Culling a Flock

It's midday Sunday.  The Boy is out at a guitar lesson, so I am in EVE.  I've checked out two systems, a C4 and a C5, adjacent to my home system.  No targets.  Now, into a second C5 via a K162.  I'm not particularly hopeful of finding anyone doing anything dumb, because after all they connected to us.  They presumably know they are not zipped up.  That's why I left this one for last.  Still, you never know in EVE.

Ships on scan!

I am right to not know.  I cross the wormhole and dscan, and what should appear but a flock of Ventures.  Also an Orca and a tower, almost certainly boosting a gas mining operation.  Eight targets!  Visions of mass slaughter arise in my mind, but let's not get ahead of ourselves here.  I can only kill multiple Ventures if they are being extraordinarily stupid.  First things first: get on grid.

Is there an outer planet?  There is an outer planet.  I warp to it at 100km, as always cloaking immediately as soon as my gate cloak drops.  This is my first chance to blow my cover, and there is nothing I can do about it.  With eight of them, probably at least three actual players, there is a decent chance someone is dscanning.  Will the see me?  I hope not.

I make a safespot out in space near the outer planet, which is pleasingly abandoned.  Also there are no sigs out here, so there is little reason why any of the natives would come out here.  I warp to the safespot, uncloak, deploy my mobile depot, and fire probes.

The probes I throw out of the system.  I'll get back to them.  The depot is for refitting.  I need to refit my Manticore from its normal configuration into its Venture-killing config.  The Venture killer removes the normal target painter for a second warp scrambler, which is needed to tackle a Venture with its built-in +2 warp core stabilization.  My anti-Venture fit also forgoes torpedoes.  I've been using light missiles for Venture killing, because I have had them at level V for a while.  But recently I trained Rockets V, so I get to try rockets for the first time.  Yay, me.

My minute is impatient.  Then I refit, get the rockets loaded, scoop the depot, and it's hunting time.

I warp to the inner system, then get a rough bearing on where the Ventures are.  2.4 AU from me, and generally up and left of the sun.  I set my probes to 2 AU distance, then move them into a rough position as my marker.  Now I start trying to hone down to 5 degrees.  Usually getting down to 15 degrees is fast, while the last step to 5 is hard.  (CCP: very please to put in a 10 degree setting?!)

This time, I am trying for five degrees for a while with no success.  Then I back out to 15 degrees and the Ventures are not there.  What?  Try at 360: there.  Again at 15, then 30, and 60: not there.  I guess they moved.  Strangely, they are the same distance from me, 2.4 AU.  But somewhere else.  Back to the start of my search.

I narrow and narrow, and get to 5 degrees.  OK, that's it.  I check my distance, and have to work it a little bit to get it to look like 2.4 AU.  (This is done purely by eyeball, and is a bit of an art.)  But now I am ready to scan.  I set the probes to 0.5 AU, and scan.  Scanning... and a red dot, 49%.  OK, quickly, drop the range to 0.25, adjust, and scan again.  100%!  A Vital Core Reservoir!  I retract the probes to hide them.  I am "below" the site, which means it is safe to warp in at 100km.  So I do.

Warping... and on grid.  And sure enough, there is the big gas cloud, the C540 one, with all eight Ventures orbiting it, sucking gas.  The little cloud is already sucked up.

The good news is that an orbiting Venture can be sneaked up on.  Or so I think.  I have never done it successfully before, but that's because my average kill is not orbiting.   Stupidly, they sit still.

The bad news is that they are all over the place.  The gas cloud has a radius of some 70km.  There is no way I am going to get two of them.  Orbiting while you mine is not the absolute best way to do it (here's how to do it right), but it is solid play.

Currently I am more than 100km from edge of the cloud.  This is too far to approach in reasonable time, but too near to warp.  Well, I can bounce.  I bookmark the C540 gas cloud (that is, its center), then warp off site to a nearby planet.  Then I warp back to the cloud at 70m.  I end up nearer to the edge than I thought, just 9000m.  But it's actually pretty much perfect.  I am near the edge, ready to go.  Now all I need is for a Venture to come to me.

A quick look around shows one Venture in particular that appears to be headed nearly at me.  He's 70km from me, but approaching fast.  OK, that's the one.  The Venture's orbit is mostly towards me, but a bit to the "down" direction from my perspective.  So, I maneuver down to intercept, and also include a slight angle in towards the cloud.  The approach is working.  The target is getting closer: 50km, then 30km.  I am getting close to the cloud: 7km, 5km.  I stop for a bit.  That's close enough.

Now the target is 20km, and closing.  I start moving a bit more down, and as he closes to 10km, towards him.  Time for pew!

I uncloak, and start locking.  All systems on: 2x scrambler, sebo, rockets.  The lock completes: got him.  My rockets start up, and the range stays short.  Good.

I pounce.

He is past me, and starting to pull away.  I may have to pulse the microwarpdrive to keep up.  But it seems like not.  Distance is maintained at about 4000m.  Then boom, he's dead.  I am ready, and start locking the pod.  He's not ready, it seems, because he does not get the pod out in time.  Locked!  And podded.

I attend to the overview: no ships left on grid but me.  I didn't have any awareness of them leaving.  Tactical tunnel syndrome.

I approach the wreck and grab the corpse for my collection.  Then I open the wreck and loot.  The loot won't fit: there is a lot of gas, which is large stuff.  (The loot fairy smiled on this gank.)  I grab all the fittings, and fill my hold with a small portion of the gas.  In fact, there is significant value in gas.  But I can't take it, so I perforce will leave it.  Perhaps they will try to get it back.  I'll hang around.  I bookmark the wreck just in case I need to get back fast.

This would be a good time to find their tower.  I burn away from the gas and the wreck, and get cloaked.  Safe, I turn my attention to dscan.  OK, they are at that planet.  I warp to a random moon (wrong one), then dscan up the right one and warp in to have a look.  I have to approach the tower to get close enough to see.

The flock is there, but some have already refit into various other ships.  An Archon?  I don't think they intend anything here except logging out.  Sure enough, poof it is gone.  I watch them all as one by one, they get into a big ship of some kind, then poof.

Gas loot.

Finally one is left, still in a Venture, and the Orca.  I sit and watch another few minutes.  Nothing. I doubt they will do anything.

Now I resume being my greedy resource-harvesting self.  There's 12m worth of gas in that wreck, and I want it!  I log in my alt Otto, who warps to my tower to get a gas-carrying Miasmos.  Then I have a better idea: a Venture!  Otto gets one of our gas-mining Ventures, then removes the expensive gas miners, just in case he gets whacked.  Then he renames it, to the same tag and name as the natives were using on their Ventures.  I figure this might confuse them if they see it on dscan, at least long enough.  I doubt they are paying attention, but you never know.

Otto enters the system and warps to the wreck.  The guys at the tower don't move.  Otto lands on grid, grabs, and goes.  Gas mining the hard way.

A Brace of Ventures

Sunday.  I've been crawling wspace all weekend, to no avail.  I've seen a lot of probes and a few scouts, and I have seen people doing nothing at POSes.  What I have not seen is sleeper wrecks, or miners, or gassers.  But I keep hoping.

