15/05/11 08:39 AM
| Arkonor | 285 |
| Bistot | 217 |
| Mercoxit | 192 |
| Crokite | 187 |
| Hedbergite | 171 |
| Hemorphite | 168 |
| Jaspet | 152 |
| Dark Ochre | 147 |
| Pyroxeres | 118 |
| Kernite | 106 |
| Veldspar | 99 |
| Scordite | 93 |
| Gneiss | 90 |
| Plagioclase | 88 |
| Spodumain | 82 |
| Omber | 81 |
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On Remembering Everything You Should Be Doing
So you are out roaming with your friend(s) hoping to find some juicy targets to jump on and clone them back home. What all do you need? Too many things pop into my head – match-up evaluation, situational awareness, environmental factors, meta-game factors, relationships, insurance, cost-benefit analysis [just say no]… and it all makes my head hurt. We’re primarily carebears, so our version of PVP usually involves something along the lines of [edit - fictional conversation following, names have been changed to protect the idiots and events have been altered for greater emphasis on the often humorous way we approach life in general]:
<pilot 1>: I got a <insert ship name> on d-scan in the C<number> two holes out.
<pilot 2>: At a tower?
<pilot 1>: Checking… Nope, want I should scan him down.
<pilot 3>: Reshipping to something pointy.
<pilot 2>: Get a warp-in and we’re on our way.
<pilot 1>: kk – can do.
<pilot 2>: ok, I got my Pilgrim – what are we doing again?
<pilot 1>: hunting wabbits – and get something more pointy as <insert different ship name> is a tough nut to crack
<pilot 3>: Huh? I thought we were going after a tower?
<pilot 2>: How about my Onyx?
<pilot 3>: How’s it fit?
<pilot 2>: HAMs and triple extenders, single WDFG.
<pilot 3>: Meh, won’t be much good against the tower.
<pilot 1>: oooh, you got a tower to shoot? I’m coming back to get the pulse ‘geddon.
<pilot 3>: I thought you had a tower to shoot?
<pilot 2>: I have an Imicus scrammed at our hole!
<pilot 1>: no, I was looking at a <insert still another different ship type>, but it’s unmanned at the tower.
<pilot 3>: Oh – I see, well time to go pick up the significant other at the airport, good luck with the killing.
<pilot 2>: no no no, omg, no – I’m dying to an imicus!
<pilot 1>: huh, you’re in an Onyx, how?
<pilot 2>: No, went back to the Pilgrim but forgot to online all my modules.
<pilot 2>: Gah – new implants for me… goodnight, see you all later.
<pilot 1>: Grah – newbs.
<pilot 4>: o/ Hello Pilot 1, how goes it.
<pilot 1>: you just missed 2 get waxed by an Imicus in his Pilgrim.
<pilot 4>: *snap*, anything else up?
<pilot 1>: got a couple of barges at a grav in c3, 2 jumps out, bms in the can, I’m manoeuvring in for a warp in.
<pilot 4>: cool – omw, HIC ok?
<pilot 1>: great. WH is off dscan so jump in and hold for warp in.
This doesn’t actually reflect any given conversation per se, but the contents are indicative of the great B-film classic, When Carebears Attack as seen somewhere dark and seedy, I am sure. We tend to do a lot of things to excess – too much discussion, too much consideration, too much talking, too much DPS or too much tank, too much flying around in circles, too much laughter and way too much fun. We tend to lack a good sense of: when to engage, when to run away, when to call it quits, what to fly at any given moment, what kind of wine goes good with the cafeteria’s mystery meat and how we managed to get along as well as we have without being utterly wiped out of the wormholes we live.
Mad props to our friends who help us along the way. Kudos to the people who are scanning stuff down faster than we can process them all. Congratulation to those pilots who’ve only managed to lose a couple of ships recently and even more to the ones who’ve taken their opponents down first.
Initially when we moved out into wormhole space, it was to explore, tap some of the untold riches and just see if we could survive. We managed to survive, so then we started practising getting better at “running away” and “not dying” as much. Lately we’ve moved from the running away [though we still do on occasion] to initiating conflict [sometimes at an alarming rate] and learning some lessons about how to actually have more ships than the enemy at the end of combat. At then end of the day, we’re happy when we live, resigned to the losses we incur and determined to carebear our way right through the next fleet we see.
