Wednesday, October 8, 2014

High Sec PI

That Character I had in the old Wormhole, well, courtesy of a local Clone Vat is now 5 systems from Dodixie. Skill queue is paused, but does have 3's in all the PI skills.

So I know going into it that its not as good as Wormhole PI, but its still a revenue generator. So I look around.

PI in High Sec, and indeed Low Sec is more complicated. All the customs offices are taken and belong to corps charging up to 30% tax. I spent an hour and a half touring all systems within 5 jumps of Dodixe, and found the average was around 18-20%. Some systems had a few at 12% tax but others in system were in the high 20's.
Now I am basically lazy. I want to log in to this one every 3-4 days, run to Dodixe, sell and run back. 15 to 20 mins max. So I am looking for all planets in one system that are reasonable. On top of this tax, you also pay a % to concord, I believe another 10%, but this can be reduced by training a skill.

Currently he can use a maximum of 4 planets and so set up on an Ice, Lava, Barren and Storm planet. each one has a single extractor with 10 heads, a launch pad, a storage and 3 basic processors.
Raw materials go to storage, pulled into processors and output sent to launch pad to wait for pick up.
The basic head mining rate is about 40-50 for a 1 day period, compared with about 150 in the wormhole for the same skills.

Three days later I log in collect the Epithal I have just bought and zip around the planets, collect the product and nip to Dodixie and sell. Again lazy and sell to buy orders.
Out of Interest 4 products, 8 lots of tax, 4 to concord and 4 to customs office owners. total paid 1.316 million.
Selling in Dodixe to buy orders 11.581 million.
Sales taxes in Dodixie are 130,000
So Profit before expenses (Build cost, time etc) roughly 10.1 million for 3 days or a bit over 800,000 per planet per day.

So if all goes to plan in the region of 100 million a month.

This is not brilliant but 3 fitted assault frigates a month for half an hour or so a week is a fair swap.

Its taken me a week to get back to this draft. In that week I have trained Planetology and advanced planetology to 4 and 3 respectively.
Now I have noticed that better quality resources pop up the higher you train. Fair enough. But I plonked my extractor heads on the largest dull white areas I could find. I expected the good areas to get better and maybe more good areas crop up as skills improve.
However, yes new white areas have cropped up. All out of range of extractor head, however the white areas I was on have disappeared and the yield seems to have dropped slightly if anything.

Moral of that story is to train the Planetology and advanced planetology to the point that you are happy before you settle planets.

Meanwhile I have been playing skill queue online all week as RL is busy.

John





Monday, September 29, 2014

Back In Low Sec

Well some are anyway...

I wrote about creating the third character on my account. Well just noticed that he is still in the worm hole, Logged off in an Epithal, that I think may possibly have scanning gear, but not logged on to try.

Probably going to have to pod myself back to high with this one, If I can scan down the low sec in an Epithal, I still have to run across one or more hostile systems in a hauler.

Anyway, enough of my stupidity

John has settled into the corps new home near Ostingle and started doing Level 1 missions for Fed Customs. Using an Algos normally. To be honest they are not very exiting or stretching. It does however hone the paranoia a bit as low sec missions are prone to interruption from anyone and everyone.
If you have not spent any time in wormholes its a quick and effective way to get used to D-Scanning, is doing low sec missions. Keep a spare ship handy.

If I get on and I really have no time, then a spot of belt rating relieves the tension. I tend to do this in either of two ways.
1. Take a cloaky rail gun armed Proteus, warp cloaked to each belt at 30-50. If you see something worth shooting uncloak and blap.
2. Fire up the Drake and methodically clear each belt and kill them all.

Method one can go though 12 - 15 belts in about 15 mins, usually only stop for a battleship or a clone soldier.  I admit I would stop for any Mordus Legion chaps, but only seen looted wrecks of these.

Method Two takes nearly my entire play time to do the same amount of belts. This does include nipping back to salvage and loot in a destroyer though.

The clone soldiers are present in about 40% of the belt runs I have done. Actual runs 11 against tags held = 4. All but one of these belt runs have been method 1 with the Proteus.
I find that if I log in and get two missions run then whip through the belts looking for Clone soldiers thats about my play time done.

As a side effect my security status has risen! I have gone from a Nasty Red Pirate at -9.6 to a Nasty Red Pirate at -8.7.
The Clone soldiers seem to be worth the most with a sec rise of 0.4% which is 10-20 times better than a normal rat. It also help that the tags that they drop can be sold quickly for 13-15 million each.

These 4 tags have helped me fund a little side project that I am working on.

I am going to sponsor a Corp Roam  for a laugh. We (the royal we, as I am seldom on long enough) take out similar frigates, destroyers or cruisers on roams several times a week. mainly expecting to die, and wanting to have fun. If fun is had, a red kill board is irrelevant. Its a game.

I have built Tristans, Hull tanked them all with rigs, Drone Damage Amp, Damage control and Overdrive in lows, Scram, Web and Afterburner in mids, highs are either Neutron Blaster, 125 mm Rails or Neuts. Light drones in bay.
I have built the same number of each type and handing them out one night. Mainly as an experiment, and hey it may kill more than the last Venture roam. If they die its cost about 40 million but provided an evenings entertainment for 10 ish people.
Gone tech 2 for most things, so Low sec Placid could be either a Turkey shoot or Death Trap one night next week....

I have to admit that I probably will not be doing this again though for a while. On limited time the grief required to collect enough bits to outfit 10 ships, then sit and fit them is an experience to do once but a chore to repeat.


All good fun

Friday, September 26, 2014

Logistics are a bit toooo much

The Logistics of operating a POS in W space have beaten me.

Now in Real Life,
that's that bit outside internet spaceships,
I have a new job. Not one I asked for or went looking for, more a case of the Boss saying there's a position vacant here, we think you can do it, its yours if you want it, let me know tomorrow.
Oh and by the way if you say no, your current role may be chopped in a couple of months...

Pay rise... No
Better Benefits .... No
Outside comfort Zone ... Yes
Lots More Work... Yes
Later Hours ... Yes

But lots of training into a position that is marketable most places instead of the very narrow field I was in.

So no brainer it seems.

However its cut my eve time from 1-2 hours a day to 30 mins to an hour tops.

For the first week, I would log in. Scan out the sigs, reset PI, then see if the holes lead to high sec for fuel. By the time I had done this and scanned out the C2, I was done. John, my main character had not even logged in that week.

Most days I would have no time to do anything else. I was logging on for no fun at all.
I play to unwind and I was stressing about fuel and a dwindling bank account, PI not quite paying for fuel costs. Its not good to stress over pixels.

The final straw was one of these new frigate holes. Found it, ignored it, went to sort PI. Next thing I know my POS was hit with a bomb.
Several Bombers on long Dscan, and three times one would decloak, drop a bomb and warp off before my guns could lock him.
No lasting damage but pride, and they were clearly playing to draw me out and murder me in a dark place. Now I was in a bomber, set up to scout, and I had my trusty Drake, but nothing that can kill multiple frigates. So I thought I can't touch them, and they cant be bothered to kill my stuff, so I logged off and went to walk the dog, who was most grateful.

Logged back on, to see if I still had a POS, and I had. Made the decision that I needed to move out, and there was a high in next doors C2. The C2 was clearly inhabited, multiple POS with lots of industry.
BUT no time like the present. Started ferrying all ships but scout and Iteron MK V out. all full of stuff.
Off lined and unanchored most defenses, and arrays and shipped them out.
Made the mistake of off lining the tower with a gun still anchored. Mistake that as could not unanchor the tower, had to put fuel in and wait to online to do it properly.
POS stuff is a nightmare and isn't simple.

Nearly 4 hours later at 3am I finally had most things in high sec. I had left a small gun that was 50k away but thats it. I could not be bothered to go back.

The next day I totted up the expenses..
Cost of ships
Cost of Tower
Cost of Fuel

Vs

Loot

And came up heavily in the RED.

However if I count the equipment and fittings I have at book value, then I made a profit. The Loot and PI paid for the fuel and 30% of the ship and tower cost, and I still have the ships and tower.

I did not play Oliver for a week, mindlessly failing to shoot things with John.

I have been invited to join a corp in a C3, which means I do not have to run my own POS, but real work currently comes first.

I have found that I do not have much of a life outside work, and I am taking a couple of weeks to sort it out.






Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Bit of a Disaster

But not much!

Now John had been neglected while wormhole stuff was being sorted out, and had not killed anything in ages.
So He logs in and gets on team speak to hear a frigate and destroyer roam had just left.
Aha, the hull tanked Tristan needed another spin.

So once undocked and had a target system off we go. 4 jumps, figure is easy. A ten plus group clearing the way should be easy.
Saw no one, Jumped into Renarelle, and onto next gate... hit the gate and nothing happened. Checked in TS and it appears that I disconnected. TS is on a phone, not computer.
Now I use a Mac and the client is not 100% and I get a disconnect usually once an hour or so. So well trained in killing the client and logging in again. Usually takes 30-40 seconds..