I am now two jumps down the chain from my home system.  My home system connects to our static C4, which connects to a second C4, where I am.  There are many wormholes here.  I've explored a further C4, a C5 (EOL: I stayed only long enough to see nothing happening), and another C5.  Nothing, nothing, nothing.  There's another C5 through a small wormhole.  This is no problem for me, in my Manticore.  I jump.

Dscan from the wormhole shows nothing beyond a POCO.  I am near an outer planet in this system, which has a fair number of signatures.  Only three anoms, though.  System may be inhabited.  Won't find out the truth here.  I bookmark the wormhole, then warp to the inner system to look around.

The system.  My entry on the right.

As I warp across the system, I dscan.  Ventures on scan.  Six of them!  I am in a C5.  C5 plus Ventures almost always means one thing: a core gas site.  There is an ore anom among the three here, but it's in the outer system.  And nobody mines rocks in wspace anyway.  These guys are mining gas.

I work a bit to find a general location for them.  While doing this I see a Flycatcher on scan.  Overwatch?  Unknown.

Then I warp back out to the outer system to refit and launch probes.  My Manticore is currently fit with its general purpose gank fit.  I want the anti-Venture fit: it uses light missiles for better damage against such tiny targets.  It also has two warp scramblers, since one cannot hold a Venture.  Where to refit?  I make a safespot between two moons; that should do.  I check dscan -- clear -- then uncloak and launch my mobile depot.  I hate being exposed!  I also launch probes, then throw them out of the system.

I sit for my tortured minute, nervously watching my dscan for combat probes.  No probes, but I do see a Venture on dscan.  Ooops.  Evidently they are not locals, and are coming from the other signature out here. Will they bug out?

My minute is up.  I swap in the new fit as fast as I can, then grab the depot and cloak.  Safe again!

Range and bearing.  Ready to scan.

I warp to the inner system, to the planet nearest where I think the gas site is.  The Ventures are still there.  Good.  Now I get setup to probe for the gas site.  The range is 2.7 AU.  I set the probes in the correct spot for my 60 degree scan, then start the narrowing.  I get to 5 degrees with surprising ease.

I decide to risk missing the site or having to scan multiple times for a shot at getting it in a single try.  I set my probes to 0.25 AU.  And... I scan.  Ping, ping... a hit!  100% on an Instrumental Core Reservoir!  I recall the probes, and warp to the site... no, wait.  Cancel that warp.

I am looking "down" at the gas site.  (Space has absolute directions.)  Gas sites are aligned up/down, more or less: they are safe to warp into from the sides.  From above in particular, you don't want to warp in at any range for fear of landing in the large cloud.  (Its radius is 50km.)  The gas clouds decloak anything in them.

The only thing really decently far away is the outer system.  So I warp out there to bounce back to the site, at 50km.  I figure to check out what the Ventures are doing and then form a plan of attack.

As I warp back toward the inner system, but still out of range of the site, I dscan and see three Ventures.  Uh oh.  Did they see my probes?  I land in the site (nicely far from the gas), and no Ventures.  Bummer.  I bookmark the gas clouds anyway. 

I warp back to the outer system, and get confusing hits on dscan.  Ventures, then no ventures.  I warp back in.  Same thing.  Eventually I make a safespot right out in the middle of the system, so that I can dscan both out to the outer planet and to the gas site.  I can see the Ventures briefly a few times, but narrow-band dscan shows them not in the gas site.  Spooked, I'd say, but not enough.  They are either warping to and fro among safespots, or possibly cloaking.  Either way, they are still in system.

I'll wait.

I get out my phone and get a game or two of chess in.  Occasionally I dscan and see nothing.  But after a particularly intricate endgame, I dscan again and there they are again.  Narrow band dscan at the cloud: there.  Ha!

I warp back to the gas site, this time at 20km from the site's center.  (I am already far enough away that my angle of approach should be fine.)

I land in the site, and sure enough.  Ventures.  Three are doing something... don't know what... clustered near the edge of the cloud but not moving.  They are about 60km from me.  Perhaps transferring cargo?  Several others seem to be in the middle of the cloud.  And two are orbiting at speed.  I decide to try for an orbiter.  I look at them and find one that seems to be coming around the gas cloud to me.  I wait... he's off to my right a bit.  I start moving that way.  But the cloud is very close... 10km... 6km... I have to slow down, and vector to my right.

Here he comes!  I am close.  But not quite close enough.  I am not going to risk blowing it. 

This guy lived.

OK, I have determined that intercepting a Venture at the edge of a 50km cloud is pretty difficult.  Let's look again at the others.

Those guys in the middle of the cloud... they appear to be right at the center.  This is a huge no-no.  Don't do it Venture people.  Anyway, I check their location using the tactical overlay, and I am right.  They are in the middle.  So, it's an easy approach: bounce off the nearest celestial, then warp straight to the cloud as already bookmarked.  It's a plan!

I warp, then warp again.  The gas will uncloak me; I don't need to do that myself.  So I get ready to hit my sebo and start locking.  The Ventures will all flee, of course.  But I might get two if I am fast.

I land on grid.  I leave warp and the gas uncloaks me.  I start the sebo and then lock the two nearest Ventures.  I turn on both of my warp scramblers, but not the light missiles.  I'll pin one while I shoot another.  The one I am shooting will be able to leave if the pilot is alert.  But I hope he won't be alert.

The plan works.  The one is pinned, and my missiles make short work of the second.  Wow, fast.  I start on the one I have pinned.  Strangely, they are not fleeing.  There's a third Venture still in range, so I lock it.  The first pod flees.  Now the second one dies, and, oops.  I am warp scrambled.

Hmm, I guess it was a trap.  Oh well, no bubble here, not yet.  I'll kill everyone close and then see about escaping.   I open up on the third Venture.  Strangely, none of them are shooting me and I see no drones out.  No damage.  As I check for how I might escape, the one scrambling me warps.  The third one dies.  They are all gone, except one pod.  I kill that.  (It was the one I killed second, I find out in retrospect.)

I check dscan.  Nothing.  OK, safe.  Or safeish -- I am still in a warpable spot they have bookmarked.  But I gather what loot I can carry, which is trivial, and the precious corpse.  Then I warp back home ASAP.  I have a dinner engagement IRL and I must leave in a few minutes.  Back up the chain to home, then I warp to safespot and leave EVE.

I feel good.

A look at the killmails shows another mistake: the Ventures have almost no tank.  No shield extender; no damage control.  Extra hitpoints get you a few extra seconds to react.

A Squeeze into Null

Friday night.  I'm home early and the Boy is playing next door.  EVE time!  I log in and check my system, to discover a small wormhole directly to nullsec.  (Small wormholes to null are the only way that C4 systems connect directly to known space.)  Usually I don't explore nullsec, but we are planning to run our local sites tonight.  So I'll check.  I pop through the wormhole, hoping to find a nice empty system.

Targets!

What I find instead is a nice inhabited system.  And I think I can see the inhabitants on dscan.  There are two ore anoms close together in range.  I point dscan at them and...

Yup.  Miners.  Miner that are out in space.  That's a bit out of the ordinary.  When I am in null ghostbusting, I rarely see any miners on dscan out in space.  They all warp to POS immediately upon my entering the system, I guess.  These guys will too, I don't doubt.  Still...  let me see if I can get on grid with them, for kicks.  I doubt they'll be there in a minute, but I determine the proper ore anom with a five degree dscan, and warp in at 10km.

