The wardec has ended as it often does: not with a bang, but a whimper.
In this case, the whimpering comes from me, wrestling with some serious server problems -- stuff the keeps me offline for a couple days. When I finally get back, we no longer have to worry about high-sec space shenanigans, but our connection to New Eden is aging to the point where I don't trust it to stay open, and Berke isn't around to kill it early, which leaves me a still trapped in the home system.
Well, trapped at least as far as known space goes: no reason I can't go poking around in our neighboring wormholes, now that the mining has slowed down. Still, it's late by the time I realize I have other options, so I leave it for the next day.
Conveniently, the next day is somewhat free of other obligations, and I start it off with some early morning scanning, which leads me to a class 2 system with a plethora of connections to other systems. An hour of scanning later, and I'm amassed a long list of bookmarks to gas clouds and connections to Class 1, Class 4, high sec empire, and class 3 space (that last one already old and dying).
A bit more exploration reveals that the class 4 wormhole (with a persistent connection to class 1 wormhole space) is completely unoccupied; unbelievably, there is no tower evident, and I decide to capitalize on this good fortune by contacting a wormhole broker I've used in the past. Lucius Taggart of Taggart Transdimensional gets a quick evemail from me, and posts a notice on my behalf.
All that's left to do (as far as the wormhole sale goes) is wait, which I'm quite bad at. I consider joining the rest of the home system pilots in some gas harvesting, but just as I'm about to hop in my trusty Thorax-class cruiser, the fleet spots a Buzzard-class covert ops ship on d-scan, and everyone scrambles for pointier ships. I don't fancy our luck snagging even a moderately wary cov-ops pilot, and the rest of the household is waking up, so I call it quits for awhile to get some other stuff done.
I log back in when I get a message from Taggart about a potential buyer for the empty class four system, but by the time I get in the buyer has logged out for the day. Ahh well -- Tira's agreed to stay hidden in the class four to provide access whenever we need, so there's no rush.
It seems I missed a bit of violence while I was gone; the Walrus fleet mixed it up with a Raven-class battleship. The fight didn't go very well, apparently, and left the fleet down a Falcon and the Raven scot-free, thanks to their judicious use of drones. We need to get folks some more appropriately PvP-fit ships, and maybe a few training sessions for the newer pilots. Something to consider.
In any case, the tussle with the Raven left no one really in the mood for evening mayhem -- it's only me and CB once the sun sets, so we saddle up in gas harvesters and take care of the sites that the Buzzard pilot interrupted in the morning. Once that's done, we use the highsec exit from that same system to sell the gas for a quick 50 million ISK. I take my cut and cobble together a serviceable Scythe-class mining cruiser -- it's no Hulk-class exhumer, but it'll give me something to do when there's nothing else to do, I suppose.
Meanwhile, Bre has logged in and is celebrating a couple complete skill training sessions by grabbing her Vengeance-class assault frigate and flying it out to known space to get it properly fit. I'm a bit concerned about this, since our connection to the class two (and, therefore, to known space) is aging and close to collapse, but Bre has great faith in her ability to find the fittings she needs quickly (or great faith in our ability to scan down a new entrance for her to use tomorrow). I wait on the wormhole to tell her if she need not bother hurrying.
It turns out her faith is well-placed; even stopping in a several far-flung systems to get the best prices (and pick up a few new skill books), she manages to get back into the home system before the connection dies.
Just before; a few minutes after she warps home to our tower, I notice that the wormhole I'd been watching is gone. Given the potential wormhole system sale, the gas mining, and a few new ships parked at the tower, I'd say it served us well.
Misadventures in New Eden and Anoikis.
2011-10-20
Life in a Wormhole: Dangerous When Bored #eveonline
It's less than 24 hours since I first heard murmurs about getting a Rorqual for the system, with a number of ideas tossed around about funding the whole thing.
Twenty-four hours is a long time for a bunch of pilots trapped in a single wormhole -- a lot of things can happen, and apparently they have; by the time I log in, Em has a new spreadsheet set up to track "the Rorqual project", and people are mining away, tallying up the value of the ore and adding it to sheet in a slow count toward lofty monetary benchmarks.
It would appear we're doing this, or at least we're seriously considering it. Our corp is lagging behind, so I cast our vote with an enthusiastic email and three hundred fifty million ISK sent over to Em to get the wheels turning -- I'm a shite miner, but I do have cash, and since the Rorqual plan involves repaying all the investors (eventually), I'm more than happy to chip in.
Honestly, I would be anyway: as I said, I'm not much of a miner, but several of our other pilots (CB, Gor, Wil, to name a few) definitely are; They don't mine in wormholes due to all the problems with mining that I've mentioned -- I love the idea of them being able to use more of their character's abilities -- ultimately, a completely 'realized' wormhole should be allowing you to use all aspects of your EvE pilot's abilities (except your official "social" skills, maybe), and this is a step in that direction.
We're still running the home system with the wormholes closed up, so I've little enough to do other than that. The wardec has a few days left; the alliance has lost a hauler in a ridiculous example of poor decision making, but we've popped a couple tech 2 assault frigates, so with all that said, we're 'ahead' for the week, and will easily cost the wardeccing corp more than they cost us.
This is probably the most dangerous part of the wardec: with only a few days left and nothing much happening, this is when someone decides to take a chance and run to a market system. I'm not a patient person, and I've got no mining ship with which to distract myself, so the safest thing I can do is log out for the night to keep myself out of trouble.
As I head back to the tower, the mining continues, and although there's no sound in space, I'd swear I can hear the pilots humming a tune over comms.
(With apologies to Freddy Mercury... and everyone else.)
Twenty-four hours is a long time for a bunch of pilots trapped in a single wormhole -- a lot of things can happen, and apparently they have; by the time I log in, Em has a new spreadsheet set up to track "the Rorqual project", and people are mining away, tallying up the value of the ore and adding it to sheet in a slow count toward lofty monetary benchmarks.
It would appear we're doing this, or at least we're seriously considering it. Our corp is lagging behind, so I cast our vote with an enthusiastic email and three hundred fifty million ISK sent over to Em to get the wheels turning -- I'm a shite miner, but I do have cash, and since the Rorqual plan involves repaying all the investors (eventually), I'm more than happy to chip in.
Honestly, I would be anyway: as I said, I'm not much of a miner, but several of our other pilots (CB, Gor, Wil, to name a few) definitely are; They don't mine in wormholes due to all the problems with mining that I've mentioned -- I love the idea of them being able to use more of their character's abilities -- ultimately, a completely 'realized' wormhole should be allowing you to use all aspects of your EvE pilot's abilities (except your official "social" skills, maybe), and this is a step in that direction.
We're still running the home system with the wormholes closed up, so I've little enough to do other than that. The wardec has a few days left; the alliance has lost a hauler in a ridiculous example of poor decision making, but we've popped a couple tech 2 assault frigates, so with all that said, we're 'ahead' for the week, and will easily cost the wardeccing corp more than they cost us.
This is probably the most dangerous part of the wardec: with only a few days left and nothing much happening, this is when someone decides to take a chance and run to a market system. I'm not a patient person, and I've got no mining ship with which to distract myself, so the safest thing I can do is log out for the night to keep myself out of trouble.
As I head back to the tower, the mining continues, and although there's no sound in space, I'd swear I can hear the pilots humming a tune over comms.
Pilot you’re a punk
flyin' cheap junk.
Playin’ in wormholes
gonna go mine some rocks today.
Shootin' Plagioclase
You big disgrace
Kickin’ jetcans all over the place.
We will we will Rorqual
We will we will Rorqual.
Pilot you’re a carebear
don't care
Lookin’ for a way
gonna pay to smash some ore today.
You got dirt on yo’ face
You big disgrace
Screams of boredom make no sound in space.
We will we will Rorqual
We will we will Rorqual.
Pilot you’re an rich man
ore man
Lickin' cracked lips
Gonna make you some ISK today.
Crushing ore in a vice
You're not that Gneiss
Gotta crazed glaze creepin' over your eyes.
We will we will Rorqual
We will we will Rorqual...
(With apologies to Freddy Mercury... and everyone else.)
2011-10-19
Life in a Wormhole: Welcome to the Alliance #eveonline
The war declaration I mentioned yesterday came on the last day of our month-long trial period with the Alliance, so while we were prepping for a bit of alone time in wormhole space, we were also going through the minor paperwork that comes with full membership; apparently, we managed to pass muster and got some pretty glowing reviews from the other corps in our wormhole.
As an added plus, Walrus and Cabbage offer to make our 'trial' arrangement permanent, so thankfully we don't have to relocate, either -- we're not 'guests' anymore; just the third 'home' corporation in our system. It feels good. We become full members within an hour of the wardec going active, which I personally find kind of amusing.
Not that the wardec has no effect at all -- it does hinder us a bit (at least it hinders me), simply because we're keeping our persistent connection to known space closed for the duration. This isn't a problem for the obvious reasons -- if we really needed supplies, all of our corporations have alt characters outside the alliance who can haul stuff in -- the 'problem' is that we're taking this opportunity to do some mining in the home system, hitting the three belts currently available in the system while the chance of outside interruption is low.
This increased security is due to the strange nature of wormholes in general. The way it works is that while any given wormhole system has one or two persistent connections available, they are only potential connections -- they show up on scan, but they don't "activate" until you actually warp a ship out close enough to them to show up on the same tactical overview grid as the wormhole.
Basically, what that means is that until you actually fly close to a wormhole, is has no 'other' side; it's not connected to anything until it needs to be (I smell some database programming efficiencies here). This affords a wormhole dweller a fair amount of security just by leaving their wormhole connections alone; since there's no 'other' side to the wormhole, no one can use your unvisited persistent connections to enter your system -- the only way to get unexpected visitors is if some other system's wormhole connection randomly selects your system as its destination point when it's activated. This is (a) not incredibly common (happens to us every week or so, maybe) and (b) pretty easy to watch for.
So, given all that, and the fact that we are already going to leave our LowSec exit closed, Mining Ops are set up, with the accompanying request to "keep all exits closed unless necessary", which means that our class two connection should be left alone as well, unless you know you have the ability and time to collapse it when you're done.
I don't want to endanger my fellow alliance mates while they shoot rocks, and Berke's not around much this week, so I'm left with few options for the next couple days, twiddling my thumbs while I pondering the fact that I didn't remember to bring a mining ship into the home system.
I'm not the only one mildly displeased by the current situations, though; surprisingly, it's the pilots in the system doing the mining who are looking askance at the whole set up, and the reason is that demon of wormhole mining: refining loss.
Miners in known space don't generally have to deal with this kind of problem; when they mine, they haul the raw ore back to a station and, assuming that their skills are good and their standing with the faction that controls the station is good, they will realize close to 100% return on the refining process. In short, if they mine X amount ore that should, on paper, yield Y amount of minerals, then Y amount is pretty much exactly what they're going to get.
Wormholes don't work that way. There are no stations, and the best refining facility you can set up at your tower yields only a 75% return on the refinement process, which (if you're selling the minerals for profit) is a pretty major cut into your profits and (if you're building stuff) is a pretty damned inefficient way to get the materials you need for manufacture. On top of that, any kind of effort to haul the raw ore out into known space where the refining percentages are better is hampered by the fact that the ore itself is extremely bulky and basically a huge pain in the ass to move out of the wormhole in any useful amount.
And mining is already kind of iffy in terms of profit in the first place: even in high security known space, a pilot with the standing and ability to run level 4 missions will make far more ISK running missions than they will with maxed-out mining skills, unless they're running something like four mining accounts at the same time. Even with the the existence of the rarer, more valuable ores inside wormholes, shooting sleepers is still almost always an exponentially faster and more effective way to make some ISK, even assuming perfect refining, and without that, mining becomes a very, very, very last-resort activity, even for pilots with a long list of perfect industrial skills.
Even carebear wormhole dwellers balk at 'mining op' fleet invitations.
Which is why my fellow pilots are spending their time in solitary talking about a Rorqual.
A what?
A rorqual-class capitol industrial ship is a kind of big-(big-big-)brother to the Orca. It is capable of performing a number of functions (mobile ship hangar and clone bay being of particular interest in known space), but the most valuable function to a group of wormhole miners lies in its ability to compress ore; it doesn't refine it into manufacture-grade minerals, but instead makes them far more portable in their raw state, which lets you accumulate what would otherwise be unmanageable amounts of ore and -- thanks to something like a 140:1 compression ratio -- smash them into a dense package that can be far more easily hauled to known space.
Obviously, this is a great solution to the problem.
There's just a few problems:
In short, it's a hell of a big project, and a hell of a big commitment to make. Given that our little corp only just joined the Alliance a few days ago, the fact that we're even discussing it says something about the great relationship we've already formed with our fellow system-mates.
It's all just talk for now, of course, likely driven by a bit of cabin fever and the fact that every hour spent mining is (thanks to the refining problem) at least 15 minutes worth of completely binned effort, but all the same I take it as a good sign for the future health of our home system.
As an added plus, Walrus and Cabbage offer to make our 'trial' arrangement permanent, so thankfully we don't have to relocate, either -- we're not 'guests' anymore; just the third 'home' corporation in our system. It feels good. We become full members within an hour of the wardec going active, which I personally find kind of amusing.
Not that the wardec has no effect at all -- it does hinder us a bit (at least it hinders me), simply because we're keeping our persistent connection to known space closed for the duration. This isn't a problem for the obvious reasons -- if we really needed supplies, all of our corporations have alt characters outside the alliance who can haul stuff in -- the 'problem' is that we're taking this opportunity to do some mining in the home system, hitting the three belts currently available in the system while the chance of outside interruption is low.
This increased security is due to the strange nature of wormholes in general. The way it works is that while any given wormhole system has one or two persistent connections available, they are only potential connections -- they show up on scan, but they don't "activate" until you actually warp a ship out close enough to them to show up on the same tactical overview grid as the wormhole.
Basically, what that means is that until you actually fly close to a wormhole, is has no 'other' side; it's not connected to anything until it needs to be (I smell some database programming efficiencies here). This affords a wormhole dweller a fair amount of security just by leaving their wormhole connections alone; since there's no 'other' side to the wormhole, no one can use your unvisited persistent connections to enter your system -- the only way to get unexpected visitors is if some other system's wormhole connection randomly selects your system as its destination point when it's activated. This is (a) not incredibly common (happens to us every week or so, maybe) and (b) pretty easy to watch for.
So, given all that, and the fact that we are already going to leave our LowSec exit closed, Mining Ops are set up, with the accompanying request to "keep all exits closed unless necessary", which means that our class two connection should be left alone as well, unless you know you have the ability and time to collapse it when you're done.
I don't want to endanger my fellow alliance mates while they shoot rocks, and Berke's not around much this week, so I'm left with few options for the next couple days, twiddling my thumbs while I pondering the fact that I didn't remember to bring a mining ship into the home system.
I'm not the only one mildly displeased by the current situations, though; surprisingly, it's the pilots in the system doing the mining who are looking askance at the whole set up, and the reason is that demon of wormhole mining: refining loss.
