We alluncloak and proceed to pound the Pilgrim. Sure enough the scout at station reports a fleet of 4 BC’s and a Falconundocking. At the same time theManticore uncloaks again at about 60km off the Pilgrim.

We all hold field long enough to kill the Pilgrim,and start to align to safes. One of thepilots announces they have the Pod, and three of us hang around just longenough to launch a volley at the pod before hitting warp as his backup finallyarrives on the scene.

We throw a few barbs in local about yetanother fail trap, and we warp back in at range again. But alas, the Pilgrim was their finalattempt at trapping us.

They get at A for effort, and we get three shipsand a Pod, with a fourth ship destroyed but never accounted for on theKillboard. Not a bad night, for us.

And yes Carebears, I managed to reset my extractorheads too.

Fly Safe,

Mick

POCO - CCP's Latest Idea

2011-10-20T08:51:00.001-04:00

In case you live under a rock, don't follow the markets, don't own a POS, or don't do PI, here is the link to the latest from CCP on PI.

http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=2899

I am not going to rehash the details of the Dev Blog, since really if you are too lazy to read it, you are not going to care much about WTF I think of it either, but hey thanks for stopping by. Before you stop reading I will just say Stealth Bombers are cool toys, but paper thin.

Okay, back to the indy talk.

We have now had 24-48 hours for the news to sink in, for the cost of POS fuels to skyrocket, and for mass hysteria to sink in.

So is turning over the Low Sec, Null Sec and W-Space PI Customs Offices to players a good thing, or a bad thing?

Well that depends a lot on who you ask.

I agree for Low Sec a lot will depend on the strategy the "controlling entities" use. Are they going to look at this as a way to make some isk? or a way to shut all the ninja PI people out of business. In an area supposedly still controlled by Concord (they do still have Gate Guns and shit) I find it interesting that they are allowing players to control a tax stream. I am not sure it fits with the overall "story" of the game. These areas in Low Sec are still part of one of the big 4 States. Would Caldari business men really allow a small band of pilots to control a tax stream? Why would Expert Distribution not jump at the chance to gain this tax stream for themselves? Sure it sounds great, but I am not sure it fits the "story" of EVE. Low Sec is where I would worry the most about the implementation of the POCO.

NPC Null. Even more fun. This is an area where there are plenty of bored, pissed off people willing to shoot at anything to pass the time. Personally, I would not spend much to setup a POCO in NPC Null. I don't see how they last long in an area like this.

Sov Null. Already has restrictions on doing PI. The POCO will just be one more structure that needs to be built and installed to "upgrade" a system for renters and alliances. Will provide a small boost in income for the major alliances.

W-Space - I think this is one area that will be interesting. Some people have said that not a lot of PI comes out of w-space. I think they are trying to deter people from competing with their vast W-Space PI empires. I can easily justify the cost of the POCO's to continue to do PI in w-space, but it will increase the "value" of my system to me, which means I am more unwilling to move, and will mean I am more likely to invest in system defenses also. I see a rise in the number of people/corps entrenching themselves into w-space. More carriers in C1's, more presence in C2-C4's, more activity. Either that or a reversal in w-space living like we saw when the price of ABC ores crashed.

The other thing with PI in a WH, if POS fuels continue to remain high, the cost of POS ownership in general will deter people from being in W-space, and put more and more value in w-space systems with proper PI to support a POS at a premium.

Time will tell if this is a good idea or a bad idea, but I am all for something that will:

Drive up PI costs
Deter people from doing PI
Allow me to better "control" access to planets in "my" system
Potentially make small to mid sized fleet battles happen around them

In the end, I think this will drive fuel prices higher (as we are already seeing), and will continue to move PI towards an alliance and corporate level. I do not want to see PI ever become something that can be a Corp activity, especially the ability to move PI goods in the Customs Office between Corp Members, as I think that would absolutely kill the ability to disrupt PI operations.

Eventually, people will adapt and find ways to make Isk again with PI in areas they don't control. If the POCO's do not drop any of the goods inside, I think people will eventually grow tired of messing with them for grins and giggles.

The major questions are still if people will look to these new POCO's to be an income source, or a way to lock down system. I know in W-space, I would use them to lock down the access.

Fly Safe,
Mick

Chumming the waters

2011-10-12T11:00:00.001-04:00

From Wiki
Chumming is the practice of luring animals, usually fish and sharks, by throwing "chum" into the water. Chum often consists of fish parts and blood, which attract fish, particularly sharks due to their keen sense of smell.

As related to EVE.
Chumming is the practice of luring pilots, usually large gangs, by throwing "chum" into the system. Chum often consists of stupid pilots in expensive PVE ships or poorly run fleets, which attract large gangs, particularly those who know how to use Dotlan.

I remember a conversation I had in local with a group of pilots doing stupid things in really nice ships. I basically was trying to get them to realize that their was a direct correlation between them repeatedly getting killed running havens in PVE fit ships and the large number of roaming gangs that came through our pocket every night. I tried to get them to realize that they were in effect "Chumming the Waters" and drawing these incoming fleets, to the detriment of all in the pocket. Alas, they could not see the correlation, and eventually they went back to running L4's in high sec since "they could not make any Isk losing ships every night".

With the shear amount of knowledge available to find "chummed systems", it is easy for gangs to see where the action is at and to head out looking for a good fight.

I can jump on DOTLAN and see every system in our area, how much ratting is going on, what times, and if ships have been killed. A good FC can "sense" the blood in the water and find the action.

Recently, we were involved in a major engagement with probably 20-35 pilots on both sides of the fight. The aftermath was a large spike in kills in a system. Within an hour, roaming gangs from across the region were seen roaming our "waters" and resulted in a couple of very nice subcap encounters.

If this type of action is repeated for a week or so, the area will start to become know as a "feeding ground" and will draw fleets in from light-years around.

Great for PvP, bad for making a productive location for Isk generation.

Just something to think about as you try to balance Isk generation and pew pew fun.

Fly Safe,
Mick

How to See Things Differently

2011-10-08T16:16:00.002-04:00

This is not a discussion on the value of having a Positive Mental Attitude, or always seeing the glass "half full"

Its not a dissertation on the merits of Zen and meditation to achieve a more enlightened vision of the world.

I am talking about how you see when you sit down in front of your computer in your mother's basement.

The EVE world is a complicated one, and your portal into it (okay computer screen(s)) can provide a wealth of knowledge, or a web of confusion. And how you see the world of EVE depends on one of the most important things in the game, your Overview.

While there are a ton of in-game and RL skills that can determine your success and satisfaction with EVE, one of the most important is knowing how to setup Overviews, and the knowledge of what you want on it. A mistake in setting up your Overview can lead to failure in combat, and is probably the number one thing you can do to be prepared as a pilot.

Let's look at a few situations.

1) A small scale fleet encounter in an Asteroid Belt. Lets say 15 people a side. You warp in and have a crappy overview tab on. All the sudden (well actually after about 5 seconds of lag for you computer to load it all) there are 200 things on your overview with asteroids, friendly ships, enemy ships, NPC Ships, drones, customs offices, planets, stations, beacons. The FC is calling primaries and you are trying to sort through this massive list to find them. As you try to target, the list bounces as new friendlies arrive and you target a friendly ship instead. By the time you get the primary finally targeted you manage to get off one shot before he pops. You repeat this process a few times before you are finally targeted and start to go down. Now you know you are going to die, so you scroll down to find something to warp your pod too. You Pop, there is a station. You select it and crap your pod is scrammed and you get to ride the white light express back to your medical clone.

2) You are ratting in a quiet system. All the sudden a red ship appears on your overview. You quickly call out on Comms "Red Drake on me, warp to Ben Affleck belt 6-2." To which, someone replies, "System is Blue dude, WTF are you seeing." And then you realize its just Ungolas, the alliance's local -9 pirate. Embarrassed you dock up and go back to playing Hello Kitty Island Adventure.

3) You are quietly mining in W-space. You are diligently pounding the D-Scan button, but you are tired of tall the crap on it and have the use active overview setting checked. You never see the combat scanners before the Hound uncloaks and bombs you back to High Sec.

All of these situations could have a much different result with proper Overview Settings.

1) You arrive on the scene with a proper PvP overview and see nothing but the enemy fleet laid out in front of you. You easily follow the FC's commands of primary and deal significant damage to each ship as it melts under you guns. You find the secondary and already have him targeted, losing no time in switching targets.

2) You have your overview filters properly set and you see an alliance drake warp into your belt. You crack a joke on Comms about mouth breathing WOW players, get a few chuckles and continue to make some isk.

3) You see the Combat Probes on D-Scan and are able to get your butt back to the POS in time.

And in each situation, only a change in your Overview makes all the difference.

So why is it that so many people have neglected such a basic thing as the overview?

1) It is not obvious. You can get away with having a bad overview probably 95% of the time. You have time to click the object in space, or do something else to get the Overview the way you want it. It is seldom a "life or death" situation.

2) It is your overview. No one else ever sees it. We share ship setups, we see kill boards of fits, we notice when a pilot doesn't follow orders, or someone shoots the wrong target. No one but you ever sees your overview.

3) It is boring to work on. Why spend an hour working on Overview when I can rat, mine, scan, roam, gate camp, play the market, do PI etc etc. Setting up a good set of Overviews is just boring.

4) It is hard to know what you don't know. How are you supposed to know you need a drones tab before going into a battle with a carrier? How are you supposed to know a logistics pilot needs a separate set of Overview settings than a DPS pilot? Like most things in EVE there is scant information, and how to properly setup Overview Tabs is just another area that people struggle to figure out.

So I encourage everyone, if you do not have a good set of saved Overview Tabs, seek out the information from someone who does. Get them to explain filters and brackets and tabs and saving and ....

The next time you warp into a fleet encounter you will be happy you spent the time to see things differently.

Fly Safe,

Mick

If Dogs Played EVE

2011-10-07T15:39:00.001-04:00

I know from being on Comms that a lot of EVE players are also animal lovers, or at least animal toleraters.

So I thought I would take some snapshots of some dogs. and labs to be specific, and discuss what type of players they would be if they played EVE.

First up.

Our Industrialist dog. His slightly sad look from getting his Tech 2 Rigged Hulk ganked the same week he went 0 for 10 on Falcon invention gives him away. His ears hang low from being so tired after having to take down his High Sec Pos for the third time on last 6 weeks due to another stinking War Dec. His keen eyes are still somewhat bright at the thought of Drake prices rising slightly netting him a better profit on his latest mineral haul.

Expert at flying an Orca, Freighter, Hulk and Inty V.

Our Second Dog.

Our PvE dog. Note the intense stare, the thorough concentration on the spawn coming from his left. He has obviously read Eve-Survival and knows this is where the action is coming from. The perked up ears an sign of his attention to the task at hand - shooting a ton of Red Crosses. He knows all the chain ratting rules. This dog is a serious force to be reckoned with for sure.

Expert at flying Golum, CNR, Paladin and Damnation

Our Third Dog.

Our Exploration dog. The thirst to find things, the inquisitive stare, the ears slightly cocked at attention to the slightest sound. This dog is definitely versed in scanning, hacking, analyzing, salvaging, and probably even running Incursions. He seeks to find things in systems where other simply fly through. The challenge of locating that 6/10 plex keeps him scanning from system to system.

Expert at Covert Ops, Tengu and Legion.

Our Final Dog.

Our PvP pilot. Nuff Said.

Fly Safe,

Mick

Time Dilation and Contraction

2011-10-05T12:39:00.001-04:00

No I am not talking about CCP's potential answer to Server Lag.

I spent almost 5 hours online last night in several groups of people discussing everything from leadership structures, low versus null ship fittings and tactics, courier contracts and other "exciting" topics. It seemed like no more than an hour or so from 9 to almost 1am. At 12:45, I gave myself "a few more minutes". I finally got to bed about 1:50am.

Now force me to spend 5 hours in a meeting discussing my own employers corporate structure, the benefits of our new equipment versus existing, shipping systems, and other "exciting" topics and I am sure it would be a snooze fest and seem like 12 hours.

So game time seems to be very contracted and work time very dilated. Wonder if CCP can tap into that phenomenon to fix lag?

Fly Safe,
Mick Flaherty

What's in a Stat

2011-10-03T12:33:00.001-04:00

It has been said many times that you can manipulate the data to eventually make it say what you want it to say.

PvP stats are no different.

As I ventured into Null with the last alliance, we had an ongoing discussion about PvP stats. There seemed to be a camp that said "I pay my $15 a month, I make my Isk and if I want to fly x, and do y I will." For x and y insert Rattlesnake and system defense, Nyx and mining op, Tengu and Ratting, etc etc.

The other camp was more like "We are judged by our Kill Board and if you can't maintain a positive efficiency there is no place for you in this alliance."

Its not hard to figure out who is in each camp, but the discussion (as well as several other events) led to a deep rift in the alliance that never really healed.

Now, my current alliance is facing the same conversation, and the camps are pretty much the same.

The stat everyone focuses on is Efficiency. So what is Efficiency? It is simply Isk Destroyed / (Isk Destroyed + Isk Lost). It is meant to show how good a pilot is in combat, but it is flawed.

Sure in some cases its easy to see how Efficiency accurately reflects the pilot. A guy that repeatedly gets ganked in High Sec in shiney ships and never kills anything will always be a boat anchor on him, his corp, and his alliance's efficiency.

But pilots can have a great efficiency in a battle and yet the corp and/or alliance can "lose the fight". Several encounters recently have demonstrated this exact situation.

In one case, I jumped into my trust Cane and warped off to a Gate Camp where we were trying to catch some people jumping in assets for transfer to Null Sec. We had almost caught a group of them before, but they had slipped the net.

So with much smack talking going on in local, we set up a "better" gate camp, probably 13-15 pilots. So in jumps a force recon ship (read 150M isk kill), and we all proceed to light him up. Then the Cyno gets lit and here comes the hot drop. So we all scatter off the gate like cockroaches when the kitchen light turns on. But a few of us are bound and determined to take the Force Recon ship down. I am one of those, figuring my 50M Isk ship is worth losing to kill a 150M ship (75% efficiency for me baby). Well the issue is a person in a 150M isk ship, a 200M Isk Ship and another 50M isk ship all decided the same thing. So we lose 4 ships and get 1 kill (well 2 for me as I managed to alpha a stealth bomber on my way down). End result - Alliance 20% ish Efficiency, Corp about 80% and Personal also about 80%.

So I come away looking "successful" since I maintained the 75% the alliance is looking for. My corp looks good, but the alliance obviously lost the battle. Many of the corps fared even better by getting early shots in on the Force Recon before fleeing the field (though without those that stayed behind they would not have). Obviously some did not, as they lost 200M Isk for 150M destroyed. That is not terrible, but not the 75% we are looking for.

In a second encounter, we were working as a small group attacking a much bigger force in the area. They were not organized and we managed to get into a few skirmishes where we killed a Force Recon, 2 BC's and SB, all while losing only a SB. Then we made a tactical error and engaged a bait BS on a gate. Cyno lit, Sabre warps in and bubbles the gate, and we lose a couple Force Recons, BC and couple cruisers. Since I missed the last encounter, but got in on 3 of the previous kills, I came out with 100%, my corp lost a Cruiser, so again very good 90%+ Efficiency. But the Alliance came in at around 50% (until an hour or so later we killed 4 more of them with no losses).

So in the end how do we judge an Alliance, a Corp, or a pilot and their "prowess" in combat? It takes a lot more than simply looking at one stat and saying "they have maintained a 80% combat efficiency, he must be good", and looking more indepth at the kills and loses.

A pilot that only flies in large groups, flies low value ships, gets on a lot of kills, but will never venture into "dangerous" situations might look good on paper, but is he really a good combat pilot? But you also need to see if the Isk being flown in situations is justified. Someone who always flies 200-400M isk ships regardless of the situation needs to be looked at too.

So in the end, no one stat is the be all, end all of evaluating PvP, but efficiency might be the best we have currently.

Fly Safe,
Mick

Introducing .... The Grog

2011-09-29T07:53:00.000-04:00

As you know, my corp joined a new alliance about a month ago. I joined for the PvP action in their Low Sec pipe. I have not been disappointed.

I got some early feedback about this blog and several people told me they would love to try blogging, but stated they didn't want to mess with the organizing side.

So to help them out, as well as try a hand at "reporting" instead of only telling about direct involvement (as I have done here), I asked the Alliance Leadership if I could start an Alliance Blog and they said go for it.

So we held a little contest to name the new blog, and the winner was "The Grog". The word comes from a combination of Gryphon and Blog, as well as being a nice alcohol reference to a weak drink usually reserved for the crew or common man. Seemed like a nice theme for our Viking mentality and every-man spirit.

So I hope some of you will jump over to The Grog and check it out.

Fly Safe,
Mick

I never knew I needed to be a Plumber

2011-09-27T08:10:00.000-04:00

There are so many aspects of EVE that I love, and the need to balance your time between making Isk and spending Isk is one of the most interesting and one of the ones that gets talked about when nobody will come into your pocket to fight.

In EVE, there are a ton of Isk faucets from which to drink. True faucets like Mining, Killing Red Crosses (bounties, reward, and loot), Exploration, PI extraction, Moon Mining, Gas Harvesting, R&D Agents all introduce things into the game where there was nothing before. Buying PLEX's also qualifies here, but is a different faucet all together.

"Secondary" ways to make Isk like production, BP market, Invention and reactions (moon goo and PI) add value to something and allow profit (sometimes), but does not introduce things into the game. It messes with the Isk in the basin, but does not create "something out of nothing".

A last category allows individuals to make a profit, and really doesn't create anything new. Trading, Scamming, PvP looting, etc all can be great ways to make Isk, but they are more a distribution of Isk and certainly does not add anything to the game (and here I mean item wise, definitely not game content wise, as all of these are fascinating aspects of the game)

As for the Isk sinks, they can be easy to understand (like NPC Corp Taxes, Taxes and fees in general, ship loss), or hard to understand (like Null Sov costs, Office Rentals, Slot fees, POS Fuel, PLEX for Account time).

At the end of the day, Isk in EVE flows from faucets to sinks. We just try to tap into our share before it disappears down the drain.

Individuals have their own personal faucets and sinks in their wallet. This carries over to corporations and alliances as well.

This never-ending flow of Isk is one of the most intriguing aspects of the game. I am always amazed at how people make their Isk, and also how the spend or lose it. People spend hours aiming their mining lasers at asteroids, make a ton of Isk, and then buy a fail fit Hulk and lose it to gankers. Others spend hours running missions, ratting in belts and do everything they can to get the Isk together to buy a 17B ship that needs a second account to offline it, just to say they have it. Others detest all the ways to make Isk so much they just fund their accounts with PLEX. Nothing wrong with that if you can afford it.

Personally, I spend almost as much time tweaking my "business" as I do thinking of fittings and tactics and other things I do for PvP fun. My wife has learned not to ask what I am doing when I have my binder out and I am sitting on the couch madly pounding numbers into the calculator. She just rolls her eyes and mutters something about "that stupid game".

Oh, if she only really understood.

Fly Safe,

Mick

I feel like the Godfather

2011-09-26T15:05:00.000-04:00

I would think that after almost 3 years of game time that nothing in EVE would shock me anymore.

So I am tooling around in a Low Sec area near our "home" with some of my new corp members. We are doing a little exploration, d-scan, and stealth training. The basics of finding your way around a w-space system without them know you are there and what not. So after too many empty and inactive wormholes, we finally decided to call it quits for the night.

As we are warping our merry little gang through the 7-8 jumps home, I see that during the course of the outing someone has been trying to get my attention in my public channel, but has since left. A quick look shows the guy is still online so I open up a private chat.

"Sorry was on an op, did you need something?" I ask ever so politely (starting with "WTF you want" usually does not lead to productive conversations)

"Yeah, I saw you guys come through my system." He replied

Well, he had my attention as I thought he was going to challenge our right to scan there or something.

"I am looking for friends." he followed up.

"Where did you loss them?" I asked. (Man aren't I witty)

"No I need better blues down here, you guys looked like you had a nice force. You live in this area?" said Lonely Guy.

"Not really." I lied

"That's too bad. The pirate group I was paying to put a POS here decided to blow me up today."

I had to stifle a laugh. Who the hell in their right mind trusts a pirate corp.

"Wow that sucks" I manage to reply.

"Yeah I was looking to exchange blue status for my POS password for a safe spot in one of these systems." continued Lonely Guy

Really. a safe spot? There are no bubbles in Low, and a ton of stations, who the hell needs a POS for a safe spot?

"Well we really just use stations, we don't use POS's."

"What about me hiring you as protection? I really want to do PI, but not if people keep killing my POS."

OMG, the guy thinks he needs a POS for Low Sec PI.

"Well we really just protect our space we consider home, don't really take on protection jobs farther away"

"I could move to where you are."

"We would not want to protect a POS" man does he not get it.

"I could join your alliance"

"We don't take 100% indy corps, do you PvP?" I asked, knowing the answer

"And get blown up all the time, no thanks" replied Lonely Guy "I just want protection."

"Sorry can't help you there"

"Well thanks for you time" finished Lonely Guy and promptly closed the channel.

Wow, people coming to me for protection from bad old pirates. That's something new.

Fly Safe,

Mick

Tools of the trade

2011-09-20T08:47:00.001-04:00

Over the weekend I downloaded the new EveHQ and was playing around with getting it setup. So far I like some aspects of it better than the tools I have been using and some less.

On the plus side, the asset tracker is awesome. The ability to quickly see where all your stuff is on all your characters is awesome. The pricing is way off, and I have not dug in enough to see how to make that more accurate. Same thing with the ability to quickly see you cash balance for all your characters and corporations.

The POS manager looks good, though I have not had a chance to dig into it in depth.

The ship fittings tool is not the greatest, but it does seem to have a nice cap simulator, as well as a damage analysis that I have not checked out. I hear the fleet manager is pretty sweet, and I also think there is a way to show what pilots can fly what ships, which would be nice for corp fittings.

Overall, I am sure going to spend a few more afternoons playing around with EveHQ and seeing the depth of what is available.

EveHQ can be found here.

So this got me thinking what other "tools" outside of EVE people use. It has been said many times EVE is really about "flying spreadsheets" and over time I have used my fair share of tools outside of the game to both be better at the game and save time and effort.

The first tool anyone ever introduced me to was Evemon. Still one of the most essential tools of the game. Maximizing training time and focusing skills is essential in EVE and Evemon is essential in doing that. I remember the days before the skills queue and it was essential to make sure you knew the short and long skills you were training for, when they would end and what time to set the alarm for. Now with the queue its more about overall planning, attribute resets and seeing if those +4 implants in Null are justified. If you don't know where to find Evemon, I seriously doubt you play eve enough to be reading this blog.

I used to use Ombey's 2D maps all the time, but I have migrated to Dotlan. I mean who does not want to know the number of jumps, the NPC Kills, the Ship kills and Pod kills in pretty much close to real time. I mean I can tell you right now as I write this blog that someone is clearing my wormhole of anomolies. I know I have a K162 into my system, since I did not open the static last night. I also use Dotlan when planning a roam to see where the botters are ratting, and what systems in the area are hot. Dotlan also offers navigation tools to see what Jump Cal V will get you in terms of additional systems within range. It also has many other tools I have yet to explore. Overall I loved Ombey's maps and still have a paper copy of the area near where I live, but really I use Dotlan for almost all my mapping needs now.

Another "new" tool is Staticmapper. While not 100% accurate due to allowing user input, it is invaluable to anyone living in W-Space. The amount of time this tool has saved me is probably into the days by now. To be able to jump into a system with 8-10 signatures and pretty much know the statics is awesome. Sure I might have missed a few routes through K162's and transient wormholes, but not scanning 8-10 sigs looking for the static is very cool.

While I hate the static nature of missions and anomolies and wish CCP would do something to randomize the triggers, Eve-Survival is a must have for anyone making a living off PvE.

Need to find a locator agent? Want to find the closest L4 agent for a particular NPC? A quick trip to EVE-Agents.com will help you there. I have used it often to find the closest locator agent when a war target has come online. Worth a glance.

Of course, BattleClinic to see if that Ungolas guy in local talking smack is really THAT good.

And probably the last tool I use on a regular basis is Eve Fitting Tool or EFT. Invaluable in playing with skills and modules, implants, and boosters, fleet boosts and WH effects to see how they will effect a ships performance.

I used to have a copy of Halada's mining guide, but I have long since lost that. I recently downloaded Volume 1 of the ISK guide and am wading through those 400 pages of information. I use Eve-Central to check prices, but have almost no knowledge of the true power of that tool so I will not touch on it.

So those are some of the tools I use (not counting the PI charts and stuff from a number of sites).

