Home is Where My Hole is…

or~  Blog Banter 39: Home

"Some say a man's home is his castle. For others it is wherever they lay their hat. The concept is just as nebulous in the New Eden sandbox.

“In EVE Online, what does the concept of "home" mean to you?"

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Mal said it best…

“Love. You can learn all the math in the 'Verse, but you take a boat in the air that you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turning of the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens. Makes her a home.”

When I first came to EVE I came to the game mostly as an EVEborn but in thinking back on it, and after reading Space Noob’s experiences, I realize I did have a little bit of the goonborn thing working for me in that I already had people I knew I could trust here. My son and a good friend had been ingame a year and on my first day they, (1) staked me 10M ISK and (b) told me to go away and “DO ALL THE TUTORIALS”… so I did. It was good advice and I avoided some of the pitfalls Space Noob ran into by skipping them a bit and then finding out that I really did need to do them first. But, that was as far as they went in assisting me.

After my wallet flashed and I was told to bugger off… I was left on my own. They and I realized I was better off exploring and learning for myself. You can tell a child over and over “The stove is HOT!”, but they never really learn it until they get burned that first time…

So, there I was in Republic Military School at Hadaugago, in Heimatar. I ran the tutorials and finally was pointed to Sister Alitura’s L1 “Epic Arc” at Arnon in Essence. After completing the Arc I… well... I was in that weird ‘OK, I’m done with school, now what?’ stage. I wasn’t really interested in and I didn’t feel I was ready to join a corp… But what can you do solo in EVE as a fresh-outta-skool-noob? Hmmm… what can one do in EVE?

Running the tutorials I had found that I wasn’t at ALL interested in industry or freighter work, I knew I liked shooting shit but I did not have access to missions above L2s and I didn’t wanna trust just any ol’ toon in a fleet to join in higher level mishes (I’d seen Socratic and his ilk gank enough noobs to have learned that lesson without having to go thru it personally…) (and if ya wanna good laugh read “The Socratic Files” by Zedric Cayne) so I knew I wasn’t ready for PvP… (I didn’t know about RvB then) So, I chose to solo rat the belts in 0.5 systems in and around Arnon. As a noob it made me some steady even if not a ‘lot’ of ISK. But it was a helluvalotta fun, I got to travel around a lot and see things and have adventures… and it filled the time while I skilled up through the classes of ships to Battlecruiser.

It was around then that my RL guys and I decided to create HBHI. Schweet! Then we decided on a HQ system based on agent availability and… it wasn’t Arnon… huh. I suddenly realized I did not want to leave Arnon. It had, at some point without me even realizing it, become my home.

Home. My home in space. I have spoke of this afore but at the end of a day’s ratting I would often undock and position my ship right at the top edge of the undock at the SOE station in Arnon and just sit… dangling my legs, sipping a drink and watch the parade of fools and noobs and gankers and griefers and mission runners and the whole panalopy of EVE unfold… I called it ‘sittin on the porch’, and it was just like sittin on the porch of any summer EVEning and watching the goings on of your neighbors and passersby…

I realized even then, that this was a special time for me. While I was getting to where I had some skills and had learned some of the pitfalls and such, it was all still ‘new’ to me, and it all still held that sense of wonder and awe one has at the beginning of a great adventure.

But, change is the one universal constant in the ‘verse, Real or Virtual, and so we moved to Soshin in The Forge. Where we had a few others join our little band, where we joined our first Alliance and had our first War.

Then came the BIG THING for HBHI. We discovered Wormholes. The Alliance had a POS in a C1 and access to a POS in a C2 via a member corp and once we were all trained up we had ALL decided Wormhole Space was the Place we needa be!! So we loaded up the Mammoths and we moved to Dodixie… (well… “…we moved to the C2” just doesn’t have the Beverly Hillbilly’s ‘ring’ to it now does it?) and we did sorta base outta Dodi when we were in Empire anyway.

But… when the Forcefield first went up on our very own Planetary Orbital Station, HBHI had its very first, bought and paid for, HOME. This was a very ‘real’ (in the virtual sense) home of our own to us. We Paid for it. We OWN it. We make or buy the fuels to keep it running. It is OURS.

The first wormhole we lived in belonged to an Allied corp, we were not ‘renters’ we were welcome guest and friends but it was not ‘our’ hole, not our Etherestate. This was never a negative and we were very comfortable and happy in the C2.