Miners in known space don't generally have to deal with this kind of problem; when they mine, they haul the raw ore back to a station and, assuming that their skills are good and their standing with the faction that controls the station is good, they will realize close to 100% return on the refining process. In short, if they mine X amount ore that should, on paper, yield Y amount of minerals, then Y amount is pretty much exactly what they're going to get.
Wormholes don't work that way. There are no stations, and the best refining facility you can set up at your tower yields only a 75% return on the refinement process, which (if you're selling the minerals for profit) is a pretty major cut into your profits and (if you're building stuff) is a pretty damned inefficient way to get the materials you need for manufacture. On top of that, any kind of effort to haul the raw ore out into known space where the refining percentages are better is hampered by the fact that the ore itself is extremely bulky and basically a huge pain in the ass to move out of the wormhole in any useful amount.
And mining is already kind of iffy in terms of profit in the first place: even in high security known space, a pilot with the standing and ability to run level 4 missions will make far more ISK running missions than they will with maxed-out mining skills, unless they're running something like four mining accounts at the same time. Even with the the existence of the rarer, more valuable ores inside wormholes, shooting sleepers is still almost always an exponentially faster and more effective way to make some ISK, even assuming perfect refining, and without that, mining becomes a very, very, very last-resort activity, even for pilots with a long list of perfect industrial skills.
Which is why my fellow pilots are spending their time in solitary talking about a Rorqual.
A what?
A rorqual-class capitol industrial ship is a kind of big-(big-big-)brother to the Orca. It is capable of performing a number of functions (mobile ship hangar and clone bay being of particular interest in known space), but the most valuable function to a group of wormhole miners lies in its ability to compress ore; it doesn't refine it into manufacture-grade minerals, but instead makes them far more portable in their raw state, which lets you accumulate what would otherwise be unmanageable amounts of ore and -- thanks to something like a 140:1 compression ratio -- smash them into a dense package that can be far more easily hauled to known space.
Obviously, this is a great solution to the problem.
There's just a few problems:
- Cost: Between the blue-prints, required training books, and materials, the Rorqual costs several billion ISK to make, and to train up pilots who can us it in the way I've described.
- Mass Limitations: All the minerals that Rorqual manufacture requires have to be acquired from somewhere -- either purchased and hauled in from known space (which goes back to the whole problem with hauling minerals through mass-limted wormholes), or mined and refined in the home system (which runs into the problem with 75% return from the refining array).
- Training time: None of us can pilot a rorqual right now, and ideally at least one member from each of our corps should be able to, so we can all make use of it at any time -- that's a big commitment for a pilot to make, even if they'd be done before the ship is actually completed.
- It's a ship in a bottle. We live in a class two system, which in turn means that any wormholes that leave or enter our system have a certain total mass restriction, and a certain per-jump mass restriction. In short, that means that we can't build or buy a Rorqual out in known space and bring it in, nor can we get such a ship out if we build it inside the hole; if we build it, we have to build it locally, knowing that it can never leave.
In short, it's a hell of a big project, and a hell of a big commitment to make. Given that our little corp only just joined the Alliance a few days ago, the fact that we're even discussing it says something about the great relationship we've already formed with our fellow system-mates.
It's all just talk for now, of course, likely driven by a bit of cabin fever and the fact that every hour spent mining is (thanks to the refining problem) at least 15 minutes worth of completely binned effort, but all the same I take it as a good sign for the future health of our home system.
2011-10-18
Life in a Wormhole: WAR (or something like it) #eveonline
I log in a few days after our last big day to find a notification of War Declaration in my mailbox, so my evening plans are put on hold to make proper preparations.
War declarations are something in EvE that never fail to amuse me a little bit, probably because of when and how I've experienced any wardecs during my time in the game.
The basic idea behind the wardec is that war between corporations or alliances in high-security space is illegal, according to the Yulai Convention. In order for one group to declare war on another group, the instigating corp has topay a fee to bribe CONCORD so that they will leave the aggressors to attack their target without getting mobbed by a bunch of peacekeepers. The bribe lasts for a week, at which point in time it must be paid again to keep going (with, I think, increasing costs every week), or allowed to lapse, at which point in time the pencil pushers at CONCORD finally notice the shenanigans and call a halt to the whole illegal mess.
It makes me smile, because the process has a very heavy EvE flavor to it. I know the folks that suffer from (or instigate) a lot of these wardecs are aware of more than a few deep flaws in the system, but that's pretty far outside my arena of regular activity.
Which brings me to the reason that I've always found wardecs personally amusing. The whole point of the things is to allow you to attack someone you otherwise would not be able to attack, while in highsec space... and I've never been in highsec when I've been wardecced. I remember two wardecs while living in Curse (to which the corp responded "we're right here, come get us!" -- it was a very quiet week) and now while in Wormhole space which (I believe I've mentioned) is a lawless frontier wilderness.
When you can safely assume that everyone is trying to kill you, it doesn't matter that much if a particular group is paying an extra specialfee bribe to do so.
So why worry?
Well, as I understand it, the group in the process of deccing us specializes in ganking inattentive haulers as they move in and out of (and between) market systems, and they're associated with a wormhole alliance that doesn't much care for ours, so it would seem that their goal is to get some easy kills and screw with our lines of supply. This affects the whole alliance as well -- not just the three corps in our system -- which at this point numbers something like 20 inhabited wormholes. That's a fair amount of logistics.
The war goes into affect 24 hours after thefees bribes have been paid, which gives me about 22 hours to get ready from the point where I get this notification, and pretty much everyone else in our home system is doing the same stuff: scan down the exits, get some hauler ships out into highsec, grab whatever tower fuels we're a skosh low on (in our case, there aren't many), get any lingering ship/drone reparis done, update the Planetary Interaction colonies to make sure the tower fuel we can make will be entirely sufficient, double check everything...
And then wire the doors shut and just ignore known space for awhile.
If these corporations want to come and find us in our home systems, they are welcome to: this is our home territory, where we understand the rules and idiosyncrasies, and where we fully expect trouble. To try to function around a high-sec 'griefer' wardec corp in their home arena -- where they are the ones who know all the little tricks and exploits and can turn them to their advantage -- is pretty much the height of foolishness and (despite evidence to the contrary) we try fairly hard to avoid being foolish.
So, 20 hours later, we have closed up the wormhole, taken stock of the activities with which we can amuse ourselves for a week (quite a few gravimetric signatures indicating mineable asteroid fields), and settled in.
It's only then that realize I never brought in any mining vessels. My time-killing options just got a *lot* more limited.
War declarations are something in EvE that never fail to amuse me a little bit, probably because of when and how I've experienced any wardecs during my time in the game.
The basic idea behind the wardec is that war between corporations or alliances in high-security space is illegal, according to the Yulai Convention. In order for one group to declare war on another group, the instigating corp has to
It makes me smile, because the process has a very heavy EvE flavor to it. I know the folks that suffer from (or instigate) a lot of these wardecs are aware of more than a few deep flaws in the system, but that's pretty far outside my arena of regular activity.
Which brings me to the reason that I've always found wardecs personally amusing. The whole point of the things is to allow you to attack someone you otherwise would not be able to attack, while in highsec space... and I've never been in highsec when I've been wardecced. I remember two wardecs while living in Curse (to which the corp responded "we're right here, come get us!" -- it was a very quiet week) and now while in Wormhole space which (I believe I've mentioned) is a lawless frontier wilderness.
When you can safely assume that everyone is trying to kill you, it doesn't matter that much if a particular group is paying an extra special
So why worry?
Well, as I understand it, the group in the process of deccing us specializes in ganking inattentive haulers as they move in and out of (and between) market systems, and they're associated with a wormhole alliance that doesn't much care for ours, so it would seem that their goal is to get some easy kills and screw with our lines of supply. This affects the whole alliance as well -- not just the three corps in our system -- which at this point numbers something like 20 inhabited wormholes. That's a fair amount of logistics.
The war goes into affect 24 hours after the
And then wire the doors shut and just ignore known space for awhile.
If these corporations want to come and find us in our home systems, they are welcome to: this is our home territory, where we understand the rules and idiosyncrasies, and where we fully expect trouble. To try to function around a high-sec 'griefer' wardec corp in their home arena -- where they are the ones who know all the little tricks and exploits and can turn them to their advantage -- is pretty much the height of foolishness and (despite evidence to the contrary) we try fairly hard to avoid being foolish.
So, 20 hours later, we have closed up the wormhole, taken stock of the activities with which we can amuse ourselves for a week (quite a few gravimetric signatures indicating mineable asteroid fields), and settled in.
It's only then that realize I never brought in any mining vessels. My time-killing options just got a *lot* more limited.
2011-10-13
Life in a Wormhole: Day-tripping #eveonline
A few days ago in the comments, Ko asked:
Really, really good question I'm probably going to answer poorly.
At what point do you say “thanks but no thanks” to a hole?
The short answer: "If there's any kind of activity."
That doesn't mean "if you see Towers", or "if you see ships". It means you see ships, and there's pilots in them, especially if they're doing stuff. (Really, the only way to tell if there's pilots in them is if you can tell they're moving around, or by getting on grid with them, which means finding their tower and looking at them. If the overview shows you a Drake in one column, but a player name in the other column, it's piloted. If it says the ship type in both columns, it's just floating there.)
The long answer: You should cancel your original plans of shooting sleepers if you see online pilots in system, for sure, although it's possible that you can make new plans that involve doing pointy things to the pilots. By yourself, you won't be able to do much, but mugging a lax miner or a badger out collecting planet goo is a fun change of pace, and maybe you'll scare him into logging off so you can shoot sleepers in peace. If you have a couple friends online, you might even be able to lure a guy into attacking you and ambushing him.
It seems that most holes spawning into High Sec space are occupied, regardless of how many sites left. They are positively littered with POSes and more often than not, ships.
I would say that at least 9 of every 10 wormholes I encounter are occupied to some degree, yes. Keep in mind I'm talking mostly about Class 2 and Class 1 systems, but given that Class 2s are the most numerous type, this is indicative.
With that said, "occupied" isn't the same thing as "active". A few minutes of poking around when you get into a system will tell you a lot about what's really going on there. If you do a passive scan (using your onboard scanner), do you see a lot of anomalies? If so, these guys either aren't terribly active, or they just aren't there for the Sleepers (they're doing gas reactions, or making tech3 cruisers or something).
You can also tell by the modules they have on their towers. Are there a lot of silos and coupling arrays? Then they're doing some kind of industry. Online ship assemblies (or ammo or drones or whatever)? Building stuff. Is it nothing but guns and a few hangars? They shoot stuff.
And as I said, just because you see a lot of ships doesn't mean anyone's online. Lots of people are very sloppy and just leave their stuff floating inside the tower shields. The only way to tell for sure is to get on-grid with the tower and look, and that means finding the tower first. More on that in a bit.
I’m wondering what I can do to increase my security.
Okay, so here's me, coming into a system for the first time. I'm not day-tripping, but aside from that, nothing is really different, nor should it be.
I'm outside the wormhole, cloaked. I bookmark it. I have the scanning window up, and I have the in-game browser open and minimized. The homepage of my browser is set to wormnav.com.
I approach the wormhole and jump.
I am on the other side. I have less than a minute before my the 'jump cloak' drops. I check my overview (which is currently set for basic PvP and tower-hunting) and hit both my ship's passive scanner and d-scan. I open the browser window and tell wormnav to update to my current position (something it can only do if it's open in your in-game browser).
Bookmark this side of the wormhole.
I now have data to analyze. Assuming no one is sitting immediately on the wormhole, I align to convenient celestial and immediately cloak. Maybe I jump somewhere to sit at a safe spot, or maybe I keep flying off in random directions while cloaked. Up to you. Time to analyze the data I have.
1. Passive scan: Least-important, but fastest to analyze. Are there anomalies here? "Few or none." means this system is actively occupied, or has very hungry visitors. "A half-dozen or so" means they occupants aren't very active, or they're very inactive and someone cleaned them out a few days ago. "Many" means they're inactive and haven't been visited recently. "OMG it's full of stars" means no one lives here. Jackpot.
2. D-scan. Any ships or towers? If ships AND towers, they're probably together. If ships and no towers, uncheck 'use my overview settings' and re-d-scan, looking for wrecks. If you see wrecks and ships, they're shooting sleepers. No wrecks might mean mining, gas harvesting, Planetary Interaction, space rugby, or ... hell, lots of stuff. If Tower and no ship, probably everyone's asleep. Make sure your overview is set to also show you force fields; if you see a tower but no forcefield, it's abandoned.
If you see no ships or towers, open your system map and see which planets with moons are more than 14AU from you. You will need to warp to those planets (NOT THE MOONS) and refresh d-scan in that area until you have d-scanned the whole system.
Do that even if you initially find a tower. There may be more.
Rule 0: there is a tower. There is always a tower.
3. Wormnav. This page will tell you lots of things about the system, but mostly you're looking for the readouts in the middle that tell you about recent jump activity (random, far-flung spikes indicates visitors-only; lots of consistent jumping means occupants that are active), NPC shooting in the last week or so (indicates activity), and PvP ship and POD kills.
If you see ship and pod kills, reconsider sticking around, unless you're looking for a fight.
If you see ship and pod kills, go to the bottom of wormnav and open up the battleclinic link for more details. Maybe it's the locals who get shot up all the time; that's not bad news.
If you see very little activity, then things are looking pretty good for you.
Let's have a look at that tower. (Or those towers.)
Directional scan is called that for a reason. At this point, it's time to figure out where the towers are and go look at them. Change the 'angle' of your d-scan down to about 15 degrees and swing your camera around so that a planetary cluster within d-scan range is dead-center, then scan.
Do you see the tower on the results? If yes, then the tower is at one of those planet's moons. Warp to that planet at some random distance (not 0 and not 100). If no, repeat this with each planet until you get a 'yes'.
Once in orbit around the planet, swing your camera around to point at each of the planet's moons, d-scanning each, until you figure out which moon is concurrent with the tower. That's your moon.
Make sure your d-scan is showing you EVERYTHING, then scan again, looking for a lot of secure containers, abandoned drones, or corpses, concurrent with mobile warp disruptor bubbles. Such things equal traps meant to snag and decloak you. Be wary.
Warp to the moon and check out the tower. See if the ships are piloted. "Show info" on the tower, check out the owning corp and alliance, and see what their corp info says. Look up the corp and alliance on the battleclinic kill boards. Google them. See if they have a website. Do your research.
Repeat this for every tower where you see ships.
Is everyone logged out? Are you alone?
Good.
Now.
Finally.
You may deploy scanning probes.
Wormnav will tell you how many wormholes there should be in the system. Use your scanning probes and verify there aren't more than that, but don't visit them if you have the right number and want to keep the system quiet.
So: Are we cool? All things are right in the world?
Now you can go get your Drake. Hopefully, all of this hasn't taken more than an hour or so. If you're lucky, or you get good at it, it'll be about 20 minutes, top to bottom. (Yes, it takes a tedious amount of time. I've said as much. C'est la EvE.)
What if there isn't a tower?
There is always a tower.
If you really think there isn't, drop a single combat scanner probe, set it to 64 au, and scan the whole system.
