 On Keeping and Disseminating InformationOne of the things that I suggested in a previous post was a dedicated list of wormhole blogs. So without further commentary from yours truly, I present the WHole-Pack, a list of informative and experiential blogs about pilots living in wormholes. This isn’t a static list nor exclusive. If you think your blog should be here [i.e. you post about wormholes], the let me know.On Flying & Visiting WormholesLast time I wrote about some of the skills and methods necessary for finding wormholes and the action inside them. I suggested that Astrometrics V was beneficial but I never meant to imply that it was required. Sorry. The whole of scanning is probably is probably something that everyone else seems to already know or expect that someone interested in visiting a wormhole would already know. The same thing for fitting your ships and flying in said wormholes. The reality is, that until you’ve been out and done something, it is all just theoretically. Sure EFT/EVEHQ says your ship does 800 DPS, but not until you engage the enemy do you see if the fit has merit for actually delivering that damage to the enemies’ ships. The same is true for visiting wormholes, until you get out and do it, do the scanning, get some practice, you’ll never really know. So for those of you looking to actually do something in the wormholes that you are now finding, what is the next step in the process? First, what kinds of wormhole systems are there? There are six basic classes of wormhole system each with increasing levels of difficulty of combat sites as well as increasing levels of reward. With practice and experience you will begin to recognise the class of system you are in from the color of the star and its surrounding system. From the deep blues of a class 2 system to the angry red of class 6 systems, you will have an idea of what you’ve come across. Additionally, when you find a wormhole, you can check it’s ID and cross-reference it against other tools like Wormhole Thingy or Static Mapper. Class 1 wormhole systems are fairly basic and can easily be soloed by a well tanked cruiser or speed tanked by assault frigs. Always keep moving. Class 2 systems will require at least a battlecruiser usually, unless you are very good at piloting a very tough cruiser. Class 3 anomalies can usually be taken on in a well tanked Drake, but will likely need a battleship and the radar and magnetometric sites will require a small gang to accomplish. In flying solo in the first three systems, understand that drones will not be as effective due in large part to Sleepers switching their focus to attack your drones. They can however be a good escape mechanism. Class 4 systems will require a fleet of remote repair battlships or a pair of logistics cruisers. Additionally, utilising an electronic warfare boat such as a Scorpion or Rook can ease the pain. As you move into class 5 systems, it becomes necessary to have a larger group of battleships as well as logistics and ewar. Class 6 sites require the presence of 8-10 battleships, ewar, logistics and several people even bring in carriers [though they bring an additional spawn of Sleepers when they come.]. I would suggest that the best way to learn about what to bring to a particular class of wormhole is to ask the people who have been there. Give me a call, or drop in on the exploration channel in EVE. Talk to any of the other bloggers who regularly post about their experiences in wormholes. Given the nature of the people who live in wormholes, they are likely to have very strong opinions about the best way to do something, but they have invaluable insight and experience. Wormhole Blogs:
After writing this, I think I’ll also put together a Wormhole Blog List for people to easily reference who is posting about their life in W-Space! On Scanning For Wormhole SpaceSo you are reading all of the wonderful posts about living the adventurous life out on the edges of uncharted space. You might have heard some enticing tales about the bountiful harvests to be had from slaying Sleepers and easy access to high end ores. The main thing is, you’ve heard about all the inherently cool things about living in a wormhole, now you’re ready to make it a reality. In order to help you, here is some information from the Wormhole Engineers [né Dark Star Galactic Engineers - Wormhole Division] as we learn from our wormhole operations. The decision to explore in wormholes has a very low barrier to entry. Skill-wise, all you’ll need [theoretically] is Astrometrics trained to level 3, an astrometrics frigate [Heron, Magnate, Imicus, Probe], an Expanded Probe Launcher and some Core Scanner Probes. While these are the minimums really for finding a wormhole, you’ll likely benefit from training [should go without saying]
