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. 

I Steal from a Siphon

I've been out ghostbusting a lot recently.  When I do, I don't always dscan systems I enter.  But sometimes I do.  I almost always do a dscan in the system our wormhole comes down in, as well as searching it down.  Partly that is because I am in my exploration Buzzard.  Partly it is because I like doing small amounts of exploration, even though I have been doing more ghostbusting.

slurp

The other day I found the first siphon I have seen.  This was in Mafra, in Amarr lowsec.  There was nobody in local, so I knew I could check it out safely.  Still, there might be POS guns.  So I cautiously flew to thing at 10 km, just in case.  In fast the POS had no guns at all, just a bunch of hardeners.  So I gleefully grabbed a full Buzzard-load of moo goo.  (This did not get all of it.)  Then I headed back in to wspace.

Returning in my ghostbusting Tengu, I grabbed the rest of what the thing had stolen.  Then I went on my way, said Hi to Sugar, and eventually out into null for serious ghostbusting.  Eventually it was getting late and I returned.  There were people in system, but I threw caution to the winds and warped straight to the siphon.  One of them was there -- in a rookie ship.  I uncloaked and started locking, but this was not fast enough.  He warped.  Then I stole one more small portion of moon goo and headed back into wspace.

That's my complete story of interacting with siphons.  I have looked on many dscans in nullsec and never seen one.  As well as many other scans in lowsec.  Since I cannot stick to any given bit of kspace for long, I cannot really deploy them effectively myself.  But I can see what others are doing.  And on that count, I have to say that much of the debate before Rubicon on them seems to have missed the point.  They are not economical in most situations.  And people just don't want to grief when it does not cause tangible grief.  So they are not being used much.

A Drive-by in Molden Heath

Our wormhole came down in Mimiror, in Molden Heath today.  To be specific, actually it is someone else's wspace system that links to Molden Heath.  Our system links to theirs.  But we routinely refer to the kspace place where our C3a links to as "where our wormhole came down".  And yeah, it's Molden Heath this time.

There are sigs in the system, so I search them down.  Two crappy gas sites, but one combat gas site.  With the semi-voluntary help of one Renee Sanguine, I run it.  I get a few modest valued skillbooks for my trouble.  Since I am in my ghostbusting ship, and Molden Heath is not a faction warfare zone, I figure I will take a run around Molden Heath and see if there are any ghost sites.  (Faction warfare zones are always full of people, so I avoid them.)

I slobber on Sugar

It turns out Molden Heath is rather well populated.  So, I don't find a single site.  As I am working around the ring, I notice that I am going to go through Bosena.  This is where Sugar Kyle has her Cougar store.  (What the "cougar" is about, I don't know.  That's what she calls it.)  So I wonder if I might see her in space.  She's American.  I think.  Actually I have no idea other than that she went to EVE Vegas.  I think.  Which seems rather American.  If she is American, she might be on playing at about the same time as me.

Anyway, she's not in Bosena.  But then, as I am headed through Half, I see her!

There's no ghost site here, so I am just warping across the system.  I can't hold a conversation.  And she doesn't know me from Adam anyway.  But I spew some fanboi praise in local, then jump onward.  She sends me mail: ":)". On the way back (it's a cul-de-sac), I see her pirate-red self in a Jaguar!

Someday I will see The Mittani in local.

After getting stiffed in lowsec, I head out into Etherium Reach for more ghostbusting.  I find 5 sites out there, including a system with two ghost sites in it.

Nobody lives here, obviously

These null ghost sites are hard; not much time.  I do score a few nice things though.  I have yet to see one in wspace, by the way.  My average in null is perhaps one per 20 systems.

A Ghost Site Disappoints

Two nights ago, I went ghostbusting in Stain.  Skunked.  Last night, I did it again in lowsec, out to the EVE gate.  Very few people around, but no ghosts.  Skunked again.