If you don't get any hits but you, congratulations: You either just found your new home, or are about to make about 300 million isk or more from selling the system's location.
I feel like I’m being stretched 5 ways from Friday trying to keep an eye on the d-scan while running sites and keeping myself aligned to a celestial or safe spot.
You're doing it right, mostly. Solo, daytripping into a wormhole, you need to land on the site, align to a celestial, keep moving, and be ready to warp away to that celestial the moment you see anything weird on d-scan (which window should simply never be closed, and which you should be hitting every 10 to 15 seconds, at minimum.
Don't salvage on that Drake, though; not while you're solo and fighting (if you have friends with you, one of them can salvage as they fight, if they're very good at it, but don't expect them to watch d-scan). Bookmark a wreck as you keep moving and killing. When everything's dead, warp to another site and keep going, or warp away somewhere and wait, or warp home for a salvaging ship. In 20 minutes or less, the site will despawn. (You'll know it has if you try to warp to the wreck and DO NOT see the little pop-up message.) Don't salvage until it's despawned. Preferably, do it in a dedicated salvaging boat, because it's better to do it faster and get out, and frankly one salvager on a properly tanked Drake will take WAY too long.
The reason you wait for the despawn is because anyone in the world can find you with no probes in an active anomaly (they need only d-scan and the passive scanner), but in a despawned anomaly, they must use probes, and that gives you a layer of protection and a few more seconds of warning.
And if you have someone following behind you to salvage, try not to do what these guys did.
Hope that helps. More good questions and bad answers in the comments...
Question, when day tripping, at what point do you say “thanks but no thanks” to a hole? It seems that most holes spawning into High Sec space are occupied, regardless of how many sites left. They are positively littered with POSes and more often than not, ships.
I’ve been probing down with cov-ops, peeking inside and running a quick passive and d-scan. If ships are present I’ll pull out the probes. I then run back to high sec for the Drake if things look nice. I’ve been lucky so far, but after a close call a few days ago (got tackled by an assault frig with his friends in-bound.) I’m wondering what I can do to increase my security.
I feel like I’m being stretched 5 ways from Friday trying to keep an eye on the d-scan while running sites and keeping myself aligned to a celestial or safe spot, and I’m at loathe to run a cloak on the Drake since I’ve already got a probe launcher and salvager.
Really, really good question I'm probably going to answer poorly.
At what point do you say “thanks but no thanks” to a hole?
The short answer: "If there's any kind of activity."
That doesn't mean "if you see Towers", or "if you see ships". It means you see ships, and there's pilots in them, especially if they're doing stuff. (Really, the only way to tell if there's pilots in them is if you can tell they're moving around, or by getting on grid with them, which means finding their tower and looking at them. If the overview shows you a Drake in one column, but a player name in the other column, it's piloted. If it says the ship type in both columns, it's just floating there.)
The long answer: You should cancel your original plans of shooting sleepers if you see online pilots in system, for sure, although it's possible that you can make new plans that involve doing pointy things to the pilots. By yourself, you won't be able to do much, but mugging a lax miner or a badger out collecting planet goo is a fun change of pace, and maybe you'll scare him into logging off so you can shoot sleepers in peace. If you have a couple friends online, you might even be able to lure a guy into attacking you and ambushing him.
It seems that most holes spawning into High Sec space are occupied, regardless of how many sites left. They are positively littered with POSes and more often than not, ships.
I would say that at least 9 of every 10 wormholes I encounter are occupied to some degree, yes. Keep in mind I'm talking mostly about Class 2 and Class 1 systems, but given that Class 2s are the most numerous type, this is indicative.
With that said, "occupied" isn't the same thing as "active". A few minutes of poking around when you get into a system will tell you a lot about what's really going on there. If you do a passive scan (using your onboard scanner), do you see a lot of anomalies? If so, these guys either aren't terribly active, or they just aren't there for the Sleepers (they're doing gas reactions, or making tech3 cruisers or something).
You can also tell by the modules they have on their towers. Are there a lot of silos and coupling arrays? Then they're doing some kind of industry. Online ship assemblies (or ammo or drones or whatever)? Building stuff. Is it nothing but guns and a few hangars? They shoot stuff.
And as I said, just because you see a lot of ships doesn't mean anyone's online. Lots of people are very sloppy and just leave their stuff floating inside the tower shields. The only way to tell for sure is to get on-grid with the tower and look, and that means finding the tower first. More on that in a bit.
I’m wondering what I can do to increase my security.
Okay, so here's me, coming into a system for the first time. I'm not day-tripping, but aside from that, nothing is really different, nor should it be.
I'm outside the wormhole, cloaked. I bookmark it. I have the scanning window up, and I have the in-game browser open and minimized. The homepage of my browser is set to wormnav.com.
I approach the wormhole and jump.
I am on the other side. I have less than a minute before my the 'jump cloak' drops. I check my overview (which is currently set for basic PvP and tower-hunting) and hit both my ship's passive scanner and d-scan. I open the browser window and tell wormnav to update to my current position (something it can only do if it's open in your in-game browser).
Bookmark this side of the wormhole.
I now have data to analyze. Assuming no one is sitting immediately on the wormhole, I align to convenient celestial and immediately cloak. Maybe I jump somewhere to sit at a safe spot, or maybe I keep flying off in random directions while cloaked. Up to you. Time to analyze the data I have.
1. Passive scan: Least-important, but fastest to analyze. Are there anomalies here? "Few or none." means this system is actively occupied, or has very hungry visitors. "A half-dozen or so" means they occupants aren't very active, or they're very inactive and someone cleaned them out a few days ago. "Many" means they're inactive and haven't been visited recently. "OMG it's full of stars" means no one lives here. Jackpot.
2. D-scan. Any ships or towers? If ships AND towers, they're probably together. If ships and no towers, uncheck 'use my overview settings' and re-d-scan, looking for wrecks. If you see wrecks and ships, they're shooting sleepers. No wrecks might mean mining, gas harvesting, Planetary Interaction, space rugby, or ... hell, lots of stuff. If Tower and no ship, probably everyone's asleep. Make sure your overview is set to also show you force fields; if you see a tower but no forcefield, it's abandoned.
If you see no ships or towers, open your system map and see which planets with moons are more than 14AU from you. You will need to warp to those planets (NOT THE MOONS) and refresh d-scan in that area until you have d-scanned the whole system.
Do that even if you initially find a tower. There may be more.
Rule 0: there is a tower. There is always a tower.
3. Wormnav. This page will tell you lots of things about the system, but mostly you're looking for the readouts in the middle that tell you about recent jump activity (random, far-flung spikes indicates visitors-only; lots of consistent jumping means occupants that are active), NPC shooting in the last week or so (indicates activity), and PvP ship and POD kills.
If you see ship and pod kills, reconsider sticking around, unless you're looking for a fight.
If you see ship and pod kills, go to the bottom of wormnav and open up the battleclinic link for more details. Maybe it's the locals who get shot up all the time; that's not bad news.
If you see very little activity, then things are looking pretty good for you.
Let's have a look at that tower. (Or those towers.)
Directional scan is called that for a reason. At this point, it's time to figure out where the towers are and go look at them. Change the 'angle' of your d-scan down to about 15 degrees and swing your camera around so that a planetary cluster within d-scan range is dead-center, then scan.
Do you see the tower on the results? If yes, then the tower is at one of those planet's moons. Warp to that planet at some random distance (not 0 and not 100). If no, repeat this with each planet until you get a 'yes'.
Once in orbit around the planet, swing your camera around to point at each of the planet's moons, d-scanning each, until you figure out which moon is concurrent with the tower. That's your moon.
Make sure your d-scan is showing you EVERYTHING, then scan again, looking for a lot of secure containers, abandoned drones, or corpses, concurrent with mobile warp disruptor bubbles. Such things equal traps meant to snag and decloak you. Be wary.
Warp to the moon and check out the tower. See if the ships are piloted. "Show info" on the tower, check out the owning corp and alliance, and see what their corp info says. Look up the corp and alliance on the battleclinic kill boards. Google them. See if they have a website. Do your research.
Repeat this for every tower where you see ships.
Is everyone logged out? Are you alone?
Good.
Now.
Finally.
You may deploy scanning probes.
Wormnav will tell you how many wormholes there should be in the system. Use your scanning probes and verify there aren't more than that, but don't visit them if you have the right number and want to keep the system quiet.
So: Are we cool? All things are right in the world?
Now you can go get your Drake. Hopefully, all of this hasn't taken more than an hour or so. If you're lucky, or you get good at it, it'll be about 20 minutes, top to bottom. (Yes, it takes a tedious amount of time. I've said as much. C'est la EvE.)
What if there isn't a tower?
There is always a tower.
If you really think there isn't, drop a single combat scanner probe, set it to 64 au, and scan the whole system.
If you don't get any hits but you, congratulations: You either just found your new home, or are about to make about 300 million isk or more from selling the system's location.
I feel like I’m being stretched 5 ways from Friday trying to keep an eye on the d-scan while running sites and keeping myself aligned to a celestial or safe spot.
You're doing it right, mostly. Solo, daytripping into a wormhole, you need to land on the site, align to a celestial, keep moving, and be ready to warp away to that celestial the moment you see anything weird on d-scan (which window should simply never be closed, and which you should be hitting every 10 to 15 seconds, at minimum.
Don't salvage on that Drake, though; not while you're solo and fighting (if you have friends with you, one of them can salvage as they fight, if they're very good at it, but don't expect them to watch d-scan). Bookmark a wreck as you keep moving and killing. When everything's dead, warp to another site and keep going, or warp away somewhere and wait, or warp home for a salvaging ship. In 20 minutes or less, the site will despawn. (You'll know it has if you try to warp to the wreck and DO NOT see the little pop-up message.) Don't salvage until it's despawned. Preferably, do it in a dedicated salvaging boat, because it's better to do it faster and get out, and frankly one salvager on a properly tanked Drake will take WAY too long.
The reason you wait for the despawn is because anyone in the world can find you with no probes in an active anomaly (they need only d-scan and the passive scanner), but in a despawned anomaly, they must use probes, and that gives you a layer of protection and a few more seconds of warning.
And if you have someone following behind you to salvage, try not to do what these guys did.
Hope that helps. More good questions and bad answers in the comments...
2011-10-12
Life in a Wormhole: Payout #eveonline
The last couple days have been...
How should I put this?
Here. This:
There. That. The one and only time you will ever see me compare myself to Brad Pitt in any context.
Moving on.
I vowed to make this day work out better than they have for the last week, and the neighboring class 2 system looks promising. Many anomalies and a juicy radar signature waving alluringly, and between the persistent connections to Class 5 wormhole space and nullsec (both of which I leave closed) and the fairly inactive, PvP-averse corporation that calls the place home, we are go for money-making.
Our system also has an unannounced inbound connection, but like our c2 neighbors, it reads "Mostly Harmless", if only because the inhabitants are French and not active on our timezone. We have confirmation: Time to make some iskies.
Gor and CB are online by the time I finish finding a lowsec route back to our wormhole for Cabbage, and we head into the anom-rich system to shoot Sleepers and take their stuff. This goes fine until we leave the second site and head to the third. Ty and Gor's ships leave CB's lumbering Dominix behind, and as soon as it's alone, it's jumped by an Arazu force recon cruiser!
Oddly, while I'm pounding d-scan and working to get turned around as fast as I can, CB is entirely calm about the whole thing.
"It's just Em," he explains.
"No it isn't," I counter. On d-scan, I can see that the ship is nothing at all like Em's Nighthawk command ship, nor does it have a callsign I recognize.
"It is," CB replies. "He's sitting five klicks from me. I'm looking in his cockpit."
"Oh," I say. "Well... kick his ass for me; I about had a heart attack." I pause to let me pulse slow down. "And ask him if he wants to join us."
Em readily agrees (once he stops laughing), and swaps ships into the far more familiar-looking Nighthawk. Aside from friendly-fire ambushes, the system remains quiet and we clean the entire system out, then collapse the wormhole connection to find a system with better exits, since Cabbage reports the lowsec gates near our other wormhole are camped and no use for getting supplies and loot in and out.
The new neighboring system has a persistent connection to lowsec, like our own, but the exit is much better; only six jumps from a major trade hub, and immediately adjacent to high sec -- an easy run for haulers fit with a few warp core stabilizers, which we happen to have. We all head out and sell our shares of the loot accumulated in the last four or five days, netting each pilot around 100 million isk. All in all, a good day of profitable sleeper shooting, followed by bountiful supply run.
Success.
How should I put this?
Here. This:
There. That. The one and only time you will ever see me compare myself to Brad Pitt in any context.
Moving on.
I vowed to make this day work out better than they have for the last week, and the neighboring class 2 system looks promising. Many anomalies and a juicy radar signature waving alluringly, and between the persistent connections to Class 5 wormhole space and nullsec (both of which I leave closed) and the fairly inactive, PvP-averse corporation that calls the place home, we are go for money-making.
Our system also has an unannounced inbound connection, but like our c2 neighbors, it reads "Mostly Harmless", if only because the inhabitants are French and not active on our timezone. We have confirmation: Time to make some iskies.
Gor and CB are online by the time I finish finding a lowsec route back to our wormhole for Cabbage, and we head into the anom-rich system to shoot Sleepers and take their stuff. This goes fine until we leave the second site and head to the third. Ty and Gor's ships leave CB's lumbering Dominix behind, and as soon as it's alone, it's jumped by an Arazu force recon cruiser!
Oddly, while I'm pounding d-scan and working to get turned around as fast as I can, CB is entirely calm about the whole thing.
"It's just Em," he explains.
"No it isn't," I counter. On d-scan, I can see that the ship is nothing at all like Em's Nighthawk command ship, nor does it have a callsign I recognize.
"It is," CB replies. "He's sitting five klicks from me. I'm looking in his cockpit."
"Oh," I say. "Well... kick his ass for me; I about had a heart attack." I pause to let me pulse slow down. "And ask him if he wants to join us."
Em readily agrees (once he stops laughing), and swaps ships into the far more familiar-looking Nighthawk. Aside from friendly-fire ambushes, the system remains quiet and we clean the entire system out, then collapse the wormhole connection to find a system with better exits, since Cabbage reports the lowsec gates near our other wormhole are camped and no use for getting supplies and loot in and out.
The new neighboring system has a persistent connection to lowsec, like our own, but the exit is much better; only six jumps from a major trade hub, and immediately adjacent to high sec -- an easy run for haulers fit with a few warp core stabilizers, which we happen to have. We all head out and sell our shares of the loot accumulated in the last four or five days, netting each pilot around 100 million isk. All in all, a good day of profitable sleeper shooting, followed by bountiful supply run.
2011-10-10
Life in a Wormhole: Skipping the Boring Stuff #eveonline
The title of this post is misleading; one of the things you can't do in a wormhole is skip the boring stuff.
Every day, when you log in, you scan. It may just be a passive scan and d-scan, or it might be with scanning probes, but either way, you scan.
