Rolling with a Higgs Rig

For those not keeping up on stuff, as of Phoebe there is a new rig in EVE: the so-called Higgs Anchor.  It has a number of effects on a ship, including doubling its mass.  A reader mailed me asking if I had thought about them for the purpose of popping wormholes.  I have.  I decided to write a bit about it.  This prompted me to get the latest EFT to play around with.

The Higgs does make it possible to make a battleship with almost exactly 300gg of mass.  That is double the current mass (about 150gg) that my wormhole-popper gets.  But I am still not sure if I will use it.  There's just a few problems.

Here's one problems with the Higgs.  It doubles all of the mass on the ship, including microwarpdrive or afterburner mass.  Yes: your 100mn afterburner adds 100gg.  (This violates my intuition, and I wish CCP would change it.  I don't care if the Higgs doubles the armor mass.)  Thus, most battleships will end up slightly over 300gg with prop mod on.  Therefore more than half of the cheap battleship hulls cannot really use it to full effect.  You can still get ~200gg of course, turning your prop mod off.  So you require five back and forth passes to pop a wormhole, instead of seven.  That does not excite me as much as half as many passes.

Another problem with the Higg rig is that it drastically decreases speed.   You get a quarter of what it would be otherwise, and the doubled mass means that prop mods don't have as much effect.  (I get about 1/6 the speed with a microwarpdrive.)  This makes a microwarpdrive almost mandatory, and even that is not very fast.  It's a lot faster than five minutes of polarization.  But it's not just a simple time tradeoff, since the extra time is spent on the dangerous side of a wormhole.

One more problem, which applies only for people with 2000gg wormholes (those in C2 through C4), is that you really do not want a ship more massive than 180gg for the later passes when popping one of these wormholes.  A wormhole can have mass variation of plus or minus 10%, and it is at the 1/10 mass level which it goes critical.  Thus, if your hole popper has mass of over 180gg, then it can potentially pop a disrupted but not highly disrupted wormhole in a single pass.  A single pass leaves you stranded outside.

(If you live in C5+, then getting a battleship with 270gg is still safe.  But none of them can easily reach this number.)

Now, it would be possible to use one set of battleships for the early/middle part of hole popping, then only switch to lighter ones after you've gone well past half mass.  Still, I like the general foolproofness you get from the rule "it's always safe to do a single out and back pass in this ship".  And I don't really want to have even more single-use ships.  I already have two dedicated hole poppers and limited space to store big ships.

A final problem I have with Higgs has to do with my hole popper.  On occasion I pop holes by myself, using two characters.  I fly Scorpions for the purpose; here's the fit:

[Scorpion, Hole Popper]
Damage Control II
'Hypnos' Signal Distortion Amplifier I
'Hypnos' Signal Distortion Amplifier I
Beta Reactor Control: Capacitor Power Relay I
Beta Reactor Control: Capacitor Power Relay I

'Cetus' ECM Shockwave I
'Hypnos' Multispectral ECM I
'Hypnos' Multispectral ECM I
'Hypnos' Multispectral ECM I
'Hypnos' Multispectral ECM I
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Large Micro Jump Drive
Experimental 100MN Afterburner I

Expanded Probe Launcher I, Core Scanner Probe I
Heavy Unstable Power Fluctuator I
Heavy Unstable Power Fluctuator I
Heavy Unstable Power Fluctuator I
Heavy Unstable Power Fluctuator I

Large Particle Dispersion Augmentor I
Large Semiconductor Memory Cell I
Large Semiconductor Memory Cell I

Hobgoblin II x5
Warrior II x5

This ship is very hard to stop by any enemy short of a pretty substantial and well-chosen fleet.  It can burn back to a wormhole in reasonable time unless webbed.  It can jam out ships webbing it.  It can microjump out of bubbles, unless scrambled, and if desperate it can try to drain a tackler's capacitor out.  I like it a lot.  The hull's bonuses are used fully.  You'd have to bring a fleet combining several jam-resistant webbers, scrams, and DPS to stop it.

This ship is also a good escort for a hole-popping fleet of battleships with micro jump drives.  If there's an enemy attack, it can get everyone else out and probably escape itself.

I don't feel I can make as good of a ship for popping on any hull but a Scorpion.  But of the sub-100gg hulls, I think the Raven might be the best.  Here's a possibility cranked out with a little EFTing:

[Raven, Higgs Hole Popper]
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Damage Control II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
Stasis Webifier II
Warp Scrambler II
Large Micro Jump Drive
100MN Microwarpdrive I
Rapid Heavy Missile Launcher II, Mjolnir Precision Heavy Missile
Rapid Heavy Missile Launcher II, Mjolnir Precision Heavy Missile
Rapid Heavy Missile Launcher II, Mjolnir Precision Heavy Missile
Rapid Heavy Missile Launcher II, Mjolnir Precision Heavy Missile
Rapid Heavy Missile Launcher II, Mjolnir Precision Heavy Missile
Rapid Heavy Missile Launcher II, Mjolnir Precision Heavy Missile
Heavy Unstable Power Fluctuator I
Large Higgs Anchor I
Large Core Defense Field Extender I
Large Core Defense Field Extender I
Warrior II x5
Hammerhead II x5

This has just under 300gg mass. It can fight off light tackle pretty well, and can swap to fury missiles against larger stuff.  Still, compared to the Scorpion I'd feel rather exposed in it.  The main good thing about it by comparison is its 300gg mass -- one half the passes.  I'll have to consider whether it is worth it. 

One other amusing possibility occurs to me: the use of a Higgs on a lighter hole-popper.  A Higgs and a 100mn prop mod is 100gg.  So, I should be able to make my hole-popping Onyx better at its single function.

How to Mine Gas Fairly Safely in Wormhole Space

I mine gas from time to time.  I've not yet been killed doing so.  Also, I hunt solo in wormhole space, in a stealth bomber.  Occasionally I come across people mining gas.  When I do, I try to kill them.  I succeed in this more often than I should.  So I know what works and what fails.  Therefore, it's time to write it down.

0. The Old Guide

Actually I have already written a pretty good guide to mining gas in wspace.  Here it is: Gas Mining in Wspace For Newbies.  Please read that if you have not already.  It is a bit out of date, though, and also I've improved my technique a bit since then.  So, here is my new guide which builds on the old.  Consider the old guide included by reference, with the following updates.

I. Nomenclature

Gas sites are now called "gas" sites in the game, and not "ladar" sites.  Good for CCP.

II. Fits

The fit in my original piece is good, but not what I use now.  It is designed to be hard to scan with combat probes.  But it does not take combat probes to get on grid with a gas miner, and combat probes are actually rather rare in wspace.  So that fit, while certainly serviceable, is not what I am using now.  Here's what my corp mines gas in:

[Venture, Gas Miner II]

Damage Control II

Medium Subordinate Screen Stabilizer I
Scoped Survey Scanner
Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I

Gas Cloud Harvester II
Gas Cloud Harvester II
Core Probe Launcher I, Core Scanner Probe I

Small Polycarbon Engine Housing I
Small Polycarbon Engine Housing I
[empty rig slot]

The rigs are optional. They'll increase survivability marginally in a few circumstances. The main difference in the fits is the inclusion here of a survey scanner. It's nice to know the amount of gas left. This is also a tech II fit, obviously. You can make it tech I easily by using the parts shown in the original guide.

One can also mine in a Prospect, the new Expedition Frigate introduced in Crius.  Prospects are basically Ventures that can hold twice as much gas, and fit a covert ops cloak.  I have not trained Expedition Frigate yet, because Prospects do not mine gas any faster than a Venture.  And they are more expensive.  Still, the larger ore hold is nice.  So here's what I would do, if I did:

[Prospect, Gas Miner II]

Damage Control II
'Stoic' Core Equalizer I
'Stoic' Core Equalizer I
Local Hull Conversion Nanofiber Structure I

Medium Subordinate Screen Stabilizer I
Scoped Survey Scanner
Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I

Gas Cloud Harvester II
Gas Cloud Harvester II
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II

Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I
Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I

The rigs are there for a travel fit, with the idea of roving through wspace scanning for good gas to mine. If you're not roving, then you can rig it with Low Friction Nozzle Joints to get a faster align time.