On Being a Frog in Well Stocked Pond
The wormholes have been rolling by us at a rate of 2-3 a day. With our static Class 4 exit lasting at most 16 hours we usually have time more than enough time to harvest anything we roll across in the adjacent wormhole systems. If those systems are empty and their connections not holding any prospective targets to hunt down, we’re more than happy to roll the exit and see what else pops up. We’re easily running as many sites as we can possibly squeeze in between pilot availability, wormhole collapse and outside interference. It’s good on the wallet and fun for the participants – so who could want for anything more?
Time – as I posted above seems to be the limiting factor. Were there more of it in the right places, we’d accomplish even more. As it is, I’ve let the posts slide for the last two weeks. I’m behind on keeping up with not getting farther behind. The reasons are all good and I don’t regret them in any way. The first issue that demands more time is the burgeoning role of maintaining the new alliance. Hats off to Letrange on the way he’s managed to even stay sane let alone manage to get some play time in. And he even manages to post regularly. The second is some impending travel that is coming up for myself, and that means a lot of loose ends have to be tied up first. And finally, there are some issues with EVE and CCP that needed to be dealt with.
So, while having loads of fun, I’m a bit tired and looking for whoever it is stole my last billion isk. I’ll be coming for you…
On Making Stupid Mistakes & Learning
As I looked over the last year or two of posts, I realised that I very often only present the upside to the efforts and events that we go through. I don’t often mention some of the accidents, problems and outright stupid mistakes that my colleagues or I make on a seemingly regular basis. To further entertain you, I’ll try to recall some of them and tell you what we’ve learned in the process.
Hmmm…. Nope…. Can’t think of anything.
Wormhole Mass
We learned this very early on and it is a lesson that has been repeated for us several times. Wormholes have a dedicated amount of mass available for ships to transit after which they summarily collapse.
On our very first expedition, Project Move In, we managed to try and squeeze a freighter through a wormhole leading to a class 3. Oranges can’t fit through drinking straws and survive. The battleships jumped ahead and the freighter went back to downsize to an Orca which, according to research, should fit through. Paring down our crap into 1/10th of the space was a bit of nightmare, but a helpful second Orca accompanying the replacement Orca made the essentials fit.
Right – we’re idiots. The essentials were some small guns, medium tower, week of fuel, cargo array and ship array. The electronic warfare batteries were too big to fit so we left them in the staging station, as was the rest of the fuel. I think we also might have miscalculated the fuel ratios and didn’t really have a whole week.
The Orcae returned to the wormhole to find it strangely wibbly, but this was “unknown” space so there had to be things we couldn’t know. The first Orca with the tower and some fuel jumped in to the wormhole. End of story. Really – no more wormhole, no more connection. Just some very confused pilots floating around in Amarrian high security space trying to figure out what had happened for sure. The lesson we learned from this first experience were really good and helped us to prepare for some future operations and moves…, but not completely. The main lessons we learned were.
- Too Much Ship = Do Not Enter
- Too Many Ships = No More Wormhole
- Bring the combat/industrial ships in after the tower is ready.
- POS + Fuel should likely travel in same ship.
- Wormhole MASS is often the limiting factor in large moves.
Offline
Apparently it is possible to time the rebalancing of fuel in the tower at the precise instant the tower decided to “cycle” through its hourly fuel needs. Should this cycle happen at the exact moment when say, some of the coolant was being moved out to make room for more isotopes, nothing bad should happen. When you accidentally split the coolant stack with an extra digit and move ALMOST ALL of it out right as the tower cycles – bad things do happen. First thing you might notice is that the wibbly, wobbly shield bubbled between you and oblivion is no longer floating around out there in space. The second thing you might notice is that the array next to you is offline. In point of fact, you may notice that ALL of them are offline. And finally, you may notice your disembodied consciousness looking down at the interior of the arbitrary station where you had installed a medical clone [you did update your clone right?].
- Double check your digits when moving fuel.
- Keep an eye on the fuel levels when moving.
- Try to add fuel in balanced ratios to begin with.