Log in warp starts, just as my wife starts talking to me... Not good.  Anyway, I think just have to select gate and jump.

However overview had gone to my default, which is a little cluttered, and saw gate 12k away, Thought some bad things, selected and pressed jump and paid attention to Her who must be Obeyed.

The horrible sounds keyed me into trouble. Turned around, and I was already in structure! Tried aligning to a random celestial and pressed warp lots. No go. As a nasty piratey red person the insta locking frigates snagged my pod as well. No gate guns for them....

Looking at a floaty corpse I realised two things.
1. I obviously disconnected jumping into Ren not jumping out, thus the log in warp took me to the gate I was not expecting.
2. While landing from a log in warp, even if I was paying attention, you cannot warp for long enough to let you be locked by a blind one legged cow.
3. I should have thought quicker and turned on the damage control, launched the drones, fired the guns or even tried to target one of them. Or done anything at all....
4. I am a total Scrub.
5. I can't count.

So, wiping the goo off at least I remembered to upgrade clone, went back to Oulley and jumped into a rapid light missile Talwar.

Set destination again and set off.

Went past my looted wreck and floating corpse, next system over I think, oh that's a lot of red crosses on the gate, and get scrammed and one shotted by the incursion rats in system.
I was less than impressed.
Pod was already in warp to next gate and jumped.

Set destination to Oulley again, slightly different route back. Next system saw a proteus decloak on jumping in and then I was off. The proteus showed up on overview and Dscan mid warp. Strange I thought....

Land on gate and bang,

Dead.

Again.

Killed by a smart bombing Proteus that beat me in warp and obviously knew what he was up to.

So not killed for months, then lose 2 ships and 2 pods in an hour.

Sometimes its good to not log in.

Tristan was 100% my fault as should have been paying much more attention.
The incursion kill (no kill mail by the way, I wonder how many they get?) is annoying but could see no reasonable way to avoid that.
The pod to the proteus, well good kill, and very skilled at what he does.

But annoying

Went to go sit in a wormhole and muck up shooting at sleepers.

John

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

A little excitment

Now Oliver's scanning skills are not brilliant
Astrometrics 4
Rangefinding 2
Pinpointing 2
Acquisition 0

So to stack the deck a Helios
Covert Ops skill 3

High
Core Probe Launcher
Covert Ops Cloak
Mid
Scan Rangefinding Array
Scan Rangefinding Array
Scan Pinpointing Array
Scan Pinpointing Array
Experimental 1mn afterburner
Low
Warp Core Stabiliser
Nanofiber Internal Structure
Nanofiber Internal Structure
Rigs
Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade
Small Low friction Nozzle joints

Sisters core probe scanners

In short small fast, hard to pin and single job is scanning
with this I get the average signature on second or third attempt.

So I log on, and I am already in the scan ship. It is pointless logging in to find your POS reinforced or dead if you cannot scan out. 6 sigs in system, five minutes later have them as 2 gas, a data and three wormholes. None of the other usual inhabitants of the hole are online, so security for site running is not going to happen.
Warp to the first hole, Low sec in Solitude 5 jumps from high and no local fuel... No decent shopping so book mark and go back.
Warp to the second and its a K162 from Null. A deserted system in the Greater Wildlands. biggest point of interest was that it had an ice belt. One I could use. There was a plan afoot. Well at least until I went back to the POS and looked in the ship hanger.
Drake
Epithal
Venture
Venture
Iteron V

Hmmm. Nothing that could mine ice. Made a note to get a procurer at some point.

So last hole was a C2. Warped and jumped in.
Dscan showed towers, plenty of them, and 9 ships, mainly Dominix and haulers. Oops I thought lets look. Only 3 sigs and 1 anomaly in system, and that was ore outside dscan range. So made a safe.
One side of the system had 6 towers and 6 forcefields, the other side, after shortening the range to clear duplicates had 4 towers and 3 force fields. Interestingly there were 4 Ship Maintenance Arrays and 4 Corporate Hanger Arrays on scan....
So kept probes in, as they may not notice me. There was also a further 5 ships, two being retrievers, both in the Ore....
Narrowed down the towers and warped to each. One had a piloted Domi and a piloted slicer... Good to go unseen.
Anyway one tower had no force field, but did have the SMA and CHA.....  oh for some guns.

Bookmarked, and went to ore site. the two retrievers warped off after I had been there a minute as the sleepers showed up.

I wanted to kill that SMA, but thought the likely hood of getting a Drake across system, Kill two structures, loot and get back to my hole were slim. No one I knew was up and had no idea how to contact any interested party. the system did have a High sec static, so I thought that I could provide an entrance if I had a taker.

Mailed the other inhabitants of my hole (who had cloaky combat ships) and went to bed.
7 am the next morning I text one who I knew would be up and told him to read his mails. Full details of the target were included. I was just off to work... Isn't Real Life good!
20 mins later had a text back that he had killed it scooped the loot and was dodging a Tengu.

Wish it was my kill!

He had an alt that scooped the Orca and thus all the rest.
Killed the CHA as well.

I did rather nicely out of that, adding a Retriever and a number of other bits to my loot. The Retriever was set up well for mining, tech 2 strip miners and crystals, tech 2 rock scanner and mining upgrades but rigged for more CPU... which reduces the rubbish shields they have.
Need a couple of Ice miners next trip and its a cheap standby.

My issue is that the SMA was an easyish target if I could apply damage. However if I shot it I would have been forced to shoot most of the dropped ships as could not fly an Orca or even the Domi that dropped... Also I would have to abandon the Drake. Not good.

Added a Bomber to my list of useful things to have. (That I can fly).

I also need more contacts.

If I find a target that I cannot hit they there is no reason in my mind why not let someone else do so.

I figure the bomber is a good replacement for the Helios. Just as squishy, reasonably agile, cloaked, but without all the scan bonus. Big plus though is some torpedo launchers. So I could at least shoot some things.

Will have to fit one and see how badly it scans. Probably 40 - 50 million to buy and fit though so a big chunk out of my fuel slush fund.

Is it for me. Who knows.

Oliver

Fuel

What would we do without it.

Well in Wormholes, move out.

I find my daily routine governed by the question, "Where can I get fuel from?"

Now my set up with a medium POS is only 20 blocks an hour, or 480 a day or 3360 a week....
The fuel bay has space for about 30 days worth, and like the fool I usually am I only bought 2000 initially, needing space for tower, strontium etc.

Very quickly I decided that Fuel blocks were painfully expensive and quite bulky. There was also the issue that I have PI set up to churn out all the PI materials that go in fuel blocks, I was just missing the ice products.

Luckily an ammunition array can also manufacture fuel blocks, so one BPO later all set to go.
Heavy Water and Liquid Ozone are a product of all ice, the Hydrogen Isotopes needed for the rust buckets that are Mimnatar towers, are however are far more rare.

My skills not being brilliant, and the paranoia of a few warp core stabilisers means that my Iteron V can only carry about 4000 fuel blocks, or 8.3 days worth. This will cost outside Jita about 64 million or about 8 million a day.
However buying Liquid Ozone, heavy water and Hydrogen has so far, in the quantities to create a similar amount of blocks, has not filled the hauler and costs about 44 million. So 5.5 million a day.
So far I have then exported the excess PI and combined with the blue loot has paid for fuel. Once my alt actually gets a PI planet or two then I will be looking at a profit. This is at a rate of doing a site every other day.
Logistics and exploring take more time, and some days with 4 active wormholes in system, the thought of running sites is daft.

Whoever said wormholes were paved with gold obviously :
a. Never lived in a C2
b. Did not have to pay for fuel
c. Or had plenty of PI alts.

So I find myself usually with between 6-10 days of fuel, and always exploring a low or high sec entrance to get more. Most days I will come back stuffed with one or more or the materials.

The thought of upgrading to a large tower is too much for a beginner.

Oliver

Friday, August 29, 2014

New Alt

Finally after 15 months of playing Eve I have filled the third slot.

The driver for this is Oliver's recent move into wormhole space.

Being realistic, there is going to come a point where I am podded out and will have an issue getting back, so paying for a months training to up the scan skills and some basic PI and I will have someone that can at least scan the way back in.

Also with a few planets PI it helps pay the fuel costs.

There are now two residents in my POS, both me.

Setting up for Wormhole Life

Oliver was basically given an ultimatum, 24 hours to leave Elite Mining Services (EMS) or the same period for John to leave Dead Jesters(he finally got in) and join EMS or Oliver would be kicked.

Now, living in a POS of a corp that's about to kick you is scary. I had only been there 3 weeks, two of which I was offline on holiday. As such assets were small. A scan ship, a Drake, two transports and two ventures. Had a heavy missile BPO and about 15 million in modules and stuff (most of my ships multitask)

I had a long chat with the pos owner and other people in the hole. They were all cool with me staying regardless of what happened in corp. Which was excellent.

So packed as much as I could into a scan ship and logged off in a safe. Mailed EMS and explained as it was my wedding anniversary (True) I would be excommunicated from several vital organs if I played Eve over the weekend so could not comply with the limit.