Tonight I fly again.  (I need to think of a name for my exploration Tengu.  Nosey, perhaps.)  Tonight our static C3 has a lowsec, and it comes down in Harner, which is in a corner of Solitude.  I scan down the local system.  Nobody is here but me.  There's a data site, which I run, to modest gain.  And there are two lowsec gas sites.  One has a low-value gas.  But the other... Celadon Cytoserocin.  Currently second most valuable gas in the game.  I think about it a while, then log out to bring in my farming alt.  (He has better gas skills than Von does.)

I mine on and off for a while, twice interrupted by people entering the system.  I mine the gas orbiting at 1000, so it is easy to move off and cloak.  Jayne shows up later and brings down two characters; we suck it dry quickly.  Now back into wspace, dump gas, and change characters.

Back to my original plan.  Ghostbusting.  Where?  Well, let's see if highsec Solitude is well populated.  I would not mind finding a site there first to run, so I could get the feel of it.  But that's unlikely unless it is pretty abandoned, and I just don't know how populous the place is.  So I set course for Gererique.  All of the systems I go through have people in them, lowsec and highsec.  So, I guess this is not the place to bust.  OK, plan adaptation: I am heading for nullsec.  Fortunately, Solitude borders nullsec.  So I can get into Syndicate in just a few jumps.  OK, off I go.

I am a little bit scared of a camp at the border, but I have been this way before and there was none.  (There was a camp going the other direction coming from contiguous empire, but I am not going there.)  And today there is none.  Also no ghost site, but now I am into null and there is nobody here.  So things are looking good.  I am planning to hit the local cluster here, since I don't have a lot of time.

Angry Concord Guy never sleeps.

When I enter Iggy (as I think of I-YGGI), there is a ghost site!  It shows up on my scanner as a normal combat anom, named "Improved Serpentis Covert Research...".  But there's also another player.  Hmm.  I order a warp to the site anyway, and cloak immediately.

Before I leave grid, I see the other player on grid.  He's leaving.  Nice!  It's all mine!  Except... it isn't.  I get a popup for the ghost site when I warped to it, but when I land, there is no ghost site.  And it has disappeared from my list of anoms.  Hmm.  My guess is, the guy I saw leaving just ran the site and left.  It despawned between when I warped and landed. 

A minimalist site -- very un-CCP-like

That's a disappointment.  Nothing to do but keep looking.  I set course north.  Two hops later, in A-ZLHX, I get lucky again!  Another ghost site.  And also another player.  I warp to the site, cloaked.  Here is what it looks like: there are four cans in a square, with about 20km between cans.  You warp into the center of it, I think.  (I warped to 10, being cautious, and ended up near the lower-left can.)  Above each can is a flavor object (bunker, small tower).

I sit for a second gathering my thoughts.  I do not really want to run the site with anyone in local.   On the other hand, if she is in local in a frigate maybe I can kill her when she comes to the site.  So I look at dscan for her: no ship appears.  I check out the system: it's all in range.  This makes me suspect she is cloaked.  But then I notice there is a station.  OK, she's probably there.  No way for me to check, though.  And it's been long enough that I doubt she is going to come in a frig.

Well, Nosey is designed to run away pretty well.  And I can't just sit here.  So, I mentally formulate and rehearse my escape plan, and then uncloak and start scanning cans.  I will want to get the can with the best stuff first, since it may be all I have time for.  First can: some minerals and some junk.  Second can: junk.  Third can: junk.  Fourth can: minerals and junk.

BOOM

Hmm.  Should I hack for basically nothing?  I would if alone, but it's not a good risk:reward proposition.  So I don't.  Still, I am curious to see what will happen.  So I back off from all four cans, and wait.

It all goes down as I have read on the forums. After about a minute and a half, Serpentis pirates appears.  I am cloaked so they are no problem.  Shortly, they blow up all the cans, and then they warp off in all directions.  (I don't think I have ever seen NPCs do this; it's kind of cool.)

