So I had the goal of pulling this w-space adventure off over the Summer, but alas Summer has consumed most of my time, and little has gone on in space. Niskin is relaxing in his mission hub. Having run all of one mission, and having let one expire. He hopes to do better in the Fall, which is only a few weeks away...
It's not so much that I love Summer, in fact I get cranky when the temp gets over 75 degrees F and the sun is out. But I'm married with children, so I don't always get to determine the plan. It's not all family stuff though. I've been out to the gun range a lot, which is a recent development. I shot rifles and shotguns as a kid, but only a pistol once, 20 years ago. So upon purchasing my wife a gun and taking her to shoot it, I got a little hooked. My current job has morphed in such a way that I get to do both IT functions and help with gun/ammo sales, safety instruction, and various other gun related things. It's turning out to be pretty cool, but the new hobby is taking up a lot of my personal time, and money.
The kids are gone this weekend and the wife has to work on Sunday, so there could be some missions worked in there somewhere. It's gonna be a few weeks before I venture out into w-space. Summer is still in full swing, and I might go kayaking next week!
Scanning...
There's nothing shiny in the solar system map. The solemn darkness eats away at your soul.
Thursday, August 20, 2015
Friday, July 10, 2015
So that's what I forgot
Skills, two of them to be exact: Hull Upgrades and Capacitor Management
What that means is that my placeholder alt is sitting in a Cheetah which is full of low slot modules he can't use. The Inertial Stabilizers aren't a huge deal, but the Micro Auxiliary Power Core (MAPC) is. Without that I can't turn on the MicroWarp Drive. So essentially he's flying a CovOps and the only two modules that are active on it are the Covert Ops Cloak and the Sisters Expanded Probe Launcher. It's enough to get by, but not optimal.
At this point there's not much I can do. The account has lapsed and is no longer active. Eventually I may re-up it for a month to deal with that, we'll see how things are going. But now on to my main goal, the next adventure!
Plans are in motion, a ship has been purchased, along with most of the fittings. I'm probably going to need some supplemental income to launch this adventure though. I can buy the rest of what I need, but will be flat broke after that. My main concern is insurance, I'll need Platinum for this because chances are pretty good that I'll get blown up and will need the payout.
So I'll probably take a day, possibly this Saturday while the wife is out with "the girls," and run some missions, collect datacores and anything else I can do to pad the wallet. Then I should be prepared to start the adventure in the next few weeks. I'll be running some test maneuvers in High-Sec first to ensure my plans are viable, but I think I'm going to try this even if they aren't. The maneuvers involve finding targets, but the alternative is letting the targets find me. Either way it's going to lead to a fight, but I'd prefer the version where it's on my terms instead of theirs...
What that means is that my placeholder alt is sitting in a Cheetah which is full of low slot modules he can't use. The Inertial Stabilizers aren't a huge deal, but the Micro Auxiliary Power Core (MAPC) is. Without that I can't turn on the MicroWarp Drive. So essentially he's flying a CovOps and the only two modules that are active on it are the Covert Ops Cloak and the Sisters Expanded Probe Launcher. It's enough to get by, but not optimal.
At this point there's not much I can do. The account has lapsed and is no longer active. Eventually I may re-up it for a month to deal with that, we'll see how things are going. But now on to my main goal, the next adventure!
Plans are in motion, a ship has been purchased, along with most of the fittings. I'm probably going to need some supplemental income to launch this adventure though. I can buy the rest of what I need, but will be flat broke after that. My main concern is insurance, I'll need Platinum for this because chances are pretty good that I'll get blown up and will need the payout.
So I'll probably take a day, possibly this Saturday while the wife is out with "the girls," and run some missions, collect datacores and anything else I can do to pad the wallet. Then I should be prepared to start the adventure in the next few weeks. I'll be running some test maneuvers in High-Sec first to ensure my plans are viable, but I think I'm going to try this even if they aren't. The maneuvers involve finding targets, but the alternative is letting the targets find me. Either way it's going to lead to a fight, but I'd prefer the version where it's on my terms instead of theirs...
Tuesday, July 7, 2015
RLS: I sit too much
That is actually one of the reasons I pulled the starbase down. I sit in the car on the way to work, then 8 hours of mostly sitting, then driving home, then sitting at home. Playing EVE is unfortunately less comfortable than sitting on my couch watching Netflix. Despite the best efforts of my Aeron Chairs, both at home and at work, the couch still wins when I want to relax.
Really I should be out walking/exercising, and I do once in a while, but not regularly. Sometimes I just stand, so that I'm not sitting. Reading things like this really opened my eyes to what I needed to change. That made it harder to play EVE.
I'm looking into getting a Kneeling Chair to see if that helps.
I'll have a new game-related post up in the next few days, hopefully.
And now off to do something where I'm not sitting...
Really I should be out walking/exercising, and I do once in a while, but not regularly. Sometimes I just stand, so that I'm not sitting. Reading things like this really opened my eyes to what I needed to change. That made it harder to play EVE.
I'm looking into getting a Kneeling Chair to see if that helps.
I'll have a new game-related post up in the next few days, hopefully.
And now off to do something where I'm not sitting...
Monday, June 15, 2015
A fitting exit
A while back my wife realized I was getting billed twice a month for EVE, of course she thought it was a glitch because I didn't tell her about the second account until that point. So I explained the purpose of it, and that it would only be active for a short time. That helped light a fire under my butt to get moving. At that point I had only logged in once to scan for an exit and hadn't had much luck.
So on June 1st at 22:02 EVE time, I logged in and took a shot. The first thing I noticed was a Mobile Depot on scan, this was the first activity, or space-trash, that I'd seen since I packed everything up. I bounced around the system in the Prowler but nobody was around. Then I proceeded to scan, but with poor results. There were 30+ signatures in system and a ton of them were gas sites. I gave up after finding a Q003, frigate hole to null, and realizing I couldn't jump the Prowler through to bookmark the other side.
A week later, on June 8th, I logged in at 22:41 EVE time. This time I was a bit more optimistic. There were maybe 12 signatures in system, and a good portion of them turned out to be wormholes. I found my E545 static null connection, a Z006 frigate hole and Z647 medium sized hole, both to w-space. When the fourth connection showed up as a Wormhole on the probe scanner I wasn't sure whether I'd be exited or disappointed. It could have been my N062 static C5 connection, but it wasn't. Landing on grid with a new connection is always fun, watching to see what code is on that wormhole... Hello K162!
I started this adventure by going through a "reaching the end of its natural lifetime" wormhole from high-sec. I guess Bob decided that was how I would end it also. I didn't know how long I had on the original entry hole and I didn't know how long I had on this exit hole either. Thanks Bob, for keeping things interesting.
End-of-life wormholes get my adrenaline going, getting trapped on the wrong side never fits into the plan. So I jumped and bookmarked the other side, quickly jumping back and logging off to find out how far away the alt was. The exit led to Antiainen, a high-sec system in Lonetrek. The alt was logged off in Charmerout in Essence. With the auto-pilot set to "shortest distance," the route was 16 jumps, mostly through Gallente/Caldari FacWar Low-Sec. This also meant I had to pass through the dreaded Tama system, specifically the always-messy Nourvakaiken gate.
With the invisible clock counting down, I started warping and jumping as fast as I could. The route through Low-Sec was mostly quiet until Tama and the Nourv gate which featured an ongoing battle, as usual. Jumping through as fast as as possible, I continued into High-Sec and on to Antiainen. After arriving in system and initiating warp to the wormhole, I took a deep breathe. There was nothing I could do now but wait and watch. Moments later I landed on grid with the quickly-pulsing wormhole and jumped through. After checking to make sure I ended up in the right wormhole, I logged and switched to Niskin's account. Not wasting any time, I jumped the Prowler out.
It was finally done. Sure I hadn't put the alt in the Cheetah yet, but after cancelling the account I still had nearly a month left active. So I would come back to that later. With a quick reversal of the route the alt took to get into the wormhole, I returned home to Charmerout in the Prowler. Once again passing by the endless battle at the Nourv gate in Tama, happy to have my Covert Ops Cloak doing all the heavy lifting.
Project "I guess I need an alt" is nearly complete. Now I think it's time to hit the Market and do some shopping. That is one thing I've missed while hiding out in w-space, shopping sprees!
So on June 1st at 22:02 EVE time, I logged in and took a shot. The first thing I noticed was a Mobile Depot on scan, this was the first activity, or space-trash, that I'd seen since I packed everything up. I bounced around the system in the Prowler but nobody was around. Then I proceeded to scan, but with poor results. There were 30+ signatures in system and a ton of them were gas sites. I gave up after finding a Q003, frigate hole to null, and realizing I couldn't jump the Prowler through to bookmark the other side.
A week later, on June 8th, I logged in at 22:41 EVE time. This time I was a bit more optimistic. There were maybe 12 signatures in system, and a good portion of them turned out to be wormholes. I found my E545 static null connection, a Z006 frigate hole and Z647 medium sized hole, both to w-space. When the fourth connection showed up as a Wormhole on the probe scanner I wasn't sure whether I'd be exited or disappointed. It could have been my N062 static C5 connection, but it wasn't. Landing on grid with a new connection is always fun, watching to see what code is on that wormhole... Hello K162!
I started this adventure by going through a "reaching the end of its natural lifetime" wormhole from high-sec. I guess Bob decided that was how I would end it also. I didn't know how long I had on the original entry hole and I didn't know how long I had on this exit hole either. Thanks Bob, for keeping things interesting.
End-of-life wormholes get my adrenaline going, getting trapped on the wrong side never fits into the plan. So I jumped and bookmarked the other side, quickly jumping back and logging off to find out how far away the alt was. The exit led to Antiainen, a high-sec system in Lonetrek. The alt was logged off in Charmerout in Essence. With the auto-pilot set to "shortest distance," the route was 16 jumps, mostly through Gallente/Caldari FacWar Low-Sec. This also meant I had to pass through the dreaded Tama system, specifically the always-messy Nourvakaiken gate.
With the invisible clock counting down, I started warping and jumping as fast as I could. The route through Low-Sec was mostly quiet until Tama and the Nourv gate which featured an ongoing battle, as usual. Jumping through as fast as as possible, I continued into High-Sec and on to Antiainen. After arriving in system and initiating warp to the wormhole, I took a deep breathe. There was nothing I could do now but wait and watch. Moments later I landed on grid with the quickly-pulsing wormhole and jumped through. After checking to make sure I ended up in the right wormhole, I logged and switched to Niskin's account. Not wasting any time, I jumped the Prowler out.
It was finally done. Sure I hadn't put the alt in the Cheetah yet, but after cancelling the account I still had nearly a month left active. So I would come back to that later. With a quick reversal of the route the alt took to get into the wormhole, I returned home to Charmerout in the Prowler. Once again passing by the endless battle at the Nourv gate in Tama, happy to have my Covert Ops Cloak doing all the heavy lifting.
Project "I guess I need an alt" is nearly complete. Now I think it's time to hit the Market and do some shopping. That is one thing I've missed while hiding out in w-space, shopping sprees!
