25/08/10 15:39 PM
| Jaspet | 55.92 |
| Omber | 55.99 |
| Hemorphite | 62.18 |
| Pyroxeres | 68.21 |
| Hedbergite | 74.04 |
| Veldspar | 65.77 |
| Kernite | 88.68 |
| Plagioclase | 84.13 |
| Scordite | 68.17 |
| Spodumain | 75.94 |
| Dark Ochre | 95.49 |
| Gneiss | 95.24 |
| Crokite | 172.65 |
| Bistot | 216.26 |
| Arkonor | 270.56 |
|
On Finding and Using a Common Reference Point
While working in space has its perks and for the most part is a wonderful experience, we are in part hampered by the interface built into our ships. I firmly place any and all blame on the Jovians as part of their desire to maintain a position of aloof superiority over us by seeding small technological wonders attached to inane and sometimes incomplete user interfaces. I could probably wax eloquent over multiple examples, but would only be “preaching to the choir” as it were. None of the pilots I fly with or talk to would recommend the user interface we use on a regular basis for any purpose other than masochism.
Having written all of that, we are flying around in a multi-dimensional space with the only real point of reference being a false horizon given to us by the tactical overlay. Flying around planets, suns, moons, et cetra are all inconsistent measures of location and often difficult to describe in a place where concepts like UP, DOWN, STARBOARD, PORT, AFT, BOW are rendered meaningless in light of both the interface and third-dimensional travel. [As an aside for those who might have flown a spaceship in a "twitch" type of environment, a barrel-roll really loses it's meaning without a horizon, but that doesn't negate it's usefulness.] So how can you organise yourself and others [especially fleet commanders] to use a common point of reference without everything going down the drain in confusion over directions and terms.
REALITY – You can’t. There will always be someone to misunderstand any given command. “Warp to 30km and hold,” will invariably be understood as, “Get to the gate and jump. Jump! JUMP!” by aforementioned schmuck. In another life, we had a fleet-mate who always turned up oriented 180˚ degrees vertical to the rest of the group. Ultimately it didn’t matter as she would at least be facing the right direction. The best we can do is develop a consistent point of reference and be insistent that people reference it for direction. Anything else will largely just be lucky, random happenstance.
Something reminded me the other day of how we were taught to find reference points in fleet operations while giving a new corp-mate the grand tour. Dazed and confused by the overwhelming flood of information coming at him upon joining our little patch of home, he queried, “How do you all know where you are going?” Admittedly he was referring to finding and keeping track of the ever shifting network of wormholes, but it was a good reminder about getting oriented and one that I had completely forgotten in moving into a wormhole. The point of this is to get everyone a common frame of reference that they can use to describe position and interpret directions.
[caption id="attachment_754" align="alignright" width="230" caption="Finding North"]  [/caption]
The method is fairly easy and refers to an arbitrary direction that we will call, Norbert. To find Norbert and get oriented to Norbert, you simply full up the otherwise useless system map [via the F11 key unless you've remapped it somehow]. In the lower right hand corner will be a map of your current system complete with relative planetary orbits and the star in the centre. Somewhere on this little map will be a red circle that represents your current position. extending outward from this circle is what can best be described as two overlapping, semi-transparent triangles. These indicate the current horizontal “field-of-view” of your camera drones. The direction your ship is facing is irrelevant as is your vertical declination above or below the plane of the tactical overlay horizon. Remember Norton? It is this field-of-view that we use to define Norbert. Norbert is arbitrarily defined as the top of the little system map. Everything else can now be defined relative to Norbert. You warp to a wormhole at 10 o’clock knowing that your cloaked stealth bomber buddy is 30km 6 o’clock. Stealth Edit. 
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 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 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.
My corporate compadres, denizens of Domnion, wanton wormhole wanna-be’s are relentlessly reminding me that it has been a week two weeks nearly three weeks since I posted any information. I’ve been sorely remiss in spending much time posting information here, as I’ve been busy trying to live life in a pod out in the wilds of Apocrypha. Dominion brought some changes, but nothing overly significant to the capsuleers who fly here the wormhole. So then the question I need to answer to myself is, “What has happened?”
We’re still in the same system and we’ve managed to pick up another regular engineer. He really seems to be settling into the opportunities that exist out here in the unknown and is always eager to learn more. He laughs at our attempts to explain that living out of one or more metal boxes powered by a large metal candy cane is a “Lifestyle Choice,” but is excited about the future. We’ll have to revisit the idealism when he’s been ganked a coupled of times, podded and otherwise thrown under the bus [bus being a euphemism for Tech 2 ships with overwhelming firepower and numbers.]