I land on grid, and they are still there.  Amazing!

Now I start to think about killin'.  I am about 60km from them, and they are all in a group near a couple of anchored cans.  I bookmark the cans, then think about bouncing to land right on top of the miners.

Who can see this without fantasies of slaughter?

But these are not wimpy miners; they are three skiffs and one procurer.  It's not hard to have a skiff with an omni buffer tank in the 70k EHP range.  With a DCII they can get near to 100k EHP.  So I can't kill them that fast.  Skiffs also have drone bonuses, meaning they should be able to shoo off my pesky stealth bomber without breaking a sweat.  In fact maybe they saw me enter on dscan and just are not afraid.

I ponder this.  The obvious solution would be to drop on them in my Onyx.  It doesn't do as much damage as a bomber but its tank is huge.  But an Onyx can't fit through a small wormhole.  Unless... unless it has two warp disruption fields on.  That's it.  I'll put on two.  I'll lose firepower.  But it's the best I can do.

I warp around the system to look for two characters that are in local that I cannot see on grid.  I cannot find them.  Weird, knowing that.  I have an idea, so I make a safespot in the long haul between the inner system and an outer planet.  Then I warp back to the ore site.  The miners are still there.  Good.  I warp back to the wormhole and jump. Then I warp to my POS and refit into Onyx.

I find a spare warp disruption field generator and put it on.  Then I get out EFT and look at the fit.  It does 320 DPS... not great.  In fact, I am not really keen to be on site for four minutes chewing through the shields of one of those skiffs.  But my inner Penny wants a gank, and I figure the chance is too good to pass up.  So I figure on a compromise.  On the assumption that they are not paying attention, I plan to refit in their system to put on my fifth launcher.  400 DPS.  It will still take three plus minutes to kill a skiff.  But that's as much damage as one can do when constrained by a small wormhole.  It will have to be enough.

Deep breath, then I am off.  I expand my fields and cross the wormhole successfully.  Then I warp to my safespot.  I hope they miss dscanning me as I zip by.  From the safespot I cannot see them, and of course vice versa.  The minute of deployment time for depots is always frustrating.  Then I refit, and warp to the can I bookmarked earlier.

I land on grid... and no miners.  Rats.

Failure.

Oh well.  At least I didn't die.  I warp back to my depot, mindful to watch for combat probes.  There are none.  I refit to put the second warp bubble generator back on, then warp home.

Another Massacre

It's corp night.  That's the night we get together as a corp to run PVE sites in C4 -- usually -- to earn ISK.  Since we got a C5 static in Hyperion, C5 is now also a possibility.  We got our latest incarnation of our PVE fleet ready to go last night.  So, tonight we are hoping for a good system.

I log on.  I expect the guys to appear in an hour or so.  But I am on by myself right now.  This is wspace, so there is no gain without scanning.  Let's see what we've got in the home system.  A bunch of new sigs since last night.  Only two gas sites have persisted, but there are five sigs.  This is likely to mean we have a K162, but it might mean a new sig site.  Only one way to find out.  I launch probes and scan.

Sure enough, the extra sig is a K162.  I warp to it; it's from C2.  That probably means a highsec connection, which would be nice if we needed anything.  But we don't really, and we will probably be popping this wormhole.  I also scan down our statics, and fly there to bookmark them.  The statics may or may not be linked from the far side; that depends on whether whoever opened up the connection from C2 came in and instantiated them.  But the K162 is linked for certain.  I'll look at it first.  I warp to it, and jump into C2a.

As always when I jump in wspace, I dscan upon entering C2a.  And what to my wondering eyes should appear, but two mobile depots and one tiny reindeer.  No, I mean a Ferox.  A Ferox?  Caldari battlecruiser, T1, guns.  Shield based tank means big sig radius likely.  Guns means I might be able to kill it in my Manticore.

I am near the outer planet in this system, which is rather far out from the rest.  So I can only see it on scan.  I bookmark the wormhole, then move away and cloak.  Now I look to see if I can find the Ferox.  If it is out in space, I cannot.  But it might be at some moon or something.  A quick narrow-beam dscan of the nearby planet disproves that theory.  It's out in space.  I dscan towards the inner system.  It appears to be on grid with a mobile depot, or maybe both depots.

A ship not in a POS

I dscan again, expecting that by now it has disappeared.  But it is still there.  That's... odd.  Why would someone be sitting out in nowheresville?  I can't fathom.  What I can do is get combat probes.  Not in my Manticore, of course.  The CPU is far too limited.  I'll log in my alt, Otto, for the purpose.

I log Otto in, then fly him to our tower to change ships.  He's got a Cheetah that has combat probes, so I get that, then warp to the wormhole.  As I warp, though, a dscan from Von shows the Ferox is gone.   Rats.  Kind of expected that, really.

I bring Otto in anyway, and orbit the wormhole at 30km cloaked.  It is possible the Ferox is running sites or something, and so I may still want the combat probes.

Meanwhile, Von examines the system map.  There is just a single anom in the whole system.  It's an ore site in the inner system.  Recently I have taken to entering un-dscanned space by warping to ore anoms if they exist.  The reason for that is that if miners are there, you find out via overview.  You do lose the possibility of luckily finding of a tower at a moon.  But you also eliminate the possibility of warping into a tower with a decloak trap.  So, all in all a slight win.  I warp Von to the ore site.

As I enter the inner system, I dscan, and my excitement rises.  Covetor!  Miasmos!  Retriever!  Mack!  There's a mining op on!  And I am headed to the only place it can be.

Sure enough.  I land on grid and there they are.  They are about 80km from me, so I can use Look At.  Three of them are clustered together near an arkanor asteroid.  The fourth, the Mack, is elsewhere in the field.  You might ask WWPD?  But I know, and I think you know.  This is a miner massacre waiting to happen!  I bookmark the asteroid, then hightail it back to the wormhole.  I am going home to get my Onyx.

Otto will keep cloaky eyes on.  I warp him into the ore anom, where he sits and watches.

Von crosses into C4a, then flies to my tower.  He gets into my Onyx, then warps right back to the wormhole.  This is no time to be worrying about polarization.  This is a once in a year opportunity which should not be missed.  The operation might break up at any moment.

I cross back into C2a, and sit cloaked a second.  Where to warp to?  A little eyeballing with Otto shows that the arkanor asteroid is a bit further away from the outer system than the miners.  So I warp the Onyx to the ark at 10km.  The die is cast.  I notice as I am doing this that the Mack has now joined the other miners.  Mwahahaha!

Will the Ferox interfere?  I don't know.  I don't know if my Onyx can kill it in a straight-up slugfest or not.  I do know, though, that I'll get a bit of warning.  I'll dscan.  And if the Ferox does warp in to attempt to help, my bubble will stop it before it lands right on me.  If it has a scrambler, it can't pin me before I can (maybe) drop my bubble and attempt to flee.  But I think I'll take my chances and just slug it out.

All this rumination is cut short as I land on grid.  Hands shaking!  Cool.  The miners don't flee in time.  I pop up the bubble, and start locking up ships.  It's killin' time.

Trapped in my bubble.