Wednesday, May 6, 2015
The Flu
I didn't realize it had been a month since my last post until I went to make this one. The last two weeks have been terrible and I didn't touch EVE at all during that time. Luckily my training queues were more full than I realized and no time was wasted.
Just over two weeks ago I started getting sick, mostly coughing, and I figured it was just a cold. Within a few days it was obvious that something more serious was going on, the symptoms had moved into my head. I stopped at a clinic thinking it was something antibiotics would solve, but that wasn't it. I had the flu, and not the 24-hour bugs that some people think are the flu, the actual flu, which is like a really serious cold. Over the course of the next week I barely ate, tried to take anything I could that would address the symptoms, and missed a few days of work. By the second week I was down 10 pounds, and showing up for work each day, but I was still miserable. Finally, by the end of the second week, the last bits of the symptoms were gone. I felt well enough to start thinking about things other than sleeping and blowing my nose.
That was this past weekend, and I took the opportunity to log into my accounts and check on things. The alt is proceeding nicely, he's about two weeks from being able to pilot a CovOps and scan with reasonable effectiveness. Since the ship he's going to fly is in the Ship Maintenance Bay of the Orca, already in the hole, I'll likely get him in there before the two weeks are up. He can remain logged off until he's ready and I can give him the ship in space, so that shouldn't be a problem. That also means Niskin can exit the hole sooner.
Niskin is closing in on level 5 for some skills that I plan to use in the upcoming adventure. He'll also be hitting level 5 on the Minimatar Strategic Cruiser skills shortly after. I was never actually able to decide which ship would be best for solo roaming, so I decided to pick one to try first. That ship is not a T3 Cruiser, mostly due to cost. I won't reveal what it is yet, but I have selected it and will be building it over the next couple weeks.
Once that is done I'll find a wormhole to jump into and begin the adventure. Where it will go from there, I have no idea. I'm excited about the prospect of roaming wormholes and not necessarily caring which one I end up in at any given time. Also, the idea that there won't be any required upkeep is appealing. Solo-PvP scares me for sure, but my hope is that even an epic-fail could lead to a good story.
Just over two weeks ago I started getting sick, mostly coughing, and I figured it was just a cold. Within a few days it was obvious that something more serious was going on, the symptoms had moved into my head. I stopped at a clinic thinking it was something antibiotics would solve, but that wasn't it. I had the flu, and not the 24-hour bugs that some people think are the flu, the actual flu, which is like a really serious cold. Over the course of the next week I barely ate, tried to take anything I could that would address the symptoms, and missed a few days of work. By the second week I was down 10 pounds, and showing up for work each day, but I was still miserable. Finally, by the end of the second week, the last bits of the symptoms were gone. I felt well enough to start thinking about things other than sleeping and blowing my nose.
That was this past weekend, and I took the opportunity to log into my accounts and check on things. The alt is proceeding nicely, he's about two weeks from being able to pilot a CovOps and scan with reasonable effectiveness. Since the ship he's going to fly is in the Ship Maintenance Bay of the Orca, already in the hole, I'll likely get him in there before the two weeks are up. He can remain logged off until he's ready and I can give him the ship in space, so that shouldn't be a problem. That also means Niskin can exit the hole sooner.
Niskin is closing in on level 5 for some skills that I plan to use in the upcoming adventure. He'll also be hitting level 5 on the Minimatar Strategic Cruiser skills shortly after. I was never actually able to decide which ship would be best for solo roaming, so I decided to pick one to try first. That ship is not a T3 Cruiser, mostly due to cost. I won't reveal what it is yet, but I have selected it and will be building it over the next couple weeks.
Once that is done I'll find a wormhole to jump into and begin the adventure. Where it will go from there, I have no idea. I'm excited about the prospect of roaming wormholes and not necessarily caring which one I end up in at any given time. Also, the idea that there won't be any required upkeep is appealing. Solo-PvP scares me for sure, but my hope is that even an epic-fail could lead to a good story.
Saturday, April 4, 2015
Everquest Interlude
If you've looked at the Legos with my kid page you know from the Kunark Cloth Map on the wall that I'm an old Everquest die hard. Little did I know, back in 1999, that one day I'd play this game with my son. He's almost 10 years old and we've played Minecraft and many other games together. Out of all those, EQ is the one that really makes me happy to play with him. Sometime in the last few years I let him get an account and he mostly just goofed around in newbie areas, not leveling past 12 or so. Then one day he was old enough and familiar enough to group and do something coordinated. It didn't take long for his Necro, and my Enchanter, to level to 44 together. We went to a variety of zones along the way, finally camping out in Trakanon's Teeth on the way to Sebilis and ended up going inactive at that point.
That was sometime last year, but suddenly he started talking about it again recently. I got us setup again and we logged in to head to Sebilis. My friend from high school, who I played EQ with back in the day, was going to try to join us with his 47 Beastlord, but schedules did not work out. So my son and I decided to try Sebilis, just the two of us.
Necro+ Enchanter is already pretty good, but the addition of mercs has simplified filling out a group when trying to do dungeons with big multi-pulls. We both use Fighter mercs which works pretty well. If the Beastlord makes it next time, he's got a healer which would make us incredibly tough.
Anyway, my son and I click the red and black glowy ball in the floor and zone into Sebilis. The first two mobs are red and yellow. With Mezmerize and Slow they both went down quick and easy. So did the next two, both red. We worked our way up to the door at the end of the entrance hall, fighting the last two mobs. Then it happened, the last mob hit 20% and ran, snare had failed. It started a 5+ chain of a train. Somehow not immediately dying as two cloth casters in a sea of red and yellow cons. I told my son to follow me and I headed for the exit, thinking suddenly to check if the zone was empty. A quick "/" told me there were 40 people in the zone, I hoped for a Trakanon raid, but as I opened the door to the exit hall I saw three or more people standing there.
As quickly as we arrived we were off again, running back to the entrance hall. My son informed me that my merc was dead, which was good to know. My son has Gate memorized at all times but I still needed to memorize it. So I did that real quick and told him to get out. We managed to kick some butt, start a huge train, not kill anybody and not die. You gotta love that.
The next day we went back and got level 45 in that same hallway. Just as we got past the door, where we got in trouble the day before, my older son came in and I had to talk to him about real life stuff. Playing an Enchanter properly while discussing the finer points of being a truck owner is not an easy thing to do. Fighting by the big rock between the entrance and exit halls, we got some wandering adds. So I made the call to gate out. My son always argues, he thinks we can fight it out. Maybe we could, but it's EQ and managing not to die still makes me feel good, even if the penalties are nowhere near as bad as they used to be.
Back in EVE things are still progressing. Niskin will be remapping for Perception/Wisdom tomorrow, finishing up T3 training and whatever he needs for the upcoming roamer mission. The alt is still filling out basic skills, but I'll be picking up the last ones he needs tomorrow. I don't have an ETA on the swap yet, but I should know soon.
Back in EVE things are still progressing. Niskin will be remapping for Perception/Wisdom tomorrow, finishing up T3 training and whatever he needs for the upcoming roamer mission. The alt is still filling out basic skills, but I'll be picking up the last ones he needs tomorrow. I don't have an ETA on the swap yet, but I should know soon.
Monday, March 9, 2015
Who doesn't like a free Venture?
A few days into the trial I got an email saying that I could get various free things if I subscribed before March 1st. For the one-month option the reward was a Venture. It turned out they were bluffing though. I totally got one over on them by being lazy, which is one of my strengths. Today they emailed me to say that my trial was, sadly, over, but that I could still subscribe and feel the power of internet spaceships even now. So I did, and I still got the free Venture, which I much prefer to not having a Venture.
But seriously, I've got Frigate 5 and I'm on to Astrometrics now. It's going to be a month or two before I can get into a CovOps properly. I've started looking at fits and will continue to do so.
That's all I have for now.
But seriously, I've got Frigate 5 and I'm on to Astrometrics now. It's going to be a month or two before I can get into a CovOps properly. I've started looking at fits and will continue to do so.
That's all I have for now.
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
The Next Steps Are In Progress
Over the weekend I started a new Trial account, and began training the first toon towards Cov-Ops and Scanning. I'll take that as far as I can during the 14 day trial period and then activate the account fully. I haven't sat down with EveMon and determined anything yet, and I may not bother. I'm not really under a time crunch and in the end it will take the same amount of time to train the skills. I'd just know how long that would be ahead of time if I used EveMon. Really though I have bigger things to worry about, like what am I going to do with Niskin once I get him out of J150533?
The nomad idea is growing on me, partially because I can't think of any other good ideas, but also because it would be fun to blog about. When I first had the idea I was thinking of using a Loki, but that seemed a bit cost prohibitive, though it could be a very effective option. I'll revisit that if the other options don't pan out, but it would be the most expensive route. Other possibilities are a Dominix or Typhoon in the Battleship class or a Devoter or Broadsword in the Heavy Interdictor class. The first order of business will be determining what fits I could use on those ships and how effective they would be. Then I'll look at cargo space and refitting options for versatility.
Whichever option gives me the best balance of target discovery and combat ability with good versatility will likely win out. Combat probes will be a must. Since warping cloaked won't be possible with the current options, I need to be able to find a target, quickly refit (hopefully out of d-scan range) and warp to the target. This could lead to ganks, or traps, or decent fights, any of which could make for good stories.
The upside is that when things go badly, I'll end up back in empire space, ready to try again or try something different. That's as much as I have planned so far. I'll update you when I know more.
The nomad idea is growing on me, partially because I can't think of any other good ideas, but also because it would be fun to blog about. When I first had the idea I was thinking of using a Loki, but that seemed a bit cost prohibitive, though it could be a very effective option. I'll revisit that if the other options don't pan out, but it would be the most expensive route. Other possibilities are a Dominix or Typhoon in the Battleship class or a Devoter or Broadsword in the Heavy Interdictor class. The first order of business will be determining what fits I could use on those ships and how effective they would be. Then I'll look at cargo space and refitting options for versatility.
Whichever option gives me the best balance of target discovery and combat ability with good versatility will likely win out. Combat probes will be a must. Since warping cloaked won't be possible with the current options, I need to be able to find a target, quickly refit (hopefully out of d-scan range) and warp to the target. This could lead to ganks, or traps, or decent fights, any of which could make for good stories.
The upside is that when things go badly, I'll end up back in empire space, ready to try again or try something different. That's as much as I have planned so far. I'll update you when I know more.
Friday, February 13, 2015
Where do we go from here?
If you're like me, you've seen the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer way too many times. In fact you've watched it enough that upon seeing the title of this post it started a replay in your head that you can't stop and you will curse me for later. You're welcome. Maybe it should say "where do I go from here," but I do have three toons, and this whole intro wouldn't make sense if it said "I" anyway. Plus it's a good way to introduce the idea of a second account and potentially three more toons. Yes, after years of having one account, I may finally have a reason to get a second one.
Running two accounts simultaneously has never appealed to me before, despite the generous returns one could get from doing so in EVE. I don't multi-task well, and I don't have multiple EVE capable PC's, nor one capable of running multiple clients at once. But suddenly I find myself with three characters and a need for at least one more. With my three toons all packed up and logged off in J150533, I'm left unable to do anything else in the game until that's resolved.
