Anchors Away & Guest Post #3

So I'm off again! The Navy has shipped me out on my 3rd deployment. I have been gone now for about 7 weeks and am writing this from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In order to keep the Blog going I have asked a few buddies to send me these guest posts and I will post them when I hit port-of-calls along the way. W/O further rambling from myself, here is the first of (hopefully!) many entries by Forgotten Heathen.
What follows is an account of what can happen when you do not scan in wormholes as much as you possibly can. Hopefully you will hit the scan button at least once more after reading this. If one more button gets pressed, I'll have done my job, and made Eve a slightly less lethal place to live.....
Who am I kidding? Eve is always going to be the game where you can be as bad as you want to be. It's the haven for MMO's Halo kids. People that just want to ruin your day, and get their fun out of it.
So, in knowing that, you have to work within those parameters.
I am a miner by trade, an industrialist. A CAREBEAR. I have recently, meaning within the last three months, plunged into the darkness that are Wormholes. My motivations are primarily the same as "most" people, barring pure griefers: I'm in it for the isk. So mining Arkonor, Bistot and Crokite in sheer huge quantities has a certain appeal to me. If you can work within those parameters of knowing you WILL lose ships, and you WILL get podded, then you can deal with the inherant dangers of living in a wormhole.
So at the moment, my corp, which consists of me and only two other corpmates, are living in three wormholes, soon to be four. We'll be giving up our two class 1s for two class 2s, one of which is already in our hands. But I digress.
You're reading this to hear how much I got blowed up. Alright, I'll get on with it.
At the time of the "Incident" as I call it, since "The Event" would get me sued, we were in what we call our "low sec hole", as it has a low sec static. Our other C1 has a high sec static. Between I and my two corpmates, we have nine active accounts. Some of these accounts can fly Hulks and do Planetary Interaction, and that's it. Our "mains", of course, can do more, like fly HACs, and even carriers. But all of that means nothing when you're also at the controls of a Hulk alongside a fleet of them.
In my corp, my title is Hulk Fleet Commandant for a reason. I have access to seven accounts total, and have developed the skills to run all seven at once on my one computer between two screens. At the time of "The Incident", cue ominous music, I had four Hulks, one Covetor, a Myrmidon, and a Impel V, out and about running different jobs. All controlled by me. At the time I didn't really have a pattern for when to hit the Directional Scan button, and it was mostly when I remembered.
Those of you who know how long it takes you to combat probe down a fleet of this size, please quit snickering.
A good scanner can get these lazy targets scanned in TWO scans. That's roughly 20 seconds. How does one get that fast? Number one, practice. Moving probes around and sizing them down are two of the most tedious and time consuming tasks when you're trying to pin down that annoying guy in a Probe you know is going to shortly try to log off in your wormhole, to appear later when you're off to let in the entire Worldwide Russian Wrestling Federation into your wormhole to run the 30 combat sites you've been letting build up.
Number two: Astrometrics 4, Astrometrics Rangefinding 4, Cov Ops 4, Racial Frigate 5, Sisters Probe Launcher, Sisters Combat Probes, and a PPG Prospector scanning strength implant. All of that gets you the scanning strength of God Almighty, and you can put your finger on a ship in less time than someone gets to re-align for warp.
Think someone can't sneak in between your scans? You bet they can. And that's if you're hitting that button religiously. Now of course, most people in wormhole space are flying throwaway Magnates with three day old characters, and they have nowhere near these skills. Neither of the toons I podded in the last week did, that's for sure. But the Russians who caught me with my pants down sure did.
So on to the ship destruction. I am normally pretty good about watching my directional. At the time I had the bright idea to swap out my Orca trained pilot from a Hulk to a Myrmidon with the cycle time reduction boost going. Now, this is a great idea, it cut my cycle time on all my mining lasers by 41 seconds. That's 13 strip miners that are cycling 41 seconds, then dumping their sparkling loads of ore into my waiting Itty V. Do the math. It was a good idea.
But it was mistake number one. NEVER fiddle with ship loadouts, websites, porn, ANYTHING, unless you have someone else watching that directional.
Mistake number two is one that is largely related to those of us who run multiple accounts. ALWAYS leave the Squad Commander in the field with the ships he is boosting or even mining alongside! Here's why. Read on.
I left the Myrmidon Squad Commander at the POS to boost, and was fiddling with his loadout while also running the Iteron back and forth to the field, grabbing cans. Out of the corner of my eye, something moved on one of my overviews. Something moving on the overview means something is MOVING closer to your ship. And it was colored yellow.
About then I started panicking. I screamed something incoherantly, realizing someone was jumping in on me.
Mistake number three. I started trying to warp out every ship I had. I switched screens and hit warp, warp warp. One Hulk, A Covetor, and the Itty made it away. Three Hulks and a Covetor got caught by a multi-point Arazu, and a Broadsword and Drake took my fleet apart one by one.
