A Quiet Little Hole, Mostly…

~or, “Well, That Din’t Go As Planned…”

Seems Sov has found us a quiet little hole this time. The C3 we now live in has, in weeks since I moved in, been all in all kinda quiet. It’s nice for PVE and PI and to sit quietly of an evening and contemplate Life and the ‘Verse whilst gazing deeply into one’s navel… so quiet in fact, one gets a little… complacent… and you mebbe dunt spam the scan buhtan as often as your training and experience tells you too. Not that that’s what happened… but, last night we sure got jumped right outta the milky mauveish whiteness that is the normal sky for C3s...

First off, I was in a very good mood as Sov and I had finally finished off a legacy POCO left over from some other corps time in this particular Black Hole C3. Before I joined HELPeR the guys had replaced the one’s on the planets they cared about for POS fuel production and ignored the others, but I am interested in PI for its own sake. I make Robotics on the planets already in our control, but I donate all of them to corp for fuel and the excess is sold for the corp wallet.

As we don’t get taxed on Sleeper L&S like the rest of ya'll do on bounties and Agent payouts, bonuses and suchlike, other than POCOs there are no levied taxes in Anoikis, so Robos serves in that stead… and considering the price of Robos, 56k to 57k ISK per unit avg., it’s not a bad deal for the corp.

I however also need and just want to make PI a source of personal income if possible, and in most W-space systems, as we are negative sec, IE all holes are -1.0 security rating, so the PI in even a shitty hole is a far cry better than Hi, Low and many null systems… hence I wanted to expand my production which meant clearing out one or two more of those pesky legacy POCOs to free up more planets.

Now you see the one we dunt own are charging me taxes on every transfer… from 5% to 10% and even 17%...this was absolutely unacceptable as you might well imagine… I was literally giving ISK away to people I dunt even know much less not wanna shoot in the face. So Sov and I had reinforced one of the ones I needed and completed the removal and erected a Brand New Shiney POCO in HELPeRs good name, and with a tax rate of 0.0, heaven for us small time Industrialists.

Add to that my corpmate Strigon, who had been on (I can’t afford PLEX) uh… sabbatical... from EVE, finally returned last night… well, I was having a grand time. We had scanned all-the-things, and had an empty C4/C3 EOL (end of life), a halfway decent U210, also EOL, and a few sites in home to run.

Life was good. I messed around with PI, Sov was scouting around the lowsec... and he saw a guy, he said a mission runner, I said Bait… I’ve reached a point where every ship in space is bait… if it isn’t who cares what I said but if, no when it is, I was RIGHT!... anyway, he jumped into Bosena and we put together a 3 ship to try and jump him and get a Navy Scorp kill but he left before we got in place.

So we trundled back home and decided to run the 3 sites in our home hole. We have settled on a nice system that works well  for a small gang inna C3… we run at least 2 DPS ships with Logi. As I finally decided Tur is gonna be a L5 Logi and EWar pilot when he grows up, so I am always logi and happy to be so. I fly a cap stable solo Scimitar and normally orbit at 65k keepin an eye on the watch list and reps on them as needs it.

I also still have an abiding love for the Noctis and salvaging and we have found a good way to utilize the strengths of the MTU (Mobile Tractor Unit) and the Noctis together for small gang site running. I carry 3 MTUs, drop one at the warpin for each site, when we finish the 3^rd site I swing back, scoop the MTU and loot the can it drops at each site in turn. If we have more than 3 sites, I’ll drop off the loot at the POS and we rinse and repeat until all sites are done. Then, once I have the last of the MTUs, loot and the Scimi back in the POS I reship to the Noctis.

Now the Noctis is fit for fastest warping and all the highs are fit with Salvager IIs… I warp from BM to BM and, as the MTU has made a nice fat wreckball at each BM, I land and just salvage all wrecks without having to tractor or loot and off to the next site. The guys fly cover, watching the holes, and flying DPS & Ewar JIC… and last night, JIC happened.

I was on the third site Scoop n Loot when Sov called out, “Proteus on scan.” I was ordering a warp to the POS when…

[2014.05.02 05:35:05] (combat) 91 from Trick Nixon[SB00N](Proteus) - Heavy Electron Blaster II – Grazes…   !!!

I called out, “He’s on me.” Sov advised I try and open range as the Scimi is AB fit and does a decent 1100+m/s. I had his Hob II drones on me, was webbed and scrammed but tanking well. Then the Proteus was joined by an Abaddon and Falcon… then my guys landed right behind em!

NC1M is almost always inna Falcon and he immediately jammed out the Proteus freeing me to make good my escape… from that point on all did not go well for our intrepid gang of interlopers…  =]

We had a Falcon, Ishtar, Nighthawk and a Hurricane after I reshipped… I landed and burned hard and called out 2nd point on the Baddon. EC1M jammed the aggressor Falcon and our Ishtar and Nighthawk started taking him down.

We were holding point on the Baddon but he was slipping out of range, Sov asked me to reship to a Sabre. The Falcon went down while I was reshipping, his POD got away, the Proteus broke off and fled and the Baddon kept trying to pull range to escape point. I landed, burned in, dropped a bubble, got point and web and that was that for the Baddon. We offered ransom for the POD, but…

[2014.05.02 05:43:43] (notify) Greasy Khan has initiated self-destruct of their Capsule, it will explode in 120 seconds.

Needless to say, we didn’t need 120 seconds to decide that Greasy Khan wasn’t going home on his own terms.

The Proteus and the Falcon POD looked to have exited stage left. Sov did some scouting/research and found they came in from our U210. They are a Lowsec group that takes unkindly to wormholes, and them as live in them, as impinge on their system from time to time… But this time, they bit off a bit more than they could chew it seems.

Well... once things calmed down still had three sites worth of Sleeper wrecks in the sky… I reshipped once more to a throw away Thrasher Salver and went to work with my guys again scouting, flying and watching the sky for me. I salvaged up all three sites, got everything back in the POS safe n sound…  =]

THIS is why I love Anokis. CCP got it right when they created Wormhole Space… no ‘local’… destroyable , incredibly hard to live in ‘stations’…  imminent danger and the prospect of great riches…

Does anyone think for one second that there will be anything like ‘local’ once we actually go to space IRL? I highly doubt it… hence Anoikis is the most virtually like IRL to me, and for me... that is THE game.

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