Vanguard Incursion Farming

Posted: 2012-01-20 | Author: | Filed under: eveonline, screenshot, ships | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

For an excellent guide on the methods for running Incursions, review Jester’s Introduction to Incursions Part 1, 2, 3, and 4.

Given that I have Logistics V, Caldari Cruiser V, Shield/Energy Emission Systems V, and Multitasking IV, I found my way into an Incursion fleet running a Basilisk for a Shield fleet. I had Monday off and took the time to grind out Vanguard sites for stupid amounts of ISK. Our average was a little low due to members changing ships, but we still managed to pull in 93 M/hour.

My impressions of Incursions sites is that they are very formulaic. As a Logistics pilot, here are the steps to complete a Vanguard site in 4-6 minutes if you have the proper fleet composition:

  1. Get on voice comms. This is so you can talk about how easy Vanguard sites are and how rich you are becoming every 4-6 minutes. In actuality, you will use voice comms to yell at Logistic pilots if they are not paying attention or if someone deviated from the prescribed kill order and triggered the next wave.
  2. Anchor warps in to the site first which is usually your FC.
  3. Everyone else warps in, lands.
  4. Orbit the Anchor at 5,000 and lock up all your friends.
  5. Watch to see who got aggression first and start repping them.
  6. Before the site is finished, the FC will post an align to the next site. Active align.
  7. Site ends and rats despawn, fleetwarp to the next one.
  8. Go to step 2 and repeat.

I do agree that a change should be made to the risk/reward of Vanguard sites. Different waves, site types, and perhaps lengthening the time it takes for Vanguard sites seem reasonable in order to increase the amount of effort for the ISK.

Lucky Bastard XIII

Posted: 2012-01-17 | Author: | Filed under: eveonline, ships | Tags: | 5 Comments

My apologies, I’ve been farting around in highsec running incursions with a shiny fleet, making me the 1% of incursion runners, according to the forums. An unfortunate side effect of this is very few funny stories, unless you can make the next Odyssey out of “I repped that guy when his shields went low, but then this other dude’s shields went low, so I repped him too; then the FC warped us out without saying anything and I lost my drones again”

The recent unwashed masses pissing in the free ISK fountain finally gave me a sense of scope. I’m doing the same thing over and over again to the extreme as a source of fun. As I said in a very depressing post I typed over the weekend and threw into the trashcan because it was too depressing, once you accomplish your goal you have to find a new one as fast as possible. Since my previous goal in Eve was “make lots of ISK” I was rapidly and easily curbstomping any source of a challenge with these 100-150 mil/hour sites.

Not that I’d stop doing them if the huddled dirty masses wern’t ruining the sites but STILL, point stands. No goal, no point, no fun.

So in an effort to fling myself back into my actual corp who had been wondering where I’d been for last few months, I grabbed a Buzzard, kit it out for scanning with an offline cyno and tore a new one on my way to Branch, which according to the corpmails is where we’re setting up. According to my lossmails, I titled the Buzzard “Lucky Bastard XIII” and flew off into the great void, pointing and laughing at anyone who dared try to lock me.

Until I got to nullsec where I realized I wasn’t sure exactly how to get to Branch. Sure, I knew where it was(kinda in the northy part), what it was (that place goons are fighting in), and the general area(above that circular place without sov) but I wasn’t sure what route to take. So, being a bit of a moron I started warping through gates based on which one moved me closer to a regional gate that pointed in the general direction of Branch.

That’s how I ended up in Venal. I jumped through a gate, there’s a Drake sitting there with me. “AHA!”, I think; “This is a perfect chance to test my microwarpdrive cloak trick, which is wholly unnecessary in all but the most coordinated gatecamps!”.

So I smoothly orient myself away from the gate, double click in space and press my MWD and cloak in that order at the perfect time, having practiced this over and over back when I was using the same trick on an Itty V. (Shut up, it worked and I couldn’t afford a Viator).

Feeling full of myself for demonstrating that months of pressing F1 through F4 whenever one of the ten grey bars on my screen turned red, I jumped through the next gate into a significantly bigger gatecamp. Remaining calm, I oriented myself, double clicked and hit my MWD and Cloak in that order.