The CEO was understanding but one of the directors was being paranoid.

Anyway spent the next 4 days out of eve due to real life. Logged back on and had been kicked.

Such is life, its a game and I treat it less seriously than some.

The other inhabitants were supportive and offered to ferry all my stuff to the next high exit.

Some hard thought went into the next actions. I decided that I would like to stay. The tipper was that my PI was set up, and I was fed up shifting it....

So I had a chat to a friend who had his own corp, small and high sec, and joined with director privileges.
So shopping, I admit that I bought a Plex, cashed it in and went shopping for a POS.

Risk vs reward
Small, Medium or Large POS

I suspect small, unless staying only for a week or two is just kill board padding for someone, Large, for my needs is probably too fuel intensive and Medium about right.

After much reading of forums, settled on the rusty old Medium Mimnatar tower that has the downside of rare fuel, but Auto Cannons.
As luck would have it a K162 high sec was in system, coming out in a high sec island in Molden Heath.
One of the EMS chaps ran off to Rens for me and bought a tower, strontium, fuel and  an SMA for me, and we did an exchange in high sec. He also ran out my Iteron Mk 5 for me. Marvelous.
I in the meantime, collected some guns and Electronic warfare structures. All this was now stashed in a hisec station ready to run in.

First the tower. Loaded it and fuel and stront and headed in. Picked a moon around the same planet the EMS pos is at, (muddy the waters a bit for intruders), and started the anchoring process.
Never having put a pos together before, I have to say that the tower was painless, spent 15 mins warping around the system. Note to self, a cloak would be useful. Once anchored and fueled pressed online and went to get second load.
So far, painless.
Working out how to get the force field up took longer. Having to input a password was not the most obvious way.
Came back and dropped the SMA and an ammunition array and on lined both. I then made 7 more trips for Electronic Warfare and guns. Then went back for my scan ship.
A good job I had a free afternoon as I then spent 4 hours attempting to anchor guns and EW modules. The interface is bad. OK not within 5 km of shield is fine. Not knowing where the shield ends, or where the stupid green anchoring box is in relation is not good. Very frustrating to move it, anchor, be told no as you are 3k short, move agin etc until it just anchors with no way of telling how far away it actually is....
I have modules and guns now 31 - 40 k away from the tower. Shield is apparently 26km. It would be better to be visual, so that the anchoring grid was red where you could not and green where you can.

The last few I cheated, set orbit distance at 31500 m and orbited the tower and threw the last few out at random points. I did feel very vulnerable though as no guns were online.

Took me another hour to online everything, and the high sec was very end of life when I thought about ammo.... Not good I had stocked up on assorted small auto cannon ammo. Of course this did not fit. Silly me, small guns take medium ammunition.

I borrowed 10 thousand rounds from EMS for the night.

I was lucky in that the next low sec was 4 jumps from Jita, so went and stashed my scan ship in my new SMA, and  retrieved my trusty Iteron mk V.

Jita. Never had i seen such a hell hole. Left warp 5km from station and thought... Oh dear.
Still on the way in watched a Freighter being bumped and shot by a hoard, and Concord promptly blapping them in return.

Bit worried so bought the cheapest frigate and a micro warp drive and created an insta undock. On my third attempt. Was heavily bumped (accidentally I think) on first two.

Here, I bought a lab, ammo BPO's, more guns, ammo for said guns and an ore reprosessor. And all the ice products to make fuel.
Several runs later my ammunition array was churning out fuel blocks and I offlined a medium gun to get the lab up to research the ammunition BPO's. I suspect the lab will be up about a week to research all the small and medium ammo BPO's that I now have and then come out rarely if ever.

I hate Jita. I felt safer jumping into a random C5 than I did undocked there. Still no war decs and no load went above 70 million so was probably ok. Hauler was also shielded and had a rack of warp core stabilisers, so was in with a chance if attacked by a solo.

I then went home and sat, looked at stars and worried about attack. So shifted the majority of modules from top and bottom of POS and spread them out. Badly. But at least now a single bomb would only hit one or two weapons, and any attacker would have to move around the POS increasing their time in the danger zone, at the expense of not concentrating fire.

All my PI and modules were then delivered from the EMS pos in the remainder of my ships, great guys in our wormhole.

So not all Wormholes with two different corps are fighting....

John did not log in....

Oliver

Kill Rights

Love them or hate them they make life for some interesting and have no effect on others.

Kill rights are given to anyone who is podded in Low Sec or ship is destroyed in High Sec.

This kill right is basically a free pass to make the offender a legitimate target in either Low or High Sec for 15 minutes. This enables anyone to shoot him/her.

John now has 26 kill rights against him. 14 are currently active and a number are up for sale from between 2 (just 2) and 20 million ISK.

Utterly pointless while I have a security status of -9.3. I can never go to high sec, and anyone can shoot me elsewhere with no penalty.

But such is life. (or death)

Thursday, August 14, 2014

All Change

Honestly, I go away for two weeks to the third world (not really just somewhere with no internet connection and I am too tight to pay roaming phone charges), and upheaval occurs.
John's corp, Space Mutts has basically folded and mail asks us all to apply to Dead Jesters.
Oliver's corp, Elite Mining Services, was kicked from the alliance and homeless...

Deep joy.

Now after a holiday it seems like there is a massive amount to do at home, washing, ironing, cut the grass, sort out the weed problem, retrieve the dog, children in school holidays.... the list seems endless. So eve time is limited.
Both were training Cruiser V while away, John Amarr and Oliver Caldari.
First night, logged in and checked mails, and reset PI and went to bed.
Second night, Oliver added to training queue and collected PI. Scanned out the hole, the low sec connection was bad, 6 jumps in Molden Heath to a high sec station, and the C2 looked to have too much traffic, and they were a Low/c2 system with the C2 end of life, so went back.
John got on with plenty in local but no one from Jesters that could accept him. So after housekeeping, joined two others on the gate for 30 mins before bed.
It was a bizarre night, for in 30 mins, three gnosis managed to shoot
Thrasher
Catalyst
Catalyst again
Imicus
Algos

The Thrasher and the Imicus were the same person, Zen Zubon, and he lost his pod the second time. The Catalysts were also a special case, both piloted by Jacur Jigafur. Both identical fits and he lost his pod both times. With only 12 minutes between the two, one can only hope his stupidity was rewarded by failing to update his clone. It was interesting that he mixed blasters, with some ion some electron and some neutron.... must have had some issues. To lose your pod in low sec is fairly difficult, to do it twice in 12 minutes in the same place to the same people is silly.

The next day, everyone was somewhere else, so scanned out Oulley to see if anything interesting was there. There was a data site, so thought I would do that and went to swap ships. came out of station to find a magnate in system scanning, so swapped to proteus cloaked up and went to wait in the data site. The Magnate duly arrived and started hacking cans. Sportingly I waited until he was on the last can before I popped him
Magnate
and then his pod.

He did not seem amused and promptly made the kill right available.

I was then bored so took out a bait venture and started mining... All sorts of neutrals came through the system, either none d scanned or the name "Bait Miner" put them off. Mined a load of pure Jaspet and went to bed.

Oliver logged on to find the same holes still open and a gas site. No other anomalies available, so reset PI, and went to bed. All the corp and alliance shenanigans really did not effect me as no assets were in Oulley.


Fly safe

John

Friday, July 25, 2014

Lack of Time

Combination of work, children and preparing to go on holiday has kept me away from the game in the last week for anything more than an hour or so a day.

Oliver, has been logging into the wormhole, by and large in between others, and so has not been sociable. PI, a small amount of mining to trigger the rat spawn, and poking nose into whatever connects for a quick look has been the name of the game.
The Crius release hit 2 days ago and stopped the only other activity I do there, ammo and fuel block manufacturing. Now I deliberately stopped all jobs before the update. I have not been playing long enough to be truly paranoid, just, with an industry release thought it prudent to stop it all.
Now have fallen foul of the cost to manufacture in a pos bug. 1 run of tech 1 missiles now costs me 6 ISK to put in. for 100 missiles, fair enough, but it wants the funds from the corp master wallet.
Now like 95% of POS users, we do not run corps, just use the facilities, mainly for free. There is no way on any New Eden planet that we would all be allowed take access from the corp master wallet.
Now I get why, as the POS is a corp asset, and all jobs are corp jobs, then if someone has to pay then the corp is the default. But hello CCP this is real life. most people that use a POS are not corp directors. Possibly all the devs, testers and CSM members that use a POS are directors and have roles to access the corp wallet, and therefore this was tested and passed without thought.
Please test from the little persons view point. Please.
CCP has now listed it as an undesirable feature, and said that a fix will take about a week.... For many a week without fuel blocks built locally will be interesting. Also a week when they have one or two other things to fix will probably mean two.