I would love to hear the tools others are using on a regular basis.

Fly Safe,

Mick

Prince said "Forever and that's a mighty long time"

2011-09-16T13:51:00.000-04:00

But I'm here to tell ya, he wasn't dealing with CHON.

So as you probably know from this I had an unwanted, uninvited and frankly undesirable visitor to my w-space retreat.

It was quite fun after the initial "Rawr, we are leet Pvp alliance, Pack up your flying circus and leave" banter to finally get around to killing their POS's. But alas, they did not take the first hint, and with 6-8 people doing PI, there was more than enough profit to justify erecting a Large POS in my wormhole every time a hole popped out near a trade hub.

So my guests thought it would be great fun to erect a third POS, and to go with all ECM and Harden the crap out of it. Well all that meant is their 4-6 hours of anchoring and online'n stuff would have to be met with 4-6 hours of throwing ammo out of our BS fleet. (and at least two hours of listening to Pleco complain that "every damned ECM is jamming me", "how the hell can they all jam me" and "I swear even the incapp'd ones are still jamming me")

Sure enough in the final stages of the POS bash the scanner for the invaders logs in and warps to the POS. So we start a nice convo in local that basically goes a little something like this.

Valiant Defender (that's me): "Didn't get the first sign this is our system?"

Leet PVP or PI or Whatever (That's them): "Have fun shooting the POS for 6 hours again"

VD (hmm maybe I should have chosen a better name for myself): "We will."

LPVP/PI: "Good cause I am staying here Forever"

VD's Fleetmate: "Sounds like we all win here"

VD: "We are just waiting for the leet PVP portion of your Alliance to come"

LPVP/PI: "Oh its just me, this is a personal thing."

VD: "Damn, that's too bad, we were looking for more fun"

VD: "BTW, offer still stands to sell you the hole if you like it that much"

LPVP/PI: "Why do you think this is about money? Even if you leave we will follow you where ever you go"

VD: "Well it sure can't be about KB for you, I mean over a Bil in POS losses now for you."

LPVP/PI: "You just don't get it do you, I am not going anywhere"

LPVP/PI: "End of Conversation, have fun killing an empty POS"

VD's Fleetmate: "Next time set up a faction tower please."

So sure enough the POS goes pop, and its time to decide what the heck to do to stop this madness. There is not anyway to kill the PI that is already on the planet, I hate to invest in more BS's and Cap ships to kill their poorly defended and heavily hardened POS's, and I sure the hell was not leaving.

Now one of the things I never check when evaluating systems is the number of moons. Never been important, and frankly never cared. Well I guess I got lucky, cause my wormhole home has less than 20 moons.

So step one was to prevent them from easily anchoring another POS. If it was indeed just one person with 5 PI accounts and no more DPS than a couple Drakes, the easiest way to accomplish that would be anchoring a tower at every moon. And with less than 20 to cover it would cost less then building a Dread in a C1 (and would not be a total loss in the fact that it would never get out).

In addition, I decided to make it as time consuming and as much of a hassel to do the PI from safes and get it out of the system. I figured a Large Bubble on every WH would do the trick.

So after a few days, I had every planet covered, and was happily bubbling all the holes as I found them.

Being on the other side of the world from them, and the fact that they really only needed to run stuff every 3-4 days at most, it was going to be hard to directly interfere with them.

Well it seems they solved the large bubble by having all the ships slowboat to the wormhole then jump enough times to mass close it and then use the fresh hole to run stuff out. Figuring I never was on when they were this worked fine for them.

So on to plan B. I decided to bubble the crap out of the main Customs Offices they were using. Let them slowboat 80km (40 in and 40 out) each time they needed to get something from a hanger. And I had the option of offlining them when I needed to use the Office.

Finally, about 2 weeks after the last POS bash, I logged in during their peak time to find 5 of his characters active. So I jumped in the SB and immediately started checking the WH, Custom's offices, and pounding D-scan. Nothing, no sign of anybody. I know all his ships have cloaks, so I threw Combat Probes and waited for one to logoff, so I could try to catch it during the 1 minute or so it hangs in system.

Sure enough after about 10 minutes one of the toons goes offline and .... nothing. Nothing on D-Scan, nothing on probes. I expand the probes to cover any deep safes, and still nothing. This repeats for another character 5 minutes later.

So I quickly open Planet 1, lo and behold, the Command Centers from our guests are gone. Planet 2 same. Could it really be?

I log on my character in k-space and quickly find a locator agent. Search for first character. Find another agent 4 jumps away and search for second. Get a random in local to run a third search. Just in time as soon the last three character's log off. Again, nothing on D-Scan or probes.

About 8-10 minutes later my suspicions are confirmed as all three location agents return HS locations for my visitors.

So thus ends the saga and one of the most interesting months in w-space that I have had.

Final tally

3 dead POS for them, as well as a new found lack of respect for their "leetness"

Almost 20 new small towers, and about a Dozen new BS's in the hole for me, as well as a shit ton of ammo.

So I probably spent twice as much defending the hole than they spent attacking it, but I am apparently alone again, despite the assurance from my new friends that I would never be alone again.

As an alliance mate said "Maybe he meant fortnight, and he would follow your corps Killboard".

Who knows, maybe. But I am kind of sad, I was looking forward to coming up with new ways to harass them.

Fly Safe,

Mick

A Final Frontier

2011-09-14T09:14:00.001-04:00

Last night I crossed into a realm where I have never been before, and no I did not finally leave Mom's basement and go on a date with a girl not somehow distantly related to me.

Before joining the current alliance, I have been a High Sec Miner, High Sec Mission Runner, ran a T2 Manufacturing Corporation, Lived in every class of W-Space, moved to Null, returned to High Sec, Moved back to W-space, moved back to Null and finally returned to High Sec again.

After I joined, I moved to Low Sec. I was amazed at the relative safety of Low Sec. The annoying gate guns and GCC timers was new, my near perfect Sec Status took a hit, but all in all it was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. That said, I would not want to do it without 20-30 of my closest friends.

Now last night, after getting smack talked by a carrier pilot and his friend (while they were docked inside a station) we decided to disband our merry little gang of misfit toys and move some pilots down to a new area we are exploring in NPC Null. Now I have never lived in NPC Null, but it has always been something I wanted to do, just never seemed to have the opportunity with the right group. This seemed like a good time to try it out. So off I went on a 30+ jump trip to get a clone and a ship to NPC Null.

To say the trip was uneventful would be a vast overstatement, in the 31 jumps through Low and NPC Null, we saw 5 ships, which all promptly ran for cover at the site of our posse, and maybe an additional 10-15 in local. For all those people who think EVE is too crowded, you need to get the hell out of Jita and Motsu.

It was very funny once we got there to see Low Sec pilots in Null for the first time.

A rat BS in the belts of Low Sec is like a small crumb of cheese to a bunch of hungry mice, and one in our area is quickly reported and shared by all the Sec Grinding pilots striving to stay just enough on Concord "Nice List" to be able to fly through the .5 systems linking our Low Sec area to larger roaming grounds. The constant typing the Fleet of "BS in Belt 6-1" "Two BS in Belt 7-3" was great. Though they were quick to learn there is almost a BS in every belt in the land of milk and honey.

So after shooting a few belt rats and renting a couple offices to save the rest of the corp the trouble of 30+ jumps (cause riding the White Light express to null is so much easier), I called it a night and clone jumped back to k-space.

I look forward to having another place to call "home" and starting to experience the last major area I have never experienced - NPC Null Sec.

Fly Safe,

Mick

We Saw, We Came, They Dropped Carriers on Us

2011-09-13T08:43:00.002-04:00

So after a very boring "vacation" back into W-Space (tearing down and setting up POS's is so broken), I finally returned to our Low Sec home.

Nothing much was going on so I jumped into the scanner and set out to try to find a nice wormhole to either find some targets, or find some sites to run to make some isk. The pipe was very empty, but the third system did have a C3 with a Damnation and Prowler online at their POS. Watching for a few minutes it was obvious they were afk, probably playing WoT or something.

The fourth system yielded a Radar site and a couple more items I needed during the next Jita run. I swapped out the scanner for my Cane and with the help of a friend quickly finished off the site. At this point it looked like a fairly boring night and I was deciding if tweaking my PI setups might be in order.

But alas the wonderful world of PI was going to have to wait.

Someone broke into Comms and announced we had a small group setting up a gate camp in a neighboring Low Sec pipe. This was quickly followed by additional information that said group had 8-10 reserves in a neighboring system. Cool it was a bait gate camp. Time for some fun.

It took the required 15 minutes to get everyone to close WoT and get back into EVE, and to rally. I was impressed, as we quickly pulled together a 20+ man BC gang. Usually this takes 30-45 minutes as someone needs a module, a setup posted in Fleet, is 5 jumps from something they need etc etc etc. My rule of thumb is to allow 2-3 minutes past the desired start time per desired person in the fleet to get the show rolling. Looking to get a 30 man fleet rolling, better plan to leave an hour past the announced start time. I assume this is not a linear formula, but maybe it does take a day or two past the start time to launch a 1000 man fleet.

Anyway, the group camping the gate had consolidated their fleet onto one side of the gate and consisted of a scorp, tengu, couple of BS's and BC's. About 11 total. So the plan was hatched to engage them at range from the front, while the main force went the long way, waited for them to aggress, and then jumped through and slugged it out. Perfect plan, except their obviously neutral scout saw us coming and they warped off to a station. Oh well, that still beats the hell out of doing PI.

But the night was far from over.

So we proceeded to play the waiting game and my favorite "chase the bouncing scout" game. (for what it is worth, never choose to be scout if the system you are assigned to scout does not have a station, and you do not have a cloak). After what seemed like forever, a close call at one of the scout's safes, and endless debate on how to get them to engage I am about ready to call it a night.

"Check, Check, Check has anyone got any torps?"

No wait that's a different story.

"Check, Check, Check the main group is aligning. Wait. They are aligning to your gate."

"Burn to optimals, burn to optimals, prepare to engage, Scorp will be primary, BS's Secondary."

Now in a Cane with Autocannons, my optimal is sitting in their copilots seat, so I burned to 10km and hoped to be close to something as it uncloaked.

Gate Flash, followed on Comms "Drake jumped on landing, rest are holding"

"Weapons free, Kill it" Of course it uncloaks 20km away from me, so I burn towards the Drake and manage to get a few shots in before his hard candy coating cracked to reveal his soft, gooey pod. Amazed there were no more gate flashes.

"They are holding at zero" came the intel from the other side. Followed quickly by "They are jumping, everyone is jumping"

"Shoot what uncloaks, but get the Scorp as soon as it decloaks" "Engage the geddon, get that geddon" "Scorp has uncloaked, primary is the Scorp" "Cyno Lit, Cyno Lit" "Carriers on the field" "Burn to the sun, everyone burn to the sun" "Holy Sh*T" "Battle Comms please" "Everyone burn to the sun, warp when your can" "Someone get a safe" "I have a safe" " x up in Fleet Please" "Warp to sun and bounce to safe" ....

So with my heart pounding (far less then stalking a noctis solo in a wormhole, or lining up a T3 kill though) I warped to the sun and proceeded to bounce safes.

Quick analysis showed only one loss. Well we finished even, BC for a BC, and I experienced my first Hot Drop. Not a bad night.

But wait there's more ... now how much would you pay.

So we warp back through the group and jump to the other side of the gate to see if they want to play again. We sit there for 4-5 minutes till we get word that the party is breaking up and the carriers are leaving system.

"Single Drake lingering to scoop drones, just one drake, come on guys get this dude."

So we jump back through, see a single Drake scooping some Ogre II's and proceed to liberate our captured friends from the belly of the beast. Always bet on Stupid getting you a kill.

So now we decide to call it a night, are all making best speed back home when the stragglers of the group cross jump another unrelated Drake (wow bad timing on his part). So I quickly turn around just before our rear scout announces he has hero pointed the Drake. A couple of the stragglers jump back through and force the Drake back to the gate where he jumps right into 4-5 of us landing on the gate. Easy Kill.

So the night ends with 3 kills (2 due to shear stupidity and one to poor timing), and 3 of our fleet notching their first kills. So hats off to the three Carebears that can now call themselves a PvP'r.

I only wish every night was this exciting.

Fly Safe,
Mick

Always Bet on Stupid

2011-09-01T08:51:00.002-04:00

This is for sure my favorite motto when it comes to PvP. I don't know how many times after killing someone I sit back and scratch my head and wonder what the heck they were thinking. Last night was no exception.

I logged in expecting a night of heavy logistics, as I needed to get some stuff moved and I know I have commitments to attend to in the coming nights that will not allow me to get what needs done, done. So I was a little disappointed listening on Comms that we had found a C5 with several Mag sites and I was not going to be able to participate in the Billion Isk funfest.

But as I am loading up the truck for its 20+ jumps to market, I hear on Comms a small skirmish on the wormhole to the C5. Disappointed, the nights primary activity is scrubbed and everyone proceeded to go about their "normal" Low Sec lives. For some this was a jaunt to mining and WoT (seems the two are inseparable now for some), scanning for other WH's, Sec Grinding, and running logistics.

So as I get about 9 jumps out and to my first of several "stops", the normal "chatter" of Comms is broken by a slightly higher than normal pitched voice of one of our regular WH Scouters.

"Check, Check, Guys, Holy F*^K, Guys, Shit I am sweating, Guys there is a group of 3, no 4, shit 5 guys setting up a POS in here. Holy F*$K its got 9 minutes. There is a Domi, two navy issue ships, Orca, Bestower, Drake, Cane, Maller, and 5 are manned. Holy Sh*T guys get here now!!".

Now I am pissed. I mean really pissed, this kind of fun does not come along every night.

Decision time. I open my Jump Clone list and sure enough the only Clone I have in the area of the soon to be fight is my "PvE/Training" Clone with all 5% implants and several +5's. The thought of heading out to a large fight in a Clone worth about a Billion Isk does not excite me, but missing the fight excites me even less. So I pop out of my ship, stop learning about the intracies of POS Guns, and wake up 9 jumps away, feeling a little smarter and a heck of a lot better at gunnery then I had moments before.

Unfortunately, I was still 2 jumps from my HIC and 5 from the fight. Off I went.

So final plans are being layed. The Armageddon Navy Issue is 200km off the POS. I assume its supposed to be "protection". The Domi is in closer, and the Bestower and Orca are hanging out right on the POS (Cloaks FTW for the Orca by the way. Why they had it sitting at the POS during the 30 minutes online time is beyond me. They were fortunate that we did not find them 10 minutes earlier.)

The decision was made to go after the Domi and See if the Navy Issue would engage. Not the approach I would have used with multiple HIC's and ECM on the field, but a solid plan.

The party never waits for anyone, and the group jumped in about a minute before I arrived at the wormhole. As I am screaming through warp towards the fight I hear the Domi is in structure. At this point the Navy Issue has not even moved. Our Cyn pilot starts to burn out to him in hopes that he is far from his speakers and the screams of his friends. As I land on grid, the Domi has just been finished off and the Pod is being popped, Too late to get in on that fun. As I align to the Navy Issue, our Cyn pilot just gets him locked and pinned as drones appear and the ship starts to move. I initiate warp and land within range of the Navy Issue. It did not take long melt under the pressure of the group. We catch the Pod again and send other w-space explorer back to the comfy confines of the CQ in K-space.

The inevitable local chatter from the shocked owners of the POS ensues of "Where did you come from", "Is this your hole" etc etc.

So the initial scout says in Comms, "Hey everyone, lets leave the grid, everyone warp off to the last planet, and I will warp back in cloaked off the Navy Issue wreck and see if they come out to loot and salvage it."

I laugh in my head and think to myself "no way they are THAT stupid", then I immediately say to myself "always bet on stupid".

So off we go to the last planet, and not 3 minutes pass before a laughing scout comes on Comms, "Warp Warp, the Maller came out to loot the wreck, I have him." This was quickly followed by a little more worried voice "Cane and Drake in warp, they are on me".

So I land again in the middle of the fight and learn that HIC's with no prop mods are great for gate engagements, but suck in open space. I will need to adjust my fit.

So the Maller is already half way through Armor, so we finish him off and send another on the white light express back to K-Space. At this point the Cane and the Drake run in opposite directions. The drake back towards the POS and the Cane farther out. The Drake was primary, so we decided to stay on him.

I bounce to the closest planet and back into the scrum. I manage to get a few shots in before the Drake burns out of range. "Why the hell did I not grab the Rapier I think, but remind myself of the value in my implants and am thankful I am in my HIC.

So finally, with me trailing the fight by 60km, the Drake goes down and the fourth person is given a free, one way trip to the afterlife (about 6 seconds for most capsuleers).

After that we are pretty much convinced that we are done, unless the Orca wanted to try to turn the tide of the battle. As we prep'd to reship and start hitting the POS, we heard there was a fight back in the Low Sec system we came from, so off we all went back the wormhole. We sat there on the W-Space side to avoid spiking local, eventually heard we had successfully gotten them to fight on another wormhole in the system. So we all started jumping. At that point we broke the cardinal rule of W-space of "prober jumps last". The hole collapsed as we were jumping and one pilot, in a "Drake with no Probes" (parody song anyone) was left behind.

Well turns out the Cane on the second hole was bait, and the pilot tackling him had the good sense to hit D-Scan in time to see the massive incoming fleet from their POS. We disengaged, and scattered to safety.

The thought of continuing to fight a larger group did not appeal to me. So I docked up and proceeded to pod back to where I had left off my logistics run.

Turns out the Maller and Drake were their two scanning ships in the wormhole, so while we had stranded one pilot, they were stranded till they could get word out for another scanner to log on and find them another way to get their 4 fallen comrades back into the hole.

The story ended well for the Drake pilot, as he convinced the new "owners" of the system to let him out in exchange for a small fee and not warping to all their combat sites. and killing a single sleeper.

So "Stupid" won the day with an extra Navy Issue kill, because someone had gone afk in a 500m Isk ship, and an additional Maller and Drake kill because someone could not resist trying to "salvage" a little bit from a bad situation. I will never know what possessed the Maller pilot to try to loot the wreck (of cap boosters) not 5 minutes after the battle was over, with us having 3 known cloaky ships on the field. But I thank him for the fun.

So here's to Forrest as he was so right when he said "Stupid is as Stupid Does".

Fly Safe (or smart)
Mick

Could "Instant PVP" work in EVE?

2011-08-26T08:49:00.002-04:00

I have read with interest the posts regarding WoT and EVE here.

As well as the link in that post to the idea of a "Virtual Combat Simulator" in station when the door in the CQ ever opens.

I also listen on Comms most night to a core of players in the alliance that play WoT while either "fittings spinning" or mining or some other mindless task in EVE.

I am intrigued by the thought of "Instant PVP" within EVE, but in the end I just think no matter what they do, it will never match real PVP for one reason. Finality.

Sure, CCP could find a way to introduce some "Station Based PVP Simulator", but there does not seem to be a way to make it a substitute for PVP as it is now, because if it ends up like every other "spawn type" combat game, than it has no finality and will become nothing more than a "video game" to me.

If the Simulator makes you grind combat to get to new tiers, to use better ships and mods, but at no risk to ever losing anything, then whats the point. The "thrill" of most EVE PVP to me is stalking the T3 running combat site, finding the Covetor mining and getting to him before he sees you. Being able to use Probes quickly to not spook the prey. Sure going on roams looking for a like sized fleet and either taking their bait, or engaging them is great, but not the heart of PVP to me.

But the main thing that real PVP has that makes it so great is the finality. The ship lost is really lost. Time to make that isk is gone. It "hurts" to lose that Zealot, that Covetor, the mined ore in the can, the implants, and everything else. It causes emo rage, tears, people to flip out and do stupid stuff, classic convos and evemails. It is why we PVP in the first place.

Its also why certain people just will never PVP. They just can't handle the thought of losing stuff, even if the corp gives them the ships.

I would love to see CCP spend some effort to come up with a class of "realistic" missions, with skills that don't just involve shooting bigger and bigger red crosses. Have missions where you have to use D-Scan, probing, cloaks, hunting, warp scrambling. Have missions that you might actually fail if you don't find where the target is in time. Make more realistic AI fight back. Role out Sleeper AI to all L4 missions. Make random triggers, how hard could it be to have spawns be one of 2-3 with different triggers.

There are so many things CCP could do to improve the game play more than adding a zero loss simulated PVP simulator to the game.

Fly Safe,
Mick

200m between success and failure

2011-08-25T14:42:00.003-04:00

After all the "fun" I had last week, I finally got a chance to take my recently reconfigured Cloaky Legion out for a spin in the Low Sec pipe.

The third system turned up two wormholes. The first was a C3 and showed no signs of activity. Upon warping into the second, I immediately saw a Legion on scan with 10-15 wrecks, and no POS in site. Could my luck really be this good? I had hoped for maybe a Covetor, or a Drake or two, but a ratting T3 was too good to hope for.

So I got on Comms and called in the brute squad, while I tried to pin down the site he was running.

"Do you have probes this time?" came a question on Comms, man I am never going to live that one down.

So right about the time I think I have the site he is in, the Legion warps off. Did I decloak, did he see me? A quick warp to 100km off the site showed that he had simply finished the site. I quickly checked all the planets and while there was a POS, there was no sign of the pilot in any ship. Guess he was visiting this hole.

Sure enough in a few minutes a lowly salvager showed up on scan. I warped back to the site to watch him salvaging the wreck. Man I hope he was not calling it a night.

I warped back to the wormhole and jumped through to provide the brute squad a warp in for the operation. Once they were in place I jumped back into the hole and warped back to the site in time to see him finish the last few wrecks. Soon enough he warped off and disappeared from D-Scan. It seemed like forever, but eventually the Legion reappeared on scan. Time to start the hunt.

The second site I tried was the right one. I bookmarked a wreck, bounced to a planet and arrived 30km from the Legion that was burning away towards a new spawn. I quickly bookmarked a second wreck, bounced again, and promptly landed in the middle of 4 Sleeper Frigates. The closest was a mere 6,000m away and closing. The Legion was almost 35km away, but closing. I held my breath and prepared to make the best of it if the Sleepers decloaked me.

I started moving towards the Legion as the distance between me and one of the frigates continued to shrink. 5k, 4k, 3k and I was ready to mash the AB and target the legion. Hopefully I could get within overheated disruptor range before the Legion saw me and was able to react.

The numbers kept creeping down past 2500, past 2300, to around 2200, then mercifully started to creep up again.

The Legion kept closing distance, and in a minute was at about 14km from my ship.

I commanded the Brute Squad to "Jump Jump Jump" (why is it always necessary to say it three time?)

I decloaked, hit the AB, primed the warp disruptors and guns then started to mash the target button for the agonizing delay time.

The Legion turned to warp off, but was caught. Soon enough the Brute Squad landed and the Legion melted under the combined fire.

A nice kill. Lucky too. While we might have had a chance had the Sleeper decloaked me 30 to 35km off the Legion, it was much easier at 15km to execute the attack.

I scoped the nice nights work of loot and high tailed it back to Low Sec and a station. This ended the successful maiden voyage of my Cloaky Legion.

Fly Safe,
Mick

Should I Stay or Should I go Now

2011-08-22T13:53:00.000-04:00

It was a very interesting week, to say the least.

It started a little over a week ago, when I logged in to find yet another person had setup a POS in my system. I am truly amazed at the number of people that cannot figure out I have a POS in this C1. Sure its over 14AU from the Sun, but really who goes through multiple hours of work without checking every planet. This is like the 4th time this has happened. Maybe picking an outer planet for my POS was not such a great idea. Maybe I should have put it in the middle of the system instead. Oh well, time to deal with another lazy explorer.

So I quickly find the POS, get the corporation running it and fire off a nice "hey there" evemail requesting that they remove the POS from my system. I headed off to bed thinking like the last 3 times this would be resolved and the corp would realize their error and move on.

Well I guess my luck had run out on reasonable and lazy both being adjectives to describe my guests.

While watching the POS the next day, I saw 4 characters log into the POS. I got one into a conversation that went something like this.

Reasonable Current Occupant (played by me) "Hey there, did you not see my POS in this system?"

Person Too Lazy To Check (played by leet Euro PVP'r) "I don't see no POS, except the one offline."

RCO "Did you check Planet 11?"

PTLTC "Nope"

RCO "Might want to"

PTLTC "I might not"

RCO "Why not?"

PTLTC "I don't care if you do or don't have a POS."

RCO "Okay, I will plan accordingly"

PTLTC "Flyz Safe"

So now what? A quick check shows the corp in question is a decent sized PVP alliance from NPC Null Sec. Not really someone I would expect to be interested in a C1. In addition, a quick check of planets showed at least 6-7 people already had setup PI on planets. Now the POS was not my main worry, but the fact that there is no way to really "kill" their PI at this point. So like it or not, they had the ability to make my life in this hole much less desirable. On the other hand, I had no desire to simply pack up and leave.

