I've been low activity in EVE lately. A lot of this has to do with other games occupying my time -- Clash of Clans, Star Wars Commander, and Castle Clash. But it also has to do with luck. I've had a good run of luck in having my system zip itself up. When I am zipped, I hate to waste it. Instead, I head out into our local anoms for some carebearing.
Last night was an example. I've had five gas sites in my system for a while, which I have carefully not touched. Most scouts coming through don't seem to instantiate sites, so the sites tend to persist until I want them. Several of these gas sites had been there for a week.
Yesterday morning, I had three connections. My two statics, and a connection from a C4 with a lot of towers. These people were fairly busy yesterday. But then they popped their own wormhole in the afternoon, leaving my static C4 in EOL. So I knew I had just my two connections. By the time I logged in last night for real playing, my static C4 had self-terminated, leaving only my C5.
The C5 system, I knew from yesterday's fruitless roam, was unoccupied. So the chance of getting traffic from it is slight. My system is very likely half-zipped. I'll picket the C5 wormhole, while I do stuff in my system.
First, I trigger all my gas sites except one. I do not think I will have time to slurp them all. Then I wait for 20 minutes for the sleepers to come. (I get off an attack or two in Clash of Clans.)
A bit later I get Von into his Rattlesnake and kill the four gas sites. Two of them are Ordinary Perimeter Reservoirs -- the site with sentries. Bouncers and precision cruise missiles deal with these nicely. Then on to two Bountiful Frontier Reservoirs. Gardes and precision cruise missiles kill the cruiser rats, then a Gecko kills the frigates. (Yes, Geckos can track frigates. 690 DPS. Sometimes they one-shot them. Go figure.)
After the sites are killed, I warp back home to switch into a Coercer to salvage. The sentry sites don't have anything, of course. But each of the other two sites has about 40m in salvage and blue loot. Good pay for the amount of time it takes.
Next I have some PI to do. Von is first, but all my PI characters (three of them, on two accounts) need to do it. So I get into an Epithal, and start making the rounds. Each planet gets about 50000 units of P1 goods; this is enough for about two weeks of operations. Each planet produces a complementary P1 good, and a P2 good. The P1s sometimes get carried on to a complentary planet. Those which don't, and the P2 goods, go back to my tower.
Ordinarily when I do PI, I do it in an insecure system. Each time I warp out from my tower, I blind a hunter by warping to a safespot inline with a planet I am not going to. But I skip that tonight, speeding the process. Nobody uncloaks and kills me.
Von watches the wormhole for a while as Otto does his PI. Then I swap again, and log off Von for his PI and gas sucking alt. The alt does PI first. Then on to the gas sucking. He has perfect gassing skills, and an implant. So he sets to work.
This is work for him, maybe, but not for me. I have nothing to do for hours now, except listening for the wormhole noise on my picket, and strobing the discovery scanner every 10 or 20 minutes to check for new wormholes. I dutifully do this, minus the occasional break for coffee and bathroom. No wormholes connect. Evidently nobody sneaks in while I am completely AFK. I do see a new combat anom appear. I watch as the sites go down one by one. Every half hour I have to warp back to my reaction tower to dump the gas.
The C5 connection goes EOL, and I am tempted to use my picket to help mine. But I leave him there just in case. (I explore through EOL wormholes. Others might too.) Also, I want to know when the C5 goes away, because I would like to enter C5a when I am done for the night and check it out.
Hours later, it's time for bed. I've tapped out three of the sites and a bit of the fourth. 80m in sleeper loot, and 100+m more in gas. The C5 wormhole is still alive.
When you read a blog like this, it's easy to get the notion that EVE is really interesting all the time. But I only write the good parts. I write about the one percent moments, and some of the boring stuff that sets them up. I rarely write about the 99% when that's all there is. But it's there, and like everyone else, that's what I spend most of the time doing. Scanning. Safe PVE. Gassing.
Showing posts with label PVE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PVE. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
Wednesday, December 24, 2014
Fun in C1
It's Christmas eve. I am not working. So, in between family I work in some Christmas EVE. I am out for a roam in my Manticore.
My system's static C5 connects to C5a, as it always does by definition. C5a has Russians in it, and they are still awake. But it looks like they are winding down if they were ever doing anything. I lurk about hoping they do something, but apart from a few moves in between far-scattered POSes, they don't. Eventually I give up and scan their system. I see a Tengu and Loki appear, neither of which I can do anything about even if I did get them outside of their POS bubble.
I'm about done here. Onward. C5a has a static C1, which I just scanned. Ever since Hyperion, C1s, 2s, and 3s are great places to hunt. So I am eager to get in there and see what's up.
Nobody on scan, and I warp around a bit to find one live tower with nobody home, and nothing else. But there are fifteen sigs. Time to scan. My scanning reveals eight data sites (four of them sleeper sites), four relics, and three wormholes. One wormhole is the one I entered from, and another is the N110 static to highsec. I jump out to find the exit in Caldari space, eight jumps from Jita. The final wormhole is an EOL and highly disrupted connection from C5. Well, that probably won't be much of a problem.
I do note one interesting thing: one of the sleeper data sites has a talocan frigate in it. So I confirm for myself that these do exist. (I suspect all sleeper data sites have the potential.) I bookmark a spot near the talocan. Perhaps I can run this site. But not now -- later. Now I have family to attend to.
Later, I return to the computer. There's a small amount of time before dinner. A dscan in C1a shows something interesting: a Helios! The local POS is out of range, so that Helios must be out in space somewhere. I see his sisters probes, so he appears to be an explorer looking for loot.
Sure enough, in a minute I find him on narrow-beam dscan in one of the data sites I scanned earlier. I throw it into warp, to 100km. When I land on grid, the setup is perfect. He is heading to a can about 170km from me. I start to warp to it at 10km, then stop to make a perch just in case. Then I warp over. The Helios approaches the can and scans it, then starts hacking. Perfect.
I set myself to orbit the Helios at 1000m. Then I wait a few seconds, and when i am in scrambler range, I uncloak. And the expected happens. Getting out of the minigame and warping is practically impossible in time, and he does not manage it. So, dead Helios. I try, but the pod warps free. I loot the wreck, and the loot fairy is in tune with the season. The Sister's launcher survived.
Now I lurk a bit more, but I've got to go. I head back into my system just in case.
Later, I return. A quick trip through C5 and into C1 shows nobody around. OK. I log in my alt, thinking about running that data site for the talocan. Otto gets in a Falcon, then warps down to watch the C1's highsec entrance. Then I warp back to get my small-site running Tengu. I find a relic analyzer and put it in my cargo, then head down the chain.
Arriving in C1, I warp into the data site and start in on the sleepers.
The difficulty is comparable to an easy gas site, except three in a row. This is nice. I use rage missiles on most of the cruisers, then javelins on a few that pull range beyond normal assault missile range. Then I kill the frigates. Then I refit to salvage, and clean up. Finally, I get the relic analyzer on and hack into the talocan frigate. It's an easy puzzle, which is trivial to run with virus strength of 40.
I quickly find and crack the system core. I am rewarded again, with two small hull sections.
Merry Christmas. Probably won't post again for a few days.
My system's static C5 connects to C5a, as it always does by definition. C5a has Russians in it, and they are still awake. But it looks like they are winding down if they were ever doing anything. I lurk about hoping they do something, but apart from a few moves in between far-scattered POSes, they don't. Eventually I give up and scan their system. I see a Tengu and Loki appear, neither of which I can do anything about even if I did get them outside of their POS bubble.
I'm about done here. Onward. C5a has a static C1, which I just scanned. Ever since Hyperion, C1s, 2s, and 3s are great places to hunt. So I am eager to get in there and see what's up.
Nobody on scan, and I warp around a bit to find one live tower with nobody home, and nothing else. But there are fifteen sigs. Time to scan. My scanning reveals eight data sites (four of them sleeper sites), four relics, and three wormholes. One wormhole is the one I entered from, and another is the N110 static to highsec. I jump out to find the exit in Caldari space, eight jumps from Jita. The final wormhole is an EOL and highly disrupted connection from C5. Well, that probably won't be much of a problem.
I do note one interesting thing: one of the sleeper data sites has a talocan frigate in it. So I confirm for myself that these do exist. (I suspect all sleeper data sites have the potential.) I bookmark a spot near the talocan. Perhaps I can run this site. But not now -- later. Now I have family to attend to.
 |
| Talocan and guard. |
 |
| (Jaws theme.) |
I set myself to orbit the Helios at 1000m. Then I wait a few seconds, and when i am in scrambler range, I uncloak. And the expected happens. Getting out of the minigame and warping is practically impossible in time, and he does not manage it. So, dead Helios. I try, but the pod warps free. I loot the wreck, and the loot fairy is in tune with the season. The Sister's launcher survived.
Now I lurk a bit more, but I've got to go. I head back into my system just in case.
Later, I return. A quick trip through C5 and into C1 shows nobody around. OK. I log in my alt, thinking about running that data site for the talocan. Otto gets in a Falcon, then warps down to watch the C1's highsec entrance. Then I warp back to get my small-site running Tengu. I find a relic analyzer and put it in my cargo, then head down the chain.
Arriving in C1, I warp into the data site and start in on the sleepers.
 |
| Squishing small sleepers. |
 |
| Puzzle can't touch me. |
I quickly find and crack the system core. I am rewarded again, with two small hull sections.
 |
| Lucky loot. |
Merry Christmas. Probably won't post again for a few days.
Sunday, October 12, 2014
Shut Out Twice
It's the weekend, and The Boy is busy with another boy. A busy Boy means EVE time. The weekend means I can interact unwillingly with a lot more people. And this weekend in particular there is a contest on to score little blue loot. Let's see if I can find something interesting happening.
I appear in my system, then set off down the chain of a C3 that connected to us last night. It is EOL, but I have its approximate time of connection, so I have about an hour left before it might close on me. I head in.
I look through the remains of last night's scanning, down a few systems then back up. Nothing and nobody seen, except some probes. I don't have the time to linger to try to figure out whose those are.
Last on my todo list is the home system of Sleeper Social Club, as it turns out, which I found last night and backed out of due to too many Sabres. But this morning it is quieter, so I have a look around. Strangely, there's a Retriever out mining by itself. A trap? Maybe, but I don't think so. I am going for it.
I warp on grid. It's 140km from me. I have to back away from it just a bit, then I can warp to 10km to the asteroid it's mining. It's orbiting the asteroid (movement is good!), but it so happens to be perpendicular to me.
It is easy to fly where it will be, and then (at 6km) I uncloak, lock, and open fire.
It's over quickly. The miner is alert and the pod flees. I grab two Strip Miner Is as my well-earned loot, then GTFO out of the ore site and indeed I get GTFO of the system. This is a large corp, presumably well-able to communicate so I won't get anything else even if there is someone doing something stupid. Also I don't want to be trapped in here.
I head back up the chain and warp to C3a->C4a... heading home. I land on grid where the wormhole is... or rather was. No wormhole. Oops. I guess the timing of our bookmark was a bit later than I had thought. Oh well. I'll have to scan out of this chain, then scan out from my home with an alt.
I spend the next hour or two doing that. I find a ghost site in a C1 with highsec access. Ghost sites in wspace are rare and well worth doing on average. So I remain in system to watch, as I switch monitors and get busy with Otto, scanning out.
I decide to take my ghostbusting Tengu. It scans well, and I plan to take it across highsec to myself. So I set off. Scanning, scanning, over the bounding main. Lots of scanning. I find a highsec exit three jumps down our chain in a C2, but unfortunately it is some 25 jumps to where Von is. Ugh. I'll look a little more. Hanging off that C2 is a second C2, with a lowsec static. This one is just eight jumps to Von; I'll take it. Unfortunately it is also EOL. I'll try to make it snappy.
