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 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 Getting Lost Without Losing Your Way
Recently I managed to end up on the wrong side of a wormhole. Many of you read about Penny’s side of the story and search to find a safe passage for me back into the wormhole system we call home. In a multi-part series she recounts how over several days it was necessary to scan, scan and scan again. For those of you who might have missed it:
 Well, the reality is that I often end up on the wrong side and often without it being the end of the world. It is a regular occurrence to see “20:33:35 Notify As you pass through the wormhole you realize that it collapses behind you.Have you become trapped?” in my logs. I was going to get a picture to illustrate, but sadly my fingers have not been cooperating quickly enough to generate the screen shot as I jump through the last time. New image of what you see when you close the hole now included.
As residents of a class 4 system with a static class 3 wormhole, it takes 2,000,000,000 Kilogrammes to close the hole and force a new static wormhole to spawn. For the sake of protecting my zero key and facilitate a slightly faster representation, I will be abbreviating that number as 2,000M(illion). It is also relevant in that ship masses are all larger than 1,000,000 Kilogrammes [shuttles and pods excluded]. Thus as we scan, haul, hunt and pew in and around our various wormhole connections, it is often essential to maintain fairly accurate accounting with regard to both the type and number of ships we have pushed through the holes.
Frigates tend to hover around 1M Kilogrammes, destroyers are about 1.5M, cruisers are about 11-13M, battlecruisers are 13-15M, battleships are around 100M and an Orca is 250M. To these values are then added afterburner [AB] or micro warp drive [MWD] effects if they are active on the ship when jumping. 1MN AB/MWD adds 0.5M Kilogrammes, 10MN AB/MWD adds 5M and the 100MN AB/MWD adds 50M Kilogrammes. There are a few anomalous ships in this schema like the Caldari black-ops battleship Widow which tips the scales at a massive [for a battleship] 150M Kilogrammes. Together these ships can form quite a variety of mass combinations to push though and close a wormhole with ships arriving on the same side at the same time as planned.
Thus for our situation, a typical closure [which we refer to in-house as "rolling the hole"] will look something like:
| Beginning WH Mass |
Ship Transit |
Direction |
Mass Used |
Remaining WH Mass |
| 2,000M |
Orca with AB/MWD |
Outbound |
300M |
1,700M |
| 1,700M |
Orca with AB/MWD |
Inbound |
300M |
1,400M |
| 1,400M |
Orca with AB/MWD |
Outbound |
300M |
1,100M |
| 1,100M |
Orca with AB/MWD |
Inbound |
300M |
800M [WH should indicate change] |
| 800M |
Orca with AB/MWD |
Outbound |
300M |
500M |
| 500M |
BS with AB/MWD |
Outbound |
150M |
350M |
| 350M |
BS with AB/MWD |
Inbound |
150M |
200M [WH should indicate critical] |
| 200M |
Orca with AB/MWD |
Inbound |
300M |
-100M [WH should collapse] |
There is one final issue to consider – the fundamentally unstable nature of wormholes. They can vary by as much as ±200M Kilogrammes which is slightly less than an Orca, 2 battleships, 10 AB/MWD cruisers… et cetra. This also means that if the hole is on the light side [closer to 1,800M Kilogrammes] then you will likely find yourself sitting in a fairly expensive ship in a system that is not quite friendly. Thanks to a good deal we brokered with Mr. Murphy, this most often happens under perfect conditions when the system I end up is:
- Full of Hostiles
- Null-Security Static Exit
- Approximately 5 minutes before they all come online
- Smaller than 14 AU across in diameter
These perfect storm conditions are surprisingly easy to come across and account for a surprising number of incidents for getting trapped outside of the system I call Home.
 Oddly enough, the most recent exclusion event happened as a result of properties unknown and unknowable with regard to wormholes. I took a picture of the situation as it manages to baffle me to this day. I returned to this bookmarked [former] wormhole and it remained just like this for several hours. As Penny mentioned, one of the highlights is the fact that I trapped some tourists from high-security inside the wormhole and got a cool picture of an apparent illusion or apparition. It is logically impossible to prove an absolute negative. But one thing I can state absolutely, there was no way back the way I came. Oddly enough there never was a message about the wormhole closing behind me.
