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 |
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On Being a Frog in Well Stocked Pond
The wormholes have been rolling by us at a rate of 2-3 a day. With our static Class 4 exit lasting at most 16 hours we usually have time more than enough time to harvest anything we roll across in the adjacent wormhole systems. If those systems are empty and their connections not holding any prospective targets to hunt down, we’re more than happy to roll the exit and see what else pops up. We’re easily running as many sites as we can possibly squeeze in between pilot availability, wormhole collapse and outside interference. It’s good on the wallet and fun for the participants – so who could want for anything more?
Time – as I posted above seems to be the limiting factor. Were there more of it in the right places, we’d accomplish even more. As it is, I’ve let the posts slide for the last two weeks. I’m behind on keeping up with not getting farther behind. The reasons are all good and I don’t regret them in any way. The first issue that demands more time is the burgeoning role of maintaining the new alliance. Hats off to Letrange on the way he’s managed to even stay sane let alone manage to get some play time in. And he even manages to post regularly. The second is some impending travel that is coming up for myself, and that means a lot of loose ends have to be tied up first. And finally, there are some issues with EVE and CCP that needed to be dealt with.
So, while having loads of fun, I’m a bit tired and looking for whoever it is stole my last billion isk. I’ll be coming for you…
On Making Stupid Mistakes & Learning
As I looked over the last year or two of posts, I realised that I very often only present the upside to the efforts and events that we go through. I don’t often mention some of the accidents, problems and outright stupid mistakes that my colleagues or I make on a seemingly regular basis. To further entertain you, I’ll try to recall some of them and tell you what we’ve learned in the process.
Hmmm…. Nope…. Can’t think of anything.
Wormhole Mass
We learned this very early on and it is a lesson that has been repeated for us several times. Wormholes have a dedicated amount of mass available for ships to transit after which they summarily collapse.
On our very first expedition, Project Move In, we managed to try and squeeze a freighter through a wormhole leading to a class 3. Oranges can’t fit through drinking straws and survive. The battleships jumped ahead and the freighter went back to downsize to an Orca which, according to research, should fit through. Paring down our crap into 1/10th of the space was a bit of nightmare, but a helpful second Orca accompanying the replacement Orca made the essentials fit.
Right – we’re idiots. The essentials were some small guns, medium tower, week of fuel, cargo array and ship array. The electronic warfare batteries were too big to fit so we left them in the staging station, as was the rest of the fuel. I think we also might have miscalculated the fuel ratios and didn’t really have a whole week.
The Orcae returned to the wormhole to find it strangely wibbly, but this was “unknown” space so there had to be things we couldn’t know. The first Orca with the tower and some fuel jumped in to the wormhole. End of story. Really – no more wormhole, no more connection. Just some very confused pilots floating around in Amarrian high security space trying to figure out what had happened for sure. The lesson we learned from this first experience were really good and helped us to prepare for some future operations and moves…, but not completely. The main lessons we learned were.
- Too Much Ship = Do Not Enter
- Too Many Ships = No More Wormhole
- Bring the combat/industrial ships in after the tower is ready.
- POS + Fuel should likely travel in same ship.
- Wormhole MASS is often the limiting factor in large moves.
Offline
Apparently it is possible to time the rebalancing of fuel in the tower at the precise instant the tower decided to “cycle” through its hourly fuel needs. Should this cycle happen at the exact moment when say, some of the coolant was being moved out to make room for more isotopes, nothing bad should happen. When you accidentally split the coolant stack with an extra digit and move ALMOST ALL of it out right as the tower cycles – bad things do happen. First thing you might notice is that the wibbly, wobbly shield bubbled between you and oblivion is no longer floating around out there in space. The second thing you might notice is that the array next to you is offline. In point of fact, you may notice that ALL of them are offline. And finally, you may notice your disembodied consciousness looking down at the interior of the arbitrary station where you had installed a medical clone [you did update your clone right?].
- Double check your digits when moving fuel.
- Keep an eye on the fuel levels when moving.
- Try to add fuel in balanced ratios to begin with.