I warp Otto across highsec, meeting up in a station to hand the Tengu over to Von. (Otto cannot use T2 codebreakers.) Von returns to the C1, and the ghost site is still there. Yay me. I warp in to run it. Scanning the cans shows a blueprint for a 'Magpie' mobile tractor unit, which is worth ~250m ISK. I sweep across the minigame in solid shape, but I cannot find the system core! Virus suppressor, crunched. Now I have to start hitting firewalls. My virus weakens dramatically... the core is not on the far side as is typical. I start back filling, touching every node. No luck. Now I have to use my remaining virus strength attacking firewalls. Finally I do find the core, with only two nodes left unknown. But I cannot win because my virus is down to five strength. Rats.
I move off, and the Guristas come. Boom goes my can as I clear the codebreaker's range, then the Guristas apply damage. This is all as expected. My Tengu can tank it all easily, and eventually they leave. I cloak and move off, no richer in ISK and poorer in time.
Oh well. Sometimes you score, sometimes you get nothing.
Back out to highsec, and I give the Tengu back to Otto. Then we burn across highsec towards the lowsec exit that is EOL. Jump. Jump. Von gets ahead, so he is first to the wormhole... except, no wormhole. Dammit.
My path to the other entrance is down to 20 jumps. I start in on it. Ugh.
I appear in my system, then set off down the chain of a C3 that connected to us last night. It is EOL, but I have its approximate time of connection, so I have about an hour left before it might close on me. I head in.
I look through the remains of last night's scanning, down a few systems then back up. Nothing and nobody seen, except some probes. I don't have the time to linger to try to figure out whose those are.
Last on my todo list is the home system of Sleeper Social Club, as it turns out, which I found last night and backed out of due to too many Sabres. But this morning it is quieter, so I have a look around. Strangely, there's a Retriever out mining by itself. A trap? Maybe, but I don't think so. I am going for it.
I warp on grid. It's 140km from me. I have to back away from it just a bit, then I can warp to 10km to the asteroid it's mining. It's orbiting the asteroid (movement is good!), but it so happens to be perpendicular to me.
 |
| New cloak effect in action. |
It is easy to fly where it will be, and then (at 6km) I uncloak, lock, and open fire.
 |
| Boom. |
I head back up the chain and warp to C3a->C4a... heading home. I land on grid where the wormhole is... or rather was. No wormhole. Oops. I guess the timing of our bookmark was a bit later than I had thought. Oh well. I'll have to scan out of this chain, then scan out from my home with an alt.
I spend the next hour or two doing that. I find a ghost site in a C1 with highsec access. Ghost sites in wspace are rare and well worth doing on average. So I remain in system to watch, as I switch monitors and get busy with Otto, scanning out.
I decide to take my ghostbusting Tengu. It scans well, and I plan to take it across highsec to myself. So I set off. Scanning, scanning, over the bounding main. Lots of scanning. I find a highsec exit three jumps down our chain in a C2, but unfortunately it is some 25 jumps to where Von is. Ugh. I'll look a little more. Hanging off that C2 is a second C2, with a lowsec static. This one is just eight jumps to Von; I'll take it. Unfortunately it is also EOL. I'll try to make it snappy.
I warp Otto across highsec, meeting up in a station to hand the Tengu over to Von. (Otto cannot use T2 codebreakers.) Von returns to the C1, and the ghost site is still there. Yay me. I warp in to run it. Scanning the cans shows a blueprint for a 'Magpie' mobile tractor unit, which is worth ~250m ISK. I sweep across the minigame in solid shape, but I cannot find the system core! Virus suppressor, crunched. Now I have to start hitting firewalls. My virus weakens dramatically... the core is not on the far side as is typical. I start back filling, touching every node. No luck. Now I have to use my remaining virus strength attacking firewalls. Finally I do find the core, with only two nodes left unknown. But I cannot win because my virus is down to five strength. Rats.
I move off, and the Guristas come. Boom goes my can as I clear the codebreaker's range, then the Guristas apply damage. This is all as expected. My Tengu can tank it all easily, and eventually they leave. I cloak and move off, no richer in ISK and poorer in time.
Oh well. Sometimes you score, sometimes you get nothing.
Back out to highsec, and I give the Tengu back to Otto. Then we burn across highsec towards the lowsec exit that is EOL. Jump. Jump. Von gets ahead, so he is first to the wormhole... except, no wormhole. Dammit.
My path to the other entrance is down to 20 jumps. I start in on it. Ugh.
Friday, October 10, 2014
Phoebe: Bones
CCP has a new dev blog out featuring stuff coming up in Phoebe. There's a lot of things of moderate interest to me. But then there is this:
Also, scanner window separation:
Of interest to everyone: UNLIMITED SKILL QUEUE!
First time I've been excited about a new release in a while.
Data sites get better reward balance and a variety of new items will be possible to find in these exploration sites. Data and Relic sites found in Null Security Space will also be present in wormhole Class 1-3 systems. An upcoming blog will describe the changes.(My emphasis.) This means for the first time there is a reason for unarmed frigates to come into wspace to seek their fortune... and also to be killed by me! Yay!
Also, scanner window separation:
there will be separate windows for Directional Scanner, Scan Probes and Moon scanning.Huzzah!
Of interest to everyone: UNLIMITED SKILL QUEUE!
in Phoebe you will be able to construct and start training skill queues of unlimited time length.Finally, not in the dev blog but via Nosy, there is a very interesting rumor:
Cloaked ship decloaking others on SISI.I'll be testing this tonight. If this is true, it's another godsend for me. [UPDATE: Just tested. Yes, two cloaked ships decloak each other.] Imagine it: you see probes in a system you've already scanned down. So you warp around to each wormhole sig at zero, trying to find the one the guy is scanning next. If you uncloak, it's because the other guy warped to the sig at zero. He uncloaks too, of course. For me, GTFO if he's in T3; engage and destroy if covert ops. Should be particularly fun for T3s.
First time I've been excited about a new release in a while.
Thursday, August 14, 2014
The Tractor Problems
It's the weekend. I have killed three ships in here today, and I am looking for one more kill. It's a mobile tractor unit that is ... somewhere. Somewhere out in space. I can see it on dscan, but so far I have not made the time to look for it. Well, now I will. I figure I will create a bookmark for myself. Von can come in with his stealth bomber and blow it up. I wonder what it is in it?
I bring my alt Otto in. He's in his Cheetah, with combat probes. A quick probing narrows down the location, then bang. A warpable point. I warp in at 20km. There's a warning.
Woops. It seems it is in a live combat site. I quickly abort my warp, then warp in at a more safe 70 kilometers. I don't want to drop into the middle of a bunch of sleepers!
I should have realized it was in a site. That explains how the thing can still be there, unblown up, after half a Saturday of people connecting to this system. It has guards.
I land on grid, and sure enough. It does indeed have guards: two Sleepless Sentinels, and four sleeper sentries. The Sentinels are very close to it, no more than 20km off. I look up the site at eve-survival: it's a Quarantine Area. Nasty battleships: they "[scram, web, nos]". Although I don't think any sleepers actually scram as in warp scramble; what they do is warp disrupt. Still: I can see why nobody has killed the tractor unit.
Thus: the tractor problem. Kill a mobile tractor unit, then loot it, against two close-by sleeper battleships and four sleeper sentries.
This is an interesting problem.
What about the direct method? Kill them! My two characters can probably kill the sleepers eventually using the standard ships my corp uses to run C4 anoms. One would be a logistics, the other a battleship damage dealer. However, the nossing might be too much for just two ships. Also, it will take time in any case, time where I would be stuck me out in a hostile system, warp disrupted by the sleepers. I would rather not risk that. Furthermore, the battleships are the trigger for a new wave. So, either I run the site completely, which may be too much DPS and will take one damage dealer quite some time. Or else I cannot kill the last battleship. But it won't stop disrupting, which means I have to either jam it out, or distract it with drones. I am not 100% sure either idea would work.
All in all, the direct method is not very promising.
Can I kill the tractor without killing any defenders? Well, I might warp in my guys, kill the tractor, loot, and then try to escape. I think that microjumpdrives always work against sleepers (they disrupt, not scramble). But I am not sure about that. In any case, it is still risky. And my logistics ships cannot microjump.
What about without microjumpdrives? I might be able to tank the sleepers in a Tengu, then burn out with a 100mn afterburner. Or a microwarpdrive, if they don't scramble. But again, I am not sure.
As I sit, puzzling, I realize that there's more IRL stuff I need to do. So I set off to do that. I am absent for about two hours.
When I get back, I dscan. And I guess my problem has been solved -- by someone else. There is no mobile tractor on scan, but there is a mobile tractor wreck. I warp to the tractor's location at 70 km to have a look. Sure enough: the tractor is gone, and a tractor wreck is there.
The tractor wreck has loot in it. I cannot fathom why anyone would partially loot it, so my guess is this means they did not loot it at all. And that means, I can get the loot. (As I write this, I realize there should be a killmail for the tractor unit, but I cannot find it.)
So here is a new tractor problem: loot a tractor wreck against two close sleeper battleships who warp disrupt and four sleeper sentries.
This is a much easier problem. All I need to do is warp to it, grab the loot, and warp out before the sleepers can lock me. Otto can do it in his Cheetah. Sleeper battleships take a while to lock. The Orthruses, I don't know. But I figure that I won't be there for more than a few seconds. A Cheetah is tiny. It should be OK.
Challenge accepted!
I warp Otto to the C5 wormhole, jump, then warp directly to the tractor wreck. He lands on grid, and I open the tractor wreck and prepare to loot it. I see the loot, and then it is gone.
Blam. I am in my pod. What happened? I guess the Orthrus sentries lock really, really fast. Damn it.
Challenge failed.
I warp Otto's pod back home, then go sit at my tower and stew. During the brief moment when I had the wreck open, I saw blue loot and I also saw two Gecko drones. This is worth working a bit more on.
OK, new tractor problem: loot a tractor wreck against two close sleeper battleships who warp disrupt and four sleeper sentries that lock almost instantly and deal significant damage.
I look up the Orthrus at chruker.dk: 1404 damage per hit, thermal and em. The range appears to be 250km. That's strange; the similar sentry drone in C4 sites -- Argos -- has a limited range, no more than about 80 or 90 km. I look up Argos to see what its range supposed is: also 250km. Apparently it's a bug of some sort that prevents it shooting longer. Well, it seems likely that the same bug should affect both kinds of sentry.
My new plan: use my own tractor unit. Get as far from the sentries as possible, deploy it, then warp out before the sleeper battleships can lock and/or damage. Wait for it to drag in both the tractor wreck and the Cheetah wreck. Then warp back in, scoop it fast, grab loot, and flee.
Since I am not sure about whether the Orthrus will fire at 150km+ or not, this time I want enough tank on my ship to take a hit. It should be 5600 damage, so I take a Heron and fit it with a medium shield extender and some hardeners. I think it should take a round.
Meanwhile, Von is in the anom slowboating to a good position for the tractor unit. Tractor units have a max range of 125km. I get to about 120km from the wrecks, with the Orthruses almost directly inline and further off, so the nearest sentry is about 160km. Hopefully that will be beyond the range they fire at. I save a bookmark here and Von moves away from it.
Otto is ready. I warp Otto to the C5 wormhole, jump, then warp directly to the new bookmark. He lands on grid, and I deploy my tractor unit. Then I warp to a perch I saved on the way in and...
Blam. I am in my pod. Ugh, not again. I am not sure what happened there. Obviously the Orthrus sentries do more damage than I estimated, so either chruker has them wrong (doubtful) or I used EFT wrong calculating the tank on that Heron. Damn it.
I warp Otto off to home. My tractor unit drags in the Heron wreck immediately, then sets to work on the distant tractor wreck and Cheetah wreck. This still takes less than the five minutes that Otto will be polarized.