Once I wanted to jump corp and try my hand at being a pirate and a War Dec’er… and I found that no matter where I was in New Eden no matter how attached I was to a certain sky, HBHI was in fact also my home. HBHI is my family in EVE… I even blogged about my feelings at the time when I first jumped corp here.

Then we tried null… personally yuch, nough said.

Now we are setup in a C3 wormhole that ‘we’, HBHI, own and we are back living in “Serenity Station”, our POS. This is our home in our homehole.

“Home”. It is that place where your family and friends are. It is where you are accepted for who you are, warts and bad temper and all. It is the place you can keep your stuff and feel safe (by this I mean as long as ‘we’ keep the FF up and we keep our security tight, anything we have inside the POS FF is almost as safe as in an NPC station…). But best of all it is ours. And it is up to us to keep it safe… same as in RL. This is what “home” means to me… in RL as well as in EVE.

Often when I am on alone the day is done I will just sit and gaze at our home in the stars… as The Operative (sorta) put it…

“Have you looked at… …his face? It's love, in point of fact. Something a good deal more dangerous.”

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

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Planetary ISKflammation, Got a Salve for That?…

or~  I Just Can’t Get That Magnum PI…

Now that we have a by-the-gods, dyed-in-the-wool “EXPERT” Industrialist in HBHI maybe we can get some real ISK outta this hole… And may I add here that I have the greatest respect for, and I cast no aspersions upon my fellow corpmate who has built CAPITOL ships in W-space, amongst many other things… But HBHI has never been a corp whose ‘primary’ focus was Industry. We do have all the basics covered as far as production for ‘needed’ resources, IE Labs, Refining Arrays, Ammo, Drones, Components & all sizes of Ship Docks, etc. Two of our members are well skilled in the required skills for same. So we can ‘do’ most any production project we turn our mind to… but as any who have read this blog at all know, we just aren’t Miners and Industry guys at the core.

We prefer to make our ISK w/ Sleeper L&S. We do make all of our own POS fuels w/ PI products and by hauling in just those ice prods you can’t make in W-space. But we don’t really do any ‘real’ production for sale on the markets in Empire the way Zandramus, Scientist, and Mabrick do. Having Mab join us is a twofold project. He gets to experience life in a wormhole and the possibilities, threats, losses and profits inherent therein… and we get to benefit from his four years of serious Industrial experience and skills.

Take PI for instance… strangely enough I loved all the complexity inherent in fueling a POS the old way… making the various PI products… finding sources for the ice prods… getting them into the hole... stockpiling… the inevitable spreadsheets that went with balancing the different prods in the fuel bay for the load on CPU & Grid… to me, this was wonderfully fun complexity, not boring busywork as it was for many others. Now I never got very deep into PI in the C2, as our sister corp and HBHI Indy guy pretty much took care of that aspect. I worked on keeping things balanced and running inside the POS and kept the defenses up and ready.

Now with the fuel blocks you still have to make many of the original prods from PI and bring in ice prods in order to do your production runs for fuel blocks, but… I don’t know why, but it changed it for me and took out some of the fun. The old way I understood why you had to make or ship in ‘robotics’ and ‘consumer electronics’ on a regular basis because in RL, machinery wears out, shit gets broken and needs to be replaced. There are many ‘consumables’ that factories and buildings require and people use up, the complex needs of a POS made sense to me… but “Big Blue Bloks”? It made the POS not a ‘place’ where people lived and worked, but just this ’thing’ in space that needed gas…  (and I don't know about anyone else but to me... they look like jello shooters...) so meh.

So after the change I for the most part ignored PI until we moved into the C3. Ok I figured I would at least setup several planets making needed fuel comps… only to find I just don’t get it and I was getting very frustrated… especially when I glanced at the wallet one day and found out I was chewing my way through millions as I setup a production line, discovered something new, saw a better way, worked out shorter links, etc., etc., so I was decommissioning and rebuilding extractors, storage facs, spaceports and factories left and right… and I have NO IDEA if/when I might ever recoup those losses… and I don’t even wanna start a PI spreadsheet for fear of what it will show…

I use “EVE Planets” and “EVE PI Planner”, I just wish someone would mash the two together and make a graphic planner so you could import a planetary scan and play around with building placements, links and routes and CPU/Grid requirements BEFORE you (ok “I”) waste a billion ISK effing around with it…  sheesh.