In retrospect, the whole situation reminded me of a quote that will probably live in infamy for those poor pilots living in the USA during the reign of Bush the Younger. His senior hounds-of-war-master issued the following statement about not really knowing if things were true or not:
“Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.” –D. Rumsfeld
So in the end, I guess we will never know if we know or not.
On Using The Noctis [or not]
In a recent discussion with Penny [thank you for helping to keep Our Eve stocked and readable], the subject of the Noctis was brought up. Penny and I [and the boys too] have popped a couple Noctises [Nocti? Noctae? Noctices?] in wormholes since ORE began shipping the blueprints for manufacture and have seen a few different fits. This has raised several questions about the usage of and consequently the fitting for a Noctis. In view of my own usage, the Noctis – I would have to say that the answer to the first question is a resounding, “Maybe” and the second question has an even more amorphous answer.
On the one hand, a pilot could try and fit his salvage ship to survive. Plates and resists for protection and rigs to round out its ability to tank. This seems like a fairly tenuous position as the ship is quite fragile and will not be able to mount a very effective escape with such a high armor burden. The other option might be to generate as much speed as possible though it will be impossible to outrun all but the most inexperienced pilots.
Still a third option might be to use a cloak in a high slot to help “hide” for a moment to possibly confuse and confound a potential attacker. This can work for some ships, but the Noctis is still a big target that will be hard to miss when it does uncloak. Another problem with the cloak is the amount of time it adds to the job that the ship is supposed to be performing. Every decloak will engender a delay in targeting and the fitting of the cloak will increase the amount of time necessary to target the wrecks themselves. This can be mitigated to some extent by the application of Sensor Boosters and Signal Amplifiers. This is akin to ships fitting Ancillary Current Router rigs on Caldari ships so that anything “proper” will fit.
Penny is of the opinion that the best way to protect a Noctis is to let it do its job as quickly as possible. The less time that it spends in open space, the less time its pilot will spend updating his clone. This is true to a large extent and I believe that the fitting is only a small part of it. I would suggest that with the added bonuses to salvagers [and especially if you fit Salvage Tackle] that the onus for efficiency will fall on the tractors. Thus in general, a five-three split of tractors and salvagers will likely serve you better. This should hold true for high-sec as well as wormhole clean-up. I would suggest against a cloak as it is going to decrease the speed at which you get the wrecks locked and consequently the speed at which to process the trash floating around in space.
For the mids slots I would lean toward a microwarp drive for its ability to burn toward a gate or wormhole. It is going to make little or no difference in salvation of the ship should sneaky seeds of Satan show up to snatch your scow from you. It will however potentially get you to your destination in a more timely manner. A Sensor Booster [SeBo] is going to help get the wrecks locked more quickly and generally enable you to spend more time frantically mashing F1-F8 to clean the mess that was left floating behind. The other alternative is a Capacitor Recharger but will largely be a matter of choice.
Finally in the low slots do we come to the bones of contention. Cargo, Speed, Armor – which direction should you head? From the beginning I would suggest against a plate. It will do more harm that good to try and slap on a plate that eats up your powergrid, offers only limited improvement in tank and slows down your ability to turn, accelerate and go fast. Resists are a great option and will generally help bolster your tank so that your fleet-mates can arrive on grid in time to see you explode save you. I would avoid the expanded cargoholds unless you are working in High Security Space and you need the 3-4k m3 to store the level 4 mission loot you are collecting. Speed then is a great option to help you get close to the wrecks that are just outside your 68-80km tractor range or align when local/dscan spikes.
Your rigs are likely to just be Salvage Tackle and possibly a Low Friction Nozzlejoint or CCC if you have poor cap skills.
As I write this I am hearing and seeing a lot of negative commentary to the discussion of ship fitting in general and industrial ships in particular. Not everyone understands why they are told to fit a ship certain ways, and many more will believe whatever it is they want about ship fitting in denial of and with disregard for any suggested fittings. For those of you looking to shoot the Noctis, the best advice is just get in and apply alpha as it will go down very quickly. For those of you trying to survive, your best bet is to keep your eyes open and stay out of harms way.
