I Can Live with Dyin, I Just Can’t Mine for a Livin…

or, The Mind Melting Drone of The Minin Lazers…

I have never been, nor shall I ever be, a miner. Tried it, got the T-shirt… balled the T-shirt up, stuffed it into an ore compression unit, jetcanned it and the ore is was compressed into, target locked it, sent 5 Warrior IIs to attack it… and fired 2 Heavy Caldari Navy Scourge missiles at it for good measure. Fuk that T-shirt…

Take that… stoopid T-shirt

OK, so you mebbe get the idea I am not into mining much… all I can say is that the complete inactivity one experiences once one has begun mining ops combined with the endless mind numbing sound of the mining lazers… just makes me wanna podlkill myself. I really feel that this HAS to be the absolute worst way to “enjoy” making ISK in all of EVE, and yet… there are those who do naught else, and while I dunt know the percentages, not all of them are BOT miners.

Bastards Over There Mining Corp… 
BOT Miners are the ultimate “I dunt wanna mine” crowd… cause THEY dunt mine, their BOTS do, and they are, to me (and MANY others including CCP) not “players” in the game. They use software roBOTs and Macros to run their mining ships and fleets so they can make ISK while being permaAFK. 

EVE is a Shared Virtual Reality… 
Shared = we all do whatever we do together in real time in the same ‘verse; 

Virtual = this ‘verse exists inside a computer matrix; (howdya like them mixed metaphors huh!?) 

Reality = collective subjective experiences from moment to moment in real time. 

BOT Miners break this Shared Virtual Reality in two ways by… 
(1) NOT being there with all the rest of us in real time, in doing so they… 
(b) opt out of the shared ‘reality’ we all experience.
 When a BOT Miner has ships attacked and destroyed, he may not find out for hours or even days afterwards. He is not THERE on scene when things happen, WITH the rest of us sharing the experience that is EVE…  and so you end up with things like Hulkageddon.

The Mittani & Helicity Boson – HAG V

Hulkageddon was started originally as a campaign against BOT Miners when Macro mining and BOT mining had started to become wide spread and there were those in the community who took great umbrage at this. Of course people, being the cussed and depraved things we can be, quickly spread this to attacking any miner and the justification was… they were there.  Well that’s ‘nough bout automated mining, what I started talkin about was ME mining… or, er, well… not.

To mine, ORE not to refine? 
Anyhoo… my whole corp, small as ‘tis, is basically of one mind on this. None of us really “like” mining as compared to PvP or PvE or even, say… hittin ones self in da face with a nail studded Louisville Slugger… OK, mebbe I am a bit moar averse to mining than the rest, but it aint their first (or second or thirtyseventh) pick on the list of Things To Do in EVE either. 

But back when we setup Serenity Station we turned our shining faces to the sun with high hopes and aspirations of being Industrial Tycoons and having tha ability to expend massive amounts of ammo and missiles AND SHIPS at a fraction of the cost of others cause we made em ourselves!!  Uh huh… but no matter how many ammo and droan and ship assembly arrays you have… you aint makin shit one till you got ores… and we dunt like to mine… Hmmm. 

So here we have this very nice POS, all dethstarry with its massive Rings of Deth defensive arrays and all cluttered and hard to move around in inside due to the number of assembly arrays… and we dunt make shit. We spent months using it for almost nothing but ship and mod storage so we can run Sleepers and have our own home in the sky. The ONLY thing we did do, which I will say is no “small” thing, is our industry corpmate was able to do the required training and buy or mfg the required parts and our first Capitol Ship, a Nidhoggur Class carrier, rolled out the Lrg Ship Assembly Array several weeks ago.

They’re sooooo cute when they’re newborn!!

Understand I am very proud of our corpmate for his achievement and I am extremely proud to be part of a corp, as small as we are, that has joined the ranks of the corps and alliances in EVE who have fielded Capitol Class vessels. It is an achievement of note… but it is still the only thing of any real value we have built in the POS since we set it up. So, we finally decided we needed a someone who has whatever it takes to actually enjoy sitting for hours as his(her) brain liquefies to the drone of the mining lazers, we needed to hire us a miner, which means we need to get active about recruiting… Hmmmm.

NBDR = Not Blue Dunt Recruit… 
I hate recruiting. Scares me worse than a Flashy RED Tengu poppin up on grid while I am in my Noctis all alone in the hole… You see, I read constantly. I read Sci-fi books, history (mainly war histories), and EVERYTHING I can find about EVE. I read “voraciously” to quote a friend when he realized that I read several books at the same time. I will have one by my bedside, one (or two) in my backpack, and usually one I carry around with me so I have something to read in those brief quiet moments waiting on whatever to start, finish, reboot, load, break, set or… 

My reading as regards EVE has shown me that there is, in my mind, the distinct possibility that, moar ISK has been lost to spais and corporate intrigue than has ever been lost to PvP or any form of aggro. We are a small tight corp. We are RL friends and family. I TRUST these guys… and I have trusted them in RL with the life and safety of my children. I think I can trust them with everything I have in a game. But to trust a toon? Some char with I dunt care what stats? “Oh look, he’s a noob, only 4 weeks ingame…” Uh huh… the CHAR may be 4 weeks old… the GUY behind the keyboard may have been playing EVE since the second day it was online and can kill us ALL with a Rifter HULL. 

But he does not WANT to kill us… Oh Noes!! He wants a Directorship or at least full “take” access to ALL of our stuff. So when we log on one fine EVEning we find the POS and everything in it is GONE or destroyed because while we were all sleeping or spending our workday secure in the knowledge that all would be as it should be ingame cause we have only TRUSTWORTHY guys in our corp… he brought in his REAL corp and they looted and destroyed everything…  LOLing all the while. Oh and we all get a nice ingame mail with a link to a vid on Youtoob showing the whole effin WORLD the whole thing… starting with the last one of us online that night saying ‘o7’ and a good night to our trusted friend as we logged off while he stayed up late working on something “…for the corp”.