Anyhoo.. I guess part of it is I also have for shit skills… all my PI skills are at L3, so I know I need to up them… one day. I would love a nice steady reliable income stream from PI. I know it can be done, I have talked to Mab and I see the potential… I just don’t know if I have the patience… strange huh, this from a guy who would happily spend hours and hours on the old fueling mechanic?    =]

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

Mining In W-Space, EVE’s ‘Deadliest Job’?

or~  A Profitable Way to Die…

I am working w/ Mab to get him up to speed on how HBHI does life in th’ hole. Every wormhole corp has, of course its own culture, style, goals, fits and such. The size and racial makeup of a corp also makes a bit of a difference too. My compadres are Gallente and Caldari, I am the only Matari in our corp ATM and so the majority of our guys are Armor tankers and almost all of my skills have focused on Shields… meh.

I have a Machariel in the hole and while it does quite well when armor tanked, this is unjustified as one of the Machs qualities is speed, and armor nerfs that severely. So I fitted out an Armor Typhoon for fleet ops. Of the Matari ships, the Phoon armor tanks like a stone plated bich and this is does not go against its bonuses as it is a fat slow lumbering BS anyhoo. This can be a liability but Strigon suggested I skill up to Cruise missiles for better range and so I did. The DPS is not as high as say, Heavies or Torps, but I can hit consistently way out past 100km. A Droan Link in the open hi-slot and I can project all DPS way out past my max lock range... I am now pleased that I finally have a good C3 Sleeper fit BS.

Mab has brought in an armor Domi for Sleepers and he is getting the SOPs of life in the hole, living by dscan probing out the daily holes, the ins and outs of life inna POS all down pat. I am well pleased with the progress of my Padawan Learner…  =]

He and I have been working on how to best mine in W-space. With the new upgrades to the mining barges we have decided on the Procurer as the staple mining barge for holes due to its BS class tank and when properly fit it has a very decent, IE short, align and warp out time. Fitting an Inert Stab II and a DCU II in the lows plus fully rigged w/ Med Low Friction Nozzle Joints reduces her align time to 6.25s. Then we use the webwarp trick.

The Webwarp Trick, for them as dunt know is, inna nutshell:

A Sebo, or Dual Sebo Web fit Escort (in Empire must be a corpmate, in W-space anyone and no need for Sebos) working with usually any large slow ship, Freighter, Industrial hauler, Hulk, etc. we’ll call it a BUFF (there are them as will know the reference). So, in Empire after breaking jump cloak (in W-space anytime) the Escort locks the BUFF. He then waits for the BUFF pilot to call out that he has initiated warp, the Escort immediately engages his web on the BUFF.

Now, because the BUFF is such a slow ship... and because he has just initiated a standard warp his systems are working on the basis of the ships std speed to reach ¾ to go to warp, as soon as it is webbed this reduces its top speed almost always to the point where it will then already be traveling at 90% of its ‘new’ top speed... thus warp is induced immediately… (IE insta-warp)

In our case we are doing this with two Procurers. We begin mining ops by creating BMs in working range of several good sites in the Anom... we then:

(1) Fleet Warp in to out chosen BM (engage all Shield Hardeners):

(2) Align to POS & cut speed to 0.0ms;

(3) Target Lock each other & whatever rock we will be working;

(4) Begin mining;

(5) Spam the crap outta Dscan;

OK, once we are setup and running IF we are attacked the hope is we will catch sight, either on dscan or visually on grid, of the attackers and initiate fleet warp and web each other instantaneously in the very very few 10^th of a second required to do a dual web warp. If, I say “IF” we do this just right we both warp off in less than one second.

We practiced this over and over in many variations. The window of opportunity, the time from initiation of warp to warp cutting off targeting is very very short, but… we were able to do it successfully once and even all the times we didn’t get both ships webbed one always did get webbed and basically warped off in less time than we could count… well under a second. So even if only one of us gets the benefit of the webwarp, better to lose only one ship than both, and with a 6.25 second align for the ship that misses the web trick assist, that would still take a fairly fast locking ship to get a scram on the second ship any way. The key is early warning… and in holes that is often extremely hard to get.

