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 |
COPYRIGHT NOTICE EVE Online and the EVE logo are the registered trademarks of CCP hf. All rights are reserved worldwide. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. EVE Online, the EVE logo, EVE and all associated logos and designs are the intellectual property of CCP hf. All artwork, screenshots, characters, vehicles, storylines, world facts or other recognizable features of the intellectual property relating to these trademarks are likewise the intellectual property of CCP hf. CCP hf. has granted permission to Our EVE to use EVE Online and all associated logos and designs for promotional and information purposes on its website but does not endorse, and is not in any way affiliated with, Our EVE. CCP is in no way responsible for the content on or functioning of this website, nor can it be liable for any damage arising from the use of this website. |
On Crucibles Of Change
So in a few moments, the universe as we know it will collapse in on itself in a cataclysmic cacophony of conniptions that we will come to call Crucible. There are changes enough for everyone, including everything from lowly munitions all the way up to galaxy spanning goodies. There are new modules/equipment as well as new ships to put them on. There are old types of equipment with new abilities and properties as well as new paint on old ships.
Perhaps more than with other releases I have been keeping an eye on this update. Regular daily Singularity updates and visits have become a part of my routine as much as my morning coffee. Perusing the differences of the new equipments, ships and visuals has become something of a habit. By-and-large, there is little in the changes that will effect my day-to-day routine significantly [with the exception of corporate bookmarks - which still seem only half of a solution]. There is a bit of internal struggle that coincides with all of this change, mostly centered around the question of, “Why do I care so much?” Bear with my introspective, belly-button browsing as I consider how all of this is affecting me so deeply.
In a bit of confession and disclosure, I have toyed with the notion of hanging up my pilot’s license and settling down into a long stasis. Over the last year has seen some interesting flak and change happen in the universe and not all of them have been useful or happy. There were times and days where I could not be arsed to haul my pod into a ship to do much of anything, let alone fly around, shoot, scan, salvage, explore…. So in the midst of all this malaise, comes a rather expected update to the universe with rather unexpected feelings attached to it.
Where there was apathy before, suddenly there is attention. Where before I felt like giving up, I am tending to feel things going up. I look forward to sliding into my ships and launching forth to interact with the others around me. If nothing else, at least there is in Crucible the concern for quality that derides my contempt and compels my attention. I am ready for change. The world is again before me on a plate of stars waiting to be devoured with the utensils of ships and shots.
I would like to leave you all with a quick Wordle of the patch notes mentioned above. I was singularly impressed with the results and how much it reflects the essence of change.
On Tier 3 Planetary Production – My Current Setup
As I have reviewed what has happened in getting a good sized Planetary Interaction setup organised, several things began to pop up. There was this constant nagging sensation that I was Doing It Wrong™. There also had to be a way to get a better yield and some how make use of the CPU that was not being used. The first idea was to see if would be better to separate extraction and production completely. To do this, I enlisted the help of The Puppet to set up his four planets to extract each of the four P0 needed in the production of Robotics.