Combat
You will die. A lot. Hopefully over time you will die less often. Some of our losses were due to a superior force with better ships and fittings and skills than ours. Most were just stupidity, laziness and incompetence on the part of high sec industrialist trying to learn how to harvest resources in null security space. To say we were ready for 0.0 is true, but these were wormholes and we were IN them. So were the pirates, gankers, griefers, some more pirates, bigger territorial industrialists, and solo PVP artists. Other times we just didn’t know the ships we were used to flying and what they would/could do when faced with certain situations.
- Be willing to use and lose your ships.
- TRY and learn from each death. [This is very hard. Expect to fail at it as well.]
- When attacking a POS, warping to the nearest celestial object will fail.
- Going after a bait ship is dangerous.
- Chasing a bait ship into an enemy’s home system is not dangerous, it’s a free ticket to your medical clone [You did remember to update your clone, right?].
Industry
Ore takes up volume. Calculations of yield are based in m3/time, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that all of those cubic meters add up. Remember our first lesson about wormhole mass. Two corollaries are spun off from it that apply in this situation. A) It takes a lot of industrial ships to collapse a wormhole. And, B) not much high end ore fits in an industrial [at best about a jet can]. An Orca helps both of these situations immensely, but also suffers from being highly susceptible to being intercepted along the way. Losing a fully rigged and fit Itty V is mere pocket change compared to replacing the Orca that didn’t make it back to the POS.
- Intensive Refining Arrays are a good investment for any corporation that is mining in wormhole space.
- Losing 25% of your yield/profit/potential is better than flying multiple trips to known space.
I’m quite sure I could come up with more examples of our incompetence, but would likely ruin our reputation for flawless execution.
On 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.
How do I balance my own progress with that of providing for my corporation and or alliance? As an industrial character who has spent a fair number of hours learning to build nice things, how do I remain profitable while supporting those around me?
If I produce for the corporation and/or alliance, the expectation is that there is some kind of break in prices. As a conscientious industrialist, I am going to tell them how much it costs me and where it’s more than the market, suggest that they obtain it there. Where it is cheaper to build, I want to offer them the opportunity to get it cheaper and be there for the people that help make it possible. I have found that I am quite horrible though at maintaining the balance necessary between things produced for sales [the market] and those manufactured for consumption [the corporation/alliance]. Often then the result is a complete halt to my industrial tendencies.
This is often further complicated by my relative incompetence and disconnect with the sales and marketing side of things. I am quite comfortable in navigating the market, getting the resources I need, etc, but just as equally uncomfortable putting my wares up for sale. Finding holes, navigating gaps, incremental adjustments, market trends all tend to elude my grasp, leaving me with a very real sense of dissatisfaction with the sheer number of things I could be doing to maximise my profits, but are generally left undone. I envy both the selfless industrialist who is able to provide everything her corporation needs as well as the ruthless profiteer who is able to judge the market, jump into the fray and make obscene profits.
As a corollary to the above, there is also a push to be involved in corporate and alliance activities that are somewhat beyond my level. I am fairly competent at combat in sub-battleship roles, but could always use more experience and training in weapon systems. I’m quite happy to spend the time training for better weapons, drones, fittings, but have to balance this with a desire to also be able to improve my abilities to support my corp-mates with industry. Has anyone else figured out to do it all and do it well yet?
It is certainly something to work and think through.
Now listen all you swingers, don’t you try to tag along
I know monkey see, but monkey’s dead, for you it would be wrong
Put a dime in my jukebox, you’ll only hear this song
And it won’t be fun for long -(TMBG)
The end is nigh!
The end has passed and off into the night we continue swimming past planets, moon and stars. Wormholes open and close and wars and rumors of wars are left in our wake. All and all, everything continues on as it did before, so what is different?
Training for the Damnation has been completed. Mostly. Sort of. There are few days left to fit the armored warfare links, but everything else is fit and fine. I should be jumping for joy, holding parties in low-sec pirate filled dens of iniquity and generally announcing it to every stray passer-by I meet. Instead I’m merely looking at the next couple of weeks of training and thinking, “Now What?”
