Not Much About Nothing, or is it?

~or  Gettin Settled In…

Just an update really… I am not ROBOBLOGGER like Ripard over on Jester’s Trek, and I usually only have a post burble up in the greymatter tween my ears for a Banter or when something of note happens… and neither is ATM but I dunt like to let this Blog lie idle too long… might lose one of the 8 who actually read it… that would be a 12.5% drop in my over all readership… can’t have that now can we?  =]

Yea, we moved into a Class 6 wormhole with SYJ Alliance and we are safer (due to numbers, skillz & attitude these bros have) and we are potentially richer (C6 Sleepers, BEST L&S in Anoikis!). These guys have the sites & spawns, ships & fits and Fleet doctrines and FCs to run them handily… they chat and shoot the shit, calmly almost... bored... while they shoot and kill C6 Sleeper Sites such as… the ‘Forgotten Core Circuitry Disassembler’ and… the ‘Unsecured Core Emergence’ (just to name 2 of the 8 sites normal to a C6…)  in which, with a full Capitol escalation, you can go up against a total of: 34 Sleeper BSes; 3 Argos; 4 sentry guns; 33 Cruisers and 44 Frigates…  Sleeper Fleet: 118 ships, guns & sentry turrets.

For them as dunt wanna click the links, a summary of one site…

Forgotten Core Circuitry Disassembler, Class 6

Faction: Sleepers

Signature type: Magnetometric

Space type: Normal Space

Damage dealt: Omni

Extras: NOS, Stasis Webify, Warp Scramble

Webbers: Emergent Sentinel, Sleepless Guardian

Scramblers: Emergent Sentinel, Awakened Keeper, Sleepless Sentinel,

Sleepless Keeper, Sleepless Guardian

Recommended ship classes: Capital, Battleship, T3 (10+ Remote Repair Modules)

Recommended generic setup: Multi-range, Heavy Omni-tank, Remote Repair (Spider Tanking)

All sleepers will auto aggress; Sleepers will switch targets… drones and support ships are not immune.

These guys are so active… or, I guess I should say ‘we are so active’ now shouldn’t I? I mean I have already been on a Low Roam where we got a Cap kill, run sites where making under 100 mISK is cause you missed 3 of the 4 sites we ran… and everyday there is something going on, a lowsec roam, scanning the pipe for profit and  adventure, a POCO Bash for the LULZ, an Op for a paying customer or a Friendly Corp/Alliance… or even a POCO Camp, that being we found a group bashing POCOs in their homehole an so we decided to jump the POCO bashers… for the LULZ… and that’s the short list.

But, as many know I have a bad case of RL>EvE occasionally so I have not been as ‘active’ as I would prefer… and in that time I was ‘trapped in Empire’ as we put is when one cannot make it to a pipe or other things get in the way of one getting back in the hole from an Empire run or roam or whatever. I got back in a few days ago after most of a week in Hi and I got my Alliance Approved ™ Armor Loki and Shield Rapier in the hole for sites PLUS my Venture… and while ya’ll know I love me my Venture, you also know I HATE mining… not only do I personally find it monotonous in the extreme but TBH it simply is not “really” profitable unless you can do the REAL CAREBEAR ™ and fit for max yield with Orca (and mebbe Rorqual) support and mine with Fleet Bonuses… then and only then can you make ISK at a rate that begins to tickle my fancy… unless yer inna hole.

Mining in hole has always been a lucrative proposition, the problem is, it is also one of the MOST dangewus jobs in EvE, support fleet or not… at least, it used to be. With the buffs to the Retriever and Procurer and with the new Venture, mining in Anokis is not only incredibly profitable… but it is much easier now, in a well watched and active hole, with a fleet & support to mine up a very respectable profits in a very reasonable time… and in the Venture… it’s down-right fun too. =]

You know... the Venture has opened a new, emergent, gameplay I personally had never heard of before now. Ninja Mining™. Yup... think on those two words... "ninja" + "mining"... they just don't seem to go together now do they?

We have always raided statics 'next door' as twere... you know, pop a static into a hole with a POS or two but nobodies home and there are sites!! RAID!!!! You take down the sites and hoover up the L&S before the owners wake up...  But now, with the Venture, we are also raiding Gas sites like the Vital Core Reservoir. The Venture is so fast and efficient that a fleet of em can wipe out a decent number of Gas sites in fair order. So, you get eyes on the POS(s), eyes on the outbound static and then bring in Team Venture! They hammer the Gas sites while the scouts provide Perimeter Security and Early Warning. Then go go GO! LOL too funny... and DAMNED profitable too.