So I asked myself "Should I stay, or should I go now."

Now when I acquired this hole it came with 4 BS's, but I knew that would not be near enough firepower to take down a Large Control Tower. I also knew that using "hole denial" was unlikely to yield much results, since they were only here for the PI and on the opposite side of the world from me. They would need to only have access to PI maybe once every few days, and we would have to have almost 23/7 coverage for weeks to make an impact.

So I figured I had a few choices:

Find 40-50 of my closest buddies in Drakes,

Build more Battleships that would be trapped in the system

Leave

Well, I had no desire to simply pack up and leave such a nice C1, that generates so much pretty planet goodies. On the other hand, I did not really like the idea of investing 1B to 1.5B to make a large enough BS fleet to make an impact, unless I knew for sure I could muster the pilots to fly them. Fortunately for me, most of my alliance and friends are Killboard junkies, always looking for a fix.

So as I was preparing to take the offensive (read shuttling a crap ton of mins into my wormhole), I got a reply from their CEO that basically said "RAWR, we are old and leet PVP corp. We see no sign this system is yours RAWR. Pack your flying circus and leave. RAWR."

Well, I like circuses. Especially flying ones. Hope they would find my show to their liking.

Have I mentioned I am a DOTLAN junkie? If not, well "My name is Mick, and I am addicted to using DOTLAN to monitor my wormhole."

Final plans were made to hit the system over the weekend to insure maximum coverage and play time for our pilots. So the middle of the week turned into a waiting game. One day DOTLAN showed a ton of jumps during their play time and I was wishing I had a way to check notifications for POS attacks while out of game. I was relieved when i finally was able to log on and see no notifications. But I did have a surprise. They had setup a second POS on the outer planet with mine. (Hey at least they finally flew out to that area). So now we had double the fun waiting for us.

So POS 1 was very well put together. 12 ECM, 14 Small Arty, couple Warp Distruptors, Couple Webs, and a few hardeners. Overall a very nice setup and one that would not be a cake walk to take down. The second POS was weird. 12 Medium Auto, no ecm, no warp, no web, and a ton of hardeners. While the hardeners would make the shooting time increase a ton, the POS had no real defenses, as the Medium Autos could easily be sniped.

So as I went to sleep on Wednesday Night, the additional BS's were built and mostly equipped, and the plan was coming together to move in some additional scanners the next night.

Well the best laid plans of mice and capsuleers never seem to go as planned.

I logged in on Thursday to find POS 1 was now offline, but POS 2 did not have any new defenses. This opportunity to take down the POS's while poorly defended could not be passed up, so the assault was launched 24 hours early. And as with any spur of the moment operation, it was a total cluster. By final count we had over 25 people trying to get ships or pods to the entrance, while the people inside tried to quickly sort out the BS's, ammo, and everything else we thought we had 24 more hours to prepare. In the end it took only about 2 hours from announcement of the operation, to starting to snipe the Medium Autocannons.

The next 12 hours saw all the weapons on the active POS incap'd, the anchored POS destroyed, and the Online POS reinforced, but not before the corp logged in and onlined every hardener, taking the resists above 80%. It was grueling to watch the shield tick down so slowly, but it was just a matter of time, since the guests seemed to have neglected to bring any of their leet PVP'rs into the hole.

The next night, we turned our attention to some other space junk in the system, and took down another offline POS that had been taking up space for a month or so since it went offline.

Other then a few gawkers from High Sec, we saw no activity for the next 2 days.

The final stoke good luck, was the fleeing guests had not left enough fuel in the tower to get it all the way through the reinforcement timer, and the tower, and its umpteen hardeners, all went offline, mercifully sparing us hours of shooting at a tower with 80% resists.

All told, we killed 3 towers and around 50-60 modules. The C1 is now clear of all space junk (save some warp bubbles that no one seems to remember where we anchored them), and I have a shiny fleet of BS's in the hole. Maybe we can see if a fleet of 5 Tempests can crush C1 sleeper sites.

Now I just have to decide if I want to move my tower to the inner planets, or just wait for another lazy, unreasonable house guest to arrive.

Fly Safe,

Mick

Congrats to Phaser Inc.

2011-08-12T19:50:00.000-04:00

http://www.phaserinc.com/index1.html

Congrats to one of the best and most intricate scams pulled off in EVE since I have been playing.

I saw the adds, heard the rumors, know people who "invested".

They pulled the proverbial wool over many a players eyes and walked away with a fortune.

Makes those people selling everything for 1 Trit look lamer than ever.

Just hope they don't try to make 2 Trillion quickly by doubling their money in Jita.

Fly Safe,
Mick

The complexity of "Blue"

2011-08-12T13:36:00.000-04:00

I am color blind in real life and have trouble distinguishing shades of greens and yellows and blues, but that has nothing to due with the topic of this post. This post is about the complexity of the political arrangements in EVE.

EVE is a great sandbox that can change on almost a daily basis. Null Sec is ruled by Alliances, Power Blocs, Vassels, Renters and a endless stream of players into and out of corporations and alliances.

Add to that the fact that some corps and alliances are "for hire" and really only serve whoever is paying this moment.

These relationships and dynamics bleed over into Low and High sec, but not to the same overwhelming level it does in Null, where Sov issues dominate almost every aspect of the game.

Add another level of complexity when most people are really 3-4 (or more) people in the game.

There is then also the idea of anonymity in the game, and the fact that people will do things and say things to others that they probably never would face-to-face.

It gets to the point that more time is spent figuring out who you can shoot and shouldn't shoot, than the time you actually shoot.

Nothing is worse than spending 30 minutes rallying a group for a CTA or Roam, jumping 15 jumps to the designated rally spot, only to jump through and get annilihated because the CTA called by Alliance A that you are Blue to invited Alliance B that you are not Blue to and they just saw a "local spike of neuts". Add this to the fact that Comms are usually divided, and its a mess.

Worse yet is when you spend 15 minutes chasing neuts, only to have the FC break off the chase because "the CEO has an Alt in a corp that is Blue to these guys and he said don't shoot them".

And like women, the minute you think you understand all the rules, they change.

It is a fact of EVE life that the friend of my friend is not always my friend, and the enemy of my enemy is still probably not my friend either.

Good luck figuring out where you fit in "Sea of Blues", and I hope your CEO does not have too many alts floating around.

Fly Safe,
Mick

What are they teaching kids these days

2011-08-11T08:37:00.003-04:00

Last night we were rallying on a low sec gate for a roam, cause why sit in station when you can camp a gate while you wait for the inevitable last 3-4 people to get their crap together 30 minutes after the "start time".

So we setup the camp, put a cloaky scout in High Sec, and wait for Billy Bob and Joe Bob to track down some lost module in the bottom of their CQ's closet they need for the roam.

About 5 minutes into the gate camp, 2 Hurricanes appear on the High Sec side, sit for about 2 minutes, and then warp off. Disappointment, guess their Spidey Senses were tingling.

A few minutes later a pod and Myrm warp to the gate together, and jump right through. The pod warps right away, because we don't have any ubber locking pod catcher on the gate. The Myrm holds cloak, obviously aware that his chances of survival jumping into a 10 man gate camp are near zero.

Finally the Myrm uncloaks and runs for the gate. Not a chance. He is popped quickly (too quickly) and warps off in his pod. A review of his setup reveals that he was headed in to low sec to do some exploring.

Now the chance that these two guys were unrelated, and just happened to show up and jump at the same time is possible, but unlikely. This begs the question of what the heck corps are teaching people these days.

Why would you jump a massively undertanked battle cruiser into Low Sec, when you have a potential scout with you. The Myrm would be alive if the pod simply warped in ahead of him, since there is little chance you are going to catch a pod coming off a gate, and relayed the information back to the Myrm pilot.

Even if they were not related, the Myrm pilot could have docked in High Sec, gotten into a shuttle or pod, and warped into Low Sec to check things out. Sure its not 100% safe, the gate camp can assemble in the 3-4 minutes it would take to reship, but its a heck of a lot safer then a blind jump.

I guess the old PVP adage of "bet on stupid" still applies. Guess most corps do not do much to teach their players the "ways of EVE" and how best to stay alive.

Fly Safe,
Mick

A Zealot, A Vagabond and 2 Drakes walk into a bar ....

2011-08-10T10:55:00.000-04:00

So after overseeing a few minor tweaks to my PI operations, I logged into the Low Sec Pipe to see what was going on. Turns out the "excitement" for the night was a mining operation at least 10 jumps from where my mothballed Hulk was sitting (unfit of course). Based on this, I decided to undock the scanner and see what fun might be awaiting in our pocket.

The first system offered nothing of excitement, but the second system offered a Z971 wormhole. So in I went to find a very vast system. One of those where none of the 4 planets are visible on D-Scan together. There was a POS at the planet scannable from the wormhole exit, with a Mammoth and Hurricane on scan. Quickly locate the POS and saw that the Hurricane was active. Very nice.

Next planet offered a small, unoccupied POS.

Warp to the Planet 3 and bingo, a Covetor, mining drones, and a can. Warp to Planet 4 and find no moons or activity. A perfect spot to launch probes and setup to scan without being seen (man I do love no local).

The goal was to minimize the time the probes were visible, so set up a 4 AU pattern of combat probes. Warped them in to Planet 3, got my results, noted the mining barge location (at 86%), and warped them back out. Reconfigured the probes to 2 AU and warped them back in, 100% hit, warped them out. Perfect. Warped to the Covetor at 100km and hoped an asteroid would not uncloak me. Warp took forever, but I landed, didn't decloak and watched as the Covetor continued to mine.

Bookmarked the can right next to the miner and warped back the wormhole to go get a ship with some firepower. Also called to anyone else in the area that wanted in on the fun. Too bad they had no idea the "Fun" that awaited them.

So usually I would grab my dual point, cloaky Legion, but it was 24 jumps away. So my PVP Zealot would have to do. So I warped back to the entrance and the plan came together. The Zealot would warp in, fly forever in warp, tackle the Covetor, play around with it and see if the Hurricane would come to its rescue. So I jumped through and warped the Zealot to the bookmark, and about mid warp to the target someone in Comms piped up "Hey, anyone got probes fitted?", silence, and a few uhh's. Well no biggie, I would kill the Covetor and see what happened. Then I got within D-Sacn range and saw the Hurricane was now in the belt with the Covetor.

So I land on grid, start target locking the Covetor and Hurricane. "Point the cane, and kill the covetor, is the new plan". Next thing I hear is "Everyone jump and warp to targets", followed quickly by a "oh crap", and "no way". Yep, the wormhole had collapsed behind us.

The Covetor melts like butter in a microwave, and the other three ships finally land on grid. The Hurricane starts to go down quickly under the pressure of 4 ships. The FC quickly makes a plan to lock both pods and see if we can work out a deal for the location of the High Sec Static. So the Hurricane goes down, and we get both pods locked. We were quickly hailed in local by the resident and quickly explained our little "predicament".

By this time the public channel in our comms that we are using (along with the mining op) is erupting with laughter at the 3 wormhole vets and one noob who are stuck in w-space with well over a billion isk in ships and implants because they failed to bring any probes. We figured the combined W-Space experience for the crew was over 5 years (for the record, it was the w-space noob who asked prior to jumping if anyone had probes). Also, the Security Status of the guys I was with is not the greatest and two of them have been off Concord's Christmas Card list for awhile now.

Now fortunately, for us, the guy found value in letting us out of his hole and not making us spend days shooting at everything we could find until someone else came along and let us out (which we all knew could be awhile). I kind of equate it to opening the window in your car to let the hornet out while you are driving on the Interstate. Sure you could try to kill him, but its safer to just let him out.

So the ribbing on comms continued and we saw probes on D-Scan so we hoped he was living up to his side of our arrangement, and not just scanning in all his buddies. After about 15 long minutes, he finally found the High Sec static and we were able to get our 4 ships to the wormhole.

For the other 3 the fun was just beginning, our first intrepid explorer jumped through, found out he was not welcome and quickly docked his Vagabond. The news was not great, the hole opened into a .8 system, 26 jumps from home, with several .9 systems in the route. There would be no easy return to home.

So having been the "mastermind" of this adventure, and the only one still with a positive Sec Status, I offered to get the other 3 ships the 26 jumps home. So the other two pilots docked and off they went too, flashy red, the 26 jumps back home.

So in the end, we got 2 kills, endured a fair share of deserved ribbing, and had a good laugh (after we were all safe back home).

It goes down as one of the more fun nights I have had in awhile, but despite all the fun, next time I will still bring a probing alt with us.

Fly Safe,

Mick

Revisit to my PVP views

2011-08-09T16:55:00.001-04:00

About a year ago, after a lengthy discussion on PVP with a number of players on Vent, I wrote this:

http://eve-lifeinthehole.blogspot.com/2010/06/view-on-pvp.html

Now, after a year of participating and trying to learn more about this side of EVE, I have come to some conclusions about PVP.

#1 Most of PVP in EVE is non-consensual
#2 Like my sex life, it takes way too long to happen and is over too quick
#3 No matter what you do, some people will never, ever voluntarily PVP
#4 Shooting i-HUBS and Stations is not PVP, but can lead to it
#5 Even people who fly the biggest ships still can suck at PVP

Looking at each one a little bit closer.

#1 - So little of EVE PVP is consensual. Most PVP is the result of small gangs and solo players looking for indy and PVE targets. The ratter in a belt, the mission runner, the industry player at a Customs Office, the low sec gate camper. Now this is not to say that there are a lot of combat ships v combat ships fighting, its just that one of the people is not looking for a fight, it finds them due to their stupidity, afk-ness, or other reasons. While this is not "bad" its just not the glorious vision most people have of PVP.

#2 - Takes too long to find and never lasts. Sure this might say more about my sex life, but we all have experienced the 2 hour roam to nowhere that ends up in a ball of flames and white light expresses back to our medical clones. Even worse is when it ends due to the blue of our blue not being blue.

#3 - The Reluctant Carebear - Offer free ships, offer training classes, offer "insert whatever you want here" and the fact of the matter is there are some people, even living in 0.0, that have zero, zip, ziltch, nada desire to ever PVP. Sure they get blown up in their Tengu's while ratting, or their Rattlesnakes, or even their carriers, but tell them we are going on a frigate roam in corp paid for rifters, and they disappear quicker than a drop of water in the desert. I can not figure out how they can undock a billion isk ship to go rat, but cant for the life of them undock a free ship to go shoot other players. Even as incoming roams increase to the point their ability to make isk ratting is in serious jeopardy and they still would never be found in a corp paid for drake shooting at the incoming gang.

#4 - SOV warfare is broke - end of story. To have to spend days shooting at targets with a bazgillion HP when the owners could care less is ridiculous and only encourages blobs and crappy lag induced PVP.

#5 - A plethora of ISK and no brains - How else can you rationalize a guy undocking a Rattlesnake when the corp provides all BC's for system defense? How else can you explain a Titan pliot that cynos himself to the fught instead of opening a jump bridge. How else can you describe all the crap and fail fits we see on a daily basis. Too much isk and not enough brains.

So overall my views of the glory of PVP have changed, but the reality is still as I once believed. There are the hunters and the hunted, the high sec afk miner and the suicide ganker, the hot headed mission runner and the ninja salvager, the war dec'n high sec corps and the indy players too dumb to know there is a war on.

There is little PVP that meets the trailer reels CCP makes, but man those trailers are cool. Maybe the next trailer should be cloaky Tengu or Hound slowly creeping in on a mining op and blowing up an Orca and Hulk, or a Sabre dropping a bubble on a group of Drakes running a Sleeper site, and his friends blowing the crap out of them. Those would be way more realistic.

Fly Safe,
Mick

News from Great White North Exploration

2011-08-05T16:52:00.000-04:00

Well its been a long time since I have updated everyone on my exploits, but since they have involved a couple of stretches in boring w-space corps, null sec, and other non-wormhole things, I have not had much exciting to relate to Wormhole Living.

Well that has changed.

So here's some updates.

First I have sold and bought several characters and my crew has significantly changed. Hundo is still my oldest character and is back as CEO of my W-Space corp, Great White North Exploration. My other characters now encompass an almost Rorq pilot, an almost Carrier pilot, and too many PI alts to talk about.

Great White North Exploration has also joined the alliance Gryphon League. In my desire to return to running my "own show", I set out to find an alliance that could help me offer a wide range of stuff to people I recruited. Gryphon League represented a nice balance of Low Sec operations in a Low Sec pipe they call home and High Sec operations as well. I hope to add a little W-space flavor to their alliance.

So that brings me to the shameless plug.

Great White North Exploration is recruiting. Unlike when I founded GWNE, when w-space was a vast unknown, and people like Star Defender were leading us into the unknown and educating us in the ways of the wormhole, w-space is now much more of a known. Staticmapper, Dotlan, and other tools have taken a lot of the mystery out of W-space. Wormholes are bought and sold at an alarming rate on the forums. And PI has once again made W-space living a very profitable venture.

So with that in mind, I look to grow GWNE into a more well rounded corporation, with a focus now on being a little of everything to everyone. As part of the Gryphon League I am able to offer recruits a chance to experience a lot of the aspects of EVE, while still maintaining a foothold in W-Space. I decided not to be exclusively W-Space, since I am not sure it offers a long term living environment to sustain a healthy corp. And really I have little desire to babysit a bunch of people in a wormhole anymore (having done that for several corps).

So check out our recruitment thread and our public channel.

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1561757

Fly Safe,

Mick Flaherty

I miss my Orca

2011-08-04T13:29:00.000-04:00

For those of you who have followed the blog since early on will realize the "fun" I have had with my first Orca "Shamu". I have twice been on the wrong side of a wormhole collapse with it, have had to pay a small fee twice to keep it from getting blown up (though I am not convinced the falcon pilot would have ever been able to crack its tank), and countless other adventures. It has lived in C2, C3, C4 and C5 space, closed countless wormholes and been one of the most useful ships I have owned. By far, I have probably logged the most hours in the ship the last year and half.

Now that I have settled into a nice C1, Shamu is sitting in High Sec, collecting dust, and helping only occasionally for logistics.

By far, the thing I like least about the C1 is the fact I cannot close holes easily (8 orca passes is so easy). And I can not use my trusty Orca for logistics.

So while there are a lot of things to like about the C1, the fact I have to leave one of my favorite ships in High Sec is sad.

Too bad I can't tear it down and rebuild it in the C1.

Fly Safe,
Mick

They Came, They Saw, They lost their Noctis

2011-08-03T15:54:00.000-04:00

Its been a long time since I've posted and a lot has happened.

I've learned null sec statics make for really sucky logistics, been "evicted" from a wormhole for the first time (staging POS for a move), learned the "joy" of Sov Warfare in 0.0 (an IHUB has how many HP?), gained a lot of small fleet roam experience, and invested a lot of time into learning the ins and outs of PI.

The one area I have "grown" the most is in a willingness to get into situations that might not always have a favorable outcome for me (not to be confused with a Death Wish, but more a Death Apathy).

So in my shiny new wormhole, complete with a crap ton of anomalies (since it had not been "worked" in awhile), I logged on to find 2 T3's, and 2 BC's running sites. Well, in the past I would have let them go and have their fun, done my resetting of PI extraction units and logged off. As long as people left my POS alone, I never really cared too much. I even threw a probe and scanned down the K162 to see it was a "dangerous" route in.

But then they had to bring in a Noctis. That is too juicy of a target to not try to at least take a pot shot at. So to the POS I flew and swapped out the scanner for a SB. Now being in my own "home" here helped. I had several well positioned spots to use d-scan and quickly was able to determine they were leaving the Noctis alone in sites to salvage. In the first site I found the Noctis, he was almost done and it was too late to setup a bombing run. But the next site I caught him just starting to salvage as I warped in at 100km.

So I bookmarked a wreck right next to the target, warped to the closest planet and back at 30km. Got lucky on the warp in to not get too close to a wreck, and was able to sneak into 25km away.

Uncloak, fire bomb, target Noctis, overheat point, orbit 20km, hit the torps, wait for target lock, bomb explodes, half armor, volley 1, bye bye rest of armor, second volley and bye bye Noctis.

Forget the Pod, lock the wreck, crap here comes the Calvary, warp off. Pray the melted nanos died a glorious death in the wreckage.

Warp to a safe, warp back to the site at 100km and watch them orbit the wreck farther and farther out with drones.

Check killmail, and yes the melted nanos didn't drop. Bye bye 150M in loot (probably closer to 200M at the time of the kill) and a nights work for at least 5 people.

While not my first kill, it does represent the first for the corp that once served as a carebear in w-space corp, that used to run and hide in a POS and would never risk pissing off "dangerous" people. But having now been in a "dangerous" corp or two, lived in null, and seen the other side of eve, I am more then willing to risk a 20M loss to win a Noctis kill.

http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=13771475

On the opposite side, I am amazed that a corp experienced in W-space would not 1) Guard the Noctis, or 2) Monitor my POS. Especially since I had announced my presence with probes, and changed ships at my POS. They should easily have seen me reship into a Bomber and at the very least sent one of the 4 combat ships to protect the Noctis. Having the Noctis aligned would have saved it also. It was sitting still, and easy prey. Overall, they probably had not encountered great resistance in a C1 before, or thought so little of the possible occupants, that they got lazy. Again the 200M loss probably represents a drop in the bucket to what they make, but its still is 200M.

So if you come to visit my wormhole, please fly lazy. I like Noctis kills.

Fly Safe everywhere else,
Mick Flaherty

PI, Depletion, and WH life

2011-03-04T12:49:00.000-05:00

Personally, PI is what got me back into W-Space life, and PI is the overriding factor keeping me there now. I think that is also the reason that I have seen a resurgence in the number of people living in w-space. High End Gas Mining, and C5/C6 Sleeper Sites still represent the top of the line Isk generation in W-space, but PI is the backbone of providing the Isk to justify a semi-permanent presence.

So along comes the new depletion, the planets I am making "mining" for my coolant on probably had 5-6 people on them each pulling material. The planets got significantly poorer in a matter of weeks, yet prices have not risen. So either people had a backlog, or more people are doing it with the new "ease" of PI (yes, I can not get through 5 toons with login and everything in about 15 minutes on nights I don't need to move materials).

So will the depletion lead to a similar exodus of w-space as the falling ABC mineral prices did? Will people just spread out more and we will see more systems being run by smaller groups? Or will people just scale back in the holes they are in and make less per person?

Personally, I moved my merry band of PI toons to a new hole and am happily back to only 2-3 toons on each planet and reaping the hot spots all myself.

Time will tell how the new depletion and PI will work, but for now, I think that w-space remains the best place to operate for PI and the less people doing PI in the hole the better.

Fly Safe,
Mick

My New Hero

2011-02-27T10:43:00.000-05:00

So right now, almost all my W-Space toons are in my new C3 with a Null Static, setting up my PI refuge. So I was not around to witness this story.

Last night I log in and private chat one of the guys I still communicate with from the C4 corp, and to say the least he is hot. Like steaming mad, punch a wall and spit in another soccer team's fan's face hot (well thats what all us US people think you crazy soccer fans do anyway). Finally I get him to calm down a bit and start to get the story.

Appears that our corp has successfully ambushed a couple of BS running sites in our static C3 and killed and podded one of them. So on logs my friend for a quick check of whats going on and they are screaming for help closing the hole before the C3 corp figures out what hit them. He is ensured the hole is not critical and can support 2 Orca runs (those of us familiar with 2B mass holes and the shear fatness of an Orca can immediately grasp the fallacy in this statement). So without a refit for probe scanner, or cloak, or anything that could help survive in a hostile C3, off my friend goes to the hole. Now we all know what happened, because if he passed twice and closed the hole there would be no story to tell.

So one emo-rage log off, some confusion on WTF happened, calls for a petition cause the WH mass must have been bugged, some diplomatic overtures for help meet by a resounding "pound sand" and the end result was one Orca piloted by an implant rich toon, stuck in a hostile C3 with no cloak, no probe launcher, and no BM to the static low sec that had never been scanned out. Needless to say the thought of losing 750M in ship and implants was not appealing. I suggested trying to negotiate in local, but really that was fools hope. The only hope I saw was a passer through seeing a jet can and helping. But my friend had another plan.

I left to go watch a movie with the SO and came back to find a much calmer and while happy does not describe the mood, at least relieved friend. My friend's Orca and pilot were back in High Sec and safe. He had managed this in a way I would have probably never thought of. Locator Agents.