You are looking for ‘Cosmic Signatures’ in general and specifically the ones of type, “Unknown”. These represent the wormholes that you are going to kill you later. I’ll skip explaining exploration because it’s been done several times over by better scanners than I. For a start, check out CCP’s own video on the process. You’ll learn how to better position your probes with time and experience, but it will get you started. Google is your friend for finding some other videos and tutorials on scanning, so I’m not going to bother trying to explain it. Before I go any farther, let me recommend that you go read Blake’s post about how to survive in a wormhole. It doesn’t do you any good to find the wormhole only to turn around and have it beat you senseless multiple times. Never mind, strike that. If you spend any time at all in wormhole space, you ARE going to die. Repeatedly. It is still a good idea to read the above post. Don’t worry if you don’t understand everything, you will come to understand it as you wake up in your clone the next couple of times. While you are at it, update your clone. Take some time and get to know the scanning interface and it’s quirks and foibles. You are going to be spending a lot of time using it and won’t want to have to learn it while under fire in an emergency. Get in the habit of cloaking to scan. I’ve seen way too many people out scanning in wormholes in an uncloaked ship and most of them managed to get popped. If you survive, you will hopefully be left with a set of warp-able points that you can bookmark and explore. Sleepers love to uncloak ships and they will vaporise astro-frigates faster than you can click a target to warp out. I’ll try to put together a rough look at various ships and how they perform in wormholes in another post. On Reaching 100 PostsIt had to come sooner or later. I always thought it would be later. I can remember back when I first started and thinking that I would probably never see 100 posts. I’ve never been that faithful at keeping a digital journal and have multiple different abortive attempts saved on various backups through out the house and online. Journals on paper have always been easier for me. Now that I’m here I find I’m at a bit of a loss on what to say. I have several different things that I have been reticent to post about for fear of touching off dry tender or annoying people overly much. Additionally, I so wanted people to see the hundredth post and think, “This is 100 material.” So, without further ado, I am celebrating 100 posts with the proclamation that Our Eve has been included in CrazyKinux’s BlogPack. Now that you’ve glimpsed my vanity, let me celebrate by making announcements.
All this will allow us to do several things more efficiently. Those who are interested in missions and pvp will be able to do so without the burden of worrying about corp-mates living out in a wormhole. Those who are living out in the wormhole won’t be feeling bad if “so-and-so” isn’t fulfilled living out of a tin can in the wilderness. And the burden of maintaining high-sec research facilities is removed from both of them while still keeping those resources available to them. All this coupled with a fresher set of leadership that is flatter [not so top-down in style] and committed from the ground up to inter-corp co-operation and movement as necessary. At the core of each is a group that get their jollies doing the very thing the corporations are dedicated to. Thus they could also be considered “core”-porations. And Happy 100 Posts! On Living And Lasting In WormholesIn a recent article Star Defender ponders the longevity of wormhole occupants and the preponderance of persons heading back into known space. This is increasingly true, I will agree. One of the other things we have noticed is that even within a corporation, we’ve found that some people who loved the wormhole when they first moved in, decided that it wasn’t really a long term option for them. After doing this for almost a year, we’ve learned that it is, as much as anything, a lifestyle issue. Some people are looking for isk and have decided that missions or tending their rock gardens in high sec is more to their liking. Others miss the constant flow of traffic and capsuleers that they can shoot at. We look for people who like smaller ops, closer knit groups and slightly neurotic. The people who end up doing the best are the ones who don’t like crowds, love making things work [especially without the right tools], and are used to living on the fringes of society. In many ways, Letrange’s post on Alliances as they relate to wormhole life is indicative of the issues involved in long term wormhole residency. If you haven’t read it, let me take the liberty of paraphrasing him, “1st, go read Letrange’s Blog Entry. Back. Good.” Basically as it relates to wormhole life, alliances are different. Both alliances and corporations need to start thinking approaching life differently from their counterparts in high-sec, low-sec and null-sec. There are aspects of all of them that apply, but there some things that need to be thought through differently. The first to be addressed is living out of what amounts to a caravan parked on the Gaza border. You desperately need fuel, supplies and food; however, parties on both sides of you are armed and should be considered dangerous to your well-being. You have to find