I have a look at the rest of the small area I am in.  No more ghost sites.  And that is about it for my play time tonight.  Then I decide to log off here, so I can try again tomorrow. 

A Run Through Indian Country

Nevermore

It's a new day, and we still don't have our Ravens.  That means, hole rolling time.  But not yet.

I log in and check the probe scanner.  Two signatures.  One will be our static, but what is the other?  Perhaps nice connection from C2?  One way to find out.  I warp out and launch probes.  The first site I scan is our static.  I bookmark the sig but I don't fly to it; I don't want to unzip yet.  The second sig is a gas site.  Well, I am glad I did not instantiate our static.  Since I am here alone anyway, I think I will just slurp some gas while I wait for Jayne to show up.

I activate the gas site immediately on finding it.  Then I do stuff on the second monitor, safe in my POS, waiting for the sleepers to show up.  After about 20 minutes, I warp over in a Drake.  There they are, two sleeper cruisers.  And here are my Scourge missiles.  Oh yeah, and hobgoblins.  Pound, pound, buzz buzz buzz.  (Those latter are my imagined drone noises -- bees.)  The sleepers are both dead and I return in a light salvager to salvage.  But no nice nanoribbons.  All told, I get about 500 thousand ISK.  Woo!

Now the site is clear, and I get a Venture gas miner and put it in orbit of the C72 cloud, and start sucking.  I am ice mining on the other monitor.  Boring squared; time to read a book.  I can bat an eye at the discovery scanner every few minutes and it should be good enough.  So long as no new sigs appear, I am zipped up and 99% safe.  Even if a new sig does appear, the site has to be scanned down, and I am moving, and I have +2 warp core stabilization.  So, it should take at least a minute or two for even the best ganker to kill me.

After about 20 minutes, Jayne shows up.  He usually does PI immediately, so I watch his characters come and go for a bit as his PI alts are logged on and off.  Once things stabilize I tell him about the gas and he joins me at the gas site.  The mining is much faster with three, and techII miners.  Soon we are done, the gas clouds are gone, and sig vanishes.  Back to a nice, tidy one signature. 

Now it's time to start searching for a decent route in to import our Ravens.  I bought the Ravens yesterday; they are all ready to go in Jita, just waiting for a transshipment station to point the freighter at.  Let's see what C3a has today.

I open the hole by flying to it in my cloaky Tengu.  We have not fleeted yet, so we pause to do that.  Now Jayne can warp to me, and both of us can enter C3a.  Staticmapper, tell us highsec static!  Bzzt.  Sorry, try again.  It's lowsec yet again.  Well, there are eight sigs to look for.  We do that.  None are highsec.  Two are lowsec.  Where do they go in kspace?  Jayne pops out to look.  The better one is 26 jumps to Jita and 5 of them lowsec.  Not good enough.  Time to roll.

We back out and spike the hole.  It dies when it is predicted to, without drama.  Then we scan down the new hole, and go in.  Excellent -- highsec!  There is no live tower on dscan from the wormhole, but there are warp bubbles.  Strange.  The outer planet is outside of dscan range, so I warp out to have a look.  Uh oh.  Two active towers out here, and there are ten ships on scan, and not types one normally sees idling at towers.  There is a variety of combat ships including an Onyx.  And there are warp bubbles, and I see some cans and drones.  These guys may have a trapped tower.

I dscan from the moon I am at to locate the towers among the 6 moons.  The larger tower with six ships at it is at one moon, with lots of bubbles and assorted cans that might decloak me.  Another moon has the other tower, and it has no bubbles.  I figure that even if the locals do have traps set up around their POS, they are unlikely to have trapped the direct warp between the two POSes, since they probably want to do that.  So I warp to the safe moon first.  There is a medium POS with four ships, including the Onyx, and all are manned.   I report the manned ships on coms.  These guys seem ready for PVP.  Could it just be PVE?