First a quick survey of the system gave us a good rundown of what resources were available on each of the planets [or just glancing online somewhere] and in what quantities they are present at each one. This part was something that I felt was important as it allowed me to eliminate some planets in favor of others. From this survey I whipped up a quick and dirty sheet of numbers to help plan out my strategy:
| Planet |
Aq
Liq |
Base
Mtl |
Carbon
Cmpds |
Micro
Org |
Noble
Mtl |
Hvy
Mtl |
Non-CS
Crys |
Susp
Plas |
Ionic
Sol. |
Noble
Gas |
Reac
Gas |
Plank
Col. |
| I |
25 |
75 |
75 |
75 |
33 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
| II |
25 |
75 |
75 |
75 |
25 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
| III |
0 |
40 |
0 |
0 |
80 |
40 |
50 |
5 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
| IV |
60 |
80 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
60 |
50 |
60 |
0 |
0 |
| V |
50 |
75 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
55 |
75 |
25 |
0 |
| VI |
50 |
75 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
60 |
75 |
33 |
0 |
| VII |
50 |
75 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
60 |
75 |
25 |
0 |
| VIII |
50 |
75 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
60 |
75 |
20 |
0 |
| IX |
100 |
0 |
0 |
50 |
0 |
100 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
33 |
0 |
50 |
[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="161" caption="Kename's Ice Planet"]  [/caption]
[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="The Puppet's Ice Planet"]  [/caption]
The Puppet planned to just extract the raw materials and export the refined P1 materials and store them in the Corporate Hangar Array for me to haul to the planet where I was building Robotics. He set up on the ice planet to extract Heavy Metals as it had the largest concentration of that resource. I added an extraction set up for the ice planet as well and soon we were pulling in a great volume of Heavy Metals and exporting quite a fair amount of Toxic Metals to put toward Cons. Elect. production later. One of the big benefits of the way the new extractor head system works is the ability to move them around freely to adjust to changing deposits of resources or fix and fiddle with any of them without having to destroy and rebuild a colony every time. Due to the way the CPU/power grid worked out, I was not able to get an additional basic industrial facility as I was short about 50 PG. Since there was copious amounts of CPU available, I opted to add a second Landing pad and put the intermediate P1 there for storage and export.
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="151" caption="Kename's Storm Planet"]  [/caption]
[caption id="attachment_1126" align="alignright" width="150" caption="The Puppet's Storm Planet"]  [/caption]
For his second installation he set up on the storm world to extract Base Metals. This was a deliberate decision based on my previous survey of the system. All but one of the planets in our wormhole has deposits of Base Metals and at fairly high concentrations. The storm planet has the benefits of being the largest quantity by percentage coupled with a fairly low planetary radius to keep link costs down. It also does not have any other resources necessary for production of robotics. The lower CPU and PG needs for links allows for an additional processor instead of the second spaceport of the ice planet. The Base Metals are refined and converted into Reactive Metals for the later production of Mechanical Parts needed to make Robotics.
[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="244" caption="Kename's Plasma Planet"]  [/caption]
[caption id="attachment_1125" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="The Puppet's Plasma Planet"]  [/caption]
The third move was into toward the plasma planet’s set up. It was initially set up to be both an extraction and production plant. Some conversion was necessary in order for it to fit the new structure of pure extraction instead. The basic industry facilities were retained but in some cases repurposed with new schematics. Additionally the the spaceport for storage and export was kept intact. Production schema were updated and routes modified to match. The radius of the planet is similar to that of the storm and so has a similar number of processors. The Puppet here also set up shop to extract Non-CS Crystals and produce Chiral Structures for later incorporation into Cons. Elect.
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="244" caption="Kename's Barren Extraction Planet"]  [/caption]
[caption id="attachment_1124" align="alignright" width="150" caption="The Puppet's Barren Planet"]  [/caption]
Finally the last extraction planet was one of the Barren Planets. There was not much difference between the two and their relative deposits so The Puppet put up an extractor colony on the first planet and I opted to build my extraction facility on the second one. The idea was to avoid interfering with each other’s setup and thereby maximising the returns. The barren planets both have somewhat mediocre deposits of Noble Metals, but the only other planet with the resource is the plasma planet which is already obligated for Non-CS Crystals.
After all of that, it seemed like the bulk of the work was finished. Eight planets had been set up to extract the four necessary P0 materials and refine it into the four Tier 1 Products used to produce Consumer Electronics and Mechanical Parts for final inclusion of the Robotics.
[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="194" caption="Making Robots"]  [/caption]
[caption id="attachment_1123" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Backup Production Facility"]  [/caption]
The last step was supposed to be the most straight forward as it could be set up on any planet and did not require survey. Again, I opted to have this set up on the second barren planet in our home wormhole system that I was not using for Noble Metals [but The Puppet was] as it had the smallest diameter and thus was the most economical in terms of CPU and PG needed for links. This was a fairly complex setup and in hindsight would do a couple of placements differently [for aesthetic reasons mostly]. The lessons learned in previous iterations and attempts at PI were useful in making sure that things went smoothly.