What was mistake number three? Every single one of my ships was armed with Acolyte IIs. I had a support Mymridon with Infiltrator IIs, Medium Remote Armor reppers, and lots of extra cap, waiting at the POS, and I could have jumped him into the fight. I panicked and didn't think through.
Yeah, sure, I might have lost more ships, but I might have at least gotten one of them, and my Hulks were shield tanked, not great, but to the point it would have been somewhat annoying. Instead, I let them die, one by one. And since I wasn't actively monitoring every screen, I wasn't able to get any of the pods away from the warp bubble from the HIC. One by one my Hulks bit the dust, at 150 mil a ship. Thanks for the Pend insurance.
Then they decided to open communications with me. They wanted me to make them a ransom offer on the pods, which I hadn't bothered trying to get away from the interdiction field, mostly because I just didn't know any better. I asked what they wanted, really expecting something stupid, I was pretty set on not paying anything since they were going to probably torch all the pods anyhow, I do read Crime and Punishment, you know.
Too late, they said and killed one. Give us the bookmark to the low sec exit.
That one kind of threw me. I hadn't scanned down the day's low sec, preferring to leave it so it didn't spawn. That got me the rest of the pods killed, since they could "do it themselves". I watched in my Anathema as they sent my last clone off, then proceeded to destroy all the ship wrecks, then the ore cans!
K, seriously, at this point, can we all agree these guys are dicks?
So they go about scanning. I furiously scan looking for their wormhole and my low sec exit. How the hell did they know I had a low sec exit anyway? But I managed to find where they came from, a freaking empty class 5. My corpmate got on at this point, as I had told him I'd just gotten two of his characters podkilled. *sigh*
I give him the bookmark to the low sec hole, he hops in a Purifier stealth bomber and proceeds to grief a Drake and a Gallente shuttle who was trying to give the Drake something in a container, we assume it was a bookmark. We'll never know. My corpmate continuously destroyed the can and warped off. In the meantime, I had assembled some lolz-proof Retrievers.
Retrievers are the Class 1 wormhole closer ship of choice. At 20 mil mass, they are the max amount of mass one can pass through a Class 1. It makes calculations easier, and means less ships have to go through to either crit or make it collapse. I put two warp core stabs and a shield booster, making them mostly immune from a class 1 capable camp.
So I managed to drive the Retrievers through a few times before they became wise, and sent the Drake to deal with the Retrievers. I then jumped into my Zealot and I and the corpmate chased him out into low sec while I finished in critting the hole. The hole closed after I brought my last Retriever through, who also have offline probe launchers, just in case.
The last thing we saw of them was one of them making a penis in local since we had closed the way back home for them. You stay classy San Diego. And go play some Halo.
So we closed the low sec hole and took stock.
Three Hulks at 150 mil a pop, 450 million total. Covetor is 20 million. One character had a set of Standard Implants, about 200 mil there. One of my main characters was killed, with standards, and a 3% mining implant, say 25 mil. On top of that were at least 30 Mining Drone 2s, 100k a piece, so 3 mil there. I won't even include the ore that was destroyed. And the fittings on the ships. And the pickles. And the pickles.
So roughly, a ONE BILLION ISK loss.
And it all stemmed from not hitting the scan button.
Sure, they could have been bad ass scanners from Mars, and it wouldn't have mattered. I could have seen the Combat Probes and got everyone out in time. Or I could have hit Fleet Warp and got everyone out. So many things to second guess. The only thing I'm sure of is what I have to replace.
So, I've decided to switch to Covetors only for now, and to fit seriously large shield tanks on the remaining Hulks I still have. My boosting ship is going to stay in the field, and I've also taken to using a Zealot as a guard when I know the static hole is open. When it's not, I'm relying on hitting that scan button.
I have three scan screens open at all times now. One for each of my chars that I can see easily. My first has it's arranged by Type, Z first. the second has it arranged by Type, A first, and the third has Active Overview checked so I can see strange ships quickly if they don't have probes out yet. I've also learned to watch and see if your scanner scroll bar moves at all when you scan. If it does, it means something has changed on your scan. It could be you pulled in some drones, or dropped a new can.
Or it could mean the entire Worldwide Russian Wrestling Federation is about to drop on you.
In the end, you learn from your mistakes and suck it up in wormholes. You pay dearly for every mistake in here, but at least if you're a good player, you learn from them. If you don't, well you're dead.
Also, if you happen to come across me in a wormhole, and you're scanning for sites, I no longer try to chat with my visitors. I go straight for the pod. You're in my home, trying to find my refrigerator. You cannot have my leftovers, and you sure as hell aint getting my beer! So if you want to live, better talk in local before I get there.
Or try to self-destruct like the last guy. He didn't make it.
}

GUEST POST #2

Hello Again Everyone!