He had spammed all the active toons online for the corp in the C3 that he could find. From there had found a few of them clustered in a section of low sec. He proceeded to send a covert ops scanner to that area, found a number of wormholes, including a C1 with over 25 anoms, before successfully finding his little lost ship.

I was amazed in such a short time (2 hours) he was able to accomplish this rescue. And for that he is my new hero. Great job dude. But next time fit a probe launcher and cloak to that Orca.

Tell Me What You See

2011-02-25T18:37:00.001-05:00

Well after long last I have returned to W-space. First in a C5 with C3 static. That didn't last long. Next in a C4 with a C3 static. Lasted a little longer, but the new PI depletion and a few too many people making coolant on too few planets, and I was ready to find a new home for at least my merry band of PI toons.

So in looking for a HS route out of the C4, I came across a nice C3 with static null and a very nice mix of planets (minus one lava or plasma that would have made it near perfect). So I moved in, set up a medium POS and managed to get a month of fuel and 9 ECM batteries onlined. I figured that would deter most people.

So I monitored Dotlan today and this is what I saw.

Jumps Last 48h

NPC Kills Last 48h

Ship Kills Last 48h

POD Kills Last 48h

At first I thought for sure someone had decided to get about 20 of his best null sec friends and decided to pop my POS for fun. Well I logged in once home and found nothing on d-scan, and the POS in perfect order.

So tell me, what do you see happened in my new system today?

Mick

A Short Vacation

2010-07-14T17:15:00.000-04:00

It is Summer and the time has come to train a few long skills and take a vacation.

Now for "work" I still take my laptop so I am able to tell a short tale.

As we try to do every few years, we headed the 600 miles to the ocean and the beach. Now I am not as, shall we say .... thin, as i used to be.

So the second day I am down at the beach and the surf is pretty pounding as there is a storm offshore really kicking up the waves. So as i grew tired of fighting the waves and saw my kids hard at work building stuff in the sand I decided to join them.

So I stumbled ashore and flopped down next to my kids and started to claw at the sand in an effort to help them gather some sand for their walls and structures.

Now let me tell you it was a pretty hot day. Had to be pushing 95F and the sun was really beating down hard. I really started to sweat and considered returning to the sea, but just then a group of people came along and started to pour water over me. I didn't recall this level of service in reading the timeshares website, but it was appreciated. So I continued to dig up sand for my kids.

Now along came another group and started really soaking me with some hoses. Seemed a bit extreme. I looked around too and didn't see any others receiving this special treatment.

I did get worried when they started to try to tie ropes to my legs and a boat showed up. At this point I got up and started to ask a few questions. Needless to say the people gathered where a bit shocked at my sudden mobility, and I was a bit embarrased when I saw they were all from the local marine biology college's marine rescue program.

Guess maybe it really is time to consider that diet when this vacation is over.

Mick

Back in W-Space ... Finally

2010-07-07T09:59:00.000-04:00

Well, it took longer then I expected.

And it was for a totally different reason then I expected.

But I am back in W-space, with most of my toons.

Yes my two main toons are still bumping around Provi, killing the crap out of Sansha and Sleepers when available. They are still taking baby steps into PVP also. Overall I am happy with where they were at.

My two indy/trading toons meanwhile were sitting around collecting dust and training for things that might make them slightly more useful. I was just about ready to bite the bullet and setup a high sec POS to start invention again (though I dreaded the time sink a high sec POS was and the time sink invention was) to justify these two toons.

Then my C4 discovery.

So now I have 4 new sub-toons (my term for the 2 extra toons on each account) that are able to fly a cloaky bestower, probe ridiculously bad, and run 5 planets with Advanced Command Centers (total training time with 2 remaps and 100% bonus was about 5-6 days). So now I have a Large POS setup, Defenses installed (I am sick of 2m30s to anchor and 2m30s to online messages), the hole bottomed out (thanks to warp cancels) and 4 toons ready to use Advanced Command Centers tonight.

So once again, I am living the dream of no local, living in a POS, managing WH exits, as well as worrying about the logistics of w-space refueling and market runs.

Still on the to-do list is getting my drake capable PVE toon into the hole to clear smaller ladar and grav sites when they spawn. As well as having at least one toon capable of putting up a fight.

So with renewed interest in W-Space and its PI impact, I look forward to a much different blog scope in the next few weeks to a month.

It is my hope to discuss my total setup in the next few days.

Fly Safe,
Mick

The Pull of PI

2010-07-04T13:18:00.004-04:00

Well, I kinda laughed at the initial idea of Planetary Interaction.

It looked kinda, well, stupid. Seemed like Farmville meets Eve. A bunch of clicking, moving stuff, and limited rewards. Yet another thing for people to do that don't want to learn PVP. Another dream of passive income that would end up taking way to much time to justify the end result (gee, I can save $14 a month by spending 30 hours a month messing with this passive income stream).

So I did not mess with it on Sisi, I did not rush to train the skills, and I didn't even start paying attention till it was out a few weeks and I started to get word of some serious potential profits.

So I started to scan around in High Sec to see what I could find. Short answer was nothing good. No "hot spots" for sure.

For those of you who have followed this blog for awhile will remember, I left scanning alts in at least 3 different WH's. So I decided to log them on and see what planet mixes they had. The two C2 were both a no go as one was occupied and the other had a bunch of Barren, Gas, and 1 Oceanic.

However, the C4 was a very pleasant find. First it had a C2 static so I am never far from a Empire route. Next it had 3 Temperate, 2 Lava and a Gas. All of the three types with "unique" resources. Even better, they all had 80%+ "hot spots" for those resources.

For those of you not yet fluid in PI, there are 15 "Planetary Resources" and 3 of them can only be found on a single planet type. These are Reactive Gases on Gas Planets, Felsic Magma on Lava Planets, and Autotrophs on Temperate Planets.

Now the engineer in me kicked in and I started to look at what I could make. Then the Salesman in me started to look at what I could make. Then the PVP'r in me started to think about what i could get blown up with all the Isk I was going to make.

Here is what I have found. The three resources I will be swimming in (could hurt swimming in Magma) combine to make 3 P2 Level Products. These are RG+FM= Silicate Glass, RM+AUTO= Polyramids, and FM+AUTO=Microfiber Shielding.

Now, looking further, those 3 P2 products represent half of the P2 products needed for BOTH Broadcast Nodes and Self Harmonizing Power Cores.

A plan was evident.

So off went the initial toon into the C4 to play with PI. Unfortunately, he forgot a cloak. Guess what? PI takes a lot of time "messing" with stuff and in non Empire areas, a cloak is invaluable.

Fortunately, I got a few days of playing and transferring stuff around, before Alpha Dog ended my fun.

So at this point I have 4 planets setup, 2 scanning toons left in the hole, and 4 more scanning/PI toons training.

The goal now is to get a POS into the C4, along with the 4 scanning/PI toons and start to harvest and process as much of the Broadcast Node and SHPC parts I can inside the hole.

From there, I plan to setup my trader toon near Jita on enough planets to finish off the BN's and SHPC's.

As I work to setup my planets, I will try to get some pictures on my basic setups and thoughts on PI. The overall goal of the setups is to try to balance the time between transfers of materials between planets. The goal is once a week. That way the daily activity will be setting extractors, and once a week I will need to spend a few hours shuttling products between planets and toons.

At the end of August I promise to report if my projections of Isk are anywhere close to what I actually make.

Fly Safe,
Mick

Goodbye and Hello Mr. Legion

2010-06-28T12:37:00.000-04:00

Well I can say the wait was worth the trouble. T3 cruisers are sweet.

Now, I have to say when I first got in my Legion and try some lower WH anomolies, I was not impressed. But it was my skills not the ships fault.

I have always been a Caldari PVE type player. Through my first trip through game and even most of what I have been doing so far on my second stent.

Yes I trained Amarr, but I approached it like a Caldari would. Massive tank, no speed and long range. Yes not exactly the formula for success in a T3 Cruiser.

So as you might expect my first experience with a Legion, heading into a fight with 2 Sleeper BS's and a few webbing cruisers did not end well. Suffice it to say that 2 Sleeper BS's can pretty much take a Legion from half armor to POD in one dual volley. Fortunetly my 350M armor repper survived.

After a brief lesson on how to effectively fly a cruiser sized ship, the importance of speed and yes navigation skills (what the hell are those, says the Caldari in me), I got back on the Legion horse. Have to say I am damned proud I did.

This ship is great. With a tweak of a few skills and setup I now top 600m/s while holding a 25k km orbit. I am hitting for as much damage as I usually did with a volley of 7 heavy missiles on a drake, in about a third less time. I have a very healthy fear of webbers now, as well as tracking disruptor (both new fears for a Caldari missile chucker).

I am still learning the best approach to PVE in the Legion, but I can now solo all 0.0 anomolies, and would have no fear in taking on Class 2 WH anomolies solo either. Class 3 might still be a stretch, but more for not knowing the triggers and beiong afraid of triggering an overwhelming force.

I am still working on getting all the skills needed to really max out the Legion (like all subs to V, and some remaining gun and armor skills to V), but man am I impressed with the T3 Cruiser.

Guess my days of warping in and sitting there in a raven and drake are a thing of the past.

Fly Safe,
Mick

Aren't Sleepers Fun.

2010-06-11T14:23:00.010-04:00

I finally got all my stuff into the Provi pocket and have started to try to get "good" at finding stuff to do.

As of right now, there are not a ton of US TZ players around during my normal playing time so I am usually trying to find some solo or small fleet stuff to do.

My choices start at finding a high end WH (our area seems to get a lot of C5 entrances) to clear the ladar and grav site of rats. This seems to be safer as there are far fewer roaming gangs in WH space then our pocket.

If a higher end WH is not around then any WH will do and I can then look to "solo" some anom's.

If all else fails its off to run anom's in our pocket or simply rat in belts. (Nice side benefit is my security status is much higher)

So few nights back I get on just as a Corp Op is wrapping up clearing some C5 sites. I get into the hole and find like 11 ladar and grav sites. Potential for a very good night. No one else is interested in running them so I hop in my Raven and Harby (both with tractor and salvager) and head in. Now most of the low end Ladar and Grav have 4-6 frigs, or 3-4 cruisers, or some combination of sleep rats to kill. Very easy, especially with dual target painter Raven and Pulse setup Harby. So I get to a site I am not familiar with. It is an "Exceptional" grav site. Quickly check ArcDragon and says its not one of the high end ones with multiple BS's. To be on the safe side I go ahead and warp to it in a pod to see what it entails. I see a single lone BS. No Problem, Right? Wrong.

I warp the Raven in at range and am insta web'd and scram'd from like 65km away (man I want some Sleeper mods). Still no sweat. Warp the Harby in closer and start orbiting really fast and close (about 2000 km). Now my Raven is not full tanked because of the dual Target Painters but I am able to perma run the large Caldari Navy Shield Booster. Well the BS never changes targets. It completely ignores the Harby at close range. About 50% armor on the BS and the ravens shields are starting to struggle. I throw my 5 hammerhead II's hoping they become sacrifices to the Sleeper and will get some heat off the Raven. No Luck.

30% armor on the Sleeper and the Raven is now starting to take some armor damage between shield rep cycles. The Sleeper has given no thought to switching targets. I align the Raven for the chance to get away and hope for just a second he decided to take a few shots at the drones.

Finally get the Sleeper into Hull and the Raven is taking more and more armor damage. Cap is also starting to feel the effects of the NOS and I am thinking I really might want to jettison the 20 melted nano's in my cargo for fear of losing that 100M in addition to my ship.

It becomes very apparent that this is going to be a very close race to see who dies first. I keep wishing for a target change as I have to start feathering the shield booster to try to keep cap above 15% and not completely drain it.

Closer and closer to cutting through the remainder of the Ravens armor and now testing the single digits of Cap, the Sleeper BS gets closer and closer it its end. Finally I get the death sentence of the Raven in the sweet female voice informing me "the capacitor is empty". A last volley of Cruise Missiles leaves the launchers, and the Harby sends a pulse of energy streaking across space, and mercifully the Sleeper BS explodes (how is that possible in a vacuum). I finally catch my breathe. Final analysis shows 87% structure left on the Raven and no capacitor. To make matters worse, I could not even salvage the wreck as both toons have Salvaging to IV and I did not have a dedicated salvager in pocket yet with salvage rigs on it.

All the risk, for a few blue tags.

Well thankfully our station has free repairs.

Mick

All Together Again

2010-06-06T14:34:00.000-04:00

After dissolving our WH ops, my three toons have all been scattered to the wind. Hundo first learning PVP and then trying a stent in a C6 Wh corp. Ian ran Cosmos missions and ran with some L4 PVE types, and Capt. just sat around doing some invention and a little mining.

Well I am finally happy to have them all back in one corp and headed out to null sec. In addition I am happy to hook up with Star Defender and other I have met during my time blogging.

While i am still getting the parts and pieces together to get all my stuff out to our pocket (null sec logistics do really suck), I am looking forward to being able to bring several toons to the game in the same area.

As part of this endeavor, we will be running WH's in a more nomadic fashion and I look forward to starting to look to solo C3's, as well as continue to fleet C5's.

Hope to be able to start posting a little more regularly, but might not be 100% WH content.

Mick

A View on PVP

2010-06-02T16:12:00.001-04:00

So here is my two cents on PVP based on High Sec War Decs, Low Sec Roams, Some Null and Some WH experience. I do not profess or hold myself out to be a good PVP'r. I can not rattle off ship names and classes, ecm races and types, and many other things. But I do think I have a feel for what PVP entails.

In addition I think I have the three main keys to starting into PVP.

1) A willingness to learn from others
2) A willingness to try
3) A willingness to die

With these three things as a basis I think anyone can learn and enjoy PVP.

To be clear, this is also almost entirely from a perspective of small to mid sized fleets (3-15 ships).

To start it might be easier to define what PVP is not. PVP is not an extension of PVE. It is not a progression from L1 to L4 to C5 anomalies. And most of all it is not Fair. The fact that they brought 8 guys when you brought 3 is not unfair, its smart.

I have seen many people who think they will rock at PVP because their Raven setup "kicks ass" on Level 4's. They are naive and ripe for failure. A fleet of 3-4 small ships properly fit and flown by good PVP'rs can easily take out that shiny Raven, leaving you wondering how you just lost your 300M isk setup that crushes L4's. I have seen Tengu's go down to fleets of ships worth less then 100M total.

PVP is a completely separate aspect of the game and as such requires different skills, both in game and real life, to be successful.

In my opinion there seems to be several "Steps" in learning and being comfortable at PVP, each with a different skill set and scope of knowledge.

Step 1 - T1 Frig - ISK involved $500k-$1M
Pick your race's best frig. Only requirement is at least 3 mids. Requires AB, Warp Scram, Web. Fit highs for best DPS, lows for cap stability and added DPS. NO EWAR. Learn to do 4 things in order. Orbit close and fast (ie get differential speed maxed), warp scram, web, fire. Congrats you are PVP'n now. Principle here is simplicity. You have a role in a fleet (tackler) and you are adding to the fleet's effectiveness. You will get over the jitters of PVP and risk very little. Just remember to always update your Clone after you die.

Step 2 - Cruiser Specialist - Isk Involved $10-20M
Now learn your race's cruisers. There are some awesome EWAR and Support cruisers as well as some decent DPS boats. Key here is to start to find some niche to fill. Blackbird/EWAR, Aurogor/Support etc. You now have to start to expand your skills and worry about others around you. You will have to start to understand primaries and secondaries, optimal ranges. You will have to learn to walk and chew gum. You will die, especially in a Blackbird. Just remember to always update your Clone after you die.

Step 3 - Battlecruiser - Isk Involved $40-50M
Now its time for some bigger toys. Legit DPS. FC'n and making tactical decisions (as a step the FC might be in a Frig for a Frig Swarm, but should probably be at this level of comfort to be able to make decisions about others.) Overall the skills here are understanding opponents, making decisions about primaries, understanding what the opposite side is using and how to counter. Also should really be able to deliver some serious DPS. At this point you might also start to be able to dabble in solo PVP.

Step 4 - BS, Tech 2, Tech 3 etc. Isk Involved - $50M to whatever you can afford to lose.
Here is where the specialization really starts. Falcons, Rooks, Curse, SB's, Zealots, Guardians. Here a role is well defined and you better know what you are doing. You have a task in the fleet, a job to do and people are depending on you with their ships to do it. DPS, EWAR, Support, HIC, Bubbler. The roles must be balanced by a competent FC as it is very easy to have 1B isk plus in play. Here is where enemy knowledge and fleet setup have as much if not more to do with the success of an encounter then individual skills.

I feel I am at the very early stages of Step 3. But no matter where you feel you are, with an open attitude, willingness to try, and willingness to die you can progress.

It is also more fun then watching the paint dry inside the station while a single Red Zealot come looking for you and your corp mates.

Mick Flaherty

Something Old, Something New

2010-05-07T09:46:00.001-04:00

Something Borrowed, Something Blue.

No I was not a Bride in a wedding, but it was an interesting week that included alot of old and new experiences.

First, Something Old.

This week showed again why "hunting" in W-Space is so awesome. In our genreal activities of finding something to do (read collapsing WH's and scanning) we came accross a few active people in a mining op. There were two miners and a couple of POS's in system and several cans out. A welcoming party was quickly assembled and a quick scan of the POS's showed an Orca. With the number of cans jetted it appeared they were going to haul with the Orca. Needless to say a great op that had people salavating. In any other space other then W-Space this type of op would have been pointless as it would have been impossible to maintain any eliment of surprise. But in W-Space we were able to get several cloaky things into the system, have eyes on all targets, and POS's and execute a textbook ambush of the Orca and two miners. No "Local Spike", no free intel, great use of skills and ships the way they were designed.

Few days later, we managed to find a Drake sitting on a hole outside a system we had been playing some games of "chase" with some fellow probers. First thought of course was "bait drake". A small fleet assembled and we were again able to deploy cloaky ships to assess the situation and even get to the point of flying through the hole he was sitting on to asses the other side. If this was bait, then there seemed to be no hook. End result is we were able to get the Drake to jump both ways through the wormhole and get his 4 minute session timer activated. No help arrived and Drake went down quietly. In the end, the Drake pilot again had no idea the number of cloaky things hunting him, where in low or null he would have recieved the "free" information on our numbers in system at all times and been able to probably better assess the situation at hand.

So glad there is no local in W-Space. It truely enables small fleet ops to be highly effective versus needing the "blobs" of low and null sec.

Now for Somethng New.

Finally got my Legion. Ship looks so sweet. Can not wait to kill some sleepers in it.

Also, finally got to participate in my first attack on a POS. Very interesting experience that gave me a whole new respect for POS setups and defenses. All I can say is that Module balance and placement really do matter.

So far I am impressed with the huge difference between C2 and C6 life. I look forward to getting a couple of other key skills trained in next month that will continue to enable me to do more and more in this environment.

Mick

The More Things Change .....

2010-04-27T08:22:00.001-04:00

The more they stay the same.

In this post I just wanted to take a second to note some very distinct similarities I have experienced so far moving to a C6 from our old C2.

By far the biggest is the shear amount of scanning needed to accomplish anything. In our C2 almost all of that scanning fell on two or maybe 3 people. Guess what, in a C6 with several hundred people in the system, the scanning still falls on 3-5 people per TZ. Keeping in mind that we really only ran a single TZ operation in our C2, and our C6 is more active. The key here is probing really is one thing that has a "real" skill to it. By that I mean you can train all the skills in game very high, but still suck at probing. Maybe its just more apparent as I guess you can train all the ECM skills and still suck at that too, its just not as obvious.

The second very obvious similarity is the "feast or famine" of W-Space life. It is the same here in the C6 as it was in the C2. Connections are fluid, situations are fluid and therefore life is very uncertain. We can have a series of connections result with good sites, be left alone and be busy every night (and make an insane amount of isk/hr), or we can have a series of active systems, run down systems, or simply keep getting interrupted in our ops and end up spending a lot of time watching the paint dry on the side of the POS.

The last thing, and the best in my opinion, is the "fog of war". I LOVE the fact there is no local channel that gives an overwhelming, and unreal, amount of information away for free. I love flying around systems truly unknown. The ability to control the knowledge of your presence is amazing.

Case in point, I was returning up a pipe from a high sec route we had scanned out and came upon a few friends that had slipped into one of the systems in some Battlecruisers. Now we had seen another prober on scan when we were scanning that system also. We knew there were two Null Sec holes in the system and were pretty sure that's where they had come from. Now if this was Null Sec, the BC's would have known in seconds they had company and been able to asses the risk by looking at my bio, my killboard stats, etc etc. All because I appeared in local.

Now in W-space, I knew they were there, but if I was lucky and he didn't hit the d-scan in the few seconds I was uncloaked, he had no idea I was there. Advantage to the cloaky thing. Now in quick order our corp had the ability to gain an advantage by using our tools to hopefully complete a successful operation.

Long story short and details omitted, we missed cause we guessed the wrong null sec hole (hey was a 50/50 guess), we had a third party from who knows where throw probes and flushed the prey early, and overall the BC's were seconds from getting blown to bits. We did manage to chase them back into Null and there we lost all real use of cloaky measures and element, because the damned Local let the prey know the entire time who was in system.

So overall, while things are much different, they are still very similar, from C1 to C6, W-Space offers some very unique environments, and for that I am thankful.

Mick

First Ops

2010-04-22T15:08:00.001-04:00

Well after a few nights of scanning systems and feeling like a total noob again, I added even more angst to discuss with my therapist next session (yeah doc, its a space based MMPOG, and I feel, yeah space based, and I feel, yeah kinda like WOW but way better, and anyway, what, oh eve-online.com, and I joined this new corp, sure I could send you an invite, what our hour is up? okay guess I'll see ya next week).

So lets start by saying that scanning skills are not the only thing I am "lacking". I already knew the ship of choice is T3 (and who doesn't prefer T3 in W-Space, duh), but I didn't expect the total BS disdain that greeted my undocking of the Abby. I guess the one (and most say only) use of an Abby is mass limiting an WH for closer by bigger ships.

Well begrudgingly they allowed me to come on the Ladar Clearing OP, but only because the WH's had not been effected yet by mass and no larger Ops were planned. So with excitement coursing through my veins (and maybe some fermented sugars) I fleeted up and headed to the rendezvous at the Wormhole. And in my excitement I yes......., wait for it ......., jumped on contact. Total, 100%, no excuses, pleb and noob move. To top matters off I then had to wait for a good 5 minutes on the wrong side of the hole and listen to endless banter on Vent about the pleb in the BS who couldn't follow basic WH procedure of largest ship through last.

Ha Ha Ha, no harm no foul. But wait it gets better. Now I don't know about the majority of Eve peeps, but I am an account junkie. I have 4 (though soon to be 3 as I combine accounts since my producer/trader toon is almost done he can "share" time with my Orca/Leadership pilot). Anyway, I tend to forget who can do what skill wise. Now I KNOW I have toons that can use T2 drones, and I THOUGHT my C6 WH Toon could. Well I was wrong. So imagine my shame finally showing up to the first site to be cleared (a good half hour after the T3 cruisers did, or at least it felt like half an hour)and attempting to throw my drones, only to get the message I don't have the skills to use Hobby II's. Fortunately, there were plenty of drones out and maybe no one noticed.

Well from there things settled down. The sites cleared quick (yes 3 T3's and Abby and Guardian make quick work of 2 Sleeper BS's), my gas mining skills are fine, and I am told I made a fair amount of Isk for 3 hours work.

So it is obvious I have gone from decent fish leading a small group in a small C2 pond, to a very small fish, with an oversized ship, in a very big pond (and unfortunately one who had a few first op jitters). Here's to hoping the next few go better.

Mick

I thought I knew how to live in W-Space

2010-04-20T18:53:00.001-04:00

Turns out I only knew how to get by.

So my first three "serious" nights in my new home have been eye-opening.

Lets just say I thought a lot more of my w-space skills before the weekend started, then after it ended. I do have to preface this by saying that my main toon is still a young pup at just over 11M SP. In addition I have never been around large fleet deployments. My 0.0 experience in a previous life consisted of chaining some belts and very limited mining, a few roams, and in the end a lot getting blown up and one 32 system jump back to high sec in a Rook.

So this weekend started with a call to arms to do some "evictions" in neighboring Class 6's. I only wish my RL, and Eve Skills, allowed me to fly the ships i saw gathering and participate and witness the stories I heard being told on vent.

So while the "big boys" were away playing with their "big boy toys", I was actually happy to get in some scanning time. I must say my skills were rusty as it took awhile to get back up to speed on how the whole scanning thing worked. In addition, the people who make a habit in living in Class 5 and 6 W-Space tend to be, how do you say, "a little more experienced" in making life hard on scanners. It didn't help that I was at the same time trying to learn how to best scan and use the corp tools for recording my findings (necessary to get compensated for my scanning efforts).