The first installation [after the Command Center] was the Spaceport. Additional Advanced Industrial Facilities [AIFwere placed around the Spaceport in a hexagonal layout while attempting to minimise the distance between them. The result was a tightly packed set of 25 AIF. The next step was to link everything together with the minimum number of links and avoiding any long links. This involved a bit of trial and error and sketching to get it set up with the least number of links without overloading any of them or requiring upgrades if necessary. The final result was 5 branches of 4 AIF connected in a general ‘Y’ or ‘T’ shape and one branch with 5 AIF.
On Colonising and Mining a Planet
In my first foray into Planetary Interaction [PI], there was a mythical 4th Tier [P4] level product that could then be used to potentially build POS arrays and structures. I scoured the ‘show info’ windows and read as much as I could about how it all stacked together [P0->P1->P2->P3->P4], which planets were necessary and even which POS arrays were moving and selling, how much of what it took to make them, which planets were optimal for that, what skills would be needed, et cetera. I briefly [nearly non-existent moment in time] toyed with the idea of building Corporate Hangar Arrays as a lot of them were showing up on tower kills [a few that I happened to be a part of – shooting them that is]. I have seen a lot of other pilots talking about their planetary colonies, how they set them up, what they are producing and what they have found to work well for them. I wanted to share my experience and hopefully offer help for someone else looking to set up their own PI production chain.
As it turns out, this was going to be quite beyond what would be profitable for a single pilot [or even two] to effectively manage with sufficient appreciable return. Perhaps if an entire corporation were committed to producing all of the parts involved it could be a profitable venture. Realising full well that the first ‘M’ in MMO is for multiplayer [the second is for migraine], I still thought there must be something that a single player could do with PI that would be a least somewhat profitable.
I spent a fair amount of time looking at the spreadsheets, making my own, pulling up prices from the late eve-metrics and eve-central and deciding what might be possible. In the end I opted to start with just a couple of little things to help offset POS fuel. Enriched Uranium seemed good as it could all be produced at the plasma planet we already had and then could be used to help fuel the POS we were living out of. Easy, right?
It took a couple of tries [including a full tear down and rebuild of the colony] to get everything situated in some semblance of order. Along the way I learned important lessons about planet size [bigger means longer, more expensive links], production set up [work in reverse – more on this later], and repetitive stress syndrome from the click-a-palooza involved in turning everything on. As I learned I also read more and discovered several great tools for planning:
Additionally I began to become more efficient in planning my colonies to try an squeeze the most out of them. This is a fairly difficult pursuit as the changes made to PI since incursion have affected the ability to do single planet construction.
On Not Learning Anything Any Longer
[caption id="attachment_1007" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Learning is for sleepers."]  [/caption]
[Due to a publishing issue, this was originally posted by the wrong author. That has been corrected. Sorry Penny. Ed.] There is some griping and much discussion about the disappearance of the learning skills. Most of the distress is not in making the game easier for newbie—indeed, this is seen as a positive move by the same people—but that the investment in the learning skills is now going to waste. That is almost understandable, as the raw skill points injected in to the learning skills, and that will be refunded, do not translate directly to the gains those skills will give a character. But this is also the very point that renders the complaint ineffective.
‘I chose to invest time’, writes the typical veteran, ‘and now I am getting nothing from that investment’. Sort of. Your advantage of training in the learning skills will be negated, but the effect is not gone. Far from it, as the training you invested in the learning skills helped you get in to the shinier ships with bigger guns faster than if you hadn’t learnt those skills. There is simply no way that effect can be removed from your character. The time you spent waiting patiently for the learning skills to complete has helped you gain skills faster than any short-sighted or impatient capsuleer who didn’t plan similarly, and has done so for however many years it has been since you trained them.