Sometimes -- perhaps even most of the time, if you have a lot of active pilots in your wormhole -- there won't be much to do locally. Anomalies in the home system are run almost as soon as they appear, with the rarer signature sites taking very slightly longer to attract pilot aggression. Likewise, gas clouds (which only take a few minutes to harvest) die pretty quickly; that leaves only the gravimetric signatures of mineable asteroid belts to accumulate until the locals decide that they too need to go, and if you don't like shooting rocks, that's not a terribly enticing option.
If you want more to do, then there's more scanning to do; find the connection to the nearest wormhole and, once you get there, do more scanning to see if it's got stuff to shoot or is as picked over as your home. If the later, maybe you push big ships back and forth through the wormhole until it collapses under their weight, or maybe you scan further afield, looking for better pickings.
Maybe by this point you've found something to do. Maybe not. Maybe you're shooting sleepers, or other pilots, or they're shooting you.
Maybe.
Sometimes, though, there just isn't much going on. You can't skip it.
In space, no one can hear you sigh.
You can't run over to the next system and pick up a couple missions from the nearest Fed Navy agent. Even roaming around looking for some PvP takes a fair amount of preparatory scanning work.
It's sometimes hard -- mentally -- is what I'm trying to get at.
But is it worth it?
Absolutely. Even at it's most boring, wormhole living is better than 90% of everything else in the game, because although you are sitting at your tower with nothing to do, and nothing to shoot with your shiny guns, you are still sitting at your tower, in your system.
You are, for lack of a better word, home. Sitting around your home may be boring, but sometimes it's kind of nice.
HOWEVER.
Just because that's what we end up doing for the next couple days days doesn't mean YOU need to hear about it, so...
Berke and Ichiban's Orcas gets a workout for the next few days, and we rack up an impressive number of incredibad wormhole connections -- systems that are picked over, over-populated, just plain empty (and inexplicably so), or halfway useful systems we don't have the manpower to make proper use of. At one point, we scan through the next door system to the next one over from that, find a bunch of sites to hit, get a good group together, hit a bunch of sites, and gather up what may go down in history as The Worst Loot Ever -- so bad that it's actually possible we lost money on the effort once you calculate the cost of expended ammo.
Our loot accumulates, however slowly, but the other side of the poor connections is that it's simply building up in storage, since we can't seem to get a decent outbound connection to known space, either... though it's possible that our scouts are being a bit cautious in the aftermath of the loss of Berke's old orca and Shan's Hurricane.
But enough of this nonsense. I haven't been on much in the last few days, but I have an open day tomorrow and I decide that is going to be the day switch the momentum back in our favor. Enough of this crap; bored people are boring people.
Every day, when you log in, you scan. It may just be a passive scan and d-scan, or it might be with scanning probes, but either way, you scan.
Sometimes -- perhaps even most of the time, if you have a lot of active pilots in your wormhole -- there won't be much to do locally. Anomalies in the home system are run almost as soon as they appear, with the rarer signature sites taking very slightly longer to attract pilot aggression. Likewise, gas clouds (which only take a few minutes to harvest) die pretty quickly; that leaves only the gravimetric signatures of mineable asteroid belts to accumulate until the locals decide that they too need to go, and if you don't like shooting rocks, that's not a terribly enticing option.
If you want more to do, then there's more scanning to do; find the connection to the nearest wormhole and, once you get there, do more scanning to see if it's got stuff to shoot or is as picked over as your home. If the later, maybe you push big ships back and forth through the wormhole until it collapses under their weight, or maybe you scan further afield, looking for better pickings.
Maybe by this point you've found something to do. Maybe not. Maybe you're shooting sleepers, or other pilots, or they're shooting you.
Maybe.
Sometimes, though, there just isn't much going on. You can't skip it.
You can't run over to the next system and pick up a couple missions from the nearest Fed Navy agent. Even roaming around looking for some PvP takes a fair amount of preparatory scanning work.
It's sometimes hard -- mentally -- is what I'm trying to get at.
But is it worth it?
Absolutely. Even at it's most boring, wormhole living is better than 90% of everything else in the game, because although you are sitting at your tower with nothing to do, and nothing to shoot with your shiny guns, you are still sitting at your tower, in your system.
You are, for lack of a better word, home. Sitting around your home may be boring, but sometimes it's kind of nice.
HOWEVER.
Just because that's what we end up doing for the next couple days days doesn't mean YOU need to hear about it, so...
Berke and Ichiban's Orcas gets a workout for the next few days, and we rack up an impressive number of incredibad wormhole connections -- systems that are picked over, over-populated, just plain empty (and inexplicably so), or halfway useful systems we don't have the manpower to make proper use of. At one point, we scan through the next door system to the next one over from that, find a bunch of sites to hit, get a good group together, hit a bunch of sites, and gather up what may go down in history as The Worst Loot Ever -- so bad that it's actually possible we lost money on the effort once you calculate the cost of expended ammo.
Our loot accumulates, however slowly, but the other side of the poor connections is that it's simply building up in storage, since we can't seem to get a decent outbound connection to known space, either... though it's possible that our scouts are being a bit cautious in the aftermath of the loss of Berke's old orca and Shan's Hurricane.
But enough of this nonsense. I haven't been on much in the last few days, but I have an open day tomorrow and I decide that is going to be the day switch the momentum back in our favor. Enough of this crap; bored people are boring people.
2011-10-07
Life in a Wormhole: Hole-crashing a Manticore #eveonline
A new day! Albeit another day where my playtime is limited. Kate's out of town, and while she's taking The Littlest Copilot with her on her trip, I've still got a pretty heavy work schedule and Eldest Daughter to care for. (Something something, needs food, something something, homework, something something, laundry, something something, get to school on time, something...) The upshot is that while I'm technically living the glorious dream of temporary bachelorhood (all the slacker free time, none of the soul-crushing, life-long loneliness), the reality is that I need to use most of my playtime bandwidth for things like feeding the dogs and making sure my daughter has reasonably clean uniforms to wear.
On week's like these, seeing to my own stuff takes a distant back seat.
Today, in fact, I have only a few minutes to be online, but they conveniently coincide with Em, Berk, Bre, and Tira. I consider doing a bit of sleeper shooting, but a note in our home system's comms channel about a suspicious in-bound wormhole sends me out for a shufti instead.
I quickly scan down the wormhole and home in on the class four wormhole, sweeping my d-scan around to locate a couple of towers, which gives me the intel I need to determine that, once again, we're next door to some pretty dangerous people.
"You going to collapse that hole?" Em asks. A few seconds pass during which all of our pilots start switching to appropriate ships. "Nevermind. I can see you are. I'll get the Falcon."
Our setup this time is considerably more paranoid, due to recent events. Tira gets into her Helios-class covert ops frigate and posts herself in a fifteen kilometer orbit around the 'enemy' side of the wormhole, scouring d-scan for the signs of any activity, which right now means only a single piloted Mammoth-class hauler. Meanwhile, both Bre and Ty have gotten into Blackbird-class cruisers brimming with Electronic Countermeasures, backed up by both Em in her Falcon and Si in her Curse. Only with the entire defensive infrastructure in place does Berke warp in and jump.
The first jump turns out poorly, as the stubborn wormhole spits the Deliberate out nearly eight kilometers from the other side of the hole, forcing the lumbering ship to crawl three klicks before it can jump back. Not normally a problem, except for the fact that we're within d-scan range of one of the enemy towers, and this move leaves Berke's orca visible for almost 45 seconds -- more than enough to spot, if the current pilot is remotely awake. Maybe we'll get lucky.
Turns out we won't. Berke jumps back to the home system and then cloaks up manually to wait out the polarization effect, and as the Orca's secondary coils (whatever those are) recover, Tira spots movement at the tower: a Buzzard-class covert ops frigate appears, warps out of the tower, and dumps a half-dozen scanning probes into space. They aren't looking for the Orca (which would be hard, since it isn't there) but for the wormhole through which our Orca has invaded their system.
Right. This is going to get a little close.
The probes are still out during Berke's next jump, and he has time to watch them close in on the wormhole's location while he waits out the session change timer. Once again, he jumps home, destabilizing the hole (though not critically) and (again) cloaks up to wait out the polarization. Ty warps back to the tower to swap his Blackbird for a Typhoon-class battleship to help with the final wormhole-destroying push.
Tira, meanwhile, sees the probes vanish once again, and the Buzzard reappears at the tower, only to be swapped out for a Manticore-class stealth bomber. Interestingly, though, the Manticore doesn't immediately warp away from the tower and cloak -- it's just sitting there. Odd. Maybe the pilot isn't happy with the configuration of the ship? Maybe it doesn't get used much, and they're frantically swapping modules around at the Ship Maintenance Array? Maybe.
"How's it looking over there?" Em asks.
Tira ops for optimism, as is her way. "They've spotted us," she says, "but they're not getting organized fast enough to do anything."
"You sure?" Em asks.
"Mostly," Tira quickly corrects herself. "Most definitely." There's a short pause. "You know... just... be ready, in case."
Berke isn't waiting. Dangerous neighbors are bad, but dangerous neighbors that we've alerted and riled up are worse, so it's time to kill the hole. He jumps, followed by Ty's 'phoon, and Tira starts moving back to the hole to get out as well.
Neither Ty or Berke see the Manticore on d-scan. It's left the tower and cloaked. There's very little doubt where it's headed.
We have only the Orca's session change timer to wait on.
Ty's timer expires, and he jumps. The hole critically destabilizes.
Tira hits the 'hole at full speed, decloaking as she approaches, which is enough to encourage the Manticore to decloak as well. She doesn't see what happens next, because the wormhole whisks her away, leaving only Berke in enemy territory.
So. A Manticore twenty kilometers away, in perfect bombing range, a critically destabilized wormhole just behind.
The Deliberate decloaks, activates its afterburners, and pivots toward the hole.
The Manticore releases a bomb directly at the hole and starts to lock the Orca in the vain hope of following the blindly-launched bomb with guided torpedoes.
The lock never happens and the bomb, so far as any of us know, never lands. Berke tips the Orca through the wormhole, destroying the anomaly with the mass of his shiny new ship, and vanishes from the system, leaving only empty space where a juicy bombing target used to be.
Back in the home system, the anomaly collapses in on itself as the Orca fades into view.
"Easy peasy," Berke comments. "Heading back to the tower."
If he and Tira exchange any knowing glances, well... who can tell from inside a spaceship?
Today, in fact, I have only a few minutes to be online, but they conveniently coincide with Em, Berk, Bre, and Tira. I consider doing a bit of sleeper shooting, but a note in our home system's comms channel about a suspicious in-bound wormhole sends me out for a shufti instead.
I quickly scan down the wormhole and home in on the class four wormhole, sweeping my d-scan around to locate a couple of towers, which gives me the intel I need to determine that, once again, we're next door to some pretty dangerous people.
"You going to collapse that hole?" Em asks. A few seconds pass during which all of our pilots start switching to appropriate ships. "Nevermind. I can see you are. I'll get the Falcon."
Our setup this time is considerably more paranoid, due to recent events. Tira gets into her Helios-class covert ops frigate and posts herself in a fifteen kilometer orbit around the 'enemy' side of the wormhole, scouring d-scan for the signs of any activity, which right now means only a single piloted Mammoth-class hauler. Meanwhile, both Bre and Ty have gotten into Blackbird-class cruisers brimming with Electronic Countermeasures, backed up by both Em in her Falcon and Si in her Curse. Only with the entire defensive infrastructure in place does Berke warp in and jump.
The first jump turns out poorly, as the stubborn wormhole spits the Deliberate out nearly eight kilometers from the other side of the hole, forcing the lumbering ship to crawl three klicks before it can jump back. Not normally a problem, except for the fact that we're within d-scan range of one of the enemy towers, and this move leaves Berke's orca visible for almost 45 seconds -- more than enough to spot, if the current pilot is remotely awake. Maybe we'll get lucky.
Turns out we won't. Berke jumps back to the home system and then cloaks up manually to wait out the polarization effect, and as the Orca's secondary coils (whatever those are) recover, Tira spots movement at the tower: a Buzzard-class covert ops frigate appears, warps out of the tower, and dumps a half-dozen scanning probes into space. They aren't looking for the Orca (which would be hard, since it isn't there) but for the wormhole through which our Orca has invaded their system.
Right. This is going to get a little close.
The probes are still out during Berke's next jump, and he has time to watch them close in on the wormhole's location while he waits out the session change timer. Once again, he jumps home, destabilizing the hole (though not critically) and (again) cloaks up to wait out the polarization. Ty warps back to the tower to swap his Blackbird for a Typhoon-class battleship to help with the final wormhole-destroying push.
Tira, meanwhile, sees the probes vanish once again, and the Buzzard reappears at the tower, only to be swapped out for a Manticore-class stealth bomber. Interestingly, though, the Manticore doesn't immediately warp away from the tower and cloak -- it's just sitting there. Odd. Maybe the pilot isn't happy with the configuration of the ship? Maybe it doesn't get used much, and they're frantically swapping modules around at the Ship Maintenance Array? Maybe.
"How's it looking over there?" Em asks.
Tira ops for optimism, as is her way. "They've spotted us," she says, "but they're not getting organized fast enough to do anything."
"You sure?" Em asks.
"Mostly," Tira quickly corrects herself. "Most definitely." There's a short pause. "You know... just... be ready, in case."
Berke isn't waiting. Dangerous neighbors are bad, but dangerous neighbors that we've alerted and riled up are worse, so it's time to kill the hole. He jumps, followed by Ty's 'phoon, and Tira starts moving back to the hole to get out as well.
Neither Ty or Berke see the Manticore on d-scan. It's left the tower and cloaked. There's very little doubt where it's headed.
We have only the Orca's session change timer to wait on.
Ty's timer expires, and he jumps. The hole critically destabilizes.
Tira hits the 'hole at full speed, decloaking as she approaches, which is enough to encourage the Manticore to decloak as well. She doesn't see what happens next, because the wormhole whisks her away, leaving only Berke in enemy territory.
So. A Manticore twenty kilometers away, in perfect bombing range, a critically destabilized wormhole just behind.
The Deliberate decloaks, activates its afterburners, and pivots toward the hole.
The Manticore releases a bomb directly at the hole and starts to lock the Orca in the vain hope of following the blindly-launched bomb with guided torpedoes.
The lock never happens and the bomb, so far as any of us know, never lands. Berke tips the Orca through the wormhole, destroying the anomaly with the mass of his shiny new ship, and vanishes from the system, leaving only empty space where a juicy bombing target used to be.
Back in the home system, the anomaly collapses in on itself as the Orca fades into view.
"Easy peasy," Berke comments. "Heading back to the tower."
If he and Tira exchange any knowing glances, well... who can tell from inside a spaceship?
Life in a Wormhole: Orca Migration #eveonline
Our luck with known space connections has been uniformly bad for the last few days, making it difficult for Berke to get his new ship home in one piece. All our recent wormhole connections have been to Class 2's with pretty useless connections, and while that's given us a good chance to get some gas harvesting and Sleeper shooting done, that's not really the goal at the forefront of our minds. Finally, though, we get something that might work, and it's only about twelve jumps away from Berke's location and about as many for Ichiban, who is also bringing in an Orca from another direction.