So after a few run ins with locals, an hilarious encounter with a Buzzard jumping into our guarded system (and back again really quickly), and several routes to high sec discovered and quickly utilized in both directions I felt good about myself. The feeling was short lived as I went to log out of the probing op and discovered that on average, the other 3 pilots had discovered about 4 times as many sigs in the same amount of time.

I quickly got one in Vent and started to pick his brain, only to discover these guys are using patterns on probes i would never have thought of, are getting signatures scanned down to 25% (and thus type) several at a time, and overall making my opinion of my overall probing skills fell severely inadequate (and there is no little blue enhancement pill for that).

So as i sit looking at my ships and skill set, I am for the first time in Eve feeling crazily meek, and hoping that even 1/10th of the knowledge and experience rubs off on me as I learn what W-Space living and thriving is all about.

Mick

p.s. For all of you in the blogs I have read fearing CCRES as you go about your daily W-Space life, just remember, we only seem to cover about 1% of W-Space a day. But remember, you aren't paranoid if people really are out to get you.

A "hole" new level to Eve

2010-04-19T15:16:00.000-04:00

I have played Eve combined between my two stents for almost 2 years now.

I have been in decent corps, run what I hope are decent corps, and been a part of awful corps (and hopefully not run any bad ones).

But I have to say, in my limited experience, I have never seen nor been a part of a corp like the one I am now. The level of organization, both in and out of game, is insane. And frankly it would have to be to run a corp with over 200 members out of W-Space.

From the mundane of logistics in just housing and moving stuff, to the complex of figuring out how to split the pie, this corp is like nothing I have seen.

I have been part of 0.0 in an alliance that resembled a major interstate, after a truckload of oil had been spilled, followed by a light rain, and topped off by several cars with no brakes, driven by blind teenagers, talking on cell phones, and texting.

I can't wait to participate farther in the corp and see what Class 6 life entails. But after finally getting to the Home system, getting my "hole" legs back, and contributing slightly, I am excited about the future with CCRES.

Mick

Preparing to depart

2010-04-08T11:12:00.001-04:00

Well I am now a member of Capital Contruction Research and am ready to depart for a Class 6 wormhole, well mentally ready.

Just a few small tasks to actually get ready. Needed to prep justa few things, like ships, rigs, mods, etc.

For the first time I dont have an Orca running stuff for me and will have multiple jumps to get into the C6. So the thought of trying to jump in rigged ships did not appeal to me. Overall, I need to get 4 ships in. A quick analysis showed a rigged Mammoth will haul all the hulls, rigs, and mods I need.

So I have spent the last two nights gathering stuff into Sobaseki, selling my rigged ships in Jita, and getting new hulls, rigs for the trip in.

The corp will be providing Gas Mining ships and I will be buying a PVE ship from a corp mate. So I need a PVP ship (Harby), scanning ship (amarr covert ops), Stealth Bomber (Purifier), and rock miner (Covetor). Overall it just fits inside the 27k m3 the Mammoth provides. Nice thing is that will also give me a small hauler to use also.

So all I need to do now is get the Mammoth packed, and wait for a high sec opening (and hope its clear of hostiles).

Well hopefully I will have some stories soon again of my Life In The Hole.

Mick

Headed Back to W-Space

2010-04-06T11:12:00.001-04:00

Well I am headed back to W-Space, well part of me is.

I have decided I have had enough of High Sec PvP and decided it is time to head back into W-Space. I always thought that when I did this I would lead a group into a Class 4 wormhole.

Well I decided to take a slightly different path.

I have joined a corp that runs a C6 with a static C6 and am taking just one toon in for now.

I hope to have some fun tails soon, but at this point all I have to report in my application has been accepted, pending my 24 hour wait to leave my current corp. From there I will have to wait for a High Sec route and then jump in my ships.

I am looking forward to getting back to W-Space life, and truth be told, I actually have missed scanning stuff down.

More to follow I hope.

Mick

Final Tally and Update

2010-03-18T08:33:00.000-04:00

For those of you keeping track at home, here is my final tally of almost 2 month or so in W-Space life. For the record we have completely liquadated the corp assets and rebought all shares.

Losses: Hulk & Rigged Mammoth in our First Hole
            Rigged Mammoth in our Main Hole
            Rigged Inty V in our Reaction Hole
            Several Scanning Alts scanning ships

Gains: Personal - Approx $1.5B isk
          Corporate - Investors put in $2B, Final Corp Distribution $2.8B

All told I think all members of our Corp pulled in about $3-5B in isk during our stay.

Now I can list my goals for he next few months as follows:
1) Get my trader (and his new wad of cash) CN standings to lower Broker Fees
2) Have some fun at PvP
3) Get a good high sec indy corp up and running

On item 1, my main PvE toon is finally running Level 3's for CN and now fleets my trader. Trader finally can at least salvage so he provides some benefit.

On item 2, my side project is proving to be a lot of fun and I am looking forward to more action soon.

On Item 3, no real push yet.

Thanks again for all the kind words people have shared and, pending the excitment on the planentary stuff panning out, do plan a return to W-Space sometime in the future.

Fly Safe,
Mick

Thanks Damark

2010-03-11T09:10:00.000-05:00

It was all over but the final hour of pulling down the Large Tower where we had been trying (mostly with limited success) our hand at Simple Reactions in a Classs 2 system with a high sec static.

So I log in and am immediately invited to a Private Conversation by Damark. In W-Space this is usually followed quickly by bad news.

Sure enough the converasation quickly confirms the following:

He is sitting somewhere within sight of the POS and sees me. I hate cloaky things.
He has intentions on "my" w-space
He has experience in W-Space

I quickly tell him I am leaving (even offer to sell him the tower) and want nothing other then to beat an exit to the soon collapsing wormole to high sec. He "assures" me that he will assist in safe passage out. A quick look at the corp info does show he is the CEO, so at least I can assume he does speak for the corp. Well he tells me I am gfood to start unanchoring and that he needs to run for a bit to eat.

So at this point I have few choices. Trust him and start unanchoring, or wait it out and assume he really does have the fire power to take down a Large POS with only two ECM left. I guess I could just wait and see if he is just bluffing, but I don't think he was bluffing.

Again, my assumption (much like K162space's) is that anything brought to W-Space is already lost. However, I usually don't look for ways to lose 350M. So I assumed he really was eating (and not gather troops to kill me) and he really was friendly.

Well about 15 minutes into the hour, the B274 collapsed. So much for plan A. I worried because this static has had a nasty habit of popping out onto high sec islands, surrounded by low sec, with no routes back to Jita. So started to scan down the new hole (been warp canceling to all the sigs so the hole is pretty bottomed out). Found the new exit, and flew through. Sweet, first good news of the night was the new exit was 4 jumps from my high sec base.

So as my scanning alt sat on the high sec side watching for visitors, I lined up the orca for the snatch and grab. I hoped Damark was a fan of very long dinners and he would maybe fall asleep after a big meal.

No such luck. With about 15 minutes left in the count down back came Damark on the chat. He kept it friendly and I even offered him the Deep Safe Spot i had created. He started to share his plans and a few stories. Seemed like a cool enough guy. I went ahead and mentioned my blog and lo and behold he is a reader. Confirms my belief that w-space regulars are a weird bunch that actaully enjoy reading about other peoples gaming expierence.

So as we discuss plans for the Class 2 Damark mentions that they are looking to use the Static Z Wormhole to Class 1 systems as a PvP training ground. Now that got my attention. So with 10 minutes left we had agreeded to a Non Aggress Pact, as well as potential to join them on PvP nights when the High Sec exit was in a good spot.

So in the end, the chance encounter ended way better then I could have hoped and even lead to what I hope becomes a potentially sweet launchpad for my PvP corp to learn some W-Space PvP tactics.

Oh and of course with 3 minutes left a scanning ship appeared on the high sec side of the wormhole and headed in. Figures, nothing goes as easily as planned. Funny thing was the scanner saw the POS on scan, without a force field mind you, and quickly decided the system was dangerous. Second lucky break of the night, as an experienced pirate would have quickly known what a POS and no associated force field (or any modules for that matter) probably meant.

So fly safe, and a shout out to a new W-Space friend in Damark.

Mick

So Long and Thanks for all The Fish

2010-03-10T15:28:00.001-05:00

Well with our W-space lives finally 100% concluded (at least for now), I wanted to bid this blog and my followers a fond farewell.

I don't want to blend my current exploites into this blog, as they have nothing to do with w-space.

For those of you wishing to continue to follow my eve experience, I have started a new blog dedictaed to my new corps exploites. Please feel free to visit me at Hey Koolaid.

Again, thanks to all those who have followed, and I look forward to the possibility of someday joining the ranks of the w-space faithful again.

Fly Safe,
Mick

And I thought sitting in an empty wormhole was boring

2010-03-08T13:23:00.000-05:00

So back in high sec and here is my to-do list.

Get Standings with main Fighting Character
Get Standings for main refiner (by fleeting with main fighter)
Form a High Sec Indy corp with possible POS for research (deligated)
Recruit for Indy corp
Recruit for PvP corp
Figure out a Passive income stream
Find a Class 4 WH with Static Class 4
Figure out just how much Isk I am going to need for upcoming expansion

So here I sat all weekend, trying desperately to increase my standings with the corp we settled on for our Indy side. So either I can fleet along with the other 3-4 guys doing level 4's (and getting about one mission done per hour and splitting it 4 ways) or I can "power" through Level 2's on my own. I choose the Level 2's since I can get 5-6 done in a hour just by powering through them in my Harbinger with 5 Hammerheads.

So I can honestly say I have now accomplished one other thing in Eve I never thought I would. Falling asleep at the keyboard while playing.

I have had several times where someone on a mining op fell asleep/passed out and thankfully the Corp had a POS in system to warp them to safely. But I never understood how that happens. Defiently never thought I would accomplish that task, especially in a mission. But do it I did. Friday night, watched a movie with the SO and decided to settle in to a few hours of killing frigs. About the 4th mission, warp in to a central pocket and unfortunetly this mission has timmed waves so there were several "gaps" in the mission. I think I fell asleep in the second wait time. All I know is I woke up about 25 minutes later, head slumped back in the chair and my dogs staring at me with their legs crossed. I expected to look at the screen and see a pod, but all I saw were enemy wrecks and 3 drones happily circling me (and yes I started with 5).

So I pulled the drones, set course for the Dock, let the dogs out and went to bed. Yes I even forgot to turn the mission in. Realised the next day when I went to get another mission that I still had one to turn in.

So in the end I have determined that there are things worse then sitting around in a W-Space system, with no anoms, your 2 statics, and crappy neighbors. Its power running low level missions.

Fly Safe,
Mick

Life is not fair, why should EVE be different

2010-03-05T10:44:00.000-05:00

It amazes me why people always expect stuff to be "fair" and even further what their views of "fair" are.

Now I know I have views of things that are "wrong" with the game, like the freaking exit from Jita 4-4 (I mean who doesn't love to play bumper ships in Inty V's with people trying to scan your cargo, and why is scanning someones cargo not an aggressive act). But overall I don't complain about the mechanics of the game very often. I don't LIKE suicide gankers at gates, I don't LIKE the imbalance of indy ships being able to be ganked by destroyers that can be fully insured to amount to zero loss for the gankers. But I don't think these things are "unfair".

So again the other night we are flying in a small frig fleet looking for trouble. We are all in seperate areas of the same system trying to get a fight (okay trying to piss people off enough to shoot us), when a pilot in a Harpy decides for whatever reason to mess with us. Usually a T2 frig is not a fight we would look to take on, but we were bored and there were three of us. Well he decides to flip one of our cans in front of a station and draws aggro for our whole corp. We promtly decide that yes this is a fight we are willing to take on.

We wait a few minutes for him to resume ratting from belt to belt and launch our attack. We quickly get a point on him and soon enough have him in armor. The first request in local is 5M to stop. Nah. Second is 10M. Nah. We finish the job. Then the onslaught in local begins about how 3 v 1 is not "Fair" and we "cheated" and this game is not "fair". Really? How so? Oh he EXPECTED a 1v1 battle with a Punisher. A quick scan of local would have showed him he should have EXPECTED a 3 v 1. He did not ask in local for a 1 v1. He did not seek to clarify the rules of engagement. Not that we would have taken a 1 v 1 fight (please a t2 frig v t1, that is not even).

In the end, his lack of looking at the situation, not scanning local for the number of people he was about to aggro and not negoiating the rules of engagement before hand all fell back on him, but we were the ones that were "not fair" and he was simply a victim. Please.

Mick

How old is old enough to know ...

2010-03-04T19:02:00.002-05:00

With almost 2 years of game play there are things I know, and things I don’t about Eve. I would like to think that I know a lot about the game. In three short days experiencing frig based PvP, I have learned that there are people out there who don’t know much about the game and beg the question, “How old is old enough to know …”.

My first question for the day, “How old is old enough to know not to Jet Can Mine?”

I know I learned the hard way a whooping two weeks into my first stent in the game that Jet Can mining in a busy system is not a good idea. Even worse is fighting a guy who obviously wants you to fight him. This lesson cost me an Osprey and, at the time, a lot of work to fill that can. I joined a noob mining corp and saw several of them learn this lesson quickly. Quickly we learned the proper way to mine with several ships and haulers. Throw the ore quickly and scoop it completely. Sure we still used Jet Cans with bookmarks in them, but we didn’t leave full cans around. And we were all under 2 months old and learned this lesson.

So fast forward to my first night of frig based PvP. As I learned the ropes in my Punisher with another Punisher and Rifter along teaching me, I was amazed to stumble upon a mining op in high sec with 3 ships all with Jet Cans out. A quick check of the toons showed all were over 6 months old, and part of an 80 person indy corp. No haulers in site. I gladly accepted my target and promptly flipped his half filled can. I assume this was not the first time this had happened and expected no response other then a few shouts in local. But nothing, no response at all. Within a minute though the hauler came swooping in and to my amazement, scoped a can right in front of us. I mean really, three red frigs on your overview, a message you are about to steal, and I would hope a warning from your corp mates and he still steals the ore? Oh well, 1 dead Badger.

Well then the fun starts. The Osprey decides he is going to help and quickly draws aggression. Bye Bye Osprey.

The belt quickly empties as the other two miners must have decided they had seen enough. A few shouts in local regarding our manhood, challenging our bravery and providing a few choice suggestions about what we can do with ourselves in our spare time ensue.

This brings me to question number two, “How old is old enough to know how to properly fit a ship for a fight?”.

I ask this cause after my two trainers flew off to look for more adventures, I hung around waiting for the aggression to wear off and see if our fun there was really done. Sure enough back comes the Osprey pilot in his Drake. Now my first instinct in a Punisher when seeing a Drake was “Oh Crap”, but my trainers talked me down.

“Get Transverse on him”, like I knew what the hell that meant, oh yeah that means orbit him fast. Okay, orbit at 2k. check. Afterburner on. check.

“Point him”, okay that one I knew.

“Watch for drones”, really drones? Not the 7 Caldari Navy Heavies flying at me every 6 seconds? Oh yeah, I’m a frig, those things can’t hurt me. But Hammerhead II’s will rip me a new one (funny being on the other side of that fight).

So I point the Drake, orbit and start using my pulse lasers to do absolutely nothing to him.

Soon enough my trainers are back by my side and together we eventually crack his tank and I succeed at getting my first rage-log.

In looking over his setup, it was great, for killing cruisers and other battle cruisers. But he knew he was coming out to fight frigs, and he left his most important weapon, drones, at home. Again we faced an 8 month old toon, capable of fitting out a t2 setup Drake, but not knowing enough to fit it properly for the fight at hand. A toon in an 80 person, established, indy corp. The best was he really thought, as demonstrated by his chat in local, he was in for a simple kill of three frigs, and yet he had no hope of ever doing any damage to us. Sure against one of us it is a stalemate, as we could not hope to crack his tank. But in the fight he knew he would get when he undocked, he was already dead.

Should I feel sorry for him? Only in the sense that he has played the game for that long, in an established corp, and not learned some basic principals of the game.

I learned a valuable lesson too. Carebear tears really are sweet.

Mick

Why W-Space

2010-03-04T12:18:00.000-05:00

I thought the answer to manasi's comment deserved a seperate post.

So why W-Space.

For me initially it was the increased Isk that coul dbe made mining the ABC roids. Up to that point all my efforts had been to maximize my ability to generate Isk in an Orca based fleet in high sec. I accomplished this and was even able to fly my own Orca (though not with all the booster skills).

At first I was attracted to the new scanning skills. It was one area where true "skill" outside the game could be used. A young toon with minimal in game skills but a good understanding of the 3-D nature of scanning could hold there own.

First trips into W-Space were for the "thrill" of mining in a 0.0 envirnment and being able to "control" my environment with wormhole management.

Then added to that the Sleepers that actually fought with better AI, switched targets, targeted drones, etc.

In the end what attracted me most was the "unknown" of W-Space. The not knowing what the day and new hole would bring. Might be fighting anoms, might be a neighbor linked to a Class 5 and high end Ladar. Might be an unwanted active neighbor and potential hostile visitors. Overall, that is why I was drawn to W-Space. What kept me in W-Space was the increased ability to generate Isk with young toons. Ultimetly that is what has also lead to our departure as the overall ability to generate income has severly diminished in Class 2 systems.

What will eventually lead me back to W-Space is the unknown of what the day will bring. Also I can say it is also the small, closer knit nature of W-Space. A small corp of 5 dedicated players can make a very good living in W-Space, but larger groups are not at that much of an advantage in W-space as mass limits, time limits and other factors inhibit the effectiveness of large corps to muster large roaming forces in lower Class 2 systems.

So I guess its the fact that any day could bring Mining, Gas Harvesting, PVE or PVP (wanted and unwanted) that continues to draw me to W-Space. The logistics and hassle and potential for boredom are what keeps me away. For now the Class 2 with a Class 2 static does not tip the scale in W-Space's favor, I will someday find out if a Class 4 with a Class 4 static will.

Fly Safe,
Mick

And now for something completey different

2010-03-03T14:32:00.000-05:00

Well the pull out of W-space is complete (except for the corpie that has not logged on for a week, wow is he in for a surprise, and yes i left a scanner in system to lead him out), the Red Frog contracts have our stuff back to our high sec base and well it was time to figure out something new.

So I know that the one glaring hole in my resume for w-spave is PVP stuff, so I moved to a small Frig based PVP corp for a stent in high sec/low sec pvp.

I have to say this is a completely different world. Flying around in a punisher looking for a fight is way different then shooting roids and scanning sigs.

So far I have my first two kills and have to say I am aching for more.

The goals of this stent are simple. To work my way up to stealth bombers and other ships used for PVP in w-space, all in preperation for a return to w-space in a Class 4 with a Static Class 4.

Fly safe, or cheap
Mick

What's Next ......

2010-03-01T08:39:00.000-05:00

Well the plug has been pulled.

The Lights are Off.

The Fat Lady has Sung.

Its all over but the shouting (or in our case the two Red Frog Courier Contracts).

Enough cliches.

Our decision made, we have pulled our Large POS out of w-space and are calling an end to our "permenant" occupation of w-space.

The reasons? There are many but it all boiled down to isk. There simply was not enough advantage over simply mining scordite and running L4 missions to justify staying in w-space.

So we will add w-space stuff to our list of things to do, but not 100% for awhile.

The long term goal still remains a Class 4 with a Static Class 4, but we will need several more experienced w-space people to tackle that. And I am not sure that won't also end the same way with a limited ROI.

I agree it might be a lifestyle choice to stay in W-space, and maybe for some corps it is. But unfortunety at this time it is about the isk for this young corp.

So long w-space, for now.

Fly Safe,
Mick

The Down Side of W-Space Living ... Boredom

2010-02-25T08:26:00.001-05:00

Well I got someone yesterday asked why I have not posted in a week. Simple answer, nothing has happened worth reporting.

We are back in our home system and the second day back we had a K162 open and someone cleaned us out. All Sigs and all Anomolies. We have had 2 (or 3 with an inbound K162) sigs for almost 4 days now. This is unusual for a Class 2, as we are used to seeing a spawn rate of 1-2 Sigs per day.

To add insult to injury, our neighbors through the static D382 have been either as bad as our own, or actively being run. We have not found in the last 10 neighbors anything worthwhile. Last night was the biggest tease. Found the D382, warped through, found a POS but nobody home. Scanned down the 15 sigs and found 5 grav sites. Took about 30-45 minuites and when I warped back to the wormhole to take a short break and watch some TV with the SO, the hole had switched over to "End of Life". So that really limited what I could hope to do as I did not feel like tempting fate for more then an hour. So yet another limited night.

To top this current situation off, Min prices continue to fall and the isk available versus just high sec mining continuies to fall.

This really brings me to a decsion point on what I want to do.

1) Hang tight. Burn $8M isk a day in fuel and hope the simple reaction I am running offsets the fuel costs.

2) Import another Simple Reaction and rely on that to offset costs of fuel and wait for grav sites to appear again.

3) Pull out and reconsider W-Space all together

4) Pull out and go nomad and just rely on medium POS setup and chase class 1-3 systems for Grav sites alone

5) Pull out and move to a Class 4. Would not be able to run the combat stuff solo, but the main point of W-Space for us has always been Mining. I am fairly certain within a week or so I could find a Class 4 with static class 4.

6) Pull out and move to null sec. With the overwhelming need for indy types in Null sec this might be a tempting offer.

Anyway, random ramblings, but bottom line is I hate to sit here thinking of the fuel burning through the POS and nothing to do in our w-space home. It does suck.

Mick

Out, In and Wormhole Managament

2010-02-17T14:25:00.001-05:00

Good news is we have finally completed the move out of the vacation mining system and have started to get back into our main hole.

Bad news is the main hole has had a rash of small holes (R934?) coming in from k-space. It has been like 1 a day for last 3 days. I don't think I have seen 3 in entire 2 months I have been in a class 2 and now 3 straight days. Just checked evemaps from work and yet another jump today. This is getting unreal. To top it off one of the jumpers obviously visited my Grav sites as all 5 despawned last night (I returned the favor to 2 in my neighboring D382).

The problem of incoming jumps is that they tend to either touch stuff or open doors and leave them open, which compounds the issue of wormhole control. There is no middle ground, you are either closed in right (or should be) or you are wide open. And once you are open for business I haave seen now you can be open for days as people leave doors open. I don't know how someone can live effectively in W-space without the ability to mass close Wormholes. The traffic must be insane.

Mick

A Ganking, A Move Interupted and The Issue with High Sec Statics

2010-02-12T10:24:00.001-05:00

Well, what an interesting day.

Logged off after a little multitask Mining while doing some work in the morning with just a little bit of mining left to do to complete our "Vacation" stay. Not a bit too soon. I am so sick of mining it is not funny. I do not see how people choose to do this as a career. A night of it is okay. Eight straight nights of it gets sick.

Anyway, on the the rants.

I log on in the evening with an extended play time window and look forward to running ore out through 3-4 static B274 holes and get the process of leaving well under way.   Why is it everytime I am sure what I am going to do when I log on to EVE, I am never right.

As I am logging on, I check Evemaps to see whats going on with the hole. Crap, spike in jumps, npc kills, and damn, a ship kill and pod kill. That can't be good. Sure enough 15 seconds later I am bombarded with messages in chat, we had a miner ganked and podded in a covetor (thankfully it wasn't a hulk). The fact he got podded too suggests either panic or a little AFK-ness. Both of which are normal for W-space mining in long stretches by people not used to the nature of w-space.

I am impressed though that the Corp was actually scanning down sigs to find the K162 and not waiting around. So we find the K162 and its from a Class 6. Great. So i pop in my scanning boat and wish I had the old "Hat on a Stick" to test the waters first. But a quick scan shows no POS and no ships. Get the Orca out and 15 minutes later the hole is closed.

By this time the corp has found the B static and we are starting to move stuff out. Well about halfway through the first Static B mass wise, we get a Manticore popping into the system (thankfully the lookout was on his toes here). Guy had been involved in the ganking and decided to make a Jita run I guess. Well sorry dude, no way home this way now. He stated in convo that we're "safe" from him and he was going to head back to Jita.   Good thing I was not born last night. Hour later he was still popping randomly into the high sec system. Guess the chance at an Orca kill warranted sticking around.