John then gets logged in to basically shoot things. A bit of mindless gate camping at the end of the day is always a wind down for me. Sometimes I am the only one there, which gets the blood up a bit, but more often there are 1-5 others that can share the gate gun fire.
Yesterday as I log in a tower bash was about to start next door, so I jumped into a Proteus, shot the tower a couple of times to get on the kill mail

Small Tower Kill

and remained cloaked up watching while our transports landed to anchor a new one. Then went to camp the hi sec gate so that people could not come through and interfere...
I have been making a rule to log off after the first kill, unless like yesterday that was within 30 seconds of arriving at the gate. A Punisher was just decloaking as I landed.

Punisher Kill

Then it was dead.

I have had a few more than normal disconnect issues since upgrade to Crius, (Mac Client), and so missed a couple of shuttles that were caught, then killed a Coercer

Coercer

and his empty pod

That was me for the night. A good result.

I fear that business is going to be slow however in  the future as the charges to make anything in industry will now pump up the price. CCP say between 1 and 14%....
Now I have heard several ideas of what the % is a % of. Some say the base price of the item.
Say for example a Coercer,

Z-kill says 1.117 million isk. so 1% is 11, 170 and 14% is 156,380, multiplied by system index.
Not bad

Another school of thought has it that its 1-14% of the NPC blueprint price.... of 8.635 million so that's between 86,350 and 1.208 million...  multiplied by system index. That's at worst

Another says that its the materials price for whatever is being manufactured multiplied by the system index. This will give you a value a bit less than the market price calculation.

However the system index is calculated by taking the number of manufacturing hours for that system in last 28 days and dividing by total manufacturing hours in New Eden.

My heavy missile BP requires 738 Tritanium at ME -10 and 2 Nocxium so assuming a price of 6 per Tritanium and 624 for Nocxium that's 5,676 in materials cost. In a wormhole with minimal manufacturing then 1% of this rounded up is 57.... which is 10 times what it asked for... 6 is 10% of this or 0.001%

I once worked out that a Raven would cost £138,063,151 if I bought the materials. So if this is the case 1% is a healthy 1.38 million, 5%  is 6.9 million and 10% is 13.8 million but 0.1% is only 138,063 which is far better.

I am lost to be honest. Anyone who can explain simply, I would be grateful.

The end result is that everything will cost more 5-10% is my guess.

Anyway I am going on Holiday for a couple of weeks, during which time Oliver and John are both training Caldari Cruiser V and this blog will be quiet.

Hopefully Industry will be less broken when I get back.

John

Monday, July 21, 2014

Hull Tanking

Hull tanking in general

Now a little while ago I stated that you would have to be a Very Special type of person to hull tank anything with the exception of the Orca.

With Kronos this has changed. There are a number, nearly all Gallente ships, that you can actually get a better deal out of Hull tanking.

I Hull tanked a lowly Tristan the other day and went out on a solo roam, where everyone ran away, or only found large groups, and I ran away. Then I joined a larger mainly tech 2 frigate roam where we killed this:-

Proteus Kill

Now my Tristan had the 3rd highest damage.... Look at the other ships on the kill, They are all hideously expensive compared to mine.
My fit below. Only used guns as could not source small neuts in time. The other Meta modules are what I had handy in 10 mins before fleet leaves. (Harlequins fleets usually go at advertised times and if you are late you have to catch up) Also my skills are not all 5's in fitting and combat and thus had to fit meta modules to make them work. I would rather in most cases fit a meta module to do what I want rather than waste a slot on a fitting module. My personal preference.


High
125mm Railgun II Caldari Navy Anti matter
125mm Railgun II Caldari Navy Anti matter
Small Nosferatu II (keep the DCU on line....)

Med
Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler
Patterned Stasis Web
Experimental 1MN Afterburner

Low
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Internal Force Field Array
Beta Hull Mod Overdrive

Rigs
Small Transverse Bulkhead x3

Drones
Hobgoblin II x5


Now this, with my non perfect skills has a
Top speed of 1099 m/s,
Drone range of 51km,
Drone DPS 129
Gun DPS 39  This can be increased to 46 with Light Ion Blaster II and Null
Total DPS of 168 This can be increased to 175 with Light Ion Blaster II and Null
Volley of 617
Base shields 420, Armour 562, Hull 1404
EHP of 4966
And I am Cap stable....


Compare this to a common Tristan (blaster Fit) from z-killboard.

High
Light Ion Blaster II Null
Light Ion Blaster II Null
Small Diminishing Power Drain

Medium
j5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler
X5 Prototype Engine Enervator
1MN Afterburner II

Low
Damage Control II
Energised Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Small Ancillary Armour Repair  with Nano repair paste

Drones
Hobgoblin II x5

Rigs
Small Ancillary Nano Pump
Small Nanobot Accelerator x2


Now this, with my non perfect skills, I cannot even fit, but if I could has a
Top speed of 1028 m/s,  ( Minus 71)
Drone range of 51km,  (Same)
Drone DPS 105    (Minus 24)
Gun DPS 46    (Plus 7)
Total DPS of 150   (Minus 18)
Volley of 528  (Minus 89)
Base shields 420  (0), Armour 562 (0), Hull 812 (-592)
EHP of 3967  (-999)
And cap lasts 1m 18s....

It does have the Armour Rep, If you have the cap left to use it, which looks like on my fitting tool will rep 51.7 a second, But the just under 1000 extra hull makes up for this in my book.

So in a stand up fight, Not sure who would win. With my skills the traditional armour tanked would be cap dry very quickly, but the Nos would probably keep the armour rep going. The extra speed and DPS of the hull tanked one could keep the Blasters out of range once webs are on and pile on the damage and win that way.

Hull tanking for me has given the ability to fit a damage mod and a low propulsion mod for essentially the same tank, which cannot be neuted out.

Ships to Hull tank.

Well I would look for anything with similar HP in the hull area as the traditional tanking of that ship. If The ship has more Hull HP (As most Gallente ships do) then these are all worth a look.
The hull tank rigs are quite expensive, but worth getting a BPO and making I suspect.

Try the following ships
Atron   A=450 vs H=500 hp
Incursus A=450 vs H=500 hp
Tristan A=450 vs H=650 hp

Algos often shield tanked A=850, S=800, H=950... Try it
Catalyst  A=800, H = 900

Celestis A=1400, H= 1700
Exequror A=1400, H=1600
Vexor = A=2000, H=2000 but can put more damage mods in if Hull

Myrmidion A=4500, H=4750, Again More room for damage mods

Dominix  A=8000, H=8500, more room for DDA II's

Now I am not suggesting that you do this, but adding hull rigs to drone boats gives you the same if not more ehp compared to armour and frees up one or two slots for Drone Damage Amps or something else useful.

Certainly worth a look for certain fits and situations.

Hull Repairers are, however, rubbish so until these are fixed/altered its a buffer tank only.


Good luck, blow some stuff up...

John

Something Different

Orca's

These are really quite interesting multi-role ship. Most often seen in the following roles.

High Sec
Most often seen hanging around providing mining boosts to a mining fleet in systems. Can also be seen in a mining fleet that is stripping a belt, using its various holds to store the ore so that trips back are less frequent. Often attended by a Miasmos or two to ferry the ore away. A Miasmos however has roughly the same ore storage capacity as an Orca, so why both? Not sure but its there.

Low Sec.
Its lost and going to be shot shortly.
To be honest its not really a ship for low sec. If it does jump in, fit properly it should have enough time to get back to gate and jump out. The truly mad could use for mining boosts, but with little organised mining, why bother.

Null Sec.
Usually sitting at a POS in a bubbled system providing mining bonus to the fleet of care bears that are currently mining. Been there done that, always an Orca, always in/near a POS or on the station undock.
Usually built in place or ferried in via a direct wormhole.

Worm Holes.
In any hole it can be used as both a Corporate hanger Array, Ship Maintenance Array and Ore Storage that does not go offline if the POS is reinforced. So its all accessible, and uses no power or cpu on the POS so the POS can run more weapons or modules.

C1-
If present it has to be built there and cannot use a hole going out. So its stuck. Other than Mining bonus and storage, That's it.
C2-C3-C4 Can use the holes in and out. Most common use would be to "role the hole". This is to either get away from a hostile or potentially hostile connection, or to get away from a boring one that offers no targets of either the sleeper or player kind.
C5 -C6. You have, or should have capitals for hole control, but the Orca would have its place as a less massive weight to throw around.

How to tank an Orca? Well with the Kronos release you would now be mad to do anything but hull tank. That's right. To be fair even before, hull tanking an Orca was not a bad idea.

Base Shield : 10,750
Base Armour : 6,900
Base Hull : 46,000

With 2 Medium and 4 low slots, Idea for 3 new hull rigs and a Damage Control.

With Trimark Armour rigs and a DCU II the EHP is a staggering 284,000 HP
With Transverse Bulkhead rigs and a DCU II it goes up to a whopping 346,000 HP

I can see ganks on these being reduced as with a normal armour tank you would still want to use something like 3-4 Brutix to stand a chance. With the hull rigs it becomes a lot less ISK efficient to use anything to kill them.

Sorry this has been disjointed, written over a week.
Now if anyone can tell me other uses for an Orca, let me know, as I am skilling up for one for use in a wormhole.