Niskin has always been my main, he's approaching 76 million skill points. I had stopped training him a few years ago due to the costs of upgrading his clone after dying. My primary alt, Zibaz, then took over training. First it was skills for being able to run missions, then the skills for a corp CEO and finally the skills for scanning and being able to fly an Orca. Then I made a third alt, Pookiechu, and trained her for scanning and to be a placeholder pilot on a Drake. Once she was ready I launched the wormhole adventure and that brings us to where I am now.
No matter what I choose to do next, it will require some thought and a second account. It doesn't make sense to start a new toon on a new account and then skill that up and use it as my main. Niskin is well rounded and well trained, the best plan would be to get more scanning alts into J150533 so that I can bring Niskin out and use him for something else. As such I'll be starting a new trial account soon, and putting one or two toons in the wormhole in scanning ships. I can then leave Zibaz and Pookiechu in there, pull Niskin out, and if I ever restart the adventure I can just come back in the Prowler with the POS.
This would open up pretty much any opportunity I can think of. I could learn more about trading and try to make a go of it with my shiny new maxed-out Trade skills. Or I could start a roaming adventure in any number of ships. Other options would be joining a corp, in w-space or k-space, or doing production. That's just what has come to me offhand, there are so many options out there.
Roaming w-space in a ship like a space-nomad has some appeal, and no upkeep which is even more appealing. Due to cargo space limitations it would have to be a primarily PvP mission. I've already thought of various options from Battleships to Recons to Heavy Interdictors (which opens up Frigate holes as an option). At the moment this seems to be the most likely option, but I'm getting ahead of myself... right now I'm still stuck in a wormhole.
I'm going to keep blogging, maybe not as often as I was before though. I'll keep you up to date on my plans as I make them and execute them. I also have some other real life stuff I may post. In the end I just want this blog to be entertaining, and wherever possible, about EVE.
Running two accounts simultaneously has never appealed to me before, despite the generous returns one could get from doing so in EVE. I don't multi-task well, and I don't have multiple EVE capable PC's, nor one capable of running multiple clients at once. But suddenly I find myself with three characters and a need for at least one more. With my three toons all packed up and logged off in J150533, I'm left unable to do anything else in the game until that's resolved.
Niskin has always been my main, he's approaching 76 million skill points. I had stopped training him a few years ago due to the costs of upgrading his clone after dying. My primary alt, Zibaz, then took over training. First it was skills for being able to run missions, then the skills for a corp CEO and finally the skills for scanning and being able to fly an Orca. Then I made a third alt, Pookiechu, and trained her for scanning and to be a placeholder pilot on a Drake. Once she was ready I launched the wormhole adventure and that brings us to where I am now.
No matter what I choose to do next, it will require some thought and a second account. It doesn't make sense to start a new toon on a new account and then skill that up and use it as my main. Niskin is well rounded and well trained, the best plan would be to get more scanning alts into J150533 so that I can bring Niskin out and use him for something else. As such I'll be starting a new trial account soon, and putting one or two toons in the wormhole in scanning ships. I can then leave Zibaz and Pookiechu in there, pull Niskin out, and if I ever restart the adventure I can just come back in the Prowler with the POS.
This would open up pretty much any opportunity I can think of. I could learn more about trading and try to make a go of it with my shiny new maxed-out Trade skills. Or I could start a roaming adventure in any number of ships. Other options would be joining a corp, in w-space or k-space, or doing production. That's just what has come to me offhand, there are so many options out there.
Roaming w-space in a ship like a space-nomad has some appeal, and no upkeep which is even more appealing. Due to cargo space limitations it would have to be a primarily PvP mission. I've already thought of various options from Battleships to Recons to Heavy Interdictors (which opens up Frigate holes as an option). At the moment this seems to be the most likely option, but I'm getting ahead of myself... right now I'm still stuck in a wormhole.
I'm going to keep blogging, maybe not as often as I was before though. I'll keep you up to date on my plans as I make them and execute them. I also have some other real life stuff I may post. In the end I just want this blog to be entertaining, and wherever possible, about EVE.
Monday, February 9, 2015
Long Live Bob!
I thought this would be a good weekend for the tear down, but somehow I found myself sitting at my desk eating dinner on Sunday, my POS still up with all of its defenses, and the SMA and Ammo Array still online. Friday night my family attended a fundraiser for a friend of my son's who was diagnosed with cancer. We stayed fairly late and crashed when we got home. Saturday I was supposed to work from home but we ended up being lazy, and I watched Gone Girl and Divergent with my wife. On Sunday I did the work that I was supposed to do on Saturday, leaving me with some free time while I was eating dinner, so I decided to log in and make some progress.
First off I wasn't alone, there was an Astero and some probes on scan when I logged in. I was already in the Prowler, having stashed my Cheetah in the Orca the week before. After warping to a safe that is on-grid with the POS, I started doing warp dives to the batteries that were outside the shields. First were the guns, emptying them of ammo before offlining and unanchoring them. Then the Energy Neut and some ECM batteries. While I was doing this, the Astero disappeared from scan and a Venture took it's place. The name sounded like bait, but you never can tell, I wasn't going to be messing with it anyway.
At this point there were three things left outside the shields, a Warp Disruptor and two ECM batteries, one of which was clustered with the Warp Disruptor. I hit that cluster up next, and just as I had both batteries in my cargo hold, a Buzzard appeared on the overview. I tried to cloak but he was already locking me up. Burning for the POS shield, I hit the MWD but he had already landed a scram. I was going to have to slowboat back into the shields at ~300 m/s. The Buzzard wasn't doing any damage but a Sabre had just appeared on scan. He landed and started shooting, getting through my shields and shaving just a touch of armor before I slid past the edge of the POS shield and their locks dropped.
Both pilots were members of Isogen 5, but not names I was familiar with from the forums. I wondered for a moment if they had read my blog and were watching for me to move out. But as time went by it appeared that these two may have just been in my wormhole by chance. Shortly after our encounter, both pilots convo'd me. They were asking for 200m ISK to leave and roll the connection so I would be assured they were gone. I thought about it for a moment, that was roughly the combined cost of the ship I was in and the tower I was going to scoop. They had given me 10 minutes to think it over. I decided to pass on the offer but didn't have anything witty to say in response, so I logged off.
Knowing these pilots were part of a capable organization, I wondered if they'd reinforce the POS. I had enough fuel left in it to deal with that situation, but it would complicate things. I monitored my EVEMail for the rest of the evening but no structure notifications ever came. For whatever reason, the only time I ever get Corp Hangar Rental Bills is when I'm simultaneously worried about my POS being shot at. This night was no different, the bill came through and spiked my heart rate for a moment before I realized what it was. It wasn't the first time this had happened, it's just a strange irony I keep running into.
I spent the rest of the evening watching Heroes with my wife, she had stumbled upon the series on Netflix, saving me the trouble of talking her into watching it. We watched a few episodes together, then she went to bed and I got caught up to where she had gotten without me. I figured I'd finish up the POS stuff the next night and so I headed to bed too.
The next morning my wife had to wake up at 5:00am, which meant I was going to be awake at that time too. Falling back asleep doesn't always happen and since I had to move my car at 6:00am so she could leave, I laid there and thought about what was left to do. I figured I would have time to make some progress right after she left, right before downtime. As I walked back in just after 6:00am I headed downstairs to the computer room to find that EVE was down. I could have sworn downtime was at 7:00am, maybe I didn't pay attention when Daylight Savings Time changed. Anyway it was back up pretty quick and I logged in to get to work.
With one ECM battery left outside the shields and five hardeners inside, there wasn't much left to do. I bounced and grabbed the ECM battery right away, then worked on the hardeners. Then logged off to grab my secondary alt and use her to log off in the Drake. With that done I switched to my primary alt and got the Orca loaded up. Space was tight, tighter than I thought it would be. All my extra Strontium had to go overboard, and a few Cap Boosters, but that was only a few million ISK worth of stuff. One Magnate didn't fit in the Orca's Ship Maintenance Bay, so I ejected that too. With everything else in place, I scooped the Ship Maintenance Array and Ammo Assembly Array, and warped the Orca to a safe spot. Once it was logged off, all that remained was grabbing the POS in the Prowler.
The time to unanchor a small POS is 15 minutes and that was exactly what I had left before I had to wake up my youngest son for school. Figuring "what the heck" I pulled the remaining fuel, offlined the tower and started it unanchoring. A quick warp back to the on-grid safe allowed me to watch the timer tick down. I ran off and got my son's breakfast ready and started waking him up, arriving back at the computer with 1 minute to go. As the final seconds ticked down, I warped to the tower, scooped it, and cloaked. Then I warped to a safe just to be sure I was clear. With everything complete, I logged off, the wormhole adventure now officially on pause. The tower was up for nearly 100 days, almost exactly in fact. It was within 6 hours of that when I took it down.
The only signs left now are a can and a Magnate, the can will fade quickly, but the ship will remain until it's destroyed or despawns (after 30 days I think). The name of the ship: Long Live Bob
o/
Fly safe and thanks for reading.
First off I wasn't alone, there was an Astero and some probes on scan when I logged in. I was already in the Prowler, having stashed my Cheetah in the Orca the week before. After warping to a safe that is on-grid with the POS, I started doing warp dives to the batteries that were outside the shields. First were the guns, emptying them of ammo before offlining and unanchoring them. Then the Energy Neut and some ECM batteries. While I was doing this, the Astero disappeared from scan and a Venture took it's place. The name sounded like bait, but you never can tell, I wasn't going to be messing with it anyway.
At this point there were three things left outside the shields, a Warp Disruptor and two ECM batteries, one of which was clustered with the Warp Disruptor. I hit that cluster up next, and just as I had both batteries in my cargo hold, a Buzzard appeared on the overview. I tried to cloak but he was already locking me up. Burning for the POS shield, I hit the MWD but he had already landed a scram. I was going to have to slowboat back into the shields at ~300 m/s. The Buzzard wasn't doing any damage but a Sabre had just appeared on scan. He landed and started shooting, getting through my shields and shaving just a touch of armor before I slid past the edge of the POS shield and their locks dropped.
Both pilots were members of Isogen 5, but not names I was familiar with from the forums. I wondered for a moment if they had read my blog and were watching for me to move out. But as time went by it appeared that these two may have just been in my wormhole by chance. Shortly after our encounter, both pilots convo'd me. They were asking for 200m ISK to leave and roll the connection so I would be assured they were gone. I thought about it for a moment, that was roughly the combined cost of the ship I was in and the tower I was going to scoop. They had given me 10 minutes to think it over. I decided to pass on the offer but didn't have anything witty to say in response, so I logged off.
Knowing these pilots were part of a capable organization, I wondered if they'd reinforce the POS. I had enough fuel left in it to deal with that situation, but it would complicate things. I monitored my EVEMail for the rest of the evening but no structure notifications ever came. For whatever reason, the only time I ever get Corp Hangar Rental Bills is when I'm simultaneously worried about my POS being shot at. This night was no different, the bill came through and spiked my heart rate for a moment before I realized what it was. It wasn't the first time this had happened, it's just a strange irony I keep running into.