If you have never run scout duty or are ever curious as to what cloaky scouting in Anoikis is like... I found a way to virtually 'share' this experience... OK, imagine you are in a cloaked probe frig, or bomber. You have basically untanked ships in fleet that YOU are the only protection for. Your ability to call out an Early Warning giving them time to GTFO is crucial to the success of the operation...

So, you are cloaked and sitting 100km off a hostile POS in unknown deadly space, with a Moros (Dread) and a Thanatos (Carrier) floating innit... you have a full set of Sisters Core Scanner Probes out in a full coverage configuration... overlap blanketing of the whole system. You have removed (ignored) all current active sigs & anoms...

Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to watch that POS like a hawk for ANY movement AND to cycle your probes looking for any new sigs/anoms popping up in scan range... OK? That's the job. If you go AFK, you risk having hostiles pop through a new hole YOU dint call out a warning for, hence leaving your fleetmates out in the cold hard black with hostile ships warping in on them...

But, I dint go AFK and we warped out having ninja'ed up a fair number of gas sites, scouts out last. Later, my wallet flashed... a full share (over 120+ mISK)... easy money. OK, now you get to see how "easy" this money really was... all you have to do is click on the graphic below, view it full screen... and then sit and just WATCH it for FOURTYFIVE minutes... I earned that 120+ mil...

If you were to ever were to pop though a hole into SYJ’s Alliance homehole… well, the number of Lrg POSes on dscan alone would make you wet your panties… and the number of ship bumbling around when we are most active… would make  even a hardened Anoikis vet think to himself… “Self, we need to go and get a pint… or two… and think long and hard on doing ANTHING in here…. except mebbe, exit (cloaked and quietly) stage left…  =]

Or better… pop though when we are on an op… Rapiers n Moros n Tengu, Tengu, Tengu, Tengu n Caps n Dreads on scan!! Of course… we get, well, none that I have seen of the usual solo wormhole ‘tourists’ that one gets lots of with Hi Empire statics, a few of with Lo Empire statics, and very few from null. We have a static that always leads to another upper class hole so our uninvited guests are almost always other wormhole non-allied corps, who jump to mass close the hole when they count the number of ships and Caps and POSes on scan… or… other wormhole Alliances, that give us a good once over to decide whether they feel like giving us a go. It does happen. We aren’t EvE’s biggest Anoikis Alliance, but SYJ IS a PvP focused Alliance and we actively seek out the fights, good, bad and just plain silly…

We recently found some possibly ToO’s (Targets of Opportunity) in the pipe we were scanning down and the FC decided to do a general call up (IE anyone who wants to, fleet up, ‘x’ type ships, and meet up at the static) for a fleet to give them a go. This is still early in my career with SYJ so I am not going to try and give a Battle Report or any kind of After Action Report… Let’s just say we scouted, they scouted, we jumped, they jumped, we fired, they fired… and for roughly 20 minutes we swapped DPS/ECM/neuts/etc… with the end loss of only 1 ship on our side. Weirdest fight I have been in yet. Seems the combo of the weather, Class 6 Pulsar, and both fleets being in shield ships meant that shield EHP, Targeting Range and Ship Sig was DOUBLED while CAP recharge was HALVED…

This means ANY Shield Repping and all Neuting was hilariously effective… and they had a Carrier in triage at the hole. We had a Logi CAP chain supporting us so… all we really did was expend a seriously silly amount of ammo for basically nothing. I have never seen the like. I was in a Drake, and in each engagement, I think we had 2, we disengaged once and jumped back when the Carrier warped off, but then he came back… but In each instance I immediately burned for optimal range and put all missiles and drones on the Primary as called… This was the first fight I had been in where I had enough time to calm down enough to do some things I have never done before in a fight.

At the FCs command, I intentionally overheated my missile launchers and MWD… never did that afore… then, also for the very first time in my New Eden career… I found myself actually getting UP and quickly refilling my drink (the fridge is only like 3 feet from me but…) DURING A FIGHT. NEVER have I EVER thought THAT would happen… but we just fired on each other for like SOOOOOOOOO damn LONG… sheesh.  =]

Finally we broke off and kept the fleet together while our probers scouted a way to Empire… “All holes eventually lead to Empire.” It was the first time I had heard that… but it’s now in my personal lexicon. We had a number of holes to transit but they finally found us a nice C1 static only 2 hops from Amarr… LOL. Quite a few of us docked up and did repairs etc. while the probers from home found us a new pipe back… and then it was warp jump warp and home again home again.

After we got home I realized that while I was docked in Amarr I had not repaired my lightly toasted missile launchers… so I used some Nanite Repair Paste… for the very first time… and I have had that skill at 3 for like 2 years, I even had to google HOW to use it… LOL… whatta night.  =]

Say hello to my little friend…  Norman The Doorman.

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