OK, new tractor problem: scoop a friendly tractor unit against two distant sleeper battleships and four sleeper sentries that lock almost instantly and deal significant damage.
This one is easy, though a bit risky. The sleeper battleships are now out of warp disrupt range, so I can use pretty much any ship I want. I choose to take a Tengu, mainly due to lack of good options. It is plenty hard to take a round or two of Orthrus fire, and I doubt the battleships will even lock it. I am only really concerned about human predators, but I won't be on grid long, and they've only had a few minutes to prepare. I use my normal sleeper-killing Tengu, but refit to have four points of warp core stabilization.
This time, it goes without a hitch. I land on grid, grab my tractor unit, then loot the resulting can. The sleepers open up, but this thing can take it easily, and I warp off.
The loot is pretty good, about 160m worth. Looking at it, I can tell it was a remote repping drone boat that got killed and left it behind.
Here's one of the things I love about EVE. When other people are playing in the same universe, sometimes they do things partially and you run into it. In this case, someone had a bad day and lost a Dominix. But they created an interesting puzzle. No developer would ever think to create a site like this intentionally. But it happened anyway, because EVE is a sandbox. And I got to solve it, albeit at a higher cost than I should have.
In retrospect, I'd have done better to just take the Tengu I finally used. That would have saved two ships.
I bring my alt Otto in. He's in his Cheetah, with combat probes. A quick probing narrows down the location, then bang. A warpable point. I warp in at 20km. There's a warning.
 |
| Ignored, of course. |
I should have realized it was in a site. That explains how the thing can still be there, unblown up, after half a Saturday of people connecting to this system. It has guards.
 |
| Cheap kill void where prohibited. |
Thus: the tractor problem. Kill a mobile tractor unit, then loot it, against two close-by sleeper battleships and four sleeper sentries.
This is an interesting problem.
What about the direct method? Kill them! My two characters can probably kill the sleepers eventually using the standard ships my corp uses to run C4 anoms. One would be a logistics, the other a battleship damage dealer. However, the nossing might be too much for just two ships. Also, it will take time in any case, time where I would be stuck me out in a hostile system, warp disrupted by the sleepers. I would rather not risk that. Furthermore, the battleships are the trigger for a new wave. So, either I run the site completely, which may be too much DPS and will take one damage dealer quite some time. Or else I cannot kill the last battleship. But it won't stop disrupting, which means I have to either jam it out, or distract it with drones. I am not 100% sure either idea would work.
All in all, the direct method is not very promising.
Can I kill the tractor without killing any defenders? Well, I might warp in my guys, kill the tractor, loot, and then try to escape. I think that microjumpdrives always work against sleepers (they disrupt, not scramble). But I am not sure about that. In any case, it is still risky. And my logistics ships cannot microjump.
What about without microjumpdrives? I might be able to tank the sleepers in a Tengu, then burn out with a 100mn afterburner. Or a microwarpdrive, if they don't scramble. But again, I am not sure.
As I sit, puzzling, I realize that there's more IRL stuff I need to do. So I set off to do that. I am absent for about two hours.
When I get back, I dscan. And I guess my problem has been solved -- by someone else. There is no mobile tractor on scan, but there is a mobile tractor wreck. I warp to the tractor's location at 70 km to have a look. Sure enough: the tractor is gone, and a tractor wreck is there.
 |
| Thanks, anonymous tractor killer! |
So here is a new tractor problem: loot a tractor wreck against two close sleeper battleships who warp disrupt and four sleeper sentries.
This is a much easier problem. All I need to do is warp to it, grab the loot, and warp out before the sleepers can lock me. Otto can do it in his Cheetah. Sleeper battleships take a while to lock. The Orthruses, I don't know. But I figure that I won't be there for more than a few seconds. A Cheetah is tiny. It should be OK.
Challenge accepted!
I warp Otto to the C5 wormhole, jump, then warp directly to the tractor wreck. He lands on grid, and I open the tractor wreck and prepare to loot it. I see the loot, and then it is gone.
Blam. I am in my pod. What happened? I guess the Orthrus sentries lock really, really fast. Damn it.
Challenge failed.
I warp Otto's pod back home, then go sit at my tower and stew. During the brief moment when I had the wreck open, I saw blue loot and I also saw two Gecko drones. This is worth working a bit more on.
OK, new tractor problem: loot a tractor wreck against two close sleeper battleships who warp disrupt and four sleeper sentries that lock almost instantly and deal significant damage.
I look up the Orthrus at chruker.dk: 1404 damage per hit, thermal and em. The range appears to be 250km. That's strange; the similar sentry drone in C4 sites -- Argos -- has a limited range, no more than about 80 or 90 km. I look up Argos to see what its range supposed is: also 250km. Apparently it's a bug of some sort that prevents it shooting longer. Well, it seems likely that the same bug should affect both kinds of sentry.
My new plan: use my own tractor unit. Get as far from the sentries as possible, deploy it, then warp out before the sleeper battleships can lock and/or damage. Wait for it to drag in both the tractor wreck and the Cheetah wreck. Then warp back in, scoop it fast, grab loot, and flee.
Since I am not sure about whether the Orthrus will fire at 150km+ or not, this time I want enough tank on my ship to take a hit. It should be 5600 damage, so I take a Heron and fit it with a medium shield extender and some hardeners. I think it should take a round.
Meanwhile, Von is in the anom slowboating to a good position for the tractor unit. Tractor units have a max range of 125km. I get to about 120km from the wrecks, with the Orthruses almost directly inline and further off, so the nearest sentry is about 160km. Hopefully that will be beyond the range they fire at. I save a bookmark here and Von moves away from it.
Otto is ready. I warp Otto to the C5 wormhole, jump, then warp directly to the new bookmark. He lands on grid, and I deploy my tractor unit. Then I warp to a perch I saved on the way in and...
Blam. I am in my pod. Ugh, not again. I am not sure what happened there. Obviously the Orthrus sentries do more damage than I estimated, so either chruker has them wrong (doubtful) or I used EFT wrong calculating the tank on that Heron. Damn it.
I warp Otto off to home. My tractor unit drags in the Heron wreck immediately, then sets to work on the distant tractor wreck and Cheetah wreck. This still takes less than the five minutes that Otto will be polarized.
 |
| Run away!! |
This one is easy, though a bit risky. The sleeper battleships are now out of warp disrupt range, so I can use pretty much any ship I want. I choose to take a Tengu, mainly due to lack of good options. It is plenty hard to take a round or two of Orthrus fire, and I doubt the battleships will even lock it. I am only really concerned about human predators, but I won't be on grid long, and they've only had a few minutes to prepare. I use my normal sleeper-killing Tengu, but refit to have four points of warp core stabilization.
This time, it goes without a hitch. I land on grid, grab my tractor unit, then loot the resulting can. The sleepers open up, but this thing can take it easily, and I warp off.
The loot is pretty good, about 160m worth. Looking at it, I can tell it was a remote repping drone boat that got killed and left it behind.
 |
| Some nice loot. |
In retrospect, I'd have done better to just take the Tengu I finally used. That would have saved two ships.
Sunday, June 15, 2014
Watching a Vexor Blob
It's midday, the weekend. I am wrapping up a ghostbusting expedition to lowsec. The expedition started in wspace, a routine patrol in my Manticore looking for anything interesting. I'd hopped down my chain, looking for anyone in C4b, then C2a, and C4c. Nobody home. But C4c had a ghost site.
I ran home, got my ghostbusting Tengu, and returned. I got a nice 'Magpie' mobile tractor unit blueprint from it. Then I went out to lowsec, since I was already in the thing. Out in lowsec I found one ghost site, but did not get much from it. I also saw a bunch of the new Mordus legion sites, the besieged covert research facility. These evidently have tough enough rats that one cannot easily do them in the sort of ship people generally have out in lowsec. I found a lot of them, and in clumps. Two systems had three of them each, along with several capsuleers in local. My guess is some of those guys wanted to run the sites but they wanted the system to be empty. Interesting sites. My ghostbusting Tengu has very little offense, so I was not tempted to try.
My time in EVE is running short -- things IRL -- so I turn to home. I warp through a few lowsec systems I have already visited -- no new ghost sites, no surprise. Then I warp to the C2 static exit to low. I jump, and dscan according to habit. Nothing has changed. So I warp to the wormhole to C4b, and jump. Again, I dscan as normal. This time, however, something has changed. There are a great many Naxy Vexors on scan, as well as two Augurors, two Ishtars, an EOS, etc. Also, there are sleeper wrecks, and a battlecruiser wreck. (Oops!) The battlecruiser, by its naming scheme, appears to have been one of theirs. (I did see a pod much earlier in C2a. Hmm.)
There are two anoms left that I can see. I bookmark them both ASAP. Then I move off the wormhole and cloak. Dscan shows the enemy seems to be in the nearer one. I think about flying over to have a look, but what would I do in my 500m Tengu with loot worth 300m? Nothing. I might as well fly home now and get my Manticore. I am not attacking a Vexor blob in any ship. But sleepers require salvaging, and there is the possibility here that these guys will leave a salvager out where I can get at it.
I warp across the system, then jump to my home system. I hope they did not see me. Then I go home and change into my Manticore, and fritter away my polarization for five minutes in a safespot cloaked. Then I warp back to my static and jump back into C4b. There's nobody there to greet me at the wormhole. Dscan shows the blob is still there, although the two anomalies are not. (This is why you bookmark them.) Using dscan I figure out which ex-anom they are in, and I warp to it at 100km. Interestingly, I get the anom pop-up even though the site itself is not on my probe scanner.
Once on grid, I can see they are not using mobile tractor units. I look more closely and yes, there is a Noctis there in the middle of the blob. This is unfortunate for my hunting plans. If I was really hot, I might be able to catch it just as they fleet-warp, if they do that. But that will be a while; they've barely touched the wreck field. I don't have the time to wait today. I have to be gone real soon. In fact I should be gone now, but I am pushing things because targets. You know how it is.
What can I do? Well, let me have a look at the other anom. I can see on dscan that there are wrecks out there, and I expect they are in it. Rather than mess with narrow dscan, I go.
I warp over, and sure enough. Wrecks. I figure I might loot a few, just to let the enemy know I've been around. I'll start with the battlecruiser wreck. It is surprisingly unlooted, so who knows what might be on it. Probably more than the 10m of blue loot I can expect on a large sleeper wreck.
I bookmark the wreck, then bounce off a CO about 2AU, warping back right to the wreck. I end up 2100m from it -- not uncloaked, even. So I uncloak and grab. This fills my hold, so I grab the stack of missiles that did not fit, and then decide it's enough. I have said my hello to the Vexor fleet, and now I really do have to go. So I warp home.
On the way home I check out the loot. The window says 38m, but I can't see what costs so much. I have to mouse over each individual item to check its price. Can you spot it? It's the "Basic EM Ward", which evidently is a rare item. (I have looked for this kill on killboards, but nothing is there I can find. The system is J145129 if you want to look.)
I dump off my stuff in my tower's "out" folder, then warp to my safespot and disconnect en route. Gotta go.
I ran home, got my ghostbusting Tengu, and returned. I got a nice 'Magpie' mobile tractor unit blueprint from it. Then I went out to lowsec, since I was already in the thing. Out in lowsec I found one ghost site, but did not get much from it. I also saw a bunch of the new Mordus legion sites, the besieged covert research facility. These evidently have tough enough rats that one cannot easily do them in the sort of ship people generally have out in lowsec. I found a lot of them, and in clumps. Two systems had three of them each, along with several capsuleers in local. My guess is some of those guys wanted to run the sites but they wanted the system to be empty. Interesting sites. My ghostbusting Tengu has very little offense, so I was not tempted to try.