[caption id="attachment_1008" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Get it working"]  [/caption]
If I were to offer any pilot the opportunity to go back in time and train from scratch, knowing that this deletion of these skills was coming one, two, or six years down the line, I daresay no one would choose to eschew training the learning skills. It would not be seen as optimal to put those couple of million skill points elsewhere, knowing that that’s where they would be put eventually once the refund was given, as the overall rate of skill point accumulation would still not be as great. After all, the whole point of planning ahead and investing the time in the learning skills was to eventually gain more skill points than would otherwise be possible. The accelerated training rate would mean you would recoup the skill points invested in the learning skills after a period of a year or so, and only continue to reap the benefits after that.
Indeed, the clever capsuleer is taking last-minute advantage of the imminent learning skill refund, dumping more points in to a learning skill using her favoured attribute, with a view to refunding the points in a skill of her unfavoured attribute. Such cunning, using learning skills to gain skill points faster than normal right until they are taken away. But that’s what the learning skills were there for, and any pilot that took time to invest in their training has either gained the obvious benefits for a long time, or will see the skill points refunded for no loss. And as the learning skills are themselves affected and accelerated by the attributes they increase, any training in them will still have created more skill points to be refunded than a new pilot would have gained normally.
[caption id="attachment_1009" align="alignright" width="150" caption="We all start somewhere"]  [/caption]
I don’t see any reason for veteran pilots to be frustrated by the removal of the learning skills. To claim they now have no advantage over new players is absurd. A new player will not gain ninety million skill points overnight, because of this change or otherwise. And the very existence of the learning skills means that every pilot must invest in them in order not to fall behind, which just puts everyone in the same boat. Rather than having new players have to find the ISK to buy the expensive, second-tier learning skill books, then themselves get frustrated as they spend a couple of weeks learning with no immediate gain to their character skill, we now all train at the same rate.
That is, we all train at the same rate except when using the expensive implants that only veteran players can really afford, after training the cybernetic skill. As for the time investment, neural remaps have made available even longer-term skill training plans, for pilots who like to think in years instead of months. Removing a pointless part of the already fierce learning curve can only be a good change, which is what deleting the learning skills achieves.
On Being Plugged In
[caption id="attachment_971" align="alignright" width="149" caption="Plug It In, Plug It In"]  [/caption]
There are within EVE a plethora of ways to get better and be better than the next pilot. Fitting your ship, pilot ability, skill training and finally implants. Like the Glade® Plug-ins of Terran myth, these cool little doodads work their magic by being inserted into sockets in your brain and having some larger effect on the world around you. Unlike the Glade®’s they can be more than just a fresh scent. They can increase your ability to squeeze things on your ship, improve your cap-life, add time to your tank, and even speed up the rate at which you acquire new skills. They are the magic beans being sold by the side of road. They are quite simply, rigs for your brain. In much the same way you might spend extra money to rig your ship for a performance increase, you can ‘rig’ your melon with implants for an increase in something [often just ego, ask Krull].
They can generally be divided into two broad divisions and several sub-categories. First there are the attribute implants that increase your Intelligence [Einstein never had it so good], Memory [Where did I park my Onyx?], Perception [I see dead people], Willpower [OBEY!] and Charisma [Leadership skill training?]. The second division is the broad range of enhancement implants that improve how skills work, how modules function, how damage is calculated and applied even how effective the drugs you might be taking are on you performance. Each of these two broad divisions can be further subdivided into categories:
- Attribute Implants:
- Specific Attribute [Int/Mem/Per/Wil/Cha]
- Limited
- Limited Beta
- Basic
- Standard
- Improved
- Pirate
- Hardwirings
- Armor
- Drones
- Electronics
- Engineering
- Gunnery
- Industry
- Leadership
- Missile
- Navigation
- Science
- Shields
There are a myriad different ways to fit these into your head, just as there are millions of possible ship configurations. Hopefully over the next couple of posts I will examine some different combinations that can serve particular needs. If you a particular set you like to use or rely on, post a comment and I will see about getting it put into the mix.
