An Alt in High Sec

After a period of time failing to log on due to real life intruding on the world of Eve I am back.

I have Two accounts now, the main still has John and Oliver. The second has two maxed out in PI skills that follow John and Oliver around attempting to make some ISK. The third Character is a primary Industry and Transport one. This is not to say he cannot fly both an Ishtar and Gila well, as all those good complexes that ccp put in for holidays have to be farmed somehow.

Recently I have been playing the Industry character more, as I can often walk away from the keyboard to help with homework or cook or other chores. There are also no CTA's (Call To Arms) or strategic ops to get in trouble for missing.

Now This character is not organised. He has Jump Clones on Three High Sec Islands and a set up in each area.
In Placid he has PI and is Making an Astrahus from the ground up. (Reminder, still need the citadel bpc).
In Devoid I am not really sure what he is up to. The plan was to build a carrier, but was side tracked by running cosmic anomalies. Lots of shiny expensive drops from level 3 and 4 sites.
In Derelick he is building a Freighter. If I get ambitious then a Jump Freighter, but that is a lot of hauling of moon goo and other stuff.

Up to last week he was in his own corp (done early when fed up with 10% tax to npc corp.).

Last week though he was persuaded to join a high sec mining corp.

No they may well be reading this so....

They are set up on a High Sec Island, its small and surrounded by low sec. They were at war when I joined but it was a typical trade hub band that would never risk their nice shiny gank ships.

The corp itself is run by a fairly experienced chap who simply wanted to run his own corp. Now he has organised a citadel, and has a fairly extensive BPO collection (note to gankers - not in citadel) and had about 10-15 real people plus alts. (to be fair these are just the ones I see, there look to be more in the deep USA time zones.)
However, probably only 5 ish of those have more than 6 months eve experience, and there are several Alpha clones and 3-4 that are new omega clones. This is an interesting dynamic and he probably thinks that cat herding would be easier sometimes.

I am all for new blood and gave a number of items littering my hanger away to both the CEO and one new omega clone now has a prospect that he probably needs to train for...

Now the kill board for the corp is rather snuggly with 3 kills and 72 losses at last count.

Since I have joined I have tried to answer the basic questions and provide some insight. Obviously 1 person (You know who you are) did not finish the tutorial, as I had to point out how to open the probe window, and indeed what all those combat sites actually were... There is more than mining!

The corp is going in the right direction though and some of the new blood will stay and grow with the corp. Others will go elsewhere, but thats Eve and is only right.

Only  Stay in a Corp while its enjoyable!

Life is fluid and there is much to see.

Our dear leader has sort of the right idea though, he has built from corp funds a clutch of Tristans and Vexors, fitted them out (with tech 1 stuff he built) and is handing them out for people to try sites and hopefully PvP.

Corp Mates. If you are reading this, then I am building Punishers and Thrashers, and will provide them fitted, IF and only IF you can prove you can fly it. Fittings dependent on current War Dec as they are competent and not worried about low sec.

Sample fit to train for

Punnisher 

Small Trimark Armour pump 1 x3

400mm Rolled Tungsten Plates

400mm Steel Plates II

Damage Controll II

Energised Adaptive Nano Membrane II

Adaptive Nano Plating II

1MN Y-S8 Compact Afterburner

J5b Enduring Warp Scram

150mm Light Auto Cannon II x4

Hail ammo

Now this little beast is not an all rounder and a kite ship will still peck you to death. But probably very slowly.  Any kite frigate will run out of ammo or get bored first. It has around 19k ehp (depending on skills) and can easily take gate or station guns in low sec for 30-40 seconds (42 was the longest -  but someone else was shooting me as well).

Thrasher 

Small Targeting System Sub controller x3

Gyrostabaliser II

Tracking Enhancer II

Warp Disrupter II

F-90 Compact Sensor Booster x 2 (Scan Res Script)

280mm Howitzer Artillery II x 7

Repuplic Fleet EMP or Quake ammo

This one is more of a glass cannon, The alpha damage is huge at 17-1800 for the initial volley but works out to around the 250 mark. You do however get 1 and a half free shots before the others have locked you when fighting un boosted smaller ships. This will obviously die if used on station or gate in low sec, but in numbers can kill lots of stuff.

I have some skill books for the above, so if you need one mail me.

Next installment is a word on War Decs.

Long Time No Writre

Well, what can I say. Real Life seemed to be anti writing....

I would work rest and play, but when it came to putting finger to keyboard to write it came out all wrong.