The ability to run sites has picked up some as well with a fairly balanced effort at participation from all involved. We have tried [and been fairly successful] in making everything a concerted group effort, though the industrial side of things is still a bit of a struggle. The new guy has been very giddy about not only mining Arkonor, Bistot and Crokite, but being able to be compensated for it without having to worry about the market, hauling, refining, et cetra. We’re excited about his excitement too. Along the way we’ve become very adroit at operating together as a unit and understanding each others’ strengths and weaknesses. In many ways our efficiency is finally picking up and coming together.
The flip side of this situation is that we are also beginning to realize just how isolated we are. Our jargon and vocabulary has shifted significantly and we communicate in seeming nonsense to some of our corp-mates. We haul our “bloot” to market, we talk about our gases and our pre-warps, we know that “@#$@” and “aoliv89#*&” mean someone is about to die. We have reached the point where we know within a few million isk how much a particular site is worth. We can judge approximate time frames for running those sites. We have become fairly comfortable with suggesting fittings and I would go as far as to say know what should work. We have established procedures for scanning, scouting, bookmarking, mining, fighting, etc that aren’t really written down in electrons anywhere.
This is all to say that as we add new people to our endeavor out in the uncharted realms of otherwhen, we’ll be struggling not only to bring them up-to-speed, but also even just communicate.
Technorati Tags: old players, new players
In continuation from the previous article…
Recently I found myself discussing the bygone era of naivete with regard to flying ever bigger, faster, deadlier, efficient, specialised and ultimately more expensive ships. We have all come a long way since our Ibises and Velators. The time since we’ve used civilian weapons [if ever] is far away and mostly gone are the days when the fittings and ships are limited by the skills we haven’t trained or isk we haven’t earned. We still flounder a bit on the first few times we do something new [ship fittings and how to effectively use a Stealth Bomber], but by now we know where to look for the information and make fairly educated choices and decisions based on that information.
Given that we are now what I would consider Intermediate level pilots, we are probably prime for various and sundry problems brought on by our decent into madness [Is linking to your own posts rather akin to talking to yourself? If so, I also have posts whereby I comment on my own posts thus creating a dialogue. Sadly, I'm probably going to end up posting a comment on one of my posts about a link to a post or comment of my own thus degenerating into complete insanity. I apologize to myself in advance.]. Having nearly gone off the deep end one too many times, it occurs to myself [and others, I'm far from unique or inspired], that fresh meat is needed to halt the rapidly encroaching madness. Either that, or we’d like to begin drafting some people so that we at least statistically reduce the number of insane pilot actions.
Actually, we’re debating bringing on a few newer members that we can ultimately train into effective capsuleers according to our own images while exploiting their current skills for our gain. We’re probably going to start with some dedicated salvage/mining personnel to help offset our tendency to let the mining sites in our wormholes degrade to uselessness as well as help accelerate the speed at which we can work over the various anomalies and signatures there-in. Having employed all manner of recruiting means in the past, I thought we might also benefit from some of the other blog readers/personalities out there who might like to take a chance on wormhole mining and salvaging.
I am hoping to wrap this up with a segment on some of the other recruiting methodologies and their relative effectiveness.
Words fail
Buildings tumble
The ground opens wide
Light beams down from heaven
She stands before my eyes
– (TMGB)
Because I’m always a bit distracted and doing 20-30 different things at once, it often means that I hit things hard and hope I get enough to keep the project afloat until I get back around to it again. One of those projects is the ongoing Orca development project that manages to be purely theoretical in nature. All this means, I don’t actually produce Orcas, but I come back and look at their production costs in relation to the current ore/mineral prices. In update to a post of long ago [Orca Production Calculations], the following changes have been made:
An Orca can currently be broken down into its component pieces and then sub-costed into their mineral components. The overall picture doesn’t include any of the manufacturing costs and assumes NO Material Efficiency research. I am putting the picture of the calculations in this post, but I’ll try to summarise the numbers for brevity as well.
To produce an Orca requires 7 component blueprint and one ship blueprint that all average around 1.1 billion each to purchase from the market. Each of the seven components will cost approximately 4 million in minerals on average [3.2 million - 5.5 million]. Combined with the total number of each component, the cost to produce an Orca is currently approximately 310 million. Since I’m not selling Orcas, I feel comfortable in suggesting that market prices ought to be around 350m allowing for profit margins, research costs and capital paybacks.
If mineral costs continue to fall, Orca prices could stabilize as low as 325 million. Adding rigs to them will still push them up over 400 million. The cargohold optimization rigs are still running over 30 million each. The addition of the ore hold has drastically improved the Orca’s flexibility and original role performance.