Grand Theft Tengu(s)...

And there we are, with just the ships we logged off in, the ISK in our personal wallets, and a smattering of personal stuff here and there throughout New Eden. Billions in ISK gone, and months, possibly years of TIME and effort… stolen from us. It has happened, (watch link above, read post here) It will happen again. I DO NOT want it to happen to us. Ever. The ONLY way to ensure that (as best you can) is…

(1) only have RL people you personally know and trust at the Director level;
(2) stay small and controllable;
(3) read: Corp Security.

We have a very good friend, a guy I have written about before (linky) who is a war griefer by trade. He is a Master of Spais and in the art of infiltrating noob corps. It is probably the primary reason he is successful. If he can get an alt in your corp, no matter at what level, he will learn about you… your real membership, primes & alts, the ships and fits you fly, how skilled you all are, both in game and in piloting skills, he will find out your locations your patterns, your playstyle… he will learn YOUR WEAKNESSES…and exploit them.

Personally I believe that Oz made a strategic error with us. He saw us as too new and too small and probably too easy a target to spend a lot of recon time on… so he started the war dec THEN had his alt request membership. While we did initially accept his alt I grew increasingly nervous about him and finally pushed for us to kick him JIC. And I was proved correct later. He did not take the time to really get to recon us well. If he had he may have then seen that though small and very new…
(1) some of us were on the right track with ship fitting and skills and that we,

(2) were RL friends who are very dedicated to each other and that we,

(3) would not ever give in to a protection racket and that we,

(4) would fight back no matter the cost...

because several of our members were (are) bloodthirsty to the point of recklessness (a sumtimes useful trait) and we also know, it’s just a game. As it turned out, the fact that we did undock and we did fight valiantly, with one of us (me) undocking TWICE and dying in a horrible fire… even though we lost, this earned us his respect and his friendship.

So you can see that recruiting from the pool of ALL EVE chars out “there”…. Freakin scares the shit outta me. I know, I know… not ALL of em are bad, heck MOST of em are exactly who they portray themselves as… it’s that unknown percentage that aren’t that spoils the whole basket of apples for me. I just CANNOT trust a toon. It is Soooo easy to lie here. Soooo easy to disinform… so easy to deceive, and the cost, in game time and effort, can be very, very real. OK, so just don’t make anyone else a Director right? Yes, there is that and we have agreed not to unless it is a RL person and it has to be a unanimous yea vote to get it in, one nay vote and it’s off the table. Plus there are ways to allow access and still provide corp security in a POS.

I Hear the Drone of Mining Lazers in the Distance…

So yes, we finally did ‘hire’ a  miner… and one I, and we all, can live with. I’ll call him Vic. Vic is first off absolutely crazy…  stark   raving   mad. The mining lazers liquefied his brain many many years ago and left, sloshing around inside his skull, a goo similar to moon goo, but a self-aware goo… we think. At least he acts self aware, most of the time… Oh, and one moar thing… Vic is a mining GOD. He has lost moar ISK and ships than my whole corp in our whole history… and still he makes moar ISK than my whole corp in our whole history. He is simply amazing. He is a guy we met many months ago while we were in DemSal Alliance. Everybody got along with Vic. We all liked him and loved chattin with him on TS… he is a real character not just a char. And I am proud to consider him a friend.  =]

He had been outta the game for quite a spell but a week or so ago he logged back in and got back in touch with us and he got all caught up on current events etc. Turns out he was looking for something newish to do… he was still gonna mine, where ever he was, but he was looking for a new venue to do it in. My CEO and he got to talkin, Vic has prior WH experience and felt mebbe some time in th hole might be just th thing for ol Vic. Well HELL YES!!!! We started drooling at the wallet thinkin of the kind a rock rapin Vic could do in a WH resource site… Arkonor, Bistot, Crokite, Scordite, Veldspar… Vic knows moar about mining and refining ORE that ANY of us… and he LOVES it.

From my Early Days… A 3 Hulk mining Op w/ Orca Support

Getting Vic incorp would be like hiring 4 or 5 miners who have several months experience… it would be like hiring 10 mining noobs and focus training them. But Vic doesn’t want to change corps which we completely understand as our corp means far moar to us than just a convenience as it is for so many out there. So… Vic's corp joins the Alliance, and due to the fact that we heavily overbought Arrays for the POS we are able to basically give him Alliance access to a Ship Maint Bay (to store his ships in) and a Ship Assy Array (to store everything else of his in) and they are basically for his corps use only. We retain control and Director access. NOW we’re cooking with GAS baby!!! 

Now Refining Arrays in POSes are not nearly as efficient as the ones in NPC Stations throughout EVE, they are capped at 75% efficiency for all but Ice products, all Ice Products refine at 100% efficiency in POS Refineries. Go figure as there are NO ice fields in W-Space… ever. The unwritten but commonly accepted reason being that CCP wants you to “want” to do your refining in a station badly enough for you to risk transporting your ore around, thereby increasing the chance for “Player Interaction” (PvP, ganking, etc.).

We dunt care… with Vic minin for us, we will have moar than enough ore to choke the Refineries we have… in detail a 25% loss for each batch is not “efficient”… who cares when you have moar ore than you can process? And we will finally start running batches of our own ammo, our own droanes and our own ships… that, I can’t wait for. So another chapter begins for HBHI as we finally get down to business and put our POS to work for us, not as just a home, but as a tool for generating income all on its own merit. 

