Escapes, Sites, GudFights and PI…

~or, “Getting Back in the Game”

Escapes…

Now that I am getting settled in nicely in the C3, I remembered it was time to bring in what I call my Hole Card… In Anoikis this is the alt you focus train as a scan alt and then bring them into the home hole and log off ‘em in a CovOps and that toon NEVER leaves the hole. This is your backup in case you get closed out of your hole either by accident or by having an enemy mass close your hole on you or worse, you get podded out. This way you always have char to scan the entrance/pipe down with.

While we were In SYJ I had Angel in Bastion as my hole card. We had left Bastion some months ago and as I was in Hisuc I had not been overly concerned with Angel. When I decided to join HELPeR in their C3 I realized I had to get Angel out… but this was problematic. You see a few months ago I was going to just Blood Jump her out so she had ejected from her Cheetah, self assploded it and only then did I realize… Angel had a basic clone…  Yup, I had not updated her clone after the last time she was podded AND you can only update your clone from a station… and there aint no stations in W-Space… sheesh.

So, back when this happened I had thought I’ll get ahold of somebody in SYJs Aussie corps that had remained in Bastion when we first left, to see if I can get her a pipe out. Yea… well, it turns out that SYJ really has ‘left the building’ as twere… and guess who has taken up residence in our old C6? The Merchants Trade Consortium [MTCU] (executor corp of The Last Chancers Alliance [TLC]) of course. For those who know this is highly ironic and for them as dunt... well, SYJ took a job from an insider last year where we invaded and burned down a C5 called “The Office”.

The Office was a staging hole where The Last Chancers [TLC], a major Anoikis Alliance, stored a number of Capitols and support ships in several POSes. The insider, a Director who had tried to leave on good terms, IE with advance notice, had had his roles stripped and was locked out of his assets as a precautionary move by the leadership of TLC… this angered him and he decided to ‘get even’ on his way out… seems he had an alt they had forgotten about that still had “Config Starbase Equipment” role… and with that you can anchor, unanchor, online, and offline any POS equipment owned by his corporation…  oops.

So, he bided his time, waiting until TLCs downtime, scanned the pipe, and, as I said in my post on the raid… He opened the gate and unbarred the front door in the dead of the night then stood aside as the bad men came in… The upshot? (video ->) Over 500+ billion in ISK destroyed or looted from The Merchants Trade Consortium [MTCU], Executors of [TLC].

So as you can see, TLC and especially MTCU could possibly hold a wee bit of a grudge against SYJ, the member corps and, well, anyone involved in the Office Raid. And, while Angel wasn’t there, she is my alt and I most def was there… and Angel was trapped, inna POD, in Bastion… sheesh.

Anyway, I finally decided to bite the bullet and go ahead and take the SP loss and blood jump Angel out. So I logged on and was preparing to that when, on a whim, I decided to give peace a chance… I joined the TLC Pub Chan and said Hello… after a bit I was answered and the ensuing convo led to what I find is often more usual in this weird weird game we play… they were cool with helping me out as being stuck inna hole happens when you fly in Anoikis… and while we love the Good Fights and the Hot Drops, someone asking for help is a very different matter… EvE, it seems, is not full of assholes only.

Anyway, I get Angel out and back to hisec, docked her in the Old HBHI HQ in Eglennaert. I settle her in and get her trained up to Corp Mngmt L4, Tur makes her CEO, dropped roles, quit HBHI and joined HELPeR.

Sites…

In my first week I am logging on almost nightly, I am in our standing fleet if anyone else is on, I am joining in and taking part in site running, raiding adjacent and nearby holes, setting up PI, even sucking up C3 gas sites and I am enjoying warding off the weak attempts by the C3 Sleepers to defend ‘their’ space.

We went a raiding... Sov found a C3 one lowsec hop away from our home hole... We had a kitchen sink PvE fleet… A Mael, Geddon and Tengu DPS with a single Basi for Logi. I was in the Basi, Cap Chained to the Geddon so I was able to run all 4 Lrg Shld Repper IIs, both Lrg ‘Regard’ Cap Trans, all defenses and the 10MN AB II full time.

Well, we ran 11 sites easy peasy... too easy it seems. I was carrying 3 MTUs and dropping one at each warpin… well, I tried to but Logi is an intensive role and on landing I have to…

(1) anchor on the Geddon,

(2) target the fleet,

(3) ensure the Cap Chain is up,

(4) start checking the watchlist to keep tabs on who is getting primaried by the Sleepers and

(5) apply Reps and/or Cap as I see the need or as it was called for…

Well, I dropped the MTUs when I remembered them or when someone asked why I hadn’t yet, sheesh… I love running Logi…  =]

Anyhoo, we would run 3 sites then nearing the end of the third, I would warp back to each MTU, scoop and loot in turn. After 11 sites, we were halfway through the total, so we stopped and one of the guys went back for a Noctis and salavaged up all 11 sites. He had just made his way back to our home hole when… The Geddon and I got jumped by a small T3 gang with EWar support, Proteus, Legion and an Eos... I think there were more there but those were the ones on me and on the killmails.