Thursday, July 10, 2014

Mixed Feelings

Low Sec or Worm Holes.....

Dilemma.

The last week I have been mainly on as Oliver, trying to set up all that I need, and only on as John after, and with a new character to get on as well.

The new chap will be high sec only and initially skills are being built up towards being an Ice Miner. Now this is dull, however POS fuel does not magic itself, and ice products are the most expensive to buy in.
Now I say most expensive because PI in the hole is sufficient, even at Oliver's skill levels to provide all the PI ingredients for fuel blocks. So just ice products need providing.

Large POS towers require 40 Fuel blocks PER HOUR of operation
Medium's require 20 PER HOUR

Not interested in small as to be honest its asking to be shot in any wormhole.

So that's either 960 or 480 fuel blocks per day. Current Jita prices are between 13k and 16k per block depending on the racial type. Mimnitar, is the cheapest and Caldari, the most expensive.

Large Tower between 14.5 and 15.4 million a day to buy fuel. That's  between 375 and 450 million per 30 days
Med Tower between 7.25 and 7.75 million a day and 190 and 225 million per 30 days.

Prices are approximate and rounded.

Now a character that could provide this as a sideline is worth it. About 30 days to mine the ice skill wise and another 30 to process it with a degree of efficiency.  The training is so long as you need to be in a barge, and that requires a reasonable amount of support skills to train into. Ideally, a Procurer or Skiff, as looking at systems with ice belts in high sec, there are a large number of ice miners dying to ganking. Either of these ships provides a measure of protection as they are easier to tank and therefore need more ships to kill them. This shortens the profit for the gankers, and also with the drone bonus that these ships now have, they too could be in on the concord kill mail. Not something the average ganker wants.

So with one playing skill queue online, and ongoing a semi afk mining regime its just the main two to decide the way forward.

Once Oliver is skilled enough to take a wormhole site solo, there will be more fun to be had here in a wormhole. Currently, the day is scanning the sites, warping to gas sites and collecting as much as I can before the sleepers turn up and then collecting the Drake and shooting the 6 frigates that turn up. Normally get about 3000m3 gas and the 6 sleepers for about 40 minutes signed on. Once PI is reset and collected that's almost an hour. Then, the choice is sign on as John, or go and collect more gas, mine or jump into the static and see what the next hole over holds.
This is my dilemma as currently my play time during the week is about 90 minutes. Also at the time I finish all this few are online in Oulley.

Part of me wishes to make a go of the worm hole and ignore low sec for a while, the rest wants the opposite... Its clear that I cannot do both well...




Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Wormholes again - What's the fascination?

Now for the last 6 weeks neither character have been near a wormhole, the time has been spent gate camping with one and mining with the other. A sideline in building a few bits in Oulley has done quite well, making a profit from Station Containers, Scripts and Warp Core Stabilisers. seems to be a healthy market for each.

Now I was listening into team speak at the wrong time, it seems that one corp in the alliance has a wormhole and was looking for fresh meat volunteers to join them. I sort of did want to do this, but not with John, although he is the best skilled and set up for wormholes.

So Oliver finally left Back-Water and joined up. This has also left me without an out of corp/alliance back up... So I capitulated and started another character.

On the first night I managed to kit out a Helios as a scan ship and get it in the hole. But I needed some roles to use the POS which would have to wait for the next day. I busied myself making a couple of safe warp to spots and perches.

I then took stock. Travelling light was going to be name of the game, so I made a list
1. Scan ship plus probes
2. Venture kitted to mine both ore and gas.
3. Venture as a fast salvage ship with salvage rigs
4. General Hauler
5. PI Hauler
6. Assorted PI command Centres.
7. DPS ship
8. Modules to fit each.

This was fairly easy to purchase, and run in, as there was a direct hi sec connection at the time.

My only issue was the DPS ship. Oliver had initially skilled up in combat minimally then become a mining and manufacturing  alt.
Biggest ship he could fly and had available was a Drake.

Right that's half the readers of this blog switched off....

Now the Drake is the first large combat ship that I flew, but had not tried it for 8-9 months. It was brought to over watch mining ops in Paragon Soul, and kill Sansha.

Wormholes are a different kettle of fish however. So I slinked into the hole fit with tech 1 Heavy Missiles, tech 1 shields and tech 1 Ballistic Missile enhancers. I did have a tech 2 damage control though.

So, that's the other half given up in disgust.

One of my colleagues immediately took me on a sleeper shoot.

I learned the following
1. I could take down the Frigates and Cruisers, just
2. Battleships, I could not break their tank.
3. Drones. Keep an eye on these. The sleepers spread their love by randomly re-targeting  the drones. They die fairly fast. Keep control and recall as soon as sleepers target them.
4. Align to safe is the best. Drakes align and warp like a drunken pig in a mud pool.
5. Sleeper Loot is like bounties, but you have to collect and take to certain K-space stations to swap for ISK.
6. Need to watch D-scan like a hawk while shooting the red crosses.


One low level site, done, 4 waves of sleepers. with my microscopic amount of damage it took nearly 45 minutes and I needed another person to shoot the battleships. Not good.

Found out that I am deficient in some crucial skills
Cloaking - need level 4 for a covert ops cloak.
Caldari Battlecruiser. Level 3 is really not good enough
All the shield skills - well 3's do not let you use any tech 2 modules.
Scanning- I can do it with a full complement of scanning modules in the mid slots and 2 rig slots for them as well.
Missile skills - mainly 3 and 4's. Ok, but need them up to increase DPS.
Weapon upgrades, need to increase it to fit the tech 2 modules.

So just to fit a tech 2 Drake properly my training queue looks to be about 30 days. Oh Happy days.


But the people are friendly, and that's what counts.

So in a wormhole and huffing gas...

Thursday, July 3, 2014

Kronos and me

Well a new patch. Nearly 40 minutes to load on the Mac. Almost gave up the nights activity at that point.

On loading and undocking it certainly looked visually, well, different. The artwork is visually stunning. Stars and Station skins look very very good.
Sound seems to have completely shut off however.... Hmm I liked the locking sound....

On the game play side, well I immediately whipped around the belts and did not find hordes of Mordus Legion queuing up to hand over the Blue Prints. There were more signs of life in a week dead cat.

Still kicked off the invention of some prospect blueprints and placed a materials order in Jita, on the hope that a few would work.
Not much going on in the home system so jumped round 6 more systems to check belts. No Mordus. Hmm
lots of other people out looking though. decloaked on a couple, but they ran away before I could lock.

The next few days were busy in real life, so I fished out the completed invention jobs, and found out that I have BPC's for 7 runs of the new prospect... Put 3 in to cook and semi afk mined.

The prospect, nice ship to look at and now I had some in the hanger was eager to try them out. That was a flop however as Mining Frigate V was not trained. I had missed that one, I had trained the new skill, but was stuck with 9 days left for mining frigate, never a priority till now...Should I swap? No was the answer as I did not want to abandon the 25 day skill that I started a few day ago. Ho hum. Planning was poor as usual. decided to wait.

A few days later I had the opportunity to sign on in the morning, and promptly did so. Un-docked in the Proteus to tour the belts. There were only a hand full of people in system and one was blue. Just as I hit Dscan, voice comms clicked in and I was asked if I was in a Retriever....
Sure enough a Retriever on Dscan. With only 6 belts, my colleague took the top and bottom and I went for 2 and 3 and we would meet in 4. As it happens I landed 14km off him in belt 3, and started in toward him while calling in my colleague to warp to me. He definately was shooting rocks with 2 beams out on different one. Not a Cyno carrier then. When my compatriot was in warp, I was 7km off target, dropped the cloak and began targeting him managed to scram him just as the Gnosis landed. We both opened fire and he died very quickly, no tank, set up for maximum mining.

Retriever

Pod

The pod made no effort to escape, so he must have been AFK mining as well... On less than 5 minutes and a good kill already...



All the other Kronos changes seem to have passed me by, in the large.
The contested Guristas sites are far too lethal to venture into, in my little ships. I sat cloaked and watched a couple of carriers have a hard time in one, all for a ship skin....

Ship skins, to be honest I am not bothered, 95% are for ships that I do not fly, and a lot of the time I am zoomed out anyway to get a better tactical awareness. May go for a Proteus one, or a Gnosis one, or even to be honest one for the multitude of Gallente haulers.... When they are released.

The Prospects I have in the hanger, I could sell I suppose but at the prices they command I would be making less than a million each profit, and as I intend to fly and probably get shot in them at some point its worth keeping. They caused me trouble to make, so I will get my monies worth.

The anti cloaking in Faction Warfare does not affect me at all as I have yet to take a cloaked ship. Fights there are already far from fair though, so its a step in the right direction... The increase in large complexes is however interesting as it gives scope for future large ship warfare.

The best bit about Kronos is that its drawing lots more people into the Low Security regions of New Eden, and more people = more targets.

John




Wednesday, June 25, 2014

The down side of Low Sec combat

Down Side I hear you say!