Probably one of the safer groups of people to use hardwiring implants are professional mission runners. Since the majority of mission runners use missile based set-ups [Caracal, Drake, Raven, CNR, Golem, Tengu], most of these people will benefit from implants that maximise their application of missile damage to their intended targets as quickly as possible. They also have the added benefit of being able to earn the LP necessary to buy the implants in the first place as well as face a relatively low risk of losing them. They can most likely justify spending a large amount of isk and resources on a nicer set of implants than someone who is doing regular fleet-ops in 0.0 or pirating in low-sec.
It can be overwhelming to decipher the implants that you are looking for in the sea of choices. All of the missile hardwirings begin with either ‘Snapshot’ for improving missile damage or ‘Deadeye’ for improving missile related skills. Since there are 5 slots that the missile implants can slot into, here is a break down by slot and then what a couple of sets might look like.
First up is slot 6. The options available here include boosts for Torpedo [ZMT-500/1000/2000] or Cruise [ZMU-500/1000/2000] damage. This will likely come down to whether you are flying the Caldari Marauder Golem or any other ship. The Golem‘s insane boosts to torpedoes makes the addition of the implant marginally useful, but flying a billion isk ship that likely has more than a billion in fitting modules on it makes the implant a fairly small drop in the isk bucket. For everyone else, slot six is likely to just be a utility for more capacitor, CPU or power grid.
For slot 7 there is a choice between the two cruiser sized missile platform [Heavy Assault {ZME-500/1000/2000} vs. Heavy {ZMH-500/1000/2000}] damage or increasing missile ranges [ZMC-10/100/1000 or ZML-10/100/1000]. For those in torpedo or rocket fit boats the added range is nice, but for cruise/heavy/standard missiles it is less useful due to their already long range. It could be argued that you could maximise a sniper cruise boat, but the real question would be why. If you are in a PVE ship- you probably want to get the heavy missile damage implant, for a PVP ship like the Sacrilege consider the HAM damage implant.
Slot 8 really does not have a choice. The two available missile hardwirings are for defender missile [ZMD-500/1000/2000] or explosion velocity. I honestly cannot conceive of a situation where using a hardwiring to boost defender missiles is beneficial. There really are only a few situations where having defender missiles are even remotely useful and having an implant for that is not going to make the difference. On the other hand, if you are using cruise or heavy missiles, the bonus to explosion velocity is icing on an already very tasty cake. While it will not make your cruise missiles hit for more damage, it will increase the amount of their damage that actually gets applied to smaller targets. If you are using the unguided missiles [Rockets, Heavy Assaults or Torpedoes], consider filling slot 8 with something like the Rogue DY [for afterburner cap savings], the Squire CC [for more capacitor] or the Alchemist WA [longer drug booster effects - a whole other set of topics].
Slot 9 for missiles is either for small missiles [ZMR-500/1000/2000 and ZMN-500/1000/2000] or for explosion velocity [ZMS-10/100/1000 - all missiles]. If you are a dedicated Hawk, Hookbill, Flycatcher, Heretic or maybe even Kestrel pilot, the two small missile hardwirings could do you good. Until they make a change to rockets, the explosion velocity is likely going to do you more good than the damage boost. It also has the added advantage of working with any other missiles that you might fire.
Finally, slot 10 is a lot like slot 8. The need for Friend-or-Foe [F.o.F.] is highly situational and not likely to be one that you face often. Thus the need for an implant that helps the explosion radius of F.o.F. missiles [ZMF-500/1000/2000] is not going to be a great choice. The other missile hardwire for slot 10 is one that has a direct effect on DPS by boosting their rate of fire [ZMM-10/100/1000]. This is a great choice for PVE and PVP both.