Jayne has been scanning down the the system.  He reports that he has found the highsec static -- and it is completely warp-bubbled.  My first thought is that the guys are gearing up to run sites.  Maybe we can gank someone.  But what about that other tower?  Are those ships manned or not?

Not literally

I fly over, prepared to try to GTFO if I fall out of warp at a bubble and there is something close.  But there is no such problem.  Instead I see a tower in a bubble-wrap.  It has a reinforcement timer with about four hours left.  Suddenly my gestalt shifts: this is not a corp gearing for PVE action, but a siege!  Sure enough, I get info on the owner of the tower, and the ships.  They are different.  The siege appears to be a Russian corp, judging by the Cyrillic in the corp description.  That, and the timer, suit me.  It's about nine PM for me; that means in Moscow it is about five AM.  The ships we see have got to be a skeleton crew manning the siege to prevent breakouts before the timer exits.

It would kind of fun to stay around to see what happens, but I don't intend to be awake in 4 hours.  And also the Russians would probably at least bubble cage our hole, and probably pop it, to prevent us doing exactly what we might try to do if they let us.  Can we get good PVP?  Maybe, but these guys seem ready for PVP and there are a lot more of them than us.  They've already scouted us.  Nope, not good odds.  Declined.

We cannot use the highsec here.  So we are going to pop it ourselves.  It's ironic.  First highsec we get in a long time, and we can't use it.

Meanwhile, Hiljah has logged in.  This is good -- we can use two Orcas now.  So this time I let Jayne and Hiljah do the popping, while I sit in C3a and watch the wormhole and dscan.  As I tell the guys, it is unlikely that the Russians will attempt to gank us.  They don't want this connection, so as soon as they realize we are popping it (which the Orcas make clear enough), they will probably just leave us alone.  Of course they might not, and so we have me on this side, and a Falcon and Scorpion on the other.  Opsec is important.

Just as the first Orca warps to the wormhole, Jayne reports a stealth bomber in our system at the wormhole.  It traverses the wormhole.  He says attack, but I cannot lock a bomber in time, so I don't bother to try.  The bomber moves away from the wormhole and cloaks.  I expect the pilot entered our system and watched until our Orca made it clear what we were planning to do.  The Orca jumps and jumps back.  Then after a bit, the second Orca and Scorpion.

Now we wait for polarization to abate.  Dscan, dscan, etc.  Nothing on grid and nothing on dscan.  Now another Scorpion pass, and then the final Orca.  I come through just before the end.  The outward pass of the Orca destabilizes the wormhole to critical, and all is well.  The return pass pops it.

Well, we are now back to square zero.  I have my probes out even before the Orca returns, ready to search.  It takes a few moments for the discovery scanner to realize the wormhole is gone, and for the new wormhole to be created.  Then I scan it down.  I warp over, and others warp to me.  We enter.

Jayne groans as he reports the results of the staticmapper lookup: lowsec.  I am intrigued to see two ships on dscan.  There's also two towers, so the ships are probably sitting at one empty.  I'll find out.  Are they at a tower?  I narrow-beam dscan and look around.  OK, inner three planets have no moons at all.  There's a single moon on planet 4: yes, there they are.  In fact, this whole system has only two moons, total.  I know where the other tower is if I need to go there.  But I warp to the tower with the ships.

The ships are manned.  But they are just sitting there.  Their alignment tells me they have not been idle too long, so that is encouraging.  But after a minute and they are not moving, I tell the guys to start scanning.

Scan, they do.  Quickly they find a nullsec, and the static lowsec.  Jayne pops out for a look.  There's good news and bad news.  Good news is: we are 6 jumps from Jita!  Bad news: three of them are lowsec and it's faction warfare (which generally means more pilots).  But we might be able work with this.  I ask Jayne to scout the systems to the edge of highsec.  There are few people in each system, but no camps at gates.  OK, good enough.