A few days ago I woke up to the following EvE Mail in my box, seems we have Guest Post#2 waiting to be posted. Enjoy the post from our "French" brother!

It's been a while Since I made any log entries, so i'll be running trough a few important events to me.The first was the move into WH space with AOE enterprises and it's young, but awesome CEO Zombika.I had been on shore leave for about 2 weeks, and when I came back I got a message that our new Little empire was set-up, thanks to Zombika and Tykari. Tykari I knew from my days as a planetwalker, but met again many years later flying among the stars.A matter of days later I had also moved in and set up, becoming a bane to sleepers and invaders alike.The second worthwile experience came with the first kill we made in WH space, a drake that was playing games with us. Growing weary of interruption we eventually decided on outwitting him. The plan we used was elegant in it's simplicity. A lone drake of ours would lure him into our WH, where I would be waiting in my Phobos.We expected him to run and so he did, with me jumping trough right after him. Before he even had a chance to uncloak the warp interdiction was up, he was trapped and my fellow captains were pounding the hell out of his ship. He of course couldn't jump again for another 4 minutes due to coil instability.His heroic buffertank amounted to nothing in the end, as we simply tore his ship apart as does a coroner a corpse. Eventually his ship went up, his podded trapped we offered him the choice, or a one way ticket highsec via clone express, or he paid us 100million. We gained a nice little bonus in the end.The second worthwhile event was the discovery of a enormous asteroid concentration in our WH system. ThePhantommajor and me (occacionally helped by our corp mates), spent days on end mining it. The referinery was running non stop at that time, spewing out toxic gasses, and worthless debris, and a steady stream of valuable minerals.At this time it was decided to build two carriers.The 3rd plain cool event was the encounter of a vagabond sitting at a Wormhole 2 systems away from our home WH. I was in my stealth bomber at that time, and didn't see any activity on the ship. The pilot was most likely in hibernation, without warping to safety, or shutting down all on-board electronics, making him very eaasy to detect. A mistake that he would never make again. I fired an experimental scorch bomb at him, in order to check if this was a trap.But the only effect was the ship's shields that dropped to 2/3 maximum capacity, and it being slightly moved due to the blast. Satisfied, I proceeded to launch torpedoes, whilst painting him, the result was that 10 minutes later a wreck and a frozen corpse had replaced the vagabond.I felt bad for th ship's crew, who must have seen this fiery end to the vagabond approaching, yet were unable to stop it. My conscience was eased when the numberous lifepods were jettisoned.The last event was the destruction of hulk exhumer class vessel. This all started when I was in my own hulk mining away at the last asteroids in our home system. I was the only one active at that time.After having crushed about half of a pyroxes asteroid I suddenly noticed the signatures of scanner probes appearing on my direction scan. Without hesitation I stopped my strip miners, had the crew secure all ore we could carry in the cargohold, and warped to station. upon arrival I instantly ordered the unload of the cargo into the hanger array, while I jumped into a helios class scanning vessel. Recognizing this ship mostly likely came from a K162 type WH, I began a sweep for such a WH. Upon pinpointing the wormhole is question I noticed the hostile probes disappear and noticed a Probe class vessel appear and quickly disappear on my directional scan. I warped to the WH, jumped upon exiting warp, and warped to a random moon in system. Immediately trowing out probes and running a sweep of the sector, 2 minutes later I had an exhumer class vessel pinned down.I did a quick warp to 100kmto verify the probe readings, and encountered a hulk mining a crockite asteroid. Checking my stealth protocols I was confident that the hulk had not picked me up.The crockite roid meant it was unlikely the hulk would be warping away anytime soon, so I returned to station, and swapped for a nemesis stealth bomber. When I warped back into the ore belt the hulk was still there jollyly mining. I checked the alignment and estimated the hulk would need at least 40 seconds to warp out. With that I manouvered myself into a decent position to start a bomb run. 30 km away from the hulk I uncloaked, let a bomb fly, activated the afterburner, and prepared the target painter, warp disruptor and siege missile launchers. When I was 20km away the bomb impacted collapsing the enemy shields and vaporizing the hostile drones, the other mods where activated upon the poor vessel a mere split second later.After that I was a mere matter of pounding the ship with torpedoes untill it went up in a ball of flame.