Well it depends on your view point.

Initiating combat with a ship that's not a war target and does not have a severely negative security status (-5 or less) gets you a ticking off from CONCORD.
The form that this takes is to reduce your security status for each offense. This is a % , I believe of the difference between your current and -10.0. So the higher your status the quicker you fall, and the blacker your soul the less it hurts...
As an example John had a security rating of 1.4 before embarking on shooting people. Not massive but good enough. Now 15 ship kills and 6 Capsule kills later it stands at -4.4. You seem to lose 10 times as much for shooting capsules.
I have also been belt ratting in this period, which raises security, usually by 0.01 a time(see below). That's not a huge amount and it only counts every 15 minutes. So 0.04 an hour. Kill a pod and I lost 0.8 in one go. So 20 hours of dedicated belt ratting. Per pod. Oops.

A security status gain occurs for the HIGHEST value outlaw NPC you kill within a 15 minute time period PER SYSTEM. So the bigger the ships you kill the better your increase.

Now I believe that if you are in Factional Warfare, you can shoot the other side without this loss, as technically you are at war. However, you tend to get a lot of non Factional Warfare corps and players trying to shoot you. So to avoid the security loss you almost have to give them the first shot, and hope your defenses can hold while you lock and shoot or run. Consequently you see a lot of players running around low sec systems that are a solid red colour. Basically a neon sign saying shoot me! Something that in High Sec the various Police forces do quite capably.

Where You can be shot freely depending on Security status:-

-2.0 or lower will be attacked in 1.0 space
-2.5 or lower will be attacked in 0.9 and above
-3.0 or lower will be attacked in 0.8 and above
-3.5 or lower will be attacked in 0.7 and above
-4.0 or lower will be attacked in 0.6 and above
-4.5 or lower will be attacked in 0.5 and above (all of highsec)

So John is just that one or 2 kills from being barred from High Sec.

Interestingly enough the various Police forces will not shoot a pod. Any player however can pod you in high sec freely once below -0.5. So as long as you do not get caught by an armed player you are fine. There are no armed players of course in Oulley. Come and visit. Bring a freighter....

How to repair the status

1. Stop shooting Pods. These have the highest negative impact.
2. Stop shooting other players. (unless they are Pirates or war targets) (Or your bored)
3. Rat a belt in system every 15 minutes.
4. Change systems and back to point 3.
5. Do missions, Shoot the rats in these missions. 
6. Scan out anomalies and do these.
7. Find the elusive clone soldiers that drop tags. These can be traded for an increase in status at a concord station. Best systems are those that are 0.2 and below.
8. Continue to be good and polish your halo.

Remember be good....

John



  

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

A Pirates idea of Camping

Now in Oulley, there is not a lot to do. There are only 6 belts, 6 moons and a few anomalies.

There are two gates however. One leads to the Hi Sec system, Orvolle the other to a long chain of Low sec systems.
As such its a conduit to and from safe space, and sees a lot of passing traffic.

As such, its gate camped, often one or both, depending on the amount of people available.

You may be lucky however, so bring that Freighter along, any prime time you fancy. We will make you welcome. Honest. There may be cake.

Now, I log in and join some others on the Orvolle gate in my new shiny Proteus... I immediately get told to go away, and come back in a battle cruiser. It was not however that polite, everyone in the alliance is an adult and from about a dozen different countries. Some of the comments are quite inventive. This is after all EVE.

Now this is, apparently very sensible, as me being in a ship that costs the same as any 4 of theirs makes the gate camp a good target for a hot drop. and a hot drop is bad.

Hot Drop ---

If you are going to do one....

Fit a ship with a cyno field and tackle and some tank and drive around dumbly until you find a nice big target. Tackle them and activate (light) the cyno beacon. All your mates then appear and kill everything around. Nearly always will you lose the cyno ship, as once the beacon is lit then you cannot move or anything. Very dangerous for the cyno pilot. Use a throw away newbie frigate or a brick tanked cruiser or above.

If you have it done to you....
1. Die messily.
2. Kill the cyno pilot before it can activate.
3. Scatter at the first sight of one. They then have wasted the fuel. Then hide like quivering jellies in the station until they go.
4. Re-ship into a fighting ship and maybe die.
5. Wake up in a goo vat.
6. If not 1 or 5 then offer suitable praise to Bob.

Option 2 is preferred, but option 3 more normal.

So I nip back to station where one of the older and wiser members gives me a Gnosis. A 60 million ship, to play with. Free. Christmas. Early.Wow.

The beauty of this ship is that anyone can fly it, its easy to fit, any weapon system (except drones) works as well as any others, and its versatile.

Now i opted for
High Slots
5x 250mm Railgun II's with Fed Navy Antimatter (its cheaper out this way than the other variants)
Empty slot.

Medium
Tracking Computer II (Tracking Speed Script)
Faint Warp Disruptor
3x Sensor Booster II (Scan resolution script)
10mn Afterburner II

Low
800mm Reinforced Steel plates II
2 x Magnetic Field Stabiliser II
Damage Control II
2 x Energised Adaptive Nano Membrane

Trimarks in the rig Slots

and Hammerhead II's in the drone bay.

Now This is armour tanked, makes complete sense on a gate camp in low sec. In a fleet or for solo pvp or missions this I suspect would die fairly fast. Any damage is repaired in station.

Gate camps Oulley style often consist of 2-10 ships. Normally all Gnosis, but other battle cruisers are welcome. The idea is to sit at roughly zero on gate, and anyone who jumps into system gets targeted and shot. Then everyone has to warp out to avoid the gate guns fire, and return for the next one.
Rules
1. Do not shoot Blues.
2. Be on voice communication.
3. See 1.

Very simple.

Saying that it took me a while to hit anything.
The third target had just been killed when I realised that my safety interlocks were on green... I was stopping myself shooting. I was not impressed, and like all good workmen, promptly blamed my tools. Then threw them out of the pram and had a cup of tea.

Once fixed, I managed to hit and damage a Punisher, a Tristan, and two pods. I still missed several ships that I really should have been able to hit. This was still more kills than I had had for the last 6 months.

Overview issues again.
Gate Camps call for a specialised set up. So specialised that it warrants its own tab. Basically create a new tab with a right click. Call it Gate Camp or whatever floats your boat.
Then open overview options and uncheck everything. So nothing shows. Then check every ship in the ship section.
Then importantly on the next tab, exclude fleet and blue (so Corp and Alliance).
This will give you a blank sheet until something jumps in, and then the deceased is the only one to select from.... no messing with celestial's, drones, wrecks and other clutter to find your target. Seconds count.

Also pre activate your modules. Have the sensor boosters, tracking modules, damage control + any other active modules active. You will not have time to manually activate, and if you are at all cap stable there is no downside.

Now a trick.
Click on your weapons, your point/scram, web, ECM, whatever else you have that targets the hostiles. All these modules will flash and do nothing else.
When the target appears on your overview you mouse click it or hit the control key(depending on keyboard setup). This then auto targets and activates the modules as soon as they can be....

This is powerful, as you do not need to target, click weapons, click point, click web etc. (or key equivalents), one action does the lot.
Very good.
HOWEVER
It does this WHATEVER you click on. If on screen, you mouse over the gate to check distance, or a college to check you are out of smart bomb range and accidentally click on them? Well then they are then targeted, pointed, webbed and shot.
Its a way to win friends I suppose....

I did shoot the gate that way. Gate guns had me into armour before I could warp off.


Gate guns are the reason that you have to have a bigger ship and a tank. They seem to do about 350 dps (damage per second) to me. If your combat time and warp time is 10 seconds that's 3500 damage, so most frigates and destroyers will pop.

More later

And thank you for the comments via both the blog and eve mail. Its good to know people actually read this.

John



Monday, June 23, 2014

Recovering and Reflections

EVE....Am I addicted?

Its a game, it can be left alone and real life goes on....Its only pixels.

Except need to reset PI, or fuel that POS, or defend a timer, or trade your way to the next million or gank some poor soul.....

Now I have always (well its a year now) regarded Eve as a method of relaxation, and aim to limit my game to an hour a day.

Well that hasn't worked.

I am often on for 2 hours plus, I write this, I have tried coding market data into spread sheets (badly), I even think about the game, (mainly on the train), and usually along the lines of should do this.... However, I can never remember when I log on.

I still have time for work and the children, I never log on while they are up, and always have a couple of hours of chores or TV as well.....

I still cannot wait to log on, I spent all day in the garden on Sunday, sorting out stuff, was thinking about EVE on and off.....


Anyway.

After loosing the Proteus, I went and bought another. But different. Living in Low Sec, I no longer needed the interdiction nullifier for example.... and then brought it up to the Island.

I knew for the next week or two my time would be limited as I had three evenings a week out for the next several weeks.

I early on said I would not log on after a session in the pub, as once did this and thought it was a good idea to put some BPO's in a ship and auto pilot across the universe and leave them there. The next days play was wasted bringing them back. So only a few days play.