I did lose one Procurer in a mining op, but I was soloing and while I was at aligned and at speed, manually set to just over ¾ std speed, and doing the fly-by-mining method, a Helios uncloaked @ 2K from me and pretty much instantly had me scrammed. I feel pretty sure he was Sebo fit and he targeted by engaging his scram and then selecting my icon. This gives you the fastest lock-to-weapon-engagement time as he had me scrammed before I had a chance to react, and I feel I reacted in a fairly decent time… He popped a Hobgob II on me and started in on the new Procurers impressive tank… but as he had me scrammed, well… it was just a matter of time, and as we all know for some reason drones never run out of ammo…  =\

Plus he called in a ‘Cane and that was that… Mab was willing to come to my assist, all kudos to the man’s esprit de corps, but as he is not yet up to snuff on PvP I saw no real value in possibly losing two ships, especially as we can easily afford the Proc loss. I got my pod out and was not overly worried about it… we had made much more in Arkonor and Sleeper L&S over the last few ops in that Grav site than the cost of multiple Porcurers… I had it replaced in a few hours. Loss: (per Battleclinic) 25.6M, damage done: 20,830… not too shabby for the smallest mining barge in EVE.

Wonder if I should send this particular EVE “Deadliest Job” off to Mike Rowe?  =]

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

I’ve Never Been So Nervous, Just Watching TV…

or~  …

A Mining We Will Go, A Mining We Will Go…

Well, aside from some fun bringing in Mab’s ships, things have been sorta quiet in our hole. As I have stated before RL is overshadowing EVE ATM for our little corp, but a few fun items of note…

Woke one day to see a Caldari Frig wreck on scan… Hmmm. Did we have cloakies in th' hole still or was this just evidence of a bit of past ‘player interaction’? I was able to dscan the wreck down to a particular planet, and then range it to… hmm, well, right at the planet, interesting as most wrecks are in Sleeper Combat Sites, losses to the webbin, scrammin SleepyGuys… and as you cannot probe down wrecks, unless the site is still active, which is very rare, then you just wait until it pops and clears off your scans.

However I warped to 100km at the POCO of that planet and lo and behold the wreck was within 20km of the POCO, interesting… and a flash frozen corpcicle was floating just a few klicks away from the wreck… moar interesting… I had SARA do a deep scan and pull all the info she could, the wreck was named for a member of a corp, yet the wreck itself was ‘owned’ (had been killed) by the CEO of that self same corp… huh. Why did a CEO kill his own corpmate out here in our hole? Was this some weird form of bait?

Meh, I took the bait, warped in looted the wreck and scooped the corpse while my Salver II cut nothing of value from the bones of the frig, cloaked up and warped off w/o incident… I often wish I could be on 23/7 so I would know the genesis of some of the things we find lying around in our hole while we sleep.

Then last night I was on solo, did some housekeeping and ship maintenance in the POS, then scanned down the daily sigs. Most were still the same, the losec still had a few hours to go afore it popped but we had a new K162 to nullsec, meh… in our experience nullsecers dunt mess with holes all that much, now I am sure there are those who do, but we have statistically seen the largest number of visitors from hisec, a much lower number from losec and almost none at all from null… other W-space denizens are like the weather…  This was Sov null, Persona Non Gratis space and I considered bubbling it, but as Nullbears ‘usually’ either ignore holes or roll em, I decided to ignore it.

So, all was quiet so I decided to try an Oruze Construct solo. I have brought in my Armor Phoon and while I was very unhappy with my effective DPS range, she tanked as well as I had hoped… I still hate ALLOWING my shields to go down and depending on armor alone for defense, but both my other corpmates are armor tankers and soon Strigon will be in a Command Ship and givin out armor bonuses, and it simply does not make sense not to take full advantage of every % of boost you can get in here.

But, as I was solo, inna wormhole, I do things a bit differently than is done in Empire… I warped in initially in my Cheetah and made 2 Strategic BMs at 200 and 300km out from the site and over 200km from each other. This gives me the ability to break aggro and warp out and still remain on grid. Then I went back and jumped in my Zephyr, warped in to the site and proceeded to make a few Tactical BMs on hot-drop locations very close to the Sleepers when…     I see ‘local’ flashing…  uh, wha?

This is what I saw in ‘local’:

EVE System > Subspace communication beacon unreachable. Channel list unavailable.

Maloxkov Malukkar > CHUPAME LA PIJA COLORADOOO

Linkert Attor > HIJO DE PUTA

LoTeX Attor > DONT STOP THE PARY

LoTeX Attor > DONT DONT DONT DONT DONT DONT DONT DONT, DONT STOP THE PARY!!!