We get properly coordinated on this effort to make sure that all our ships get home in one piece. Ty puts together a package of bookmarks and drops them off for both Berke and Ichi in the nearest knownspace station, then gets back to the tower where Bre is waiting in a Blackbird ECM cruiser, and gets into one himself. Em rounds out what should be an overwhelming force in the realm of attacker frustration by bringing her Falcon force recon cruiser to the escort party, and Si waits in the wings in her Curse cruiser. Between the four of use, we may not be able to actually kill anyone, but we certainly should be able to keep a (not so) small fleet of attackers effectively neutered until the lumbering Industrial Command ships can get away, which is rather the point.
And this time, everything goes exactly to plan, with both the Orca into the neighboring wormhole, off to our home connection, and safely tucked in at our respective towers with no kind of problems whatsoever. Now is the time at Sprockets when we dance, right?
Well, no. Now is the time we log off, since that whole process took up most of the evening. Still, it's good to get everyone back home. Time to sleep.
We get properly coordinated on this effort to make sure that all our ships get home in one piece. Ty puts together a package of bookmarks and drops them off for both Berke and Ichi in the nearest knownspace station, then gets back to the tower where Bre is waiting in a Blackbird ECM cruiser, and gets into one himself. Em rounds out what should be an overwhelming force in the realm of attacker frustration by bringing her Falcon force recon cruiser to the escort party, and Si waits in the wings in her Curse cruiser. Between the four of use, we may not be able to actually kill anyone, but we certainly should be able to keep a (not so) small fleet of attackers effectively neutered until the lumbering Industrial Command ships can get away, which is rather the point.
And this time, everything goes exactly to plan, with both the Orca into the neighboring wormhole, off to our home connection, and safely tucked in at our respective towers with no kind of problems whatsoever. Now is the time at Sprockets when we dance, right?
Well, no. Now is the time we log off, since that whole process took up most of the evening. Still, it's good to get everyone back home. Time to sleep.
2011-10-04
Life in a Wormhole: Weekend Coda #eveonline
It's been a fairly frustrating weekend. We started off with the loss of an Orca, which we replaced by selling off a Tengu hull, a blueprint, and some faction fittings, losing and replacing an assault ship in the process, which means that when it's all said and done we're exactly where we started two days ago. That's an awful lot of effort expended on treading water.
Berke is still in highsec in the Deliberate, so even though we don't have a good way to control the wormhole connection, we really have to scan a good entrance/exit if we want to get him back in the home system. I locate our C2 connection easily in the relatively barren system, then Ty and Ichiban from Walrus hit the next system over with a double flight of scanning probes to make short work of the recon process.
We're not in luck as far as a connection goes -- the system connects only to dangerous class 5 wormhole space and nullsec known space -- but it is a good system for Sleeper bashing; full of anomalies, all but abandoned by the neighbors (who don't seem to have logged in since the last time they needed to refuel the tower), and pretty much ours for the evening. Sounds like a good alternative to getting the Orca home. (Honestly, after all the travel we've done in the last few days, it sounds like a better alternative, even to Berke.)
Ty, CB, and Ichiban run sites with Bre flying unnecessary-but-comforting overwatch, keeping an eye directly on the local's tower. An hour later, we've raked in a bit over 90 million in loot, which provides an understated but welcome up-note at the end of a moderately crappy weekend. Sounds like a good time to call it for the night, which is exactly what we do.
Berke is still in highsec in the Deliberate, so even though we don't have a good way to control the wormhole connection, we really have to scan a good entrance/exit if we want to get him back in the home system. I locate our C2 connection easily in the relatively barren system, then Ty and Ichiban from Walrus hit the next system over with a double flight of scanning probes to make short work of the recon process.
We're not in luck as far as a connection goes -- the system connects only to dangerous class 5 wormhole space and nullsec known space -- but it is a good system for Sleeper bashing; full of anomalies, all but abandoned by the neighbors (who don't seem to have logged in since the last time they needed to refuel the tower), and pretty much ours for the evening. Sounds like a good alternative to getting the Orca home. (Honestly, after all the travel we've done in the last few days, it sounds like a better alternative, even to Berke.)
Ty, CB, and Ichiban run sites with Bre flying unnecessary-but-comforting overwatch, keeping an eye directly on the local's tower. An hour later, we've raked in a bit over 90 million in loot, which provides an understated but welcome up-note at the end of a moderately crappy weekend. Sounds like a good time to call it for the night, which is exactly what we do.
2011-10-03
Life in a Wormhole: Orcas Require Liquid(ation) #eveonline
We've tried a couple different ways to handle the costs of living in a wormhole. Our first was probably the most 'big corporation' method, and involved putting anywhere from 75% to 50% of our gross profits from any given sleeper run into the corporate wallet, until we got said wallet up to a nice fat number, and then paying for all fuel and other expenses (ship replacements, et cetera) out of that pile. That actually worked pretty well; individually, we made a less, but we also covered all the big expenses out of a shared wallet.
Since moving to the new home system, where we share the space with two other active towers, we adopted a different method that benefits from simplicity, although it does require more hat-passing before major purchases. Put simply, the new method is "you keep what you kill", and it is probably the best solution when you have a half dozen pilots from three different corps in a fleet, killing Sleepers. In a situation like that, once all the loot is collected, it's split up into even piles and distributed to everyone participating, regardless of whether you were shooting sleepers, hiding in a covert ops ship and watching d-scan for enemies, or following behind everyone else in a salvager. The reason for the even split is quite simple: everyone can potentially get jumped and blown up, so everyone gets paid the same. If you think you should get more because of the fancy ship you're risking, then don't risk the fancy ship. (Be honest: you're 'risking' it because deep down you WANT to fly that thing.)
(It's worth noting that the players who run more than one pilot at a time decided awhile back that they only get a single share of group loot, which is an opinion I happen to share, so I suppose it's accurate to say each player gets a share, not each pilot. I know that different groups handle that differently.)
This arrangement, while relatively easy to manage, fairly straightforward, and simple to scale up and down from '10-man fleet' to 'one guy harvesting gas', can become a bit of a problem when someone like Berke loses something like an Orca. What do you do?
First off, obviously, the Orca is damned expensive. With typical fittings, it'll easily run a half-billion isk.
Secondly, Berke isn't the sort of guy who's going out and making money directly -- he really doesn't fly much besides the Orca; can't, in point of fact. Yes, he is sometimes directly involved in ops, and he certainly puts his ship at risk for the benefit of the home system (too many examples to link to too), but what kind of 'cut' do you allocate for system-wide leadership buffs shared from his command ship, mobile ship refitting, swapping, and repair, or fuel hauling done in a ship with five times the capacity of a typical industrial hauler?
How much does a guy get paid when he throws his ship back and forth through a wormhole to collapse it, hoping that the math is right and when the thing collapses, he's on the right side?
Every corp has to answer that question for themselves, but in our case, the answer is "you replace his damned ship, and you do it as soon as possible."
At the moment the Mammoth exploded, any of our individual corp members could probably have brought a new Orca outright, though it would have left any particular individual tapped out. Certainly we could have spread the fiscal damage out by passing the hat, but given that we're resourceful EVE pilots, we decide that we're going to see how fast we can pay for an Orca with out spending any of the ISK we already have.
Bre's solution is fairly straightforward. She recently won a Tengu-class strategic cruiser hull as part of a one-off lottery that was run amongst the pilots who participated in the alliance-wide POS-bash a few weeks ago. On the upside: Yay, winning. On the downside: Bre doesn't have the skills for (or interest in) piloting a Tengu -- even if she put her entire training queue on hold, it would be almost two months before she could fly it well enough to risk it.
So she's taking her Iteron IV hauler out to the station it's in, picking it up, hauling it to the the system with the best buy-order she can find, and liquidating it.
"You sure you want to do that?"
"Are you kidding? If it sell it, I don't have to train for it or worry I'll lose it. This is a relief."
Ty is taking a more direct route. A few months ago, he had the chance to run the Gurista "Epic Mission Arc" in the nullsec areas controlled by that NPC faction (sent in as an undercover agent of the Gallente Federation, who think he's the bees knees). It was fun, it was an interesting and entertaining storyline very evocative of the group it concerned itself with, and the end result was a very nice fitting that sold for a nice sum, and a one-shot blueprint for a Gila-class cruiser -- a ship I've already expressed my admiration for on several occasions -- as a PvE ship, it's hard to beat.
He can't re-run the Gurista arc for awhile yet, but in the meantime, there is another epic arc that takes place in the NPC Nullsec region held by the Angels. Specifically, it takes place in Curse, which is an area I'm fairly familiar with thanks to my time with OUCH. Like the Gurista's arc, the major rewards for completion are a nice 'bling' fitting that he can sell, and a blueprint for a Cynabal-class cruiser, which is to PvP was the Gila is to PvE. Frankly, it doesn't matter if I make the ship and sell it, or simply sell the blueprint; the profit would be nearly the same.
Why aren't we just staying in the wormhole and shooting sleepers to make money?
That's the irony. Sleeper sites would be the best way to handle this, but in order to really push through and make a good chunk of change in a short period of time, we need to cycle our wormhole connection aggressively to find good systems full of anomalies, then crash them when we're done to move onto the next, and to do that, we need...
Yeah. An orca.
So, without further ado, Bre and Ty head out of the wormhole, then take off in opposite directions; she in her Iteron and 37 jumps to the system where her Tengu hull is stashed, and he toward lowsec Minmatar space, where he will find the agent who will send him (undercover again) to meet with the Angels.
I'm not going to say a lot about the Angel Epic Arc except to suggest that Gurista arc is better, for a couple of different reasons:
Still, eventually Ty wrapped the story up, and I had a chance to drop in and say hi to some familiar names in OUCH (while I dodged their gate camp), which left me about five jumps inside Curse, with a couple very expensive items in my hold.
The question was: sell them in Curse for a lesser profit, or risk them in the haul out to highsec for a bit more isk?
I opt to sell them, because I can't easily 'travel fit' my Jaguar in the system I'm in, so I don't love my odds of getting through the hellishly overcamped Doril system nexus.
Turns out that was a pretty good decision.
I've been on the ball throughout my run of the Angel arc, using pretty much everything I ever learned in OUCH and everything I've subsequently taught myself in wormholes, and I've successfully avoided a couple of gate camps, station camps, and guys looking to gank a mission runner.
The warning signs are there, if you pay attention.
My doom comes, as it always does in Curse, in the form of an Interdictor. God I hate those ships.
On my last jump before the Doril-Sendaya gate that will take me out of Curse, I spend more than a half hour watching traffic through the gate I plan to use, sitting cloaked and at a safe distance. This gate is frequently camped, and the kill reports for Doril are depressingly high right now. However, what I'm seeing on this gate seems to indicate that this isn't where all the fights are taking place -- there are a lot of ships coming and going, many of them roughly in the same size category as my tough little Jaguar, so I finally decide to take a chance.
The interdictor's warp disruption bubble blows up all around me as soon as I land on the other side of the gate. Of course.
Some warnings come a little bit too late.
Still, there's a chance: I align to the nearest celestial, tap my cloak and pulse my propulsion, then change alignment to a different celestial as soon as I cloak. I know the interdictor spotted me in the split second before the cloak kicked in, but hopefully he'll be fooled into thinking I went the other direction, and won't get close enough to decloak me before I can get out of the bubble and warp away.
It almost, almost works. I'd go so far as to say that I think I might have been outside the bubble when the Sabre-class interdictor (deadliest of the breed) gets within 2 kilometers of my ship and disrupts my cloak -- it's hard to tell, because the bubble itself visually fluctuates. I initiate warp, and can't; pulse my propulsion, try to initiate again, and I can!
But then the Sabre gets a warp scrambler on me, and I'm stuck. The only way out now is to try take the Sabre down first, so that's exactly what I do.
Tactical advice via guynumberthree on Reddit.
Amazingly, the Jaguar is holding up under the Sabre's fire (he seems to be missing a fair amount, thanks to overheated propulsion pushing me in a fast orbit of his ship), and I'm actually making a dent in his shields (thanks to overheated guns) -- for a second, I let myself dream that I'll get the ship to flee or explode, and get out.
That's about when the Vagabond-class heavy assault cruiser, Scimatar-class logistics cruiser, and Falcon-class force recon land on our position and save their Sabre buddy from my deadly Jaguar. I warp away from the explosion with a heartfelt salute to the little ship -- he did me proud, and I'll be happy to build one exactly like it when I get out of here.
As a matter of fact, that's actually not a bad idea: in addition to the two pieces of loot from the Angel mission arc, I also got paid a fair amount of isk for the missions themselves. 35 million isk, give or take, which is almost exactly enough to replace and refit the ship in Rens and head back home neither a penny up or a penny down. A little frustrating, but I'll take it.
Between Ty and Bre, it's not quite enough to buy the reasonably-priced Orca that Berke's located, but that's only true until he checks his mail.
And that wallet flash signals all the rest of the money we'll need to buy and fit a brand new ship. With that, Berke hops into a shuttle and flies back to the Essence region.
One hour, lots of very careful shopping, and only 435 million isk later, the Deliberate is ready for service.
Total elapsed time: less than 24 hours.
Bank balances: all intact.
Now to pay back Cabbage...
Since moving to the new home system, where we share the space with two other active towers, we adopted a different method that benefits from simplicity, although it does require more hat-passing before major purchases. Put simply, the new method is "you keep what you kill", and it is probably the best solution when you have a half dozen pilots from three different corps in a fleet, killing Sleepers. In a situation like that, once all the loot is collected, it's split up into even piles and distributed to everyone participating, regardless of whether you were shooting sleepers, hiding in a covert ops ship and watching d-scan for enemies, or following behind everyone else in a salvager. The reason for the even split is quite simple: everyone can potentially get jumped and blown up, so everyone gets paid the same. If you think you should get more because of the fancy ship you're risking, then don't risk the fancy ship. (Be honest: you're 'risking' it because deep down you WANT to fly that thing.)
(It's worth noting that the players who run more than one pilot at a time decided awhile back that they only get a single share of group loot, which is an opinion I happen to share, so I suppose it's accurate to say each player gets a share, not each pilot. I know that different groups handle that differently.)
This arrangement, while relatively easy to manage, fairly straightforward, and simple to scale up and down from '10-man fleet' to 'one guy harvesting gas', can become a bit of a problem when someone like Berke loses something like an Orca. What do you do?
First off, obviously, the Orca is damned expensive. With typical fittings, it'll easily run a half-billion isk.
Secondly, Berke isn't the sort of guy who's going out and making money directly -- he really doesn't fly much besides the Orca; can't, in point of fact. Yes, he is sometimes directly involved in ops, and he certainly puts his ship at risk for the benefit of the home system (too many examples to link to too), but what kind of 'cut' do you allocate for system-wide leadership buffs shared from his command ship, mobile ship refitting, swapping, and repair, or fuel hauling done in a ship with five times the capacity of a typical industrial hauler?
How much does a guy get paid when he throws his ship back and forth through a wormhole to collapse it, hoping that the math is right and when the thing collapses, he's on the right side?
Every corp has to answer that question for themselves, but in our case, the answer is "you replace his damned ship, and you do it as soon as possible."
