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.
Scanning...
There's nothing shiny in the solar system map. The solemn darkness eats away at your soul.
Friday, January 30, 2015
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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