Beta Testers Needed

So in my journey thru all that is EvE Online I've ran into, met, flew w/, yarr'd w/, & been yarr'd on... lots of people.

All of these people can be put into 1 of 3 categories:
1. Those that fly ships w/o a probe launcher

2. Those that fly ships w/ a probe launcher, &

3. Those that can flip for fun.

I have a special place in my cardiovascular system, namely the heart, for pilots that probe. Maybe it has to do w/ my love of WHoles, or maybe it stems from my dislike of running missions, or my love of probing that Wolf that ran to its safe spot. Whatever the reason, we prober's MUST STICK TOGETHER! Else the larger group of un-believers out there overtake us. While scanning (could this be a pun Iwonder...) thru the forums just a few minutes ago (on duty and stuck on-board the ship, so no connection to play EvE thru) I stumbled onto a gem, a real gold mine. Even if this site works 1/2 as well as advertised, it will be an asset to all explorers out there. It has the potential to be to an explorer what eve-survival is to a mission runner.

Here is a link to the post on the forums. Keep in mind, this is a Beta and any support we can give these guys will only help all of us out in the future. If you could all spread the word, more people that know about this the more we benefit. I don't know about ya'll, but being ranked and ranking corps doing this is a pretty awesome idea imho.

o/ FLY SAFE!

All Apologies

What else should I be?
All apologies.
What else could I say?
Everyone is gay.
What else could I write?
I don't have the right.
What else should I be?
All Apologies

Well there you have it, my apology. What those are MY WORDS! Kurt who? Nah I said them first! Alright so I borrowed my sincere apology from a famous rock star. But I wouldn't just do that for no reason. No, see the reason Dwarf Paladin has been sleeping in his pod over the last month is due to the Navy, see? Not my fault, in all honesty I got back to ya'll as soon as I could. And whats more? I'm doing it from sunny Seattle now. I even found time to get to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame just under the Space Needle and went looking StarDefender! He is proving even trickier to find here than he was in his WH...

Well I'm back for the time being at least and we will have more posts coming your way shortly, more posts w/ some substance. Eli and Phantom got the corp move completed while I was away and are living in a very plush C5 now-a-days, and I'm all ready to move in as soon as see what Uncle Sam has in store for me over the next 6-9 months. If I end up on a deployment (like I'm hoping for) I will keep Dwarf safe in Empire, no sense leaving all my assets in a WH if I wouldn't have a chance to scan an exit if I left on short notice again. If I end up staying for a few months then it's off to WHome! Either way I promise to get more posts up that deal w/ scanning and Hi/Low-Sec Exploration at the very least.

o/ FLY SAFE

Transitions

Well the day has come, time for the 3 Hyper Active WH Junkies to leave ALLROUND FLYING MADNESS and move to our new home. AOE is a very active C5 WH corp that made us an offer we found hard to refuse. They supplied us a C4 w/ very favorable shield tank effects in play as well as a Large Mini tower setup. Now for me to take advantage of this I had to swallow my pride and and shelf the Proteus and dust off the passive shield Domi, H.M.S. Indomitable, as well as train the skills to effectively use transporters. Now all this will take about a week to train, fit and iron out any wrinkles that may or may not pop up. A quote I found awhile back that I had intended to use on a future WH move-in entry fits this topic "While planning the journey, you own the journey. Upon embarking on the journey, the journey owns you." I can't even begin to get into how true this is. How many times have you had perfectly laid plans, only to have the whole thing go FUBAR 30 seconds out of the gate? Well issues popped up w/ the Domi almost from the start. "OK" I say, "lets take this passive/buffer shield Domi and turn it into a resist beast w/ no passive recharge mods, throw a large shield transporter on top and call it good". For those of you trying to apply the quote here, this is the planning of the journey, I OWN THIS PART! Well, turns out that trying to fit several LSE's along w/ Invul's just won't fit w/ my TII large rails and MagStabs...this is the journey fucking me.
Well this issue was solved, from a fitting standpoint, anyway. Field testing has yet to happen though I PLAN on doing some before our C4 move-in...