At the moment the Mammoth exploded, any of our individual corp members could probably have brought a new Orca outright, though it would have left any particular individual tapped out. Certainly we could have spread the fiscal damage out by passing the hat, but given that we're resourceful EVE pilots, we decide that we're going to see how fast we can pay for an Orca with out spending any of the ISK we already have.
Bre's solution is fairly straightforward. She recently won a Tengu-class strategic cruiser hull as part of a one-off lottery that was run amongst the pilots who participated in the alliance-wide POS-bash a few weeks ago. On the upside: Yay, winning. On the downside: Bre doesn't have the skills for (or interest in) piloting a Tengu -- even if she put her entire training queue on hold, it would be almost two months before she could fly it well enough to risk it.
So she's taking her Iteron IV hauler out to the station it's in, picking it up, hauling it to the the system with the best buy-order she can find, and liquidating it.
"You sure you want to do that?"
"Are you kidding? If it sell it, I don't have to train for it or worry I'll lose it. This is a relief."
Ty is taking a more direct route. A few months ago, he had the chance to run the Gurista "Epic Mission Arc" in the nullsec areas controlled by that NPC faction (sent in as an undercover agent of the Gallente Federation, who think he's the bees knees). It was fun, it was an interesting and entertaining storyline very evocative of the group it concerned itself with, and the end result was a very nice fitting that sold for a nice sum, and a one-shot blueprint for a Gila-class cruiser -- a ship I've already expressed my admiration for on several occasions -- as a PvE ship, it's hard to beat.
He can't re-run the Gurista arc for awhile yet, but in the meantime, there is another epic arc that takes place in the NPC Nullsec region held by the Angels. Specifically, it takes place in Curse, which is an area I'm fairly familiar with thanks to my time with OUCH. Like the Gurista's arc, the major rewards for completion are a nice 'bling' fitting that he can sell, and a blueprint for a Cynabal-class cruiser, which is to PvP was the Gila is to PvE. Frankly, it doesn't matter if I make the ship and sell it, or simply sell the blueprint; the profit would be nearly the same.
Why aren't we just staying in the wormhole and shooting sleepers to make money?
That's the irony. Sleeper sites would be the best way to handle this, but in order to really push through and make a good chunk of change in a short period of time, we need to cycle our wormhole connection aggressively to find good systems full of anomalies, then crash them when we're done to move onto the next, and to do that, we need...
Yeah. An orca.
So, without further ado, Bre and Ty head out of the wormhole, then take off in opposite directions; she in her Iteron and 37 jumps to the system where her Tengu hull is stashed, and he toward lowsec Minmatar space, where he will find the agent who will send him (undercover again) to meet with the Angels.
I'm not going to say a lot about the Angel Epic Arc except to suggest that Gurista arc is better, for a couple of different reasons:
- Story. The Gurista Arc has one. It's creepy and tragic and backstabby and piratey and just generally good EVE. The Angel "story arc" is just a baker's dozen worth of missions where you go shoot some guys. That's it. No story. Bleh. The only comparable bit is that both of the arcs basically require that you run them in an assault frigate or interceptor. For the Guristas, I used a Ishkur drone boat that basically melted the opposition. This time I'm using a Jaguar-class assault frigate that isn't quite as perfect for the mission-running, but which can perhaps fair a bit better if someone jumps me.
- Location. The Gurista arc takes place in the fairly quiet Venal region. There are lots of different ways to get around, so it's easier to avoid ambushes and gate games. Conversely, Curse is basically one long pipe. With only one way through the system, Ty often found himself cloaked up in a safe spot for hours while massive roaming blobs swept up and down the pipe looking for ships to pop, or stuck inside (or outside) a station he needed to dock at while some Sabre interdictor pilot camped the undock ring. Super fun.
Still, eventually Ty wrapped the story up, and I had a chance to drop in and say hi to some familiar names in OUCH (while I dodged their gate camp), which left me about five jumps inside Curse, with a couple very expensive items in my hold.
The question was: sell them in Curse for a lesser profit, or risk them in the haul out to highsec for a bit more isk?
I opt to sell them, because I can't easily 'travel fit' my Jaguar in the system I'm in, so I don't love my odds of getting through the hellishly overcamped Doril system nexus.
Turns out that was a pretty good decision.
I've been on the ball throughout my run of the Angel arc, using pretty much everything I ever learned in OUCH and everything I've subsequently taught myself in wormholes, and I've successfully avoided a couple of gate camps, station camps, and guys looking to gank a mission runner.
My doom comes, as it always does in Curse, in the form of an Interdictor. God I hate those ships.
On my last jump before the Doril-Sendaya gate that will take me out of Curse, I spend more than a half hour watching traffic through the gate I plan to use, sitting cloaked and at a safe distance. This gate is frequently camped, and the kill reports for Doril are depressingly high right now. However, what I'm seeing on this gate seems to indicate that this isn't where all the fights are taking place -- there are a lot of ships coming and going, many of them roughly in the same size category as my tough little Jaguar, so I finally decide to take a chance.
The interdictor's warp disruption bubble blows up all around me as soon as I land on the other side of the gate. Of course.
Still, there's a chance: I align to the nearest celestial, tap my cloak and pulse my propulsion, then change alignment to a different celestial as soon as I cloak. I know the interdictor spotted me in the split second before the cloak kicked in, but hopefully he'll be fooled into thinking I went the other direction, and won't get close enough to decloak me before I can get out of the bubble and warp away.
It almost, almost works. I'd go so far as to say that I think I might have been outside the bubble when the Sabre-class interdictor (deadliest of the breed) gets within 2 kilometers of my ship and disrupts my cloak -- it's hard to tell, because the bubble itself visually fluctuates. I initiate warp, and can't; pulse my propulsion, try to initiate again, and I can!
But then the Sabre gets a warp scrambler on me, and I'm stuck. The only way out now is to try take the Sabre down first, so that's exactly what I do.
Amazingly, the Jaguar is holding up under the Sabre's fire (he seems to be missing a fair amount, thanks to overheated propulsion pushing me in a fast orbit of his ship), and I'm actually making a dent in his shields (thanks to overheated guns) -- for a second, I let myself dream that I'll get the ship to flee or explode, and get out.
That's about when the Vagabond-class heavy assault cruiser, Scimatar-class logistics cruiser, and Falcon-class force recon land on our position and save their Sabre buddy from my deadly Jaguar. I warp away from the explosion with a heartfelt salute to the little ship -- he did me proud, and I'll be happy to build one exactly like it when I get out of here.
As a matter of fact, that's actually not a bad idea: in addition to the two pieces of loot from the Angel mission arc, I also got paid a fair amount of isk for the missions themselves. 35 million isk, give or take, which is almost exactly enough to replace and refit the ship in Rens and head back home neither a penny up or a penny down. A little frustrating, but I'll take it.
Between Ty and Bre, it's not quite enough to buy the reasonably-priced Orca that Berke's located, but that's only true until he checks his mail.
Hey, just wanted to say thanks for all the work you and your guys are doing to help us protect the system and all the heavy lifting you've shouldered lately. I promise I'll be risking my own ships in the future, but in the meantime, I hope this helps you replace that Orca as soon as you can.
Cheers,
Cabbage
And that wallet flash signals all the rest of the money we'll need to buy and fit a brand new ship. With that, Berke hops into a shuttle and flies back to the Essence region.
One hour, lots of very careful shopping, and only 435 million isk later, the Deliberate is ready for service.
Total elapsed time: less than 24 hours.
Bank balances: all intact.
Now to pay back Cabbage...
2011-09-30
Life in a Wormhole: For Want of a Nail #eveonline
It's early in the morning, and after last night's hauling run, I'm in a mood for a shufti and some alone time in a fast ship.
The class 2 system we're connected to is the same as last night -- the one where a group of our pilots beat up sleepers for their lunch money and then got out of when the local traffic spiked -- and a quick check of the local system activity indicates that the heavy traffic they spotted wasn't a fluke. In the six hours hours since we logged out, the number of wormhole jumps per hour has stayed in the mid to high 20s. I'd thought I might hit a few sleeper sites or do some gas mining, but this info changes my mind.
The previous evening, while scanning for an entrance for Berke, I'd located another inbound connection into the class 2 system from another class 2, and I suspect that that's where the traffic is coming from, so I warp to that wormhole and jump through to take stock of the situation and see how bad it is. After all, a lot of traffic from unarmed haulers carrying out unrefined ore isn't really that bad.
It doesn't take me long to figure out the traffic is not from unarmed haulers and that the situation is, in fact, pretty bad. A little poking around and a little research reveals that the eastern European corporation in this new 'hole are very dangerous people to have as neighbors, with bloody PvP record. I check to see who's online at the moment -- our wormhole is never empty, thanks to what amounts to world-wide membership, but there are times when a lot more people are on than others.
Right now, it's me and three other guys.
"Cabbage," I say. "We need to close our wormhole connection. Right now."
"Bad neighbors?"
"Bad neighbors," I confirm. "They're two systems over, but they're using the hell out of the class 2 system we're both hooked up to. More to the point, it looks like a lot more of them are on right now than there are of us."
"Gotcha," he says. "Let's do it. Can you guys get your Orca on if I bring something to play bodyguard?"
"Sure," I say, electronically prodding Berke to get online. Cabbage is another Orca pilot, but we have those -- his cloaked up Tengu strategic cruiser seems like a more valuable addition to the party.
"Need me for anything?" Shan asks. He's a fairly new pilot, but nevertheless always willing to offer assistance.
"Not at the moment," I tell him. "Just keep an ear open if I scream like a little girl."
"Copy that."
Meanwhile, I jump back to the home system and set up a cloaked scanner alt character on the far side of the wormhole, to watch for a spike in local activity. The weird thing is that while the local traffic has been high in the wormhole we share with the other corp, I haven't seen any other pilots since logging on, so I'm wary of a sudden population spike.
Once that's done, I jump back to the tower and ponder what ship to grab, but settle on a battlship to help Berke with the collapse, and we both warp out to the wormhole, where Cabbage has cloaked up.
"Jump one," I mutter into comms and check the far side of the hole with my scanning alt. "Off we go."
Berke lights his afterburner and jumps through the wormhole.
Three guys decloak on the far side, some of them only a few thousand meters from my cloaked alt's location. Worse: only one of them is a ship that can fly cloaked (a Cheetah-class covert-ops frigate) so the others must have been sitting there already, probably for the better part of an hour. Waiting. All three ships start burning toward the wormhole.
Berke doesn't panic, but waits out the session change timer so that he can jump as soon as he drops his jump-cloak. The Monolith fades into view, pivots and lets the wormhole slurp it back into our home system.
Right then, a Drake-class battlecruiser decloaks on OUR side of the wormhole. This keeps getting better and better.
Ty starts locking him, but I'm in a battleship and the big guns aren't tracking well on the smaller target. Also, it's a Drake, so it's going to take awhile to kill the thing anyway. Time to consider options.
Berke arrives back in the home system and tries to warp, but the Drake locks him and scrambles his warp drive.
He what?
He scrambles the warp drive. After the long haul the night before, Berke didn't refit his Warp Core Stabilizers, and we forgot to do it this morning in the rush to get the hole closed.
A Loki-class strategic cruiser and the Cheetah jump through the wormhole. Both get warp disruptors on Berke as well and start shooting. (The Cheetah Cov-ops even has guns on -- sure sign this is a pretty warlike corp -- that's like strapping a minigun to an ultralight.)
I jump back to the tower and start yelling for help. Unbeknownst to me, Cab has had his connection to the game cut off, so he's out of the fight. Ty jumps into a blackbird (Pro tip: Blackbirds and other ECM ships are more valuable as hole-collapsing bodyguards; bring one if you can. Hell, bring two.) and warps back to 50km off the wormhole. I lock and jam the Loki, then I lock the Cheetah because both it and the Drake's flight of light drones are on me and chewing through the blackbird's meager shields much faster than I'd like.
This is where I screw up.
(Yes, here: up to this point, I don't think most people could take issue with the way we handled the hole collapse, in terms of security; we were out maneuvered (who camps an unused wormhole for over an hour?), but we didn't actually screw anything up too badly.)
Anyway: the Blackbird is somewhat fragile, the Cheetah has switched its warp disruptor to Ty so I can't warp out, and the Drake already has drones on me, so I think:
"Jamming the Drake will do no good, now."
(Which is so stupid in hindsight I don't even want to write it down.)
Since I already have my minmatar-specific jammer on the Loki (which is working quite effectively), I engage all the my other "racial" jammers on the (minmatar-made) Cheetah, hoping that even without the bonus for Minmatar systems, I will get a lucky jam.
Those of you who can do basic addition and subtraction will see my mistake.
(Also, if you're any good at math, you've noticed that I said three ships decloaked on the far side of the wormhole, but only two came through.)
Shan, who heard me shouting, lands on the hole in his Hurricane and opens fire, and Cabbage returns from his forced warp-out. I'm just about caught up on the fight and realizing I need to jam the DRAKE when the wormhole flares again. Two Cynabal-class crusiers jump in, moving like the sharks they are, followed by the Manticore-class stealth bomber that had been waiting on the other side of the hole to (a) stop anyone who tried to get away on that side and (b) provide the Cynabal pilots with a warp-in to a location I imagine they didn't have a bookmark to. (Given the timing, I imagine they scrambled over from their home system when their corpmates said the fight was on.)
The Cynabals lock and warp scramble Shan. Cabbage calls for everyone who can get out to get out. I get my lucky Jam on the Cheetah and get the blackbird out with about a third of my armor left. Shan's 'cane goes down, but he escapes in his pod, a few seconds later Berke is also escapes the ambush, albeit in his pod, not the Orca.
And that was the fight. Afterwards, we sent Shan some replacement funds for the ship because... well, frankly, he jumped in, no questions asked, and started shooting. That's a hell of a thing, really. That's someone you want in your home system with you.
In hindsight, I panicked a bit and jammed the wrong ships, or (rather) didn't jam the right ships. If I'd gotten the Drake offline for just a second, Berke would have got out, and on balance the Orca is a hell of a lot more expensive than a Blackbird, so that should have been my priority. If I'd picked one of the other Blackbirds -- say, the one with two Minmatar-specific and two Caldari-specific jammers -- I'd have gotten out, simply because I would have had the right options to jam everything from the get-go. If I'd sicced Shan on the Cheetah, that might have tipped it by driving off my harasser and letting me focus. If we'd all been on voice chat instead of trying to coordinate via chat window, we might have gotten organized better and gotten out. If we'd had the Warp Stabs on the Orca, of course.
If if if.
For want of a Nail...
The class 2 system we're connected to is the same as last night -- the one where a group of our pilots beat up sleepers for their lunch money and then got out of when the local traffic spiked -- and a quick check of the local system activity indicates that the heavy traffic they spotted wasn't a fluke. In the six hours hours since we logged out, the number of wormhole jumps per hour has stayed in the mid to high 20s. I'd thought I might hit a few sleeper sites or do some gas mining, but this info changes my mind.
The previous evening, while scanning for an entrance for Berke, I'd located another inbound connection into the class 2 system from another class 2, and I suspect that that's where the traffic is coming from, so I warp to that wormhole and jump through to take stock of the situation and see how bad it is. After all, a lot of traffic from unarmed haulers carrying out unrefined ore isn't really that bad.