LoTeX Attor > I DONT GIVE A FUCK WHAT U THINK

LoTeX Attor > GO GO GO GO GO

LoTeX Attor > I WILL DESTROY UR FUCKING POS IN THIS FACKING WORMHOLE!! YEAH!!

Uh… really? I mean really??  FUKKIN BRING IT ON!!!!! (and no, I did not reply in local… you dunt talk in holes) and hey, I might even finally get to use the POS guns!!    =]

Now dunt get me wrong, I was immediately amped up… I mean I dunt wanna lose our home, but if they actually decided to really bring it, I would fight back with every erg of GRID, every cycle of CPU and every round of ammo I have at my command! And I have a HELLUVA LOTTA AMMO!!!!   =]  Unnerstand I knew it could very easily be, and prolly was, just a troll…  but, better to waste some time in preparation than be caught with yer panties down I say.

So I warped back to the POS, reshipped to a Cheetah, took control of four guns, two Autocannon and two Artillery batteries, checked load outs to make sure I was putting out omni-damage, reset my HUD/OV for hostiles…then I got on the NEOCOM and put out the alert to my corpmates thru multiple channels… and I waited…. and waited… and waited…  =]

Finally Strigon logged on, we discussed the situation for a bit then he headed out to Hisec for a ship he had been waiting on. My CEO called in and we talked over the situation. By this time I was pretty sure it was just a troll and AI felt the same so he dint logon. Then Mab logged and I brought him up to speed and he did some scanning then decided to go fix his implant missplant. I went back to SOC (Standard Operating Conditions) in the POS and we dint see anymoar of our trolling null frens.

I decided to warp by and ‘pop’ (spawn) all the sigs (ladars, radars, gravs and mags) to keep the number down, which makes us less attractive to raiders etc. As I was doing this I landed on a grav… mmmmm… ABCs… Arkonor, Bistot and Crokite, the three most valuable ores in EVE. These are available only in nullsec and negsec.

So I decide to pop out to Empire as I knew Mab was gonna wanna start ramping up mining and PI and suchlike and I was actually kinda interested in the new Mining Barges now that they can run a really worthwhile tank. I may not enjoy mining, but I do like doing corp ops with my guys and I mining in W-space has to be a much moar “active” activity than the usual AFK mining standard in Empire.

I finally decided just to bring in a mining fit Scythe I already had. It actually out mined the (pre buff) Procurer and it is fast, nimble and at least minimally armed. So I loaded it up with some new Cruise Missile Launchers for my Phoon and filled a couple'a cans with as many Cruise missiles as she could hold and made the run back to the hole ok.

During this Mab logged as was past his personal downtime and there I sat. I was still on ‘yellow alert’ from the earlier incident so I din’t wanna run the combat sites as they are scannable with dscan, however, the Anoms like that Grav must be probed down… so as long as you are REALLY spamming dscan you have a very high chance of seeing probes in the air and getting out in time. Hmmm… ok, what the hell.

I warp out, pick out a nice fat Arkonor rock, close to under 2k, align to the POS, pop a jetcan and start the music of the three Mining Lazor IIs… I scan the rock, size and position that screen, open the can, size and position that screen, open my cargo and start spamming dscan while dropping the mined ark into the can as the lazors cycle… huh… I’m mining… solo… inna wormhole… and I’m       okay with it…  weird.  =\

Anyhoo… I ask SARA to find something on the NEOCOM worth watching… Ah, some Pubbie Broadband Service piece on “Rogue Planets”… interesting (spam dscan)… huh I dint know (spam dscan) that… Lovely graph(spam dscan)ics… I wonder what (spam dscan) would happen if (spam dscan) we ran across (spam dscan) one of those (spam dscan)  during warp (spam dscan)? …while the mind numbing drone of the mining lazors fills the background…   =]

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

PS  Full can of Ark dropped off in th’ POS and off to bed…  ahhh….  =]

Hiigaran Bounty Miners Incor… wha?

or~  We Train Up a New Carebadger…

HBHI is a small corp. We like it that way. We are RL family and frens. We are safest that way. We did have a few ‘regular’ members back when we were a new corp. One logged off one night and we have never seen him since (which sometimes causes me to worry about unknown events in RL, we hope he is ok) Two left after some internal disagreements, unpleasant but not all that unusual. One left after a toon changed hands… We have a few trusted frens who, from time to time have joined up to assist us with various ventures and war dec's etc. But, all in all, we are basically distrusting of the toons of EVE. What with scammin, spyin, and corp intrigue being as much a part of the weft and weave of EVE as space itself...