“That module failed to activate since you are cloaked”.

For those who didn’t spend several hours cursing at an Iteron Mark V with an overloaded afterburner and a cloaking device, that message means that you were slightly off on your timing, activating the cloak and then the thrust module. On a Buzzard, the ship I was presently flying, this didn’t matter much except to a skilled gatecamp. Unfortunately I was still in the Iteron Mark V mindset from several months of pressing F1 through F4 whenever one of the ten grey bars on my screen turned red.

I instantly panicked and assumed that for some reason my CLOAK had failed to activate due to my cloak being active, so I mashed my F1 key again with all the panic of a velocity-fit Iteron V staring at a lowsec gatecamp.

It was at this point that my modules helpfully updated with the fact that my cloak had indeed been activated but since I had asked so kindly it was now turned off. For those who don’t know, there is a three to four second delay between decloaking and recloaking, probably for balance issues. More than enough time to lock me and therefore kill me.

In hindsight what was I expecting with a name like Lucky Bastard XIII? Here’s hoping for better luck with XIV.

2011 Trading and Industry Report

Posted: 2012-01-13 | Author: | Filed under: eveonline, industry, market | Tags: , , , , | 3 Comments

This post serves as an expansion on the 2011 Trading and Industry Reflection post where I outline some of the high level items that brought success to my efforts in 2011. After some further database work, I created a page that shows items in groups on a more granular level.

Q: How was your list created?

I spent a lot of time looking at items that are consumed for mission runners, PVP, and nullsec fleet doctrines.

Q: I might want to take a stab at creating a report of my own. How did you create this page?

All the items have been manually entered into an array.

...
'12773', //Barrage M
'191',//Fusion M
'193',// EMP M
...

The array is then used in a very non-optimized query to produce volume and profit numbers over the past 365 days.

$eveDate = $this->getEveTimeSql();
$sql = ('SELECT typeID, typeName, sum( profit ) AS totalProfit, sum( quantity ) AS totalVolume
				FROM wallet
				WHERE DATE( transactionDateTime ) > DATE_SUB( DATE( :eveDate ), INTERVAL 365
				DAY )
				AND personal = 0
				AND transactionType = "sell"
				AND typeID = :typeID
				GROUP BY typeID
				ORDER BY totalProfit DESC');

956 x 2993 report page:

Q: What happened with the Improved Cloaking Device II?

I fat fingered the sell price and was off by a power. Whoops.

Q: Surprises or unexpected trends?

I was completely floored by the amount of Capital Shield Transports that I was able to move in 2011. The new Tier3 BCs did not sell as well as I expected.

Q: Why didn’t you trade xxx or yyy?

There are still a lot of markets that I need to test out.

If you have any more questions, please ask!

Crucible Glamor Shots

Posted: 2012-01-09 | Author: | Filed under: screenshot | Tags: , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The nebula rework that came in the Crucible expansion is very breathtaking. It ads such an amazing feel of location to the universe. Traveling from The Forge to Gallente space near Cloud Ring really gives me a sense of  locational awareness.

Another effect that has really impressed me is the miss animation of weapons. Fighting Amarr ships has never looked so good! Enjoy the 1680 x1028 goodness.

Deadspace Shield Hardeners

Posted: 2012-01-08 | Author: | Filed under: market | Tags: , , , | 2 Comments

Through Newb Eyes has a great post started about the upcoming changes on the test server that will be coming to Tranquility soon as part of the Crucible expansion. Watch that space as new items are deployed to the test server.

Of particular interest to me are the new Deadspace shield hardeners.

TQ vs Upcoming Deadspace Items

I have been holding off on purchasing a bunch of Caldari Navy Invulnerability Field modules for my Tengu and Incursion Machariel as the price differential between the Meta levels is currently too extreme. Expect the price of the Caldari Navy to fall as the new Deadspace ones start to come to market.

In the grander scheme of Eve, this is a small step forward to braining shield Capitals inline with their Armor tanking cousins. Hopefully a Slave variant set with shield bonuses is in the works.

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