So did some more level 2 missions, and the alliance asked us to evacuate all assets from the southern base. That was my PI stuffed again.

I had some BPs in research which I had to leave but otherwise moved most out to high stations.

After some days, I got the bonus mission (after every 16) and had to go to Osmallanais and deliver about 8000 Scordite.

So undocked my Procurer and mined 10000 scordite, then jumped into Osmallanais.

On jumping in, I admit not paying much attention as it was a route I was doing daily to look for ghost sites, Three Red war targets on the gate.
All were Proteus....

Several things entered my mind at once. I immediately gave up on system and tried burning back to the gate. It took them 6 seconds to lock and point me. Still the Procurer is a tanky old beast. I debated about releasing my drones, but to be honest Hobgoblin II's vs Proteus, why bother. Best hope was the gate and jump though while they had aggression timers.

It was not to be, and went bang very fast. warped in pod to station.

Had a chat to them in local. seemed quite nice. The war dec had been active for 7 months, but this was their first day on the island. They to be honest seemed decent enough. So I put in a buy order for Scordite, warned the alliance that the war targets were in high in T3's and went to bed.

Early in the morning I got up, filled the mission from the bought Scordite, filled a ship with as much as I could carry and moved to Oulley.

The next few days I spent playing cat and mouse and moving as much as I could out to Oulley without getting shot.
I had to leave the Dominix, several haulers and a couple of scanning ships.

Such was life, I had all the important bits and the rest could wait until they moved out or moved on to other targets. To be honest I assumed that Low sec is a different beast and that it would be best to go in with cash and ask advice of what to fit and run with.

I also brought Oliver up to Orvolle, 1 jump from Oulley with a Retriever for mining support.

This took the rest of the week...

I also made all the bookmarks I may need in Oulley.



Gank = Attacking a target with no reason or warning. Often in High Sec and bringing down the wrath of Concord.
The reason that this is done, is the mechanics that allow, for example, 3 catalysts, fit a certain way in a certain security system to kill a mining barge before concord kills them.
In fact, does not matter what ship, there is something cheaper that can kill it, and enough people that will try.

Why? well several reasons. People do it to expensive ships in the hope that their alts can collect the loot drop from their target and the concorded wrecks and that this covers the cost of their ships.
People also do it because they can. This is EVE.
People also do it because it looks good on their kill board. They kill 30+ million ship for the loss of something that costs them 8-9 million.
Also its done to collect the abuse that will come there way from miners.


Tank = Defense. Basically how well your ship can survive the attacks that will come from others.
Your ship has natural resists in armour, shields and hull, and hit points for each. Naturally these can be altered depending on both skills and modules that can be fitted. But there are choices...
Armours enhancements can be fitted in low slots, which is also where damage enhancers go. So with a limited amount of slots then do you opt to have more armour or do more damage?

All gank no tank is an eve expression suggesting that the ship has enough armour to stop a pea shooter but can put out a fantastic amount of damage.

Ships are usually either Shield Tanked or Armour tanked, or if you have an Orca Hull tanked. There is no sane reason to hull tank another ship, and those that try should try listening to the trees when they are speaking....

As a rule of thumb, a ship with more mid slots than low is shield tanked and the other way around is armour tanked.

There are exceptions, for instance ratting drone boats often fill the low slots with drone damage amplifiers and shield tank...

The other exception is by and large, if you want to..... Its your ship, paid for by you and you have to fly it and accept its loss.

Remember in Eve, if you like a ship and wish to keep it, never undock.
If you do undock, start planning its replacement as sooner or later it will be shot from under you.

John

Moving, and another Proteus down

Now the new corp had two main locations and a couple of high sec offices on the Island.
Oulley is no secret, the home of the Harlequins, but there was a mission base south of the Island as well.

Optimistically I thought that I would set up to the south and start running missions, So I moved roughly half my items and ships out of High Island to a Low sec system.

I also set up PI in this system - should have realised my jinx effect.

Now, I wandered around the belts killing rats, and started on level 2 missions in Vivanier
Pretty boring really. I had some chats with my new corp members and decided that I was happy enough doing circuits of the island to check for ghost sites and level two missions.

Now I went in for overkill on the missions, Fitted a Dominix with Curators and a Mobile Tractor Unit (MTU) and warped in at 70km, Dropped drones and targeted the red crosses, one by one and pressed the F key. It turns out that the sentry drones could kill the rats faster than I could lock them. 
I would then bookmark the MTU, go for another mission, do the same, and bookmark that MTU as well. By the time the second set of rats were dead, warp back to the first site, scoop the loot and tractor, salvage the wrecks with drones and a salvager and back to the second site.

I found that in my daily playing time I could jump once around the island, reset my PI and do 2 missions.
In all dull existence.

One day I was bored and in Grispire, which for some reason was always good for harvesting loose drones, and a relic site appeared and was scanned down as a by product of the combat drones. Looked at system and only 3 blue present. So nipped into station, re fitted a relic analyser  and popped back to the site.

There looked to be 8 cans in the site, and I was feeling paranoid, so remained cloaked right up to the first can, hacked it, collected the spew and re-cloaked on the way to the next. After the second can, two reds jumped in system. They were Filthy Peasants (Alliance name, not description!), and I had been warned about them. So I stayed cloaked and waited. Less than 2 minutes later, after not even appearing on D-scan they left.

Hacked 5 more containers with no issue.
Just as I arrived at the last the two reds jumped back in system, only other people were Blue. So I thought the minute that it takes to hack, they will never find me and I will be off.

Not even half way through the hacking game, about 20 seconds, and one of the reds, a Crusader was 9k off and locking and scramming me....

First thing that came to mind was warp.... and scrambled, then drones started hitting me and I locked up the Crusader, tried scramming it and shooting while dropping Hobgoblins. Then a Pilgrim landed, while I was targeting and killing the Hammerhead II's that were eating me.
10 seconds later I had no cap, and scram and guns shut down. The crusader was at this point entering structure, or nearly so, and my drones, now I could not fight were killed....

Now it was just the wait to die. I tried good fight in local while screaming for help on alliance channels/comms.
Unfortunately the Blues in system were probably AFK, and the people on comms were 10 jumps away as could not go though high sec.

So I zoomed out to better watch my demise, and saw a blue on field... Hooray I thought, a Rapier would be my savior... I became all excited, then noticed he was shooting me with a Hammerhead II....

12 mins later my tank failed and I died rather quickly, whilst typing, so did not get the pod out either. Such is life.

Dead Proteus

Not waking up in goo, I thought and reflected on the fight. I also passed the kill mail onto corp and alliance leaders as a Blue on your kill mail is never good.

Some reflections.

1. The can I was hacking was 40km from warp in point.
2. Even if they had pre bookmarked the site, they could not have landed that close to me.
3. The Rapier must have provided a warp in point while sitting cloaked, and the last can was an obvious pinch point.
4. A Crusader does not have Hammerhead II's, so initially the drones that shot me (and I killed were from the Rapier)
5. I never saw the rapier on grid, as I was zoomed in and the overhead excludes Blue and Fleet members to stop me shooting them. I quite literally did not know he was there until the end.
6. Neuts are painful, and once the cap has gone, you are dead.
7. I was fit poorly. In hindsight taking the scram out and leaving the web in may just have been better. Also putting on the Rail mixed with the blasters was wrong. Now I did this for two reasons. 1. I wanted to blap belt rats from afar, rather than get mixed up and stuck on rocks, and 2, I found I did not have the power grid to fit a whole rack of them.
8. If the Blue chap had not warped them in I would be safe.
9. If I had cloaked and warped as soon as reds landed in system the same would be true.
10. I am bad at PVP

So well done for a good trap, and Blues are now back on my overview.....

Fly safe

John




Wednesday, June 11, 2014

New Corp for John

Talking To the CEO of Back-Water on team speak did not fill me full of confidence. All the directors were taking a break due to real life issues or playing other games. They all intended to come back at a point in the future.
Other big names in the corp had just gone dark or left to join other corps that fit them better.

Looking around I decided to do the same, with John at least.

Now home was a High Sec island, with at least 2 jumps to the nearest main high security space, the choices were a island based corp or one of the Low Sec based ones.

The Island based corps all seemed small and mining based, there not being much else to do there without venturing into Low sec.

So I went into low security space to the south of the island, to see what was what. Picked up a whole load more spare drones, and killed a mobile Tractor unit or two.

First MTU

Second MTU

Both belonged to the same corp, and I saw quite a few around running missions. The also belonged to The Harlequins alliance. The same that camped me in Oulley....

A bit of investigation lead me to an impressive kill board and the fact that they were basically a bunch of Low Sec pirates.....

So I signed on to their public channel and had a chat. The added bonus is that a large number are EU based, but the alliance is made up of all different time zones.

In short I handed over a full API key, declared my alt and joined.

So Space Mutts are my new home. Oliver stays in Back Water to keep doors open.