So what is a Hyper Active WH Junky to do when he has no WH to call WHome? Thats an easy question to answer as far as I'm concerned. Being the master probe'r that I think myself to be, why not use those skills? I dust off the H.M.S Hunter, my low-sec radar/mag running Vexor and head off to Old Man Star and systems in a 7-8 jump boundary. Well, things go well for the first 2 days, 9 Radar sites, even more Mag (anyone else forget how crappy these are when held against the WH space cousins?) sites and 3 Crokite deposits. whenever I found a rock deposit I would BM it and come back right after DT, clear it out then resume site running. Now I don't want to get into how wonderful a local window is (it just might spoil me...) but being the paranoid WH pilot that I am now-a-days, I treat any pilots in system w/ some suspicion and a full drone bay on standby.

After one rather good haul of Crokite a few locals decide to harass the Hulk, now there TI frigs really never had any chance of breaking the tank, and seeing they are new players, I grab H.M.S. Stinger II and head into system, PEW-PEW & don't come back again! Well his buddies got away, but hey, I'm a bit out of practice w/ the Rifter, but oh how fun it was! Well that was fun...

So back to Dodixie it is, fit a Rex and head to Old Man Star, 3rd belt I jump to and I'm locked and pointed, moving the camera I see a hostile Rifter setting into orbit, knowing that his buddies are in warp as we speak ( I mean, who engages a Rex w/ a Rifter? Unless you happen to have encountered the rare Arty-Rift range whore fits that still exist in small nimbers), I try not to laugh when I see him level out at 6km, MY OPTI RANGE!!!

1. Web
2. Scram
3. Drones
4. Heavy Electron Volley
5. Set Warp...

Well just as the Rex aligns, here comes the secondary point in the from of an Inty. Then the gang Vexor, Vexor, Brutix, Caracal. Oh shit, well what to do? The Brutix sets in at 7km so why not? I get a volley or two off before I call no joy, eject and align the pod to the nearest gate. Just as I go into warp I see a Drake pop into the belt and engage the Brutix. I see the Kill Board later, whoever you are WarslayerCr, thank you for getting him, I only hope you survived the rest of the gang, O7 FLY SAFE!

So even outside of a WH, I've found that I can still keep myself occupied, & not only that, but have a blast doing it. The big thing here is that I've avoided missions all together! That's all for tonight folks, as always,

o/ Fly Safe!

Guest Post # One

Due to long hours at work over the last month I've found it harder and harder to keep up the posts and EvE In-Whole-Time. Fortunately I'm gifted w/ some pretty amazing partners in EvE. One of which, Eliniale, agreed to do a guest post for this weeks entry. He briefly hits on a few points that I intend to elaborate on in the very near future.

The industrial was making the transition from warp to sublight smoothly. I snapped the camera drone's view on the control tower, and saw it was halfway packed. Many men and woman could be seen working franticly to continue packing, the last of the pos crew who would go into stasis once the tower was in the process of doing the last automatic sequences. I took one last peek at the planets that had been colonies of mine for the better part of a month, they looked bare now my buildings had self-disassembled. I had picked up the people living there, together with the last produce just minutes earlier, and now not a trace was left.


Splitting my attention between de Directional scan, my communications channels and the information browser, I couldn't come to regret my decision. The people I was talking to seemed nice enough, and their offer was even better. They had scanned down a class 4 wormhole that was only inhabited by a loner in a medium sized station, moreover this wormhole had a static connection to class 3 wormholes and a large variety of planets. The offer was that we would join their corporation and go live in the class 4, while the rest of them would continue to live in their class 5. We would be outfitted with a large death star type POS, and left to our own devices for the rest of the time.


I jumped as I saw a ship appear on the directional scan screen, but relaxed as I saw the ship type, Thephantommajor's transport was no doubt picked up in the split second before cloaking. He was also in the process of taking down his colonies. I asked how the last trip went, and he said without a problem, but we should probably be careful for 5 pirates had entered local before he came back.


As I returned my attention to the information browser I reviewed the sleeper information available, and couldn't help but wonder if bigger things were at work. The Sleepers were too advanced for coincidences, as were the Talocan who were somehow linked with them. No doubt responsible for the wormholes, the Talocan were still rarely encountered in unknown space (much like in known space), yet they were here. I had shown this info to all my fellow wormholes explorers, and they were just as eager to get to the bottom of this, and our class 4, combined with our new allies would no doubt go a long way towards finding answers.

At this point I got the info of the crew that they had gone in stasis, and the packaged pos was busy doing the final straws and self powering down.