ways to be self-sufficient while sharing with those also in your RV. One hopes that everyone living in the same place is courteous, thinks exactly alike and doesn’t have any body odour. If you solve this in a manner that keeps everyone happy, let me know. Other issue that exists after a short amount of time is resource availability. CCP stated that they never intended wormholes to be a long-term residential solution. They’ve set it up so all your fuel and possibly everything else you use up will come from beyond the confines of your home. Couple this with the simple fact that wormholes tend to ‘dry up’ with usage and soon there are a plethora of people and paucity of provender for them. This is the main issue for people that otherwise have the correct state of mind to survive in a hostile environment making ends meet with their own wits. They just need more ‘content’ to be content. As a corollary to this, the more pilots that you have in a given system, the better equipped the corporation will be to deal with any of the situations that happen to come upon it. Besieged by battleships, bring it. Perplexed by pirates, pulp ‘em. Stymied by Sleepers, sic ‘em. But as above, it takes a lot of resources to provide a lot of resources and all of them chew through it rather quickly. So we’re left with the phrase, “Lifestyle Choice” that I really think best captures what it means to be a wormhole resident. Things aren’t often grand out here, nor does it all happen with clockwork efficiency. Fleets are often best described as ad hoc and would make most dedicated FC’s cry. Logistics are always a bit of strain and a large percentage of time is dedicated to just making sure everything doesn’t come crashing down. I think it is ok to say that those of us who tend to stay out here in the wormholes are different. There’s a niche out here that we honestly feel blessed to be able to fill and wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. Things are happening all around us and changes are afoot. In more ways than just the mild revamp of this site, the more it changes, the more it will really stay the same. We are in the process of making some very fundamental changes to the way we will be approaching our wormhole operations. After a significant amount of thought, discussions and consultations with other experts, we have decided not to operate out of a wormhole from within the wormhole engineers’ division of Dark Star Galactic Engineers. Sadly, this marks the end of nearly a year of wormhole expeditions by the engineers of DSGE. What this doesn’t mean though is that the people who have been diligently learning how to live out on the edge of the unknown will be leaving that life. We are still all going to be living in the same system and using the same ships and equipment. After much preparation we are decided to cut the apron strings and move out from underneath the protective umbrella of DSGE and work on our own as the Wormhole Engineers. We have big plans for the future and are excited about the opportunities that still lie ahead of us.
I’m not going to suggest that you switch to running in a Drake unless you have a specific desire to become a full-time mission runner, and even then I would probably just suggest that you skip the drake and head straight to training for a Raven. I love the utility of these mid-sized ships and prefer to be in a battlecruiser hull if I can. For example:
Then if you fit a drake to run the level 3’s in say, 10-15 minutes each, you can really clean up. It is fairly easy to blitz them for about 10-15 million per hour. Obligatory Drake Fitting: [Drake, LVL 3 Blitz Drake] Ballistic Control System II ‘Malkuth’ Heavy Missile Launcher I, Scourge Heavy Missile Medium Warhead Rigor Catalyst I Hobgoblin I x5 Fitting Comments: 1. It’s a tight fit CPU-wise. You may end up needing to drop back to named modules for the tank to free up a little more. 2. The shield resits are interchangeable depending on what you are hunting [fit for Sansha]. 3. The ‘Arbalest’ heavy missile launchers are expensive [16 million!], but can usually be resold for the same amount when you move up to a bigger/better ship. 4. Tech 2 Launchers are perhaps a bit to tight to fit here. ‘Malkuth’ are used to cut down on CPU requirements. 5. The dual-rigor catalyst rigs are key. They are the equivalent of having two target painters built into every missile you fire. As you might have noticed [or not if this is your first time tuning in], the site has been undergoing some minor, um, “tweakage”. I’d like to say that this is all part of the on-going effort to provide consistent quality in a relevant format that is changed and modified to meet the needs of the readers. It is not. I have been however thinking for sometime to give it a bit of refresh. And in that vein, saw that the original theme had gone through several iterations and point updates. I decided to pursue that as a first line means to freshen up the whole site. It has been an interesting couple of days to say the least and I thought I’d share some of the highs and low points along the way.