On Adding, Subtracting and Finding Yourself Happy
 Some things are easily quantified and measured. They can be numbered, totalled, divided, analysed and reported. This is basic maths and accounting, in that you know how much of something there is and how much it is worth in time, effort, profit, etc. These are the things that most people aim for and are more than happy pursuing. More and better ships, profit, ore, isk, research, production, flying, etc.
On the other hand, there are the unquantifiables. The things that defy counting and spurn attempts to wrangle them into mathematical formulae. The time spent teaching a new corporation member the way things are done or walking a newbie through basic scanning 101 can be really hard to put a number on/in/by. How do we assign a value to the logistics pilot that kept several millions or even billions of isk on the field longer in a fight? Is there any quantitative measure for the time spent making sure the POS was set up efficiently so that arrays were easily accessed without flying back and forth all over the bubble? How about the amount of energy and resources put into manning a gate camp?
Still another thing to consider is how much isk is enough? The answer ranges from the PVP pilot who like heroin addicts, just wants enough for the next fix, er, ship to the full-on industrialist/trader who needs all of the isk to be satisfied. Most of us fall somewhere in between where we have a comfortable point, varying slightly by our preferred hulls and fittings. We could all use more and could survive on less.
Orakkus recently wrote about what it takes to be a Solid Pilot, and I think it is just as applicable to the discussion of value [and worth a plug as well]. There is a certain value to a pilot that can fully fit a sniper battleship and the one that knows she needs to stick to something else. It is often immeasurably valuable for fleet commanders to know that the the people in the fleet know their roles and can adequately fill them. I am afraid of only two things in EVE: 1) Logging in and finding that my friends have decided to pack it up and move to some other venue; 2) Idiots.
The first is mitigated by the communication channels that friends share in and outside of New Eden but the second is something that shatters dreams in fits of screaming nightmares. This is another item of value that is hard to quantify. How long do you invest in people that seem to be unable to learn or at least very slow to pick things up? Almost every cost/benefit analysis argument generally boils down into either a he-said-she-said situation or becomes so subjective as to be meaningless.
On Being Angry With CCP and/or GMs
I’ve read a lot of rants in my life. Everything from cats eating neighbours’ birds, gimped drone bay on Rokh, dogs leaving their calling cards on the lawn, cans flipped, presidents sleeping with interns, GCC timers, GUI problems [or complete and utter failure at Human Interface Design 101] and letting people talk to Mr. G. Brown. But all in all, I’ve always assumed the majority of them are emotional responses to complex issue that don’t particularly affect me directly. So I smile, nod my head and move on.
Until Now.
[caption id="attachment_806" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Banned Wagon"]  [/caption]
I’m on the bandwagon. No, wait, I’m on the Banned Wagon. Persona non grata in EVE. I go to log in and I’m greeted with – “Login Data Incorrect” and no explanation. Huh, fair enough, I must have mistyped my passw… nope. 0/2 on login attempts. Quickly check SpaceBook, er, EVE Gate. It’s more informative, “This account has been banned.” To quote a corp-mate, “Bweh?” What is going on here. I quickly double check my email in case I missed something. Nothing I can find. I check the spam folder, nothing there. Check the servers spam que – AHA! A very generic message from a supposed Mr. GM Something or other indicating that my account had been hacked and as a security measure the account had been banned. Ok, fair enough, I’m all for them trying to run a tight ship and protect us from the evil account hackers and keyloggers.
As indicated in the email, I replied and asked for the account to be reset so that I could reset the password and survey the damage. As a corporate director, I was a bit fearful of the damage that could be wreaked on both our corporation’s wallet, our assets and those of our alliance mates. I quickly checked with them as well as the CEO. Interestingly enough, my character had not logged in since my own last activity. Additionally, the millions of isk in the corporate wallet were untouched. This is one very incompetent hacker…
24 hours pass… no reply to petition, no reply to email, no status indication at all. Additional petitions are made from other accounts to try and get some semblance of a response, acknowledgement, update. My last skill training ran out 20 hours ago [which was why I was trying to log in to begin with]. 36 hours. 48 hours, a reply to one of the players petitions, “Your account has been reset as per the email sent in response to your original petition on ….” First things first, reset the password and get to training again while surveying the damage to my personal wallet. Ok, skill set, wallets – Full. In point of fact, there was more isk in my wallet than when I logged off 2 days ago [several large contracts had cleared as well as personal donation from a very dear friend upon the loss of a close personal ship. What? Where's my 0 isk balance? Why are there still assets in my name? Why didn't the evil hackers strip my assets, post offensive pictures on the eve-o forum, offline all our towers and kick everyone out of the corp?