At Jita, my alt buys 16 warp core stabilizers, and throws them in the freighter with the Raven parts.  All told, about 750 million in ships and parts.  Now I undock and trudge towards Nourvukaiken.

Meanwhile, I see one and then the other of the two pilots in C3a log out.  OK, that is handy.  No interference.

Freighting in highsec is semi-AFKable, so while I do that, I return to our home tower and ditch my Tengu.  We will pod out with four pilots to fly in our four Ravens.  Pods are almost uncatchable in lowsec, so it should be pretty safe getting to highsec.  It is the other way I worry about.  On the way out, I notice that the last lowsec system is Tama.  Tama!  It's notoriously camped, and there are 17 pilots in local.  But they are not at the gate.  No change of plans.

My alt is the first to the transshipment station.  But soon Von is there and trades him for all four Ravens and parts.  I assemble the Ravens, imaginatively naming them "Raven 1", "Raven 2", etc.  It is a real station, not a POS, so save/restore fittings works here.  That makes the process faster.  The Ravens' lowslots get a damage control and four warp core stabilizers.  Let the pirates chew on that!

Holy Ravens, Batman!

The other guys arrive in pods or rookie ships, and I hand out Ravens.  Now we are ready to go, and it's time for our mad dash across lowsec.  I fleet warp us to the Tama gate.  We jump in and... there is one pirate at the gate, red, in a Navy Hookbill.  He can't do anything to us: he won't have three scramblers fit.  And even if he did, if he aggresses the gate guns will kill him.  Conversely, we cannot do anything to him, either.  With four warp core stabs fit, our lock time on a frigate is probably 2 minutes.  We warp without interference.  I am a bit concerned about the second system -- there might have been time for a gang to organize -- but nobody is there.  And we sail on through, and finally back into the safety of wspace.  When we get back I see a local has noticed us on his dscan.

Stealing from Killers of Pirates

It's late in the evening.  The corp as a group has just been running sites in C3a, but we're done now, and everyone has logged off except me.  This particular C3 has no towers at all in it, dead or alive.  So it is a decent candidate for sale.  I jump my babysitter alt in, and immediately he sees a Imicus on dscan.   Before we ran sites, we scanned down all the wormholes, so I know the guy must have come either from the lowsec static, or from a nullsec wormhole.  I expect it is the lowsec, and I point the dscan there.  Meanwhile, the Imicus deploys probes and cloaks.  But I can see his probes on dscan so I know where he came in.

Hmm.  Maybe it is time to be a monster for a while.  With Von, I jump into Artemis, my cloaky Tengu, and warp out to the wormhole to C3a.  I jump, and move off the hole as fast as I can.  But before I do this, I see the probes vanish on dscan, and then a flash of the Imicus again.  It looks like he left the system.  I don't know why.

Hopeful, I warp over to the lowsec static and orbit it at 3000.  Maybe he will come back in, and even be polarized.  But, nothing happens for a few minutes.  Well, maybe he is on the other side... it's lowsec, but worth a look.

I pop through, and there is nobody close to the hole.  There are four pilots in system, though.  A dscan shows something interesting: there are some Angel wrecks, and 10 Hobgoblin IIs, as well as a Drake and Myrmidon.  The system has 5 signatures.  My guess is the Drake and Myrmidon are at a POS or will be soon, and the hobs are abandoned somewhere.  Well, I can look for them with Artemis.  Or I can get a much cheaper ship.  I like the latter option better, since there may be exploration sites in among those signatures.

I head back into wspace to my POS and reship into my exploration Buzzard.  My plan is to head for null, but I want to get those drones I saw out, and maybe do the lowsec system sites if there are any.  Since I will be looking for drones, I load combat probes while crossing C3a.