Enter the backups. I briefly toyed with the idea of just reloading everything from the back up and giving up on any sprucing up of the site. But something, somewhere, deep down inside of me wouldn’t let the php win. I was in control. I am the mistress of this domain. I will…. scream and start using the aforementioned screen cap of the theme settings to begin to squeeze things into shape. After about 15 minutes or so, I had something that at least resembled the previous theme and was mildly functional. I decided to head off for bed and think about it at a later point. After coming back I managed to make a few more changes, wrangle some of the CSS back into place and even begin some of the ‘tweakage’ that I had desired all along. Here’s hoping that it doesn’t just offend all those concerned. It was all over in a flash. In what was probably the most efficient, concerted, corporate wormhole operation that I’ve had the pleasure of being a part of, the end came much too quickly. Here’s how it played out: The neighbouring wormhole system had been scanned down and it’s exits located and noted. Additionally, the capsuleer who had performed the survey noted a large number of anomalies that were present and the utter lack of other residents. As a larger group of potential participants showed up, the possibility of trying to run a few of these anomalies was thrown around. An advance scout was sent ahead to reconnoitre the combat theatres and try to determine optimal deployment locations. On his return with a raft of bookmarks, the fleet had assembled and was prepared to ship out. As was going to be a fairly large operation for our rather smallish group of anarchists, I was fairly excited about the support logistics involved. With the dual-Guardian set-up that we have been fielding as of late, keeping 2-4 battleships in combat readiness has become fairly routine. The thought of doing the same thing with two large capacitor sucking Abaddons, a Damnation, a Rook, an Ishtar was nearly too much excitement. As we finished the preparations to head out, it was mentioned that the destination had a spacial phenomenon present, namely it was a Magnetar system. This is one of a handful of systems that plays host to a localised effect on shipboard systems. Magnetar systems specifically effect electronic systems it seems. In a class four wormhole system, the effects are: ECM eff. +68% So the net results was many, many dead Sleeper ships. Warp in, jam them all, liberally apply missiles, lasers and ammo, rinse and repeat. It consistently took us about 10 minutes to completely clear any sleeper anomaly we warp into. We all earned about 180 million for approximately two hours worth of work. And then it was over. Like falling off a speeding train or coming down off your latest high – the sites were clear, the fleet was gone and future was…. BRIGHT – Tomorrow we get to do it again!!!! How do I balance my own progress with that of providing for my corporation and or alliance? As an industrial character who has spent a fair number of hours learning to build nice things, how do I remain profitable while supporting those around me? If I produce for the corporation and/or alliance, the expectation is that there is some kind of break in prices. As a conscientious industrialist, I am going to tell them how much it costs me and where it’s more than the market, suggest that they obtain it there. Where it is cheaper to build, I want to offer them the opportunity to get it cheaper and be there for the people that help make it possible. I have found that I am quite horrible though at maintaining the balance necessary between things produced for sales [the market] and those manufactured for consumption [the corporation/alliance]. Often then the result is a complete halt to my industrial tendencies. This is often further complicated by my relative incompetence and disconnect with the sales and marketing side of things. I am quite comfortable in navigating the market, getting the resources I need, etc, but just as equally uncomfortable putting my wares up for sale. Finding holes, navigating gaps, incremental adjustments, market trends all tend to elude my grasp, leaving me with a very real sense of dissatisfaction with the sheer number of things I could be doing to maximise my profits, but are generally left undone. I envy both the selfless industrialist who is able to provide everything her corporation needs as well as the ruthless profiteer who is able to judge the market, jump into the fray and make obscene profits. As a corollary to the above, there is also a push to be involved in corporate and alliance activities that are somewhat beyond my level. I am fairly competent at combat in sub-battleship roles, but could always use more experience and training in weapon systems. I’m quite happy to spend the time training for better weapons, drones, fittings, but have to balance this with a desire to also be able to improve my abilities to support my corp-mates with industry. Has anyone else figured out to do it all and do it well yet? It is certainly something to work and think through. |
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