Well, finally he logs and I feel at least gutsy enough to warp the Orca (yes it obviously got caught on High Sec side), to the wormhole. Sure enough the reason I hate High Sec Statics was sitting there staring back at me. A Raven, Domi, Drake and Alton. Quick fly around by my toon still in the hole shows two Imicus (are they Imici in groups) scanning down the system. Great. They could sit there forever on the high sec side without a fear in the world while they decide if the want to run the anoms or work the system at all. In the mean time I cannot do crap as a sure as hell am not jumping the Orca back through with them sitting there.

So i log for the night hoping that 1) that was not the first wave of a POS busting party and 2) that they leave the hole open so I can sneak the Orca back in before it times out.

This all reinforced 4 lessons of W-Space living for me..

1) Mining in W-space is very dangerous. You will eventually die when a higher class wormhole opens and the people that really know how to pew pew get to you. Or that they will simply open your static to k-space and the people there who like to pew pew will find you. LEsson is eventually someone with skills and bad intentions is going to find you, and you don't have local as your friend.

2) Trust no one. Despite "assurances", this manticore pilot was more then willing to sit and wait for me despite the assurance I was free to go back about my business. Either a lot of people are very trustworthy or gullible. I tend to be neither when dealing with my $600M isk ship. I know you are not supposed to fly what you can't afford to lose, but you aren't supposed to be jack ass stupid with your stuff either.

3) People have way too much time on their hands. To sit at a wormhole for 2 hours for the chance to pop an Orca? How is that fun? I guess being "stuck" till his corp found him a new route home, he had nothing better to do? But then to sit in a Raven, Drake and Domi outside a hole for 35-45 minutes, that takes either a lot of game time available, or a sheer desire to do nothing. Maybe they were watching the Season Premier of Survivor at the same time.

4) High Sec Statics suck balls. One, they are going to be found. There is like no chance a K162 in high sec is not going to be found in the 24 hour life of the hole. You can only hope its found by a little old lady who just likes to scan all day and is only going to fly around in a Zeypher and attempt to communicate with the Sleepers.  Higher class wormholes are going to open them when they find them, cause they need to get stuff to market and hate low sec like the rest of us too. And people can congregate at the high sec side and there is not a damn thing you can do about it. I am more determined then ever to minimize my time and assets I ever dedicate to a W-Space system with a High Sec Static.

So worst case at this point is that our Manticore "friend" has friends who love to bust POS's and we are in for a major loss.

A little better is the chance I will have to cool the hole for a day or two to make sure the baddies are gone and then fly the Orca over half of empire to the new hole.

Best case is they are gone and they left the hole open and I can slip the Orca in before it closes.

Hmm, I guess the worst is really that I think they have gone, warp the Orca in, Get ganked, and then the destroy the POS. Maybe they can even get my Mother to come and say "she told me so" to add further insult to ever feeling safe with a High Sec Static.

Fly Safe,
Mick

All Good Things Must Come To An End

2010-02-11T15:01:00.001-05:00

Well after a little time today pecking away at the annoying Average grav site, we have it down to 10 small Crok roids that should be done tonight.

So by all intentions our time in the hole is done. So I send out this notice that if anyone is interested in a W-space Class 2 system with a lot of Anomolies, Ladar, Mag and Radar sites, please contact me in game in the "Life In The Hole" channel and we could work out something out.

Fly Safe,
Mick

The State of Eve - Mining

2010-02-09T09:25:00.002-05:00

As I sat last night and looked at the "Ore Value Chart" it became clear that something is wrong with the state of mining in Eve. Falling Zydrine and Megacyte prices, rising Pyerite and Trit prices, and the world of mining is becoming unbalanced.

Now before I begin, let me state that I LOVE the market driven aspect of EVE. I mean I LOVE it. It is one of the greatest features that the game does not artificially set prices, but relies on supply and demand. I think the Jita market is awesome.

In a "perfect" world, the amount you can make should be somewhat proportional to the risk you are willing to take. Unfortunetly, this is no longer the case with mining. There exists a situation where, if trends continue, the best way to make Isk as a miner will be to get into an Orca boosted fleet and pound the mins found in .9 and 1.0 systems. With a good booster, you can warp into a belt, hit the whole belt with out moving and off load the mins into the Corp Hanger of the Orca. Yawn, what fun. And gee won't that make the game fun for noobs when locust fleets strip every belt and a poor guy starting ina Bantam wont even be able to find a belt (or be stuck mining Pyrox).

Low sec mining has completly become a losing endevour. Increased risk and all Low Sec ores are worth less then Scordite.

Null Sec/W-Space still allows for a greater profit, albiet at a greatly increased cost and risk. Factor in the 75% refining, or a sick amount of time to get the ore refined in High Sec and the profit differential starts to decrease.

I have not run the numbers, but right now I estimate that we are running at under $190isk.m3 on the high end ores being refined in W-Space. Right now Massive Scordite is getting about $110isk/m3.

Revisiting my Orca Boosted Hulk v Covetor W-Space, and the number get even tighter. Orca Boosted Hulk pulls about 1400 per laser every 150 seconds for 1680m3/min. Covetor is pulling around 1150m3/min. So the Covetor in W-Space is pulling just $20k more per minute then a almost perfectly safe Scordite miner in a fairly good Orca Boosted fleet. Starts getting hard to justify the extra risk and the $240M per month fuel bill for a measly Million Isk per hour more.

Solutions?

1) Go old school with a true "Mining Director" in a BC. Less skills required to get a person into this role then an Orca. Really in W-space the only link that matters is cycle time. We are a few weeks away from this solution. Now you sacrifice alot less to get the boost. Now we have to take a Hulk/Covetor pilot out of commission to get the Orca running, and in W-Space we are not hauling with the Orca very much anyway (and we sure are not leaving it parked in the belt).

2) Add risk and use Hulks. With Hulk prices pushing $200M this is not a great solution. The ROI is about 30 hours and while we have been lucky in the loss column, we do not want to continue to push our luck here. Not a great solution.

3) Get a crap load more miners into corp. This would justify getting the Orca out more, but with solution 1 available why? Downside here is what do all these miners do when there are no Grav sites? I'll tell you what they do, they whine, get bored, and leave.

So yes, mining in Eve is becoming a very unbalanced system Good thing I am not in W-Space just for mining. I want to run the anoms, I don't mind mining gas, cracking radar and mags sites is pretty low payoff in Class 2, but I don't mind it, and I look forward to starting to add some PVP to our agenda. Bottom line is that I am in W-space for the variety, not the mining. Our corporates goal is to grow and become big enough and good enough to live in Class 4 W-Space.

I guess the point here is a simple warning to people looking to W-Space for quick mining profits. Be very careful, it may be a mirage. And if Zydrine and Megacyte prices don't stabilize, or Pyrite and Trit start to fall, soon W-Space mining might really lose its luster.

Fly Safe,
Mick

Our "Vacation" Coming to an End?

2010-02-08T16:24:00.001-05:00

Well we knew it couldn't last forever, but it is still sad to see the Grav sites ticking off the list.

We started with 8 and assumed we would be in our vacation system for about a week to 10 days.

We have had 3 new belts spawn, but most of what is left are the "ordinary" sites, which are a lazy mans (and haulers) dream as all 5 of the high end roids can be hit from a single spot. The problem is they are all on the smaller side (5k Ark, 10k Bist, 15k Crok, 10k Dark O, and 10k Gneiss).

So with 3 of those left and an Average (really spread out belt with 2k Crok roids), it looks like we might be out of the vacation spot by the end of the week.

Good news is our main home has spawned at least 3 grav sites while we have been away.

All told we have over 4M m3 in ore right now in the XL assembly array (enough for over 6 static runs through the B274 hole). We also have welcomed a few new recruits and are actually mustering some decent sized mining parties.

So if anyone is interested in a hole with a crap load of anomolies and some mag and radar sites let me know. We would be happy to leave the keys under the mat for you (as we do not plan on running the combat sites).

Fly Safe,
Mick

Who Left the Door Open?

2010-02-05T08:46:00.001-05:00

Unfortunetly, I did.

With our main crew in our new mining home and the main home sitting dormant (having run all the reaction material on hand), I decided to make a run to our main wormhole with as much reaction material as I could easily carry.

I online one of the three scanning alts holding down the fort in our main system, find the A239 Static pop out 26 jumps from Jita (I am learning that Low Sec holes seldom come out near Jita). So I loaded up the truck and moved about 86 hours worth of simple reaction materials the 26 jumps and off loaded the materials in the reaction hanger.

Get the hauler back to Sobaseki, while I switch over to the mains to mine some more ABC's.

Well I logged on last night to this.

Jumps

NPC Kills

Yes kids, that the problem leaving the door open.

The number of NPC Kills clearly shows a mass running of anoms or mag/radar sites.

The concern is the jumps and possibility our Grav sites got hit.

So much for resting our main hole.

Good news is that the our mining hole spawned a new Grav site and we are barely half way through the initial 8. So our initial 7 to 10 day time frame may have been a bit aggressive. Add in the desire to at least hit some of the Ladar sites "for the corp" and we may be gone a bit longer the expected.

As I sign off now, the Large POS is churning away on it 86 hours of simple reaction, we are opening our 5th grav site in our vacation hole, and I have yet another lesson in wormhole management (not that I didn't know leaving K162's active will lead to this).

Fly Safe,

Mick

How to Close a Wormhole, especially 2Bkg ones

2010-02-02T13:14:00.001-05:00

Given that I now have closed probably over 100 wormholes, and almost all have been of the 2Bkg variety (specificially B274, A239 and especially D382), I would like to try to provide a somewhat step by step guide.

First and foremost, we all know the dangers. If you don't feel free to read this this adventure or this one in closing wormholes gone wrong.

So the basics.

For a 2Bkg wormhole, the true mass allocation will be roughly 1.8Bkg to 2.2Bkg. I have pretty well seen both of these extremes. The first "mass tick" from "Has not had" to "Has Had" on the show info appears to be right at 50%. The last "tick" from "Had Had" to "Critical", I am still not sure of. Until a recent experience with a 3Bkg hole, I thought for sure it was 5%. But when my Orca (250Mkg) failed to close a critical 3Bkg hole that had just been made critical by a retreiver (20Mkg), I have had to rethink this number. So for best guess this number is between 5% and 10%. I would hate to think that CCP has also added variability to thios number as well. For what I do, I have always assumed it is 5% to be safe.

In general.

In general, to close a hole you want to get a big ass ship on the "away" side with the total mass used as close to but not over (The Prices is Right) the Minimum Mass Allocation. This ship should be at least 10% of the Maximum Mass Allocation of the hole. Then simply drive small ships, with twice their mass under 5% of the Minimum Mass Allocation, through and back ONE AT A TIME until the hole is critical. Then return teh big ass ship to the "Home" side and hole shold close.

What you need for a 2Bkg Wormhole Closing:

1 big ass ship. Need mass of at least 220Mkg. Orca works great, but so will Battleships with armor plates, 100mn AB, or 100mn MWD.
Medium Sized ships of any size
Multiple small ships. Key here is two passes must not close hole if it is not yet critical. So I have always been very safe and assumed 5% of the 1.8Bkg "smallest hole possible" and gotten 90Mkg. So a 45Mkg ship would be perfect. The Hulk and Covetor at 40Mkg do very nicely.

Specifics for a 2Bkg wormhole.

If you know you just opened it and you have all the mass allowed then start with big ship passes and try to get the mass to right at .8Bkg. The key here is you want to see the mass tick over when a smaller ship passes. This will allow you to confirm the hole has not been used.

I do this with 2 Orca passes (away and back home) and two Abby passes (away and back home). Mass used 706Mkg.

I now pass the Abby back through to Away side. Mass used 809Mkg. And then back through. Mass 912Mkg. If the mass ticks here I know I have either a small massed hole or someone has used it.

So based on that I pass the Orca through and back. Total mass 1309Mkg.

At this point, I swap the Abby for a Hulk/Covetor.

Wait 4 minutes, and jump the Orca back through to the away side. Mass 1559Mkg.

If the Critical message is 10% then the hole will show critical at 1.62 to 1.98Bkg.

At this point I call every Hulk and Covetor available (and retriever and hauler for that matter) to the wormhole and ONE AT A TIME have them move "Away and Back" until the mass ticks over to Critical. Could take as little as one pass, or as many as 5 or more. Once everyone is on the "home" side the Orca returns and closes the hole.

Thats the "quicker" way. If you have more big ships the feel free to eliminate the 4 minute wait times that are in my system. Mine is based on using the three accounts I have.

Also I can not imagine trying to close a wormhole solo. To variable and would be very difficult.

Once we, have two orcas and two pilots and multiple BS's also, I might tweak the process. But for now I am pretty certain on the method and the only time it takes long is the very big holes where multiple small ship passes are needed and I am the only one on. Usually we can marshal 4-5 small ships and that defiently makes it go faster.

Note: For high sec Orca runs, I use solely the Orca and as long as the mass ticks at 4th and 7th pass, I am confident the hole will close. If mass does not go critical on 7th pass, then a few Hulk passes will usually do the trick.

Hope this helps.

Fly Safe,
Mick

tl:dr
1) get big ship on away side with mass just under 90% total allowed mass
2) repeatedly fly small ships (2 x Mass < 5% Wormhole mass) one at a time away and back till mass goes critical
3) fly back big ship

Settling in to a New Routine

2010-02-02T09:41:00.002-05:00

For the first time we are strictly concerned with our own w-space system. This has drasticially changed our daily routine.

Now instead of being ready for whatever presents itself, we are 100% in mining mode. We have the luxury of knowing what we are going to be doing every day.

As Pinky always asked Brain "Whats we gonna do today?", the answer now is empahitcally "Same thing we do every night, mine the crap outta ABC roids".

So a few new additions. We have our first XL Ship Assembly Array. The 18M m3 of storage is insane. Good thing too, because the first 36 hours in our new home we pulled in almost 2M m3 of ABC. Not bad for a small 3 person corp.

So overall this seems just what the doctor ordered for us.

A wealth of ABC,
a static high sec to refine it at 100%,
a static high sec to allow us to get some new recruits quickly seeing the best of low class w-space living,
and did I mention a crap load of ABC roids.

So the new routine at night is to open/close the static high sec B274 and get 4 orca loads of ore out to be refined. Last night repeated this twice. Took a little over 1 hour (the first system did not have a station). The logic here is the orca is a perfect 250Mkg so as long as the wormhole ticks over to "has had" on the mass on the 4th pass, and to "critical" on 7th pass its a real easy task to close the hole. If not, then we run a few hulks/covetors out after the 7th pass to critical the hole before flying the Orca back through.

After that the task all mining. At this point we have cleared 1 of the 8 sites of the ABC, D & G ores. We are working through two sites now. The Isolated site, with its annoying electric cloud, is being mined by the two hulks we have in system (forgot one in the move), while the annoying spread out Average site we are hitting with Covetors and Retreivers. It is our goal to clear a site a day atleast. On the last night we plan of mass running the 16 Ladar sites for the corp. After reading Star Defender's post on reactions, I am not sure if we will just sell the gas or react it. Might just sell to avoind the task of trying to get it back into our main system.

So here is to wishing for a continued quiet week of mining and running ore to refineries.

Fly Safe,
Mick

p.s. Was very nice to log into our main system and get the "not yet loaded" message.

A Sudden Change of Scenery

2010-01-31T16:25:00.001-05:00

Never know whats in store when you log onto Eve.

After a very stressful day where our wormhole was doing its best impression of Grand Central Station, with 3 outbound and 2 inbound wormholes active, I was excited to log on for a quiet night of some home space mining. So much for the best intentions.

Warped to our open grav site and we had already hit the good stuff and okay stuff, so i decided to open the static D. Well damn if it wasn't what we had been waiting for. An empty system with 37 sigs. So i jumped in and started scanning for a grav site. Found one quick, got one hulk mining and proceded to scan down the rest of the system. Figured I would bomb out and learn it was a class 5 and null static or something else that would prevent a move to a "vacation property". Well got the 4 outbound holes scanned down and they were B274, Z647, N062, and D382. Best guess was this was a BZ static combo. Not good for permenant home, but damn fine for a vacation site.

All told there were 15 ladar, 8 grav, 3 mag, and 6 radar, and 5 unknown (including the K162 i created).

So figure I need to make sure of at least the B274 static so I close the hole and yes its a static. Go for vacation home.

So figures its a night I am on solo, so I start the setup of the Medium POS, while at the same time closing the D382 and N062 holes. Got the D382 closed, but left the N062 just critical (first attempt at a 3Bkg hole, well except for that one drunk night in college, and really she wasn't that big).

So finally at about 2 hours past my intended play time I had the Medium online with 1 Corp hanger up, the hole as secure as possible, and a few ships in system, along with about 4 rambling corp emails notifying people what to do.

We are excited at the chance to mine to our hearts content and even more so at the opportunity to refine in k-space at 100%. Here's to hoping for a safe week of cruching ABC ores.

Fly Safe,
Mick

P.S. on the recruitment front we have added 2 peeps and are still looking for a few more. In game channel "Life in the Hole"

Support the Armadillo Module

2010-01-29T20:25:00.002-05:00

Come to Assembly Hall and supoort the creation of the "Armadillo" super damage control module for industrial ships.

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1260042

Thanks,

Mick

Weighing In On Indy Ships

2010-01-29T09:00:00.004-05:00

There have been several recent posts about the state of the Industrial ships and their complete lack of defenses.

I think it was best summed up here:

http://letrangeeve.blogspot.com/2010/01/more-reflections.html

Now there are a few things I hate more then flying paper mache in a rain storm, but one of them is macro miners. Another is the person who never takes risks.

The first type is the laughable excuse people use to justify a career in suicide bombing, but really it is the second that should be the reason. Should there be a place in tha game for people who just want to log on their three (or more) accounts, get their Orca into a belt with boosters on, have their Hulks be able to hit the whole belt and basically Alt-Tab mine all day while at work, watching TV, eating dinner, etc. Cause while this is not "botting" it is about as close as you can get when really you need to be at the keyboard every 9 minutes for 30 seconds.

In regards to transporting, should it be essentially zero risk to transport stuff around in High Sec? Would creating an environment where all risk was eliminated not just add to the number that set autopilot, walk away and return 40 minutes later hovering off a safe gate where they want to be?

So how do you balance out the desire to make the game "better" for us "active" carebears (are we still carebears if we mainly live in w-space?), versus the "passive" carebears? Make the ships way more "ganker" proof and we drasticially add to the ranks of AFK miners. Make "Trade Lanes" where gates have ECM and guns that alpha strike a battleship, and add to the ranks of the autopilot hordes.

Unfortunetly in EVE, as with real life, every action is a double edged sword with the ability to cut in a direction we don't intend. While being an active carebear, I do appreciate the frustration of many at the shear paper mache build of the Industrial Ships. I agree there is no counter at this point to the tactics being used to make life miserable for Indy ships. And yes there is always going to be a segment of the gamers who, dare I say, enjoy the abiltity to cause misery in game (do they all kick puppies outside game too, or are they just our accountants and we dont know that side of them).

Now for my suggestions. Again, all of these suggestions are based on the desire to "reward" people for ... well, actually "playing" the game.

1) Within range of a station or gate in High Sec, like 25km, there should be a module that allows a one time, 10 second, infinite strength ecm burst. The equal of a ECM Bomb. Should be instant activation and would allow indy ships targeted while aligning away from a gate (prime gank time) to have a window to get away. Make the cost relativelky high so it would make it worthwhile when transporting high value stuff, but not while running the cigarettes you got while popping NPC haulers off stations. Justify this as a device that "calls" the gate to send a massive ECM burst to that location.

2) Add NPC haulers to the game. The ability to bring your goods to any station in High Sec, contract an NPC hauler to take it to Jita (or where ever), and pay based on skills, standings, and cargo worth. Would make running those damned courier missions for an NPC corp have a little more value. Would also take away from some of the "down time" of hauling crap around. This option should cost a boat load. And I am not talking 1%, much closer to 10% base with top notch skills and standings getting it down to like 5%. And it should take a day, but be absolutely fool proof.

3) For the miners, there needs to be a "Super Damage Control" module, call it the "Armadillo" module, that makes you damn near invulerable for 30 seconds, but leaves you without the ability to move. Has to be a low slot so you have to sacrifice mining yield to use it. Wrecks you capacitor and leaves you with only enough available to cap to make a short warp jump (1AU) for a couple of minutes (5 minutes?). Basicially all you are trying to do is give the Calvary time to show up, be it Concord, or Friendlies. This would make it much more feasible also to have escorts, since they would then have time to fight back against the aggressors.(hell give it to haulers to and make it a low slot to sacrifice cargo room for safety.) Also like everything else CCP does to limit it to certain ships, give only certain higher industrials (read Mammoths, Inty V's, all tech 2 transports, the orca, mining barges, exhaumers) the 99.9% reduction in CPU to use them.

None of these ideas are going to help the AFK miner, or the auto pilot hauler, and that is good. But they all will help the active player and balance the game play to where at least a player as the option of trying to defend himself, or make escorts a legitimate opiton. In the end all these options would allow a player options to sacrifice profit, by paying a NPC company, sacrifice cargo or yield, or hiring escorts, in the name of safety.

In the end, balancing game play must be a very difficult thing to do as any added defenses only adds to the saftey of the passive players, to the detriment of all us active industrials.

As an aside, is this ability to suicide, going to carry over into the "walking in station" portion of the game? Am I going to have to worry about getting mugged on the way to the market with my 50 melted nano ribbons? Am I going have to worry about my 100M isk I have on the poker table if a suicide bomber comes into the station?

Fly Safe and tell CCP about my Armadillo module.
Mick

A Great Guide and a Funny List

2010-01-28T08:30:00.000-05:00

After spending a few hours mining gas, I had about an hour to kill before the refinery was done and I could put another load of our new ABC's into the thing (I hate 3 hour cycles). So it was off to my other addiction. poker. While palying, I also decided to do some searching around for more w-space stuff. I came accross

http://k162space.wordpress.com/

and his list of how not to die

http://k162space.wordpress.com/2010/01/

This is just too damned funny, while actually very, very helpful. I think #17 is by far my favorite.

Also while there, check out his guide.

http://k162space.wordpress.com/wormhole-guide/

I did not read it in depth, but certainly look forward to going back and doing so. I am eager to see if the humor and knowledge is consistant throughout his posts.

Fly Safe (or cloaked)
Mick

Our Typical Night

2010-01-27T10:29:00.000-05:00

So it all started when the wife said she had something to watch on TV and "I could play my stupid game" :)

So that meant a larger block (5 hours) of play time.

That meant finding a grav belt somewhere. Anywhere not in our system (as we finally got a grav site, but are saving it for fall back nights.)

So warped to our D-static (same place it had been for 3 days), and popped through. Quick D-Scan and "damn" occupied and 4 miners and an indy on scan. Being the peaceful type (for now), I shouted a quick hello into local. Hmm no running for cover. Maybe a combat probe, lets see if they are awake at the controls. Yep that worked. I now have their attention. Told them if the left me alone I was going to close the hole from my side. They agreed, but obviously didnt trust me as i didnt see anything but a merlin on d-scan for the next 15 minutes it took me to close the hole (a big one at about 2.1).

On to next D-Static. Pop in and it looked great. No POS, No Ships, No activity on evemaps. After about 15-20 minutes fo scanning, no grav site, and it was a High Sec Class 2 with B274 and Z647 statics. But the good news was a third Unknown and it was a small signiture, usually reserved for higher class holes. After a few minutes messing with it my corpmate pinned it down and happily reported a N062 - Class 5 WH. Good news as a K162 most likely meant an occupied system.

In we went. Good news again in an empty and inactive system. Quick scan got us a Ordinary grav site. So away we went having spent about 1 hour scanning. Since my Corpmate was hauling, I broke out the prober on Ian's toon and kept scanning.

So we attacked the ABC of the first belt with our three hulks, and started into a night of mining. (We are now just using drones to clear the spawn). So with the miners humming, I turned attention to scanning down the rest of the system. (Corpmate was on D-scan duty). Quickly found another grav site and 2 ladar with C-32 and c-28 them. Quick scan of eve-central revealed the c-32 would yield a good rpofit for Ian (as he only flys Retreiver for mining ore).

So back again and fit the Abby for gas mining (yeah over kill), and set off for the clouds. Well needless to say one ship attacking a 5,000 unit C-32 cloud is a joke (25,000k m3 at 40m3 every 30 seconds, yeah do the math), but at least he was making isk.

Well an uneventful 3 hours passed and we managed to clear 15k of Crokite, 5k of Ark, and almost 10k of Bistot, plus 1000 units of C-32. Not a bad night.

And to top it off, we did not have to open our own Grav site (we would like to wait till a second one spawns before opening the first).

Also, Shout out to the two folks who joined me in "Life in the hole" in game and provided some great conversation about life, Eve and W-space.