III. Operational Security

Sometimes you'll be mining gas in a system you know is zipped up.  Operational security in a zipped system is easy: you just need to strobe the discovery scanner every so often.  (If you aren't sure what I am talking about, read my post Basics: Safety in Wormhole Space.)  New connecting wormholes are rare.

If a new sig appears, you don't need to stop mining.  It might be something other than a wormhole.  (Most new sigs are wormholes, especially since Hyperion, but occasionally not.)  Deploy probes and scan it down.  If it is not a wormhole, proceed as before.

If it is a wormhole, your system must now be considered "open", that is, compromised.  You can mine in an open system, but operational security is much harder.  You must be dscanning as I described in my original guide: once every 15 seconds, if not more often.  Remember that any attacker must scan to find either (a) you (with combat probes), or (b) the gas site you are in.  But his probes need not be out for more than a single scanning cycle, which is 10s.  For harder sites it will probably require two scans, so you have 20+ seconds.

If you see probes, it is likely because you are being scanned.  It is safest to simply bug out immediately as soon as you see them.  But you have a small amount of time, so it is possible to lower the range on your dscan and wait to bug out until you know the enemy probes are close enough to resolve your site.  (Gas sites can be resolved by a highly bonused scanner at 2/1/0.5 AU respectively for "perimeter"/"frontier"/"core" gas sites.  Most scanners require closer, that is 1/0.5/0.25 AU.)

Once you leave a site because you think it has been scanned, don't return to it.  Don't return forever?  Well, at least for an hour or two.  Hunters can be very patient.  Last night I killed two Ventures in a gas site; they'd fled earlier after seeing my probes.  But they returned in 10 minutes, and I was still there.  But that's another story.

IV. Tactical Security

Tactical security is your final failsafe, not your first.  If you even get to the point of having an enemy player on grid with you, you did something wrong.  But Ventures are forgiving, and there is still a good chance for you to survive.

Many people gas mine while sitting still; this is a serious no-no.  Sitting still makes it really easy to sneak up on you.  But it also means that you take more damage when someone does get a shot in.  This is particularly true of the torpedoes that most people have on stealth bombers.  But cloaky T3s often have guns that would have trouble tracking a speedy Venture.  If you were moving.  So move.  You should always mine in motion.

In my original guide I propound mining in orbit of the gas cloud, at 500m.  This is how you should mine the smaller of the two gas clouds in a site.  (Its radius is not large enough for the trick below.)  But there is a better way to mine the larger gas clouds.

Gas clouds, like most objects, decloak anything within 2000m.  So, when you are deep inside the cloud, you cannot be sneaked up on.  At least not within normal scrambler range.  This is a huge benefit!  Sometimes I see people who warp to zero to the cloud and then just sit there mining.  They do gain this benefit, but as noted above, they dramatically increase their own risk by not moving.  But you can have both benefits!

For the large gas clouds, you should mine from within the cloud, orbiting a jetcan.  Even though the center of the cloud would be a perfect object to orbit if you could, you cannot orbit things in EVE at negative distances, which is what you would need.  (Orbits are computed from the outer edge of objects.)  So, you place a jetcan to orbit instead.

The jetcan should be placed at the center of the cloud.  You can get to the center of a cloud most easily by bookmarking it and then warping to it, but this requires time bouncing that you may not want to spend.  If you have warped to the site (as you must the first time you go to it), then it is faster to microwarp to the center of the cloud.  Note that while you can see where the center is when you are distant to it, this display is turned off when you are close.  So, locating the center is hard without aid.  But aid is present: turn on the tactical overlay.  It shows a line going to the center of each object on grid, including gas clouds.

A jetcan can be created by anyone.  You need something in your hold to jettison, but this can be a bookmark.  So, create a personal bookmark (it does not matter the location) then drag it into your hold.  Voila, you've got something.  Right-click on it then select Jettison.  Now you have a jetcan.  The jetcan lasts for two hours, which should be plenty to mine out most clouds.

You should not orbit close (within scrambler range) of the jetcan.  Since the radius of all large gas clouds is 50 km, I orbit at 25 km.  This puts you at the maximum distance from many dangerous locations.  The center of the cloud is warpable, and so is dangerous.  The jetcan is also warpable, and thus dangerous.  (This is why I recommend creating it at the center of the cloud.)  And all of wspace outside of the cloud allows cloaking, and so is dangerous.  By staying in between, you minimize the danger to you from cloaky attackers.

A Lost Site

It's the weekend, but late.  Jayne and I just zipped up our home system and ran 9 anoms.  There's nothing left to do in our system except suck some worthless gas.  I care, but not that much, bear.  Let's open up and have a look at the rest of EVE.  It's a bit late to interact unwillingly with Europeans.  But you never know who might be out.

I am in already in my hunting Manticore.  In fact I already have the new static wormholes located and ready to fly to.   As soon as Jayne is done with a PI run, I transit into C4b.

There's two towers, but nobody around.  They are not very active -- the system has 13 combat anoms.  Par for the course.  After determining this, I scan down the system's 12 sigs.  In addition to lots of gas and some radar sites, it has C3a and C4a through its statics, and also a small wormhole to C3b.  I check out C3a first.  Abandoned system; abandoned C3s are usually nullsec statics.  I check.  Yup.  Nullsec.  Well, that's dull.  There is one sig to a C6, which I look into long enough to see nobody home.  Oh well, back up the chain.

I go back to C4b, then on to C4c through its static.  C4c is occupied, but they are not around.  I see a Rorqual, though, which is a rare sight in wspace.  Ironically, it is at a POS with a Compression Array.  I don't have the energy to search down its 10 sigs.  So I back out again.

On to C3b.

A small wormhole

My manticore has no problem with small wormholes.  I always hope to surprise someone, but of course people know that stealth bombers come through such holes and so are just as wary.  Still, hope springs eternal.  C3b is inhabited but nobody is home.  It's got a lowsec static.  It also has 19 sigs, which I am not keen to scan down.  I am hoping for a highsec connection, so I decide to just scan the high signature sigs.  This will include any K162s.  (All K162s have high signal strength.)  After I eliminate all the sigs with obviously lower signal strength (they have bigger bubbles), I am left with six sigs.  That is manageable.

Scan, scan.  Several are gas.  One is the lowsec static.  Another is a K162 from nullsec, not what I want right now.  The final one turns out to be another C4.

Well... my hunting time is almost done.  But just one more system...  I dive into C4d.

C4d turns out to be uninhabited, and an anom graveyard.  Looking through the anoms, there's a ghost site!  OK, I'll go home and get my ghostbusting Tengu...

No wait, I won't.  It can't get here.

I ponder what to do about this.  But there is nothing I can do right now.  Instead, I fly to the site in full tourist mode, camera at the ready.  I figure the C4 clouds are always so dramatic, and I never get good shots of ghost sites because I am too busy attempting to score.

I warp in uncloaked at 100km.  You must be uncloaked on grid to start the timer.  Then I cloak and get ready.

A Guristas Superior Covert Research Facility looking tranquil.

I am not there long when the Guristas come.

Guristas wardens.

With nothing to shoot, the guardians just mill around a little.  Then they blow the cans.  Goodbye, whatever nice blueprints were in there.

Gablam!

And finally they zoom off.  This is a nice effect, and rather hard to capture.

Zoom!

I proceed home, not richer, but thoughtful.  Is there a ship to safely run ghost sites through small wormholes?  An Astero can just barely survive a 14000 point explosion.  I think.  But I know an Onyx can, for sure.