Phatom went ahead to scout out the exit, and reported an all clear. I secured the pos in my cargo hold, and engaged the warp, ready to leave our home for a new beginning.

Again I would like to thank our Dutch ally for taking the time to not only read this blog, but also contribute his prose for our enjoyment.

As always 0/ FLY SAFE!

Quick Poll Post

ALCON:

The latest poll has closed. The question was, "What class of ship would you consider best for solo work in a C3 WH (pew-pew, Radar, Mag)?" While we didn't have an overwhelming majority here it seems that BattleCruisers pulled out a narrow win w/ 36%, BattleShips and Strat Cruisers came in second w/ 27% each, CommandShips at 9% and TII BS's had no votes. Rather than talk about the winner I'd like to talk about the lame duck we had in last. Getting no votes is a feat in itself, but what I'd like to discuss is what made this happen? Would I have needed to specify Marauders (I assume that nobody would fly a BlackOps ship for all-out-combat)? Or is it that TII BS hulls simply cost to much vs the risk? Interested to see the comments here & as always,

o/ Fly Safe!

Proteus Loved; Proteus Lost.

Well having invested in my first multi-hundred million ISK ship in the Proteus, I was keen on pushing the test flight to the limit. You know, flying a lvl 3 or even a lvl 4 mission would be below such a fine piece of Gallente engineering; I was heading to a WH.

Now since this is the test flight and nobody wants to loose a ship on one of those, I fit H.M.S. Metamorphosis w/a heavy tank, resists were at the lowest 83% and the highest 97%. I fit Her out w/ a faction MWD, faction armor rep, Sisters launcher, and TII the rest. First WHole I find was a C3. "Disco, Disco" repeating over and over in my head, Sleepers start melting at 2.5KM, the salvager is bringing in some solid loots (4 nano ribbons the first 2 sites) and I'm feeling good w/ the setup. Now w/ that being said, I feel "good" not "great" or "amazing". The cap is going quicker than I'm used to, and I cant seem to land solid hits when orbiting at more than 400m/s. But the tank was holding as well as I had hoped for.

Having "helped" the owner of this WH clean up some sites, I scanned down a connecting WH, hopped thru & took stock of the sites. Oh, what sites this WHole had...I BM the first 5 pew-pew sites, then check the info on the system. C3 w/ a bonus to missile flight time (bleh) and a penalty to my max velocity. Should I? Sure why not! First site I warp into 30KM & lock up the frigates. "KA-BOOSH", pop, pop, & pop. Frigs down, tank is holding. I set orbit on the frig wrecks and salvage as the drones tear thru the first cruiser. After finishing the salvage on the first 3 wrecks I rocket (have I mentioned I'd never flown a cruiser sized ship w/ a MWD?) towards the first cruiser to assist my drones, 2 volleys of Anti-Matter M and it's on to salvaging. I recall the drones and head to the trigger ship.

At this point, things settle down to a routine, first wave pops, is salvaged, second wave goes down the same, though the BS was a bit rougher than I had expected. Well the trigger from the 3rd wave goes and I'm salvaging it as the 4th appears, now this is were things go south, & go south fast.

The last spawn has 3x BS, 2x Cruiser and I'm content to finish my current task before engaging the next section of sleeper vehicles. Well my shields were already down to nada from the first waves, my armor is sitting at around 90% then I hear "ERRRNNNNTTT", less than a heartbeat later I see my mail icon blinking, see my Hull melt to 0% and I'm the proud owner of a new ship. The new model isn't as easy on the eyes as the Proteus...So what went wrong? I have no clue to be honest, bad spawn on the last wave? Any ideas or knowledge that the readers have would be greatly appreciated.

I've since bought a new Proteus and replaced the subs that I lost. The new fit(s) seem to work fine in the C1-2's that I've been running, but I hold my breath every engagement seeing as how the LAST fit held in one C3 but not the other. Well enough for tonight, typed this up in a hurry while at work (on detachment to Top Gun in beautiful Fallon NV.).

o/ Fly Safe!