Combat
You will die. A lot. Hopefully over time you will die less often. Some of our losses were due to a superior force with better ships and fittings and skills than ours. Most were just stupidity, laziness and incompetence on the part of high sec industrialist trying to learn how to harvest resources in null security space. To say we were ready for 0.0 is true, but these were wormholes and we were IN them. So were the pirates, gankers, griefers, some more pirates, bigger territorial industrialists, and solo PVP artists. Other times we just didn’t know the ships we were used to flying and what they would/could do when faced with certain situations.
- Be willing to use and lose your ships.
- TRY and learn from each death. [This is very hard. Expect to fail at it as well.]
- When attacking a POS, warping to the nearest celestial object will fail.
- Going after a bait ship is dangerous.
- Chasing a bait ship into an enemy’s home system is not dangerous, it’s a free ticket to your medical clone [You did remember to update your clone, right?].
Industry
Ore takes up volume. Calculations of yield are based in m3/time, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that all of those cubic meters add up. Remember our first lesson about wormhole mass. Two corollaries are spun off from it that apply in this situation. A) It takes a lot of industrial ships to collapse a wormhole. And, B) not much high end ore fits in an industrial [at best about a jet can]. An Orca helps both of these situations immensely, but also suffers from being highly susceptible to being intercepted along the way. Losing a fully rigged and fit Itty V is mere pocket change compared to replacing the Orca that didn’t make it back to the POS.
- Intensive Refining Arrays are a good investment for any corporation that is mining in wormhole space.
- Losing 25% of your yield/profit/potential is better than flying multiple trips to known space.
I’m quite sure I could come up with more examples of our incompetence, but would likely ruin our reputation for flawless execution.
On Saying The Same Thing
A lot of the questions that we get both from new pilots in our organisation — as well as other pilots that we fly with — regard the terminology we use to describe our environment. I realised that the last post would fall into this category as well. It basically describes something that some of use regularly and others of us will use more often. Our resident information super-goddess has compiled quite a list of terms that we use internally and posted them for all to share and learn from. It is a great resource and reference for our pilots and we all hope you enjoy them as well.
Moar Bloot
| A contraction of ‘blue loot’. The loot recovered from the wrecks of Sleepers has a blue colour on its graphics, allowing us to distinguish it from other loot. Bloot is separate from any salvage recovered from the wrecks. |
On Going Backwards For A Bit
First, a Public Service Announcement from WHEN. Pro-Tip: Cloak, THEN scan. Recently while scanning, two of my corp-mates cornered a day-tripping scanner in a nearby class 1 wormhole and sent him home, express postage paid. Even in a Tech 1 frigate, fit a cloak if you are going to be scanning. Additionally keep your eyes peeled and on the d-scan. Your first sign of danger shouldn’t be the sound of ammunition pummelling into your hull!
The Wormhole Engineers have done a fabulous job of clearing out the anomalies and signatures in our home system. The standard mode of operations is:
- Scan out the static exit.
- See how deep the rabbit hole goes.
- Prioritise the resources located.
- Secure the area.
- Collect as much as feasible given personnel, skills and equipment.
Numbers one and two happen almost automatically now. It’s become an engrained response to the place we choose to live. Number 3 is somewhat amorphous and can change dynamically [It's the nature of priorities.]. Number 4 can be difficult as there are times when we can easily tell we are out-matched and our best course of action is closing the w’hole as quickly as possible. Sometimes number 4 involves shooting other ships, as was seen in the recent expedition into the nearby class 1. In addition to the uncloaked, and possibly AFK scanner, a salvage-Stabber was chased down and shown the door.
Second, a Public Service Announcement from WHEN. Pro-Tip: Don’t leave a salvager behind to clean up. Especially don’t leave a salvager behind to clean up when:
- A Corp-mate just got podded,
- the wormhole you came in through is end-of-life,
- The poor salvager doesn’t have a probe launcher fit,
- The straggler doesn’t have bookmarks for the other w’holes in the system.
Having done all this, we eschew the neighbouring class 4 system with its relative dearth of anomalies and sites to pursue the cheap candy covered thrills of the class 1 conveniently left behind by the previous, unfortunate visitors. A few minutes are spent debating the relative merits/demerits/benefits/challenges of flying various fleets to best capitalise on the class one in the most efficient manner. In the end, efficiency really becomes less of a concern when dealing with things that can be handled solo. We each hop into our preferred ships and head off to clean up the Sleeper detritus infecting said system.