[Onyx, Ghostbuster]
Power Diagnostic System II
Power Diagnostic System II
Power Diagnostic System II
Damage Control II

Large Shield Extender II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
PL-0 Shipment Probe
Data Analyzer II
Experimental 10MN Microwarpdrive I

Warp Disruption Field Generator I
Warp Disruption Field Generator I
[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]
Improved Cloaking Device II
Core Probe Launcher I, Core Scanner Probe I

Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I

Maybe.

Fits for Hunting in Wspace

Usually weekends are the best times for interesting happenings in EVE, but not this time.  I drew a blank, and not for want of trying.  So instead of the latest story of killing or weird stuff happening, I thought I'd take up an easy one.  A reader asks what ship I hunt in.

Requirements for Hunting in Wormhole Space

Perhaps the most obvious and important requirement for hunting in wspace is a covert ops cloak.  There are lots of people interested in kills, and if they can see you, eventually they'll catch you.  So, the only ships in consideration are stealth bombers, the cloaky Recon Ships (Pilgrim/Falcon/Arazu/Rapier), and T3s with the Covert Reconfiguration subsystem.

A second requirement for most hunters is the ability to launch probes.  This is wspace, and you must find all the exits once per day.  This requirement really hurts Recon ships, since they do not have any spare high slots once the covert ops cloak is fitted.  They have to give up 1/3 of their already not huge non-drone output.

I hunt in a stealth bomber, a Manticore.  I do this mainly for reasons of price/performance.  Stealth bombers are cheap, so I can afford to lose them.

On the performance side, the most important thing when hunting is high DPS.  Killing your target ASAP prevents it from getting away (if it can), or escaping when help arrives.  It can even prevent it from helping itself.  (I ganked a Noctis a bit back that deployed Warrior II drones but did not kill me with them.  I chatted afterward with the pilot and it turned out he was locking me the whole time!)  Stealth bombers have more DPS, with more modest skills, than anything that can fit a covert ops cloak.  Compare: my bomber gets about 500DPS.  A comparable Loki, which I trained into but never actually flew, gets about 375 DPS.  (Of course the Loki cannot be killed by harsh language.)  Similarly Recon ships do moderate damage by comparison to bombers.

Another important aspect of performance is ability to lock quickly.  Again, bombers are superior to larger ships here.  They have no "sensor recalibration delay" when uncloaking, buying precious seconds.  And they have higher sensor strength so they lock more quickly.

In Hyperion, we also have those new small wormholes.  This is an additional reason to hunt in a bomber, since only the lightest ships can get through.

My Manticore

I have two fits for my Manticore, which you can see below.  The first is the main fit that I hunt in; it is a fairly traditional bomber fit.  I expect you can find this exact fit on battleclinic, except perhaps using higher-meta parts in a few slots.  I use lesser parts to keep costs down, mainly, although it is also helps with fitting on the always-tight CPU.

[Manticore, Wspace Hunter]
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II 

J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
Alumel-Wired Sensor Augmentation, Scan Resolution Script
Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I
Phased Weapon Navigation Array Generation Extron 

Prototype 'Arbalest' Torpedo Launcher, Caldari Navy Scourge Torpedo
Prototype 'Arbalest' Torpedo Launcher, Caldari Navy Scourge Torpedo
Prototype 'Arbalest' Torpedo Launcher, Caldari Navy Scourge Torpedo
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Core Probe Launcher II, Core Scanner Probe I 

Small Warhead Calefaction Catalyst I
Small Bay Loading Accelerator I

This Manticore can gank most of the soft targets that you'll find in wspace: most transports, Noctises (strangely, some people still use them), salvaging destroyers, scouting frigates, and mobile tractor units.  It can kill Epithals if it gets enough shots in, but it typically cannot stop them because only idiot Epithal pilots fit less than three warp core stabilizers.  It is weak against Ventures because it does not apply a lot of damage to them, particularly if they are moving (as they ought to be), and it does not have enough warp scrambling to overcome their built-in +2 warp core stabilization.

What about ganking battleships?  Or other big/slow but armed targets?  I am afraid I have never done it.  I'd love to do it someday, but here's the problem.  Stealth bombers have two weaknesses: missiles (which always apply at least a little damage to your tissue-paper tank), and drones.  Most people in wspace do PVE in T3s and drone boats.  There is little point in optimizing your bomber to deal with a target you'll never actually see.  Nor for a target you simply cannot kill before it kills you.

Variant Fittings

I fly Caldari because I when I was looking at which frigate V to get, the Manticore seemed the most easy to fit good fits in.  I still like the Manticore more than the other stealth bombers.  It has the most CPU, allowing it to fit all the stuff you see above.  The disadvantages of the Caldari ships, which are larger signature and lower speed/maneuverability, are not very important when you are ganking.

That said, the performance of all bombers is quite similar.  All get around 500 DPS.  The four-midslot models (Manticore and Nemesis) generally get a little less raw DPS but can fit a target painter, which is better against most targets.  The three-midslot models (Hound and Purifier) have to face the hard decision of which midslot module to sacrifice: the target painter (and its +36% damage against most ships), or the sensor booster.  I'd probably give up the sebo (and thus most pods), but I'd rather not have to make that choice.

As I noted previously, I use several lesser-meta fittings.  If you are rich, go ahead and use meta-4 or tech II.  If you are really rich, then you might use various faction or deadspace parts to improve performance.

Don't bother with T2 launchers.  They do a bit more damage, but it's not worth the much higher CPU required.  They do much more damage if you use rage torpedoes, but you very likely won't, because as previously noted the very low incidence of gankable big ships in wspace.

One fitting that's worth extra thought in the Hyperion era is the microwarpdrive.  Formerly, a MWD was vital not for hunting per se but for moving around in wspace.  However, it is much less so with the new guarantee that you'll never appear within decloak distance of a wormhole.  We might replace it with an afterburner (which would be of some help fitting in non-Manticore bombers).  Or we may drop the prop mod completely.  This seems risky to me, but one rarely sees interdictors, and it would allow an extra midslot item.

That said, for now I am keeping my microwarpdrive.  The thought of being caught by a Sabre with no microwarp scares me.

Anti Venture

I noted above the weakness that my fit has against small stuff, Ventures in particular.  Because of this, I have a second fit which uses light missiles.  [Update: rockets are better if you have the skills; see this comment below.]

[Manticore, Anti Venture]
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II 

Alumel-Wired Sensor Augmentation, Scan Resolution Script
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I 

Light Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Mjolnir Light Missile
Light Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Mjolnir Light Missile
Light Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Mjolnir Light Missile
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Core Probe Launcher II, Core Scanner Probe I 

Small Warhead Calefaction Catalyst I
Small Hydraulic Bay Thrusters I

This fit is sufficiently similar to the main one that you can carry around the diffs in cargo (along with a mobile depot).  When you find a Venture, usually it is sucking gas for a while.  So, if he is not alert to dscan and the discovery scanner, you will have the time to go and refit at a distant planet.  (Or if no planet is safely out of view, in a nearby system.)  This fit has a small fraction of the DPS, but applies it well against small, fast things.  More importantly it has the two scramblers needed to deny the Venture the ability to warp.  I expect you can kill a Venture with torpedoes if you don't want to carry the full refit, but you do need the second warp scrambler.

Note the use of Mjolnir missiles.  Ventures have one low slot and three mids.  If they tank at all, they shield tank.  And stealth bombers get no damage bonuses for non-torpedoes.  As such, go ahead and use whatever missile type you think is best.  I think it is Mjolnirs.

Anti Epithal?

For a while, I also carried around a third warp scrambler with the hopes of using three warp scramblers to pin Epithals.  This is a fine idea in theory, but in practice there is a huge difference between planet-gooers and gas-suckers: gas suckers have to be in a gas site for tens of minutes or hours.  This is plenty of time for you to refit and return.  By contrast, an Epithal is out of a POS and not in warp for perhaps 10 seconds per CO.  Neither does it take much time to set up a PI run.  Because of this, by the time you see someone refit into an Epithal it's too late to refit: you want to watch him right now because if he is going to leave the POS at all, he's likely to do it within the next minute or two.  There's just not the time to go off and hide, refit, and return.