So to recap [and provide application to the above rhetoric] – here are a few specific suggestions:
| PVE Torp Golem |
|
|
|
| Slot 6 |
Torpedo Damage |
‘Snapshot’ ZMT-2000 |
~170m |
 |
| Slot 7 |
Flight Time |
‘Deadeye’ ZMC-1000 |
~177m |
| Slot 8 |
Booster Duration |
‘Alchemist’ WA-2 |
~100m |
| Slot 9 |
Explosion Velocity |
‘Deadeye’ ZMS-1000 |
~165m |
| Slot 10 |
Rate of Fire |
‘Deadeye’ ZMM-1000 |
~177m |
|
|
|
|
|
| PVE Tengu/Drake |
|
|
|
| Slot 6 |
Capacitor Recharge |
‘Gypsy’ KMB-50 |
~23m |
 |
| Slot 7 |
HML Damage |
‘Snapshot’ ZMH-2000 |
~160m |
| Slot 8 |
Explosion Radius |
‘Deadeye’ ZMA-1000 |
~170m |
| Slot 9 |
Explosion Velocity |
‘Deadeye’ ZMS-1000 |
~165m |
| Slot 10 |
Rate of Fire |
‘Deadeye’ ZMM-1000 |
~177m |
|
|
|
|
|
| PVE Raven Cheap |
|
|
|
| Slot 6 |
Cruise Damage |
‘Snapshot’ ZMU-1000 |
~22m |
 |
| Slot 7 |
Flight Time |
‘Deadeye’ ZMC-100 |
~15m |
| Slot 8 |
Explosion Radius |
‘Deadeye’ ZMA-100 |
~21m |
| Slot 9 |
Explosion Velocity |
‘Deadeye’ ZMS-100 |
~22m |
| Slot 10 |
Rate of Fire |
‘Deadeye’ ZMM-100 |
~24m |
|
|
|
|
|
| PVP Generic |
|
|
|
| Slot 6 |
Ship Velocity |
‘Rogue’ CY-1 |
~5m |
As an alternative for slot six, the pirate ‘Omega’ implants can be used to compete those sets. |
| Slot 7 |
Missile Velocity |
‘Deadeye’ ZML-10 |
~1.5m |
| Slot 8 |
Explosion Radius |
‘Deadeye’ ZMA-10 |
~2.1m |
| Slot 9 |
Explosion Velocity |
‘Deadeye’ ZMS-10 |
~2.2m |
| Slot 10 |
Rate of Fire |
‘Deadeye’ ZMM-10 |
~1m |
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 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 Getting To Know The Author
Somewhat in response to Freebooted‘s post about introductions, I came up with the following:
[caption id="attachment_678" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Vestigial Heritage"]  [/caption]
I’m an old Caldari pilot who has managed to fly a lot of ships, visit a lot of systems and learned some of the most spectacular ways to die. I believe in working very hard to be the best pilot that you can. To that end, I spend a lot of my skill points on getting my skills to level 5. This also means I don’t have a lot of skills. I love my Drake and I don’t mind trying to use it in a lot of different situations.
I am that bane of banes for MMOs, the carebears’ carebear. I like mining. I like manufacturing. I like killing rats and Sleepers, setting up towers, plugging different numbers in spreadsheets and seeing what comes out. I like flying with a group of friends more than I realised when I started and I miss them when they are gone. I used to mine Veldspar in high-sec before I started exploring and mining Kernite in exploration sites. I would run missions for extra ore when the macro-miners would strip out whole systems.
I have a whole lot of blueprints and end up using them on occasion. I have been in one fail cascade, one very successful corporation and have most recently started out again on my own with a new venture. We endeavour to focus on solely on wormholes and utilising them for fun and profit.
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.
When the hands that operate the motor lose control of the lever
When the mind of its own in the wheel puts two and two together
When the indicator says you’re out of oil should you continue driving anyway? -(TMBG)
[caption id="attachment_441" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Turkish Gas Rooster"]  [/caption]
I’m not sure what to make of the fullerene gasses that we harvest in the wormholes. They are by and large fairly low revenue items, plentiful to locate and annoyingly mundane. I have to admit upfront that I am a compulsive miner. I didn’t start mining because it was a “quick revenue stream” early in a missioning or PVP career. I’m a miner because I really hate rocks. Or because I am good at it and like to keep track of rocks and what is going on with all the systems in and with my ship.
Gas on the other hand in mundane. Even for an especially hardcore mining carebear. The cycles are blessedly short, but so is the yield and the satisfaction of filling your cargo hull is just not the same. The effect is compounded by the amorphous cloud that you are working it that varies from too bright to look at to obscuring your view of the heavens around you. I feel like a waitress at a very stodgy gentleman’s club full of cigar smoke and nearly dead investment bankers hoping to die before they have to go home.
Having said all this, I’ll continue to harvest gas and clear out ladar cosmic signatures.
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