New Project: Build a Carrier in WH Space

Posted: 2010-02-11 | Author: | Filed under: industry, ships, wormhole | Tags: , , , , , , | 11 Comments

When I started my Eve account, I had dreams of becoming a master builder. Since then I’ve put a lot of industry jobs on hold to go mine in WH space. To some mining is boring. I however, have enjoyed my mining career. I’ve been able to buy some nice toys due to hours of sitting on Arkonor roids including a Freighter, T3 Cruiser, Orca, 2x Hulks, Plexes for a 3rd account, and even a Carrier that is currently sitting in lowsec awaiting a good link to our WH system.

Even though I have concentrated on mining over the past 1.5 years, I have done some building such as T1/T2 drones, T1/T2 Hybrid guns, and basic T1 modules since the BPOs were cheap. Now I’m embarking on a large project – build a Carrier in WH space since I’m becoming impatient waiting for a nice link from lowsec to our WH system and honestly, what is Eve without new challenges?

As many of you know, the majority of Eve projects begin with a spreadsheet to see if your idea is ISK-feasible. So now onto the estimations.

With a ME10, PE1 Thanatos BPC, I will need:

  1. Megacyte 17,941
  2. Zydrine    41,849
  3. Nocxium    232,855
  4. Isogen    823,502
  5. Mexallon 5,287,183
  6. Pyerite    14,128,271
  7. Tritanium 57,790,100

This comes to 784,000 m3 of minerals with Tritanium being the biggest spacehog. Sheesh, that’s two freighters full of minerals!

I scanned a link to highsec via a C2 and assembled my NPC shopping list:

  1. X-Large Ship Assembly Array, 90 M – builds the Carrier
  2. Component Assembly Array, 9 M – builds the Capital Ship parts
  3. Capital Ship Construction Skillbook, 65 M – I allows you to build fighters, III allows you to build Carriers. Only took some 3 hours to train to III with +4’s
  4. Small Ship Assembly Array, 90 M – builds Fighter Drones

Along with the NPC orders, I needed some BPCs so I started searching contracts in Jita.

  1. Capital BPCs purchased in Jita 4-4, each 5 unit run BPC was around 2-6 M for a total of about 180 M
  2. Thanatos BPC ME10 PE1, 70 M
  3. Firbolg BPO ME 20 PE 5, 75 M

Raw mineral cost based on Jita 4-4 buy orders:

  1. Megacyte    44.3 M
  2. Zydrine    56.3 M
  3. Nocxium    20.9 M
  4. Isogen    44.5 M
  5. Mexallon    15.6 M
  6. Pyerite    90.4 M
  7. Tritanium    156.0 M

Total: 428.1 M

A few nights ago we had a route from our WH -> C5 -> C2 (occupied with miners) -> C2 -> Highsec and lowesec exits. My corpmate and I made 2x Iteron V runs to get the X-Large Ship Assembly Array (25,000 m3) and Component Assembly Array (12,500 m3) into our WH system. They are currently anchored and offline (as to not consume fuel) since we are currently gathering minerals.

The biggest hogs are Mexallon @ 53,000 m3, Pyerite @ 142,000 m3, and Tritanium @ 578,000 m3 (!). That’s a LOT of Tritanium. Needless to say, I’ve been working on Veldspar, Plagioclase, and Scordite roids since they have the highest yield of the three minerals. I have the money to buy the Tritanium from Jita, but lack the will to haul it all in. So the more Veldspar I can eat up in WH grav sites, the less I will have to haul.

I’ve just started mining and have one hangar filled with raw ore so stay tuned for more industry adventures!

[Feb 17 Update]

Of course a few days after I write this article and bring construction equipment into WH space we get a nice WH link that is big enough to allow Capitals to enter. Details here.

Irony, my old jackass of a friend

Posted: 2010-02-11 | Author: | Filed under: eveonline, ships, wormhole | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Let me rephrase that:
Irony, you jackass son of a cross-eyed whore. And screw you too, Murphy.

Remember how I’ve been whining about losing a PoS in a C6 for the last few weeks? Last night, I get this:
.