My time in EVE is running short -- things IRL -- so I turn to home. I warp through a few lowsec systems I have already visited -- no new ghost sites, no surprise. Then I warp to the C2 static exit to low. I jump, and dscan according to habit. Nothing has changed. So I warp to the wormhole to C4b, and jump. Again, I dscan as normal. This time, however, something has changed. There are a great many Naxy Vexors on scan, as well as two Augurors, two Ishtars, an EOS, etc. Also, there are sleeper wrecks, and a battlecruiser wreck. (Oops!) The battlecruiser, by its naming scheme, appears to have been one of theirs. (I did see a pod much earlier in C2a. Hmm.)
There are two anoms left that I can see. I bookmark them both ASAP. Then I move off the wormhole and cloak. Dscan shows the enemy seems to be in the nearer one. I think about flying over to have a look, but what would I do in my 500m Tengu with loot worth 300m? Nothing. I might as well fly home now and get my Manticore. I am not attacking a Vexor blob in any ship. But sleepers require salvaging, and there is the possibility here that these guys will leave a salvager out where I can get at it.
I warp across the system, then jump to my home system. I hope they did not see me. Then I go home and change into my Manticore, and fritter away my polarization for five minutes in a safespot cloaked. Then I warp back to my static and jump back into C4b. There's nobody there to greet me at the wormhole. Dscan shows the blob is still there, although the two anomalies are not. (This is why you bookmark them.) Using dscan I figure out which ex-anom they are in, and I warp to it at 100km. Interestingly, I get the anom pop-up even though the site itself is not on my probe scanner.
 |
| Vexor Blob |
 |
| BC wreck has loot! |
What can I do? Well, let me have a look at the other anom. I can see on dscan that there are wrecks out there, and I expect they are in it. Rather than mess with narrow dscan, I go.
 |
| Spot the expensive item |
I bookmark the wreck, then bounce off a CO about 2AU, warping back right to the wreck. I end up 2100m from it -- not uncloaked, even. So I uncloak and grab. This fills my hold, so I grab the stack of missiles that did not fit, and then decide it's enough. I have said my hello to the Vexor fleet, and now I really do have to go. So I warp home.
On the way home I check out the loot. The window says 38m, but I can't see what costs so much. I have to mouse over each individual item to check its price. Can you spot it? It's the "Basic EM Ward", which evidently is a rare item. (I have looked for this kill on killboards, but nothing is there I can find. The system is J145129 if you want to look.)
I dump off my stuff in my tower's "out" folder, then warp to my safespot and disconnect en route. Gotta go.
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Spooking a Vargur
It's the AM, and I am out hunting in my Manticore. Bookmarks from last night are valid; my system has only its static wormhole. I cross into an eerily deserted C4b. Most systems in wspace have customs offices at each planet, usually player-owned but sometimes Interbus. Rarely you see systems like this one, with no COs at all. Such systems are rarely occupied, and this is no exception.
This system is not scanned. I guess my colleague just instatiated our own wormhole, per company policy, but did not cross. OK, I can work with that. I purge the old bookmarks from last night's roam, and realize too late I also deleted the bookmark to the wormhole in my system. Oh well, have to re-do that one later. I deploy probes and get cracking. There are two other wormholes incident. One is to C2, the other to C5. I go to C2a first, since that will get me a highsec access just in case something happens.
C2a is quite dull. But I do get my highsec. I wait outside five minutes. Then I come back in. This system has a couple wormhole connections, but I think I will try the C5 from C4b next. I am hoping to ninja mine core gas if I cannot find anyone, and it is closer to home. I warp across C2a, jump back into C4b, then cross to the wormhole and jump.
C5a has one tower, and dscan shows nobody around. I check the system size: medium. Everything is in range except one outer planet which has no moons and no sigs. Nothing to find there. OK, I'll scan. I move off the wormhole, fire probes, then cloak. Now I get busy scanning.
My first order of business is to check for core gas sites. There are two sigs out of the nine that are appropriately low in signature. (You can tell this by the size of their sig-bubble; lower signatures have bigger bubbles.) I ignore all the other sigs, then scan down these two. The first is a data site: ignored. The second is another data site. Ignored.
There's no good gas. But there are still the other seven sigs. I'll look for more wormholes. I de-ignore everything, then re-ignore the two data sites. There's a few of the sites that got scanned down into points incidental to the earlier scanning. So I start with these. Since I was scanning using 4AU probe distance, I should be able to use 1 AU on these.
The first sig is a wormhole, which I warp to. It is a nullsec. This opens a new possible activity: maybe I will ghostbust later. I sit at the wormhole while continuing to scan. There's a low-value gas site -- ignore.
There is a second wormhole which I almost get on the first try. As the second scan runs, I notice there is a Heron on grid. My torps won't do much to him, particularly if he moves. Even so, I can kill him if I get close and he just sits there. I am cloaked, of course, and I am 20km off the wormhole. So I cannot close quickly. But I start heading at him anyway, on the off chance that he's an idiot and just sits there uncloaked until I crawl into scrambler range. But before I get more than a few thousand meters, he cloaks. He seems to have come in from nullsec. Strange that I did not hear it. Hmm. Well, it's too late to hide my probes; unless he's an idiot he knows someone is around. I'll keep scanning.
The remaining sigs go down quickly. I find the static, which is both EOL and highly disrupted. (Won't be going there.) I find a connection to further C5 space. And then I find two more nullsec wormholes.
I occasionally dscan, trying to see if there are probes out from the Heron. Strangely, I never see any. However I do see a new ship on dscan: a Vargur. Is it at the tower? It appears to be. But it disappears while I am still finding the tower among a swirl of moons. I have my dscan range reduced to find the tower, so I try again using max range: nothing. The Vargur is no longer in system, or else it cloaked. It probably logged out. I bookmark the tower anyway, just in case. I am hoping the Vargur logged out and I will see an Epithal or something else I can gank log in. But this does not happen.
After a few minutes of lurking about, I guess the Vargur pilot is not logging back in. What should I do with myself? Well, I have a route to nullsec, so maybe I'll do some ghostbusting. With three different null possibilities, at least one should lead to a nice idle area of null. So, I warp to the first nullsec wormhole to pop out and look around.
I pop out. The first thing I notice is one guy in local. Boo. But I also notice there is a ghost site.
The local is probably idle, explaining his non-running of the ghost site. Or perhaps he simply has anoms off and has not noticed it yet. Or, perhaps he's an explorer in a light ship. That Heron I saw, maybe. Those seem like the most likely possibilities.
Ghost sites are quite variable, but some have some very nice treasure. I want it. Should I wait out my polarization? I figure being faster to return is worth the small risk of being killed because polarized, so I duck back into C5a immediately. There's nobody waiting there, and I warp back to C4b, and then home to C4a. Then I reship into my ghostbusting Tengu. I have to pause to re-scan my wormhole out, but this is easy since its 3D location is shown on my system map. Then I fly to the wormhole, remember to bookmark it, and traverse, again risking polarization. Then back into C5a, and across to the nullsec exit.
Out in null, the guy is still in local. I move off the wormhole, fire probes, and cloak. These are combat probes, loaded back when I scanned in my system. I doubt I will be able to find this guy, or I will find him at a tower. If he is at a tower he is probably idle/AFK, I can run the ghost site fairly safely. But if he is exploring or otherwise not AFK, I hope that my probes will scare him off. So I want them to be seen. I don't do anything tricky; I first cover the whole system with 32AU probe distance. There's a ship close to a planet.
At first I think the ship is right at the planet, i.e. in a POS. So I consider centering at the planet. But then I realize it is a bit too far out for that to be likely. So I center on the hit, and scan again. I get 100%. It's a Vargur. Huh? That can't be a coincidence. I think to dscan, and sure enough there's a Vargur on dscan, with the same ship name as I saw in C5a. Aha. He's from C5, then, not a local.
I can't see what he's doing here; no site appears on my list. I bookmark him, and consider warping over for a look. But I certainly cannot gank him and it is very unlikely that I can prevail against whatever he is doing there. (Later I realize I missed his site, a DED level 8 Serpentis somethingorother, because I had only Ships selected for display on my scanner.) But a Vargur is unlikely to come and gank me in the ghost site. Should I run it with him here?
As I consider that, I move the probes up above the system and into a blanket-scanning configuration. (Here's a link to Penny on how to perform a blanket scan.) Then I scan again. Ah. The Vargur is gone. It came from the wspace system connected via the wormhole I am orbiting at 20km. It is still in Local. Therefore it must have cloaked up in the system.
The wormhole sounds. I watch. A Heron appears, then immediately returns into wspace. That's odd. I probe-scan again, and once again I see a ship signature: the Vargur.
What's he doing? Dscan shows the Vargur. Then I see it on grid. It lands on the wormhole, and bwoomp, I am alone. (This whole guaranteed-safe-by-infallible Local thing is really nice, except that how in blazes does anybody hunt out here?) The Heron must have been a scout to make sure the wormhole was clear on both sides.
Ha ha! My probes did just what I had hoped. I love it when a plan comes together.
Now I warp to the ghost site. En route I uncloak and get my tank turned on. I land on grid, and get into the normal tempo of the thing, scanning the cans and then going to the best one first. I add an occasional extra glance at Local. Nobody appears. I get two cans, with one low-value blueprint each, before the Serpentis come.
I also discover something I had not realized: the range on my Data Analyzer II is 6000m. That doesn't seem like much but it is a significant help in these sites, because time is limited and you are decelerating when you come up to a can.
Then I head out into null. After a successful ghostbusting run, I return to find the guy in the system again. This time I just warp past as fast as I can. I'm not mean, just greedy.
This system is not scanned. I guess my colleague just instatiated our own wormhole, per company policy, but did not cross. OK, I can work with that. I purge the old bookmarks from last night's roam, and realize too late I also deleted the bookmark to the wormhole in my system. Oh well, have to re-do that one later. I deploy probes and get cracking. There are two other wormholes incident. One is to C2, the other to C5. I go to C2a first, since that will get me a highsec access just in case something happens.
C2a is quite dull. But I do get my highsec. I wait outside five minutes. Then I come back in. This system has a couple wormhole connections, but I think I will try the C5 from C4b next. I am hoping to ninja mine core gas if I cannot find anyone, and it is closer to home. I warp across C2a, jump back into C4b, then cross to the wormhole and jump.
C5a has one tower, and dscan shows nobody around. I check the system size: medium. Everything is in range except one outer planet which has no moons and no sigs. Nothing to find there. OK, I'll scan. I move off the wormhole, fire probes, then cloak. Now I get busy scanning.
My first order of business is to check for core gas sites. There are two sigs out of the nine that are appropriately low in signature. (You can tell this by the size of their sig-bubble; lower signatures have bigger bubbles.) I ignore all the other sigs, then scan down these two. The first is a data site: ignored. The second is another data site. Ignored.
There's no good gas. But there are still the other seven sigs. I'll look for more wormholes. I de-ignore everything, then re-ignore the two data sites. There's a few of the sites that got scanned down into points incidental to the earlier scanning. So I start with these. Since I was scanning using 4AU probe distance, I should be able to use 1 AU on these.
The first sig is a wormhole, which I warp to. It is a nullsec. This opens a new possible activity: maybe I will ghostbust later. I sit at the wormhole while continuing to scan. There's a low-value gas site -- ignore.
There is a second wormhole which I almost get on the first try. As the second scan runs, I notice there is a Heron on grid. My torps won't do much to him, particularly if he moves. Even so, I can kill him if I get close and he just sits there. I am cloaked, of course, and I am 20km off the wormhole. So I cannot close quickly. But I start heading at him anyway, on the off chance that he's an idiot and just sits there uncloaked until I crawl into scrambler range. But before I get more than a few thousand meters, he cloaks. He seems to have come in from nullsec. Strange that I did not hear it. Hmm. Well, it's too late to hide my probes; unless he's an idiot he knows someone is around. I'll keep scanning.