And as for me… I get to fly CAP, Combat Air Patrol… PvP security of the mining ops (YEA!), and switch off as hauler ever now an then now that I am finally flying the Mammoth… but that’s another story…   =]

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

Out of the fire and into the Crusible…

Well, we are in the Crusible now, and for me, getting there got me boiling… though once in, I kinda liked it…  =]

OK, I am a PC Tech IRL, and my notebook, the one I use for EVE, is technically the best one I have… but a few months ago the HD failed SMART. Not a “gonna die in 5 mins” kinda fail, the far more bothersome “probably gonna fail sometime soonish” kinda fail… fukme. 

So I took a bunch of spare (and lower capacity) NB drives cleaned em up, moved backup data around and picked the 2 best… The 2 best as my wife’s notebook had also started giving HD errors. I had ONE, just one drive with NO SMART errors at all and it was the larger drive too… and as you might guess, that one went in ‘her’ system. The slightly smaller drive with minor SMART issues went in mine. No prob, both more than large enough for XP SP3 and the std apps for hers… std apps plus EVE and the gigs of associated pix, vids, apps that I have for mine.

OK, so I get both systems reloaded, apps & settings configed and all ‘seems’ to be working OK. Until a few weeks ago… the minor SMART errors on the drive in my sys are creeping into the failzone… not there yet, but closer than I like. And then came Crusible…

Initially Everything was going ok then the system simply stopped. No errors, no BSOD, mouse still responded but the screen is wallpaper… no input, mouse or keyboard has any effect. I give it 30 mins and hold the power button for the required 10 seconds… crap. 

To make a long, painful yet unpleasant story a bit shorter…

I first double clicked on the EVE icon to upgrade to Crucible at around 17:00 EVE… I ended up reinstalling the client, from scratch (THANK GOD I saved the Incarna install files!) then redownloading the Crusible update, rerunning the setup… it crapped AGAIN, but I was able to rekickoff the update without downloading again… and THIS time it completed… JEZUZ. 

When I FINALLY logged into our POS in the C2 wormhole we call home (no new pretty paintings in the sky for those who dwell in holes…  =[   ) it was 04:45 EVE… that’s 11 hours 45 mins to get Crucible up and running… sheesh. 

Was it worth it? Well…

Keep in mind we live in W-space and the biggest impact on us so far is the corp bookmarks (Oh HELL YEA!!!), POS fueling changes, we wait to see, and we are talkin about the POCOs… 

As ervybody is doing careful metareports, write ups, and comparisons of ALL of the new Crucible features I thought I do sumthin different.  Here are my PERSONAL thoughts on the changes I have ‘seen’ or experienced and their impact on me personally… in no particular order they are: 

Interface Text Changes/Scaling… Kudos. Period, ‘nuff said. 

Correctly Oriented Gates… Kudos!! Nice and far better for immersion and game “feel”, the ‘science geek’ and ‘SF buff’ in me are both pleased, TY VM. 

Ship Contrails… The contrails are effin NICE! One wonders why they went away in the 1^st place… you get so much moar a FEEL for your ships movement and flight with them… and they just look damn cool as shit!  ~and~  Some Ships got the Love…  The Hookbill was one of the ships that got a ‘make-over’… Grey Urban Digital Camo!!! SCHWEET!!!!

Urban Grey Digitoflage AND Contrails,   oooooo… ahhhhhh…   =]

“Loot All ™”… TY TY TY TY… As the corp Salvage Ops Director I thank you from the bottom of my skeevy licentious heart… but… can you now make the cans POP a wee bit faster after “Loot All ™” is used?? You see, now with the New and Improved “Loot All ™” there is this ungodly, several 10^th of a second, boring wait for the can to pop as looting is now SOOOOO easy…[we will NEVER be fully happy!!!] 

Newbulea... I am of 2 minds and 1 dissenting opinion about the New Nebula…

(1) [RP & Lore] “Where in hell did they come from!??? It’s just fukkin SCARY to wake up one morning and the “eternal” sky is DIFFERENT!!!”  “What in hell do these NEW stars portend???” and “OH fuk!! Now ALL the star charts will have to be COMPLETELY resurveyed AND every goddamn ship in New Eden is gonna need a Garminverse Update immediately!” 

(B) [OOC] Incredibly VERY visually stunning and beautiful AND they do seem to maintain a cogent placement as you move through the EVE cluster… nice and accurate, the ‘science geek’ and ‘SF buff’ in me are again both pleased..  Also… they also make it far harder to ‘see’ a cloaked ship in… This is/may be both good and bad.

Good, I dunt know if others can ‘see’ my cloaky the same as I do on screen, if not then NP. But if they can and they’re close enough, well you know?? So the newbulea will help hide cloakies even better…

Bad, they make it harder for ME to see my cloaky and determine where I am oriented to etc. so hmmmm… 

(2c) Nobulea… We in W-space woke up to the same ol same ol space… no love for us…  =[ 

Corp Bookmarks… One of the single best changes CCP could have given WH dwellers… BMs are our life out here. Ervyday we have to scan down the ‘daily holes, sigs & anoms’… My corp had been using a standardized Daily Hole Report email in which whoever did the days scanning, wrote up data on everything scanned down… And we have long had a corp hangar bay where we also store BM copies in order to ‘share’ the BMs, all of which is probably SOP in all WH corps… the Corp Bookmarks will simply remove ALL of the above work… scan em down, BM ‘em for corp and ta da, yer done. Though in our case we share the W-space we live in with another corp in our alliance… and we will still have to use the old methods to share with them… ah well. 