As things stand, I basically cannot kill Epithals except that I get lucky and they are poorly fit.  Such is life.  It's still thrilling to try, and surprisingly many are poorly fit.  (I do lament the reasoning, if there was any such, that went into converting a ship with a large cargohold and four lowslots into a ship without a substantial cargohold that got the same four lowslots.  What did CCP think would happen?)

Fitting is Good Complexity

There's a new blog banter out.  I don't make a point to engage with those things unless they set me off.  But in this case, it did.  So let's talk about who's responsible for badly fit ships.

Drackarn pointed this killmail to me recently and proposed the following for a blog banter:

Obviously that is a not just a bad fit, its horrific. But the guy might not know any better. ... How do we educate players on fitting? This guy has been playing four months and can fly a BC, but has no idea how to fit one. What could be done to help bro's like this?

Furthermore, what (if any) responsibility do veterans players have in finding these players and instructing them on the finer arts of ship fitting? If it exists, does it extend beyond them into teaching PvP skills, ISK making skills, market skills, social skills, life skills...

Questions like this bring out the contrarian in me.  "We"?  Who's "we"?  "Responsible"?  You're telling me that via paying for spaceship pew I have assumed duties to some random idiot on the internet?

I can answer all these questions pretty succinctly.  "We" don't educate players on fitting.  It is too complex for any canned lecture.  We can offer our help if they want it.  But they have to initiate; nobody knows what other people don't know.  And there is simply no way to reach many people.  It's a game, after all, not work.  On the other hand, many learn it by themselves.  Nobody ever taught me to fit, and I doubt anyone taught you.  Of course, that particular sample is biased due to a strong survivor effect.

As for responsibility, it is not the responsibility of anyone to fit your ship but you.  Corporations?  I certainly will help my own guys, but that's a very limited responsibility.  And they know to ask.  Not everyone has a corp to rely on.  That Navy Drake pilot was in an NPC corp; no CEO.

Everyone should learn to fit.  Yes, newbs are ignorant.  So what?  Googling up decent information and resources related to fitting is not that hard:

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=eve+fitting

The internet is right there, at our fingertips.  Newbs are playing an online game; you can't tell me they cannot google.  It's true that google won't always turn up an excellent fit.  But it will find something, and even the poorer fittings at battleclinic are not failfits.

Fitting is complex.  Yes, there are aspects of fitting that are "bad" complexity.  I.e., all those low meta modules.  They could collapse that variety down into perhaps three modules per type with no complaint from me.  But for the most part, fitting is a fun part of the game.  I spend hours in EFT just messing around.  I don't fly most of the fits I make.  My ship storage is quite finite and subject to loss.  But it is still useful to know what sort of fitting is likely if I run up against a ship.  Given that fitting is an important and fun part of the game, it's not broken.  The fact that people fail at it is unfortunate for them, but ultimately part of the price we all pay to have a game worth playing.

Now that I have gotten my knee-jerk negativity out, I guess I do have some positive suggestions.  Drat.  Let's go there.

I do think CCP could help, in several ways.  First, let me plug boot camps again.  The problem most newbs have is not that they don't have questions, or that they think they know it all.  It's that they don't have anyone to ask.  They need some specific, particular person who they know they can ask about all kinds of stuff, fitting included.  One of the key ideas of boot camp is to specify that person.  (Two, in my formulation.)

Another way CCP could help is by referring players to a decent tutorial on fitting that ought to be part of the EVE wiki.  (Speaking of googling for you, I just googled "eve wiki fitting" -- the official wiki has a pretty good, if long, page on Fitting Ships.  It does not link to fitting tools.  Eve U has several pages on fitting.  Fitting 101, which does link tools.  Also Fitting Guidelines.  It has links to more pages, too.)  The EVE wiki page is too long and advanced for a newb to be expected to read, and also it lacks pointers to tools.  But it's the right idea.  What do I mean by CCP "referring" players?  I mean a hyperlink from within EVE -- from within a newbie mission, and from within the "Bad Fit" popup as discussed below.

One more idea.  CCP could programmatically detecting bad fits (perhaps on undock) and warn the player.  Drackarn's banter suggests this with a bit of humor.

Now, programs are inherently dumb.  You will never write a program capable of detecting all bad fits, or probably even most bad fits.  Nor can we detect many subtle problems with a fit.  Although such abilities would be nice, they are not what is needed here.  All you need is the ability to warn players off obviously bad fits, laughably bad fits, like that Navy Drake linked above.  Here are some easy to detect fitting problems that the client could warn people about:

• this ship has civilian fittings [exception for newb missions and rookie ships]
• this ship has empty highslots and extra hardpoints
• this ship has empty low slots / empty rigs
• this ship has a weapons bonus but has fit unbonused weapons
• this ship has two+ types of weapons
• this ship is dual tanked
• this ship has an empty, nonzero drone bay
• this ship has mismatched weapons and weapons bonusing items.
• this ship uses three+ fitting modules
• this ship is too expensive for what it is
• this ship has inertial stabilizers (joke! sort of!)

(I'm sure more could be added.)  Warnings could be a popup box like Drackarn suggests, with a hyperlink to a tutorial on fitting, an itemized list of problems, a checkbox to "don't show me any more fitting warnings for any ship" and another checkbox "don't show me any more fitting warnings for this ship".  Extra bonus for an official Picard facepalm picture.  

A Multibox Gate Camp

Sometimes my Jita alt takes the shortcut back from Hek to Jita.  This goes through lowsec.  If you have a covert-ops cloak, it's pretty safe.  Usually I see nobody at all.  However, sometimes there are camps.  Usually it's just a few guys.  Sometimes you see something bigger.  And sometimes it is just a few guys and rather large:

Ooh, pretty.

Me, me, me.

I have seen this one a couple times in Rancer, on the Crielere gate.  As you can see from the energy-boost and repping effects, it's mostly Augorors.  Just a few guys?  Check the overview (right).  You can see that most of the pilots here are named "Another Multiboxer N".  It appears to be perhaps five distinct people, or fewer if one of them besides the obvious Flock Master is also multiboxing.  (Or if he has, say, two mains.)

It's an interesting gate camp idea.  Obviously gate guns are insufficient to kill anything here.  The Augorors are orbiting the gate, probably at 15km to give a small chance to decloak people who try to cloak to evade the camp.  I am actually a bit surprised that there are not more drones out.  I'd have every Augoror flying a full set of four drones to decloak people.  The type is not that important, so long as they are cheap.  I'd probably go with warriors, all controlled by a fast-locking Augoror, so that smaller ships can be swarmed.  Another idea would be to use ECM drones, as at least one of the guys here is doing.

What are the fits?  I don't know, but here's my take on a cheap Augoror for multiboxed PVP.

[Augoror, Multibox Camper]
Damage Control II
800mm Reinforced Steel Plates II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II

Conjunctive Radar ECCM Scanning Array I
Conjunctive Radar ECCM Scanning Array I
Conjunctive Radar ECCM Scanning Array I

Medium 'Arup' Remote Armor Repairer
Medium 'Arup' Remote Armor Repairer
Medium 'Arup' Remote Armor Repairer
Medium 'Arup' Remote Armor Repairer
Medium 'Regard' Remote Capacitor Transmitter

Warrior I x4

Price: 14m ISK.  (That's why no rigs: they add marginal power but substantial cost.)  Note the use of the midslots: the weakness of any cap chain is having an ECM boat break it.  So, we guard against that, there being not much else to do with the midslots.

Obviously a highly multiboxed ship (of any kind) cannot expect it to do anything substantial during a fight.  That's why the fit above does need any control at all.  Again, the drones are there to serve as decloak hazards, and/or DPS against small fast ships.  They are all controlled by one of the sebo'ed Augorors that someone is actually playing actively.