I kill the Mack first since it's most expensive.  The barges have some drones, which attack.  But they can barely more than scratch my paint, and they will soon be turned off.  When the Mack dies, I shift to the Retriever, Covetor, and finally Miasmos.  I get a conversation request from someone as I am killing the ships, but I have no time for that now.  While I am still killing the barges, I move over to loot the Mack's wreck.  I get a bunch of low-value loot, but it fills up my Onyx.  The barges all killed, I dispatch the pods.  (Strangely I miss one of them.  Not sure what happened there.  Did not notice it get away.)

Massacre.

I feel like a god.  Fear me!  I dscan from time to time through the massacre, but I never see the Ferox.  Now that it's done, I feel it's time to GTFO.  I don't know who lives here.  The Ferox may be swapping ships into something appropriate to kill me.  So, I turn off the bubble (this takes a while), and when it finally deflates, I warp to the wormhole back home.

I check Local for the time to see if I am still polarized.  (I am not.)  I am amused to find the following conversation there:

[ 2014.10.08 23:48:58 ] NightFury128 > Hello :D
[ 2014.10.08 23:49:09 ] Alpha Strike Toaster > SUP :D
[ 2014.10.08 23:49:31 ] NightFury128 > Hows hows WH life been?
[ 2014.10.08 23:50:08 ] Alpha Strike Toaster > good I enjoy it so far. trying to get into Astral inferno to try it out more.
[ 2014.10.08 23:50:17 ] NightFury128 > ah nice
[ 2014.10.08 23:50:47 ] NightFury128 > WH space can be fun :)
[ 2014.10.08 23:51:43 ] Alpha Strike Toaster > It has been so far. I'm curious what it's like living out of a POS
[ 2014.10.08 23:52:13 ] NightFury128 > in High sec space? meeeh not very exciting
[ 2014.10.08 23:52:20 ] dav Uitra > u do know talking in wh local shows all the other players that ur active lol
[ 2014.10.08 23:52:21 ] Forloth Rollard > ^^^^^
[ 2014.10.08 23:52:32 ] NightFury128 > lol
[ 2014.10.08 23:52:51 ] NightFury128 > I like being socialble :)
[ 2014.10.08 23:53:16 ] dav Uitra > makes u a target use a channel
[ 2014.10.08 23:53:32 ] NightFury128 > k

Ironic.  I did not see this in time for it to matter.

Meanwhile, I have this lovely chat with CAPTAIN CRIMSON HAWK:

[ 2014.10.09 00:03:57 ] CAPTAIN CRIMSON HAWK > what an ass hole
[ 2014.10.09 00:04:12 ] CAPTAIN CRIMSON HAWK > we are a new miner corp you would have mad more if asked us to pay
[ 2014.10.09 00:04:45 ] CAPTAIN CRIMSON HAWK > never mind, your a pussy not an asshole
[ 2014.10.09 00:05:43 ] CAPTAIN CRIMSON HAWK > poor little pussy cant fight anyone with gus?
[ 2014.10.09 00:06:26 ] CAPTAIN CRIMSON HAWK > most the guys you killed are players less then a month
[ 2014.10.09 00:07:39 ] Von Keigai > Sorry, was busy.
[ 2014.10.09 00:07:48 ] Von Keigai > Hi.
[ 2014.10.09 00:07:49 ] CAPTAIN CRIMSON HAWK > being a pussy, yes
[ 2014.10.09 00:07:59 ] Von Keigai > Look.  I don't pause to look at bios or whatever before I kill.
[ 2014.10.09 00:08:06 ] Von Keigai > I kill first, ask questions later.
[ 2014.10.09 00:08:21 ] CAPTAIN CRIMSON HAWK > because your a pussy, it was easy for any body but a noob to see
[ 2014.10.09 00:08:30 ] CAPTAIN CRIMSON HAWK > duh no fighting escort, no links
[ 2014.10.09 00:08:46 ] CAPTAIN CRIMSON HAWK > all bunched up
[ 2014.10.09 00:09:05 ] CAPTAIN CRIMSON HAWK > lol, what atool, your skill must really suck to pick on a new miner corp like that
[ 2014.10.09 00:09:33 ] CAPTAIN CRIMSON HAWK > you even pod killed, waht a totall pussy to pod kill after that
[ 2014.10.09 00:09:48 ] Von Keigai > Hmm.  Pod killing is de rigeur for wspace.
[ 2014.10.09 00:09:53 ] CAPTAIN CRIMSON HAWK > pod killed people who cant fight wow what a man, lol
[ 2014.10.09 00:09:58 ] Von Keigai > I think this is a valuable lesson for your new guys.
[ 2014.10.09 00:10:02 ] CAPTAIN CRIMSON HAWK > no
[ 2014.10.09 00:10:13 ] CAPTAIN CRIMSON HAWK > taught me what a real pussy looks like
[ 2014.10.09 00:10:31 ] CAPTAIN CRIMSON HAWK > a man would have said wait these guys could need some help,
[ 2014.10.09 00:10:42 ] Von Keigai > I am sorry you are so hurt.  That's EVE, friend.  Permanent gain, permanent loss.
[ 2014.10.09 00:10:48 ] CAPTAIN CRIMSON HAWK > a child or boy acts like you did
[ 2014.10.09 00:11:06 ] Von Keigai > I am not a man.  I am a monster.  Don't forget that in wspace.  Most people here are.
[ 2014.10.09 00:11:11 ] CAPTAIN CRIMSON HAWK > i am not hurt, just amazed at what a tool you are
[ 2014.10.09 00:11:22 ] CAPTAIN CRIMSON HAWK > monster, lol
[ 2014.10.09 00:11:25 ] CAPTAIN CRIMSON HAWK > your a child
[ 2014.10.09 00:11:32 ] Von Keigai > Aw, so hurt.
[ 2014.10.09 00:11:41 ] Von Keigai > Did you lead these guys up here?
[ 2014.10.09 00:11:47 ] CAPTAIN CRIMSON HAWK > not trying to hurt you, your too noob for that
[ 2014.10.09 00:11:57 ] Von Keigai laughs.
[ 2014.10.09 00:12:37 ] CAPTAIN CRIMSON HAWK > run away child, find more targets that cant fight back
[ 2014.10.09 00:12:53 ] Von Keigai > Um, I just did.  A clump of them.
[ 2014.10.09 00:13:04 ] CAPTAIN CRIMSON HAWK > another miner group?
[ 2014.10.09 00:13:12 ] CAPTAIN CRIMSON HAWK > wow, what a pussy
[ 2014.10.09 00:13:58 ] CAPTAIN CRIMSON HAWK > whats really funny is in all you pussniess you missed the most valuable target, lol nood
[ 2014.10.09 00:14:25 ] Von Keigai > Please educate me then.  What did I miss?  Other than some kills?
[ 2014.10.09 00:14:53 ] Von Keigai > I am always looking to improve.
[ 2014.10.09 00:15:13 ] CAPTAIN CRIMSON HAWK > the ship, 100 km off, no pilot, thank god you did not pod ivanna
[ 2014.10.09 00:15:29 ] CAPTAIN CRIMSON HAWK > hopefully by now she has it and is gone
[ 2014.10.09 00:15:41 ] Von Keigai > I went for the clump.  Assault missiles have a range of about 25km.
[ 2014.10.09 00:15:43 ] CAPTAIN CRIMSON HAWK > no kill mal
[ 2014.10.09 00:15:46 ] Von Keigai > Could not go after both.
[ 2014.10.09 00:15:53 ] CAPTAIN CRIMSON HAWK > so she must still be alive
[ 2014.10.09 00:16:42 ] CAPTAIN CRIMSON HAWK > well if you would have been smart you would have it the unpiloted trasport ship first, that would have been right up your pussy little ally
[ 2014.10.09 00:17:29 ] Von Keigai > Missed one?  That was in range?
[ 2014.10.09 00:17:42 ] Von Keigai > See, now you are helping in spite of your anguish.
[ 2014.10.09 00:17:45 ] Von Keigai > Thanks.
[ 2014.10.09 00:18:11 ] CAPTAIN CRIMSON HAWK > no, we were invited in for a little minig because we are Hi sec, we wont be back
[ 2014.10.09 00:19:16 ] Von Keigai > Well.  Live and learn, eh?  Or die and learn?
[ 2014.10.09 00:19:21 ] CAPTAIN CRIMSON HAWK > 30 Day Pilot's License Extension (PLEX)  30 Day Pilot's License Extension (PLEX)  Tobacco  Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane I  1MN Afterburner I  Acolyte TD-300 Blueprint
[ 2014.10.09 00:19:38 ] CAPTAIN CRIMSON HAWK > some of what you missed, we were on a trasport mission when they invited us in
[ 2014.10.09 00:19:54 ] CAPTAIN CRIMSON HAWK > Concentrated Veldspar  Concentrated Veldspar
[ 2014.10.09 00:20:16 ] CAPTAIN CRIMSON HAWK > Expanded Cargohold II she said she is safe in .4 space, need to go later
[ 2014.10.09 00:20:38 ] CAPTAIN CRIMSON HAWK > i would have given you the ship to let my friedns live, lol dumb ass pussy

