Lessons Learned (so far)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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