With two reps from each multiboxed Augoror on the next Augoror in the chain, the tank is 414 DPS against omni damage.  That's all level five skills; actual tank for a realistic level of training is more like 400.  This leaves two spare reps that can be sent to the Machariel and/or the non-multiboxing Augorors.

I'd conjecture a similar fit for the non-multibox Augorors, except using perhaps sacrificing one or two ECCM and putting in sensor boosters to lock victims as quickly as possible.  And probably also rigging for more armor hardness or some other goal.

If there are three non-multiboxed Augorors and nine multiboxed ones, each of the three non-multiboxed Augorers can get three reps from the multiboxed ones, for a basic tank of about 600 DPS.  This leaves all four of the non-multiboxed reps free, meaning that there are 12 reps unallocated.  These could be applied to any ship getting in trouble, for a very large possible tank, something like +2400 DPS. 

DPS is mainly applied by the Mach in the middle, although each Augoror's drones do 49 DPS.  Twelve of them is 588 DPS, which is not shabby.

I am sure you could attack something like this, but it would require a pretty substantial gang.  Without bubbles to stop them, you'd have to get each Augoror tackled or they could just fleet-warp off.  And even if you do tackle an Augoror and kill it, it only cost 14m ISK plus the pod, which you can bet is completely empty.  The Machariel also has the option to jump through the gate, and probably also a micro jump drive. 

A Worthwhile Epithal

An unkindness.

It's Wednesday.  The corp is on together.  We have zipped up our own system and run all the sites.  (I time four Barracks: about 5:45 each, 45 seconds of which is warping from site to site.)  This done, we open our static to see if we can find more sites to run.

The first system is no good.  And the second.  We pop both wormholes and try again.  It's late enough that if the last one is bad, we'll just quit.  Or anyway, some of us will.  I will stay on and hunt.

We open the system, and it's mediocre at best.  Five anoms; we could run them and make a bit more money.  Two sigs, so Jayne scans it down lickety split.  The other sig is the static, to C3.  There is nothing in sight from the K162 other than one customs office.  I am in my Manticore, and I warp into the inner system looking for signs of life.  There is a live tower, and several ships on scan: Orca, Ibis, Archon, and a Reaper.  Two rookie ships and two whales.  These are probably all empty, but I make the effort and find the tower anyway.  I warp in and find that the ships are empty as expected, except for the Reaper.  It is manned.  This interests me; maybe it is one guy on alone... maybe he will do something dumb.  I park and watch.

With this guy here, my calculations change.  I am not going to run sites with a live enemy watching us on dscan.  So, we call it off.  Most of the guys drift off.  I am still watching.

The Reaper disappears.  It has logged off.  Immediately, a Velator appears.  I am guessing it is one guy and his alts.  Maybe now he will be interesting?  No.  He just sits.  I watch for a few minutes, and a pod warps in.  The Velator logs off.  Do something!

The pod sits.  And sits.  Screw this -- I am going to watch and hope with Von while I scan a way out with Otto.  So I swap monitors, and warp Otto out in his Cheetah to scan C3a.  He will have to cross C4a in sight of the pod pilot, but I figure that the guy is probably not paying that much attention anyway.  Certainly by now he must have seen the new signature from my static, and he has not scanned it down (or at least, if he did I did not notice.)  My guess is he is doing PI, twiddling extractor heads and restarting them.  Obviously he is not doing runs out to planets.  Otto crosses into C3a without trouble, and starts scanning.  There are seven sigs to do.  There is also a manned Broadsword idling at a tower.  Fortunately there is no sig near to that tower, so I can scan the system down without him seeing probes.

Meanwhile, the pod logs off, and an Epithal warps in!  Now we are talking.  I stop scanning for a minute and just watch.  But the Epithal is not moving.  OK, I'll scan and keep an eye on it.  Move probes, scan.  Epithal does not move.  Move probes, scan.  Epithal does not move.  This loop goes on a while.

Eventually the Epithal logs off, and a shuttle logs in.  Gads, how many characters does this guy have?  Now the shuttle sits as I scan.  And eventually the shuttle pilot logs out... and a new pod appears.

Meanwhile, I am done scanning in C3a.  It has a lowsec static, and that's the only wormhole.  I exit out into lowsec to get a way back in should it become necessary, then prudently wait the five minutes for my polarization to abate.  Then I return to C3a.  I don't have a plan other than to return Otto home.  It's getting late, so I may just give up on hunting and go to bed.  Otto warps across C3a to the wormhole up to C4a.  He crosses, and moves off the wormhole to orbit and cloak.

Just as he does this, the pod pilot refits into an Epithal.  Oh my; can this mean what I think it means?  The Epithal sits a moment and then starts to align.  Oh yeah.  I get a perfect view of his destination: a planet with no other nearby planet.  He warps.  I warp to the customs office at that planet, at 10km.

I land on grid and he is there, at the CO as expected, about 11km from me.  I head towards him; time is of the essence here.  When I get to about 9000m I uncloak and get my systems going, including a pulse of microwarpdrive to close the range.  He has started aligning.  Since he is probably stabbed up, I keep going straight at him to bump.  My first volley is out, and I smash into him.  A lovely bump indeed; he had been heading almost at me, and he is turned away more than ninety degrees from that heading.

My second volley fires.  He's dead.  I was not expecting it to happen so fast, so I am slow on locking his pod.  I almost get it, but he warps just in time.  Rats.  OK, let's have a look at the wreck.  I drive over and open the wreck, and I am astounded to find PI goods.  Lots of PI goods.   There are 400 wetware mainframes and a bunch of mechanical parts.  Nothing else.  My cargo hold can fit one (1) wetware mainframe.

A novel sight: my Manticore uncloaked.

I recall a clever trick I have read about in these cases: you can move the PI goods from a wreck into the POCO.  I try to do that, but there are more PI goods than will fit.  (POCOs hold 35000 m^3.)  So, I stuff the POCO with 350 wetware mainframes.  But I want all the loot -- oh yes, precious: the other mainframes, and the mechanical parts.  I'll use Otto for that.

But before I mess with Otto, I should get Von safely cloaked.  The victim might return in something suitable to kill my tissue-paper ship.  I'll lurk here in just in case the victim tries to come back with another Epithal, or something else to scoop with.  I move off the POCO and cloak up.  A quick look at dscan shows that the victim is in dscan range, and still in his pod, and there are no other new ships.  Good, it appears safe.  I bookmark the wreck.

Hey, that's me over there.

Now I warp Otto across C4b and jump home.  Then across to our POS, where he reships into one of our Epithals.  Now I kind of regret doing the POCO-stash trick.  I might be able to pull the stuff that Von cached out of the POCO and jetcan it for Otto, but that is rather fussy and I'd rather not being trying to do something like that if an attack comes.  I think I will just do two Epithal runs.  (Dscan has not changed.)  Otto waits a minute, then I think I should be safe on polarity coming back.  So he warps to the wormhole, and jumps.  Then he warps to the wreck bookmark.  He lands on grid, and scoops the wreck.  Then he returns to the wormhole.  After another consult with dscan (no change), I warp Von too, although to 10km just in case.  Let's get it done.

My estimate of Otto's flight time is not quite right; there are nine seconds left of polarization.  But they pass without incident, and both of us jump through the wormhole at about the same time.  Then I fleet-warp us both home to my POS.

I think about waiting a minute like I did with Otto, but I think it is more important to get to the POCO and away fast as possible, before my victim decides what he might do.  So I warp.  I will make a safespot and spend the extra minute in C4b warping around.  I jump back into C4b.  Then I warp to the wreck bookmark, which is right next to the POCO.

On the way I create my safespot.  Then I dscan.  Nothing initially, but once I start slowing down out of warp, I can see my victim's pod still sitting at his tower.  Great, it looks like no opposition here.  I land on grid, open the POCO, grab my wetware mainframes, and warp to my safespot.  I consult with local to see how much time I need to waste; just a few seconds.  So I idle and dscan twice for probes.  (No probes.)  Then I warp back to wormhole, cross, and warp home.