"we are Hi sec, we wont be back."  Yup.  He claims he was transporting PLEX.  In wspace.  I'd have loved to gank that, assuming it was the truth.

This chat goes on as I continue doing stuff.  Back home, I get into an Iteron V to collect loot and corpses.  It is fit for medium sized cargo, about 17k m^3m and two warp core stabs.  Seems about right for the task.  But back at the ore anom, Otto sees the Ferox land on grid.  What is it doing?  I dunno.  In any case, I can't go there now in a transport.  I want to kill the Ferox.  What ship should I use?  Hmm.  Probably one of our PVP Ravens.

As I consider this, Hiljah logs in.  Corp night!  Well, having a gang changes things.  I mention in corp chat I have a target.  Then Jayne logs in.  We get on coms.  I get back in the Onyx.  Hiljah gets something, an Arazu I think, and Jayne gets a Raven.  We warp to the wormhole.  We'll warp straight to the ark asteroid bookmark, pin the Ferox, and kill him.  Before we can jump, though, he warps out.  Dammit!  He's salvaged the wrecks (?) and perhaps looted some.  But there is some loot still there.  And the bodies.  I notice now that there are more corpses than I made: there are five.  Eh?  Is this the second gank these guys have suffered here?  (EVE is strange.)  In any case, I warp back home to get back into the Iteron V.

The Ferox appears on dscan at the wormhole.  It seems it is back at a mobile depot.  We call for combat probes.  Jayne logs in an alt who can probe.  This takes time.

Meanwhile, I have taken the Iteron in to C2a and warped to the site of the massacre.  I figure I want the Ferox to try to stop me.  I'll stay on grid as long as I can while my buddies land.  But the Ferox is still in the outer system.  I run around collecting loot and all five (again: ?) corpses.  Then I warp back.

The guys have probes out, but did not get a 100% hit in time.  The Ferox disappears.  If I were him, I'd warp out of the system.  But he seems to have cloaked.  We lurk about a while longer.  We search down the mobile depots and the Ferox reappears.  We get a 100% hit and get Hiljah on grid.  Hiljah almost gets the Ferox, but it decloaks and warps just in time.  Oh well.  It still remains in system, but we can't find it and decide to forget about it.  If he has any skill, he can evade us easily.

We pull out and pop the hole.  Onward with PVE.  These hits don't pay for themselves.

Basics: Safety in Wormhole Space

It has come to my attention via a couple interactions with some ships in wspace, that people don't know how the discovery scanner works and/or are not using it right.  Since this is more relevant to wspace miners than ever before, due to the compression changes in Crius, now's the time for a Basics article.  But really, everyone needs to know this stuff: miners, site runners, gassers.  A new wormhole opening into a system is something that every wspace resident needs to be aware of quickly.

The Discovery Scanner

The discovery scanner, for those unfamiliar with the terminology, is CCP's new name (as of Odyssey) for the overall probing system.  It shows you the anomalies and signatures in the system you are in.  It mostly displays in the Probe Scanner window, which you can see screenshots of below.  The Probe Scanner window shows anoms and sigs in a spreadsheet.  However, the discovery scanner also displays in the main window.  You can also see anoms and sigs out in space. 

Note that the discovery scanner is a distinct and different thing than the "dscanner" aka the "directional scanner".  Even though both have a "d" and a "scanner".

Game Mechanics Used

Probe Scanner window

Here's how the discovery scanner works.  First, contrary to popular belief, it does not automatically push all new sigs to people in the system.   Rather, it pushes all sigs in just one circumstance: when any existing sig or anom in that system despawns.  Anom despawning happens naturally when running sites, which is how I think the common view got started.  Other than anoms, despawnings are rare.

There is a second way to get new information, but this is per-ship, not everybody at once.  A ship gets an update whenever it enters a system (duh).  It also gets an update when the player clicks certain buttons on the probe scanner window.   Since this must be done repeatedly to stay up to date, similar to dscanning, I call it "strobing" the discovery scanner.  (I don't think that is a common usage, but you are invited to steal it.)

After clicking "Show Anomalies"

I usually strobe the discovery scanner by clicking the "Show Anomalies" checkbox.  Assuming there are nonzero anoms, this has the big advantage of causing a very obvious change in the appearance of the probe scanner's spreadsheet.  You can see this by comparing the two screenies to the right.

Other people strobe by clicking a "Show" button in the bottom right of the Probe Scanner.  You can also get it by clicking the spreadsheet's column labels (which sorts by that column).  There are other ways too.  Basically, almost anything you click on the Probe Scanner will cause an update.

Using the Discovery Scanner to Stay Safe

So how do you use the discovery scanner to harvest resources safely in wspace?  Relatively safely, anyway.  First, you want to get your system to be as safe as possible.  Zip it up!  If you cannot zip it up, or are too lazy, then at minimum you want a sound picket at every wormhole.  Of course, every sound picket means one less pilot who could otherwise be doing something.  And it makes a single point of failure: if your picket guy happens to go to the bathroom for a few minutes, you have no backup.  But that's your call.

Now that you're zipped and/or fully picketed, you can start doing whatever you want very safely.  Mining, for example.  However, you must stay there at the keyboard and strobe the discovery scanner frequently.  How often?  No less than a minute, and I would probably want more.  30 seconds is about right.