Quick update

John Still in Space Mutts

Oliver in a Wormhole as part of a larger group,


Mutts have moved out of Drone space a long while ago. I believe that there was a disagreement at higher levels, but out exit was controlled and not rushed so I expect no ego's bruised.

So back to Low Sec, and Oulley in the Placid region.

We hung around there on our own basically shooting most people that wandered in in the hope of surprising them. Several weeks later we joined an alliance called Seperatists.

This was an interesting mix of people. On the plus side there were no rules. No CTA's and no expectations to hang around three hours while a fleet formed.

so daily life was either missions, combat anoms, data/relic sites, gate camping or small roams if you felt like joining.

Caldari Faction Warfare was next door and Gallente next door but one. So if you fancied small gang or solo pvp you could with ease.

This suited many Mutts as we could all do anything without anyone frowning.

Did hit security status though. Within a week or so most of us could no longer enter hi sec freely.

We then had a couple of internal bust ups with 3-4 long term members leaving and going elsewhere.

This was unfortunately a personality clash and several people went different ways.

I have to admit, at this point I put Oliver into a Wormhole corp to get away from it all.

I signed onto John to do PI which was my only method of revenue generation.

Recently however Mutts kissed and made up with all but two of the ex members and started recruiting.
We told Seperatists that we were once again off to null and started paying a small fortune to elevate  our sec status so that we could get stuff to a staging post.

And then off to Deklin


I wrote all this in June 2016. How times fly by.

Last Note on Ganking Miners

Tips for the miner in a 0.5 to 0.7 system

1. Pay attention to Local
2. Dscan, especially after someone has just entered local
3. Include Combat Probes and Ships only on your Dscan results. The rest is just clutter
4. Use a Procurer
5. Fit some tank, even if its Thermal and EM resist rigs, they may make the difference.
6. If its your life savings in one ship, leave it in dock and see point 4.
7. If anyone you do not recognise warps to your belt, go elsewhere, and see if they follow. If they do   then Dock up.
8.Orbit the nasty evil rock that you are attacking at a medium range if you can, or drop a can and orbit that. A moving target makes life more difficult for the ganker.
9. Anything that makes life difficult for the ganker is good for your survival chances.
10. Have a disposable alt. Fly it to your ship and attempt to gank yourself. CONCORD will arrive, late as ever and kill your alt. They will then hang around the belt. This drastically reduces their response time and effectively means that that belt is a gank free zone. Any ganker will be virtually insta popped by concord. AFK mining for the rest of your session is possible.


If you cannot do the above stick to 0.8 and above systems.

I learnt a lot on my brief foray into the dark world of CODE representatives....

Chiefly not to bother with 0.8 and above, 0.7 was iffy and it takes more people to kill the same sort of target and the failure rate is higher.
0.6 or 0.5, if not mining in a venture or procurer and AFK you are going to die at some point, so insure your ship.

Huddling together is still not safe, except when faced by idiots like me who pick the target different from the rest.

Mining in low or null sec is usually in a procurer, in safer systems the odd skiff or mackinaw come out, but they regularly get shot. However a group of miners with five light drones each can often kill the tackle that wants to pin them down, not so in high sec. Not without losing your barge to concord.



Tips for the Ganker

1. Miners are creatures of habit, find a bunch or 0.5 and 0.6 systems in close proximity and get to know then.
2. You need an alt if solo ganking, if in an organised group, a dedicated scout is good.
3. Make the scout cloaky with a decent cargo hold.
4. Know your limits. A solo catalyst can take a Retriever in 0.5 and a poorly fit one in 0.6. Can do the same to a covetor.
5. Do not try the other barges solo.
6. Have some method of fixing your security status, as even if you do not pod people you will be an outlaw within the week.
7. Be aware of your kill rights and do not fly that hauler with all your loot in it where some ganker is going to kill you. Nasty people gankers...
8. Expect to die. Every time. Do not worry about this.
9. Include concord on your overview, Check they are not there before you start. (Scouts job really)
10. Alt should Always pick up the loot, the catalyst drops first as they are blue to anyone then the targets loot.
11. Alt should go and cloak / dock somewhere to wait out your timer before you drop off loot.
12. Consider a Prospect for the loot scooper / scout. You are killing miners, it would be rude not to be able to scoop the ore as well. And they have a covert cloak.
13. Have fun and make things go bang.
14. If the miner survives, be nice an congratulate him on tanking, moving, whatever. Its good manners and to be honest, why not.