After I calm down a bit, I look at the killmail to see what the Epithal's fit was.  And it was... nothing.  Not a single fitting.  An unfit.  No wonder it popped so easily.  I laugh, then I start feeling bad for the guy, and try to open a conversation.  But I guess I am too late.  He is offline.  Oh well.  Maybe I can mail him.

Advice: fit your Epithals.  You can very cheaply shield fit an Epithal, giving it many seconds of life before the likes of me can kill it.  And you can fit lots of cheap warp core stabilizers to prevent me from pinning you with my warp scrambler.

Here's the Epithal fit we are using these days:

[Epithal, PI Hauler]
'Accord' Core Compensation
'Accord' Core Compensation
'Accord' Core Compensation
'Accord' Core Compensation
Large F-S9 Regolith Shield Induction
Medium Subordinate Screen Stabilizer I
EM Ward Amplifier I
Limited Adaptive Invulnerability Field I
[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]

Some people like a damage control, instead of one warp core stabilizer; that's up to you.  And some people pay extra to rig them; I find the cost-effectiveness of rigs doubtful.  The fit above costs all of 1.5m ISK: 1m for the Epithal itself, and 500k in fittings.

More advice: unless you are pretty certain you are safe (i.e. system is zipped up, or you've had eyes on all the exits for some time), do not warp direct from a POS to a POCO.  Instead, warp to a safespot, or perhaps a random moon at a random distance, and then warp to the POCO you wanted.  This makes it impossible for a watching cloaky to track you; they can catch you only by luck or if you linger unconscionably long at a POCO.  Between POCOs, it is safer to warp direct, but still not completely safe; an enemy will attempt to re-acquire you there.

Ninja Gassing One Night

There has not been a lot happening around me in wspace recently.  Oh, I've been out hunting, but I have not found anyone acting foolishly other than occasionally myself.  But tonight is a new night.  I log in.  What's happening, New Eden?

We have an extra sig in our home system.  I deploy probes, and quickly discover the new sig is a wormhole, and a K162.  (It's signature is "fat".)  I get it 100% then resolve our new static wormhole.  I won't fly to our static yet, since it may be uninstantiated.  I fly to the K162.  It's bluish -- a C2.  That might be nice for transporting stuff.  But it is wobbling.  This means EOL.  I get info to verify.  Yep.  Well, I am not going to transport anything via a wormhole that might close at any minute.  I go in anyway, to check for Epithals and other easy targets.  I am in for long enough to dscan; there are no ships on scan.  OK, forget it.  I jump back, polarized.  Nobody there to kill me, good.

Now I fly to our static, maybe opening it, and jump through into C4b.  Several towers, no ships.  It is another C4/C4 system.  It's got only two sigs.  One is my system's K162; the other must be its own static.  I deploy probes and find it.  I leave it unopened for now.  I have noticed via dscan that one tower has a hybrid reactor.  Is it processing?  The only way to know is to find the tower and look.  So I do that.  Looking at the reactor shows that it is indeed going.  Of course, it may or not actually have inputs; but it's rare that I find one on at all.  I run back home and come back with a siphon, which I deploy and bookmark.  I'll return later to see if it will pay out.

Now, onward.  I jump to the system's static, perhaps instantiating it, perhaps not.  The system, C4c, is similar to the last system.  Another C4/C4 with nobody home.  There are five sigs this time: two gas, the K162 I came in, the static, and a third wormhole.  Investigating it finds a reddish K162 to "dangerous" space: C5.  I go in.

C5a has two pilots present at a tower: a guy in a pod, and a Loki.  The Loki is aligned to the tower.  This means it has probably been sitting there for an hour.  But the pod just warped in.  After I watch the guy in the pod do nothing for a minute or two, I figure it is time to scan.  Scanning reveals, among other sites, an Instrumental Core Reservoir.  For those not in the know, this is the most lucrative gas site in the game.  It has a large cloud of C320, the mining of which pays on the order of 100m/hour.  Whenever I find one, I get excited and want to yell out "Gaaaaas!".

Greed fills my dwarvish heart.  But fear restrains me, ultimately.  The guy in the pod has swapped into a Venture.  Is he going to go to the site?  Killing a Venture in a stealth bomber is not likely, but it can be done if the victim is not paying attention.  I watch for another few minutes, where he does not move.  Forget it.  I consider triggering the site to prevent him from getting it today (at least without bringing a fleet to kill the sleepers).  But I figure he may be going for some other site, or not going mining at all.  I'll keep going and maybe come back later on to check again.  When I come back he may be in the site (I'll try to kill him) or maybe he'll be gone (and I can mine it).

I back out to C4c, then go onward into C4d.  As with the previous C4s, there is nobody home.  This time the static is not a C4, but C5.  After resolving a bunch of medium value gas sites in C4d, I head into C5b.

Nobody home in C5b.  There are five medium ECM drones out somewhere, but I cannot find drones with core probes and tech-I drones are not worth looking for in any case.  Five sigs.  I scan.  One signature is an Instrumental Core Reservoir; another a Vital Core Reservoir.  Gaaaaas!! Two good gas sites!  It's fairly rare to find even one.  This is definitely worth doing.

I head back upstream towards home.  On the way, I drop in on the siphon I planted.  There is some small amount of loot, an hour's worth.  I uncloak, grab it, and quickly recloak.  It's worth about 800k.  Looks like this siphon won't pay for itself.  Bummer.  I jump back home.

It's time to gather my mates.  Jeedmo, the new guy, is easy.  He's already on.  He's young, but has recently trained gas mining enough to fly a gas miner with tech I miners.  I also ping Jayne with a text, and he wants to go too when I inform him that one of the sites is the Instrumental.  While we wait for Jayne to log on, I log off Von.  I log on with Otto and my alt who is at good at gas mining.  I get both characters into tech II gas mining Ventures.  The fit, for those curious, is this:

[Venture, Gas Miner II]
Emergency Damage Control I
Medium Subordinate Screen Stabilizer I
'Dactyl' Type-E Asteroid Analyzer
Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I
Gas Cloud Harvester II
Gas Cloud Harvester II
Core Probe Launcher I, Core Scanner Probe I

You can rig it if you want, probably for slightly improved agility, but we don't.

Jayne eventually appears, and gets his ships ready.  We get on coms, and start heading downstream to the gas.

Aaaand, they're off.

The path is C4a->C4b->C4c->C4d->C5b.  At each jump I am nervous, but nobody is there.  We make it into C5a, and then warp to the site.  Is it already instantiated?  If so, we will drop straight into the midst of four warp-scrambling sleeper battleships.  No, it's not.  We all microwarp over to the C320 cloud, and start mining.

Ventures are beautiful.

Now the dscanning starts in earnest.  But we see nothing, neither ship nor probe.  The clock ticks and our holds slowly fill.  Finally, as expected at the 20 minute mark, two sleeper battleships appear.  We are ready, so we each warp ourselves on to the next site, the Vital Core Reservoir.

Landing in the site, there are no sleepers.  There are also the five ECM drones we have seen on scan, and the small C320 cloud is gone.  Someone has mined here already.  But we microwarp to the C540 cloud and start in on it.  Jayne scans it: it's already been partly mined.  But there is plenty for us, too.  Back to dscanning.

83% full, 43m ISK.

After about 15 minutes, we start to fill up.  Jeedmo is least full, so we head over and jettison gas for him to grab.  But that does not buy us much more time.  Otto fills up first, so I microwarp him over to the ECM drones and grab them.  At about 18 minutes, we all are full, so we start back home.  We make it without seeing anyone.

The run took less than an hour, netting us five full Ventures carrying about 250m in gas.  That's a nice evening's work in wspace.  After a bit more chit chat on coms, I do my PI and head to bed.

