14/06/10 11:39 PM
| Jaspet | 47.03 |
| Omber | 47.14 |
| Hemorphite | 55.62 |
| Pyroxeres | 57.70 |
| Hedbergite | 66.18 |
| Veldspar | 66.67 |
| Kernite | 70.01 |
| Plagioclase | 72.02 |
| Scordite | 75.25 |
| Spodumain | 80.33 |
| Dark Ochre | 98.81 |
| Gneiss | 100.86 |
| Crokite | 185.46 |
| Bistot | 232.34 |
| Arkonor | 288.02 |
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On Flying Battlecruisers In Wormholes
The battlecruisers mark the real level of entry into effectively working in a wormhole. They are extremely versatile, usually sport a decent tank and quite capable of handling the first two classes of wormholes alone and the middle two in groups. They can fill nearly any role and provide a decent amount of bang for your buck. They will usually fit cruiser sized weapons and couple that with nearly the tank of a battleship. The Tech 2 variants called Command Ships have even more tank and greater fire-power potential, but a much higher cost.
Amarr
Prophecy: The Golden Eagle. The Space Brick. Very, very hard tank. Limited damage. A remote-repair fleet of Prophecies can be a nightmare to face down.
Harbinger: Often the better choice for Amarr battlecruisers due in large part to the damage bonus. It’s much easier to tank enemies when they are dead.
Caldari
Ferox: Suffering from the same issues as the rest of the Caldari gun platforms, it can be difficult to fit everything you need on the Ferox to be effective. The tank is substantial but the DPS will be lacking. When utilized correctly in a PVP encounter, it is a phenomenal sniper dealing up to 180 DPS at 150 km.
Drake: The mission runners’ friend makes a fairly easy transition into wormhole space. It also tends to lag behind the other battlecruisers in damage dealt over time [DPS] though if fit with Heavy Assault Missiles it can wreak havoc at about 20 km.
Gallente
Myrmidon: The battlecruiser drone boat suffers a little bit in PVE from the Sleepers predilection for moving their aggro toward drones. It can fit a wicked tough buffer tank and throw a lot of drones at the problem. It makes for a great all around utility ship due to it’s inherent flexibility.
Brutix: Designed to bring pain. Often to both parties in any given conflict. Some of the most face-melting DPS comes from this ship fit to gank.
Minmatar
Cyclone: Can be an effective ship, but as with any Mimatar ship, it will be the pilot who determines how good it can be. This ship rewards the well skilled pilot with a frightening ability to kill things.
Hurricane: The Cyclone’s big bad brother likes to get in and mix it up. He throws projectile slugs around with a careless abandon that can make short work of enemies.
I apologise to all the Minmatar pilots out there because I don’t have experience flying and fitting their BC’s. I am relying on the words of one of my corp-mates as well as the general consensus of those that I’ve talked to before. To make up for some of this seeming anti-Minmatar sentiment, I dedicated the post title to their most common fittings. As always, I will probably miss something so feel free to offer other opinions.
On Being A Cruiser Pilot And Surviving In Wormholes
The best thing going for cruiser sized boats, is their natural low cost and ability to be easily replaced. Cruisers begin to really develop as utility ships in wormholes. While generally not robust enough for Sleeper combat, they can shine in several other venues. This is also where people begin to have very strong opinions about what is good and not good, which seems odd because the number of possible ships decreases from frigates to cruisers. Finally, I’ve excluded the Tech 2 cruisers from this list for a couple of reasons: 1) I’m just tired; B) They cover such specific roles already; III) I haven’t flown or closely associated with people who fly enough of them regularly.
Amarr
Omen: When you want to bring some damage, an Omen isn’t a bad choice.
Maller: The tankiest of the cruisers, it makes the best cruiser platform for mining gases. It’s not bad for bait either.
Arbitrator: A great anti-frigate/anti-interceptor ship. A very poor wormhole survival rate.
Augoror: A great portable battery but another dismal failure in wormhole operations.
Caldari
Moa: At least you could mine gas with it.
Caracal: To flimsy to really be much use for anything beyond a Class 1 fleet. Uniform resists on Sleepers negate it’s largest advantage of multiple damage types.
Osprey: If you have young miners that want to get involved in the effort of clearing out a large gravimetric site, they could use an Osprey, but you are likely better off having them haul ore.
Blackbird: Generally it isn’t strong enough to survive in a wormhole. It’s not bad for PVP-ewar on the cheap.
Gallente
Thorax: Another good gas miner. Also good for throwing some gank DPS at an intruder.
Vexor: The penchant for Sleepers to take a dislike to drones reduces a lot of the functionality of this ship.
Exequror: Another good gas miner for pilots who don’t have Gas Mining V.
Celestis: Not that useful
Mimatar
Bellicose: You generally don’t see this ship in wormholes.
Rupture: Good gas miner and great to have as an inexpensive damage dealer.
Scythe: Not used as much as other ships. Could be due to a lack of Minnie Miners.
Stabber: Kill People. Kill Them Now!
Summary
Cruisers allow for a slightly higher level of participation in wormhole activities, up-to and including PVP. The basic resource collection done in a wormhole can be accomplished in a cruiser and still be able to get away if need be. They have been deployed en masse as cheap fleet attack forces as well.
On Flying Frigates In Wormholes
There is very little I want to say about the backgrounds of any particular race flying around in New Eden. They all have issues and a primary reason for being out here in a wormhole is putting all of that background in the background. We have all agreed to check our baggage at the last station we undocked from and acknowledge that out here, we can’t afford to be bickering about belief, conflicting over capitalism, seethe over servitude or advertise autonomy. Out in the wormhole, every pilot from every race is closer to their clone and a long way from any government or authority.