The remaining sigs go down quickly. I find the static, which is both EOL and highly disrupted. (Won't be going there.) I find a connection to further C5 space. And then I find two more nullsec wormholes.
I occasionally dscan, trying to see if there are probes out from the Heron. Strangely, I never see any. However I do see a new ship on dscan: a Vargur. Is it at the tower? It appears to be. But it disappears while I am still finding the tower among a swirl of moons. I have my dscan range reduced to find the tower, so I try again using max range: nothing. The Vargur is no longer in system, or else it cloaked. It probably logged out. I bookmark the tower anyway, just in case. I am hoping the Vargur logged out and I will see an Epithal or something else I can gank log in. But this does not happen.
After a few minutes of lurking about, I guess the Vargur pilot is not logging back in. What should I do with myself? Well, I have a route to nullsec, so maybe I'll do some ghostbusting. With three different null possibilities, at least one should lead to a nice idle area of null. So, I warp to the first nullsec wormhole to pop out and look around.
I pop out. The first thing I notice is one guy in local. Boo. But I also notice there is a ghost site.
The local is probably idle, explaining his non-running of the ghost site. Or perhaps he simply has anoms off and has not noticed it yet. Or, perhaps he's an explorer in a light ship. That Heron I saw, maybe. Those seem like the most likely possibilities.
Ghost sites are quite variable, but some have some very nice treasure. I want it. Should I wait out my polarization? I figure being faster to return is worth the small risk of being killed because polarized, so I duck back into C5a immediately. There's nobody waiting there, and I warp back to C4b, and then home to C4a. Then I reship into my ghostbusting Tengu. I have to pause to re-scan my wormhole out, but this is easy since its 3D location is shown on my system map. Then I fly to the wormhole, remember to bookmark it, and traverse, again risking polarization. Then back into C5a, and across to the nullsec exit.
Out in null, the guy is still in local. I move off the wormhole, fire probes, and cloak. These are combat probes, loaded back when I scanned in my system. I doubt I will be able to find this guy, or I will find him at a tower. If he is at a tower he is probably idle/AFK, I can run the ghost site fairly safely. But if he is exploring or otherwise not AFK, I hope that my probes will scare him off. So I want them to be seen. I don't do anything tricky; I first cover the whole system with 32AU probe distance. There's a ship close to a planet.
At first I think the ship is right at the planet, i.e. in a POS. So I consider centering at the planet. But then I realize it is a bit too far out for that to be likely. So I center on the hit, and scan again. I get 100%. It's a Vargur. Huh? That can't be a coincidence. I think to dscan, and sure enough there's a Vargur on dscan, with the same ship name as I saw in C5a. Aha. He's from C5, then, not a local.
I can't see what he's doing here; no site appears on my list. I bookmark him, and consider warping over for a look. But I certainly cannot gank him and it is very unlikely that I can prevail against whatever he is doing there. (Later I realize I missed his site, a DED level 8 Serpentis somethingorother, because I had only Ships selected for display on my scanner.) But a Vargur is unlikely to come and gank me in the ghost site. Should I run it with him here?
As I consider that, I move the probes up above the system and into a blanket-scanning configuration. (Here's a link to Penny on how to perform a blanket scan.) Then I scan again. Ah. The Vargur is gone. It came from the wspace system connected via the wormhole I am orbiting at 20km. It is still in Local. Therefore it must have cloaked up in the system.
The wormhole sounds. I watch. A Heron appears, then immediately returns into wspace. That's odd. I probe-scan again, and once again I see a ship signature: the Vargur.
 |
| I see you. You can't see me. Except on Local. |
Ha ha! My probes did just what I had hoped. I love it when a plan comes together.
Now I warp to the ghost site. En route I uncloak and get my tank turned on. I land on grid, and get into the normal tempo of the thing, scanning the cans and then going to the best one first. I add an occasional extra glance at Local. Nobody appears. I get two cans, with one low-value blueprint each, before the Serpentis come.
 |
| Ghost site go boom. |
Then I head out into null. After a successful ghostbusting run, I return to find the guy in the system again. This time I just warp past as fast as I can. I'm not mean, just greedy.
Monday, April 21, 2014
ISK in Wspace: Small Sites
Most income in wormhole space comes from running sleeper combat anoms. Above C2, this is usually done as a small gang activity. But there are other sites, the "small" sites, as I think of them. These are sites with only modest sleeper defenders, which can easily be done solo. This is true of all of the gas sites, excepting the two "core" gas sites that are only found in C5/C6. Similarly it is true of all of the mining anoms (aka "rocks") in C4 and below. There are two sites found only in C5/C6 that are considerably more difficult: Rarified Core Deposit and Exceptional Core Deposit.
These small sites are a source of income that I think many people in wspace ignore. This post is a guide on small sites: ship fittings, how to run them, and what you can expect to earn doing so.
Preparation
To kill small sites, first you must find them and summon their sleepers. Each site should be scanned down and bookmarked. In addition, you should instantiate each site as soon as you find it. To instantiate a site, you must initiate a warp to it. Note that you do not have to actually warp there; you can cancel the warp immediately (control-space to cancel) and the site will still be created. "Triggering" a site is a synonym for "instantiating" it. When a site is triggered, a timer is started. In about 20 minutes, the site's sleepers will appear. Obviously, the sleepers must be there for you to kill them!
Beyond triggering all the sites, you should explore with an eye towards operational security. Note all the towers: if none, great. If one, so-so. Check wormhol.es to see when they are active; hope it is sometime else. If many tower and wide activity, probably not a good system to run sites in. Similarly note any ships or probes you see: seeing any ships/probes at all is a bad sign. Bookmark all wormholes, and find out where they go. If the system next door is active, don't run sites. In your home system, you might zip up (pop all wormholes).
Sleeper Killing
EFT using my skills shows its offense as 555 DPS, with defense 386 against omni damage. There are two things to note. First, use a tech-II shield boost amp if you have the skill for that. (I don't.) This increases the tank to 402 DPS. Second, recall that the max damage for small sites is about 300 DPS, and I like a bit extra. If your skills are low you might find not enough defense; in that case, replace a ballistic control with a damage control. Alternatively, buy a faction shield booster. A Pithum C-Type Shield Booster costs about 90m ISK and will multiply your defense by about 1.6x. Or even more alternatively, just warp out and return. None of the sleepers in any small site has warp scrambling.
I use basic T1 assault missiles to save money. Assault missiles perform well against sleeper frigates and cruisers, and have just enough range to get to most of the cruisers even when they have moved out to their preferred orbit. Note that there are some of the cruisers (in the Bountiful) that want to orbit just beyond the range for normal assault missiles, at least with less than all-level-V missile skills. For these, bring along some Scourge Javelins, or just run the site fast. I sometimes could not quite run the site fast enough when I had a similar Tengu but lacking one of the launchers. With the sixth launcher, I can.
Running small sites is straightforward. Warp in, park, lock up sleepers and start killing them. Put out a mobile tractor. When the tractor has looted the second-to-last wreck, scoop up the tractor and grab the blue loot it has collected. Concurrently, kill the last sleeper. Warp to the next site.
There is a slight variation that is helpful in some of the rocks sites. Some of these sites have sleepers which start 100km or so from the warp-in point. You can wait for them to come to you, but you can speed things up by warping closer to them. Look for asteroids in their general direction that are at least 150km from you, then warp to one such rock at 70 or so. This will cut the range to about 50km; from there you still have to close. And also in this case, you'll want to bookmark your tractor's location so that you don't waste time later on in the salvager.
Salvaging
Once you've run all the small sites you want, switch into a light salvager, return, and salvage. For this you want a salvaging ship with one tractor beam (neither more nor less), many salvagers, and plenty of capacitor. Ideally you'd have a lot of targets (8 or so). There is a decent chance of being ganked while salvaging if you mess up on opsec, so you want the salvager to be as cheap as possible. Here's the fitting I recommend; note that similar performance is possible using many destroyers.
Testing
So, how does that Tengu perform given a plethora of gas sites? I did an empirical test the other day. The particular system available through our static had seven gas sites. It had one each of the Barren Perimeter Reservoir, Minor Perimeter Reservoir, and Token Perimeter Reservoir. The "perimeter" sites are the lower difficulty ones; they appear in all wspace system. The system had four of the medium-difficulty gas sites: one Bountiful Frontier Reservoir and three Vast Frontier Reservoirs. The "frontier" sites appear only in C3 or higher wspace. In addition, there was one mining anom which I ran. This site has two cruisers at the warp-in.
The system had only my home system and its own static (to C3) open. Both it and the C3 were quiescent. I put an alt in a Falcon at the C3 wormhole as early warning and, if things went bad, a chance to jam out an attack. Then I took my Tengu in and ran all the aforementioned sites.
I timed the run via the handy alerts that show in the Local chat, notifying you of wormhole transitions. This particular time I was in C4b in my Tengu was from 18:45:46 until 19:08:23. While salvaging, I was in from 19:10:09 until 19:20:08. The time in between is what it takes to cross a system, change ships, and cross back. Each warp takes about 45s.
The Tengu collected most of the blue loot in each site, though not all of it. As you can see in the screenshot, the total I collected from the sites I ran is 60.8m ISK. This is pretty good for spending 23 minutes.
What about salvage? The salvager collected the rest of the blue loot, as well as salvaging all the wrecks. Because the wrecks are already gathered together, except for the last one in each site, this is pretty efficient. The salvage proper was worth about 32m ISK, with the remainder of the value being the small amount of blue loot. Note that the amount you get in salvage will tend to vary a lot, because the only sleeper salvage worth anything substantial is Melted Nanoribbons, and the amount you get is a random small integer, and so it varies considerably.
Altogether in this particular run, I took 35 minutes to clean out the system's small sites, and got 91.4m ISK worth of blue loot and salvage. This is a bit on the high side: I think I got some luck with the nanoribbons. Nonetheless, we can compute the ISK per hour rate: 156.6! Typically I see rates of 100m/hour or more. So you can see that running the small sites can be quite lucrative.
That's it. Now, get out there you C3 and C4 inhabitants, and start running those small sites!
These small sites are a source of income that I think many people in wspace ignore. This post is a guide on small sites: ship fittings, how to run them, and what you can expect to earn doing so.
Preparation
To kill small sites, first you must find them and summon their sleepers. Each site should be scanned down and bookmarked. In addition, you should instantiate each site as soon as you find it. To instantiate a site, you must initiate a warp to it. Note that you do not have to actually warp there; you can cancel the warp immediately (control-space to cancel) and the site will still be created. "Triggering" a site is a synonym for "instantiating" it. When a site is triggered, a timer is started. In about 20 minutes, the site's sleepers will appear. Obviously, the sleepers must be there for you to kill them!
Beyond triggering all the sites, you should explore with an eye towards operational security. Note all the towers: if none, great. If one, so-so. Check wormhol.es to see when they are active; hope it is sometime else. If many tower and wide activity, probably not a good system to run sites in. Similarly note any ships or probes you see: seeing any ships/probes at all is a bad sign. Bookmark all wormholes, and find out where they go. If the system next door is active, don't run sites. In your home system, you might zip up (pop all wormholes).
Sleeper Killing
Once you have a system and you've triggered all the sites, and you think it is safe to run sites in, the next step is killing all the sleepers. For this you will want a ship with the following attributes: high DPS at close to medium range (6 km for frigates, out to 17 km for most of the cruisers, with 30 km max for a few of the cruisers). Decent defense: an omnitank of at least 300 DPS. Ideally, as small of a ship as possible to reduce time wasted in warp. Ideally, a cheap ship since you might well get jumped.