A Ghost Site Fit

So-called "ghost sites" are a new feature in Rubicon that I have been eager to try.  The idea is a rare site that everyone in the system can see easily on scanner, with good treasure, but a timer.  As soon as the first uncloaked player is on grid, the timer starts.  This can be from a few seconds to a few minutes.  When the timer is up, some rather nasty rats show up (they warp scramble).  They shoot at you a little, then BOOM.  The site's cans and all the treasure goes bloey.  Then the rats shoot at you a bit more, and warp off.  Given the nature of the site, it seems likely to create some interesting PVP situations.

There's been enough info come out on the site that I feel fairly confident in publishing a fit for it.  I'll revise this if I ever find one (see next post), and have actual experience.

To run a Ghost site, you want a ship that can tank a couple of 10000+ explosive blasts, plus more tank to deal with the rats for 30 seconds.  And it also should be good at escaping from human hunters, which means a good tank, some PVP ability especially against tacklers, and speedy enough to escape from bigger things.  I got the latest Rubicon-updated EFT, and played with it.  I thought the new SOE ships might work, but not really.  The Asteros is a frigate, and there is simply no way to make them work against explosions of the size we are talking about, not to mention the rats and PVPers.  The Stratos, although it can easily tank the site, has three things going against it.  First, it does not have enough lows do more than a buffer fit.  So, if you did get damaged, repair is an issue.  Second, its PVP escapability is relatively low.  Its recloak delay is a concern to me.  Finally, unlike a T3 it cannot get bubble nullification, and since I plan to do most of my busting in nullsec, this is a big problem.

I can almost fly Lokis, but since I want to do this now, that leaves me with just a Tengu as the ship of choice.  Here's what I came up with:

[Tengu, Explorer-Ghostbuster]
Damage Control II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
'Halcyon' Core Equalizer I

Data Analyzer I
PL-0 Shipment Probe
Pith A-Type Explosive Deflection Field
EM Ward Field II
Core C-Type 100MN Afterburner
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Large Ancillary Shield Booster, Cap Booster 150

Prototype 'Arbalest' Rapid Light Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Inferno Light Missile
Prototype 'Arbalest' Rapid Light Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Inferno Light Missile
Prototype 'Arbalest' Rapid Light Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Inferno Light Missile
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Expanded Probe Launcher I, Core Scanner Probe I

Medium Memetic Algorithm Bank I
Medium Polycarbon Engine Housing I
Medium Polycarbon Engine Housing I

Tengu Defensive - Supplemental Screening
Tengu Electronics - Emergent Locus Analyzer
Tengu Engineering - Capacitor Regeneration Matrix
Tengu Offensive - Covert Reconfiguration
Tengu Propulsion - Interdiction Nullifier

The probe launcher is there because I live in wspace and plan to scan in it.  And also because power is tight and I cannot fit another rapid light launcher.  (A non-rapid light missile launcher, though, or rocket, I could.)  Players with better skills than I have can use T2 launchers.

This thing is going to be hard to tackle and keep tackled.  A single long point won't work.  It's immune to bubbles.  It goes 1300m/s using its afterburner, so it will outrun heavy ships.  It uses a few of the new rapid light launchers to generate a bit of damage against tackle.  It tanks explosive like a champ; Pith Explosive Deflection Fields are in low demand and therefore cheap.  And finally, it can roam in nullsec ignoring bubbles.

To use it, get to nullsec (and/or maybe less-trafficked parts of lowsec).  Get your dotlan maps ready, and plot out a long string of systems.  Ghost sites are rare.  You need to look at a lot of systems to have a chance to find a ghost site.  Now you just hop from system to system, checking local and your scanner each time.  

If you do find a ghost site, warp there ASAP.  If anyone else is in local, go in cloaked.  Once there, if you see someone you'll have to figure out how to proceed by ship type.  If a frigate, I would not worry about it; a T3 is probably more likely and potentially worth skipping the site for.  

Assuming you are alone, head for a can as you lock up all four cans and start cargo-scanning them.  Go to whichever one has the best items.  Crack it, grab the loot, and repeat as indicated.  If you are lucky enough to have nobody else in local, keep an eye on just local.  Otherwise, keep an eye on dscan if you can.  I would hack the cans orbitting at 2500m if possible, so that you may be able to cloak.

A Fleet for C4 Wormhole Space PVE

I live in C4 wormhole space.  We make much of our money running C4 sites.  This post shows some of the fits we use to do this.

Some History

The fits we run sites with have evolved, along with the sites we are willing to attempt.  We started mainly using Tengus, running C3 sites in systems connected via our C3 static, as well as gas/rock sites (super easy) in ours.  Then we realized that we could do excellent DPS with battleships.  And we started doing the easier anoms in C4, and quickly realized that this pays quite well.  So we bought Navy Scorpions (which are hard and have better DPS than Tengus), and started running these sites.

Then we started thinking about the data and relic sites.  Two of these are no harder than anoms.  However the other two have a very scary last wave: four sleeper battleships that all NOS, scram, and web, doing 1928 DPS.  We also got a serious dunking in C3, which made us that much less interested in running T3s and expensive faction battleships.  You lose 400m ISK and skillpoints when you die in a T3.  We don't have training time to spare.  And you lose 700m ISK if you lose a Navy Scorpion.  Ouch.

Fleet Design Goals

Now, there are certainly ways one can run hard C4 sites other than what we do.  But regardless of fit, there are some general principles of the fleet design you want.  First, you have to understand the enemy, as this sets the base line of what you must have to be successful.  Any ship lost is a failed site.  The nossing and large DPS presents a huge problem for the active tanks that we use.   Logistics become necessary.

After the primary goal of survivability is achieved, the secondary goal is to generate lots of DPS, in particular against sleeper battleships.  The less time spent in sites, the more you can do and the more ISK you make.  Or you can do more of something else.  And finally, the tertiary goals are cheapness, ease of use and ability to GTFO in case of gank.  (Generally, one should always run sites zipped up.  But you won't always be able to do that, and there is always the potential for new connections that you get lazy and don't notice immediately in spite of the discovery scanner.)

Now: the fits.  There are just two: a Raven and a Osprey.  The fleet must have two Ospreys, and is probably not worth running with less than two Ravens.  After that, you just keep adding Ravens.  More DPS is always good.

Ravens for DPS

Here is our current DPS fit:

[Raven, Sleeper Killer]
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Signal Amplifier II
Damage Control II
EM Ward Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Thermic Dissipation Field II
Kinetic Deflection Field II
Pith C-Type Explosive Deflection Field
Large Micro Jump Drive
Phased Weapon Navigation Array Generation Extron
Cruise Missile Launcher II, Mjolnir Fury Cruise Missile
Cruise Missile Launcher II, Mjolnir Fury Cruise Missile
Cruise Missile Launcher II, Mjolnir Fury Cruise Missile
Cruise Missile Launcher II, Mjolnir Fury Cruise Missile
Cruise Missile Launcher II, Mjolnir Fury Cruise Missile
Cruise Missile Launcher II, Mjolnir Fury Cruise Missile

Large S95a Remote Shield Booster

Large Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Large Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer I
Large Anti-Kinetic Screen Reinforcer I
Hobgoblin I x5

High slots and most of the lows are used for DPS; these generate 755 DPS with my skills at long range. Furies are used on sleeper battleships.  (The exact type of Fury missile is not important -- just buy whichever one is cheapest.)  Use precision missiles on cruisers.  Ravens hit hard out to the typical 100km+ range that sleeper battleships often appear at in C4.  In fact we use a low slot to extend range.  The midslots and rigs are used to make the thing as hard as is reasonable given the constraint that I am cheap.  This fit has an 48000 EHP in shields -- plenty to tank 2000 DPS for long enough that logistics can notice, wait out a current repair cycle, and gets reps going.  The Raven's high hardness (5.577) means that logistics don't need to transport as much shields to keep pace with the damage.