If you do see a new signature, and you are out in space doing stuff, immediately warp to safety.  (The same is true, of course, if you have a wormhole picket who hears or sees anything unexpected.)  Once you have safed up, get a scanner ship out and see what the new signature is.  If it is a wormhole, it is very likely that someone will come through.  Prepare yourself.  Indeed, it is very likely that someone has already come through it.  If it is not a wormhole (which is unlikely, but it does happen), no problem.  Get back out there and continue doing your thing.

Note that a fleet can use a fleet/wing/squad commander to fleet-warp the whole fleet.  Thus, it is possible to make just one guy at a time responsible for the fleet's safety.  The commander sits there strobing the discovery scanner, while everyone else watches movies in another window, goes to the bathroom, etc.

In a Tangle of Rocks

It's late.  We ran sites in our system, which is zipped up.  Then I spend time hauling PI goop.  I am going on a trip IRL, so I needed to get ahead on my PI.  But now, I'm done.  There's a half hour left before I need to head to bed.  Let's see what C4b has today.

I swap out the Epithal I was in for my Manticore.  Our static is bookmarked, but I don't fly directly there yet.  I want to be as close as possible to it before I instantiate it.  I warp to the closest planet, then align, and only then do I warp to the static.  Now I cross, and dscan from the wormhole.

Dscan shows a paladin and a shuttle.  No wrecks, and two force fields, so they are probably at one of those POSes.  Still, that's a better result than the nothing I usually get.  I slide off the wormhole, cloak, and start searching down the towers.  Dscan shows one of them at a planet with one moon.  OK, that's easy.  I warp over.  No ships here.  Bookmark and look for the other.  Eventually I find it at a planet with two moons.  My first guess is moon 2: wrong.  Moon 1 it is.  And sure enough, there are the ships.  The shuttle is empty as expected.  But the Paladin is manned.  That's... interesting.

What is a Paladin anyway?  Can I expect it to do anything?  A click or two and I am reminded that it is a marauder.  That's kind of good, in that it might start trying to run sites on its own.  But it's kind of bad, since I cannot kill it alone.  With a mobile tractor unit, a marauder can do sites completely solo, salvaging as it goes.

This train of thought leads me to look at the scanner again for sites.  There are very few sites here: four sigs and three ore sites.  There are no combat anoms at all.  So this guy has nothing to do.  (I wonder if I just missed some action as he cleaned out the system, just as we were cleaning out mine.)

Two of the ore sites are out near an outer planet, 33 AU from me.  So out of dscan range from here.  Now I am wonder whether this guy might be doing some mining.  I'll go out and check.

I randomly pick one of the ore sites and warp to it at 10km.  While still in warp, I dscan and can see there is a tower at the planet, and there's a Venture out here somewhere.  This gets me a little exited, until I land on grid and it's not there.  I narrow-beam dscan at the planet, and I am surprised to see the Venture is not there either.  How about the other ore site?  Yes, he's in the other ore site!

TARGET!  Woo!  Hunting time.

I warp to the ore anom at 10km, while I look in my cargo.  I need a second warp scrambler.  For a while I was carrying around a mobile depot and two extra warp scramblers.  The idea was to refit, so as to be able to catch Epithals (and Ventures).  But I never actually did refit like that, because finding Epithals is rare enough and when you do you almost never have time and/or the privacy for a leisurely refit.  Ventures, same deal.  Eventually I gave up carrying them around.

I land on grid, and there he is.

In a maze.

The Venture is deep in an awful tangle of rocks.  I am not sure I can even get in close to him where he is without being decloaked by an asteroid, but he is moving, apparently orbiting the rock he's mining.  I watch him hit a rock and slow to a crawl, then move around it and speed up.  I should be able to get close to him somewhere, although the movement does make it a bit iffy.

I am aware that the discovery scanner is, even now, blaring my likely presence across the system -- or anyway it will as soon as anyone updates his scanner.  The clock is ticking.  It makes hunting a bit tense.

The Manticore is the wrong ship here.  Even if I can get close and lock, torpedoes do poor damage against tiny little frigates, and especially bad damage if the thing moves fast.  Just like last time I got a Venture, I am going to have to go home and reship.  I've still got my ghostbusting Tengu and it is still a pretty good fit for killing Ventures, since it uses rapid light missile launchers.  It's got extra scramblers in cargo, and a painter, so it should kill the thing quick if I can lock it.  (And assuming it does not flee.)  I'll reship.  No time like the present, so I warp off to my static wormhole.

The paladin is still on scan, and nothing new, as I land on the wormhole and jump.  I hope he did not see that.  I expect he did not, because he's probably not dscanning; if he is doing anything at all it should be strobing the discovery scanner to find my wormhole.  That the Venture is still out mining suggests he has not done that, suggesting that he either does not know how it works or that he is AFK.

Back home, I warp across the system, get my Tengu, then spend a few moments refitting it.  Don't need the data analyzer or the cargo scanner.  Do need two warp scramblers.  Also, this may be a setup.  It does not look like bait, but you can never be sure.  Just to be safe I take off the 10mn microwarp and replace it with a 100mn afterburner.  Much better chance to escape with that, if it is a trap.  A sebo would be nice but I don't have one in cargo and I am not going to take the time to dig around our storage for one and a script.

Now I warp back to the wormhole and jump.  I'll be polarized, but I am not worried having seen no probes nor indication they know I am there.  Nobody at the wormhole.  But my dscan kills hope.  The Venture is in range.  Rats; the cursed discovery scanner has cost me this one.

Well, perhaps he is just dumping cargo.  And anyway I cannot leave right now because of polarization.  I might as well have a look.  I move off the wormhole, cloak, and warp to the POS the Paladin is at.  Sure enough, there's the Venture.

Safe.

I sit and watch as it does nothing.  (The Paladin does nothing too.)  If it is just dumping off ore, it should be warping out almost immediately; dumping ore takes no time.  After a minute of nothing, I am sure I'm burned.  Since I've nothing to do, I look up the system at wormhol.es: it has a C3 static.  So, maybe I can scan out.  Actually my time is almost up.  I think I'll just wait my five minutes and head home.

As I think such thoughts, I am surprised to see my camera drop off the Venture and return to me.  Confused, I see the Venture align and it warps.  Just below and to the right of the sun -- yes, that's the direction the ore site is in.  Could he really be ignorant of my presence?  You never know.  I pursue, warping to the ore site at 10km again.

I land on grid, and he is only 12km off.  But he is rapidly moving back into the tangle of rocks.  I watch him zoom in, 35 km off, then arc around up and left.  Finally he turns on his beam, and seems to orbit a small hemorphite asteroid.

Not safe.  But how can I get in there cloaked?

Now raise my "Asteroids" tab on overview.  All the asteroids are at least 15km from me.  I head in, more or less straight at the hemorphite rock.  I watch the ranges slowly count down.  14, 13, 11, 9.  That's getting a bit close.  I stop and look around to see which asteroid it is.  It's a big omber one.  Then I turn and move somewhat to my right, trying to stay relatively far from the omber.  This works for a while but then I am getting close to another.  I stop when I am 7 km from both.  The Venture is just 15km... this close... but not close enough.  It's moving away from me though.  

I think I am close enough.  I hate to wait -- discovery scanner -- but I am going to have to let him come to me at least a bit.  So I wait.  I watch as he loops away from me, and hits a big rock.  He is slowed for minute, but then move to my left at speed and hits another rock.  He's only 12km off.  I think this may be my opening.  I regret not taking the time to find a sebo now, but there's nothing to be done about it.