Have fun on both sides.

John

Drone Space

While waiting for jump freighters to ferry in ships, discovered that the local market and contract market is well stocked.

So I bought an Astero. Fitted for probing and off we go.

Goal number 1 was to make insta undocks and safes in all nearby systems, and 2 was to find any High sec wormholes to bring in T2 rigged ships.

Working around a couple of the local constellations, you soon realise that Drone space is slightly less populated than other space, and that 80% of the sigs to scan down turn out to be combat sites.

The others are split between wormholes and data sites. No Relic sites at all.

Drone data sites are also a bit different.

For a start they all have the same name (Well the seven I have found so far do) and all have 3 cans. essentially two easy cans with strength of 40-50 on the blocks and a much harder can with many obstacles in 60+ range of damage.

Now of seven sites, only 1 of the harder cans was NOT empty. 6 duds and one with done parts.
The easy cans have been where all the loot lies. Now this is drone parts and BPC's.

The BPC's I have found so far are Integrated Hobgoblin, Hammerhead or Ogre.
1 can of the 21 dropped an Augmented Hobgoblin and an Augmented Hammerhead BPC.

Now these ae what makes the Drone Data site worth it. An augmented Hammerhead has a buy price in Jita of 11.8 million. The BPC's are 10 runs so 118 million if you make the drones and sell to buy orders in Jita.

Most of the parts except the Elite Drone AI and the Hammerhead II I have through the drops in other data sites. It looks like the local market has those parts that I am missing at a cost of about 2 mill per drone, so even if I buy the parts its still 9.8 mill per unit or 98 million for the full BPC run in Jita.

Transport costs are going to bite into it but not by a lot.

The integrated drones look to be better than Tech 1 drones but not as good as tech 2.

The Augmented though look to be better than tech 2 for several reasons.

Please feel free to correct me.
1. Same total damage but split type. Hobgoblin II's do 20 Thermal as a base with 1.92 damage mod
The augmented does 7 Kinetic and 13 Thermal with a mod of 2.11
2. Slightly faster Orbit
3. Higher resists
4. Higher base Hit points

So in my mind not good for PvE but not bad at all for PvP.

In my mind not worth 12 million a drone though.


I am not sure that I would bother with the integrated BPC's. I will probably end up making and dumping in corp hanger to dish out to newer toons.

A bit more ganking and move back to Null

What can I say, we were bored.

Put half a dozen pilots that want to shoot something into high sec, and without wanting to start wars then shooting miners and mission runners was the only option.

I spent a couple of days selling all my stuff (That I could) and moving most of the rest.

The two more days joining the others in Placid, Essence, Heimatar, Molden Heath and Metropolis looking for targets.

Many we had, and many were killed.

I personally was only involved in 3 more

A Mackinaw  Dead Miner 1

A Skiff  Dead Miner 2

And a Hulk  Dead Miner 3

Lost 3 catalysts (And a Velator when someone activated a kill right on a gate camp)

so killed 648 Million for loss of 23 million.

As a plus the corp paid for the ships so all loot went back to the corp.


We did find that the miners in certain systems would warp out as soon as our scout decloaked and called for us to jump in and warp.

We adopted a slightly different tactic. Our scout sat in system and combat probed the miners down.

We jump in and scout warps us all to zero on the target. No one even enters the belt prior to landing.

We had one or two issues where we were warped to ships sitting in a POS and one where the team landed just too far away, Here the target was orbiting an asteroid at 10k and was not afk and warped before we caught up.

On the whole though combat probing was a lot quicker than visiting or DScanning every belt.


This harvest of tears was brought short by the news that the corp had joined a new alliance.

Triumvirate

We were asked to package anything we wanted to take, convert the rest to isk, contract all stuff to corp to be jumped out and fly out in interceptors.


A bit of a brown trouser moment was had in Hek where I docked to pick up a couple of bits I wanted, I un-docked and warped to the gate. Bearing in mind that I was in a travel fit interceptor, someone still managed to activate one of my kill rights and was beginning to lock me as I WARPED... Ha ha ha.

Being flashy yellow in high sec was actually ok. Instead of actively trying to engage, most ran away. I could not have had an easier run to low sec, looking at kills on the pipe I was going down, multiple gate camps were a distinct probability.

I worked on the assumption that any gate I was heading to, if there was anyone in local, had some fool in a battleship smart bombing.