POCOs…  [Privately Operated Customs Offices]… so far I have no idea if this is good or bad… ALL I know is (1) my CEO got ganked and lost a stoopidly large amount of ISK value transportin POCO stuff to th hole… <sadface>  OH! he was ganked by the newest and baddest of the gankset… the Tornado!!, and (B) I have already started practicing my bombing runs on the local COs in our hole… Wayyy too much fun! LOL! 

New T3 Battlecruisers… are, as far as I am concerned, Battlecrusier Class Dessies…think about it. I have a Tornado over on Sisi and as intimated above, I feel the ‘Nado will become the baddest Alpha Gank boat EVE has seen yet… the ultimate GlassCannon (see: Thrasher)… A Sebo(?) & 1400mm howitzer fit ‘Nado 2 shotted my CEO’s Indie… Hello!

My 'Nado the "HDF =Bukfutter=" w/ 1200mm Arty locked and tracking...

Two of my corpmates have brought in a Naga and a Talos… the Naga nommed the Talos without breaking a sweat. Neither are ANY good at Sleepers (surprise surprise) and the Naga has been refit as a MINER (which it seems to do well at… just like most dessies, go figger)… I’ll will prolly get a ‘Nado or several… as POS Defense and/or Lowsec Gankers.

We dunt do Amarrrgh so no tactical/strategic opinion on that one… its gold colored, funny lookin and flown by God Cursed Slavers…. meh.

POS fuel “bloks”… we are still on standard fuels as are most and we will be researching and seeing what needs to be done to implement this… will update as we learn moar. 

So far that is really all the impact of note I have experienced. I do want to add though...  Damn Good Job CCP. PLEASE keep it UP!  (…that’s what she said!) 

One thought... If CCP wants to make a Vampire Avatar MMORPG I say Great! But do it AFTER you keep your dollar/euro/yen faucet in good working order! Then you could mebbe AFFORD to hire (back) staff just for that. 

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

Huh, Sleeper Boredom, now THAT was unexpected…

or, “How We Got Tired of Makin Loads of ISK”…

Our corp has a few goals we are working towards… and, as with all New Eden corps, the route to those goals is fueled by ISK. As a Wormhole Exploration and Restoration Corporation (say it out loud… its FUN!!) we primarily make ISK thru running Sleeper Sites, the sites that spawn in our homehole but especially sites in OTHER WHs, we call this raiding. 

The Honey Hole…

A few weeks ago Strigon pulled the days Scan Op and was probing down the days holes. He got the Stat C2, warped in per S.O.P. to do the initial survey… he reported that, (1) it seemed to be empty (uninhabited) and…. (b) OH DAMN!!! There were too many sites to count (chat logs follow screenshot)! He later gave a rough count at 60+… that’s OVER 60 Sleeper sites on Dscan and he counted 28 sites on probe scan… that’s approximately 90 TOTAL SITES!! It was The GREEN Cloud…  (FYI, in the screenshot below I count 68 sites…)  =]

Oh    My    God…

Chat Log - 90 Site Raid Hole Discovery:  Strigon warps through the D382 Stat C2:

[21:29:22 ] Strigon Leader > Jxxxxxx Solar System

[21:29:45 ] Strigon Leader > I have a Gallente control tower on dscan

[21:29:50 ] Strigon Leader > no force field?

[21:29:53 ] Strigon Leader > hmmmm

[21:30:08 ] TurAmarth ElRandir > EVEEYE report; C2 with a Hisec....

[21:30:21 ] TurAmarth ElRandir > no FF????  Yummmy.....  =]

[21:30:32 ] TurAmarth ElRandir > make sure yer OV is set right....

[21:30:38 ] Strigon Leader > may be out of range of it

[21:30:42 ] Strigon Leader > no ships on scan so far

[21:30:46 ] Strigon Leader > but it’s a big system

[21:30:54 ] Strigon Leader > warping to the other side to check

[21:32:00 ] TurAmarth ElRandir > stat Hisec and a Stat C3, 10 AU, 7 P, 9 Ms....

[21:32:14 ] Strigon Leader > no hostiles

[21:32:27 ] TurAmarth ElRandir > really? tower but no FFs?

[21:32:30 ] Strigon Leader > no mods either besides two mobile medium warp disruptors

[21:32:41 ] Strigon Leader > it must be offline

[21:32:43 ] TurAmarth ElRandir > Hmmm.... It’s a TRAP!  =]

[21:32:50 ] Strigon Leader > beginning a scan for a high sec

[21:34:03 ] TurAmarth ElRandir > JEZUZ.... NO NPC kills in as far as I can see.... do a dscan....

[21:34:42 ] Strigon Leader > holy fuck

[21:35:01 ] TurAmarth ElRandir > yuppers!!!  the MUTHALOAD!!!!  how many sites???

[21:35:21 ] Strigon Leader > too many to f*in count man

[21:35:26 ] Strigon Leader > we are gonna be RICH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sleeper Loot & Salvage 101:

For them as what dunt know, Ima go into a little detail here, so class, come to order… 

The Class 2 Sleeper “Cosmic Anomaly” (combat) sites ISK value is highly variable. But… if you get just 1 MNR (Melted Nanoribbon) dropped, it can be worth, currently, a low of ISK 6M to over 7M (at the time of writing the Jita Quick Buy price is: ISK 6,572,230.00 x1 MNR), and if you hit a fantastic drop rate, let’s say… 5 MNRs dropped in 1 site, plus a good load of the other loot & salvage, a single site “can” be worth upwards of ISK 35M. Yup, ISK 35,000,000.00 for one site… that high is rare, but I’ve seen it. 