The sleeper-killer ship I use in small sites is a Tengu, kitted out with assault missiles. Here's the fitting:
[Tengu, Small Sites]
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
EM Ward Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Medium Shield Booster II
Cap Recharger II
Phased Weapon Navigation Array Generation Extron
Shield Boost Amplifier I
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Heavy Assault Missile
Medium Capacitor Control Circuit I
Medium Capacitor Control Circuit I
Medium Capacitor Control Circuit I
Tengu Defensive - Amplification Node
Tengu Electronics - Emergent Locus Analyzer
Tengu Propulsion - Gravitational Capacitor
Tengu Engineering - Augmented Capacitor Reservoir
Tengu Offensive - Accelerated Ejection Bay
I use basic T1 assault missiles to save money. Assault missiles perform well against sleeper frigates and cruisers, and have just enough range to get to most of the cruisers even when they have moved out to their preferred orbit. Note that there are some of the cruisers (in the Bountiful) that want to orbit just beyond the range for normal assault missiles, at least with less than all-level-V missile skills. For these, bring along some Scourge Javelins, or just run the site fast. I sometimes could not quite run the site fast enough when I had a similar Tengu but lacking one of the launchers. With the sixth launcher, I can.
Running small sites is straightforward. Warp in, park, lock up sleepers and start killing them. Put out a mobile tractor. When the tractor has looted the second-to-last wreck, scoop up the tractor and grab the blue loot it has collected. Concurrently, kill the last sleeper. Warp to the next site.
There is a slight variation that is helpful in some of the rocks sites. Some of these sites have sleepers which start 100km or so from the warp-in point. You can wait for them to come to you, but you can speed things up by warping closer to them. Look for asteroids in their general direction that are at least 150km from you, then warp to one such rock at 70 or so. This will cut the range to about 50km; from there you still have to close. And also in this case, you'll want to bookmark your tractor's location so that you don't waste time later on in the salvager.
Salvaging
Once you've run all the small sites you want, switch into a light salvager, return, and salvage. For this you want a salvaging ship with one tractor beam (neither more nor less), many salvagers, and plenty of capacitor. Ideally you'd have a lot of targets (8 or so). There is a decent chance of being ganked while salvaging if you mess up on opsec, so you want the salvager to be as cheap as possible. Here's the fitting I recommend; note that similar performance is possible using many destroyers.
[Coercer, Cheap Salvager]Note that this is a more general-purpose salvager than just this particular mission. In small sites, there is never a reason for a microwarpdrive. The Auto Targeting system should never be turned on; it is there only to increase the number of targets.
Mark I Generator Refitting: Capacitor Power RelayMark I Generator Refitting: Capacitor Power RelayLocal Hull Conversion Nanofiber Structure I
Eutectic Capacitor Charge ArrayLimited 1MN Microwarpdrive I
Salvager I
Salvager I
Salvager I
Salvager ISalvager I
Salvager ISmall Tractor Beam I
Auto Targeting System I
Small Salvage Tackle I
Small Salvage Tackle I
Small Salvage Tackle I
Testing
So, how does that Tengu perform given a plethora of gas sites? I did an empirical test the other day. The particular system available through our static had seven gas sites. It had one each of the Barren Perimeter Reservoir, Minor Perimeter Reservoir, and Token Perimeter Reservoir. The "perimeter" sites are the lower difficulty ones; they appear in all wspace system. The system had four of the medium-difficulty gas sites: one Bountiful Frontier Reservoir and three Vast Frontier Reservoirs. The "frontier" sites appear only in C3 or higher wspace. In addition, there was one mining anom which I ran. This site has two cruisers at the warp-in.
The system had only my home system and its own static (to C3) open. Both it and the C3 were quiescent. I put an alt in a Falcon at the C3 wormhole as early warning and, if things went bad, a chance to jam out an attack. Then I took my Tengu in and ran all the aforementioned sites.
 |
| Blue loot on the Tengu |
The Tengu collected most of the blue loot in each site, though not all of it. As you can see in the screenshot, the total I collected from the sites I ran is 60.8m ISK. This is pretty good for spending 23 minutes.
 |
| Salvage on the Coercer |
Altogether in this particular run, I took 35 minutes to clean out the system's small sites, and got 91.4m ISK worth of blue loot and salvage. This is a bit on the high side: I think I got some luck with the nanoribbons. Nonetheless, we can compute the ISK per hour rate: 156.6! Typically I see rates of 100m/hour or more. So you can see that running the small sites can be quite lucrative.
That's it. Now, get out there you C3 and C4 inhabitants, and start running those small sites!
Friday, April 18, 2014
Watching Them Try
Late evening in the USA. I've been out livin' life, but there's still some time to play before bed. I get my coffee, plonk at the computer, and log in. Goooood morning, New Eden!
There are three sigs in the home system. Checking bookmarks shows these sigs are already scanned down: our static and two new gas sites. Jayne is on, and he is already scanning in C4b. OK, that's nice. Less scanning, more hunting. I trigger both gas sites, figuring that with the weekend coming I'll get to them in the next four days.
C4b has no live towers, although it has a dead tower named "lost tower, reward for access". Huh. I find the owner -- a one-man corp -- and send him mail. Meanwhile, Jayne is finished scanning. The system has a C6 static; that wormhole is present of course, as well as another C4. Also some gas sites and radars, usual stuff. Jayne is not inspired and heads offline. I stay on to hunt, or at least see what I can get up to.
First up: the C4. I enter it. There is a tower, but nobody is home. Well, it has a C4 static, so let me search my way further downstream. There are six sigs. I scan it them entirely, which is painful due to four of them being radar/data sites. The last is a gas site. Where's the static wormhole? Oh. Duh. I came in through the static. Nothing further this way.
Back into C4b, and then to the C6. I enter C6a, and there are lots of ships and many towers. Ugh. I bookmark the wormhole and fly around a bit. More ships and towers. There is, in particular, a tower with lots of ships sitting out but among them a Mammoth. I'll find that one. It's not hard; there's only two moons. After choosing the wrong one, I get the right one. The Mammoth is empty, but a Flycatcher is present and manned.
I was hoping to find this system empty, but it's not, so I don't think I am going to run any gas sites here even if they have good ones. Neither am I keen to show probes: a flycatcher on the exit would have a good chance to get me. Nor am I keen to spend time finding the other towers; there are many of them, and some of them are obviously trapped. So I quietly fly back to the wormhole and back out. I am a little concerned there will be an Interdictor on the far side, but it is clear. Whew.
Perhaps I can run the gas sites in C4a. Is C6a active at all? I sit on the C4b->C6a wormhole a while, just orbiting cloaked while I do other stuff. At one point, the Flycatcher comes in. I alert and watch. It sits in its gate cloak a long time. Eventually it is exposed, then it goes right back through. I expect he was dscanning to look for anything interesting -- probes, ships, whatever. This makes me less keen to run the gas sites in this system. But there are those new gas sites at home. Those should be safe to run and then suck. I head home.
To be safe, I'll have to keep eyes on our static. So I log in my alt Otto for that. He warps over in his Cheetah, and sits 30km from the wormhole orbiting. Now I fly Von to our tower, and refit into our PVE Tengu. It's designed for one thing: killing little sleeper sites. (Well, two things: it can also refit to do ghost sites.) I fly to the first gas site, a Barren Perimeter Reservoir, and kill. Then the same for the Minor Perimeter Reservoir. Then I get our light salvager and salvage. I get one nanoribbon, so 4m ISK for ten minutes' work.
Well, that was fun. What now? I guess I can start sucking gas. I log off Von and get in a same-account alt. It's a nuisance to have to log, but this guy mines gas better, and also I don't have to worry as much about him getting killed since he has a worthless pod. He's already in a T2 Venture; he logs off in it. Now I will mine gas. I fly to the C50 cloud and start sucking. As always, I put myself in orbit of the cloud to make it harder for anyone to jump on me.
Mining gas is boring, just like any other mining. The C50 cloud is 3000 units of gas, meaning it should take me about 30 minutes to mine. 30 minutes with no input necessary. Fortunately, I am sitting at a computer, so I can read EVE blogs, listen to music, and generally do things other than EVE while playing EVE.
After about 20 minutes, action. Wormhole noise. I perk up from my stupor, and pay attention to Otto. After a long gate cloak, there's my friend the Flycatcher again. Hmm, interesting. I wonder what he will do?
My alt's Venture is on dscan from the wormhole. If the C6 corp has already scanned my system, the Flycatcher may warp straight to the gas site hoping to find my Venture unaware. So I am ready to warp the Venture.
The Flycatcher exits. OK, he must have seen my Venture. And my tower is not on scan from the wormhole, so he cannot have mistaken what is going on. The only explanation for him leaving is that he wants to prepare an attack. I could bug out now, but I want to see what will happen. And of course, as I already mentioned, my alt's clone is not worth much, nor is the Venture he's in, nor for that matter is the gas he's sucking. I'll just stay put.
Soon enough, the wormhole sounds again. This time, it's a Cheetah. So, obviously they need to scan. I expect to get combat-probed, with the Flycatcher (probably), or some other ship entering to provide the actual killing. The Cheetah may or may not be part of it. It could mount two warp scramblers, but I find that somewhat doubtful. Still, they had time to prepare, and in these days of Epithals a Cheetah with scrambling is more useful than it used to be.
I watch for probes. Dscan, dscan, dscan. Nothing for quite some time. I start to get a bit paranoid: is the Cheetah perhaps tackle and they already had the site bookmarked? Maybe I should bail. But I still want to see what they'll do, so I stick. Education does not come free in EVE.
Finally, I see what I have been expecting. Probes on dscan. I also see something I did not expect: the Cheetah itself. This is quite unexpected. My system has an outer planet 30 AU away from everything else. There's nothing out there. That's the place to fire probes. Not in the inner system. This guy must be an amateur hunter.
A quick check with dscan shows that the probes are not very close to my location. So, he can't know it yet. Now I manipulate the ranges to try to get the right amount of warning. A few scans later the Cheetah has cloaked again.
Barren gas sites have high signal; I can probe one down in my Manticore with probes at 1AU. With a bonused T2 scanning ship, I know it can be done at 2AU and possibly 4AU. So I set my distance to 4AU (thanks for that new scanner CCP). And I watch. I don't see anything. Eventually I widen the search and the probes are gone. Hmm. I never saw them be near enough. But it is possible that he did get a hit quickly when I still had the probes at very long or very short range. It is also possible that he has moved the probes out of sight and is carefully finding the vector and range on dscan, for a one-pass scan. But that's something only experienced hunters do, and I do not think this guy is one. So I am not sure what to expect.
Meanwhile, my alt has finished up the C50 cloud. There's no need for me to be here at all, other than curiosity. I align to my tower, then microwarp for 100km. I figure this should prevent the Cheetah from being able to tackle me, if it is in the site. And it allows a quick GTFO if anything comes through the wormhole, which is what I expect.
Sure enough. Wormhole noise. It's the Flycatcher, and it quickly warps away from the wormhole. I get ready with my Venture: the Flycatcher lands on grid in the middle of the gas site, 100km from me. (Mwa mwa waa waa!) I warp anyway; the game is up at this point. There's no reason to stick around.
As I land at my tower, I see something change. What is it? An explosion. I look again: it's a wreck. It appears the Cheetah had been watching the tower, and evidently accidentally uncloaked somehow, and did not realize it. My tower has small artillery, so he was popped in one volley once they locked.
I consider trying to quickly log out so that I can get Von logged in and get into something to jump on these guys with. But long experience says: never attack anyone on a wormhole unless you have eyes on the other side. I don't have those eyes, so it's too dangerous. And also I don't think I can do a logon that fast. In any case, Otto sees the pod and the Flycatcher meet at the wormhole, and they both leave.