The whole trip to Damnation has been a grand adventure. It marks the third, major, long training plan I’ve completed. The first plan was learning skills, which can be debated ad nauseam both on the forums and in various other postings. They were long, arduous and imminently debatable, however I have never once regretted doing it. The second was maximizing my asteroid warfare potential, including a few weeks on Exhumer V, Cybernetics V, and a host of ore specific refining skills to level IV for tech 2 crystals. Again, there were parts of it that I probably could have cut corners on, but I haven’t regretted being able to field a really sweet Hulk, that can mine about 27 m3 of ore per second without being in a gang and significantly more with a good Orca pilot boosting.
Finally, the trip to the Damnation, which has been a slightly longer journey than the others. Over all it was uneventful and all the skills that I have picked up in the interim have been useful across the board. In the beginning it started with the look for a decent armor tanked missile ship to swim alongside my remote armor repairing corp-mates. The Sacrilege was an option, but wasn’t really able to fit a decent remote rep fitting. The Damnation could do that, had enough tank to be able to use ballistic computer systems without sacrificing tank and could still theoretically fit a RR with it’s missiles. The DPS worked out to a similar end as the Drake with the added benefits of helping the whole fleet’s tank.
Now that I’ve reached the Damnation, I have to admit I’m feeling rather blasé about the whole thing. I love flying it. It corners like an Orca, tanks like a very large plated battleship and hits about like a Drake, but from slightly farther away. This is all well and good, but my eyes were taken by something else shiny that had cropped up along the way.
Somewhere along the way I realized that in and amongst the skills for a Damnation, was hidden the skills for a Guardian logistics ship. So on a whim I began to research them, ask questions and look at fittings for them. I got to looking at just how the efficiency of remote repair modules compared to their ‘local’ counterparts. What did it take to use them and or abuse them. Since the Guardian is also bonused for energy transfers, I threw that into the mix as well, looking at how that could be used to the best advantage. I began to develop a real sense of respect for 0.0 fleet logistics pilots and the work they do. Flying a logistics ship well takes a fair amount of capacitor savvy, shrewd targeting and really tight fittings. Tried and true skills like weapons upgrades and advanced weapons upgrades have no effect on RR’s and Xfers, so it’s down to rigs, reactors, PDU’s and CPUs to make it work.
[Editorial Aside]:
I tend to scoff when I see CPUs, PDUs and Reactors on a lot of fits. They are mostly used to compensate for a severe lack of real fitting skills or to ‘tide one over’ until their skills catch up to their hulls. [I still maintain it would be an interesting study to compare the number of killmails between the pilots having 'helper' modules like CPUs/PDUs/Reactors versus their opponents.] I fully understand that even given max skills and an expensive implant, occasionally you still run into a fit that just won’t. I myself have used these modules to great success in the past and will continue to do so in the future and even recommend some fittings that do so.
All of this to say, “Congratulations logistics pilots for making it all fit. Large remote modules on a cruiser hull with a tank that survives and makes things so much easier for the other pilots to just shoot things.”
I know, I know, I said that I would quit
All right, I promise, no more after this
You don’t know how I’ve tried
To forget what it was like – (TMGB)
So things have been busy and I’m at a bit of a loss where to start. Who knew that managing a bunch of raving lunatics with delusions of insecurity could be so much like running a corporation. All that time at the asylum is finally paying off. [Warning, excessive use of <sarcasm> makes my hands overly tired so just apply liberally where you feel it's appropriate to make it interesting for you to read.]
Towers: Apparently you have to keep putting fuel in them. Otherwise minor details like shields, guns, labs all go offline.
Labs: Mostly full of jobs, except for when something happens to a tower.
Wormholes: Much fun. I hope to stop running errands and get back in them.
Combat: I think I remember fitting a ship with something other than cargo expanders once upon a time. It was cool. I died.
Skills: Battlecruiser V was cool and the implications are still settling in. Though it’s nice to be able to jump in all the racial BCs, albeit without being able to weaponise them currently. I can fit a whopper tank to them all, but not so much DPS. I blame the ferrets.
Corporation: Growing. Leaps and Bounds. More people means more annoying opinions opportunities, but also more things to manage. Need to train Delegation [5% workload reduction per level] to level 4 and start handing off some of this stuff.