So, let us do some math… let’s say you run, ohhh… 15 C2 combat sites, which is only a few hours work for a small 2 or 3 BS fleet with Scan Frig & Noctis support. 15 sites with an average of 0 to 3 MNR’s recovered per site so let’s say you end up with 17 MNRs. With that and the other L&S yer lookin at an approx average of 130 Million ISK…  that’s ISK 130,000,000.00 (here I am being conservative, keep reading and you’ll find out why).   =] 

DISCLAIMER:  The above is a SWAG (Scientific Wild Assed Guess) based on my personal experience and also keep in mind… 

(1) L&S drop rates from Sleeper sites is highly variable and
(2) the drop rate is strongly affected by the WH Class 
And salvage rates… 

(3) are affected by the ship, mods, rigs and 

(4) the skills and implants of the salvager, as follows... 

The amount of MNRs and other L&S recovered is also affected by the guy runnin the salvage ship, what ship he salvages with, and the mods, rigs and skills applied. I have maxed out skills, advanced mechanic skill Salvaging at L5. I use the ORE dedicated Salvager, the Noctis fully rigged with 3x Medium Salvage Tackle Is and, as I am an L5 salvager, I can fit and run 4x Salvager IIs, to speed things up I also run 4x Small Tractor Beams. All of this is done to increase the chance to pull salvage or to reduce the time to complete salvaging. Because with Sleepers, the ONLY way you can make ISK is from the Loot & Salvage, but MAN it can be REALLY GOOD ISK!!!! 

With my skills, ship & fit I have an ‘on-paper’ 120% chance to pull good salvage. The only thing I am not doing is rigging Medium Salvage Tackle IIs, an additional 15% increase in chance of salvage recovery (5% over the T1 rigs but cost prohibitive), and using the Hardwiring Implants (slot 9 & 10), 'Prospector' PPY-1, a 5% increase in chance of salvage recovery and, ‘Prospector’ PPZ-1, a 5% reduction in cycle time of salvagers…  both of which I am considering getting. If I upgrade to the T2 rigs and both ‘plants, I will have an ‘on-paper’ chance of recovery of the game max of 130%. So far I have been very happy with my recovery rates and I can tell a definite difference from the days when I was skillin up to L5. 

There’s the bell, class concluded…. you will be severely tested if you ever get into Salvaging in W-space. 

Back to our story…

So Strigon is sittin inna C2 hole with sumthin over 90 Sleeper Sites… between 60 and 70 combat sites and 28 cosmic signatures. The sigs are the Ladar, Gravimetric, Magnetometric & Radar sites that have minable resources with a minimal Sleeper defense presence that usually spawns after you start mining operations. And he scanned for ‘life’ and found one offline POS… LOL.  It was an EMPTY hole!!! This is the dreamed of strike… a hole with no residents to worry about and a (low) estimate of 2 BILLION in ISK just waiting to be harvested…  Oh Frabjous Day!! 

One of the other things we do is after we ‘reclaim’ a W-space (IE clean up all the Sleeper sites) is, if the Planetary Interaction, from which one makes the majority of the POS fuels from, and Static holes are decent, we offer the hole for sale on the market. This one was a ‘decent’ hole sale wise, not ‘great’ but good, WHs sell on the market from ISK 100M to ISK 500M on average, we hoped to put this one up for around ISK 400M. Decent PI and a Stat Hi and a Stat C3… 

Hmmmm (grin), a C3… I feel we need to up our game and start takin on C3 WHs as they are harder, (IE moar challenging and fun to run) AND substantially moar lucrative too, but to do so we need to have regular access to them. So I am pushin for my corp to find a hole with a Stat C3, or just move to a C3… so on the ‘Pro’ side this one did catch my eye. On the ‘con’ side of the sheet, it has a Stat Hi-sec hole… 

Hmm (frown), Stat Hi-sec… We really prefer a hole with a Stat low as you dunt get nearly as many ‘visitors’ as you do with a Stat Hi. Experience has shown that there are simply a LOT moar people scanning for holes in Hi-sec than in low is all. 

Anyhoo, we were, of course, VERY ready to get busy with the Reclamation Op and start separatin the Sleepers from their very lucrative L&S… I was in hisec and Strigon gave me our Stat low, we fleet up and I was OMW. I pop in, reship to my Mael and we jump in. Strigon had setup a Warp Bubble on the Raid hole’s  Stat Hisec as a precaution then he started on the sites and had 3 done when I joined him and we knocked down 2 moar. As it was a raid hole, after 5 sites I usually reship to my Noctis and start salvaging behind the fleet.

“Tengu on SCAN!!!”...

There is always a risk of either the residents (not in this case) or outside raiders (always) poppin in on you and takin advantage of the fact that your ships are PvE fit AND that you probably have Sleeper L&S in your hold, ESPECIALLY if there is a Noctis in the sky… the Noctis is ALWAYS ‘Primary”… I am always nervous when salvaging Sleepers in my Noc, especially when in a strange hole… 

And tonight was no exception…  After Tsra fleeted up and joined us, they were workin the sites and I was salvaging when over the Neocom we hear, “Tengu on scan!!!” I order “Man Battle Stations!” and the Emergency Klaxons scream throughout the ship… I turn and burn for our homehole, pop through, warp back to the POS safe and reshipped to my ‘Cane. Strigon was in his Rokh and I can’t ‘member what Tsra was in… 

The Tengu was campin out near the Hisec hole and hopin for some pew pew… we tried to oblige. Tsra went in, and once engaged called us in and we all started to dance… The Tengu turned his loving attentions on me and I eventually began to bleed deep armor… we weren’t breakin his tank but he was breakin mine, so I warped through the hole… and right into Amarrgh space!! 