It doesn't take me long to figure out the traffic is not from unarmed haulers and that the situation is, in fact, pretty bad. A little poking around and a little research reveals that the eastern European corporation in this new 'hole are very dangerous people to have as neighbors, with bloody PvP record. I check to see who's online at the moment -- our wormhole is never empty, thanks to what amounts to world-wide membership, but there are times when a lot more people are on than others.
Right now, it's me and three other guys.
"Cabbage," I say. "We need to close our wormhole connection. Right now."
"Bad neighbors?"
"Bad neighbors," I confirm. "They're two systems over, but they're using the hell out of the class 2 system we're both hooked up to. More to the point, it looks like a lot more of them are on right now than there are of us."
"Gotcha," he says. "Let's do it. Can you guys get your Orca on if I bring something to play bodyguard?"
"Sure," I say, electronically prodding Berke to get online. Cabbage is another Orca pilot, but we have those -- his cloaked up Tengu strategic cruiser seems like a more valuable addition to the party.
"Need me for anything?" Shan asks. He's a fairly new pilot, but nevertheless always willing to offer assistance.
"Not at the moment," I tell him. "Just keep an ear open if I scream like a little girl."
"Copy that."
Meanwhile, I jump back to the home system and set up a cloaked scanner alt character on the far side of the wormhole, to watch for a spike in local activity. The weird thing is that while the local traffic has been high in the wormhole we share with the other corp, I haven't seen any other pilots since logging on, so I'm wary of a sudden population spike.
Once that's done, I jump back to the tower and ponder what ship to grab, but settle on a battlship to help Berke with the collapse, and we both warp out to the wormhole, where Cabbage has cloaked up.
"Jump one," I mutter into comms and check the far side of the hole with my scanning alt. "Off we go."
Berke lights his afterburner and jumps through the wormhole.
Three guys decloak on the far side, some of them only a few thousand meters from my cloaked alt's location. Worse: only one of them is a ship that can fly cloaked (a Cheetah-class covert-ops frigate) so the others must have been sitting there already, probably for the better part of an hour. Waiting. All three ships start burning toward the wormhole.
Berke doesn't panic, but waits out the session change timer so that he can jump as soon as he drops his jump-cloak. The Monolith fades into view, pivots and lets the wormhole slurp it back into our home system.
Right then, a Drake-class battlecruiser decloaks on OUR side of the wormhole. This keeps getting better and better.
Ty starts locking him, but I'm in a battleship and the big guns aren't tracking well on the smaller target. Also, it's a Drake, so it's going to take awhile to kill the thing anyway. Time to consider options.
Berke arrives back in the home system and tries to warp, but the Drake locks him and scrambles his warp drive.
He what?
He scrambles the warp drive. After the long haul the night before, Berke didn't refit his Warp Core Stabilizers, and we forgot to do it this morning in the rush to get the hole closed.
A Loki-class strategic cruiser and the Cheetah jump through the wormhole. Both get warp disruptors on Berke as well and start shooting. (The Cheetah Cov-ops even has guns on -- sure sign this is a pretty warlike corp -- that's like strapping a minigun to an ultralight.)
I jump back to the tower and start yelling for help. Unbeknownst to me, Cab has had his connection to the game cut off, so he's out of the fight. Ty jumps into a blackbird (Pro tip: Blackbirds and other ECM ships are more valuable as hole-collapsing bodyguards; bring one if you can. Hell, bring two.) and warps back to 50km off the wormhole. I lock and jam the Loki, then I lock the Cheetah because both it and the Drake's flight of light drones are on me and chewing through the blackbird's meager shields much faster than I'd like.
This is where I screw up.
(Yes, here: up to this point, I don't think most people could take issue with the way we handled the hole collapse, in terms of security; we were out maneuvered (who camps an unused wormhole for over an hour?), but we didn't actually screw anything up too badly.)
Anyway: the Blackbird is somewhat fragile, the Cheetah has switched its warp disruptor to Ty so I can't warp out, and the Drake already has drones on me, so I think:
"Jamming the Drake will do no good, now."
(Which is so stupid in hindsight I don't even want to write it down.)
Since I already have my minmatar-specific jammer on the Loki (which is working quite effectively), I engage all the my other "racial" jammers on the (minmatar-made) Cheetah, hoping that even without the bonus for Minmatar systems, I will get a lucky jam.
Those of you who can do basic addition and subtraction will see my mistake.
- I had jammed the Loki, which takes one of the warp jams off the Orca.
- The Cheetah was jamming me now, which takes another of the warp jams off the Orca.
- If I had jammed the Drake, the Orca (which was already aligned to warp and moving at max speed by this point) would have entered warp almost instantly and gotten out.
(Also, if you're any good at math, you've noticed that I said three ships decloaked on the far side of the wormhole, but only two came through.)
Shan, who heard me shouting, lands on the hole in his Hurricane and opens fire, and Cabbage returns from his forced warp-out. I'm just about caught up on the fight and realizing I need to jam the DRAKE when the wormhole flares again. Two Cynabal-class crusiers jump in, moving like the sharks they are, followed by the Manticore-class stealth bomber that had been waiting on the other side of the hole to (a) stop anyone who tried to get away on that side and (b) provide the Cynabal pilots with a warp-in to a location I imagine they didn't have a bookmark to. (Given the timing, I imagine they scrambled over from their home system when their corpmates said the fight was on.)
The Cynabals lock and warp scramble Shan. Cabbage calls for everyone who can get out to get out. I get my lucky Jam on the Cheetah and get the blackbird out with about a third of my armor left. Shan's 'cane goes down, but he escapes in his pod, a few seconds later Berke is also escapes the ambush, albeit in his pod, not the Orca.
And that was the fight. Afterwards, we sent Shan some replacement funds for the ship because... well, frankly, he jumped in, no questions asked, and started shooting. That's a hell of a thing, really. That's someone you want in your home system with you.
In hindsight, I panicked a bit and jammed the wrong ships, or (rather) didn't jam the right ships. If I'd gotten the Drake offline for just a second, Berke would have got out, and on balance the Orca is a hell of a lot more expensive than a Blackbird, so that should have been my priority. If I'd picked one of the other Blackbirds -- say, the one with two Minmatar-specific and two Caldari-specific jammers -- I'd have gotten out, simply because I would have had the right options to jam everything from the get-go. If I'd sicced Shan on the Cheetah, that might have tipped it by driving off my harasser and letting me focus. If we'd all been on voice chat instead of trying to coordinate via chat window, we might have gotten organized better and gotten out. If we'd had the Warp Stabs on the Orca, of course.
If if if.
For want of a Nail...
Life in a Wormhole: The Refuelening #eveonline
"You know what you should do while you're out in that market system?" Gor asks Berke. It's the next evening, and while Shan, Em, CB, Wil, and a few other Walrus pilots are shooting sleepers in the system next door, I'm scanning that same system for the highsec connection that will get Berke home, and Gor is poking around our tower and doing maths.
"Fill up the ship with tower fuel?" Berke replies. "Yeah, I'm already checking prices. Can you tell me how much I need to get?"
Gor calculates the figures for five weeks' worth of fuel, and we pass the hat around for ISK to send over to Berke for the essentials. We make most of our tower fuel inside the home system, thanks to robot-run 'colonies' we've installed on the local planets, but there are a few key ingredients that simply cannot be had inside a wormhole, and they are critical, heavy, and fairly pricey.
"The good news is, I got the fuel," Berke comments about a half-hour later. "The bad news is, I can't fit it all in the Orca."
"Are you sure?" asks Gor (one of the other qualified Orca pilots in our corps), "I was able to get that much back last time."
"Your fitting's a bit different than mine," comments Berke.
"Ahh," says Gor, "right. Warp Stabilizers."
"Right."
There is a long, long pause.
"I suppose," he mutters, "I could take the stabs off and put on some cargo expanders."
"You could." Gor's voice remains neutral.
"Just for this."
"Of course."
Berke is very attached to his Warp Core Stabilizers.
Another twenty minutes pass.
"Yeah," he says. "It still won't fit."
"You're kidding."
"I picked up thirty-one Giant Secure Containers," he adds, "and even packing stuff in there, it won't all fit."
"How much have you got left?"
He tells us, and I do a quick calculation. "Leave it for me and I'll come get it in the Mammoth. Just need to tweak the cargohold."
I jump into the hauler and jump through the bookmarked wormholes into high security space, waving to the sleeper-shooting fleet as I fly past, heading to the market as Berke starts back in the opposite direction, figuring (correctly) that my there-and-back will take about as long as his single trip, considering how far it is.
Eventually, many many eye-numbing jumps later, we're ready to jump back into the wormhole and come home.
"System still clear?" I ask.
"Yup," replies Em. "You're clear."
We lumber nimbly through the connections (shut up -- you can too), clear the final jump, and warp back to the tower.
Normally, that many jumps would be enough to cash us in for the night, but Berke is determined to get the entire fuel run complete, and that includes unloading all of the thirty-one packing containers, individually, plus the Mammoth, and getting their contents into our fuel storage hangar.
I'm not going to lie to you, Marge: that's a lot of clicking and dragging.
While we're doing that, the sleeper-killers start seeing a serious spike in traffic in the wormhole next door, and opt to pull up stakes and come home. Eventually we're done, our obsessive-compulsive Orca pilot has everything squared away to his satisfaction, I've delivered the sundries that we and the Walrus pilots asked us to pick up, and we log for the night, too tired even to put our ship fittings back to normal.
"Fill up the ship with tower fuel?" Berke replies. "Yeah, I'm already checking prices. Can you tell me how much I need to get?"
Gor calculates the figures for five weeks' worth of fuel, and we pass the hat around for ISK to send over to Berke for the essentials. We make most of our tower fuel inside the home system, thanks to robot-run 'colonies' we've installed on the local planets, but there are a few key ingredients that simply cannot be had inside a wormhole, and they are critical, heavy, and fairly pricey.
"The good news is, I got the fuel," Berke comments about a half-hour later. "The bad news is, I can't fit it all in the Orca."
"Are you sure?" asks Gor (one of the other qualified Orca pilots in our corps), "I was able to get that much back last time."
"Your fitting's a bit different than mine," comments Berke.
"Ahh," says Gor, "right. Warp Stabilizers."
"Right."
There is a long, long pause.
"I suppose," he mutters, "I could take the stabs off and put on some cargo expanders."
"You could." Gor's voice remains neutral.
"Just for this."
"Of course."
Another twenty minutes pass.
"Yeah," he says. "It still won't fit."
"You're kidding."
"I picked up thirty-one Giant Secure Containers," he adds, "and even packing stuff in there, it won't all fit."
"How much have you got left?"
He tells us, and I do a quick calculation. "Leave it for me and I'll come get it in the Mammoth. Just need to tweak the cargohold."
I jump into the hauler and jump through the bookmarked wormholes into high security space, waving to the sleeper-shooting fleet as I fly past, heading to the market as Berke starts back in the opposite direction, figuring (correctly) that my there-and-back will take about as long as his single trip, considering how far it is.
Eventually, many many eye-numbing jumps later, we're ready to jump back into the wormhole and come home.
"System still clear?" I ask.
"Yup," replies Em. "You're clear."
We lumber nimbly through the connections (shut up -- you can too), clear the final jump, and warp back to the tower.
Normally, that many jumps would be enough to cash us in for the night, but Berke is determined to get the entire fuel run complete, and that includes unloading all of the thirty-one packing containers, individually, plus the Mammoth, and getting their contents into our fuel storage hangar.
I'm not going to lie to you, Marge: that's a lot of clicking and dragging.
While we're doing that, the sleeper-killers start seeing a serious spike in traffic in the wormhole next door, and opt to pull up stakes and come home. Eventually we're done, our obsessive-compulsive Orca pilot has everything squared away to his satisfaction, I've delivered the sundries that we and the Walrus pilots asked us to pick up, and we log for the night, too tired even to put our ship fittings back to normal.
Life in a Wormhole: Orca Recon #eveonline
We've had a number of good sleeper-running evenings lately, but tonight Em is taking off early, and while Wil and CB are game for some shooting, the local system is barren and the neighboring system is potentially hot, with many towers on d-scan and active pilots flying around in cloaky ships. We spot a couple scanning frigates (even one in our system for a few minutes, though he might have come in from an inbound connection from a class 4), a couple strategic cruisers, and... a Falcon-class force recon. The sleeper anomalies present don't make the risk worth the reward, and we don't like our chances trying to hunt down the easily-cloaked neighbors, so we follow Em's lead and make it an early night.
The annoying wormhole connection is still up when I check in the following day. It's wobbly and old, but by my calculations there's still a good three hours left before it's likely to fold on its own, so I talk Berke into pulling out the Monolith to crash it. We've done a lot of hole collapsing in the past and have it down to a pretty quick process that rarely causes us too much stress.
What I failed to count on, however, was that hole had (apparently) seen a fair amount of traffic the night before -- I suspect that the Helios-class covops ship we spotted in our system last night was scouting a route to known space for some kind of beefy hauler that came through after we logged out, and after that kind of use, the very first trip through the wormhole with the Orca is enough to destabilize it somewhat -- not critically, but early enough into our process that I'm left wondering how much mass the jittery thing can withstand. Did we just barely destabilize it, or are we well into the end-game of the hole collapse? There's just no way to tell.
Well, there is one way to tell: keep going. Berke is a veteran hole-crasher, and isn't too stressed by the hole's stress -- if it strands him on the wrong side he'll "just scan a way out". Bold words, considering that our neighboring system only connects to low security known and additional class 2 wormhole space.
Nevertheless, we continue with the collapsing plan and manage to attract St. Murphy during our next pass: as I jump back into our home system with a battleship meant to help the orca with the process, the hole vanishes, leaving Berke on the wrong side.
Berke rolls up his sleeves and starts shoving money where his mouth is. Probes go out, the Monolith cloaks up so he can scan in relative security, and a few minutes later he has an exit to Lowsec.
The Orca Wormhole Explorer: It's Slow, but at least it's also Very Expensive.
At this point, he could keep looking for the system's persistent class-2 connection to see if it has a different (better) connection to known space, but he opts to pull in his probes and at least check out the exit he's already found, first.
His navcomp puts him in familiar regions of Gallente space when he jumps through the wormhole, with two jumpgates separating him from the safety of high-security space. A bit more research shows him that the systems he has to get through are relatively unoccupied; only a few registered pilots are active in the systems, with no incidents of violence reported in the last 24 hours.
"Should I go for it?" he asks Gor and CB.
"Have you got Warp Stabilizers on?" asks Gor.
"This is me, of course I do." Another check of the map. "In fact, I have more Warp Stabs on than there are enemy pilots in at least this first system."
"Then I'd go for it."
He does. As predicted, there are few pilots around, and his only face-to-face encounter comes in the form of a very startled-looking Bestower-class hauler. Within a few minutes, he's reached high security space and from there heads to the nearest major trading hub to dock up and log for the evening.