With the static highsec exit left unscanned/warped, we are able to work in relative safety. Our motley crew ends up being a heavy missile Drake sporting siege warfare links, a heavy assault missile Drake equipped to both hack and analyse [2 magnetometric sites and 1 radar site present] and an Ishtar we half-jokingly refer to as the Salva-Tar for it’s ability to clean up the wrecks as we go along. After a few quick moments we realise that we are not only overkill for a class 1, we are way over tanked as a fleet and begin to split up. Salva-Tar goes back and grabs a specialised salvage boat,the HML drake goes on to the next site and hack Drake finished up on the cans. Joining the HML, the hack-Drake helps make short work of site two and the scenario is repeated for site three. All-in-all, the Drake really proved itself as a wonderful jack of all trades for cleaning up a class 1 wormhole.
In the end, the spoils were average for a class 1, and seemingly low in comparison to doing the same sites in our home class 4, but the evening was in reality a resounding success. We tracked down and killed two defenceless carebears, avoided reprisal, ran several combat sites that were quite beneath our level and left with all of the candy. It was good to feel confident, in control and powerful – if only for a moment. I know that soon we’ll be podded by bigger boys in badder boats and ganked by girls with guns.
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.
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%
TP eff. +68%
Damp eff. +68%
TD eff. +68%
Damage +68%
AOE Velocity -34%
Drone Velocity -34%
Targeting Range -34%
Tracking Speed -34%
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.
Continued from Part 1 and Part 2…
In an attempt at trying to remember things honestly, I will try to mention when things went well or failed miserably so as to present as clear a picture as possible of the reality of flying with a random collection of fruitcakes, nut cases and loony birds. We’ve pulled people in from all over the place and from time to time it has happened that they were of a lower quality than we would have preferred. It’s inevitable I imagine as there are all kinds of pilots looking to be all kinds of ship captains involved in all manner of endeavours. It would be extremely naive and a bit arrogant to assume they all thought like we thought, flew what we flew or were interested in the same thing via the same approaches. Oddly enough, just knowing that doesn’t seem to keep it from happening. Many corporations [ours included] often take far to little time to evaluate a potential employee and his fit with the organisation as a whole.
But more about that later, first I wanted to take a closer look at some of the potential recruiting methodologies and comment on their relative effectiveness. The first method we’ll dub the “Passive Method” and requires the least amount of effort and energy on the part of the recruiter. This can usually take several forms and can be a combinations of vectors. Some of the possible implementations include placing a note in your corporation’s information window to the effect, “We are recruiting,” or “Sign up now,” to let passer-bys know that you are open to members. Some slightly more involved passive recruiting efforts might be a forum post on EVE Online or some of the other frequently populated sites. And finally there is the recruiting advertisements within EVE itself.
All of these passive methods rely on the individuals seeing and responding to your information. The motivation and initial moves belong to the other pilots and are theirs to make or not.
The second type you might guess is the “Active Method” where you are going out of your way to target, engage and draw specific individuals into your corporation. This can be an intense and involved process with multiple personnel working to illicit a favourable move from an already known pilot. This involves ongoing conversations via both public and private channels; overt recruiting and posting in the forums; targeted EVE mails to the pilots in question; active referrals and contacts with other pilots of the corporation and alliance. This targeted, active recruiting is all about going after either a specific individual or a specific skill set that your organisation realises that it needs.
All long the spectrum from Passive to Active is any combination of the two. Often experience, necessity and effectiveness will require a combination of the two methodologies.
Finally, a quick word about making sure the “new prospects” and “potential recruits” are the people that you’ll want in your organisation long term. In addition to any thoughts and dreams you might have about a role and the people that will fill it, so to do the people who are possibly coming to work for you. They see themselves as gaining something out of the transaction and rightly so. If they can’t learn, grow, build wealth and generally prosper in the position and corporation, then they really need to be somewhere else. It’s not rude or arrogant to show someone the door, offer suggestions about other places they might flourish or generally pass them over and keep looking for the right person. It would however be wrong to stuff them into a role that was antithetical to who and what they were and where they were headed. And while it may temporarily solve a staffing issue, it isn’t going to help your corporation out in the long run either.
Happy Head Hunting.
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