Add to that the fact that we live in a POS in a Wormhole and the risk is far greater for us than for a Hisec NPC station based corp… and they get ripped off allatime. For us, the risks are not just access to our stuff, but access to our HOME. There are horrorshow vids out there of POSes w/ the FF down due to a spai… being raided and all that cannot be stolen and flown out getting blown up for the lulz… like this, Grand Theft Tengu… uh… no thanx, so we have not actively recruited as such at all really.

But, the one true immutable constant in life is… things change.

So, we have offered membership in HBHI to a particular pilot, and he has accepted. Now this is initially a temporary, ‘leave of absence’ corp hop actually, not planned as a permanent move. This pilot wished to ‘up his game’ and learn the ‘Tao of Holes’ and the if or how Mining and Industry might fit into the W-space lifestyle… and to experience life on the Other Side of the Sky where it says on the map… “Demons Be Here”…

Mabrick, CEO of MABMM (and yes my fellow blogger, he of Mabrick’s Mumblings fame) has consented to join with HBHI until he is experienced enough, and has built his home corp up to a state where, if he determines that W-space is the right direction for MABMM they may possibly anchor and run a POS and work, and mebbe live, in W-space.

I have followed Mab’s blog pretty much since he first started posting… and when he got WarDec’ed and such by the Goons I talked  over with my corpmates the idea to offer him sanctuary… (LOL, sanctuary! In a wormhole!! now THAT’S funny… ahhh…<wipes tear>) anyhoo, so… he & his corp could join us in here as an option if things got too ‘hot’ in Hisec for his very carebear corp. My guys were willing to give it a go, so I made the overture. Mab expressed a strong interest, he had a few things going on ATM, as did we, so things were not settled until just recently.

Now this was not totally without benefit for us as we are a mixed little corp who tends to follow… (I have always loved this corp description from Arcdragon’s excellent “Everything Wormhole” Guide…) “The Buncha Boobs Method”. This sorta loosely describes us… to a “T”. We actually dunt have any set ‘goals’ other than to (1) we all want to live in a POS in W-Space, and (b) we all want to work our way up the WH class ladder. Other than that we just sorta each do as we please.

We prefer to fly together, mostly. But RL>EVE means OL times are not always in sync so we each have to be able to fly solo or in pairs and still have a fulfilling time ingame… thankfully we three each have a wee bit of the hermit in our respective DNAs and do not ‘require’ a crowd of gooney frens all around us allatime, so the small corp inna wormhole thing works extremely well for us. And as Mab has been basically soloing EVE for four years, once he is up to speed on WH Ops and SOPs, I expect he will fit in well… wouldn’t have made him the offer if I dint think he’d ‘take’ to it.

Part of the reason we want to live in holes is the ISK… As a small corp, especially when flying solo, you will lose ships in holes… Sleeper ISK has given us the ability to afford to replace what we lose. Though… in this C3 that is starting to get problematic. You see, as I have said afore, C3 Sleepers are the class that begin to seriously web, neut and SCRAM and can be, therefore, deadly to a soloist. Even in fleet, with all three on the field, there is no guarantee you will survive being scrammed if you get ‘all aggro’ and focus fire. Add to that the increased ‘traffic’ a C3 sees as one of the routes to Empire for C4s and above and… well, the Sleeper ISK HAS to be damn good.

We also dabble (if building a Nidhoggur can be called ‘dabbling’) in Industry but we don’t ‘really’ build stuff for sale on the market as such but moar for our own needs… in W-space self-sufficiency can be a life, or a POS, saver. Problem is… we aint miners. I mean, we all ‘can’ mine… we dunt look ‘down’ on it… well not too much… we just dunt ENJOY it is all. For us mining is a lesser of two equal ebils… “Should I make a run through losec, risking ship and pod, to spend ISK on the ores/mineral/etc. we need… or go out there in the black and risk not just ship and pod, but suicide also to mine it up myself?”

I say, let Mab risk suicide! Besides, he seems to actually ‘like’ mining… yuch. We will gladly fly support, CAP (IE Combat Air Patrol) and haul for him… heck I may even fit up one a them new mining Frigates or mebbe a New Procurer and tank the crap outta it then sit back and let my mind melt to the sound of the lazors…

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