The annoying wormhole connection is still up when I check in the following day. It's wobbly and old, but by my calculations there's still a good three hours left before it's likely to fold on its own, so I talk Berke into pulling out the Monolith to crash it. We've done a lot of hole collapsing in the past and have it down to a pretty quick process that rarely causes us too much stress.
What I failed to count on, however, was that hole had (apparently) seen a fair amount of traffic the night before -- I suspect that the Helios-class covops ship we spotted in our system last night was scouting a route to known space for some kind of beefy hauler that came through after we logged out, and after that kind of use, the very first trip through the wormhole with the Orca is enough to destabilize it somewhat -- not critically, but early enough into our process that I'm left wondering how much mass the jittery thing can withstand. Did we just barely destabilize it, or are we well into the end-game of the hole collapse? There's just no way to tell.
Well, there is one way to tell: keep going. Berke is a veteran hole-crasher, and isn't too stressed by the hole's stress -- if it strands him on the wrong side he'll "just scan a way out". Bold words, considering that our neighboring system only connects to low security known and additional class 2 wormhole space.
Nevertheless, we continue with the collapsing plan and manage to attract St. Murphy during our next pass: as I jump back into our home system with a battleship meant to help the orca with the process, the hole vanishes, leaving Berke on the wrong side.
Berke rolls up his sleeves and starts shoving money where his mouth is. Probes go out, the Monolith cloaks up so he can scan in relative security, and a few minutes later he has an exit to Lowsec.
At this point, he could keep looking for the system's persistent class-2 connection to see if it has a different (better) connection to known space, but he opts to pull in his probes and at least check out the exit he's already found, first.
His navcomp puts him in familiar regions of Gallente space when he jumps through the wormhole, with two jumpgates separating him from the safety of high-security space. A bit more research shows him that the systems he has to get through are relatively unoccupied; only a few registered pilots are active in the systems, with no incidents of violence reported in the last 24 hours.
"Should I go for it?" he asks Gor and CB.
"Have you got Warp Stabilizers on?" asks Gor.
"This is me, of course I do." Another check of the map. "In fact, I have more Warp Stabs on than there are enemy pilots in at least this first system."
"Then I'd go for it."
He does. As predicted, there are few pilots around, and his only face-to-face encounter comes in the form of a very startled-looking Bestower-class hauler. Within a few minutes, he's reached high security space and from there heads to the nearest major trading hub to dock up and log for the evening.
2011-09-28
Star Wars: The Old Republic -- The Question of PvP
A few days ago, Fogsong wrote:
Would I be willing to share my thoughts?
I think we all know the answer to that...
George Lucas enjoys a number of hobbies, one of which involves methodically excising joy from my childhood memories, and another of which centers on the practice of claiming that Star Wars was always essentially a series of stories aimed at five-year-olds.
Which even an actual five-year-old will tell you is complete bullshit.
In New Hope, a ship is boarded, gunfire exchanged, and rebel soldiers are left stacked in the hallway like cordwood. Guys get strangled to death. The protagonist's family is executed, their charred bodies left to claw at Tatooine's pitiless sky. A genial old man lops off a guy's arm for starting a bar fight. HAN SHOOTS FIRST. A princess gets tortured by a droid specifically designed for that express purpose. A planet with billions of people on it is blown up. A kind old grandpa figure gets cut down after he lowers his weapon.
And a space station with tens of thousands of people on it is blown up... by the good guy.
Yes, George: Nick Jr. should pick this shit up for adaptation immediately.
The point I'm trying to make here is that Star Wars is a pretty violent story that pivots on a fulcrum built entirely on conflict between the Empire (nee Sith) and Republic. In my opinion, any game based on Star Wars needs to reflect that reality and, for an MMO, that means putting a lot of thought into Player Versus Player conflicts.
I haven't looked too hard at all the (hours of) press on this subject, but let's take care of that right now and take look at what Star Wars: The Old Republic is offering.
First off, it looks like there are three server types:
My immediate reactions:
Okay, beyond that, I'll say that this breakdown looks a lot like the way WoW does it (no surprise there: BioWare modeled a lot of WoW's successful structures) -- the PvE servers are going to restrict their PvP options to instanced mini-games (more on those in a minute) and (I would guess) 1 on 1 duels.
Conversely, the PvP servers will allow 'open world' PvP to occur, in addition to the instanced mini-games. The way they word the description is interesting: "players may be attacked by other players from the opposing faction in more areas of the game world." I can't really find anything that definitively states what "more areas" means -- some folks who really hate open-world PvP predict you'll get ganked anywhere outside of the starting areas. Other folks seem to think that it'll be "non-civilized" places. No one official has actually said, as near as I can tell, but I imagine it'll be a lot like WoW: open PvP outside of the starter zones, with certain areas (Coruscant, most bars) made safe(r) by patrolling them with many dangerous NPC guards who shoot any rabble-rousers if they start trouble.
What do I think?
Well, let's compare this set up to some of the games I've played, from least to most PvP-centric.
What am I Doing?
Like Fogsong, I'm going where my LotRO kinship is going. In this case, that means that the players I know will be playing their Republic characters on a PvE RP server, and their Empire characters on a PvP server. I look forward to experiencing the differences first-hand.
Right! What about them? What's going on there?
Basically, that sounds like fun: sort of WoW's Arathi Basin with controllable turrets; instances you can sign up for, get queued into, and then fight. The major pros are that it is quite convenient and keeps matches even. The cons are that it's basically a mini-game with (outside the ability to earn gear that's good for PvP) no influence on the outside world. I want my victories (and losses) on Alderaan to resonate through the rest of the world - to have some kind of impact. Maybe that's EVE spoiling me a bit, but it is what it is.
On the face of it, though, the Alderaan battlezone seems like fun and (unlike the capture-the-flag, Bloodbowl-with-lightsabers joke that is the Huttball "war zone") is something I could see my guys participating in from a roleplay point of view.
(Seriously, though: why the hell would a jedi ever sign up to play Huttball? Anyway...)
I've also heard good things about one of the other war zones, and rumors of a ship combat one, which both makes me happy (ship fights in Star Wars!) and sad (how ephemeral must the premise be if you can just "hit space and respawn" when you get your whole frakking ship blown up?)
All in all, I think the warzones will add some fun stuff to do in the game -- it's nice to queue up for 20 minutes of quick violence whenever you want. With that said, I would like the PvP to have more bite than it does in most WoW regions (which is SW:TOR's strongest model): at the very least, I'd like to see something like what LotRO does with the Ettenmoors, where you affect the 'outside' world when your side is winning; but my pie-in-the-sky dream on a PvP server would be able to take over "control points" on a given planet (or in a given system) and seriously bottleneck access for the opposite faction (see: the control points in LotRO's Annuminas area).
What Are You Going to Be Playing?
In traditional MMOs, I tend to make a tank first, then ranged DPS, then support. On the Republic side, that looks like a Trooper, a Jedi Consular, and probably a Smuggler or Scoundrel or whatever they're called. I'm not 100% sure what I'll do on the Empire side, but since it'll be on a PvP server, I suspect an Imperial Agent will be my first option (so I have stealth options for getting around the world), a bounty hunter, and one of the melee sith guys if I decide I hate myself that much.
But I reserve the right to change my mind based on which classes get the coolest companions, because this is a BioWare game, and ultimately that's the part I'm really going to be into.
Star Wars: The Old Republic. My LoTRO guild is debating whether to go with a Player vs Player (PvP) server or Player vs Environment (PvE) server. We are caught on the horns of dilemma – we want to be able to quest and experience the story but also [want to] have a strong and active PvP experience. We have gleaned everything we can about Warzones, Huttball, open world PvP on the various planets (Alderaan, Illum and vague mention of others). I don’t have any experience with MMO’s beyond LoTRO so I find it hard to decipher what everyone is talking about regarding PvP or why the pluses/minuses are important.
So – question – have you decided how you are going to start out with SWTOR (Faction, class and server type)? And if you have, would you be willing to share your thoughts?
Would I be willing to share my thoughts?
I think we all know the answer to that...
George Lucas enjoys a number of hobbies, one of which involves methodically excising joy from my childhood memories, and another of which centers on the practice of claiming that Star Wars was always essentially a series of stories aimed at five-year-olds.
Which even an actual five-year-old will tell you is complete bullshit.
In New Hope, a ship is boarded, gunfire exchanged, and rebel soldiers are left stacked in the hallway like cordwood. Guys get strangled to death. The protagonist's family is executed, their charred bodies left to claw at Tatooine's pitiless sky. A genial old man lops off a guy's arm for starting a bar fight. HAN SHOOTS FIRST. A princess gets tortured by a droid specifically designed for that express purpose. A planet with billions of people on it is blown up. A kind old grandpa figure gets cut down after he lowers his weapon.
And a space station with tens of thousands of people on it is blown up... by the good guy.
The point I'm trying to make here is that Star Wars is a pretty violent story that pivots on a fulcrum built entirely on conflict between the Empire (nee Sith) and Republic. In my opinion, any game based on Star Wars needs to reflect that reality and, for an MMO, that means putting a lot of thought into Player Versus Player conflicts.
I haven't looked too hard at all the (hours of) press on this subject, but let's take care of that right now and take look at what Star Wars: The Old Republic is offering.
First off, it looks like there are three server types:
Player-vs-Environment (PvE) servers can be considered representative of the standard play style and rule set. The focus on PvE servers is on experiencing the story and working with friends against the non-player enemies in the game world.
Player-vs-Player (PvP) servers have a slightly different rule set as PvE servers. On a PvP server, players may be attacked by other players from the opposing faction in more areas of the game world.
Role-Playing (RP) servers use the standard PvE rule set, but are identified as great places for players who enjoy acting out their characters in the game world to congregate and find other like-minded players.
My immediate reactions:
- That's really just two server types.
- It's a damn shame (and kind of a headscratcher) why they didn't make any PvP RP servers.
Okay, beyond that, I'll say that this breakdown looks a lot like the way WoW does it (no surprise there: BioWare modeled a lot of WoW's successful structures) -- the PvE servers are going to restrict their PvP options to instanced mini-games (more on those in a minute) and (I would guess) 1 on 1 duels.
Conversely, the PvP servers will allow 'open world' PvP to occur, in addition to the instanced mini-games. The way they word the description is interesting: "players may be attacked by other players from the opposing faction in more areas of the game world." I can't really find anything that definitively states what "more areas" means -- some folks who really hate open-world PvP predict you'll get ganked anywhere outside of the starting areas. Other folks seem to think that it'll be "non-civilized" places. No one official has actually said, as near as I can tell, but I imagine it'll be a lot like WoW: open PvP outside of the starter zones, with certain areas (Coruscant, most bars) made safe(r) by patrolling them with many dangerous NPC guards who shoot any rabble-rousers if they start trouble.
What do I think?
Well, let's compare this set up to some of the games I've played, from least to most PvP-centric.
- Wizard 101 only has arena duels, accessible from a single static location. The duels have no effect on the storyline in the game as a whole, and there is no threat of PvP anywhere in the actual game world. Winner: Star Wars. (Though the duels can be entertaining.)
- City of Heroes has really pathetic arenas accessible in a few static locations and some interesting but cut-off zones that allow PvP, neither of which allow you to influence anything that's going on anywhere else in the game world. Advantage: Star Wars. Barely.
- WoW does basically what Star Wars does, so call it a wash... except WoW has RP-PvP servers for the guys who want to monologue when they turn you into a sheep.
- Lord of the Rings Online allows impromptu 1 on 1 duels, and has a PvP-only zone where you fight players running "Monster" characters (orcs, shamans, wargs, giant spiders, et cetera). Successfully holding these lands gives the entire server's "Hero" player population XP and damage boosts, or gives the monsters boosts if the Ettenmoors are held by Sauron's forces, so while you're not affecting the overall storyline, you are affecting the whole "world". Advantage? I'm going with LotRO in regards to the way it lets you affect the world, but with Star Wars for making the PvP more accessible with the minigames.
- EVE Online lets you attack people pretty much wherever you like, provided you're prepared to deal with the consequences. PvP has huge impact on the game world both at micro- and macro-levels; you can literally take another guy's stuff away, permanently, or in fact take hundreds if not thousands of guys' stuff away. IF (and that's a big if) you're into that, there is no comparable experience in MMOs: it makes your losses sting more and makes the stuff you manage to hold onto that much more precious. Near death experiences have that affect. Advantage: EVE, provided it's not something you'd flat out hate.
What am I Doing?
Like Fogsong, I'm going where my LotRO kinship is going. In this case, that means that the players I know will be playing their Republic characters on a PvE RP server, and their Empire characters on a PvP server. I look forward to experiencing the differences first-hand.
Wait... What about those mini-games?
Right! What about them? What's going on there?
War Zones
War Zones are specifically tailored for team versus team combat, and players will experience fierce battles between the Republic and Empire, evoking memories of the famous Star Wars ground conflicts. This week we announced that the first War Zone will be located in the majestic mountains of Alderaan. Players will join their allegiance’s fight for control of several important areas. Over time we’ll reveal more information about the Player versus Player experiences in The Old Republic.
Basically, that sounds like fun: sort of WoW's Arathi Basin with controllable turrets; instances you can sign up for, get queued into, and then fight. The major pros are that it is quite convenient and keeps matches even. The cons are that it's basically a mini-game with (outside the ability to earn gear that's good for PvP) no influence on the outside world. I want my victories (and losses) on Alderaan to resonate through the rest of the world - to have some kind of impact. Maybe that's EVE spoiling me a bit, but it is what it is.
On the face of it, though, the Alderaan battlezone seems like fun and (unlike the capture-the-flag, Bloodbowl-with-lightsabers joke that is the Huttball "war zone") is something I could see my guys participating in from a roleplay point of view.
(Seriously, though: why the hell would a jedi ever sign up to play Huttball? Anyway...)
I've also heard good things about one of the other war zones, and rumors of a ship combat one, which both makes me happy (ship fights in Star Wars!) and sad (how ephemeral must the premise be if you can just "hit space and respawn" when you get your whole frakking ship blown up?)
All in all, I think the warzones will add some fun stuff to do in the game -- it's nice to queue up for 20 minutes of quick violence whenever you want. With that said, I would like the PvP to have more bite than it does in most WoW regions (which is SW:TOR's strongest model): at the very least, I'd like to see something like what LotRO does with the Ettenmoors, where you affect the 'outside' world when your side is winning; but my pie-in-the-sky dream on a PvP server would be able to take over "control points" on a given planet (or in a given system) and seriously bottleneck access for the opposite faction (see: the control points in LotRO's Annuminas area).
What Are You Going to Be Playing?
In traditional MMOs, I tend to make a tank first, then ranged DPS, then support. On the Republic side, that looks like a Trooper, a Jedi Consular, and probably a Smuggler or Scoundrel or whatever they're called. I'm not 100% sure what I'll do on the Empire side, but since it'll be on a PvP server, I suspect an Imperial Agent will be my first option (so I have stealth options for getting around the world), a bounty hunter, and one of the melee sith guys if I decide I hate myself that much.
But I reserve the right to change my mind based on which classes get the coolest companions, because this is a BioWare game, and ultimately that's the part I'm really going to be into.
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