Hmm. Sure their must have been a reason they Fort Knox'd my account? The sheer paucity information released leads to my rampant speculation wherein I have then two broad scenarios that I can imagine [help me if I'm missing something]:
- My account was hacked in such a fashion as to easily alert prescient CCP/GMs to it’s compromised status and they reacted so quickly that no damage had been done while incompetent third world sweatshop hackers failed to capitalise on their access and steal the millions, nay, billions in ill-gotten gains from myself and corporation.
OR
- CCP/GMs are clicking buttons at random over there in New Hawaii and wouldn’t know a hacked account from a large cloud of volcanic dust if it blew up in their back yard.
If scenario one is correct, I encourage everyone to take a moment and give CCP/GMs a little golf clap for their supernatural ability to ferret out RMTs, hacked accounts and macro miners/ratters with ease. I would be momentarily happy to be a part of their Unholy Rage. If you’re right, everyone is happy and the experience gets better.
If scenario two is correct [and I'm more inclined to believe this given that I can just about find macro miners in every system with ice and macro ratters everytime our wormhole exit pops up in null-sec coupled with my own recent experience], then I am just sad. OK, angry and sad. I lost 48 hours of training time for someone else’s mistake? I missed out on 200-500m in revenue and cost my corp-mates the opportunities to do so as well, due to contributing to group activities? If you are wrong, admit you made a mistake and set things right.
On Running Out To High-Sec For Some Groceries
As I slip into my ship, I get an incoming com from one of our pilots. He’s actually the only other pilot right now. He mentions that there’s a four jump exit to high-sec and he’s going out to grab some Quafe as it’s getting dry here at home. I am also rather keen to grab a new book or two to read as I’m nearly finished with the current series I’m reading, Recon. It has been a really good series with lots of fun times and some new information along the way, but by the fifth one in the series, it was getting a bit long winded. I am usually patient about finishing the books I start, but for some reason Recon drug by. The Exhumer series seemed to go much faster and even finishing up reading the Astrometric Rangefinding series rather quickly, though it was published under another title.
[caption id="attachment_799" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="New Mini Game?"]  [/caption]
As the other pilot hit the last system before k-space, he reports back that there is small bubble on the hole but poorly placed. Knowing that he’s intending to bring a ship back through, I volunteer to do some bubble popping. I decide that since it is not absolutely essential that I clear the bubble out quickly [other pilot has several jumps to get his ship picked up] and I do not really want to waste any ammo on the stupid thing [sig-rad is tiny on those things] I opt for a pulse Coercer. For those that maybe know some of the ships I usually fly, this is a fairly wide departure [not because it is Amarr] because I am exceptionally unskilled at laser turrets. This almost seems counter culture to flying ships in space, but the reality is, they just never appealed to me all that much. So I trundle the three jumps to the bubbled hole and jump through. Sure enough, a bubble greets me, but I am immune to its psychological effects and uncloak and lock it up. I start flying with the beams of light and watch as the shields on the bubble start to melt satisfyingly, albeit not too terribly fast.