This was BEFORE I had fixed my Amarr standings so I was still tagged as “shoot-on-sight” to the Amarrgh Imperious Navy and all gate and stations guns… oh joy! Talk about bein caught ‘tween a rock and a hard place… I was caught ‘tween a Tengu and the Amarr Navy!!  LOL 

I warped to the closest station, was warned at the door as they tractored me in… Seems ISK talks though, they still did all the repairs I ordered, and paid for, and a first class job of it too. I undock, the station screams it’s dire warning again as the guns try to lock me. I warp back to the hole with the Amarrgh Navy in hot pursuit and call out on TS, “Do I jump in??” 

I land and the Amarr Navy lands a few seconds later while I am waiting for a response… I ‘jump jump’ as they start in on my shields (sliver of red) and Tsra advises me to get back to our hole as we are not gonna kill him and he is not killin us…  Strigon is tankin him in his Rokh he’s not breakin the Tengu’s tank either… finally the Teng pilot pops back through the hisec hole and eventually leaves.   =] 

Salvaging Magic...
We give it a bit and then go back to waffle stompin the ISK outta the Sleepers. A bit later on Sov and a few others joined in and we ended up running 15 sites total that 1^st night… I did all the salvaging and I was very, VERY pleased with the results. 

In order to keep inventory and shares accurate, I store all L&S from each fleet in a Huge Secure Can and name it with the fleet member’s names. If the fleet changes members, I start a new can and so on. So you see below a screeshot with the 2 cans from the 1^st night’s raid. The 1^st is 10 sites: me, Strigon and Tsra, the 2^nd is 5 sites: after Sov and others joined us. 

Now one thing I am when salvaging, is superstitious. I have several rules I try not to break… 
(1) NEVER look into the hold until you are done. (“Done” being of a personally variable definition… sumtimes ‘done’ means done with a whole run of sites and sumtimes it means done with THAT site…) 

(2) ALWAYS run 2 or moar salvagers on the BS wrecks… why? I dunno…   =P 

Now even with that all I can say is that the drop rates I got in this raid were, to me, simply amazing. 
I ran through the 1^st 5 sites and got 4 MNRs… meh. Not what you want, but around what you expect. Then I ran 2 sites and checked the hold… DAMN!!! 15 MNRs for just 2 sites… I’ve never had a drop rate that high before. I picked up 5 moar in the last 3 sites, about what you hope for. So for 10 sites we got 24 MNRs… shiney.  =]   Then Sov and some frens joined us and we ran 5 moar sites… this time I dint check the hold till I was OMW back to the POS, 15 MNRs for 5 sites… YEA!!! That’s an even better drop rate than the 1^st 10 sites, wayyy above expectations.

For those of you not familiar with WHs or Sleepers, in the screencap above of the L&S from what I pulled that 1^st nights raid, I highlighted in yellow the top 4 ISK makers in Sleeper L&S… the value breakdown of the top 4 only is as follows:

Can #1 (Jita prices at time of writing):

ACD -     ea 1,250,009.99                 x4 =        5,000,039.96

MNR -   ea 6,573,230.00                 x24 =     157,757,520.00

NNA -    ea 35,002.00                       x210 =   7,350,420.00

SDL -      ea 486,001.19                     x259  =  125,874,308.21

                                                                        ISK 295,982,288.17

Can #2:

ACD -     ea 1,250,009.99                 x 8 =       10,000,079.92

MNR -   ea 6,573,230.00                 x 15 =    98,598,450.00

NNA -    ea 35,002.00                       x 124 =  4,340,248.00

SDL -      ea 486,001.19                     x 160 =  77,760,190.40

                                                                        ISK 190,698,968.32

Sooo… the gross take, for 15 sites, of just the 4 highest value salvage, was:  ISK 486,681,256.49

Not too shabby for one evenings work huh?  =] 

After Strigon and I logged, Sov, Tsra & Co. kept at it and logged off in the Raid Hole. The next day the Raid Hole had, of course, closed in our C2, and while Sov & Tsra did have a scan frig and scanned down the new Hisec, Strigon and I dint make it back in as we got caught up in other stuff. He and I did run a few sites that had popped in the homehole, so not an unproductive day… 

Sov & Tsra continued to run sites and they also sold the hole (ISK 400M and Strigon got the finder’s fee) to a corp we are Blue with, good good. It was funny though, I heard later that one of em, Tsra or Sov, got simply “tired” of bashin Sleepers… TIRED of making some of the best ISK to be made in EVE…  LOL

Wrecks eye view of my Salvage Thrasher

The day after that though, our little corp did make it back into the Raid Hole… Strigon and I left our C2 and Sov & Tsra gave us the Raid Hole system, brought us in and then left to head back to the home C2. I dint wanna risk a Noctis with no connecting WH to ours so picked up a Salvage Thrasher I had in storage out in Autaris from back when I was in RvB and I refitted her to be a Cloaky Salvage Thrasher and brought her to the Raid hole. I also brought in my Mael and a Cheetah so I had a DPS ship and we had a scan frig inside. Strigon was in his Rokh and AI was in his Hyperion. 

The new owners were settin up their POS, and we hung out there while we were gettin ready. Once all systems had been checked and dubble checked, we ran all the sites we could until we were wore out… and tired of killin Sleepers…  now where have I heard that afore?  LOL 

The next day we basically call it quits, we and our sister corp have nommed something like 40 to 50 Sleeper sites, there are STILL almost 30 left considering that sites were still spawning while we were workin on em, and of course, we needed to leave “some” for the new owners…  =]  So we pack it in and head for our homehole… tired, beat but quite a bit the richer… to put it mildly. I would give figures on how much in total was taken from this hole, but I dunt have, nor will I ask for, the totals for our sister corp and my corps finances are, well, none yo business…   =] 

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

Ch, ch, ch, Changes…

 or, “The Thing We’re Doing That We’ve Decided We Can’t Do.”

and, “What Else Is Tur Up To?”