I spent the rest of the evening watching Heroes with my wife, she had stumbled upon the series on Netflix, saving me the trouble of talking her into watching it. We watched a few episodes together, then she went to bed and I got caught up to where she had gotten without me. I figured I'd finish up the POS stuff the next night and so I headed to bed too.
The next morning my wife had to wake up at 5:00am, which meant I was going to be awake at that time too. Falling back asleep doesn't always happen and since I had to move my car at 6:00am so she could leave, I laid there and thought about what was left to do. I figured I would have time to make some progress right after she left, right before downtime. As I walked back in just after 6:00am I headed downstairs to the computer room to find that EVE was down. I could have sworn downtime was at 7:00am, maybe I didn't pay attention when Daylight Savings Time changed. Anyway it was back up pretty quick and I logged in to get to work.
With one ECM battery left outside the shields and five hardeners inside, there wasn't much left to do. I bounced and grabbed the ECM battery right away, then worked on the hardeners. Then logged off to grab my secondary alt and use her to log off in the Drake. With that done I switched to my primary alt and got the Orca loaded up. Space was tight, tighter than I thought it would be. All my extra Strontium had to go overboard, and a few Cap Boosters, but that was only a few million ISK worth of stuff. One Magnate didn't fit in the Orca's Ship Maintenance Bay, so I ejected that too. With everything else in place, I scooped the Ship Maintenance Array and Ammo Assembly Array, and warped the Orca to a safe spot. Once it was logged off, all that remained was grabbing the POS in the Prowler.
The time to unanchor a small POS is 15 minutes and that was exactly what I had left before I had to wake up my youngest son for school. Figuring "what the heck" I pulled the remaining fuel, offlined the tower and started it unanchoring. A quick warp back to the on-grid safe allowed me to watch the timer tick down. I ran off and got my son's breakfast ready and started waking him up, arriving back at the computer with 1 minute to go. As the final seconds ticked down, I warped to the tower, scooped it, and cloaked. Then I warped to a safe just to be sure I was clear. With everything complete, I logged off, the wormhole adventure now officially on pause. The tower was up for nearly 100 days, almost exactly in fact. It was within 6 hours of that when I took it down.
The only signs left now are a can and a Magnate, the can will fade quickly, but the ship will remain until it's destroyed or despawns (after 30 days I think). The name of the ship: Long Live Bob
o/
Fly safe and thanks for reading.
Friday, February 6, 2015
What Happened?
When I realized I was going to have to take down my POS, I didn't think too much about why. The most important thing at that point was to get started on the process. Now that I'm nearing the end of that process, I've had more time to think about the why, and what the future holds.
This adventure started because I wanted to know if I could survive in a wormhole as a solo player. Furthermore I wondered if it would be a good way to make money in the game. The answer to both questions turned out to be yes, I could survive and I could make good money. The caveat was that the money part was true only if I played often enough. This wasn't a problem initially, I was trying new things and playing often due to that excitement. But as time wore on, things got tedious. The excitement of trying to avoid being ganked drew me in at first, but later served as a deterrent when it was less about making money and more about staying afloat.
I'm definitely one who likes figuring things out and trying those ideas to see if they are viable. As things become routine, I lose interest. That pattern has repeated throughout my time in J150533. Anomalies were fun at first, but once I had run all the different types I stared to tire of them, preferring one specific anomaly over the others. In a short time even that one became boring. Then I moved on to Gas Mining, something I'd done many times before. Spurred on by recent movement in that market I mined everything I could. Once sales started to slump again my interest waned.
The same thing has happened with Planetary Interaction. I'm just now getting my PI operations dialed in to max output and efficiency. Now would seem like the worst time to pack it up, but it fits the pattern. Logging in to restart extractor heads is mundane, and that loot would need to be hauled out, another action that has gotten tedious. I do like scanning, it's calm and relaxing, but it's more fun to do it when there isn't a pressing need. It's just like in real life, I would probably love working if I didn't have a need to do so.
I'll be continuing to think about EVE and of ways to enjoy the game over the next month or so. I'm not deactivating my account at this time. If another idea comes to mind I will certainly blog about it. The next post will certainly be about my final tear down efforts. Beyond that, I don't know what will happen.
This adventure started because I wanted to know if I could survive in a wormhole as a solo player. Furthermore I wondered if it would be a good way to make money in the game. The answer to both questions turned out to be yes, I could survive and I could make good money. The caveat was that the money part was true only if I played often enough. This wasn't a problem initially, I was trying new things and playing often due to that excitement. But as time wore on, things got tedious. The excitement of trying to avoid being ganked drew me in at first, but later served as a deterrent when it was less about making money and more about staying afloat.
I'm definitely one who likes figuring things out and trying those ideas to see if they are viable. As things become routine, I lose interest. That pattern has repeated throughout my time in J150533. Anomalies were fun at first, but once I had run all the different types I stared to tire of them, preferring one specific anomaly over the others. In a short time even that one became boring. Then I moved on to Gas Mining, something I'd done many times before. Spurred on by recent movement in that market I mined everything I could. Once sales started to slump again my interest waned.
The same thing has happened with Planetary Interaction. I'm just now getting my PI operations dialed in to max output and efficiency. Now would seem like the worst time to pack it up, but it fits the pattern. Logging in to restart extractor heads is mundane, and that loot would need to be hauled out, another action that has gotten tedious. I do like scanning, it's calm and relaxing, but it's more fun to do it when there isn't a pressing need. It's just like in real life, I would probably love working if I didn't have a need to do so.
I'll be continuing to think about EVE and of ways to enjoy the game over the next month or so. I'm not deactivating my account at this time. If another idea comes to mind I will certainly blog about it. The next post will certainly be about my final tear down efforts. Beyond that, I don't know what will happen.
Wednesday, February 4, 2015
Final Preparations
Considering how often I use the Ship Maintenance Array and the Ammo Assembly Array you would think that when calculating my storage needs I would take them into account. Somehow as I've been thinking about this, I've failed to account for them in any of my calculations. Not only that, but once I realized what I had done, I still failed to add them the next time around. Luckily I've been taking some additional precautionary steps.
It occurred to me several days ago that I could train up Industrial Command Ships a bit more on the alt that is going to be logged off in the Orca. He was only a few hours from level 3 and a few days from level 4. Since that directly increases cargo hold space, I paused my main and started training for that. That should be complete in a day or two and then I'll return to the charisma plan on my main.
Over the weekend I logged in a few times, first on Saturday which found me some frigate holes and not much else of interest. Then on Sunday morning I logged in to a decent count of signatures, the most important of which was a K162 to Low-Sec. It led to Ansasos, a 0.4 system in Kador, one jump from Iderion, a 0.5 system in Genesis. I was familiar with the area as I have had a Research Agent in Iderion for a long time. Low-Sec wouldn't have been the best option for what I needed to do with a T1 hauler, but in this low-traffic area the single jump to High-Sec was no big deal.
I took two trips with the alt in the T1 hauler, taking out loot and spare POS mods. On the second trip I left the hauler in Iderion and flew back in my pod. Then it was one trip with Niskin to fly out a Scythe. Once I was out I sold what loot I could, listed the rest on the market, left the Scythe in Iderion, and flew back to the hole.
With that work completed, all that remains is tearing down the POS, packing it up and logging off in safespots. The plan is to do that this coming weekend. That would give me about four extra days of fuel on top of the seven I planned for. Space shouldn't be an issue, I think I'll have some to spare, but if not I have extra Strontium I can dump to make room. I'll probably login one more time before the weekend to double check everything, but it's looking good so far.
Friday, January 30, 2015
It's worse than I thought
Originally I thought my biggest fear would be the POS getting reinforced. Depending on the timing that could mean I'd lose everything but a few CovOps ships. Now I find myself somewhere between caring whether I lose the POS and not caring whether I log in and play. That puts me in the unfortunate position of having to face reality. With about 20 days of fuel left, I have to pack it all up and hit the pause button on this adventure, or risk losing it all. To do it properly I'm going to need to keep about 7 days worth of fuel stored for whenever I decide to unpause. That means I have just under two weeks to get everything in order.
Fortunately I came to that realization earlier this week and started the process right away. I had logged in to do PI and determine how I could keep things going in a low-maintenance way, when I found I didn't even have the motivation to do that. So I started with an effort to inventory everything I needed and everything I needed hauled out.
My alt has a T1 industrial with about 32k m3 of cargo space. I determined a long time ago that there would be no room for this ship in the pack-up plan, I can't put it in the Orca with cargo in the hold so it's really just wasted space. Instead I have begun loading it up with things that need to be hauled out. The laser batteries I scooped a few weeks ago are part of that, along with some loot and PI materials. Going along with that will be the Research Array, Compression Array and Reprocessing Array. One of the few things I was able to motivate myself to do over the last week was finish up the research on the three BPOs I have in the hole. With that complete, the Research Array was going to get hauled out anyway. The other two are going because I hardly use them and they take up 12k m3 of storage that I need for other things. That means that whenever I unpause, I won't be able to process ice right away if I mine any. That shouldn't be an issue, I'd likely haul in a month's worth of fuel components at that point anyway.
There is still some assessment to do, and plenty of work to get ready. I have a cruiser or two that will need to be flown out, or maybe the Procurer, I haven't decided yet. Once it's all ready I'll be able to log off all three characters in the hole and disappear.
The downside to that is it really ties up my account. I won't be able to use it for anything else either. Of the ships I'll logoff in, all three will have probes, and two will have cloaks. One of those is an Orca so I won't be logging that back in unless I have to. Really that just leaves the Prowler as an option to work with, but it will be loaded up with the POS and fuel. If I were to take that toon out of the hole it would be very difficult to probe him back in with the others. I'm tempted to start a second account, train up another scanning alt, and drop him in the hole so I can pull my main out for other purposes. Or maybe just to get another account and use that while leaving this one inactive, I'm not sure yet.
That's what I'll be thinking about over the next week as I look for exits to put this plan in motion. I'm sad that this chapter is coming to a close so soon, that wasn't my original intent. On the upside I'm working on another update to the "Legos with my kid" page and hope to put some more entertaining content in there soon. Have a good weekend, I'll update you as soon as I can.
Fortunately I came to that realization earlier this week and started the process right away. I had logged in to do PI and determine how I could keep things going in a low-maintenance way, when I found I didn't even have the motivation to do that. So I started with an effort to inventory everything I needed and everything I needed hauled out.
My alt has a T1 industrial with about 32k m3 of cargo space. I determined a long time ago that there would be no room for this ship in the pack-up plan, I can't put it in the Orca with cargo in the hold so it's really just wasted space. Instead I have begun loading it up with things that need to be hauled out. The laser batteries I scooped a few weeks ago are part of that, along with some loot and PI materials. Going along with that will be the Research Array, Compression Array and Reprocessing Array. One of the few things I was able to motivate myself to do over the last week was finish up the research on the three BPOs I have in the hole. With that complete, the Research Array was going to get hauled out anyway. The other two are going because I hardly use them and they take up 12k m3 of storage that I need for other things. That means that whenever I unpause, I won't be able to process ice right away if I mine any. That shouldn't be an issue, I'd likely haul in a month's worth of fuel components at that point anyway.