Three & Your Out

Well, after 3 days of logging in, scanning our system ("Old Eden"), BM'ing the combat sites, the grav sites, ladar, and radar sites, we have an exit pop up just 3 jumps away from our staging area. The Corp Leadership ordered us to pack up and return home, our first attempt at living in a WH had been a success! After off-lining our tower, sentry guns, hanger & maint arrays, loaded up the Itty V and a newly rigged and fitted Mammoth and hopped back into K-Space, 3 jumps later we were home. The final list of plunder is as follows;

1. Wrecked Armor x2
2. Wrecked Electromechanical Component x1
3. Wrecked Power Cores x2
4. Wrecked Hull Section x3
5. Wrecked Thruster x1
6. R.A.M. Hybrid Tech x3
7. Datacore- Defense Subsystems Engineering x33
8. Datacore- Electronic Subsystems Engineering x22
9. Datacore- Engineering Subsystems x13
10. Datacore- Offensive Subsystems Engineering x32
11. Datacore- Propulsion Subsystems Engineering x15
12. Neural Network Analyzer x150
13. Sleeper Data Library x60
14. Cartesian Temporal Coordinator x4
15. Electromechanical Hull Sheeting x255
16. Emergent Combat Analyzer x3
17. Fused Nanomechanical Engines x1
18. Heuristic Selfassemblers x7
19. Melted Nanoribbons x25
20. Modified Fluid Router x 131
21. Neurovisual Input Matrix x30
22. Powdered c-540 Graphite x101
23. Resonance Calibration Matrix x22
24. Neural Network Analyzer x150

Not a bad haul for 2 pilots over 3 days. We also did a small amount of mining and gas harvesting, pulling in a good amount of Arknor, Bistot, Crokite, and Fullerite-C50/C60/C70/C72/C84 in the process. The gas and mineral hauls were not sold as we are using them in reactions/production.

With my portion of the profits, after seeing the Proteus in action I will be visiting Jita this week to pick up my own, the tank and dps it puts out w/ TII neutron blasters is nasty and i cant wait to get behind the controls. My trigger finger is already itchy...

o/ Fly Safe!

Vein of Life: Logistics

*BEEP*BEEP*BEEP*BEEP*
The alarm rings beside the bed.
Time to get up.
Look out the window, a fine central California morning.
Rub the sleep from your eyes.
Now your ready to face the day.

After logging into EVE, I see Corp channel going crazy, one of the scouts just found a C1 full of sigs and no owner. As soon as i make myself known, "o/ morning corp-ies" I'm told to grab the Itty V (almost 39,000m3 of sexiness) and check the wallet blink. Directors had allotted me 150,000,000 ISK to grab a small POS setup. WE WERE MOVING IN!!!

So begins my morning of epic logistics action. I use the POS Honey to figure a simple setup as well as fuel for a week long stay:
-Coolant x336
-O2 x1176
-Enriched Uranium x168
-Heavy Water x946
-Mechanical Parts x336
-Robotics x168
-O2 Isotopes x18984
-Liquid Ozone x5176
These plus the small tower, corp hanger array, ship maint array, ECM batteries, small rails filled the cargo hold of H.M.N.S. Worm to around 3/4 capacity. After an hour of jumping system to system in Verge Vendor & neighboring regions, I'm ready to join the 2 corp members already inside clearing the Radar & Mag sites. Our HAC Pilot ejects and meets me (As well as the mining/scan alt in his Covetor...more about that here in a bit...) at the K-SPace entrance in his Pod. I hop the Itty thru, ALT+TAB to the Alt in his mining barrage, move to hop thru and am told that my ship is to large...so you mean to tell me CCP, that my Covetor CAN'T go thru, but an Itty V, fully loaded now w/ POS, fuel, extra TIII subs, & ammo CAN?!?! Oh, the agony!

After Beginning to anchor the tower, I ALT+TAB again to the Alt, buy a Retriever & begin the jumps to, well, Retrieve it. About this time the tower is anchored, I start adding the fuel to its bay. Now to online this puppy, ERROR. Hmmm, lets try that again...ERROR, alright maybe I should read the ERROR mssg. No O2?!?! OK, must have forgot to add it, open the Itty's cargo hold, rummage thru it:
-Hanger Array
-Maint Array
-Ammo
-Sub Systems
-Distinct lack of O2...
Yup I forgot it, you guessed it. Well this isn't good, but I have the the Alt & Retriever outside right? Sure do but this wouldn't be worth telling if it had been that easy. Only O2 in Verge Vendor? 1,000,000 ISK PER UNIT. F#ck me right? So here we go again King of Logistics, jump time. 18 jumps later I find O2 at around 100 ISK per unit, hop back to the WH and online the tower. Now while this was all going on, I managed to bring the mains Helios, Passive Mrym, and salvage desy into the WH, finishing just 15 minutes before todays extended maint shutdown.