I am back to alone. I doubt we'll see them again tonight. I log on Von and get in our lightest salvager. Then I warp to the Cheetah wreck and salvage it, and loot it. I did not get the covert ops cloak, but the loot is not bad considering. All tech II stuff other than Sisters probes.
Lessons learned? Well, don't accidentally decloak near enemy towers. And if you do decloak, make sure you know it. Of more practical use: keep eyes (ears, really) on wormholes, or zip up. The battle in wspace is half to the strong, but the other half goes to those with better information. The information asymmetry here decided it against the Flycatcher from the get-go. I knew most of his moves, and he did not know I knew. So he continued, eventually getting nothing. Whereas I got to see a fairly inept hunt leading to an unexpected but also inept conclusion.
There are three sigs in the home system. Checking bookmarks shows these sigs are already scanned down: our static and two new gas sites. Jayne is on, and he is already scanning in C4b. OK, that's nice. Less scanning, more hunting. I trigger both gas sites, figuring that with the weekend coming I'll get to them in the next four days.
C4b has no live towers, although it has a dead tower named "lost tower, reward for access". Huh. I find the owner -- a one-man corp -- and send him mail. Meanwhile, Jayne is finished scanning. The system has a C6 static; that wormhole is present of course, as well as another C4. Also some gas sites and radars, usual stuff. Jayne is not inspired and heads offline. I stay on to hunt, or at least see what I can get up to.
First up: the C4. I enter it. There is a tower, but nobody is home. Well, it has a C4 static, so let me search my way further downstream. There are six sigs. I scan it them entirely, which is painful due to four of them being radar/data sites. The last is a gas site. Where's the static wormhole? Oh. Duh. I came in through the static. Nothing further this way.
Back into C4b, and then to the C6. I enter C6a, and there are lots of ships and many towers. Ugh. I bookmark the wormhole and fly around a bit. More ships and towers. There is, in particular, a tower with lots of ships sitting out but among them a Mammoth. I'll find that one. It's not hard; there's only two moons. After choosing the wrong one, I get the right one. The Mammoth is empty, but a Flycatcher is present and manned.
I was hoping to find this system empty, but it's not, so I don't think I am going to run any gas sites here even if they have good ones. Neither am I keen to show probes: a flycatcher on the exit would have a good chance to get me. Nor am I keen to spend time finding the other towers; there are many of them, and some of them are obviously trapped. So I quietly fly back to the wormhole and back out. I am a little concerned there will be an Interdictor on the far side, but it is clear. Whew.
Perhaps I can run the gas sites in C4a. Is C6a active at all? I sit on the C4b->C6a wormhole a while, just orbiting cloaked while I do other stuff. At one point, the Flycatcher comes in. I alert and watch. It sits in its gate cloak a long time. Eventually it is exposed, then it goes right back through. I expect he was dscanning to look for anything interesting -- probes, ships, whatever. This makes me less keen to run the gas sites in this system. But there are those new gas sites at home. Those should be safe to run and then suck. I head home.
To be safe, I'll have to keep eyes on our static. So I log in my alt Otto for that. He warps over in his Cheetah, and sits 30km from the wormhole orbiting. Now I fly Von to our tower, and refit into our PVE Tengu. It's designed for one thing: killing little sleeper sites. (Well, two things: it can also refit to do ghost sites.) I fly to the first gas site, a Barren Perimeter Reservoir, and kill. Then the same for the Minor Perimeter Reservoir. Then I get our light salvager and salvage. I get one nanoribbon, so 4m ISK for ten minutes' work.
 |
| Slurrrp. |
Mining gas is boring, just like any other mining. The C50 cloud is 3000 units of gas, meaning it should take me about 30 minutes to mine. 30 minutes with no input necessary. Fortunately, I am sitting at a computer, so I can read EVE blogs, listen to music, and generally do things other than EVE while playing EVE.
 |
| The Flycatcher peeks in. |
My alt's Venture is on dscan from the wormhole. If the C6 corp has already scanned my system, the Flycatcher may warp straight to the gas site hoping to find my Venture unaware. So I am ready to warp the Venture.
The Flycatcher exits. OK, he must have seen my Venture. And my tower is not on scan from the wormhole, so he cannot have mistaken what is going on. The only explanation for him leaving is that he wants to prepare an attack. I could bug out now, but I want to see what will happen. And of course, as I already mentioned, my alt's clone is not worth much, nor is the Venture he's in, nor for that matter is the gas he's sucking. I'll just stay put.
 |
| The expected scanner. |
 |
| As predicted. |
Finally, I see what I have been expecting. Probes on dscan. I also see something I did not expect: the Cheetah itself. This is quite unexpected. My system has an outer planet 30 AU away from everything else. There's nothing out there. That's the place to fire probes. Not in the inner system. This guy must be an amateur hunter.
A quick check with dscan shows that the probes are not very close to my location. So, he can't know it yet. Now I manipulate the ranges to try to get the right amount of warning. A few scans later the Cheetah has cloaked again.
Barren gas sites have high signal; I can probe one down in my Manticore with probes at 1AU. With a bonused T2 scanning ship, I know it can be done at 2AU and possibly 4AU. So I set my distance to 4AU (thanks for that new scanner CCP). And I watch. I don't see anything. Eventually I widen the search and the probes are gone. Hmm. I never saw them be near enough. But it is possible that he did get a hit quickly when I still had the probes at very long or very short range. It is also possible that he has moved the probes out of sight and is carefully finding the vector and range on dscan, for a one-pass scan. But that's something only experienced hunters do, and I do not think this guy is one. So I am not sure what to expect.
Meanwhile, my alt has finished up the C50 cloud. There's no need for me to be here at all, other than curiosity. I align to my tower, then microwarp for 100km. I figure this should prevent the Cheetah from being able to tackle me, if it is in the site. And it allows a quick GTFO if anything comes through the wormhole, which is what I expect.
Sure enough. Wormhole noise. It's the Flycatcher, and it quickly warps away from the wormhole. I get ready with my Venture: the Flycatcher lands on grid in the middle of the gas site, 100km from me. (Mwa mwa waa waa!) I warp anyway; the game is up at this point. There's no reason to stick around.
As I land at my tower, I see something change. What is it? An explosion. I look again: it's a wreck. It appears the Cheetah had been watching the tower, and evidently accidentally uncloaked somehow, and did not realize it. My tower has small artillery, so he was popped in one volley once they locked.
 |
| Y'all come back now, hear? |
 |
| Loot. |
I am back to alone. I doubt we'll see them again tonight. I log on Von and get in our lightest salvager. Then I warp to the Cheetah wreck and salvage it, and loot it. I did not get the covert ops cloak, but the loot is not bad considering. All tech II stuff other than Sisters probes.
Lessons learned? Well, don't accidentally decloak near enemy towers. And if you do decloak, make sure you know it. Of more practical use: keep eyes (ears, really) on wormholes, or zip up. The battle in wspace is half to the strong, but the other half goes to those with better information. The information asymmetry here decided it against the Flycatcher from the get-go. I knew most of his moves, and he did not know I knew. So he continued, eventually getting nothing. Whereas I got to see a fairly inept hunt leading to an unexpected but also inept conclusion.
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Fleecing Some Tourists
Friday night. We're always looking for a good connection to highsec to do logistics. But there's nothing in particular planned. Let's see what EVE holds tonight.
I log in, and check for sigs. Just one. Evidently the gas site we have had has finally timed out and gone away. Scanning one sig is no problem, and I head for it, bookmark the wormhole, and jump into C4b.
C4b is interesting. There are two POCOs that are in reinforced mode, due to come out in five hours. I'll still be up then... hmm. There's also an Iteron V at a tower. I track it down and warp to it. Empty, as usual. Oh well. Scanning time. There are just two sigs, so that's easy. I ignore our static and then find the other.
It's EOL. Ugh. End of constellation, unless I want to pop a wormhole. I don't. I think I will log my Jita alt and move around some goods. Then I will just sit here.
Hours later... the wormhole finally expires. (Four full hours. Murphy strikes again.) Now I scan down the new wormhole, mark it, and jump through. C3b has six sigs: three gas, three wormholes. I know the wormhole I came though. The other two are a C2 and the C3 static. I'll investigate the C2 first, since it will probably have a highsec static.
I enter the C2. Nothing on scan from the wormhole. Checking wormhol.es shows that indeed the system has the expected highsec. I move off the wormhole, fire probes, and throw them out of the system. I'll scan after I check out the system for actives.
The system is rather large. It takes three warps to hit all the planets. I start at the third-to-outer planet. I have to check the second-to-outer planet (nothing), the inner system (live tower, no ships), finally the outer planet. Dscan here shows ships and lots of drones, and a tower. But no force field. Dscanning again shows a sleeper wreck. Ah. Got site runners. Two Ospreys, two Hurricane Fleet Issues, Gnosis, Brutix.
I dscan the one anom in range. They are not there. I do another 360 dscan. More wrecks; too many for a gas site. (And nobody would attack a gas site with a whole gang.) It must be a sig site -- a data or relic. There is one around this planet. But I do not have it scanned. I will try to scan it anyway; doing so will be good practice for me. I rarely get to hunt with probes.
Data and relic sites all have very weak signatures; I will have to scan at the minimum range to get a warpable hit. So this means that I will have to place the probes extremely precisely to do it in one scan. I doubt I can do that; I will shoot for two scans for a better chance. That is still starting at 1.0AU scans, meaning I need a fairly precise location.
First I use dscan to get a range. Twiddle twiddle. 6.1 AU. This seems a bit long, but it appears to be just in the range of the sig. Now, direction. 90 and 60 and 30 degrees are all pretty easy. 15 takes some time and 5 takes more. But finally I have the direction, and I crab-walk the my marker probe until it is about the right distance out. I change my mind and scan at 0.25 AU hoping for luck.
Nothing. Oh well. I try at 1.0AU. Nothing again. What? This should have worked. I must be totally off. I widen to 4 AU and move the probes closer to me. Now I get a hit, much closer to me that 6.1 AU. I guess I must have flubbed the range somehow. It takes me two more scans to get 97% -- argh! -- and the third succeeds. I throw the probes out of the system, then warp to the site at 100km. Dscan shows they have not abandoned it yet, at least.
I land at the site, and the enemy fleet is still working on the last sleeper battleship. This gives me some hope that they are slack and have not seen my probes. But in any case, I cannot attack this many people. So I hope that they make a mistake with their salvaging.
They finish the sleeper. Now it gets kind of strange. They are evidently using drones to salvage. Several of them throw out mobile depots, and refit. Then they head in to the cans to hack. Unbonused hacking on hard puzzles. Good luck with that. Of course, these being sleeper sites, you get all the tries you want. I still expect it to take forever, and it is hard to believe that these guys will just sit in the site for that long.
One deploys a mobile tractor unit. They sit in the site. Every so often a wreck gets successfully salvaged. But it's slow. One of them finally cracks a can. There's nothing obvious I can do to make trouble. And it looks like my hope of a salvager is not going to happen. Can they salvage intermediate large wrecks with drones? Maybe they have some salvagers to refit with.
I might as well bring in my probes and scan. They can't see the other planets from here, at least, and I doubt they have good opsec. I already know they either did not see me or did not care. And I also know there is a highsec and a C4 which they ignored. So I scan. Scanning finds no less than five wormholes: a K162 to highsec, the static highsec (which I open), a nullsec, a C2 (EOL), and another C2. I duck out of one of the highsecs to get an entrance, just in case I get daring and get killed.
All this time I am checking in with the enemy, warping to my perch. They're still there, half an hour after I first saw them. They've now got all the wrecks collected and salvaged. They are still working on the data cans. One of the Hurricanes goes over to collect the tractor. I consider trying to sneak in to grab the can when he takes it onboard. But this seems unlikely to work. So I just watch. He grabs the tractor. The can appears.