There is still some assessment to do, and plenty of work to get ready. I have a cruiser or two that will need to be flown out, or maybe the Procurer, I haven't decided yet. Once it's all ready I'll be able to log off all three characters in the hole and disappear.
The downside to that is it really ties up my account. I won't be able to use it for anything else either. Of the ships I'll logoff in, all three will have probes, and two will have cloaks. One of those is an Orca so I won't be logging that back in unless I have to. Really that just leaves the Prowler as an option to work with, but it will be loaded up with the POS and fuel. If I were to take that toon out of the hole it would be very difficult to probe him back in with the others. I'm tempted to start a second account, train up another scanning alt, and drop him in the hole so I can pull my main out for other purposes. Or maybe just to get another account and use that while leaving this one inactive, I'm not sure yet.
That's what I'll be thinking about over the next week as I look for exits to put this plan in motion. I'm sad that this chapter is coming to a close so soon, that wasn't my original intent. On the upside I'm working on another update to the "Legos with my kid" page and hope to put some more entertaining content in there soon. Have a good weekend, I'll update you as soon as I can.
Wednesday, January 21, 2015
Thoughts on the future
After a week stuck outside my wormhole I figured I'd be itching to get back to the grind. It has now been a week and a half since I got back in, and I've done nothing but PI and some fuel production during that time. Most of that is from lack of trying, but there was one day where it was a lack of opportunity.
For the entire time I've lived in this wormhole, almost 3 months now, I've had an embarrassment of riches when it came to anomalies. There were always enough that I didn't need to bother counting them. One time I did and found there were 27. During the week I was out of the hole that number dropped like a rock. My alt logged in one day to find 4 of them. I figured that number would start to grow again, but when I logged in this past weekend it was down to 3. None of the anomalies were combat sites, which is what I was looking for. I hadn't run one in a while and wanted to get back on the horse.
Already low on motivation, I declined to do anything else, despite two gas sites being up. The last gas I listed on the market hadn't sold yet, and I just wasn't feeling it. If there was any question before, there wasn't any now, I had reached one of my recurring apathy phases.
It's never the fault of the game, it's a personal problem I have with all things in life. Whether it's work, a game, or people, I reach a point where I lose interest and withdraw. This has been most problematic when it comes to work, but over the years I've found ways to deal with that. My current job has good variety which helps slow the build up towards apathy. In the gaming world it's a bit harder, because I'm doing that for fun and not a paycheck. If I'm not having fun then there is little else to motivate me. The upside is that I'm well aware of this flaw and know that it's temporary, in time it will pass. Of course my POS eats fuel whether I'm interested in playing or not, so I have to think about the future if I want to get past this.
For now I'm treating this like a preparation for summer. In the summer I could easily find myself pining for the coolness of the basement one week and wrapped up in something else the next. Sure that is months away, but I think it'll sneak up on me pretty quickly. Spring tends to be a busy time around our house, so it would be best for me to figure out a long term AFK strategy now and test it before it's too late.
The main question is, can I keep the POS fueled through PI alone? That would mean selling extra Robotics and Coolant to pay for ice products, as those are the ones I seem to have the most of. The second question would be, how often do I need to log in to make that feasible? It's not just about keeping PI extractors running, I'd need to exit periodically to buy and sell. More importantly I can't guarantee that the days I'd choose to play would give me the exits needed to make it work.
I'll be looking at that over the next week or two, starting to keep track a little better. Mostly because that's what is interesting to me at the moment, and I have to follow the interest to keep going. Of course having said that, by tomorrow my feelings could change and I could find myself wrapped up in wormhole life again. Sometimes all it takes to pique my interest in something is to realize all the other options are more boring.
I should be clear that I do like living in a wormhole, and specifically that I really like the one I live in. If things were to go south I'd certainly want to retain a hold on this wormhole and not lose it to the randomness of Bob's levers. When I moved in my contingency plan was having the ability to pack it all up and log off in the hole. Essentially to pause the whole experiment. I'm still roughly in the vicinity of that plan being feasible, but I'm a little short on space to pull it off. As I'm testing my extended AFK options I'll review that plan also. Leaving an offline stick in space isn't an option, no matter how unlikely it is that it would be blown up. I'd need to disappear without a trace, and return just as quietly.
For the entire time I've lived in this wormhole, almost 3 months now, I've had an embarrassment of riches when it came to anomalies. There were always enough that I didn't need to bother counting them. One time I did and found there were 27. During the week I was out of the hole that number dropped like a rock. My alt logged in one day to find 4 of them. I figured that number would start to grow again, but when I logged in this past weekend it was down to 3. None of the anomalies were combat sites, which is what I was looking for. I hadn't run one in a while and wanted to get back on the horse.
Already low on motivation, I declined to do anything else, despite two gas sites being up. The last gas I listed on the market hadn't sold yet, and I just wasn't feeling it. If there was any question before, there wasn't any now, I had reached one of my recurring apathy phases.
It's never the fault of the game, it's a personal problem I have with all things in life. Whether it's work, a game, or people, I reach a point where I lose interest and withdraw. This has been most problematic when it comes to work, but over the years I've found ways to deal with that. My current job has good variety which helps slow the build up towards apathy. In the gaming world it's a bit harder, because I'm doing that for fun and not a paycheck. If I'm not having fun then there is little else to motivate me. The upside is that I'm well aware of this flaw and know that it's temporary, in time it will pass. Of course my POS eats fuel whether I'm interested in playing or not, so I have to think about the future if I want to get past this.
For now I'm treating this like a preparation for summer. In the summer I could easily find myself pining for the coolness of the basement one week and wrapped up in something else the next. Sure that is months away, but I think it'll sneak up on me pretty quickly. Spring tends to be a busy time around our house, so it would be best for me to figure out a long term AFK strategy now and test it before it's too late.
The main question is, can I keep the POS fueled through PI alone? That would mean selling extra Robotics and Coolant to pay for ice products, as those are the ones I seem to have the most of. The second question would be, how often do I need to log in to make that feasible? It's not just about keeping PI extractors running, I'd need to exit periodically to buy and sell. More importantly I can't guarantee that the days I'd choose to play would give me the exits needed to make it work.
I'll be looking at that over the next week or two, starting to keep track a little better. Mostly because that's what is interesting to me at the moment, and I have to follow the interest to keep going. Of course having said that, by tomorrow my feelings could change and I could find myself wrapped up in wormhole life again. Sometimes all it takes to pique my interest in something is to realize all the other options are more boring.
I should be clear that I do like living in a wormhole, and specifically that I really like the one I live in. If things were to go south I'd certainly want to retain a hold on this wormhole and not lose it to the randomness of Bob's levers. When I moved in my contingency plan was having the ability to pack it all up and log off in the hole. Essentially to pause the whole experiment. I'm still roughly in the vicinity of that plan being feasible, but I'm a little short on space to pull it off. As I'm testing my extended AFK options I'll review that plan also. Leaving an offline stick in space isn't an option, no matter how unlikely it is that it would be blown up. I'd need to disappear without a trace, and return just as quietly.
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
Still pretty, but nobody is around to notice.
A while back, I remapped for Charisma to train Command Center Upgrades 5. That turned out to be a wise investment. So I've continued on that track, mostly with Trade skills and a few Social skills. Customs Code Expertise is currently training to 5. This is what I have in the pipeline before I consider remapping to Perception/Willpower to work on ship and combat skills again.
I've always wanted to max out those skills that increase the range of a Trader. That 5th rank usually gives you access to the whole region from anywhere within it. In about two months I will have them all maxed. That will be nice as my exits pass through areas where I've stashed stuff in the past or during this adventure. Relisting items will be simple and require no travel. I've wanted to do this for years, but switching to Charisma hasn't made sense for a long time. Back when I flew with others and worked on Leadership skills it did, but it's been a few years since then.
I didn't think Charisma would be of much use while living in a wormhole, with nobody around to appreciate it. But the effect on my PI installations has been great, and finishing off these Trade skills has been a long time coming.
I've always wanted to max out those skills that increase the range of a Trader. That 5th rank usually gives you access to the whole region from anywhere within it. In about two months I will have them all maxed. That will be nice as my exits pass through areas where I've stashed stuff in the past or during this adventure. Relisting items will be simple and require no travel. I've wanted to do this for years, but switching to Charisma hasn't made sense for a long time. Back when I flew with others and worked on Leadership skills it did, but it's been a few years since then.
I didn't think Charisma would be of much use while living in a wormhole, with nobody around to appreciate it. But the effect on my PI installations has been great, and finishing off these Trade skills has been a long time coming.
Monday, January 12, 2015
Wrapping up loose ends
Saturday morning I woke up around 7:30 and got online by 8:30. The hole to Bomana was still open and nearing the end of it's life. Assuming it was a 16 hour wormhole, and that it was still pretty new when I found it, there were maybe 90 minutes left on it. So I decided to haul out the gas I had stored and a few other things.
I put the gas up for sale in Danera, still shocked by the prices this stuff is maintaining. Can't complain though, it's helping me out big time. Nanoribbon buy orders were low, but not insulting, so I sold the one I had with me. There were no NPC buy orders for Neural Network Analyzers so I held on to those for now. Not really needing to bring anything else in at the time, I headed back to the wormhole.
There was more work to do however, I still had all the POS arrays I'd scooped the week before, and they were sitting in storage at my POS. It turns out I got more than I thought, there were only 2x Stasis Web Batteries, but I had actually gotten 3x of each the Warp Disruption and White Noise Generation Batteries. Switching to my alt, to use the extra capacity of his T1 hauler, I made two runs and got all that stuff out. But now it was sitting in a hangar in Danera, owned by the wrong character. Some quick corporation contracting fixed that problem, but time was running thin and I didn't want to get stuck outside again just to list them on the market.
I switched back to Niskin and accepted the contract. Not knowing how long it would be before I'd see Khanid again, I decided to risk it. I jumped out and sat cloaked near the hole, as my market skills would allow me to do everything from there. Finally, being on the expensive side of the region could pay off. There were batteries for sale in the region as low as the mid 3m ISK range, but everything on this side was near 8m ISK. I listed everything I could for 7m ISK, except for one White Noise Generation Battery which was damaged. It was only one jump away, but I didn't bother going to repair and repackage it, I'd deal with it later. So I jumped back in and called it a day, heading upstairs to continue with SHIELD.
Sunday morning I logged in on my alt and things were quiet again. On a whim I checked the dead POS grid from the week before. It was still exactly as I had left it, minus that one gun that was shot after I died. One Medium Pulse Laser Battery was left unanchored and 5ish Smalls sat there still anchored. They weren't worth much, but free money is free money, so I decided to clear the field. Using a CovOps I warped in to each cluster and unanchored everything, then grabbed his T1 hauler for the scooping. With a couple of bounces I managed to get it all, the field was finally clear.
That was it for the weekend in EVE, but it was a happy weekend. Tonight I'll start production on a crap-ton of fuel which should catch me up to where I want to be. After that I need to figure out where I am ISK-wise, it's not as bad as it could be, but it's not good either.
I put the gas up for sale in Danera, still shocked by the prices this stuff is maintaining. Can't complain though, it's helping me out big time. Nanoribbon buy orders were low, but not insulting, so I sold the one I had with me. There were no NPC buy orders for Neural Network Analyzers so I held on to those for now. Not really needing to bring anything else in at the time, I headed back to the wormhole.