Suddenly, there is a sound, a flash of light [or darkness], and there is a Tengu sitting 10 km off my stern and beginning to lock my ship. Ack, alas and alack, I am in a destroyer fit with racks of heat sinks and some cap rechargers. This is not going to be a fight, it’s going to be a little blip in the pond. Salvo 1 and the shields are gone. Salvo 2 and I am trying to remember if my clone was up-to-date. Salvo 3 and at 30% shields it dawns on me that I have not moved since I jumped into this system and the wormhole is still right there. I start spamming the jump button hoping that my poor ship [actually someone else's poor ship that I borrowed] will hold together until the session change starts. Lo, there is sound and light again and I’m sitting in a distinctly different location though with about 2% of my armor left and thankfully no structure damage.
Not waiting to see if Mr. Don’t Harsh My Bubble decides to follow for the kill, I immediately start heading back home to rethink my strategy in light of the change in situation. I update the pilot out on his shopping spree and he is easily swayed into agreeing that we should ‘defend’ ourselves [ignoring the fact that we may have, um, started things] and try and catch the sneaky, wormhole camping strategic cruiser.
[caption id="attachment_802" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Strats on the Brain"] [/caption]
As a bit of an aside, I have been thinking a lot about the ‘strats’ both from the perspective of picking one up myself as well as their reputation. Though they deserve the kudos they get for being good at a lot of things and their ability to quickly specialise at something extremely well, they are still ships. They can and do die with increasing frequency. From this I have a couple of electrifying bolts of insight:
- There are a lot of really bad ship fittings in the universe.
- Everyone and their clone is buying ‘strats’.
- The sheer number of possible fittings is confusing to say the least.
- Someone is bound to get it wrong, sometime.
and
- How much of their reputation is based on fear.
So we decide to ship up in something suitably pointy and head back and ‘defend’ our right to fly through a system they are living in. The ship shopper contacts another pilot and he slips into our well crafted bait ship to draw the Tengu pilot into engaging. In this case it is a Harbinger that we managed to forget to refit before heading out. It has lasers… well, it has lasers. Ship shopper jumps in a Lachesis to get the long range point and damp the Tengu’s range. I waver between using the Pilgrim that I just finished studying up for or something else. In the end, my rather uncommon sense wins out and I opt for a Rook because the Tengu did not have any turrets when he attacked me. We move out, hoping that we can still catch him and that he does not have a scout on our side of his wormhole [we would have] or backup [we are not likely to think about having backup until we see structural damage].
At the wormhole, things seem quiet and so we engage in some tribal war calls and Bait is sent through to begin bubble burning and we sit in quiet contemplation of the swirling colours around us. In a few seconds we get the call, “Tengu uncloaked at 60km and locking,” to which we indecisively wonder if that is within our engagement range. Bait is ordered to try and kite him in the other direction for a few seconds and we prep to jump. As Bait’s shields finally disappear, we jump in and begin racing for the Tengu. He’s closed to within 50 of the hole and Ship Shopper is able to get a point. I’m able to lock but the first round of jams all fail which causes a bit of distress for Bait. About this time a fourth pilot joins us in his Curse. His neutralisers are welcome, but I’m unsure how effective. His drone on the other hand are very good at what they do.
In order to keep this from going too well, Tengu’s tango partner, Dr. Maelstrom lands 100km off an starts pinging at Bait as well. The ECM kicks in on round two and I try one on the Dr., and manage to get off a lucky strike [Caldari racial jammer on a Minmatar ship] which saves Bait who by now is flaming. Tengu has not been able to do anything since Ship Shopper and I got him damped and locked down and we begin to see his shields crumple. At about 10% shields the Maelstrom warps off just as Bait returns from the nearby planet to get in range of the wormhole [which was still bubbled, but remember, poorly]. The rest of the skirmish flashes by as the bubble-baitings, cloaky camping, terrible Tengu shatters in a sparkling shower of light and we fail to get a lock on the pod. Curse, Ship Shopper and I manage to loot the wreck on the way out of the system. Fearing a larger reprisal, we opt to not target the bubble and head back to our own home. Before we jump, the Tengu pilot lets fly with a ‘gf’ in local and we respond by thanking him for sticking the fight. As we’re warping through another system, Curse asks what a ‘Smokescreen’ Covert Ops Cloak is.
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 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.
|
|