He does not pick it up. That's odd. I watch a bit more. He seems to be moving back to his friends. He still has not picked it up. Is he tractoring it? No, he just... left it sitting there.
This is my opening. I warp to the can at 10km. Then I check for celestials. They are all behind me. I will want to be aligned to one when I am ready to uncloak, so I sneak around to the left then towards the enemy (they are all about 40km off), then up. I stop with the sun and two inner planets decently inline behind the can. The sun will be easier to find, so I will use that. I raise my inventory, take a deep breath, then align to the sun. 5000, 4000, 2500. I uncloak, and double-click the can. There's the loot. Loot all. Click the sun, S, and zoom. I'm gone. I cloak ASAP. When I land at the sun I immediately warp back to my perch to watch.
The enemy break up fairly quickly. They warp off toward the inner system; I don't bother to check where, since I have little time remaining before bed. I get info on one, and check for the corp's CEO. Ah, she's one of them. I convo her:
Excitement over. I head out to highsec, drop the loot and contract it to my Jita alt, and head back up. Later I get myself killed shooting at guys shooting down those POCOs I saw earlier... but that's another story.
I log in, and check for sigs. Just one. Evidently the gas site we have had has finally timed out and gone away. Scanning one sig is no problem, and I head for it, bookmark the wormhole, and jump into C4b.
C4b is interesting. There are two POCOs that are in reinforced mode, due to come out in five hours. I'll still be up then... hmm. There's also an Iteron V at a tower. I track it down and warp to it. Empty, as usual. Oh well. Scanning time. There are just two sigs, so that's easy. I ignore our static and then find the other.
It's EOL. Ugh. End of constellation, unless I want to pop a wormhole. I don't. I think I will log my Jita alt and move around some goods. Then I will just sit here.
Hours later... the wormhole finally expires. (Four full hours. Murphy strikes again.) Now I scan down the new wormhole, mark it, and jump through. C3b has six sigs: three gas, three wormholes. I know the wormhole I came though. The other two are a C2 and the C3 static. I'll investigate the C2 first, since it will probably have a highsec static.
I enter the C2. Nothing on scan from the wormhole. Checking wormhol.es shows that indeed the system has the expected highsec. I move off the wormhole, fire probes, and throw them out of the system. I'll scan after I check out the system for actives.
The system is rather large. It takes three warps to hit all the planets. I start at the third-to-outer planet. I have to check the second-to-outer planet (nothing), the inner system (live tower, no ships), finally the outer planet. Dscan here shows ships and lots of drones, and a tower. But no force field. Dscanning again shows a sleeper wreck. Ah. Got site runners. Two Ospreys, two Hurricane Fleet Issues, Gnosis, Brutix.
I dscan the one anom in range. They are not there. I do another 360 dscan. More wrecks; too many for a gas site. (And nobody would attack a gas site with a whole gang.) It must be a sig site -- a data or relic. There is one around this planet. But I do not have it scanned. I will try to scan it anyway; doing so will be good practice for me. I rarely get to hunt with probes.
Data and relic sites all have very weak signatures; I will have to scan at the minimum range to get a warpable hit. So this means that I will have to place the probes extremely precisely to do it in one scan. I doubt I can do that; I will shoot for two scans for a better chance. That is still starting at 1.0AU scans, meaning I need a fairly precise location.
First I use dscan to get a range. Twiddle twiddle. 6.1 AU. This seems a bit long, but it appears to be just in the range of the sig. Now, direction. 90 and 60 and 30 degrees are all pretty easy. 15 takes some time and 5 takes more. But finally I have the direction, and I crab-walk the my marker probe until it is about the right distance out. I change my mind and scan at 0.25 AU hoping for luck.
Nothing. Oh well. I try at 1.0AU. Nothing again. What? This should have worked. I must be totally off. I widen to 4 AU and move the probes closer to me. Now I get a hit, much closer to me that 6.1 AU. I guess I must have flubbed the range somehow. It takes me two more scans to get 97% -- argh! -- and the third succeeds. I throw the probes out of the system, then warp to the site at 100km. Dscan shows they have not abandoned it yet, at least.
 |
| Watching from my perch. |
They finish the sleeper. Now it gets kind of strange. They are evidently using drones to salvage. Several of them throw out mobile depots, and refit. Then they head in to the cans to hack. Unbonused hacking on hard puzzles. Good luck with that. Of course, these being sleeper sites, you get all the tries you want. I still expect it to take forever, and it is hard to believe that these guys will just sit in the site for that long.
One deploys a mobile tractor unit. They sit in the site. Every so often a wreck gets successfully salvaged. But it's slow. One of them finally cracks a can. There's nothing obvious I can do to make trouble. And it looks like my hope of a salvager is not going to happen. Can they salvage intermediate large wrecks with drones? Maybe they have some salvagers to refit with.
I might as well bring in my probes and scan. They can't see the other planets from here, at least, and I doubt they have good opsec. I already know they either did not see me or did not care. And I also know there is a highsec and a C4 which they ignored. So I scan. Scanning finds no less than five wormholes: a K162 to highsec, the static highsec (which I open), a nullsec, a C2 (EOL), and another C2. I duck out of one of the highsecs to get an entrance, just in case I get daring and get killed.
All this time I am checking in with the enemy, warping to my perch. They're still there, half an hour after I first saw them. They've now got all the wrecks collected and salvaged. They are still working on the data cans. One of the Hurricanes goes over to collect the tractor. I consider trying to sneak in to grab the can when he takes it onboard. But this seems unlikely to work. So I just watch. He grabs the tractor. The can appears.
 |
| Nice loot. |
This is my opening. I warp to the can at 10km. Then I check for celestials. They are all behind me. I will want to be aligned to one when I am ready to uncloak, so I sneak around to the left then towards the enemy (they are all about 40km off), then up. I stop with the sun and two inner planets decently inline behind the can. The sun will be easier to find, so I will use that. I raise my inventory, take a deep breath, then align to the sun. 5000, 4000, 2500. I uncloak, and double-click the can. There's the loot. Loot all. Click the sun, S, and zoom. I'm gone. I cloak ASAP. When I land at the sun I immediately warp back to my perch to watch.
The enemy break up fairly quickly. They warp off toward the inner system; I don't bother to check where, since I have little time remaining before bed. I get info on one, and check for the corp's CEO. Ah, she's one of them. I convo her:
Excitement over. I head out to highsec, drop the loot and contract it to my Jita alt, and head back up. Later I get myself killed shooting at guys shooting down those POCOs I saw earlier... but that's another story.
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Appropriate Caution
Things are kind of back to normal in my system. We've killed off the vultures that pecked at our corpse before we de-zombified. (I admit it: bad simile.) We've not got all the stuff we have become used to, but we've got to tighten our metaphorical belts and deal. One thing I can do is jump in Blindside, my trusty Manticore, and go hunting. (Blindside survived the recent unpleasantness on one of our Orcas.)
Our static has timed out and self-popped. So we're zipped up. But there's nothing to do here. We have a gas site, but I have no Ventures. (Note to self: get in new Ventures.) I guess I will open up and see what's up in C4b.
I warp out to a safespot, then fire probes and scan. Our static is easy to pick out, being one sig of two. I scan it quickly then align to the resolved sig. Once my speed is up, I warp. I want to give the minimum warning to anyone on the other side. I land on grid with the wormhole, and I head towards it. Then I bookmark it, and jump through.
On the other side, I don't see anything on scan. Just some customs offices. Typical. But I am at an outer planet, so there is still hope. I fire probes, move off the wormhole, and cloak. Then I throw the probes out of the system. There are several planets out of my dscan range, and these might have someone doing something. I don't want to alarm them with probes until I discover that they actually don't exist.
I warp to an inner planet... and dscan shows a small gang. No wrecks, so it is probably at a tower. I point at some local planets: not there, not there, not there. Hmm. Try a 360 dscan again. Yes, they are still there.
A sleeper wreck is also there.
A sleeper wreck means one thing: I have site runners. Site runners mean site salvagers. And that means ganky PVP. My pulse rises. My eyebrows raise up a notch. Then my eyes narrow. My nose twitches. My hearing grows more acute. Yes: the hunt is on.
First things first: find the anom the enemy gang is in. I narrow the dscan aperture and point it at various anoms. Ah, there it is. I warp to the anom at 100km. Yes, the gang's all here. Two Ishtars, a pair of Basilisks, two battleships. No rush. I'll just move back and make a perch as I watch. As I move back, one of the enemy throw out a mobile tractor unit.
Ugh. That's bad for my potential earnings. But I'll keep watching. Ganking beats money any day.
I get back at 150km, then keep going. It only really matters how far the tractor unit is. I bookmark at about 200km, and that is far enough. Now I sit and watch and wait. The encounter now depends on the enemy. Will they do something stupid like put an unescorted salvager out for me to kill?
The last wave of sleepers enters, and they slowly kill it. Last one gone, I wait for them to warp off to the next site. But they don't. Instead, on dscan I see an Noctis. Mmm, Noctis. A perfect target once they warp off.
They don't warp off.
The enemy Noctis lands on grid, then starts salvaging. The enemy don't leave. I am not about to try an attack versus Ishtars, much less the other stuff present. So I just watch. Maybe they will make a mistake...
They don't. When the last wreck is salvaged, they all warp off. Now I am alone in the site. I watch dscan, hoping they go to another anom. But they don't. Instead they disappear. Hmm.
I warp around the system to look for them, but they are gone. My guess is they saw my new wormhole via the discovery scanner and GTFOed.
Kudos to you, enemy gang. You escorted your salvager, got your loot, then got out. That seems about right to me.
Our static has timed out and self-popped. So we're zipped up. But there's nothing to do here. We have a gas site, but I have no Ventures. (Note to self: get in new Ventures.) I guess I will open up and see what's up in C4b.
I warp out to a safespot, then fire probes and scan. Our static is easy to pick out, being one sig of two. I scan it quickly then align to the resolved sig. Once my speed is up, I warp. I want to give the minimum warning to anyone on the other side. I land on grid with the wormhole, and I head towards it. Then I bookmark it, and jump through.
On the other side, I don't see anything on scan. Just some customs offices. Typical. But I am at an outer planet, so there is still hope. I fire probes, move off the wormhole, and cloak. Then I throw the probes out of the system. There are several planets out of my dscan range, and these might have someone doing something. I don't want to alarm them with probes until I discover that they actually don't exist.
I warp to an inner planet... and dscan shows a small gang. No wrecks, so it is probably at a tower. I point at some local planets: not there, not there, not there. Hmm. Try a 360 dscan again. Yes, they are still there.
A sleeper wreck is also there.
A sleeper wreck means one thing: I have site runners. Site runners mean site salvagers. And that means ganky PVP. My pulse rises. My eyebrows raise up a notch. Then my eyes narrow. My nose twitches. My hearing grows more acute. Yes: the hunt is on.
 |
| The enemy in action. |
Ugh. That's bad for my potential earnings. But I'll keep watching. Ganking beats money any day.
I get back at 150km, then keep going. It only really matters how far the tractor unit is. I bookmark at about 200km, and that is far enough. Now I sit and watch and wait. The encounter now depends on the enemy. Will they do something stupid like put an unescorted salvager out for me to kill?
 |
| A Noctis... mmm. |
They don't warp off.
The enemy Noctis lands on grid, then starts salvaging. The enemy don't leave. I am not about to try an attack versus Ishtars, much less the other stuff present. So I just watch. Maybe they will make a mistake...
They don't. When the last wreck is salvaged, they all warp off. Now I am alone in the site. I watch dscan, hoping they go to another anom. But they don't. Instead they disappear. Hmm.
I warp around the system to look for them, but they are gone. My guess is they saw my new wormhole via the discovery scanner and GTFOed.
Kudos to you, enemy gang. You escorted your salvager, got your loot, then got out. That seems about right to me.
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