Go time.

I start moving towards him, and the asteroids are getting close.  5km.  But now I am within 10km of him, so I am pretty sure I will be in scrambler range when I uncloak.  Closer: rocks at 3km.  He's at 7.  Good range.  I uncloak, or try to; I think the rock uncloaked me.  Did I lose time?  I start trying to lock; can't due to decloak delay.  Try again.  Etc.  I start locking him.  Now I get my systems on: two warp scramblers, painter, and finally light missiles.  Will he warp in time?

He does not warp in time.  He's locked, and two rounds of missiles do the job.  I am ready, and start locking the pod immediately.  He's stunned (or more likely just raising his window as he hears the beeps of his doom), and does not make it out.  Podded.  Totally empty pod; he's not a fool.

Now I think about my own safety, and turn on my tank as well as dscanning.  Nothing on scan.  OK, I collect a small amount of loot, then the corpse, then finally pack in hemorphite until I am full.  Then I burn off away from the asteroids so I can cloak.  I linger briefly in the site to see if there will be any response (I doubt it), and there isn't.  Then I notice the time and go home to log out.

A Covetor in C5

It's the weekend, and I have had some time to play.  I've been out a lot today, scanning down a substantial constellation.  Earlier I ganked an Epithal in my trusty Manticore.  I took some hours off to work around the house IRL, then came back to New Eden for another look around.  Maybe someone will be out and about.

I head out and kill a reinforced mobile depot that I scanned down earlier three systems down the chain.  I always attack these things when I find them, but they reinforce; and of course 24 hours later I am long gone.  So someone else benefits (if anyone does).  But karma has come around, and this time it's me who gets the kill.  I grab some modest loot, head home, and stash it.  Time to go the other way.

I head into C4b, and then C4c, neither of which has anything interesting happening.  Then on to C4e.  There's a fair number of sigs here, and earlier my corpmate did not fully scan it down.  He only scanned for wormholes, and there is only one (a C5) besides the one I came in.  I'll search down all the sigs to see if there are any wormholes he missed, and/or new. 

Fifteen minutes later and ten sigs wiser, I know the truth.  There are no other wormholes.  Onward.  I proceed to the C5a wormhole and jump.  As usual, the first thing I do after loading grid for the new system is dscan.  There are several ships, including a ...

A Covetor?  Weird.  It's probably at a tower, but do they have any ore anoms here?  Yes, they have one.  OK, I'll point the dscan at it and... Covetor!  A thing I can kill!  By itself!

No!  It's a trap!  I have just been scanning down C4c, right next door.  The people in here might have seen the probes, and decided to set a trap if I come in.  A lone Covetor sitting out by itself?  In C5?  These people must know better than to mine without at least a sound picket!

When my colleague found this system earlier, he evidently did not scan it down, but he did bookmark one of the towers.  Dscan shows that tower has two ships at it.  I'll check it out first before having a look at the Covetor.  I warp to the tower at 100km.  The ships are there and unmanned.  Hmm.

Well, I've done the easy and fast groundwork.  So, let's get a look at this guy.  I warp to the rocks at 10km.  (Ore anoms are tricky.) 

As I warp over, my paranoia resumes.  No.  C5 guys do not mine alone.

I land on grid and there she is, about 80km from me.  She's got a jetcan right next to her, which does not help my fearful state.  She's making it too easy!  Trap!  Not only that, but when I look at her I can see what she's mining.  Pyroxeres.  You mine that in highsec.  Nobody mines Pyro in wspace.  You mine the good ore and sell it.  I suppose you might mine pyro if you are making something and want... whatever it refines into.  Some mineral.  Still, it's unlikely.

Even so, I wonder if I can get in and kill her before... whatever it is happens.  It is probably just uncloak, bubble, etc.  Still... I'm curious to see their trap.

What else can I find out?  Wormhol.es shows they are Euro time zone.  It's 7:30 here (Eastern time), so by now it is pretty late in Europe.  There's a fair amount of Cyrillic names for things visible on dscan, so my guess is they are Russian.  Moscow is 8 hours ahead of me.  So it's the very late night or early morning there.  It may well be that this corp is mostly offline, with just one crazy night-owl up mining.

Well, there are more ships I can see on scan.  The first tower had no pilots.  There's several more unaccounted for.  I am going to have to bounce off something anyway to get over to the miner.  I'll look for the ships I don't know about yet: a Devoter and a Cerberus.

Empty!

I dscan a bit to find the right planet.  There they are, along with an Orca (which I am not concerned about).  I warp over to the planet, and narrow the POS location down to the right moon.  I warp in at 100km.  The Orca is manned, although what use that is inside the POS field I don't know.  The ships are unmanned. 

That's decided it.  If you're setting a trap, you really don't want scary-looking ships sitting out where they'll spook the target.  That's what I am thinking, at any rate.  And also that if I don't go for it, I'll regret it.  So I am decided: kill or die trying.

I warp to the Covetor's can at 10km.  I land about 6000m from the Covetor.  Reach out and touch someone.  I pause for a picture of the idyllic mining action.

When suddenly...

Then set my orbit around her at 2500, and uncloak.  I get my systems active; she's locked and scrambled.  Now her fate is sealed unless she has help.

This is what you get for not being a trap.

She does not have help.

Boom.  She's dead, and I immediately start locking the pod.  Alas, she's alert by now and warps promptly.  Good on her there.

I move in and loot the wreck for what I can.  Then I scoot off and cloak, and bounce off a nearby celestial so I can come back to watch at a decent range.

Nothing happens.  I am watching on dscan, though, and I can see a Rifter appear where there was not one before.  I warp to the wormhole I entered at 20km, cautiously.  Sure enough, it appears she's deduced where I came from.  The Rifter is sitting on my wormhole in close orbit.

Thou shalt not pass!

It appears Riadri is going to try to go for me when I leave.  Well, there is no hurry.  I will just make a perch here and wait her out.  I warp off to make a perch.  Then I sit and bore her until she gives up.

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.

About Astecus

Astecus is a friend of mine.  Well, more of an acquaintaince; you know how it is.  A disembodied guy in a videogame.  May or may not know who I am.  Still, he seems like a nice guy to the extent one can know someone via chat, reading his writings, and observing his actions.

I first met him earlier this year, before I moved into wspace full time.  Back then I used to "do my rounds", as I thought of it, in a Tengu in the Poinen area.  I was doing the exploring of that time (pre Odyssey), which meant that I was mainly looking for combat sites, but would also do radars if I found them.   Wormholes I would look in hoping for targets, then maybe come back in a stealth bomber.  The one kind of signature I had no use for was ore sites (which were sigs back then).  Here was this miner-guy who might want them.  So I just started giving him my bookmarks if I found anything.  Why not?  It cost me only a few seconds given that I was searching down Otela twice a night anyway.

Not too long after that, I joined the Otela Mining Fleet, when I wanted to do something  productive with my Jita alt.  Mining ice seemed perfect: very passive, so that I could spend most of my time on my main monitor with VK doing stuff in wspace.  And yes, in case you are wondering, the Fleet really is up 23/7.  Astecus logs in every morning (his afternoon), after downtime and sets it all up.  He is also on line a surprising amount of the time, white-knighting in a Griffin at the Otela ice.