There was more work to do however, I still had all the POS arrays I'd scooped the week before, and they were sitting in storage at my POS. It turns out I got more than I thought, there were only 2x Stasis Web Batteries, but I had actually gotten 3x of each the Warp Disruption and White Noise Generation Batteries. Switching to my alt, to use the extra capacity of his T1 hauler, I made two runs and got all that stuff out. But now it was sitting in a hangar in Danera, owned by the wrong character. Some quick corporation contracting fixed that problem, but time was running thin and I didn't want to get stuck outside again just to list them on the market.
I switched back to Niskin and accepted the contract. Not knowing how long it would be before I'd see Khanid again, I decided to risk it. I jumped out and sat cloaked near the hole, as my market skills would allow me to do everything from there. Finally, being on the expensive side of the region could pay off. There were batteries for sale in the region as low as the mid 3m ISK range, but everything on this side was near 8m ISK. I listed everything I could for 7m ISK, except for one White Noise Generation Battery which was damaged. It was only one jump away, but I didn't bother going to repair and repackage it, I'd deal with it later. So I jumped back in and called it a day, heading upstairs to continue with SHIELD.
Sunday morning I logged in on my alt and things were quiet again. On a whim I checked the dead POS grid from the week before. It was still exactly as I had left it, minus that one gun that was shot after I died. One Medium Pulse Laser Battery was left unanchored and 5ish Smalls sat there still anchored. They weren't worth much, but free money is free money, so I decided to clear the field. Using a CovOps I warped in to each cluster and unanchored everything, then grabbed his T1 hauler for the scooping. With a couple of bounces I managed to get it all, the field was finally clear.
That was it for the weekend in EVE, but it was a happy weekend. Tonight I'll start production on a crap-ton of fuel which should catch me up to where I want to be. After that I need to figure out where I am ISK-wise, it's not as bad as it could be, but it's not good either.
Sunday, January 11, 2015
Thank Bob It's Friday!
Bob must drink on Fridays, and why wouldn't he? It's a great day for it. But when he drinks he gets a little loose with the levers that make our wormhole connections. Maybe he was wasted, or maybe he just forgot I was trying to call his bluff, but he definitely decided to make Friday night interesting.
I had been pretty lazy all week. Tuesday night I scanned and found nothing interesting. Wednesday night was the same, except I stayed logged in to watch for fresh sigs throughout the evening. There were 3 by the end of the night but I just logged and went to bed. At least I had the good sense to spend a few minutes filling up the new Prowler with fuel components in case I found an entrance and needed to move fast.
Thursday I didn't log in at all. I had intended to, but real life intervened. Recently I had started watching Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. on Netflix. On Wednesday night I managed to convince my wife to watch it with me, so I started over and we watched it together. That took up most of Wednesday night and all of Thursday night. Friday I got home from work, and nobody else was home yet. So I logged on, determined to find a way in, even if I had to trudge through a long chain to do it.
First things first, I wasn't alone. There was a Cyclone on scan, then a Harbinger and Hurricane joined him. I decided to go ahead and ignore them and get to scanning. All but two of the signatures were fresh, both of them gas sites. The three new ones from Wednesday night, that I never scanned, were gone. There weren't that many sigs to deal with, so I ran a quick scan and started with the weakest results, working my way back to the strongest ones. The first was a wormhole, and a K162 even, but it led to w-space. Figuring I'd come back to it later if need be, I moved to the next weakest signature.
My wormhole is usually off the beaten path due to its statics, the presence of three Battlecruisers made me think I had a High-Sec connection again, but that seemed too good to be true. The next sig was another wormhole, another K162. I almost fell out of my chair laughing as I read the description... "This wormhole seems to lead to high security space." With a quick bounce I was on the hole at zero. Then I jumped to bookmark the other side. It led to Bomana in Khanid, a system with no stations. D-scan showed a Loki and a Proteus and they seemed a bit out of place in this 0.5 security system that really led to nowhere. Jokingly I thought, "what if they are coming to gank the BC's?" I jumped back in and warped to the same safe-spot where I had seen the BC's on scan.
Itching to get moving, but curious about what could happen, I lingered for a few moments. Then it happened, only 5 minutes after I found the exit, d-scan lit up. A Sabre and two Proteuses (not sure of the plural on that) showed up first, and a bubble went up pretty quick. Then a Loki, a Legion and a third Proteus showed up, along with another bubble. From there it took a few minutes, the warp bubble count bounced between two and three until all the BC's were down.
Checking the killboard, I saw that no ship kills had happened since my Prowler went down a week earlier. One of those Spacemonkey/GWCPS pilots had logged back in after I died and taken down one more POS array, but that was it. By some chance of luck I got to be there to see this fight, albeit by d-scan only. It ended up being Unseen Wolves taking down the three BC's from Ultimate Acid Inc. The results can be seen here.
Itching to get Niskin back into the wormhole, I switched and made the 19 jumps from Jita. Arriving back in the hole I found d-scan empty and headed to the POS to deposit the fuel components. After that I hit a safe-spot and checked PI for the other fuel component supplies I needed. I hadn't produced Oxygen since the first few weeks in the hole and I was finally out of it. My only Gas planet had since been setup to produce Coolant, but it also has an Interbus POCO so the taxes are terrible. Now seemed like a good time to do something about that. There was another Gas planet in system with a corp-owned POCO that had a 5% tax so I decided to setup another planet and migrate the expensive production there.
To get things rolling so I could produce fuel sooner, I did a partial conversion of the existing Gas planet back to producing Oxygen. Then I headed back out to Khanid for supplies. I was on the expensive side of the region, but most things could be found one jump away in Danera. I picked up two Gas Command Centers and some more Hydrogen Isotopes, and then realized that there was no Liquid Ozone or Heavy Water at this hub. The closest was 10 jumps away in Agil. That would have been a quick trip if it wasn't heavy on long AU warps. The worst of these was in Rilera, warping from Edani to Tegheon, which is a 180 AU warp. There's another one further along that's ~100 and a few over 50.
On the way back the route was slightly different since I had left from Danera but was returning to Bomana. I still ended up passing through Rilera again, and found the warp from Tegheon to Avrejet to be 180 AU also. This was mostly annoying because I was making the trip back one warp at a time while running back and forth from the basement to the living room. My wife had arrived home from work as I landed in Agil and during the trip back we were trying to figure out what to have for dinner. Before I was even halfway back we decided on Taco Bell and I ran out to get it, finishing the return trip when I got back.
As I got back to the hole and jumped in, there were more visitors. A Stratios was on scan along with 16 core probes, so at least two people were scanning. My food was starting to get cold so I wrapped things up and logged off. I was happy to be back home, but I needed to get back to watching SHIELD with the wife, so that wrapped up Friday evening. As I laid down to go to sleep, I wondered, would that HS connection still be there in the morning? Bob couldn't have gotten drunk enough for that, could he?
I had been pretty lazy all week. Tuesday night I scanned and found nothing interesting. Wednesday night was the same, except I stayed logged in to watch for fresh sigs throughout the evening. There were 3 by the end of the night but I just logged and went to bed. At least I had the good sense to spend a few minutes filling up the new Prowler with fuel components in case I found an entrance and needed to move fast.
Thursday I didn't log in at all. I had intended to, but real life intervened. Recently I had started watching Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. on Netflix. On Wednesday night I managed to convince my wife to watch it with me, so I started over and we watched it together. That took up most of Wednesday night and all of Thursday night. Friday I got home from work, and nobody else was home yet. So I logged on, determined to find a way in, even if I had to trudge through a long chain to do it.
First things first, I wasn't alone. There was a Cyclone on scan, then a Harbinger and Hurricane joined him. I decided to go ahead and ignore them and get to scanning. All but two of the signatures were fresh, both of them gas sites. The three new ones from Wednesday night, that I never scanned, were gone. There weren't that many sigs to deal with, so I ran a quick scan and started with the weakest results, working my way back to the strongest ones. The first was a wormhole, and a K162 even, but it led to w-space. Figuring I'd come back to it later if need be, I moved to the next weakest signature.
My wormhole is usually off the beaten path due to its statics, the presence of three Battlecruisers made me think I had a High-Sec connection again, but that seemed too good to be true. The next sig was another wormhole, another K162. I almost fell out of my chair laughing as I read the description... "This wormhole seems to lead to high security space." With a quick bounce I was on the hole at zero. Then I jumped to bookmark the other side. It led to Bomana in Khanid, a system with no stations. D-scan showed a Loki and a Proteus and they seemed a bit out of place in this 0.5 security system that really led to nowhere. Jokingly I thought, "what if they are coming to gank the BC's?" I jumped back in and warped to the same safe-spot where I had seen the BC's on scan.
Itching to get moving, but curious about what could happen, I lingered for a few moments. Then it happened, only 5 minutes after I found the exit, d-scan lit up. A Sabre and two Proteuses (not sure of the plural on that) showed up first, and a bubble went up pretty quick. Then a Loki, a Legion and a third Proteus showed up, along with another bubble. From there it took a few minutes, the warp bubble count bounced between two and three until all the BC's were down.
Checking the killboard, I saw that no ship kills had happened since my Prowler went down a week earlier. One of those Spacemonkey/GWCPS pilots had logged back in after I died and taken down one more POS array, but that was it. By some chance of luck I got to be there to see this fight, albeit by d-scan only. It ended up being Unseen Wolves taking down the three BC's from Ultimate Acid Inc. The results can be seen here.
Itching to get Niskin back into the wormhole, I switched and made the 19 jumps from Jita. Arriving back in the hole I found d-scan empty and headed to the POS to deposit the fuel components. After that I hit a safe-spot and checked PI for the other fuel component supplies I needed. I hadn't produced Oxygen since the first few weeks in the hole and I was finally out of it. My only Gas planet had since been setup to produce Coolant, but it also has an Interbus POCO so the taxes are terrible. Now seemed like a good time to do something about that. There was another Gas planet in system with a corp-owned POCO that had a 5% tax so I decided to setup another planet and migrate the expensive production there.
To get things rolling so I could produce fuel sooner, I did a partial conversion of the existing Gas planet back to producing Oxygen. Then I headed back out to Khanid for supplies. I was on the expensive side of the region, but most things could be found one jump away in Danera. I picked up two Gas Command Centers and some more Hydrogen Isotopes, and then realized that there was no Liquid Ozone or Heavy Water at this hub. The closest was 10 jumps away in Agil. That would have been a quick trip if it wasn't heavy on long AU warps. The worst of these was in Rilera, warping from Edani to Tegheon, which is a 180 AU warp. There's another one further along that's ~100 and a few over 50.
On the way back the route was slightly different since I had left from Danera but was returning to Bomana. I still ended up passing through Rilera again, and found the warp from Tegheon to Avrejet to be 180 AU also. This was mostly annoying because I was making the trip back one warp at a time while running back and forth from the basement to the living room. My wife had arrived home from work as I landed in Agil and during the trip back we were trying to figure out what to have for dinner. Before I was even halfway back we decided on Taco Bell and I ran out to get it, finishing the return trip when I got back.