I exit back into lowsec.  Well, well.  Now there are 6 pilots in local.  I quickly fire probes and cloak, then start looking for sigs and drones.  The drones are gone from dscan.  This surprises me a little; I guess the Drake and/or Myrm were using them, although why the Myrmidon was using hob IIs I don't know.  There are several combat sites which I ignore.  Local drops to four people.  Next, a wormhole.  Ignore.  Local drops to three.

Now I find a gas site.  Ordinarily I ignore these, but I am not feeling very ambitious tonight, so maybe I will mine some gas.  (Some of the gas in lowsec, I have discovered, is very high priced indeed.  Much better than any of the wspace gas one gets in C4 or lower.)  I take the extra scan to resolve the signature.  It's an Angel Gas Processing site, which is a mixed combat and hacking site.  First you have to kill a bunch of guards, and then bring in a codebreaker.  So it is of little use to me.

As I am moving probes to scan for the last site, local drops to one.  Just me.  Hmm, I guess maybe the locals did not like seeing combat probes.

With just me here, things are different.  Maybe I can run the gas site, using a PVE Tengu.  I will have to look up this site on eve-survival, but first let me warp over there at 100km, to scope it out and so I can check what is actually there against what eve-survival says.

I warp in at 100.  All the guards are dead.  Yellow wrecks are everywhere, all looted except one frigate wreck.  But the scatter containers are intact!  I look at local again to be sure: still just me.  Yeah.  I am going in.

Angel Gas Processing Site, fully looted

To be precise, actually I am going out first.  The nearest container is about 100km from me, and the furthest is 120km.  I turn around and microwarp 30 km so that I can warp to the furthest one.  Now I lock it and cargo scan it.  It's got an implant!  Ooh.  I start cracking.  The minigame level is low intermediate: 50/20 firewalls only it appears.  Even with my medium hacking skill those are almost certain.  I find the core.  After a few seconds learning what kind of mini container I want at neural-boost, I am ready.  (I want Equipment mini containers.)  I trigger the loot explosion.  It is pretty small and I easily get the implant.  How much?  20m?  Er... no, not really.  300k.  Blah.

Now I scan and go hack the next container.  It has a gas harvester I, which is worth at least a million ISK.  So that's worth hacking.

The third container has the real prize: a Nanite Control skillbook.  This, it turns out, is worth something like 300m ISK.  Oh yeah.  I get another gas harvester from the last can.

300m richer I decide to head back home.  Thank you my unknown Drake and/or Myrmidon benefactor.

I need to get busy actually selling that C3 system.  So I look for comparables on wormholesales.com.  But you know, C3s with lowsec, and moderately good PI, just are not that valuable.  I find better holes selling for 200m.  Is that worth the hassle, and tying up my babysitter?  I don't know so.  Maybe it is the nanite skillbook talking, but I think I can do better.  I bring my babysitter back home.

Odyssey Exploration for Newbies

Jester has a post up ruminating upon the idea that maybe exploration is a feature that breaks "Malcanis' Law", which states that "Whenever a mechanics change is proposed on behalf of 'new players', that change is always to the overwhelming advantage of richer, older players."  I think exploration is great for newbies to make money with.  So, let's discuss it.

"Exploration" is what I am calling the profession of moving around in a light ship, scanning for data and relic sites to hack.  

Note that before Odyssey, exploration used to be a somewhat different mini profession, where you moved around looking for (mainly) combat sites, with (maybe) radar (data) or mag (relic) sites as modest add-ons.  True newbs might concentrate only on the radar and mag sites, but these did not pay very well, at least in highsec, and outside of highsec, there were rat guards that made running such sites impossible without substantial DPS -- and if you had guns, the combat sites paid better.  (These days, there must be players out looking for combat sites and their rewards, but I am not sure what to call them.)

So: exploration.

Hacking in Odyssey

The day Odyssey came out, my wspace system got a highsec static via its static C3.  I went down looking for a radar site (now a "data" site), or a mag (now "relic").  And on the first try, I found one!  I had a little more scanning and bookmarking to do.  Came back and.... nothing there but some asteroids.  Someone had run it in few minutes it took me to get back in a Heron.