I finally finished up what I considered a fairly good set of mining skills for a high-sec carebear-ette. All I’m lacking is the full set of T2 mining crystals. Additionally I thought I would start working on getting started on some production skills. I finally got that rolling along and realized I should be inventing as well.
I had decided at about three to four weeks into my pod-pilot career that I should focus on running any missions with one particular NPC corporation. I looked around at what I wanted and decided I like what Lai Dai had to offer. They covered a spread spectrum of endeavors and didn’t seems to rule anything else out. I wanted to fly for them as well, but it seems their rigorous application and acceptance procedures excluded me because of a technicality of my Achuran heritage or some such nonsense. I liked their spread of stations and coverage as well as the offerings from their LP store, not the least of which was the much vaunted ‘Highwall’ HX-2 mining implant.
So after specializing for a long time and even catching some flak from my then corp mates about not using ‘their’ corp and agents, I managed to get enough standings for a perfect refine. A couple of weeks later I was able to get a jump clone. And finally last week was able to afford my much coveted implant.
All of this to say, I have a lot of standing with them and was curious if there was a way to continue to leverage that to my benefit. Well, it goes back to one other reason I had selected Lai Dai originally. There are a lot of research and development agents within the Lai Dai corporation and they cover a large area of space and range of research endeavors. I looked at the spread and realized I have access to all off their R&D agents and was only lacking the prerequisite skill areas to begin earning research points for datacores. The datacores are requirement for invention of all kinds of various modules.
I started with Hydromagnetic Physics. Why? Well, my study of Ice Processing had required that I gain more than a passing familiarity with Hydromagnetic Physics and so I could immediately access high level agents by training Research Project Management. On a side note, RPM is a charisma heavy skill in the science field that for an Achura is painfully slow to get trained. I’ve stopped training it after four rounds as it will take another month to maximize it. In the mean time, I’ve also picked up Caldari Starship Engineering so that I can possibly work on some of the ship invention as well as sell some extra datacores.
The final skill endeavor has been to get some exploration work done. I had learned enough Astrometrics to use all the various exploration probes and some of scanning speed training, but knew that at some point I would need to move into a tech 2 ship to take full control of exploration. So I embarked on a journey to train Electronic Upgrades V I could train for a Covert Ops frigate. On a somewhat related side note, it turns out I need that for something completely unrelated. Manufacturing. Really, Manufacturing? Apparently you need various encryption methods for invention which require some skill at hacking which in turn relies upon… Electronic Upgrades V. So coming full circle, I’m training for scanning again so I can invent the T2 mining crystals so I can train for level IV of the various ore refinement skills to be able to use them in my modulated strip miner 2′s. Whew. I sure hope I don’t need to train any other skills along the way… 
The Musings
Some pilots may be a big overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information available to them in this day and age. By New Eden 105, systems have all been settled, contested and resettled, some of them many times over. The standard, accepted methods and mechanics for doing just about everything have been codified, argued, bugged, nerfed and buffed [not necessarily in that order]. Guides, opinions, thoughts and aphorisms abound on every conceivable subject.
Through most of that, one particular pilot has posted his thoughts and the thoughts of others on his own personal information portal. Most of us would have to be crazy to generate the amount of connections and keep up with them all that he does. Which actually goes a long way toward explaining the name. Crazy Kinux, or CK for short, goes the extra mile to keep a whole lot of information, people and reviews connected. By way of analogy, think of CK’s site as an autopilot for the New Eden Pilots’ Blogerati Class ships. But even with one person collating all that data, it’s easy to get lost in the deluge. “What To Do?” Let me be of assistance.
Click to continue reading “Pod Pilot’s Guide to The Musings”
The Musings
Some pilots may be a big overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information available to them in this day and age. By New Eden 105, systems have all been settled, contested and resettled, some of them many times over. The standard, accepted methods and mechanics for doing just about everything have been codified, argued, bugged, nerfed and buffed [not necessarily in that order]. Guides, opinions, thoughts and aphorisms abound on every conceivable subject.
Through most of that, one particular pilot has posted his thoughts and the thoughts of others on his own personal information portal. Most of us would have to be crazy to generate the amount of connections and keep up with them all that he does. Which actually goes a long way toward explaining the name. Crazy Kinux, or CK for short, goes the extra mile to keep a whole lot of information, people and reviews connected. By way of analogy, think of CK’s site as an autopilot for the New Eden Pilots’ Blogerati Class ships. But even with one person collating all that data, it’s easy to get lost in the deluge. “What To Do?” Let me be of assistance.
Click to continue reading “Pod Pilot’s Guide to The Musings”
|
|