More later

John

Thursday, May 15, 2014

Camping

In Eve, this is the practice of waiting at either a gate or a station for ships to turn up and then trying to turn them into scrap. You get gate camps, station camps and in Null space, bubble camps. I have in the last year been on both sides of each one. If you are prepared, alert and thinking there is no reason why both sides cannot claim success part of the time.
Now that is a daft statement you may think.

Interceptors fitted for speed are an absolute nightmare to catch. they can hit warp in a second if fit even averagely, and in Null are immune to the bubbles. Since the Rubicon patch they are without doubt the way to travel in Null space, especially if running in or out of Null where lots of camps occur. However, I have seen them caught by specialist tackle. Usually a frigate or interceptor themselves with mid slots given over to sensor boosters and a single point. This can keep them still long enough for slower locking members to lock them and hit their paper thin hulls with some damage. On the other side however if you hold the gate cloak for a time, then warp to a celestial that is best aligned with you there is a very low chance of being locked.

Cloaky ships, also when flown well can initiate warp somewhere and then cloak. Its only when flown badly, especially by me, or when facing an insta locker that the opposition will get these. Or its on autopilot or been de-cloaked by drones or canisters ejected for this purpose. In Null space there are often bubbles set up, best ones are outside Dscan range of gates, that will have discarded drones or cargo canisters littering the direct route through the bubble. The idea is that the cloaky ship is both stopped and de-cloaked at the same time. Then the attackers have their wicked way and wait for the next, as the wreck is another cloak hazard. I have been caught this way in a Helios in a large system, initiated warp and thought I had 30 seconds so looked at a different screen and then was dead....
These traps can be countered by bouncing off a random Celestial in system. It adds to travel time, but when there are others in system is much safer.

In Low Sec there is another complication. Gate/Station Guns. If you attack within range (140K of the gate/station I believe), a target that is not at war with you or a flashy red pirate, then you will get shot. I have been told but cannot confirm that they will have you for about 360 DPS (Damage Per Second). This means that most frigates, destroyers and cruisers will soon be scrap metal. The Tech 2 variants of the frigates and destroyers will also have a difficult time. So in Low sec gate camps are often bigger ships. Even these cannot hang around for long as the damage does mount up.

Outside Eve, the term in has several meanings, depending on audience....

So, John went shopping for some T2 weapons. Only place in Placid that seemed to stock them was Oulley, a 0.3 system 2 jumps from high sec. Looking at system kills, there seemed to be a very high number of both ship and pod kills in the last 24 hours. All done by a small number of individuals belonging to The Harlequins. Looked to be a low sec pirate corp with a huge kill board. I flipped a coin, the other option was to trace round to the south east and back into Verge Vendor to look at the market, but that was 7 Low jumps, and therefore time consuming.

I took the proteus, it was that or a tech 1 meta 0 fitted caracal, and jumped to Aubenall. I could see several Faction Warfare sites on the scanner and 6 people in system. I admit I did not think and warped straight to the gate. Hanging around on this side were three ships, I clocked a Griffon, but did not see the other two before I jumped. I had the destination set to the station that I wanted, but became aware of 6 to 7 ships in the gate vicinity, and I was taking damage! All before the gate cloak dropped. I immediately hit dock at station. 6-7 people on a gate is a bad place to fight with no back up, and I assumed the three on the other side would join in.
Getting to the station I saw several outside and then a couple of red flashy targets land on grid with me from gate. Luckily I docked quickly. Hmmm. Looking at the screen shot I took at the gate and comparing it to peoples kill mails, it looked like I was hit by a Rokh that was using smart bombs. Interesting.
Now I did not think you could be hit while holding gate cloak, and that was interesting, but I assume that as smart bombs do area damage and there is no need to lock the target then this is fair...
I have no idea if taking damage uncloaks you. I assume that it should, after all something is within 2k of you to inflict the damage.
Good tactical choice   He later died to others, but this was the fit

Rokh

High Slots
Large 'Vehemence' Shockwave Charge
Large 'Vehemence' Shockwave Charge
Large 'Vehemence' Shockwave Charge
Large 'Vehemence' Shockwave Charge
Large 'Notos' Explosive Charge I
Large 'Notos' Explosive Charge I
Large 'Notos' Explosive Charge I
Large 'Notos' Explosive Charge I

Mid Slots
Large F-S9 Regolith Shield Induction
Large F-S9 Regolith Shield Induction
Large F-S9 Regolith Shield Induction 
Limited Adaptive Invulnerability Field I
Limited Adaptive Invulnerability Field I  
Large Micro Jump Drive 

Low Slots
Warp Core Stabiliser I
Warp Core Stabiliser I 
Warp Core Stabiliser I
Warp Core Stabiliser I
Warp Core Stabiliser I 


Drone Bay 

Hornet EC-300 10   


Now this seems to do 1200 EM and 1200 Explosive damage per cycle out to 5K from the ship.  Per Cycle. For good skilks thats about 7.5 seconds
Perfect for killing capsules, frigates, destroyers and industrials. I admit, I sort of want one, and the warp core stabilisers, have no real downside as you have no need to lock a target. Its also, apart from the hull (230 million) very cheap at less than 10 million to fit.
There was a fair bit of raging against this chap in local, but to be honest its a very good fit for one thing and one thing only. I bought the stuff that I needed and then sat and thought. there never seemed to be less than 17 in local, most belonging to the same alliance, and a fair few docked up with me. The risks seemed to outweigh the benefits of undocking at that time. I had no idea if this station was a kick out station or not, had no safe spots or insta undock book marks, and no intel on where in the system the undocked were. Sitting on station or on gate... There was no easy way so thought it a good idea to log out and went to mine with Oliver while tidying up the house.

So I had just run a gate camp, that probably would have killed me in a frigate, bomber or interceptor, and had ended the day station camped. Such is life. 

Logged back in two hours later to find only a few in system, so ran back to high and went to bed.

Why not fight.
Well...
1. Against 6-7 unknowns that include battleships and battle cruisers, 1 ship, even a Proteus will die.
2. I had 80 million of stuff in the hold, and did not want to come back here shopping.
3. Only had a passive tank, something that I was rectifying soon. I like active armour repair at least...
4. To be honest did not feel like it, due to real life factors I could not guarantee I would not be called away from the pc for a few minutes at any time. Fatal if in combat. In these times I normally haul, shop, mine or do a bit of exploration where I can cloak up.



Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Searching

Now as in house buying, as in relocating in Eve... Location, Location, Location

Looking at the cluster that I am sitting in, there two areas, a single entrance cluster of 6 systems to the east with 4 single station systems, all refineries, no factories or research, and the 4 systems on the west side that have the low sec connections and the only two systems with factories and research facilities. All the East side stations also belong to one corp, so getting standings would be good.


Now this all stands to change on 3rd June. The Eastern section, currently a back water with a handful of miners, and the odd mission runner, will be able to build and research. This will end the quite life out here, sometimes as empty as the average null system. All the industrialists looking for low priced slots will move in, the miners will either find it easier to move their product or shift out to better systems.
Algasienan and Vivanier seem to actually have product to sell, although not very much of anything. To get a good choice you have to go 2-3 jumps through low sec in either direction at a minimum.

First things first, I noticed that Osmallanais is two jumps from all but one of the high sec systems and buy orders with a range of two would not enter low sec. A few buy orders for  high end minerals went up here, while I did another tour of the high space.

No Ghost Sites today, but took my time creating safe spots in all systems, trying to get one in Dscan range of as much as possible and one out of range of as much as possible. Looking at dscan a lot, I also ended up dropping combat probes in every system. Its amazing how many miners dock up in an 0.7 system when they see combat probes.
I was after Drones. I came over light on drones and there were not many on the market so I thought that I would steal a few. Scooping drones does not pick up any sort of timer, so there is no determent to it. I had to stash them in some systems as I ran out of hold space, but from 9 systems I picked up
13 Garde II
1 Bouncer I
9 Hobgoblin II
4 Warrior II
1 Acolyte II
2 Hammerhead I
7 Hobgoblin I

So if you are reading this and left drones out in Placid High Sec, odds are that they are now mine.

I then went to Vivanier and bought a Procurer and a Dominix. Strange mix but I wanted to build stuff for my own use and also kill rats.
I ferried both to Algasienan, where I had decided to dump my stuff. An ideal location would have been Osmallanais as it is central and a brilliant location. Only having one station and no factory slots however was the killer. I fitted both ships out with the parts that I had bought with me, and went to mine while I did a lot of looking at Dotlan.

I was after two things, a good PI location and a pattern of low sec kills and high traffic systems.

I was able to get 4 procurer loads of mining while doing this. One of Dense Veldspar, one of Massive Scordite, one of Rich Plagaise and the last of Golden Omber. all plentiful in the bets. Almost no rats either.

Now Oliver is the miner and refiner, having nearly perfect skills in both, but John is semi skilled having a misspent first year skilling up in whatever looked good at the time. my refine percentage was 93% average, not brilliant, but good enough for when you are building for yourself and not profit.

Put in a manufacturing order for a Caracal, some rapid light missile launchers and ammo, both light missiles and hybrid medium. Why pay over the odds when you can make it for very little....