Part the First:

“Nullsec here we co…”  “Wha? We’re not going?” “…Oh crap.”  It’s a mess..

 Our old Alliance, DemSal, imploded with massive loss of ISK (on its part) and respect (on my part).  OK, shit happens, it’s EVE, let’s move on… and most did, some to other Alliances some to other corps. A few stayed together and formed a new Alliance out of the ashes of the old and HBHI has joined this new Alliance. And we are goin thru some changes man… but, not really.

Now, as we live in a wormhole we are not as connected to Empire space (hi, lo & null sec) goings on as the majority of EVE denizens.

Case in point:

I knew nothing of the “MT Riots” in Jita, Amarr and other locations until I flew to Jita on a store run one fine EVEning… imagine my surprise when I discovered a real for-god riot under way that had Empire space stirred up like a grenade dropped inna fish bowl. Until I jumped the Perimeter gate I, and my corp, had no idea there was ANYTHING unusual going on.

‘nother Case in point:

One of our guys popped outta the hole a few days ago, docked up and exclaimed “Heyyy! They brought back ship spinning!” We collectively groaned and have gotten some real good LOLs outta that one as ervybody knows ship spinnin came back weeks ago.

But these, and many other instances highlight (1) how little the dramas of Empire space affects those of as really ‘live’ in holes and (2) how little my corp keeps up with events in Empire in the B-logs, D-logs and newsfeeds on the Neocom…. Sad, sad, sad.

At this point I must to digress briefly and make a side note... We who live in POSes never lost ship spinnin. In a POS, you are either logged off or you are in a ship inside the forcefield, or OYW sumwhar else... From the release of Incarna right through all the insanity and hoopla that followed, right up to today, when POS dwellers are on but just hangin out, we could and can still be found happily spinnin our ships in the POS... and with a far, FAR better view than any old CQ or stoopid 'door', lemme tell you!

 

We now return to our regularly scheduled post…

So, we are back in an Alliance. This one is a bit moar reserved but also bit moar… ‘involved’ is how I guess I would put it. All in all it comes across as a moar mature and stable Alliance on the whole. One of the exciting things going on… the negotiations for a move to null…   (yipes!)

Yup, I said it…. The dreaded NULLSEC. You see, I may live in a wormhole, which by definition IS nullsec as its security rating is -1.0, yet  I myself have never done any business or work below 0.2… oh, I did once run through a 0.1 system, but I dint stop off and have a beer, so I dunt count that (anyway I had my eyes closed the whole time…). So you see, I can honestly state that I have never been in null even though I live there. LOL   A conundrum I have always greatly enjoyed…  =]

While I do live in the aforesaid -1.0 W-space, I am moar skittish of going to or being IN null than WHs for the main reason that (1) in WHs you have 'no-local', and (b) W-space is off-the-beaten-path, not-on-the-map. Not a part of Empire. No public use gates, no “Spike in local!”, no jump bridges, no NPC stations, IE: SECLUDED = NO PEOPLE. Just a few of us, and the occasional target or three. Nice, quiet, private.

I HATE Jita… that many people I dunt know, all flyin heavily armed ships, all in one place… just makes my skin crawl.

Anyhoo…. The people heading up the Alliance are a group who’s last corp was a null sec corp which had come up to Empire to take an R&R break. They broke up after DemSal imploded and a core of them plus a few from other corps that were in DemSal formed a new corp and they established the new Alliance. And our new Alliance is now in negotiations to rent us a place in null. It’s still early in the negotiations so no details yet. There have been a few bumps in the road as is normal in these situations, hence the first subtitle of this post…   =]

If they ever do get ervybody happy with the details then my corp will, for the first time, have an opportunity to ‘safely’ venture into nullsec. Safely you say huh? Well we’ll not be “neutral”, which as I understand in it is null equivalent to being Flashy RED to EFFIN ERVYBODY. We’ll be Blue to the Alliance overlords and the other tenants etc. As I understand it that means we will be as safe there as, if not actually safer than, in Hisec… this is what I have heard from some. If the negotiations pan out then we shall see what we shall see.


Part the Second:

“What Else Is Tur Up To?”

As for me personally, while all the above is playing out I have been working on getting into Incursioning.

You see a number of months back a few frens and I were sittin outside Dodi station watchin the Fools Parade and shooting the shit as there was nothing else worth shootin ATM… and the convo swayed into the Dream Ships Category of Standard EVE Chat Subjects. I opined as I dint really have any dream ships, I was still just workin my way up the std power ladder at the time and had recently gotten into a Phoon and was happy with that… then a Macharial undocked and passed by us… “Now, if I had a dream ship that would be it.” Said I, “But no… Look at it, it is an Amarrian ship and you know me, I dunt fly Amarrgh.”

The not flyin Amarrgh thing is partially a small bit of RP I do, as a Minmatar (a race the God cursed Amarr have enslaved for generations) I dunt fly Amarr on principle… and partially as a Minnie, I feel we have the best ships overall in EVE anyway so uther than the Drake (for WHs), the Noctis (ORE salvager) and a few uther frigs I am concentrating my skills on Minmatar ships exclusively…

Anyhoo, one of the guys pointed out it was not an Amarrian design, but an Angel Cartel creation based on a Jovian design and built with Minmatar and Gallente tech… “Huh!?!” “Really?...” I looked it up and said how “Well then, it seems I do have a dream ship, go figger…” One of my frens, not a corpmate (at the time) or Ally who is (was then) a bit of a Hisec richbich… bought me one. Right then and there. As a gift…  uh  wha?.