I preface the post with all of that to say that no single race’s ships are inherently better, just different. Out here in the wormhole it comes down to answering the question, “Does it get the job done?” With regard to frigate-sized ships, I am going to take a quick run through some of them and point out some of their strengths as they pertain to living out in a wormhole.
Amarr:
Magnate: As the basic astrometrics frig, this is a great backup for scanning, or running around helping to clean up after a radar or magnetometric sight. With the addition of sized rigs, it can easily be rigged with gravity capacitors to boost scan strength allowing even fairly low level pilots the ability to scan down wormholes and most signatures.
Crucifier: Makes a good disposable tackler for PVP. Emphasis on disposable as they will melt quickly.
Executioner: Well, it’s faster than a shuttle, slightly sturdier. Very good for running away.
Inquisitor: Just don’t fly this in a wormhole. Please.
Tormentor: Cheap. Leave it at home. Better, refine it an build something else.
Punisher: Good PVP frigate to throw on the bulwark of invading gankers. Not good for much else.
Anathema: Great Tech 2 scanning ship.
Caldari
Heron: Good backup scanning machine. Rigged, it can make short work of finding sites if and when you can’t be in a Buzzard.
Condor: At least it can fly away from trouble quickly.
Bantam: Good intro miner, lousy wormhole ship. Reprocess or blow up and salvage it.
Merlin: Can be an evil, nasty tackler for PVP.
Griffin: Why are you undocking in this?
Kestrel: Makes a good hacking/analysing/salvage frigate.
Buzzard: Caldari covops scanning for the win. [Ninja Edit]
Gallente
Atron: See Condor above. Run away.
Imicus: Like the Caldari Heron and the Amarr Magnate and the Minmatar Probe, this is your backup for scanning when things go south. Or when you don’t have covops skills on an alt you left parked in the system before you all got run out by Evil Overkill Corp.
Tristan: Not bad for some PVP damage, but likely need bigger ships.
Incursus: Itty-bitty blaster boat beats boys! Thanks for the heads up Owen.
Maulus: Insure, blow-up, salvage.
Navitas: See Above.
Helios: When you absolutely must scan. Scan in this. It is a sweet covops ride.
Minmatar
Probe: Scan. Scan. Scan. Scan. Somewhere is some action.
Breacher: Seriously?
Burst: At least the killmails will be funny.
Rifter: PVP the living daylights out of things with this. Rinse and repeat. Rather like scanning only you use more ammo.
Slasher: Fly. And Fly. And Fly. Right on back to the station for something else to fly.
Vigil: At least you can fly quickly to get something else to fly.
Cheetah: Our serious scanning swag swears by this animal. His scanning prowess definitely doesn’t hurt either. Seriously, Minnie Pilots Rejoice – This ship scans very well.
Summary
Frigates are fairly limited in their usage. They will pretty much insta-pop to everything that they run into in a wormhole with the exception of other players in PVP encounters. Assault frigates can last longer, but I ran out of space to cover all of those. Perhaps we’ll get back to that another day.
On Getting To Know The Author
Somewhat in response to Freebooted’s post about introductions, I came up with the following:
[caption id="attachment_678" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Vestigial Heritage"]  [/caption]
I’m an old Caldari pilot who has managed to fly a lot of ships, visit a lot of systems and learned some of the most spectacular ways to die. I believe in working very hard to be the best pilot that you can. To that end, I spend a lot of my skill points on getting my skills to level 5. This also means I don’t have a lot of skills. I love my Drake and I don’t mind trying to use it in a lot of different situations.
I am that bane of banes for MMOs, the carebears’ carebear. I like mining. I like manufacturing. I like killing rats and Sleepers, setting up towers, plugging different numbers in spreadsheets and seeing what comes out. I like flying with a group of friends more than I realised when I started and I miss them when they are gone. I used to mine Veldspar in high-sec before I started exploring and mining Kernite in exploration sites. I would run missions for extra ore when the macro-miners would strip out whole systems.
I have a whole lot of blueprints and end up using them on occasion. I have been in one fail cascade, one very successful corporation and have most recently started out again on my own with a new venture. We endeavour to focus on solely on wormholes and utilising them for fun and profit.
On Keeping and Disseminating Information
One 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 list is also available via Google Reader.
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.
[wp-blogroll catid=386]
On Flying & Visiting Wormholes
Last 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 Space
So 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]
- Your racial frigate skill higher or a Covert Ops Frigate [Tech 2 astrometrics frigate]
- Astrometrics to level 5 and picking up a couple of additional scanning support skills
- Astrometric Rangefinding will increase your probes scan strength which is essential to finding the harder sites
- Astrometric Pinpointing reduces your scan deviation which makes your scans more accurate
- Finally, Astrometric Acquisition lowers the amount of time each scan takes which adds up when locating a specific site will take 4-7 scans
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 miningzen’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 Posts
It 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.
- The pilots of Dark Star Galactic Engineers [DSGE]- Wormhole Engineers Division have formally split off into a separate, wormhole focused corporation, Wormhole Engineers [WHEN.]. Not new information per se but leading up to #2.
- As a focused wormhole corporation, we will be foregoing most all high/low/null-sec activities [excepting support logistics].
- Many of the mission/pvp-minded pilots in DSGE have moved to our sister corporation, Fearless Bandits.
- Industrial pilots will be remaining in DSGE or with an as yet unannounced industrial corporation.
- In approximately three weeks, these focused corporations will be joining into an general support alliance built from the ground up to offer mutual support while maintaining individual corporate focus.
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 Wormholes
In 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.
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