Organisation: What? Hmm? I filed that here in the stack of papers on my desk back in the tower that went offline. I’ll get back to you January 4th. Some year.
Mining: See combat. [I think I warped to a belt in a NOS Drake. Sadness.]
Invention: Lot’s of invention going on. Need to get some of it finished.
So a little bit everything goes a long way toward getting nothing accomplished. Happy times! 
In the process of dreaming about my future and while staring at the picture posted in my pod, I have already started fantasizing about potential fits and what not for my Damnation field command ship, Al Abd. Come on, admit it. You have all tried fits for ships you can’t yet fly. It’s the dirty little secret/Pandora’s Box that EFT and EVEHQ when they become prevalent. Armchair capital pilots everywhere are fitting out their supercaps to do battle in their minds eye. So skipping the reverie and amorphous thoughts about what might have been, I managed to cobble together the following [mind the Tool Tips].
- [Low Slots]
- Damage Control II
- Armor Thermic Hardener II
- Armor EM Hardener II
- Armor Kinetic Hardener II
- Ballistic Control System II
- Ballistic Control System II
- [Mid Slots]
- Cap Recharger II
- Cap Recharger II
- Cap Recharger II
- Cap Recharger II
- [High Slots]
- XT-2800 Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I, Fulmination Assault Missile
- XT-2800 Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I, Fulmination Assault Missile
- XT-2800 Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I, Fulmination Assault Missile
- XT-2800 Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I, Fulmination Assault Missile
- XT-2800 Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I, Fulmination Assault Missile
- Large ‘Solace’ I Remote Bulwark Reconstruction
- Armored Warfare Link – Damage Control
- [Rigs]
- Medium Hydraulic Bay Thrusters I
- Medium Rocket Fuel Cache Partition I
- [Drones]
- [Statistics] Using Level V Skills For Comparison
- Effective HP: 85,934
- Tank Ability: 20.56 DPS
- Damage Profile – <Omni-Damage> (EM: 25.00%, Ex: 25.00%, Ki: 25.00%, Th: 25.00%)
- Shield Resists - EM: 12.50%, Ex: 89.06%, Ki: 73.75%, Th: 30.00%
- Armor Resists – EM: 85.66%, Ex: 87.25%, Ki: 89.24%, Th: 81.35%
- Capacitor: Stable
- Volley Damage: 1,121.98
- DPS: 269.28
Bah – this whole post too long to format. Nearly twice as long as dreaming up the fitting that I am sure I will iterate through at least another thirty times. Are you not entertained? Ten million to the first comment that collects all the eggs.
I  ‘m staring down a long dark hallway that is only dimly lit with some bioluminescent globes that are spaced much too far apart to give any sort of definition to the length or features of the corridor. I cannot see the end, nor can I see any distinguishable openings or portals either. My choices now are to turn around and abandon this path or proceed onward to see what will become of it. Where will it lead…? What have I begun…? What have I become…?
And so my thoughts on beginning the journey towards my current skill objective come to the fore. I’ve had long training plans before. They got me into my Covetor and my Hulk and have helped me max out most of my core skills [AWU - I love/hate you]. They are not pleasant to watch, but they are fun to achieve. Kirith Kodachi has kept many people entertained with his own regales of routines passed on his way to the Ninveah and later a ill-fated Nighthawk.
 My own plans are much more modest. I am working toward the skill set needed for the Amarrian Fleet Command Ship, Damnation. The die has been cast and the decision made. Currently I’m just getting rolling on my Battlecruiser V training. Then it’s a relatively shorter time to Amarr Cruiser V, Warfare Link Specialist IV, and Logistics IV. I’m already excited, but trying to temper that elation with the knowledge that it will still be awhile. I’m also trying really hard to ignore the results of my rather Scientific Background which includes such minor details as having pants for offensive skills. I’ll need to pick up some more training in heavy missiles and heavy assault missiles to be an effective fleet member.