So I've made a lot of ISK indirectly via Astecus.  He's a good guy in game full of black hats (me included when I can), building a community of peaceful miners.

All of which is to say: I am not objective.  But that stated, Astecus is exactly the sort of player that CCP wants.  He is a "content creator".  I was surprised a few weeks back to see a capital in Otela.  And I was surprised again when Daedalus gave a carrier to Astecus.  But I immediately thought it was a good decision.  Who better?

So I was really pained to hear what happened to Astecus over the past few days.  You can read about it at TheMittani.  In short: either because Astecus starting asking questions about the rules around highsec capitals, or maybe because someone complained, some overzealous GM brought the hammer down on Astecus.  He was accused of breaking the rules (which, if he did at all, was in the most innocent and innocuous possible way), and summarily convicted by the GM.  His carrier would be sent to lowsec and he would be temporarily banned from the game.  Astecus appealed and was told sorry; sentence to be carried out in a few hours.   All of this except the ban I heard from Astecus on Sunday evening while ice mining.

Since Astecus has no use for a lowsec capital and its ISK value was not important to him, he stole something and went suspect, allowing a random set of people in Otela to kill his carrier.  Then he started serving his two week ban.

The whole thing was enraging to me.  Not just the injustice, but the loss of an amazing relic by fiat.  It's like the Taliban dynamiting the Buddhas of Bamiyan.  (OK, I know.  That's hyperbole.)  EVE is an amazing place, and part of that is the fact that it is old.  It is old enough to have a history, not just a made-up lore history, but a history of ancient gameplay that is no longer possible or no longer viable.  This includes quirks like a vanishing handful of highsec capitals.  Guardian Vexors.  Hulkageddon.  Where there are relics, CCP should be supporting them and trying to preserve them or the memory of them, not trying to blow them up on the slightest pretext.

The good news is, CCP has rethought their awful decision.  They have apparently recreated the carrier for Astecus and presumably annulled his ban.  They will be clarifying the rules for highsec capitals.

Good for you, CCP.   I am still vexed by the lack of proportion and wisdom shown by the initial GM.  But the system as a whole has worked.

Efficient Ice Mining in Highsec

I mention from time to time my Jita alt.  He does most of the buying and selling for my corporation, and also flies supplies to us in a freighter.  I keep him in the Forge most of the time, so that he can tweak prices.  When he is not busy buying, selling, or hauling, and I am not needing the combat pilot on his account, I often ice-mine with him.  Ice mining is decent income when the ice is around.  With full Orca boost, you can earn perhaps 20m per hour.  Since you can do this semi-AFK, I often ice-mine while my main is busy in wspace or out exploring.

There's been a bit of discussion recently about how highsec players ought to mine ice for best income.  Gevlon Goblin has taken it upon himself to gank highsec miners until they use Procurers or Skiffs.  He does not seem to realize that these ships are the best miners only when nobody is ganking, and even then, not always.  Partly in reaction to this, Lucas Kell proposes his alternative approach: yield tanking:

...the basis behind Yield Tanking is simple.  If you can make more isk in any given period while losing a Covetor, than you can mining in a Procurer, it's better to go with a yield fit Covetor.  With the stats above, in 10.8 hours, the Covetor makes the same as the procure PLUS it's own cost.  This means if you get ganked every 10.8 hours of mining, you are as efficient mining in a Covetor.

I criticized "Yield" tanking there, so you can go there to see that.  I disagree with both these approaches for ice miners, at least for the average ice miner.  Both Gevlon and Lucas are correct in a narrow way, but not more generally.

Gevlon's mistake is the more obvious: a tank is only useful if there is ganking going on.  If not, you are flying the wrong ship.  Gevlon feels that you should always always always be prepared for a worst case: there is always a ganker potentially about to kill you.  But this is obviously counterfactual, and especially so in ice anomalies.  For in an ice anomaly, there are typically many miners.  If you are the only miner on your grid, and you know there are gankers about, then OK.  Better get a Procurer.  But otherwise, you can probably improve your yield.

Lucas's idea is valid for a reasonable mining method: group mining with an Orca.  But it does not really apply to the average guy, just running a single miner or two.  This guy might get an Orca boost from a friendly local, but he must provide his own transport.  For him, ore hold size is a big deal, because he loses two minutes per load dumping it off.

Also, there is the matter of implants.  If you have dedicated miner pilots, then you don't care about implants other than mining-related ones.  You lose 3% yield (which I don't think Lucas is taking into account) by using an empty clone.  But many characters are not dedicated miners: they are training something else, and have the implants for it.  So for them, getting podded is a serious problem.

My mining philosophy might be called the "Low Hanging Fruit" strategy, as in: don't be the low hanging fruit. Gankers, like anyone else, want things to be as easy and foolproof as possible. So they'll go for the weakest tank and easiest target.  Here are some of the ways in which you can avoid being the low-hanging fruit.

First, get a better tank than others in your anom.  Always be aware of the other miners mining with you, and make sure your barge is not the most easily ganked one. So long as someone else is, you are probably safe.  If nobody else is, it's time for a tankier miner.  I keep a Procurer in the same station as my Retriever; during the Ice Interdiction I flew it routinely.  But it mostly gathers dust.

You may be tempted to fit a ship scanner and scan other ships in your anom, but don't do this.  This makes you look very suspiciously like a gank spotter.  I just assume that if there are several retrievers or Macks in my anom, at least one of them has little or no tank.  And I do have a tank (see below) -- always at least a damage control and cheap shield rigs.  Don't be the low-hanging fruit: pay attention to the other miners in your anom, and if you are the flimsiest, get a harder ship.

Second, try to get a tank such that you require one more Catalyst to kill than an untanked ship of your type.  Gevlon made a table that shows this pretty well:

Untanked, a Retriever tanks just 9700 EHP against hybrid ammo.  A max skill T2 Catalyst can do that much damage in 13 seconds -- plenty of time.  Even a low-skill T1 pilot can kill it solo.  If you put on a damage control, and a few cheap shield hardening rigs for thermal and kinetic, you increase the tank to 16600 EHP.  This requires 22 seconds of max skilled T2 Cat fire.  This is just possible for a T2 Cat in 0.5 security -- but I mine in Otela, 0.6 sec.  So it would require two Cats working together to gank me.  But if they have two Cats, they can gank not just me, but a weakly tanked Mack.  What will they choose, the 40m ship or the 177m ship?  Don't be the low-hanging fruit: fit enough tank to require an extra quantum of gank.

Third, orbit something while you mine, at a range of at least 2500 and preferably 5000.  I orbit the ice itself -- it's conveniently there -- but you might also put out a jetcan for the purpose.  Orbiting the ice has the disadvantage that when that particular iceberg is gone, you go flying off into space.  So you need to pay some attention.

Why does orbiting help deter gank?  Because it makes things harder for the ganker.  The range on weapons gankers use is very low.  Light neutron blaster IIs, which are what T2 Cats use, have an optimal range of 2.5km and falloff 2.3km.  So if their warpin point is even a little bit off from you (and there is always 2500m of randomness in every warp), they may start out of optimal range.  They can easily make mistakes.  As a result, gankers prefer stationary targets.  Well, at least as I write this, most miners are stationary.  Don't be the low-hanging fruit: move while you mine.