Fly Safe (or cloaked)
Mick

Cracking the $240M nut, Is WH life worth it?

2010-01-25T12:45:00.000-05:00

Heating a POS in the cold of space is a very expensive endeavour. To the tune of $240M per month. So the question becomes how much do you have to do to justify not sitting in a nice .5 systems, mining scordite in an Orca fleet, and having to only fear gankers?

Well let us count the ways.

1) Mine. Looking at the facts. Scordite returns are at record levels, and zydrine and megacyte prices are as low as I have seen. You lose 25% refining in the WH, and right now we don't have the fleet sizes to justify breaking out the orca, at the expense of losing a Hulk. Even so, I figure I get about 150% the isk per hour in my two Hulk fleet, then I got High Sec using 2 Hulks and a Retriever in a almost maxed out Orca Boosted Fleet. In fact, it looks like I get about $250k isk per minute more. So first way to crack into that $240M nut is to mine 1000 minutes, or about 17 hours. Again, this assumes I am taking on the entire $240M burden.

2) Run anomolies/Radar/Mag sites. So variable here, since the majority of the isk running anomolies is from the Melted Nano's. Again using a base number of $24M/hour as my High Sec Scrodite mining, and figuring I can clear and salvage about 1.5 anomolies per hour solo, it really is a wash here.   Some hours I have cleared 11-13 meleted nanos, while others I have only gotten 3.  I know there are tags and other salvage, radar site stuff and mag site stuff, but in the end it is really all about the Melted Nano's in a Class 2.

3) Ladar. Just starting to get into this area. Spent the night last night clearing some ladar sites and gathering gas. Looks like I spent about 3 hours clearing 4 sites and from what I can see I will make about $40M once I can "react" it. Not really a great return, but better then doing nothing.

4) Other reactions. The real wildcard here. Since reactors are limited to .4 security or less, and the Amarr tower has plenty of power and cpu, why not look to run simple reactions when the refinery or polymer reaction is not needed. Looking at the numbers, it looks like there are reactions that can net $250k to $500k per hour, every hour.

And of course the best way to crack the nut, is to split it (among corpmates).

So bottom line, after about a month in w-space, when comparing it to high sec.

1) Be prepared to spend more time doing non isk generating stuff. Sure in high sec you still have to make market runs, but they are not usually 20 jumps. Overall, I think I spend about twice the time doing non-isk producing stuff in w-space (a lot more recently with a POS setup/teardown/setup).

2) Be prepared to do whatever is available. Our order right now is as follows:
        Mine a grav site in our system of ABC ores
        Mine a neighbor system of ABC ores
        Mine our system for Dark Ochre or Gneiss
        Combat sites (either in our or neighbor system)
        Ladar (either in ours or neighbors)
        Market runs

3) Think of ways to make money off POS when not needing the w-space equipment.

Overall, I do not envision struggling to justify the $240M it will take to keep a W-space Large POS running. Alone, I am fairly certain I would at least get the 17-20 hour of mining in that is needed to justify the w-space existance. As I also look to grow the corp (visit "Life In The Hole" channel ingame for our public recuitment channel), this nut will get even easier to handle. So after about a month in w-space I am confident that there is plenty of Isk to be made, plenty of ways to lose a crap load of Isk, and a lot of fun to be had.

So as we work to establish our Class 2 presence, I continue to look towards getting the corp into a Class 4 hole within the next 45 days.

Fly Safe,
Mick

Eve POS Refining Yields

2010-01-20T14:26:00.002-05:00

Well after spending way too much time trying to figure the POS refining yields and searching all over I have concluded one thing.

No one can agree on the yield.

I read one post where someone insists that the Intese Refining Array is a 50% base with a CAP at 75%. If this is the case a total noob with no skills would easily get the 75% as with zero skills you get 87.5% at a 50% station. Can easily check that off the list of possible ways this works.

Well I thought that it was your refining rate in a 50% station TIMES 75%, but early refining cycles come out to not match this formula either.

So I just about gave up the I came accross a reference to this formula in one of the EO forums posts.

Refining yields in a 75% POS refinery = 56.25%*Skills

where Skills = (1+(Refining Skill Lvl * .02))*(1+(Refining Eff Skill Lvl*.04))*(1+(Ore Proc Skill Lvl*.05))

That would yield the following chart for yield by skills. Rememeber it is Capped at 75% so all values greater then 75% = 75%.

So far I have been able to test this only on my skills of Refining V and Refining Eff III, and it matches the yield I got, whereas the 50% station Yield * 75% did not.

Can anyone else mining in W-Space and using a POS refinery help to confirm this formula/table?

Thanks.

Fly Safe,
Mick

Finally Back in Business

2010-01-19T18:32:00.003-05:00

Well it took way too long, but tonight I might actually get back to W-Space business as usual.

So to recap my adventure in breaking ties with old corp. Formed new corp with a sub-toon, anchored medium POS, took down large POS and stored at medium POS, waited 24 for removal of roles, reanchored Large POS in new corps name, took down the medium POS. All told about 14 hours of game time to accomplish. Not horrible, but certainly not something I want to do very often.

Shout out to Star Defender for the evemaps tool in his recent post. Love it.

So have a couple more defenses to setup and will be back to where I was prior to deciding to make the change.

Have to get a few things together and we will be ready to start to try to grow the corp by a few more dedicated members.

Fly Safe,
Mick

The Two Sides of Core Scanning

2010-01-19T12:56:00.004-05:00

For W-Space life there really are two sides to scanning down a system.

The first is the one more familar to us all and the one that CCP has put out a decent video on. That is finding a single signature and scanning it down to 100% to bookmark it and fly to it. That scanning seems simple enough and I am confident enough in my skills now to be able to do this for a single signature in a few minutes.

The other side of scanning and the one I have seen no good methods described, is the one where you fly into a system and want to find the unknown connections as quickly as possible (or grave site for raiding, or what ever you are trying to find.)

To simply transfer the skils from the first way and start with 8AU probes and work your way down taking a single site at a time does not seem best. Maybe it is but in my mind that invloves a lot of individual probe moving that takes time. I have also read about using a single probe to try to gain a "relative stength" of the signal and then start with the strongest. This too seem to take more record keeping then I care to use in situations where I am simply trying to find what exits the system has quickly.

So I will try to describe my method. My eventual goal is to develop a short guide (with pics) eventually to help in this area. Also as a note, this is almost exclusively based on my experience in Class 3 and below systems. It may or may not be at all effective in higher w-space if signal strengths are significantly lower in higher w-space.

To start I will define just 2 terms I will use. First is "overhead view" this is the view on the map where the "camera" is all the way above and is a "top down" look at the system. I use this for the X and Y placement of probes. (for record I use the 5 probe system in teh video now with a center "target" probe). The other term is "Probe Height" which I use as a reference to how far above or below the "Inner Planet Orbital Plane" the probe formation is.

So you warp into a system, Bookmark your way out (you did BM the way out didn't you), and drop the first probe(s) to see the number of signatures in the system. Lo and behold there are like 10-15 and you need to find the exits. How do you do it? Well I will describe how I do and see if anyone else can tell me if it makes sense.

First, drop a .25 probe at your entry spot. Scan and the ignore that signatures as the one you just came in on. Next launch 5 probes and at 1AU make sure the edge of the outter 4 probes just touch in the center at the "target probe". Now change to 2AU and you should have a very nice clover pattern.

Move the target probe to either the Sun or Planet 1 depending on how compact the inner system is. Scan. Ignore all signatures over 25% that are not unknowns. Now move the probe formations "height" so that the bottom of the probes is just touching the orbital plane. Scan and ignore again. If you get an unknown "hit", write down the Signature ID. I can not tell you the number of times I have "lost" the 25% strength on the next scan and forgotten the ID. Now move the height to all the way below the orbital plane so that the top is just touching the orbital plane. Scan and ignore. With decent probing skills you should be getting rid of the inner Ladar and Grav sites and possiblly be hitting the larger Unknowns (like high sec exits).

In addition to these "base" scans, if at any time I get a signle red dot "hit" I will move the formation and change to 1AU, WITHOUT MOVING ANY INDIVIDUAL PROBES IN THE FORMATION. This will get the sig type a lot of times. If I don't get an ID at 1AU but still have single or dual red dot, I will center the formation and go to .5AU, WITHOUT MOVING ANY INDIVIDUAL PROBES IN THE FORMATION. If at .5AU I still dont have an Sig Type, I note the sig ID and move on (I do not ignore it). The reasoning here is that it is probably a Mag or Radar site and I do not want to move the individual probes in the early stages of a search.

If the inner system is very packed, I will repeat this On, Above, Below to the top left, top right, bottom right and bottom left of the sun. Again just making sure that the probe formation is consistant. With any luck you will have found an unknown.

If you still don't know the way out, then lauch a 6th probe, deactivate the main formation, and determine where the remaining signatures are. I place the 6th probe at 8AU on teh sun and call that "inner system", from there I search every planet at 8AU that the "inner system" does not cover completely.

From there, I will either use the 2AU formation for any areas with multiple sigs, or I will start to use a more traditional "single sig" scanning method.

This is quick and obviously might be hard to "envision". If people think there is value in this "method" I will strive to make a more detailed guide and add screen shots.

I think this method has several advantages, but the biggest is that it eliminates the need to move individual probes within the formation, while allowing you to scan effectively at 2AU and 1AU, which are levels that most signatures will show an ID. With the 2AU probes and the On, Above, Below method you get decent coverage over the 4AU sphere where 95% of signatues will be.

All comments desired. Please feel free to add to this discussion, as this skill is vital to W-space and yet I have found almost no material on how to do it well.

Thanks and Fly Safe,
Mick

Making the Changes

2010-01-15T14:05:00.002-05:00

Man is it tough to do Corporate stuff in EVE.

To take down a Large POS, Form a Corporation, have everyone relinquish their roles, wait, get out of the hole to a station, to quit the corp, get to an office to apply and finally find a new hole for the POS.

Looks like a week long process.

So far I have the new corporation formed, Great White North Exploration (yes in reference to Bob and Doug), and tonight will have my first major toon into that corporation. Then I will be able to launch the Medium POS in our current base system and move all the Large POS stuff to its hanger.

So if all goes well tonight, I will be able to start the 24 hour clock on my other two characters to get them into the new corp, as well as the toons of my new partner in W-Space Adventures.

Once we have that done and the Large POS staged to settle a new system we will start looking at our static class 2 systems to find a suitable new home.

Overall I am liking the dual POS setup as it allows a lot of flexibility in terms of setting up and tearing down in systems. Looks like the plan long term will be to settle a system with lots of signatures with the Large POS. Once the system gets runned down, especially of Grav sigs, we will unanchor the refinery (by far the hardest at 2 hours) and trim down the POS of any modules we can and prepare to move. At that point if a good system presents itself we would be mobile enough to exploit it by anchoring the Medium POS in the new system and then moving the Large POS before the hole closed.

So onward and upward and hopefully back to killing Sleepers by next week.

Fly Safe,
Mick

Introductions

2010-01-14T08:13:00.004-05:00

Well now that I am in full control of my future, I think it is time for some introductions.

First up is my main toon, Hundo Kay. Born in a shuttle stop in Jita, Melvin Kay was a runt growing up and always insisted to his tormentors that one day he would become a great capsuleer and kill "at least a hundred ships". They quickly started calling him "Hundo" for his ridiculous dreams. Well fortune smiled on Hundo and he did become a capsuleer. He has killed hundreds of ships in vital missions for Poksu Mineral Group, but has currently taken his fight to a Class 2 wormhole and the Sleepers there.

Second in my crew is Capitaine Evident. As a boy growing up in Gallente, Jacques Pasteur had a knack for stating the obvious. It soon began to drive his school mates crazy that Jacques would always point out the most obvious of facts. During his initial capsuleer traing, Jacques stated "gee my pulse lasers change colour to match the crystal I am using", to which his instructor stated, "non feces, Capitaine Evident". Needless to say the name stuck.

Last in my lineup of main toons is Ian Stormcloud. His parents spent a lot of time worrying about Ian Keller as a boy and spent a lot of Isk trying to figure out what was behind his dark moods. In his early days of his career, his peers took to calling him Stormcloud, for the mood he often brought to the room. His friends always knew a night at the Pleasure Hub with Ian was sure to lead to serious time in the Brig. It took Ian 8 years to get through the 3 year program, and he set school records for penalty minutes in every major sport he played.

At this point I am also maintaining several scanning toons, but the only one of imporatnce is Monna Sei. She is the Founder and CEO of Great White North Exploration, until such time as Hundo can get to a station and assume control of the company.

So please feel free to drop a line to any of my toons in game and I would love to chat about W-Space and share knowledge. And please, if you see anyone from Great White North Exploration roaming through W-Space please don't shoot.

Fly Safe,
Mick

Goodbyes

2010-01-13T13:39:00.004-05:00

Well, my W-Space adventure took an unexpected turn last night.

Logged on to find our corps other main scanner knee deep in our Class 2 neighbor. System had over 20 anom's and 15 sigs. He had already scanned down 5 grav sites.

While our corp's plan was to keep the Large POS in our main base for everyone, I still maintain my own Medium POS with refinery for my personal use and as a forward base before we set up the Large POS.

Well I decided that since the new hole obviously offered a better short term future then our hole with its 3 anoms and 3 mag/radar sites, that I was going to set up my Medium POS and "ride this new hole" for a few days to a week while our main wormhole recovered and spawned some new sites. This conversation led to a decision from one of the corp's directors in the main wormhole that w-space life is not for him. Granted he is a Miner/Industrialist and it was hard enough to get him to even try W-Space. Well long story short, we did not move into the new hole as we spent the night "evacuating" him back to empire. This also served as enough stimulus to decide that my goals and the corp's were not even remotely headed in same direction.

So it is with some sorrow, but way more excitment, that I have branched out on my own and formed a new corp solely dedicated to W-Space Exploration and Exploitation.

So now I am back controlling my own destiny and able to recruit a few more like minded soles to join my adventure.

So its on to tearing down the old corp's Large POS and getting it back to Empire, as I look for the opportunity to get the Medium POS established for the new corp and then get back to making ISK.

Fly Safe,
Mick

Like Thieves in the Night

2010-01-12T08:07:00.003-05:00

As our hole has all but bottomed out (the result of "visiting" too many things in the beginning), we have been forced to turn to our static Class 2 for things to do. I realize now that this is the way it should be.

So last night our first neighbor of the night was a system with 2 POS's (but only 1 online), no sign of activity and a lot of signatures, but few anomolies. Is this a corp that just knows how to run the anomolies and not work the signatures? Well any way, we fired up the probers and quickly found 3 grav sites. Getting our resources mounted, we hit the ABC's of our neighboring system and cleaned out the cream of the crop roids from a few belts.

With 5 Hulks mining and a Commander in a Myrm giving cycle time bonuses, it did not take long. Also with only a lone rigged Mammoth hauling we also quickly fell behind and had a number of cans in space. We finished the night with a single Orca run to clean up the remaining 6-7 cans. Never saw a single probe, or hint of another capsuleer.

So I think our small corp has passed another W-Space growth point. We are ready and willing to raid our neighbors cupboard for goods. Yes, it feels safer to stay within our system and the safety of the POS, but I don't think a Wormhole can sustain a small corp for long. So as we now wait for our system to rebound I am confident we will work it smarter and also in a way that still emphasizes the importance of raiding our Class 2 Static.

Overall, I think this also shows the importance of the Static Wormholes when seleceting a W-Space home.

Fly Safe,
Mick

Lessons Learned (so far)

2010-01-10T12:25:00.002-05:00

With a few weeks of serious W-Space under my belt here is what I have learned so far.

1) Orca's rule. By far the backbone of any w-space enterprise. They can haul a ton (though they don't have the best mass to cargo ratio), they can fit three armor links for assisting combat ops, they obviously give great mining bonuses, and they are large to be that last ship through to close a hole.

2) Closing holes is a vital skill. Priority should be to work the statics and keep stuff in your own hole from bottoming out. To do this you need to be able to quickly and reliably close the static holes until a suitable neighbor is found. Also when looking for a fuel run, the opposite is true in looking for that system that is worked but not active. And above all for getting rid of that pesky K162

3) Probing skills are a must. Would think this would be tops, but really decent skills will get you by. And this really is one area where technique can overcome lower skills. Its not about having the most powerful probes, but rather using the probes you have out in the most effective manner. You should be able to 1) pin a wormhole down quickly 2) find a WH in a packed system quickly, and 3) "know" what type of site it is by how it is scanning down. On the last one I can usually tell a site is Unk/Grav/Ladar or Mag/Radar fairly quickly by the signal strengths at 4au and 2au.

4) Salvaging skills are vital. The money of anomalies in is the salvage. Better skills, quicker results.

5) Directional is your friend. Even better, learn to sort by distance to get the "unknown distance" to the top. Always have overview unchecked, and the signatures without distance at the top. Makes seeing probes easier.

6) You must be versatile. Every day will be different. Sure if you are working a Grav site in your own hole you would assume you would be mining. But you could easily log in to find 2-3 K162 holes in your system. Going to mine then? Well not right away. The system and conditions will dictate your actions. We don't know day to day what the hole will bring, and we must be ready to pew pew, mine, close holes, make market runs, etc etc. This also applies to ships, should have setups ready to go. If that means dedicated setups for quick changes then get a few more ships into the wormhole and get them setup.

7) Beware the Covert Ship. They are powerful and in hands of the right person deadly.

8) Don't get podded, getting back in sucks.

9) Fly safe and make good isk. It is really really possible and beats running level 4's over and over.

Fly Safe,
Mick

Safer? Closing the Static or "Verging" It

2010-01-07T08:32:00.004-05:00

Had this debate with another corpie last night in regards to what to do with the Static Wormholes in our system prior to starting organized mining ops or pack hunts.

I argue that bring both Statics to the verge of collapse, or "Verging" them, is not as safe for the operation, but better for the duration of the hole.

Even if the hole is on the verge, coverts and bombers can still get through and cause significant damage to a fleet mining op. On the other hand, closing the holes, scanning down the new holes, but not warping too it, means that short of an incoming K162 hole, there is no "Active" way into the hole. For the short term of the mining op this is safer as the chance of a K162 opening is smaller then someone coming accross a K162 in either low sec or the neighboring Class 2. It is also easier to detect a new hole in the system and deal with it in a timely manner.

Now for the time we are offline, I agree having the statics on the verge is better, as it discourages or prevents any large scale "movement" through our hole. Makes the POS safer (though really is someone going to come after a Large POS in a Class 2?) by making it almost impossible to get a fleet of anything bigger then a breadbox into the hole. But more important in my mind is not allowing a viable exit to low sec for others to use for fuel or empire runs and feel the need to "camp" the route and prevent our operations.

This debate will obviously extend to the neighboring system when we start to roam. The assumption should be that all holes in that system are open with the K162's spawned. So do you close the holes to gain "control" of the exit, or verge them?

So what are others doing, especially smaller corps, when they have a very consistant play time and really want to make the hole as "safe" as possible?

Fly Safe,
Mick

Feeling the Power of a Manticore

2010-01-06T13:21:00.003-05:00

I have not seen the power of a Manticore first hand except for in the hands of an inexperienced pilot, and I was never impressed. Boy has that opinion chnaged.

As I was putting the finishing touches on the defenses of our Large POS, I was also mining with a coprmate. After about an hour of mining (8 cans out), I spammed the directional, saw Russian named combat probes in system and immediately warped the squad to the POS. Couple seconds later saw a buzzard appear on scanner. I also stopped the final setup and jumped my main into a the Magnate. Warped to safe spot, threw a probe and cloaked. No new sigs in system, still our two mass criticalled statics and the annoying K162 from a Class 1-3 system that was a little to active to risk the orca to close.

So I warped to the Grav site off 100km and cloaked to watch. After about 3 minutes was the buzzard appear for a second and recloak. Why would he need to uncloak? To set a BM? Pretty sure you can set a bookmark cloaked? Watching directional for the next few minutes saw him pop on directional a few more times. Very wierd for a covert to need to keep popping up like that.

Anyway, the Orca was already on way to get first cans so quickly loaded what I could and got out of there. I then made the decision to try and make a few mammoth runs to get the remaining cans. Mistake 1, was using a cargo rigged Mammoth. Mistake 2, not adding at least 2 warp stab's. Anyway made it in and out 4 times. Not so lucky on the 5th. My "logic" was that the mammoth would be able to align and be ready to warp by time a cloaked ship could uncloak and target. Wrong. Fifth trip in saw the "red" uncloak, was locked in like 3 seconds and in two shots was bye bye Mammoth. So final balance sheet was 100k m3 of crokite into my hanger, and minus a mammoth and 3 cargo rigs. Plus 25 million isk and minus a little bit more.

Needless to say I have a new found respect for the power of a properly fitted and piloted Manticore. And a lot less desire to risk ships over cans of ore. Also, I guess waiting till there is an Orca load or more might be a little too much between hauling runs.

Good news is another lesson learned in my continuing development as a W-Space player at a cost very much within my budget.

Fly Safer then me,
Mick

Our First Pack Hunt

2010-01-05T09:11:00.003-05:00

You have to love group operations.

With the addition of two corp mates and another 4 accounts to the Wormhole Posse, I wanted to run the anomolies down to 2 and clean out the radar sites. So we decided at 9:30 local time to start a fleet and run the 2 anomolies and 2 radar sites. Well at a little after 10:05 we finally pushed off. Gotta love getting the initial setups tweaked from mission to WH setups.

Final fleet was 2 Abby, 2 Drakes, and 1 salvaging Drake. Plenty of firepower and plenty of defense for Class 2 combat. Had the Abby's paired to armor rep each other and the Drakes set up to shield transfer.

Well needless to say nobody got close to being threated in the anomolies, and fortunetly we got the Radar site with the remote repping cruiser sleepers and really never had anyone get even close to having to warp out.

All told cleared the 2 anomolies and 2 radar sites, salvaged, and hacked the cans in just over 2 hours. Not bad for a first outting with friends. Nothing like seeing 20 drones ripping through the Sleeper Frigs.

On the POS side, we had a record 4 active Wormholes in system (static 2 and 2 inbound K162's from Low Sec and Class 4), so the POS setup will wait for another night.

Fly Safe,
Mick

We Are In

2010-01-04T14:29:00.003-05:00

Finally got a close High Sec entrance last night through our neighboring Class 2 system. It was 6 jumps from our High Sec base and my corpie with the Charon quickly got the POS and supplies to the system to link up with my Orca (fresh back to W-space thanks to Ghostsheart's help).

Both wormholes (D382 and B274) were fresh and appeared unused. I assumed we would have 3 Orca jumps and several Mammoth jumps. Got in the Large POS, Intense Refinery and support gear to set up our Large POS. I think we have a months fuel and several support ships also. Got it all to my personal Small POS to stage. Hope fully we will get the Large POS up and running tonight. And to top it off we left both holes "Mass Critical".

The night did not go without incident. We had a Zephyr and Caldari Navy Caracal show up in the neighboring Class 2, but fortunetly the guy was cool and may even be interested in joining the corp.

In the end we were short one Orca run from the 4 we had planned and had to leave a few ships for the next run (as well as another corpies stuff).

So finally, I am no longer a hermit and have a few friends to run sites and mine with. It was great to hear the first response from a corp mate when he saw the size of the Grav sites roids. "Welcome to W-space mining Aev".

Fly Safe,
Mick

When 2 is not 2

2010-01-04T08:30:00.004-05:00

You would figure that once would be enough but I guess I am a slow learner. I got two toons stuck on the wrong side of a hole closing this weekend, and yet again my Orca was among them. To make matters worse I was in a hurry and didn't make sure that my prober was back in the ship maintennacne bay, so I was royally hosed. Disgusted I went to bed thinking of how I was going to come up with the 600M ISK to get another Orca, Abby and implants.

How I ended up in this situation (again) is by foolishly believeing the 2Bkg meant 2Bkg. The first time this happened I just assumed someone had used the wormhole before me and my mass calcs were off by a BS or two. This time I have learned the hard way that nothing in EVE is ever exact.

I closed the D382 static in an effort to find a Hi Sec entrance to bring in the Corp's Large POS. Found the new one, scanned down the WH's and found a null sec and Class 5 wormholes. No good, so started to close this hole. Thinking I had the routine down I was using Orca, Abby and Hulk to close the hole. Mass ticked over to the second mass message right on que at the 4th Orca passing. Cruising along just fine until through shear stupidity and overconfidence I ended up on "wrong side" with all three ships and a "mass critical" message. I rechecked all my calcs and was sure I was only at 1.78Bkg. I also checked my supplies and saw no prober. My thought was to jump the hulk back through (being the smallest, get my prober, jump it back through, jump the orca and find a way out with the prober and abby. Jump the Hulk through and the hole closed. Final tally put the total mass at 1.82Bkg. Well short of the 2Bkg I have always used. I guess I have proven at least a 10% variance. (In hindsight, I should have stored the Hulk in the Orca and jumped through in my pod, but in heat of the moment at 1am that thought did not enter my mind.)