The drones are used to kill sleeper frigates, and for some additional DPS against some of the cruisers or battleships which come up close.  You might try tech II drones; we find that the sleepers almost never target tech Is (other than jammer drones), but they do target tech IIs.  We tend to carry extra hobs and also an emergency set of ECM drones for escape.

The large micro jump drive is not used against sleepers.  It is there only as a GTFO if your fleet gets jumped.  If you see anyone unexpected on grid, or even on dscan, you should immediately stop worrying about sleepers and attempt to escape.  Align to a celestial and try to warp free.  If they bubble or point you, spool up your jump drive, and hope the point is not a warp scrambler.  Micro jump clear and then warp.

The utility high can also be a drone range extender.  If you have more than two Ravens, drone range is probably better for all Ravens after the first two.  The S95a will require cap transfer to run for more than a few cycles.

Logistics

So how do we keep those Ravens alive against 2000 DPS?  Logistics.  Since we are relatively low skill, we have been using a pair of these:

[Osprey, Chain Logi]
Beta Reactor Control: Reaction Control I
Photonic CPU Enhancer I
Damage Control II
Thermic Dissipation Field II
EM Ward Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Republic Fleet Medium Shield Extender
Pithum C-Type Medium Remote Shield Booster
Pithum C-Type Medium Remote Shield Booster
Pithum C-Type Medium Remote Shield Booster
Centum C-Type Medium Remote Capacitor Transmitter
Large 'Regard' Remote Capacitor Transmitter
Medium Processor Overclocking Unit I
Medium Processor Overclocking Unit I
Medium Ancillary Current Router I
Hobgoblin I x4

This fit uses a lot of faction parts, but they are all cheap ones.  The total cost of the fit according to EFT is 40m ISK.  The fit is as hard as can reasonably be gotten, given the need to pack in shield repping and some energy transfer.  (The nastier sleeper battleships have enough nossing to tap out any friendly, which is what the Centums are for.)

The Osprey gets some rather ridiculously large bonuses which this exploits.  One of them is its 200% bonus to energy transport amount.  This means that the Regard part by itself gives 972 energy per 5 seconds -- which is more than enough to power everything on this fit, with excess left over to overcome sleeper nossing.  The Osprey's bonus to shield transport means that with Caldari Cruiser V, the fit can transport 1287 shields each 5 seconds.  That's 257 shields per second -- which is, by itself, not enough to tank 1928 DPS with the hardness that the fit has (4.29).  Yet it can (barely) withstand that much damage.  It does it by virtue of its small signature (keeping sig down is the reason for the faction shield extender rather than tech II).  It also helps to have a good fleet booster. 

All the shield boosting of both Ospreys can be used on the Ravens, which is 514 shields per second.  With the Raven's hardness, that is 2871 DPS.  More than enough to keep them alive.  In fact, you rarely need to use more than four shield reppers on a Raven.

The Osprey fit has a small margin for error in the hardest C4 sites.  (We are planning to move to T2 Logistics soon because of this.)  But it is cheap, and low skill, and can be made to work.  

Operating Procedure

Running the fleet is fairly easy.  Everyone warps in together.  The Ravens park.  Their signature is too large and speed too low to get any reduction in incoming damage from movement, and their range is long.  (You can orbit an anchor if you want but it is not necessary.)  The two of them with S95as should lock up both Ospreys to rep them if needed.  

The Ospreys take more significant set up.  After warp-in, they should immediately lock each other and get their cap chain going.  They should also turn on one shield repper on each other; generally this is left on all the time.  Running one shield repper on each other all the time gives them in effect a larger buffer if the sleepers target one of them.  Next they should get into orbit at 5000m around an anchor battleship.  5000m is far enough to get almost maximum speed, but close enough that the battleships can shield rep them at need.  Next, they should lock up everyone else in the fleet and start applying reps as needed.  If a ship is getting heavy nossing, use the Centum to keep its capacitor high.  Finally, they can launch drones and use them to help kill frigates.  If they don't have enough targets, delegate drones.

Against a full 2000 DPS assault with webbing, an Osprey may need more reps than the other Osprey can apply.  This is when the Ravens' S95a comes into play.  The first two battleships can run theirs permanently so long as the Ospreys provide cap to do so.  

Industrial Fits for Odyssey 1.1

People have been searching for Epithal fits and hitting my recent post about that.  I posted that last week, before Odyssey 1.1, and I used the ship stats that I got out of CCP Rise's forum post.  Now that I have the latest update to EFT, I can look at the Epithal and the other new special-purpose industrials using the actual numbers.  (Or at least, the numbers that EFT uses, and it is never wrong.)

It turns out that the Epithal stats I used last week were wrong: they were too low.  The actual stats, particularly powergrid, are a bit higher than I had assumed. This allows even a moderately skilled pilot to fit a large shield extender (two on the Hoarder!).  So, I'll have to revise the Epithal fit.  But since the other new transports are there too, and they are all pretty similar, I worked out similar fits for all of them: Epithal, Hoarder, Kyros, and Miasmos.

What do you want in such a fit?  I discussed that last time:

1. Good at carrying stuff (particular types of goods in these cases)
2. Have a decent defense.  In wspace: +3 warp core stab, elsewhere probably +2 warp core stab.  And enough hitpoints to withstand a ganker's fire for the ~15 seconds to get into warp.
3. Be cheap, cheap cheap

So, here are some fits that are my best attempts to optimize the parameters above.  Note that in all cases, we get #1 for free, without requiring any slots at all.  So, the tradeoffs I am making are all about #2 and #3.  Generally, a solo ganker is unlikely to have more than 700 DPS, so taking 15 seconds of such fire requires 10500 EHP of omnitank.  That's the minimum I would want.  In highsec, you may have to take as much as 26 seconds of fire from a Catalyst ganker in a 0.5 system; that's 18200 (of hybrid weapon damage).  All of these designs take that, too, except the Kyros which falls just short.

As for cheapness, I use all tech-I stuff to hold down costs, except for tech-II damage controls.  All of these ships come in at about 2m ISK.  You can improve the hitpoints of each of these fits by using tech II shields and hardeners, and further by rigging them with expensive rigs.  Note that this will balloon the cost by millions of ISK, while not giving that much additional protection from gank.  Two gankers will practically always be able to kill any of these ships, T2 or not.

Without further ado, here are the fits:

[Epithal, PI Hauler]
'Repose' Core Compensation
'Repose' Core Compensation
'Repose' Core Compensation
Damage Control II

Large F-S9 Regolith Shield Induction
Medium Subordinate Screen Stabilizer I
Limited Thermic Dissipation Field I
Limited Adaptive Invulnerability Field I

[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]

Medium Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Medium Anti-Kinetic Screen Reinforcer I


[Kryos, Mineral Hauler]
'Repose' Core Compensation
'Repose' Core Compensation
'Repose' Core Compensation
Damage Control II

Large F-S9 Regolith Shield Induction
Limited 'Anointed' EM Ward Field
Limited Thermic Dissipation Field I
Limited Adaptive Invulnerability Field I

[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]

Medium Anti-Kinetic Screen Reinforcer I
Medium Anti-Kinetic Screen Reinforcer I


[Miasmos, Ore Hauler]
'Repose' Core Compensation
'Repose' Core Compensation
'Repose' Core Compensation
Damage Control II

Large F-S9 Regolith Shield Induction
Medium Subordinate Screen Stabilizer I
Limited Thermic Dissipation Field I
Limited Adaptive Invulnerability Field I

[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]

Medium Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Medium Anti-Kinetic Screen Reinforcer I


[Hoarder, Ammo Hauler]
'Repose' Core Compensation
'Repose' Core Compensation
Damage Control II

Large F-S9 Regolith Shield Induction
Medium Subordinate Screen Stabilizer I
Limited Thermic Dissipation Field I
Limited Adaptive Invulnerability Field I

[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]

Medium Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Medium Anti-Kinetic Screen Reinforcer I