As I got back to the hole and jumped in, there were more visitors. A Stratios was on scan along with 16 core probes, so at least two people were scanning. My food was starting to get cold so I wrapped things up and logged off. I was happy to be back home, but I needed to get back to watching SHIELD with the wife, so that wrapped up Friday evening. As I laid down to go to sleep, I wondered, would that HS connection still be there in the morning? Bob couldn't have gotten drunk enough for that, could he?
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
High-Sec Vacation
High-Sec gets kind of stale when you live there long term. Missions seem more boring. Earning lots of ISK seems pointless. There's just nothing to it but the bare mechanics of the game. That is how I felt about it the last few years, while playing casually in High-Sec. It's also part of the reason I moved into a wormhole, I needed more challenges to stay interested in the game. But everything changes when you are just visiting, passing through on the way back to something harder. I hadn't felt this way about High-Sec since I last lived in Null-Sec. Suddenly the calm safety was refreshing, even if the urge to spam d-scan was hard to ignore.
Saturday morning I logged in and started a new ritual of scanning down the hole with my alt. This will happen each day until I get Niskin back inside. My wormhole is finicky and is unlikely to give me a good entrance for at least a week. On any given day I always have 4 or more connections, This time I barely had three. My two statics and a frigate hole to w-space. I forget where the Null connection went but it was too remote to bother with. I checked out the C5, it had one static to a C1. I decided not to take it any further than that yet.
The thing is, if I dig deep through a chain to find an entrance I will probably find one. Then after I get in I'll have High-Sec K162s every day for a week. I'll play Bob's game, but on my own terms. He's going to give me something good eventually and I'm willing to wait for it, for now.
Before Friday night I'd actually been considering taking a week and spending it in High-Sec, but wasn't sure when would be a good time for that. I had some loot to move around, things to organize, and just general upkeep that I hadn't done before going to w-space. After I finished scanning down the wormhole with my alt I switched back to Niskin and continued working on those tasks. I hauled the loot from Yulai and Pashanai to Jita and sold it. Then I headed for my High-Sec mission hub.
The goal at this point was to cover the loss of the Prowler before I even got back into the wormhole. I skipped a drone mission, then a burner mission, and then had to lose some standing skipping a Low-Sec mission. Finally I got something worth running, Mordu's Folly 1 of 2. I ran that and looted it, which was when I noticed I had a bunch of old loot sitting around from previous missions. I decided I'd haul all that to Jita and sell it also. Using the Prowler it's a much shorter trip cutting through Low-Sec. But that would have to wait, I was done for the day and wanted to stay in the mission hub until I knew what was up with the wormhole entrances.
The next day, on Sunday, I logged in and scanned down the hole again. This time it was worse, there were just my two statics. Null was a bust, the connection was to Detorid, near Insmother. My C5 static led to a hole with a C3 static. I started scanning the C5 down to see if any inbounds would make my day. The first one I found was to Null again. Before I could go out through it, a ship came in through it, an Astero piloted by somebody involved with the Northern Coalition. Once again I said screw it and headed back to my home hole.
Switching back to Niskin I ran another L4 mission. The 2 of 2 on Mordu's Folly is a faction mission with no bounties so I skipped it and got Unauthorized Military Presence. That was worth running and was a breeze in the Scorpion Navy Issue that I keep around for such things. After the cleanup I took all the loot from both missions, and the stuff I had sitting from before, and headed to Jita.
That put me a bit closer to where I was before Friday night. If I can get those stolen POS arrays out and sell them, along with a few other things, I should break even. But we are now about a week past my second month in the hole. Normally I'd have done a recap post for the month by now. I may still do one, but it's clear that December will come out as a loss, even if the actual loss was in January.
Sunday night I didn't sleep, at all. I tried but it never happened. I've had that problem a few times in the last year. So I took the day off work but didn't really play, other than a quick scan of the wormhole, which came back with nothing exciting. Today is Tuesday and I'll try again tonight. We'll see how long it takes to get back in.
Note: A few posts back I said I was at 21 days of fuel in the tower. Since then I've produced a few more and put all my reserves in the tower. Before getting podded out Friday night I had just over 28 days left again, so things are fine in that regard. One thing is sure though, I'll be bringing more fuel in on the return trip. If I let this go too long it will take a lot of work to stock back up again.
Saturday morning I logged in and started a new ritual of scanning down the hole with my alt. This will happen each day until I get Niskin back inside. My wormhole is finicky and is unlikely to give me a good entrance for at least a week. On any given day I always have 4 or more connections, This time I barely had three. My two statics and a frigate hole to w-space. I forget where the Null connection went but it was too remote to bother with. I checked out the C5, it had one static to a C1. I decided not to take it any further than that yet.
The thing is, if I dig deep through a chain to find an entrance I will probably find one. Then after I get in I'll have High-Sec K162s every day for a week. I'll play Bob's game, but on my own terms. He's going to give me something good eventually and I'm willing to wait for it, for now.
Before Friday night I'd actually been considering taking a week and spending it in High-Sec, but wasn't sure when would be a good time for that. I had some loot to move around, things to organize, and just general upkeep that I hadn't done before going to w-space. After I finished scanning down the wormhole with my alt I switched back to Niskin and continued working on those tasks. I hauled the loot from Yulai and Pashanai to Jita and sold it. Then I headed for my High-Sec mission hub.
The goal at this point was to cover the loss of the Prowler before I even got back into the wormhole. I skipped a drone mission, then a burner mission, and then had to lose some standing skipping a Low-Sec mission. Finally I got something worth running, Mordu's Folly 1 of 2. I ran that and looted it, which was when I noticed I had a bunch of old loot sitting around from previous missions. I decided I'd haul all that to Jita and sell it also. Using the Prowler it's a much shorter trip cutting through Low-Sec. But that would have to wait, I was done for the day and wanted to stay in the mission hub until I knew what was up with the wormhole entrances.
The next day, on Sunday, I logged in and scanned down the hole again. This time it was worse, there were just my two statics. Null was a bust, the connection was to Detorid, near Insmother. My C5 static led to a hole with a C3 static. I started scanning the C5 down to see if any inbounds would make my day. The first one I found was to Null again. Before I could go out through it, a ship came in through it, an Astero piloted by somebody involved with the Northern Coalition. Once again I said screw it and headed back to my home hole.
Switching back to Niskin I ran another L4 mission. The 2 of 2 on Mordu's Folly is a faction mission with no bounties so I skipped it and got Unauthorized Military Presence. That was worth running and was a breeze in the Scorpion Navy Issue that I keep around for such things. After the cleanup I took all the loot from both missions, and the stuff I had sitting from before, and headed to Jita.
That put me a bit closer to where I was before Friday night. If I can get those stolen POS arrays out and sell them, along with a few other things, I should break even. But we are now about a week past my second month in the hole. Normally I'd have done a recap post for the month by now. I may still do one, but it's clear that December will come out as a loss, even if the actual loss was in January.
Sunday night I didn't sleep, at all. I tried but it never happened. I've had that problem a few times in the last year. So I took the day off work but didn't really play, other than a quick scan of the wormhole, which came back with nothing exciting. Today is Tuesday and I'll try again tonight. We'll see how long it takes to get back in.
Note: A few posts back I said I was at 21 days of fuel in the tower. Since then I've produced a few more and put all my reserves in the tower. Before getting podded out Friday night I had just over 28 days left again, so things are fine in that regard. One thing is sure though, I'll be bringing more fuel in on the return trip. If I let this go too long it will take a lot of work to stock back up again.
Saturday, January 3, 2015
And then things got interesting
While I was watching this whole confusing scenario unfold, many thoughts crossed my mind. When the Vexor was solo, I wondered if I could gank him with a Claw or a Hawk. That seemed like a tough proposition and would require a drone overview tab, so I went ahead and set that up just in case. The thought of whether I should worry about ganking when I might get to steal more arrays eventually won out and I remained hidden. But eventually I got annoyed watching the group of five.
At one point I decided to see how they would react to probes, since I hadn't seen any all day. I warped to planet 10, off scan from everything else in system, and dropped core probes. Then warped back to the on-grid safe and started scanning down the hole. First a few probes appeared on d-scan, then eventually all of them. The five didn't budge. I finished scanning down the hole and recalled my probes. A while later, even more bored, I went and checked my statics. The C5 connection was new, I had woken it up. It went to J155928. There were some T3's on scan in there, but I didn't know if they were piloted or at a POS. I lingered at the exit hole for a moment, uncloaked, to see if that drew any attention. Nothing obvious happened so I jumped back and resumed watching them. This was still before 6:30pm.
Just before 7:30pm I walked by the computer and noticed something was different. There were only two or three ships on grid and they weren't Vexors. I forget what was on grid and what was on scan but there was a mix of T3 cruisers and a Devoter in the area. There were two wrecks, the Gila and the Navy Caracal, the latter of which had loot left in it. It seems Greater Realms had found this little POS shooting party and caught them off-guard, killing one Vexor, the Gila, and the Navy Caracal, and all three pods. I watched as the last few T3s left grid and eventually only a Legion or two remained on scan. Once again diving from my on-grid safe, I warped to the Navy Caracal wreck. It had 8684 Scourge Fury Light Missiles and some Cap Boosters. Since I was still in the Cheetah, all I could take was the missiles. Then I warped back to the POS, dropped off the missiles, and got back in the Prowler again. Once again setup at the on-grid safe, I waited and watched.
Over the next 25 minutes, things got crazy. Just as I thought Greater Realms was gone completely, an entirely new T3 fleet appeared. Multiple T3 cruisers with an Ishtar, Vindicator, Navy Omen and a few Scimitars. I decided to warp to the wormhole to J155928, thinking that's where G.R. came from. It was, but they weren't there. The new fleet was, and they were No Holes Barred. I watched as they chatted for a moment.
[ 2015.01.03 00:50:01 ] etheris > tengu you guys want to brawl or no?
[ 2015.01.03 00:50:24 ] Avam TheRock > worried about rest of fleet
[ 2015.01.03 00:50:47 ] etheris > you have guardians, we have scimis
[ 2015.01.03 00:50:51 ] etheris > its an even brawl, your call
[ 2015.01.03 00:51:00 ] etheris > we're leaving in a few minutes. make your choice
[ 2015.01.03 00:51:10 ] Avam TheRock > had bad experiences lately with even fights turning into double numbers
[ 2015.01.03 00:51:22 ] etheris > alrighty, well fair enough
Thinking maybe the fight would happen or that the conversation might move to the other system, I warped back to the on-grid safe at the dead POS. Not much was left that was worth messing with. Greater Realms had saved the last White Noise Generation Battery from a worthless death. NoHo was still on scan somewhere between 5 and 10 AU away. I decided to chance a swoop in for the ECM array. With a quick unanchor and scoop I grabbed it and then warped back to the on-grid safe. Looking the field over, there were 3 Medium Pulse Batteries clustered together, next to a bunch of T2 drones. I figured I'd take one more swoop for the guns and be done with it.
One array went in quickly, followed by another, then I tried to scoop a drone that was farther away than it looked. The ship approached it automatically and I just went with it, tired, stupid, distracted... whatever. By the time I got back on track and went for the 3rd array it was too late. The Proteus was there on the overview, cross already flashing yellow. I had been forgetting to d-scan, forgetting what I was doing, just falling apart.