So remember the golden rule, WARP TO A RANDOM CELESTIAL.

Once there pause and look at map and head to gate from a direction that is not in line from another gate. This may be slower, but its faster than a pod back to high sec, shopping and getting back to where you die.


Then Onward to our staging system in Etherium Reach

Drone space here we come. Asking around, no one had lived in drone space before.

Big Unknown

Ganking Update

In short not good.

Tried a Retriever in 0.6 space.. Only got him to one third structure before concord came and killed me. I think a 0.5 will work.

Teamed up with two other corp mates and killed a Retriever elsewhere.

Overkill on a Retriever

and one of the others took his pod as well.

Then the three of us tried for a Mackinaw that was in a belt with an Orca.

Needless to say this one failed as well as a particularly inept pilot, (Me) locked up the Orca instead of the Mackinaw and thus took one third of the DPS off the table for about half the time we had.

It really is annoying having the order of ships in the overview change while ganking...

I have improved on the last post though as:
1. I remembered to overheat the guns every time
2. Had an alt provide a warp in. Mining ships are good camouflage....
3. Said alt retrieved the loot.

We are all trolling around High sec now, as we are leaving DEX and looking for a way into another alliance, and just waiting for logistics to move a load of our stuff so we can go back into Null.


Why? Well, The founding Corps of DEX had some real life issues with their CEO's and some directors, and they did not need the hassle of running a corp and an alliance. So a number of people have folded into Mutts and looking for a new home.
We want to be somewhere that actively shoots people, but can shoot those nasty red crosses so that we have the ISK to fund new ships and mods.

Watch this space.....

Or mail us in game if you have a proposition.

John

Hi sec Gank

Not something I had done before. I have never been on the giving or receiving end of one of these.

Now this is something that some members of my corp indulge in when in High sec and are stuck for a period.

I had clone jumped to near Rens last night for a skill book, thinking I was logging from eve shortly.

Events at home gave me another 30 - 40 minutes. I was listening to another member failing to gank a retriever in high sec. He apparently had drones on his overview and the positions swapped and he locked up and shot a drone. Realising his error he shot at the barge but concord showed up with the barge in structure, and he died. 

So I stopped in Rens and outfit a catalyst as he suggested. Then as a ganking virgin I looked for a 0.5 system to hunt in.

So off to Dammalin, at 4 jumps, a very close high sec with a couple of low sec entry points.

I had never been to this system before, and on the way was thinking it a poor choice as its probably well traveled by people of dubious moral character....

Anyway I get there and Dscan. Only a Procurer on scan but 6 people in system, 4 belts are out of scan range though.

Quickly warp to the planet and dscan and find a Coveter and a Venture. Narrow it down to 2 belts as both of these in a line from the planet.

Now a Procurer is generally too well tanked for a catalyst to kill in the moments before Concord shows up and a Venture is economically not worth it.

So Coveter here we go.

Warp to the first belt and nothing there but rats, who red box me before I warp. No matter.

Off to next belt at 0.

As I land I see a Coveter 13km away stationary mining rocks with at least 3 drones out and a Venture close by.

So I pre fire guns and warp scrambler so as soon as I lock I will fire, and hit approach.

Now I want to start firing at 2km and carry on in. I actually lock him at 2k but no guns fire....

Safety.. argh had it set to yellow. Forgot as irrelevant in Null sec.

Anyway, bumped the Coveter, he seemed to not react to being bumped by a Catalyst and targeted.

I suspect was not watching the screen.

It was at least 5 seconds before I set safety to red and confirmed and cycled my guns.

Now, I made an error that could have made the trip pointless. I forgot to overheat the guns.

But it was fine, the Coveter died with 4 seconds to spare before concord slapped me.

My poor Victim

My poor Catalyst

Warped pod to station and logged off.

Now I made several beginners errors here.

1. Did not have a neutral alt ready to scoop the loot so missed out on about 18 million in dropped modules. So the experience cost me about 8 mill in ship fittings and hull. Part of me hopes the miner went back and retrieved his stuff.

2. Did no research, literally flew to first 0.5 system and shot the first barge I could take. A retriever would have done. 

3. Did not have gun security lowered so the victim had a chance if they were not AFK.

To be honest, I feel bad. First time I have shot someone who really had little warning. I have shot unarmed exploration craft before, but they were in low sec or null sec and so knew they were fair game.

This feels different.

Would I do it again. Probably. 

Would I do it regularly. No.

Thoughts anyone?

John