GudFights…

When I looked up and saw that flashing icon over a ship that wasn’t there a second ago… Man oh man! I started shaking like I haven't since I don't know when!! Then I pulled myself together as best I could and I really tried my best to support the Geddon. They started trying to neut me, then I got jammed out by EC-300s, after than I couldn’t help the Geddon anymore so I tried to pull range and GTFO... but one of the T3s stayed on me… I was neuted and webbed and he finally popped me, but I had enough time to setup a warpout to one of the sites we had BMed so I got my POD out of the fight… I bounce between a few completed sites finally settling down to see if they would pop combats… they dint and it looked to us like they just looted our wrecks and left... so we went back home. LOL! It took me a while to calm down from the shakes… But, this time, instead of freaking me out it was GLORIOUS!!

The Outcome… We lost a Basilsk, Tech II Logi (175m ISK) and an Armageddon, T1 BS (213m ISK); total loss of 285m ISK… we got ALL the L&S from 11 C3 Sleeper sites… I don’t handle the bank in HELPeR so I don’t know the total, but there were 3 of us and my cut was 100m ISK… so call it 300m ISK in L&S… and an a very exciting fight all in all for me. I so prefer how fights develop in W-Space… it is SOOO much more like what I believe it might be like if we even do actually go ‘out there’… There is no ‘local’ in space in Real Life.

and PI…

Back at the POS, and I'm setting up PI again. I very carefully took down, as in decommissioned and removed, ALL of my PI facilities back in Bastion (I did the same back in our old C3 too actually). Which poses a question, I assume most players will at least pull out the last of their PI final products when they leave a system, constellation or hole, but how many actually take the time to decommission all of their PI facilities? And if not, how many just abandon them in place? I wonder how much of the database if taken up by old abandoned PI setups all over New Eden Hmmmm?

Wouldn’t it be interesting if abandoned PI Facilities… showed up as “Abandoned” after say… 60 or 90 days… and as “Unclaimed” after say… 120 or 180 days? After that they would become available for anyone to re-commission the abandoned Command Centers. To do so you would have to pay, oh say 4/5ths or 2/3rds of the original (or current) price to “Re-commission” each Command Center which would then allow you to either re-commission the rest of the facilities, for a price, as originally setup or decommission and setup a new production line… Heyyyy maybe something like that would be good for all those abandoned POSes out there cluttering up space and the database too…

Anyhoo… I took a look at the PI available in this hole and decided to do the same as I have in the past… split my PI 50/50 between Robotics that I donate to corp for fuel and the highest ISK making PI prod for personal income… in our hole if I want to use just 2 planets, that will be “Supercomputers” as shown below in my favorite PI App, the EVE Planetary Planner.

I choose Supercomputers because they are in the top 5 in ISK/m3 value per EVE-Marketdata.com as shown below. I also check on the current market movement, prices and trends and I like what I see... (next pic down)

I could make Gel-Matrix Biopaste, but as I am donating 50% of my PI to corp, that means I have to optimize what’s left and I can make more Supercomps than GM Biopaste. OK, so how do you make Supercomputers? Again we turn to the EVE Planetary Planner for the schematic.

OK, so far, so good except… at 4 of the planets I want to use we have left over POCOs from 2 previous corps and both charge taxes. One is charging 10% and another, 5% and the other 2 are at 17%. A lot of P3 and 4 prods require a bit of moving P2 & 3 prods around… and this is slowly bleeding me as I try and get my PI lines up to full production. I need to get corp assistance bashing those 4 POCOs and replacing them with HELPeR POCOs. Sov said he would gladly setup the op, but I have to go the cost of the gantries. Four Customs Office Gantries @ approx 65m ISK ea. will run me 260m ISK... yea, ok.

[Update...  I have never setup POCOs myself, turns out I dint take into account the additional assets needed to upgrade an anchored Customs Office Gantry to a Planetary Orbital Customs Office, you need 8 each of: Self-Harmonizing Power Cores; Broadcast Nodes; Wetware Mainframes and Recursive Computing Nodes. This changes things... now I am looking at 91,252,000 ISK each. In other words I now need to save up approx 365,000,000 ISK, doable but sheesh...]

Well, I am back in Anoikis, I am banking roughly 100 to 150 mil ISK per night these last few nights… Last night for instance, we ran a number of sites in Lowsec to the tune of approx 150 or so mil ISK per Sov… and that’s great but… I have dropped 150+ m ISK on PI setups (and tear downs, re-setups and tweaks) and I have been bringing in ships, mods and ammo when we have decent pipes to Amarr from our U210 Lowsec Static. This is all good and so far I am just pulling ships from my fleet, but I am also refitting for C3, lowsec sites and PvP, ships that were originally fit for C6 Bastion sites, Merc Ops or Roams and there are attendant costs there.

So while my ISK making has stepped back up to acceptable levels, I am unavoidably incurring higher than maintenance costs at the moment and my actual balance has fluctuated around 200 to 150m ISK instead of growing… as I hope it will as soon as I get the POCOs thing settled, my PI running smoothly and some ships replaced with backups too.

Oh… and I seem to have found my muse again… or, hadn’t you noticed?  =]

Fly Wreckless and see you in the Sky  =/|)=