So stuck and dreading a 600M ISK setback I went to bed. Got up next morning and figuring I had nothing to lose, started throwing Jet Cans and lableing the "Lost, Need Help" along with my toons contact. Well damned if it didn't work first try. I logged in again an hour later and had a message. Instantly got a PM from a guy in a probber looking for Hi Sec exit for his Class 5 corp. He had a route out and we quickly were able to come to an agreement on a fee to get me out. It was most reasonable and again I am convinced that most people in W-Space are extremely helpful.

So from now on I am assuming that 2B does not mean 2B, but most likely between 1.8 and 2.2Bkg. In addition, if the critical message is 5%, then it could mean as little as 90Mkg. Given these facts, the Hulk seems to be the safest ship to use past 1.7BKg, but how do you quickly close a hole and avoid repeated Hulk runs and the 4minute timeout, if you could have to repeat the Hulk run up to 4 or 5 times to mass critical the hole before jumping the Orca back through and closing it? I would love to hear how others are doing it as I am now gun shy about mass closing holes and I know it is something I need to be able to do.

Fly Safe,
Mick

Hi Ho Hi Ho

2010-01-01T11:20:00.002-05:00

With no anomolies and no Radar/Mag Sites left, I turned my sights to mining the Grav sites.

Right now I am the only one in our Wormhole as the rest of the corp is gathering supplies and waiting out the holiday season. So its just me, myself and I.

With the fear of rats non existant in the grav belts (once initial spawn is killed no further sleepers appear), I have my hulks set up with ecm in mid slots as a last ditch chance to save them if I don't see the attack coming.

With three toons, I have two in hulks and one in a retriever. My normal method is to attack a single ABC roid and "group" the cans off one ship. This allows for much easier transfer to the orca when I need to haul. If there is any ABC roids in any grav sig that is priority one. At present I have 3 grav sigs in system. 2 Common and 1 Unexceptional (which dispite its name is a very nice belt).

In the last three nights I have been left alone traffic wise and managed to get in some very good mining time. All told I have hauled in 50k Crokite, 25K Bistot, and 15k Arkonor.

The question now is what to do with it. I can hold it and wait for our Corp to set up the large POS and the refinery, or I can attemp to haul it out. The key is that while there is ABC in the wormhole to be mined, I find it hard to justify hauling to refine for 100%, when I can refine at 75% in the hole soon. From experience, hauling out the mins and saving 25% is almost equal isk wise to taking teh loss and continuing mining. The key would be saving the ABC mins till there are no grav sites in system and there is nothing else to do except haul. As of yet I have not had this problem.

Well Happy New Year to all, thanks Star Defender for the shout out and I look forward to continuing to share my experiences.

Fly Safe,
Mick

Solo'd First Radar Site

2009-12-28T12:50:00.002-05:00

Logged on last night to the lovely message that my system need to be loaded (indication no one had visited my wormhole yet since DT). Lost a grav site to despawn and had just the two unknowns of my static wormholes, so no work to do closing holes.

I started to finish off the last of the ABC roids from the Grav site I had worked the previous night when I got rudely interuppted by the crash.

Watch a little Jim Gaffigan and came back to see all was in order and back up and running in the Eve Universe.

Finished off the little bit remaining for the mining and decided to try and tackle the one Radar site. Setup t6he Abby for duel Large Armor Rep's, and twin Adaptive II's, had to scale back to only 5 guns to make the fit work, but definetly wanted to go defense over offense. Will need to add less demanding guns to shopping list for next trip to high sec.

Set up the Harbinger to throw drones and kill close in frigs and web cruisers.

Well not ideal setups but off I went. Really was surprised how easy the site started. First wave was all cruisers and the 1 BS in second wave never really got that hard. Fun started on the last wave with the dual BS spawn. Immediatly had to warp the Harbinger out as there was no way it was going to be able to tank dual Sleeper BS's. Got about 1/2 way through the first BS's armor and had to warp out the abby. I need to either be able tp throw drones farther or do more damage to get through a dual BS spawn without warping out.

On the second trip in, I just barely killed the first BS with about 8% armor left. With the dual repping I was easily able to tank the second BS alone. Finished the kills and got my hacking equipment.

Was quite surprised to find 2 of the 8 cans empty. Assume this is "normal" as I would expect the site to despawn if anyone had just warped in and tried to steal stuff quickly from the cans earlier.

Total net was about 20-25 datacores, and 12 chips. Estimated the haul at around 60-70 million, plus the 2 nanoribbons in the salvage. Total time was just under an hour, including the hacking and salvaging. Figure i can cut that time down with better setups.

Going to try the Mag site tonight if it is still there.

Fly Safe,
Mick

Settling In

2009-12-27T13:20:00.003-05:00

Well seems I got my Holiday present from CCP, and I don't mean the new ship. I finally got not one but two High Sec openings into the system.

First was a small R943 in High Sec area of Black Rise. It had already had its mass reduced but not critically, so I jumped the Orca in with the small POS setup, closing the hole behind me (which was also just fine by me). Moved to moon of choice and offlined to wait for playing time to set up the POS.

After getting the initial POS and Corp hanger setup, I explored the static 2 and found another High Sec opening in the Amarr region, only 13 jumps from my High Sec base of operation. Well two Orca trips later I had 90% of my gear in the w-space and 2 weeks of fuel.

With the POS finally setup, I spent the first night running the anomalies down to just 1, in an effort to dissuade visitors from hanging out in my system. Been using a beam abby setup with a pulse Harbinger to handle the frigates and work as a webber on the cruisers so the abby can hit them easier. Seems to be working well, though still takes awhile to clear the sites.

Last night had a little RL extra time and got to play an extended 5 hour stretch. Took this time to mine 10k Ark roid, 15k Bistot, and most of a 20k Crokite roid. Nice haul when i get another opening to high sec to refine it.

Overall now getting settled in and avoiding landing on the grids of my two statics to keep the systems as closed as possible.

When I can get a chance to get the gear for my Pulse Abby, I will try a Radar or Mag site.

Fly Safe,
Mick

Last night

Orca is out, but still no way in.

2009-12-23T12:42:00.002-05:00

With the Orca stuck on the wrong side of the collapse in Black Rise low sec, I decided that the best route to getting it "free" would be to scan down an entrance into w-space and move through w-space to a high sec opening, or change ships in mid stream and settle any decent Class 2 or 3 systems I could find.

First system was void of any signatures, but the second found an unstable Wormhole. Warped to 100km only to find several sentries around a K162 wormhole. Opened channel of communications and explained my situation and asked if they had a route back to High Sec. While they offered me "safe passage" they did not have a route to High Sec. Onwards to the next hole.

Three systems later found another K162, no sentry, but popped my head in to find a very active systems with numerous POS and ships on scan.

Couple more systems and Bingo, found a B449 wormhole, direct to high sec, and of course it was on verge of collapse so I had no more then a few hours to jump the Orca 4 jumps through the backwaters of Black Rise.

Using the magnate as a scout and waiting for systems to be empty I started my trex. First jump was easy between two systems where I was the only person in either. Second jump was to a system that had 1 guy in a station. During this jump I got a little excitement when some jumoped into the destination system, and 30 seconds later appeared at the gate. Orca was already in route. As the Orca came out of warp his Drake jumped through. We jumped together and if he saw me he did not care to turn around as I aligned and cloaked on the other side and he never jumped back through.

The real fun came on the next jump. Again waited till both systems were clear and started the Orca from the planet I was cloaked around towards the gate. As I approached three people popped into local. I jumped the Orca through, alligned to a planet and cloaked. Before I could fully alighn (man Orca's are slow), the three popped through the gate. Fortunetly none were close enough to uncloak me. As they flew off I breathed a sigh of relief. Too soon. Not 10 seconds later local exploded. I quickly lost count of the number of ships that were popping up all around me. There had to be atleast 30-40 ships coming through the gate. I can only assume they were chasing the first 3, but who knows. All I know is the closest any came to me was just over 5,000m. Way too close for comfort.

Once my heart stopped pounding and the gate was quiet for 30 seconds, I uncloaked and headed for a planet.

Fortunetly the last jump was uneventful, and while there was a scanning frigate at the Wormhole I paid it no mind as I jumped the Orca to High Sec and landed deep in Gallente space.

On the other front, two more D382's have passed without an opening to High Sec. The first was a system identical to mine with an A239 and D382 exits. The next D382 in that chain was very full and active. Last night found a very worked Class 2 system with only 3 sigs. Its two Wormholes and the one I created. As I saw no activity directional scan I warped to 0 at the first Wormhole and was greated by a manticore and a bomb for my efforts. While I could have jumped through, I did not have a backup scanner in the Wormhole, so i turned around and headed back to my K162 hole. I hailed in Local that I was looking for a way out. No response. I warped back to the B274 wormhole at 100km and saw the manticore before it cloaked. Fortunetly I was able to click the pilot info before it cloaked and found that 1) the wormhole was over 45 jumps from the Orca, and 2) they had it on the verge of collapse and were bringing in their own Orca to refuel their Class 4 POS. The other WH was a Class 1 hole that would not fit the Orca. Another night, no way to get the Orca in.

Here is hoping the next few nights brings some success.

Fly Safe,
Mick

Good News - Bad News

2009-12-21T12:43:00.004-05:00

Well I decided this weekend that I was tired of looking for a High Sec opening to the Wormhole and that it was time to jump my small POS "forward post" into the hole so that I would at least have some base of operation larger then the Orca and could start to mine and run the anomolies without having to worry so much about visitors and safe spots.

The hole wqas 3 jumps off High Sec in the Black Rise area and I started to transfer up the small Caldari POS and ECM for the forward post i planned to set up till we could get a decent high sec opening for the Orca's and the large Amarr POS for the corp.

Well as is always the case, or so it seems, the route got hot right when we were ready to jump off high sec with the first of two trips we needed to run to the hole. The route had been quiet all night, but once we were ready we got a Pirate in a Drake bouncing around, as well as two small blobs who appeared to be looking for each other. In the end, we had a few brushes at "clear gates", with people warping in at the same time as us, but we got the two trips to and from the hole done and I now had my small POS setup in my Orca.

That's the good news.

Bad news is I learned the hard way that mass allocations most definetly are variable.

I have closed several holes so far and thought I had it down pretty well. Stranded a Abby once, but all the other times was fine with the Orca and Abby closing our wormholes. Seemed pretty easy, warp Orca through till it registers the first change in mass status. If the Orca is on the "wrong" side when this happens, then warp "in" and "out" one more time and start using the Abby. Note: all the holes I have closed so far are 2B lifetime holes (A239, B274, D382)

So I start to close the A239. Sure enough a few trips with the orca and the hole flipped to the "mass effected but not critical" message and Orca was on Low Sec side. Orca back and out again, and started jumping the abby. Got the "mass critical" with all three ships outside (including my magnate prober), same as every other time. Jumped the Abby back in and "bye bye hole". So there I sat with Orca and POS on the wrong side. First time ever that the Abby has closed a hole that had not shown critical in 2 jumps.

Well so here i sit now with an Orca and Magnate in Low Sec of Black Rise, and my abby (and offlined scanning alts) inside. Well I logged the Orca off and logged on a scanning toon on that account, and scanned the new A239 down. Found it 29 jumps from the low sec it was at (the farthest from my base yet). So I jumped the 29 jumps to get the magnate back into the hole (again since all the BM's for the system were in the Orca).

So the bottom line is what to do now.

First I know I need a smaller ship to make the last few jumps to bring the hole critical. The Abby is just over 5% of the WH mass and means I could get into this situation again if the mass is just over the 10% threshold of showing "Critical".

Second, I am at least thankful my POS is with the Orca. I have the ability now to jump systems in mid stream if I can get another entrance to W-space from a place near my Orca. I am not at all excited to try to runthe orca back to high sec, as it is not setup with either ecm or warp stabilizers and would be a sitting duck with its long align time.

So tonight I will reconnect the Magnate and Orca in hopes of finding a way back into w-space and either a new home, or back to high sec.

Fly Safe,
Mick

Waiting for POS opening

2009-12-19T14:46:00.002-05:00

Well now we are waiting for an opening to bring in the POS. So far all the exits have been 19+ jumps from our POS hanger. Worst case is on Sunday we will start mass closing holes to find a suitable way in for the Orca's and POS.

In the mean time been running anomolies in both the home system and neighboring class 2 w-space. So far nothing near the haul of melted nanoribbons from he first night. Have had a couple of sessions cut short by a visiting Vagabond that did not want to leave us alone to our fun.

Still trying to get back to a station also to get mu CCP gift.

More to come as we work to establish our second w-space base.

Fly Safe,
Mick

Home Sweet Home

2009-12-18T08:48:00.002-05:00

Well the A239 Wormhole is static, so we have found our new home.

Spent last night gathering the needed supplies and equipment for our new Amarr Control Tower. We are going with the Amarr for the shear power level it has to run either the Intensive Refining Array or the Reactor for hybrid components.

We are still short a few fuel pieces, but have most of what we need for the first month.

As for setup we went with a mix of ecm and lasers for defense.

At this point we are waiting to see if we get a good High Sec exit through our neighboring Class 2. If not in the next few days, we may attempt a Low Sec move if the Wormhole is close enough to our jump off.

As an aside, both neighboring Class 2's so far have had active POS's and High Sec exits, as well as very few sig's. Could bode poorly for potential to raid when our wormhole bottoms out. But we will cross that bridge when we come to it.

Fly Safe,
Mick

First Night

2009-12-17T09:16:00.002-05:00

Just a quick report on the first night in the new wormhole.

The Wormhole D382 moved and this was very good news, as the static to a Class 2 was the more important of the two connections. The Low Sec Wormhole A239 had not yet moved on the initial scan, and at the end of the night I did not feel like scanningthe system down again to see if it was static. I will save that for tonight.

A quick scan of the neighboring Class 2 W-space yielded a High Sec exit that ended up being 7 jumps from my base of operations. I quickly rallied the Orca and fit it for a mobile base of operations, flipped my Abby and Harb setups for Wormhole running, twisted the arm of a corp mate and off we went to run some anomolies.

While it took most of my time to get the stuff jumped in, we did manage to get 3 anomolies run and probably netted close to 100M in salvage thanks to 16 Melted Nano's. With a Beam Abby, Pulse Harb, and Drake these sites went down pretty quick. The Beam Abby is probably the worst of the three ships for running Class 2 Anomolies, as there were only a few BS level ships. Will need to work on its setup for Class 2 anomolies. It really is setup more for Radar and Mag sites.

While my Corp Mate jumped back to our base of operations, I remained in the hole with the Abby, Harb and Orca (with scanning ships in the Orca).

Tonight, I will confirm if the A239 is static and continue to run some anomolies.

Fly Safe,
Mick

Possible Success

2009-12-16T08:15:00.004-05:00

Well after a week of searching we might possibly have found a new wormhole to call home.

I offlined one of my scanning alts in the Class 4 Wormhole with a Class 2 connection. Knew it was static since it was the only one found during the scan the day before.

I scanned down the Wormhole and jumped through. As always seems the case when trying to find a way out, the system had like 20 signatures in it. Fortunely, I hit an unknown on like the 5th scan of the inner system (for whats its worth I try to quickly remove ladar and grav sigs in the inner system by moving a 2au cross pattern around the inner planets).

This lead to a low sec wormhole. Even better it was within 11 jumps of my main scanning character.

I jumped in my main and scanned downt he rest of the system. The last signature i scanned down was a wormhole to class 2. If this proves to be static then I think we have found a new home.

All told the system had 19 signatures. 2 radar, 2 mag, 5 grav, 4 wh, and 6 Ladar.

If the Class 2 Wormhole is static I will be jumping in my BC's, along with a throw away mammoth, tonight to start running the anomolies. From there the corp could have a POS up by the weekend.

Worst case the Class 2 is not static and we bring in more of a transient setup instead of the full blown Larege Amarr POS.

Fly Safe,
Mick

"Standard" Low Class Wormhole Configs

2009-12-15T08:46:00.003-05:00

As I continue to scan w-space I am finding several "standard" WH configurations.

To be clear, I have not scanned more then a handful of anything other then High Sec systems to get into W-space. But I am finding a lot of "shallow" w-space systems, and a very flat class 4 systems.

The most common type of "system" is a class 2 with a high sec exit (wormhole B274) and a class 1 connection (wormhole Z647). Another is a Class 3 with a low sec static that is basically a one system "system".

I have found other configs but the majority are of these types of systems.

So to get deeper into w-space usually requires a Wormhole K162 to get in deeper.

Now the other observation is Class 4 is very very "flat", meaning that once into a class 4 the most comman static is a Wormhole X877. I have repeatedly run into 3-4 straight systems that are Class 4 to Class 4 connections.

On a good note, last night finally got my scanning alt into a 4 with a static 2. My concern here is if this is one of the few "down class" wormholes, I expect a lot of traffic.

I am moving my empire scanning efforts to low sec to see what i find there, since high sec scanning seems very limited in what you can find.

Fly Safe,
Mick

False Alarm

2009-12-14T08:03:00.003-05:00

A disappointing weekend on the w-space front for sure.

Really got excited Friday night when I found a class 3 WH system with 3 outbound WH's in it. Low Sec, Class 3 and Class 4. Thought I might have really found something good. Knew it was unlikely that all three were static, but if any 2 f the 3 were then this was a good system. It had a local phenom so thought that might be what was keeping settlers from laying down a POS. Should have known that since it was unoccupied that it was a mirage.

Woke up Saturday and scanned the system down to find only the Low Sec exit was static. To add insult to injury, I spent the rest of the weekend trying to get my scanning alt back into deep WH space with no luck. On the other sacnning alt in the Class 4, I twice ran into very occupied class 5 and 6 space and was unable to find a route back to empire.

Oh well, that's life in Eve.

Fly Safe,
Mick

Venture Capital

2009-12-11T09:17:00.003-05:00

Well the time has finally come to sit down and figure the costs of the venture out and decide both how to raise the necessary isk, as well as how to run the operations and distribute any profit.

First step was to sit down and decide on the POS setup. We settled on an Amarr Control Tower for the energy needs of running either a refining array or reactor. Spec'd out cost with all modules for the setup was $650M. Add a months worth of fuel at about $200M and the one month of POS and Fuel is $850M. Less then the $1B i had estimated.

The next step was to decide what to do with the ship needs. We could either go for a BYOS, but this seemed to be too loose and would require too many people trying to get in on th elimited space the Orca will have. We decided for the first 30 days we would settle on comman ships and have the corp own the ships, so that no one has to keep track of who owns what at the POS. Need a Raven for the night, get a Raven and hopefully return the Raven at the end of the night. Should reduce both the nuber of ships needed and the logistical nightmare of everyone trying to get stuff into the Wormhole.

So sat down and made a ship list. Hulks, Ravens, Abaddons, Scorps, Blackbirds, Buzzards, oh my. Turns out there were a lot of ships needed for all the various tasks of WH life. We will have to sit down and reevalutate the list, but initially it looks like we are in the range of $4.5B in ships and setups. Seems high, but heck the Orca is 500M by itself.

So bottom line is our little endevour is going to need over $5B worth of "stuff" to get off the ground and have a shot at making it through the first month.

Now the fun part. How to raise it and how to "pay back" those initial donors, but still allow for people to join and help and profit, even if they don't help the initial raising of the Venture Capital.

Fly Safe.

The Hunt is On

2009-12-10T16:42:00.002-05:00

The hunt for our next wormhole home is on. Prefer to find a Class 2 or 3 with a static 2 or 3. I regret the fact the early on in our hunt for our first home I found a 2 with a static 2. It was unoccupied and unfortunetly I did not know the value of the statics at that point.

To help in the search I have created seperate toons on my accounts and spent the minimal training to get their skills high enough to fly a scanning frig, grav rigged, with Sisters probes. I trained Rangefinding to 2 and feel I have decent skills to quickly get through signals at least to pin down the types. Getting to 100% is a bit slower then my main scanning toon, but I can leave these "sub-toons" in WH systems and really dont care if they get popped as the most expensive thing they have are their 5 Sisters Probes. As of today, I have yet to lose any of these toons and have flown through numerous systems.

So far I have two of these toons in a class 4 with a static classs 4 that I am hoping will be our home when we get good at what we are doing. The other toons are traversing W-space looking for a suitable system.

At this point, I have seen a lot of systems groupings that have a class 2 with High Sec static and Class 1 static. These little systems groups do not allow for deeper penetration into W-space unless there happens to be a K162 from another system. So I have taken the tact of trying to get these scanning toons into higher class systems. I guess the ideal would be to get them into a class 4 with a static to a class 2 or 3. This would "guarantee" a class 2 or 3 a day to look at for a suitable home.

The most interesting hole to date I have stumbled accross was a Class 2 with a static 4. The system was packed with no less then 6 POS's and only had 3 sigs, all WH's. I asusme this was a serious staging area for running the static class 4. By far the most developed W-space system I have seen.

So our High Sec mining and industrial pursuits continue as we look for the next Worm Hole base.

Fly Safe.

Leaving Our First Home

2009-12-07T15:40:00.002-05:00

We have effectively bottomed out our first hole, not that it was packed to begin with.

We moved in the Small POS when we found the Wh had 3 grav sites and direct connection to HS. Being our first endevour as a corp we thought that the High Sec static wormhole would be a good thing. Quite the opposite. While it did allow us to get out every day and refine our mins at 100%, it did also have the downside of attracting a lot of traffic.

The first three grav sites despawned and another one spawned. It lasted 3 days and we got another.

Yesterday, I logged in to find a fairly large contengent in our "home" and they were chewing through the last grav site, so decided it was time to pack up and look for a better wormhole to call home.

Figures the night we decide to pack we had a ton of activity on the High Sec Static. Fortunetly, we made a friend in a Legion who helped us guard the hole and we got everything out with no problem.

At this point we are building some stuff to sell to get what we need for our next trip including a reactor for gases, and a refinery so we dont need to open our outbound holes.

So now the search is on for a nice class 2 or 3 with a static 2 or 3 to call home.

Fly safe.

Background

2009-12-01T00:49:00.003-05:00

I played Eve awhile back for about a year, ran with a good corp for PvE. After about 6 months I decided to see what else the game had to offer and split training between an Inventor/Indy main and fighting Alt I was borrowing from a corpmate taking a break from the game. At the height of my first run in Eve I was running a successful Indy Corp making T2 mods and bring in over 1B a month for the corp in profit.

However, RL changed rapidly with a job loss. At the same time the corpmate wanted to come back to the game, so I gave him his character back. I also gave my Invention character to my second in command at the corporation I was running. I left Eve to concentrate on RL issues.

Fast forward to this fall and I decided to get a trail account and see what was left of the old corps. As has a way of happening, they had all scattered to the winds. The T2 Corp had long been dissolved and my character no where to be found. My fighting friend is very inactive. Old corpmates had RL issues and also left game. I finally ran into a buddy from Sweden who told me I should check out the Wormholes in the expansion, and exploration. I told him h was nuts I didnt have time to sit around and watch a scanner probe for 5 minutes at a time looking for crap. Boy was I in for a surprise.

I could not believe the difference in exploration. It was insanely better then it was before Apoc and I was instantly hooked.

About the same time I ran into another friend the runs an Indy Corp and has for a very long time. He loaned me a drop in the bucket for him, but a fortune for a new character and I was hooked on Eve again. As a bonus, he flew an Orca about every night and allowed me to tag along. Man is mining a heck of a lot more fun and profitable with that baby along for the ride.

SO for the past month and half I have been trying to absorb all I can about Eve Wormholes. I have read and re-read ArcDragon's guide. I have spent hours asking many helpful people in chat rooms all I can, and I know there is still tons to learn. My toons are new, and I know my skills greatly lag my knowledge at this point but it is my goal to make a living in the Holes of Eve.

To date, I have lost a retriever in a my first Class 1 with a Grav belt. I have lost a few Hulks to stupidity in a Class 2. Nearly lost my Harbinger in a Class 2 Radar site (corpie lost a drake), and have mined more Ark, Bist and Crok then I ever imagined in our Class 2 home for the moment. All in all it has been great fun so far.

Right now I am days away from a Abby for my main and fighting alt, as well as days away from an Orca for my Indy Specialist. I have a couple of toons offlined in a Class 4 with a static Class 4 connection and await the days I have the skills to go there and meet my fate among Eve Wormhole space.