Last night I ended the post w/ a lessons learned section, think I'll make that the anchor tonight as well. Lesson #1? Make a list and check it twice, hell check it 15 or 100 times, it will save you time, and your WH extra mass passing thru it. Know your ship restrictions on the C1, will save you time, that's #2. Now the last one didn't happen today, but #3 is this; ALWAYS check the unit / price before buying, you don't know how close I was to paying 1 mil ISK per O2 before i caught it. Shame on you Mr. Random seller...

Well that covers today, I'll update as we clear sites over the next few days.
o/ Fly Safe!

Day #1

FREEDOM!

I did it. I can't believe its done, but I did it, after months of watching skill plans tick-toc by in EVEmon, I was ready to hop thru to the abyss that was the object of my obsession. Wormholes, the thing that got me into EvE in the first place and here I was in one, a freshly fitted passive Myrm at my keyboards control. Here I was.

Let me step back a bit, I don't intend on this being an RP blog, I don't want to ramble (the latter would be the thing you should watch out for...), I just want to document my trips into W-Space as I make them, Mongol-like, & perhaps decide to live there in a fashion a bit down the road. My primary source for all things WH was the blog by Star Defender at eve-wormholes.blogspot.com, when the damn things first showed up. The EvE Online Forums, as well as hours at google and Bing brought numerous resources to my fingertips. At this point things in W-Space have settled down to routine in our EvE universe so there is no need for this to be a step-by-step guide, as others have done better than I could hope to top. I simply intend to add my 2 or 3 ISK worth and post my weekly adventures.

So, here we are back to the first jump thru. As my Helios warped to the Proteus of a corp member, we find a Helios sitting at the WH he had just scanned down, after attempting conversation, we decided to just roll w/ it. I did the first thing every guide tells you to do, I BM'd the K-Space exit, jumped thru and BM'd my entrance then shot a probe into my new system. I quickly BM'd the 5 combat sites (4x ambush, 1x perimeter camp) and re-entered K-Space to get my Mrym. As I warp back to the WH BM, the Helios is still sitting there, no answer from my convo attempts, I jump thru and warp to the site saved Ambush #1. At 40km Warden I's are deployed, Arty is loaded w/ Proton M and the sleeper frigs start popping w/n the 4th volley. Between the TIII gank/tank and the Mrym's great (better than a Drake? lets not start THAT here) passive tank-ness/sentry pwn'age the 1st site is cleared and salvaged in less than 10 min.

Warping to Ambush #2 we begin to clear the sleeper sentry towers when my Mrym screams at me "ERRRNNNNTTT" Im at 75% shields...WTF M8! I in my infinite noob-ness had forgot to turn on my hardeners, quick think! scoop drones, check! warp to safe spot, crap forgot the safe spot, warp to 50km of WH BM, check! after letting the shields recharge, I warp back to find my Corp m8 has already cleared to the 3rd wave, I begin salvaging the wrecks hes left behind. At this point I realize I have made another mistake, I've forgotten to run my directional this entire Op, something EVERY guide hits on "Don't go 2 minutes w/o hitting your directional...", clicking it I see the list of POS structures pop up (did i mention the LARGE POS in the system? didn't think so, maybe because I just now noticed them...). Right about this time I recieve a convo invite, being the strapping lad that I am, I accept. "You rang?" was the mssg i was greeted w/. It was the Helios pilot from the K-Space exit...

I inform this pilot that we had noticed him at a K-Space WH exit and had just wanted to ensure that there would be no hostility between us and him, should he decided to join us inside. It turns out, that this was HIS system and POS setup and he was simply waiting on a shipment of POS stuffs for his next extended period in the WH. The convo went something like this:

me: "pls mr, we are only clearing a few pew-pew sites, we mean you no harm and intend to leave after this salvage is complete"
system owner: "no worries, the WH still has plenty of mass, hop thru when your ready"
me: "gee mr, thxs a million"
s.o.: "np, all ive been doing are the grav sites anymore and production"
me: "well mr, were out, its been a pleasure"
s.o.: "fly safe"

So ends my first WH adventure. Came out w/ just over 10 mil in sleeper libraries and assorted salvage for the corp-ie's manufacturing. Not a bad first day, not a let down to be sure, after months of waiting, reading, planning, and dreaming it was well worth it, plenty of rushes, good combat and some alright loot. Mistakes, yeah a few mistakes are on the list #1 being directional, directional, directional. Not having a safe spot or twenty also makes the list, as does not having noticed the POS on my initial probe. Not sure how I missed it, maybe so caught up w/ the 5 100% sigs from the combat sites I never looked below it.

Well that's it, told you to watch for the ramble!
o/ fly safe!