[ 2015.01.03 00:53:45 ] (combat) Warp scramble attempt from Angelus Infirim [IXC]<NOHO>(Proteus) to you!
He held me there for a moment, until the others arrived, including the Flycatcher to make sure they got the pod. I was calm, it happened almost too fast. The time between when I panicked and when I knew I was hosed was so short that there wasn't much to react to. I just had to watch and wait. They popped the Prowler, and my pod.
[ 2015.01.03 00:56:28 ] EVE System > Channel changed to Local : Heydieles
My first thought was that Prowlers are expensive, and I had just gotten above breaking even for the month. My second thought was to get on an alt and see what was up in the hole. What I found is that a new K162 connection had opened up into us and that was where NoHo came from. I watched them leave and then checked the dead POS grid. My wreck was gone, that was it for the dead POS adventure.
I switched back to Niskin and headed to Jita for a new Prowler. Then back to Charmerout for some fittings as I have tons of stuff sitting there. Finally I headed over to Yulai to pick up some loot that was stashed there, and Pashanai also. I'd have to take it to Jita to sell it, to help cover my losses. But that would have to wait until the morning.
For the first time, I'd been podded out of my hole, and no good exits were presenting themselves. At least I have the whole weekend to watch for something, and could run some errands in k-space. I might even have to do some L4 missions as penance, the horror! But one thing is for sure, I'll never hang a Prowler out there in d-scan range of a hungry PvP gang again. Lesson, I should have already known, learned!
This is going to take a few posts
So I'll just get right into it. My adventure the night before New Years Eve had me up late and up early again. That made for a rough, but luckily short, workday. New Years Eve was another late night, but at least I got to sleep in the next day. New Years Day was ruined by my water heater dying, so my brother installed a new one, because he's good at that stuff, and I helped. That night we all went to bed early, and in the morning I started waking up around 5:30. I think I finally got online around 8:00 or 8:30. D-scan was lit up, Talos, 2x Vexors, and lots of Bombers.
Curious but not yet scared, I cloaked and bounced around the system looking for them. Thinking they were in a sleeper combat or data/relic site I did the 5 degree dance unsuccessfully. Playing with the ranges I was able to narrow it down to planet 7. Unsure of what they could care about over there I warped to the POCO, and nobody was there. I didn't have a dead POS bookmark for anything over there, but d-scan revealed one POS within 1 AU, and no force fields. The planet didn't have too many moons so I bounced to the first and then the second which revealed a bunch of Spacemonkeys shooting a dead POS.
Not just any dead POS, but the POS of Fairlight Avionics, holder of two POCO's with 0% tax rates. I must have seen this when I moved in because I hit every moon on every planet, but apparently failed to bookmark it. As it turns out, later I would find a second dead POS I'd forgotten to bookmark also. That meant the number of dead POSs in this wormhole was a total of four. But why were they shooting at this one?
Thinking about that started to make me worry. Were they moving in? Was this specifically about Fairlight? Should I be packing my gear into the Orca to prepare for the worst? They might have seen me on scan for a second when I logged in, but I hadn't dropped probes so things still looked quiet. I decided to watch them and see what happened. Reacting to their moves as they happened would give me the best chance. My best guess was that they were going to shoot down the tower and re-use the arrays to put up their own POS. I sat back and watched, waiting for the tower to disappear from the overview, and the ensuing large fireball.
In all there were 16 pilots shooting at it, mostly bombers. They were being resupplied by an off-grid Crane. It eventually showed up on grid and worked from there for a while before the tower popped. It was just after 10:00am and I expected to see them bring in the haulers to scoop all the arrays. But then an even stranger thing happened... they kept shooting. They shot down two medium lasers and six small lasers. That lasted about 20 minutes. Then, suddenly, they all started warping off. Bombers first, Vexors next, Talos last, like an unaligned fleet warp. There was nothing else on scan, just them, and then they were gone.
As fast as I possibly could I snapped into action. I was sure those arrays could be unanchored now that the tower was gone. Still in a Cheetah, I warped to a White Noise Generation Battery from my on-grid safe and tried to unanchor it. Five seconds later the countdown ended and the array was scoopable. I warped to the POS, offlined some defenses and got the SMA online. Jumping in the Prowler I warped to the on-grid safe and made a run to pickup that first array. I scooped it, cloaked, and warped back to the on-grid safe. As I was preparing to warp to another, d-scan got a hit, one of the Vexors was back. It looked like he may have logged off or dc'd and was now coming back.
For almost two hours he sat there all alone, shooting a Warp Scrambling Battery. I watched him, wondering if he was an alt trying to make some progress while the rest of them were off doing something more important. He would dc/quit from time to time and I would warp in, unanchor and scoop some arrays, and then go drop them off. I got another White Noise ECM, two Warp Disruptors, and two Stasis Webs. Most of those came on his last dc when, for what appeared like no reason, he started slowboating off in a random direction with his drones following him. About 50km later he e-warped without his drones. I was just dropping off the webs when he showed up on d-scan again. For some reason I panicked and switched back to my Cheetah, hoping he wouldn't notice the hauler on scan. With a quick warp to a safespot I was hidden again and headed back to the on-grid safe.
Maybe he saw me, or maybe this was just when reinforcements would start to trickle in, but shortly after he was joined by another Vexor. They shot down a medium pulse laser together. Then three more showed up, a Gila, a Navy Caracal, and another Vexor. The originals had all been Spacemonkeys, these newer pilots were Western Co-Prosperity Spere. For whatever reason that made me less worried that this was a move-in operation. The five of them shot down a bunch of stuff, starting with a White Noise Generation Battery and then 23 other arrays.
To add a bit of perspective, the story so far actually spans 10 hours. From around 8:30am to 6:30pm I didn't sit and watch them the whole time. Even though I was off work I had stuff to do around the house. My son needed to go to the library to get some books on Alaska for a school project. The library didn't open until noon, which gave me the morning to watch them. But of course that last array scooping session took place just after noon. I was about to give up on him for a bit since we had to leave and sure enough he did the strange align and dc thing. So we left for a while after that, hit the library and grabbed some lunch.
Around 2:00pm, when the group of five had settled in, I did a lot more AFKing and periodic checking. That gave me time to put the basement back together after the water heater installation the day before. I went outside and took down the Christmas lights since it wasn't ridiculously cold outside. By then my wife got home, she'd gone grocery shopping after work. We put all the groceries away and then took down the Christmas tree. The time was approaching 6:30pm. I don't remember which task it was that took me away, but I was gone for about 40 minutes.
Continued...
Curious but not yet scared, I cloaked and bounced around the system looking for them. Thinking they were in a sleeper combat or data/relic site I did the 5 degree dance unsuccessfully. Playing with the ranges I was able to narrow it down to planet 7. Unsure of what they could care about over there I warped to the POCO, and nobody was there. I didn't have a dead POS bookmark for anything over there, but d-scan revealed one POS within 1 AU, and no force fields. The planet didn't have too many moons so I bounced to the first and then the second which revealed a bunch of Spacemonkeys shooting a dead POS.
Not just any dead POS, but the POS of Fairlight Avionics, holder of two POCO's with 0% tax rates. I must have seen this when I moved in because I hit every moon on every planet, but apparently failed to bookmark it. As it turns out, later I would find a second dead POS I'd forgotten to bookmark also. That meant the number of dead POSs in this wormhole was a total of four. But why were they shooting at this one?
Thinking about that started to make me worry. Were they moving in? Was this specifically about Fairlight? Should I be packing my gear into the Orca to prepare for the worst? They might have seen me on scan for a second when I logged in, but I hadn't dropped probes so things still looked quiet. I decided to watch them and see what happened. Reacting to their moves as they happened would give me the best chance. My best guess was that they were going to shoot down the tower and re-use the arrays to put up their own POS. I sat back and watched, waiting for the tower to disappear from the overview, and the ensuing large fireball.
In all there were 16 pilots shooting at it, mostly bombers. They were being resupplied by an off-grid Crane. It eventually showed up on grid and worked from there for a while before the tower popped. It was just after 10:00am and I expected to see them bring in the haulers to scoop all the arrays. But then an even stranger thing happened... they kept shooting. They shot down two medium lasers and six small lasers. That lasted about 20 minutes. Then, suddenly, they all started warping off. Bombers first, Vexors next, Talos last, like an unaligned fleet warp. There was nothing else on scan, just them, and then they were gone.
As fast as I possibly could I snapped into action. I was sure those arrays could be unanchored now that the tower was gone. Still in a Cheetah, I warped to a White Noise Generation Battery from my on-grid safe and tried to unanchor it. Five seconds later the countdown ended and the array was scoopable. I warped to the POS, offlined some defenses and got the SMA online. Jumping in the Prowler I warped to the on-grid safe and made a run to pickup that first array. I scooped it, cloaked, and warped back to the on-grid safe. As I was preparing to warp to another, d-scan got a hit, one of the Vexors was back. It looked like he may have logged off or dc'd and was now coming back.
For almost two hours he sat there all alone, shooting a Warp Scrambling Battery. I watched him, wondering if he was an alt trying to make some progress while the rest of them were off doing something more important. He would dc/quit from time to time and I would warp in, unanchor and scoop some arrays, and then go drop them off. I got another White Noise ECM, two Warp Disruptors, and two Stasis Webs. Most of those came on his last dc when, for what appeared like no reason, he started slowboating off in a random direction with his drones following him. About 50km later he e-warped without his drones. I was just dropping off the webs when he showed up on d-scan again. For some reason I panicked and switched back to my Cheetah, hoping he wouldn't notice the hauler on scan. With a quick warp to a safespot I was hidden again and headed back to the on-grid safe.
Maybe he saw me, or maybe this was just when reinforcements would start to trickle in, but shortly after he was joined by another Vexor. They shot down a medium pulse laser together. Then three more showed up, a Gila, a Navy Caracal, and another Vexor. The originals had all been Spacemonkeys, these newer pilots were Western Co-Prosperity Spere. For whatever reason that made me less worried that this was a move-in operation. The five of them shot down a bunch of stuff, starting with a White Noise Generation Battery and then 23 other arrays.
To add a bit of perspective, the story so far actually spans 10 hours. From around 8:30am to 6:30pm I didn't sit and watch them the whole time. Even though I was off work I had stuff to do around the house. My son needed to go to the library to get some books on Alaska for a school project. The library didn't open until noon, which gave me the morning to watch them. But of course that last array scooping session took place just after noon. I was about to give up on him for a bit since we had to leave and sure enough he did the strange align and dc thing. So we left for a while after that, hit the library and grabbed some lunch.
Around 2:00pm, when the group of five had settled in, I did a lot more AFKing and periodic checking. That gave me time to put the basement back together after the water heater installation the day before. I went outside and took down the Christmas lights since it wasn't ridiculously cold outside. By then my wife got home, she'd gone grocery shopping after work. We put all the groceries away and then took down the Christmas tree. The time was approaching 6:30pm. I don't remember which task it was that took me away, but I was gone for about 40 minutes.
Continued...
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