I was floored as you might imagine. ISK 800+M hull… as an impulse buy gift. Nice to have frens.  Anyhoo… I couldn’t fly it at the time, so it sat in the dock for a while, and when I did skill up to fly it, I T2 fitted it for PvE and flew it to the hole. Where it has gone out on exactly one run in a sleeper site, which proved I could not fit a Mach as well as I thought I could… so it went back into the POS where it has sat.

It has come out only once since and that was to commemorate and swap DPS with our Carrier, a Nidhoggur, the day it was commissioned and sea trialed. Other than that, she’s been an ornament and a m3 hog in the Ship Maint Array. If yer wonderin why… I dint wanna lose it to a gankin or stoopidity, It was a GIFT from a fren fer crists sake…

So, our shiney new Alliance gets involved in running Incursions… the Mach is a defacto staple ‘cursion boat….and I have a Mach I am letting go to waste…   Hmmm.  I spend my usual excessive amount of time reading up on ervything I can find on Machs, Incursions and how the two go together like Quafe and Ruum. I finally go to my Alliance FCs and request their advice on fits and shit…. I get some MOAR links to moar very good info on the above topic… mmmK.

I refit my Mach specifically for Incursions (for now, T2 w/ best ‘named’ 800mm guns and one Meta 4 named mod I dunt have T2 skills for) and get aholt of one of our FCs…. Post my fit feelin I confident I am in the money and…. I get pretty much fatally trolled. I have 7x800mm Autocannons and I had 2x Ballistic Control Systems in my lows… “BCSs are for MISSILES you NOOB!!!” was about the nicest thing I hard for a while there…  Anyhoo… swapped out the BCSs for the Gryostabilizer IIs I was supposed to have and the trolling slacked off… dint stop, just got less aggressive. And I got the sign off on my boat & fit from 3 of our FCs… I was in.

Now all I had to do was (1) get the Mach out of the hole and actually buy and fit the rigs/mods as spec’ed…  and yea the fit I sent em was a PYFA fit transmitted to SARA (the Semi-Autonomous Rational Array that is the Master Admin Program over all of my computing needs both in POS and onboard all my ships) and sent to chat from there…  (b) find a way to pull the free time on one of the set ‘cursioning dates the Alliance has on the calendar… and lemme tell you, the first was far easier than the second.

Oh and one I fergot… (1A) fix my Standings re the Amarrgh Empire so I can actually GO ‘acursioning… HUH? Yes, you see a very high percentage of Hisec ‘cursions happen to break out in Amarrgh space…  and I was at a -6.29 standing. You see, at -5.0 as it says here, "NPC factions will begin shooting you on sight in their space. (-5.0 Modified Personal Standing)". I couldn’t fly in Amarr space. Well, I could, but I’d get shot at… a lot… by ALL of the gate and station guns AND the Imperial Amarr Navy would chase my ass around to boot… remember the Whoredur loss of many mil of ISK? Yea, that crap… crap.

So the OTHER thing I have been doin is fixing my standing re Amarrgh… and that dunt make Tur a happy boy, at all. You see, that means Ima hafta run mishins FOR the god cursed Amarr!!  Crap. I hate mishin runnin in general and running them FOR the Amarrgh Empire… well, as a Minmatar that is as distasteful to me as… as… as… well, mining.   lol

So began my desperate search to find out how to raise my standings to the Amarrgh without selling out on my principles… and without boring me to the point of seppuku. One of the things I found was the Social skill, “Diplomacy”. Now back when I was still runnin mishins for a livin, we all trained up all the Social skills cause they affect the agent you can access and the mish payout amounts… I assumed I had skilled up all of them including Diplomacy. Ahhhh… wrong Batman, I dint. So I find out that the Diplomacy skill directly affects your Faction Standings and I hadn’t learned it as it does not ‘directly’ affect mishin agent accessability or reward, bounty, bonus & LP amounts unless your standings are for shit, which my weren’t at the time.

Cool, I bought the book, stopped all training on the Loki (my new dream boat) and kicked off Diplomacy to L5. Ah HA!! Quickly skilled up to L3 and BAM! Im ‘in like Flint’ (google it) Amarrgh standings up to -4.99, WOOHOO!!! I can fly in Amarrgh space and not get all killed by the stooped NPCs!!  Yea!  LOL  So to bump em up a bit moar to be on the safe side, I decide to run some of the Data Center mishes which give a direct Faction Standings bump.

They’re L1 mishes and on the whole wayyy too easy as I went out to run em in my L4 Mish fit Phoon and I actually hadda really good time cause I was epically waffle stompin ERVYTHING in sight!!  LOL  Warp in to 7 frigs w/ rookie pilots @ 50km, no agro, send in the drones, 2 Hvy Webbers and 3 Warrior 2s… they tackle the frigs and, of course, do enough damage to kill em, but I like to wait for their transversal to drop under 50km/s and one shot em with the 1200’s for the lulz…    =]

Anyhoo… I work just one of the Data Centers mish inna mish and up my Amarrgh Standings to -3.44… yea me! So I can now safely go ‘acursioning in Amarrgh.  The Imperial Amarrgh Navy will allow me to pass unmolested, I have a Machurson boat & fit which have been given the stamp of approval by my Alliance FCs… now all I need is a few wifeaggro free hours one afternoon or evening…   uh huh…

Well…. With a pre-req like that, and wifeaggro like I get... looks like I will never go ‘acursioning.  =\

PS
For them as might be curious, when I finished skilling Diplomacy to L5 and with several Data Center mishes under my belt my Amarrgh standings raised to a comfortable -2.49. Gotta watch that from now on…   =]

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