 The impetus for this impulse is the desire for our fleet to be able to run sleeper sites more quickly and efficiently. With the added range for HAM’s, I think it might even be useful to fit them. With a couple cheap [it's all relative right?] rigs I can fling a HAM out to 40 km for approximately 260 DPS and just a smidge over 1,000 alpha strike volley. This is modest damage, but coupled with the ability to be cap stable while running both RR and links is too hard to ignore. In the meantime, I’m an entertaining myself by pasting pictures of my new ship all over the inside of my pod. [In case you hadn't noticed them all over this post by now. I'm also playing around with fittings for Al Abd [the name I've already chosen].
Borrowing an idea from Letrange, I’ll break the following into some sections.
Old Business:
It’s been a wonderful run in the current wormhole [WH] system, but it’s time to move on. We were consistently getting Gallente and Minmatar high-security [high-sec] WH openings that made logistics a bit harder. We found another, very similar system that we are going to give a try. We had bought a second tower and wanted to switch it out for the medium one to upgrade our processes and home. The best way to handle it turned out to be set the new tower up in the new system and pull the old medium tower down to be a more transient base that moves around from place to place.
On the skills front, I’ve managed to finish up most of the science skills associated with the tech 3 invention and production. I didn’t realize how much I was specializing in science until I noticed that I had 8.5 million skill points. I also did a bit of training in electronic warfare. I have most of my engineering skills finished up and want to work on my electronics skills. I seem to have a real addiction to finishing things up in sets.
On the industrial front, we’ve started amassing a fairly large stockpile of salvage, artifacts and wormhole memorabilia. We’ve started working it over and managed to get our first blueprint copy for a Tengu electronics subsystem. We have a reactor up and are excited about the opportunities to get started.
New Business:
The new WH system has a lot of sites for us to run and we need to get started. One of the things we’ve also noticed about visitors to our systems is that they will often move right along if they don’t get signatures when they scan. So we’re going to wipe the sites out get ready to start roaming to other systems too. The benefit of having a static high-sec WH is that the logistics is greatly relieved. We now have three new [well, new to us!] recruits who bring an extensive amount of combat experience to the system. From the rest of the corporation there is an increased level of interest in the whole wormhole project.
For skills, I’m excited about getting more science skills and increasing my ability to actually manufacture these arcane things we’ve been looking for. I would like to get back to training my electronics skills and armor tanking abilities, but I’m happily putting them on hold for some more science. At some point I will need to get some combat and ship skills, but they seem so very long to complete in comparison to the skills that I’m good at [I have low perception and willpower].
We are looking at starting our T3 production in the coming weeks and getting some of the pieces to market.
So that pretty much wraps up the time to this point.
I’ve finally been able to get some time to sit down and actually play, write and most importantly fly! The second stage of wormhole operations [WH 2.0] has been proceeding at full steam. I sincerely apologize to anyone wondering what was going on. We managed to find a nice little class three wormhole system with a static, high-sec, regenerating wormhole. I’m hoping to be able to use this as our staging ground for further wormhole operations and production ventures. In effect, the wormhole space gives us a small, portable pocket of null-sec from which to operated out of, without the associated hassle of carving said bit out from some existing alliance death-grip.
It is exciting to think and dream about the future possibilities of T3 production and supply, but at the same time we need to remain grounded in reality. We’re trying to work out what our needs are as opposed to what we’d merely like or want. Do we need that large faction tower? [probably not.] Do we need the ability to manufacture the full range of T3 hulls and subsystems? [Maybe as many as we can get, but understanding that we probably can't compete with the larger alliances.]
We have for all intents and purposes created a mini-alliance with in the corp. We have a dedicated group of wormhole engineers [what we're calling the people doing everything in the WH] and another group that are still in high-sec. We’re not opposed to a full fledged alliance, but currently don’t see the benefits outweighing the costs. Perhaps in time my views will change.
In news unrelated to WH’s, I noticed that I am nine days away from celebrating my one year anniversary with the Engineers. It has been an interesting and fun time, and it is neat to look back on all of the things we’ve accomplished and learned. I’ve moved from barely flying my Retriever to being a proficient ABC miner in a fully tricked out Hulk. I’ve expanded my personal BPO collection to include most all of the other ships and modules that I like to fly and use. The corporation has moved from selling a variety of T1 modules, ships and ammunition into an ever increasing number of T2 items and ships. I know there is still a lot of things we could do and improve upon, but we’ll get there. Step by step.
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