I'm going in!

Last night our kspace static plopped down in lowsec, in Black Rise.  So again I scanned from my Tengu and found a data site.  This time, I came back in a Buzzard (wanted the cloak), and I got to it first.  Indeed it appears factional warfare space is a great place for a Odyssey hacker.  Lots of people moving around but none of them were interested in me.  I never saw any probes but my own in ~2 hours of scanning and hacking.  I suppose they were all too busy looking for buttons to spin or PVP in small ships.

Anyway, after the first site I jumped one hop and found a system with 4 data sites and 1 relic site.  Since each site had 5 cans or so (8 IIRC in the relic), I got a substantial number of hacking minigame attempts in.  Ali Aras wrote up a very good overview on how the new game works at TheMittani.  Go read that if you are interested in learning.

I rather enjoyed the minigame.  It is a normal EVE window and does not take over your screen -- you can still dscan fine, although you need to remember to do that.  The game itself is not that hard and the strategy seems pretty basic.  Try to expand your network of explored nodes.  Grab utilities ASAP.  Hold off on exploring Data Caches until you've explored around them (in case they turn out to be firewall nodes, although I found a lot more of them were utilities than nasties.)  Don't attack any nasty nodes (firewalls, antivirus) until you have to.  (The one exception is Restoration Nodes, which you should almost always attack immediately.)  My success rate was pretty high; I'd guess I succeeded on about 80% of the cans.  This was with mediocre skills on my part -- Hacking III, but in a Buzzard w/ Covert Ops IV, and the Buzzard had two rigs Small Memetic Algorithm rigs.

I disliked the loot spew pretty strongly.  Just like 98% of all other players.  It is very "unrealistic" -- I complained about that to CCP on the forums last week (based on info from sisi).  As released, it is still clicky and fussy.  You have to be zoomed in near enough to differentiate items from each other (since you are looking for only some of the can types).  But zoom in too much and they move so fast they are hard to click on.  Also it appears to be the case that being close to the cans matters, since the "tractor" effect (which is not a tractor beam!  Just a tractor beam!) takes longer for distant cans and time is short.  So this means you also have to fly your ship to stay near cans.  This also was fussy and annoying.

The sense of losing my loot was pretty strong.  I was getting maybe half of it.  About halfway through the night I was joined by an alliance mate.  He just scooped loot, and this helped.  With two of us we got probably 90% of the loot.  Partly this is because I think he was better than me at piloting, flying around towards the loot.  Incidentally, my friend also had a codebreaker and he did one can.  I found this out by trying the same can, and it turns out that only one analyzer at a time can be activated on a can.  That's right -- if someone beats you to a can, you can't hack until he gives up.

I think that I could improve my play a lot on loot-spew gathering.  In particular I noted that when you mouse over some cans, you sometimes get a little preview of what is in it shown near your HUD.  (Maybe the ones I did not get this for were empty?  Or I just did not hover long enough on a moving object?  (Arghh!!)  Dunno.)  So it may be possible to mouse over and ignore a good part of the spew.  OTOH it may just be that I was not doing it right somehow.  The time was very short and I was frantically busy trying to control the UI.

I was disappointed when I got to the last site, which was the one relic site.  I had an analyzer (oops -- "relic analyzer"), and was eager to open the minigame and see something different.  But it was not different, practically at all.  Other than having less coherency (due to the fact that I had rigged by Buzzard with the rigs that are for data hacking), the game was identical.  There were "firewalls", etc., in my relic.  The loot was different (and at least for me, crap -- this is after all Gurista space and Guristas have crap salvage).  That was about the extent of the difference.  I expect CCP will iterate on this.  At least make some different themed art and give the firewalls different names.

I am going to try to explore some with a cargo scanner to attempt to make the spew more tractable.