I logon, and someone by the name of Henner Borgenson has apparently found the PoS and contracted the BMs to Blake, who contracts them to me. We get in our scan alts, burn a way out through four systems in under an hour, and I head back to the PoS to get my Viator, my ship of choice for hostile environments.

Unfortunately, my Viator, rigged as it was, holds 7.5k m3. A large pos, packaged, is 8k m3. So, I take the only available hauler that can hold 8k m3, a trusty Iteron V that someone fit low-friction nozzles to for some reason. I put two stabs, two nanos and an expanded cargohold in the lows and a protocloak in the high, rounding it off with as many shield extenders as I can fit in the midslots and an invul field to cover it. I head out to highsec, and fly to where the BMs are, pick em up, and fly through WH space to a C6, which, lo and behold, has the PoS. I start to unanchor, warp out, warp to 100km, and cloak, setting an orbit of 160km. 55 minutes later, my hauler has made it to warp-to range of the PoS and it’s about to unanchor. I warp to it, scoop it and burn like hell out through the C6 and connecting C2, making it to highsec. Exuberant, I log onto an alt and start clearing anomalies in my C1 while warping the hauler. Half an hour later, I tab into the hauler and notice someone firing at me with cruise missiles. Five seconds later, I’m warping in a pod to the nearest station, buying an itty V and a cargo expander, clinging to the brief hope that the gank was a solo one and the dude is docking to get his own hauler. Shit don’t happen, I arrive at the scene and find my wreck completely looted, along with three battlecruiser wrecks.
It could be the fact that it’s currently 2:30 in the morning, but I really didn’t feel too bothered by this. I guess that I’d already written the tower off as a loss and was treating it as a bonus.
Anyway, I am now, hypothetically, 360 mil poorer than I was a few hours ago, not including the under 5 mil hauler. I WAS going to give Henner Borgenson a letter praising the skies and all the heavens for this glorious day, but he’ll have to settle for a “thanks for thinking of me” note. And some iskies once I manage to get a third and fourth tower running >.>

If anyone asks, I made 20 mil off the sleeper sites as I was ganked for 360 mil.

So, the end result from this is moving “normal space” up to number three on my “list of things to loathe”, finally overtaking “Idiots in expensive ships” but still behind “well-organized gatecamps” and “Pomeranians”

Next time, I’m employing red frog industries for my hauling needs…Curse my impatient self!

Basic Skills

Posted: 2010-02-02 | Author: | Filed under: ships | Tags: , | 13 Comments

I recently started a 3rd account and after training the Evemon recommended learning skills up to their recommended level, I needed to start thinking about what to do with the character. He is going to be a Caldari focused PVP character since my other two characters are all about Industry. I wanted to share my research on basic PVP skills that every pilot should have before stepping into a Battlecruiser or Battleship.

Learning Skills:

  1. Analytical Mind IV
  2. Clarity IV
  3. Eidetic Memory IV
  4. Empathy I
  5. Focus IV
  6. Instant Recall IV
  7. Iron Will IV
  8. Learning V – Evemon recommended this to IV yet I trained it up to V. Getting it to V takes a a few days off your overall time if you plan on having your character for over a year.
  9. Logic IV
  10. Spatial Awareness IV

Primary Skills:

  1. Engineering V – Maximize the power core
  2. Electronics V – Maximize the CPU
  3. Energy Management V – Maximize the capacitor capacity
  4. Energy Systems Operation V – Maximize the rate at which the capacitor recharges
  5. Energy Grid Upgrades IV – Reduce the CPU requirements of installing power modules
  6. Mechanic V – Maximize hull strength
  7. Shield Management V – Maximize shield capacity
  8. Shield Operation V – Maximize the rate at which the shield recharges
  9. Hull Upgrade V – Maximize armor strength
  10. Repair Systems V – Operate the best armor and hull repair modules

Secondary Skills:

  1. Drones V – Control up to 5 drones
  2. Targeting IV – +4 targets
  3. Long Range Targeting V – Maximize targeting range and opens up Sensor Booster II (@ IV)
  4. Signature Analysis V – Maximize targeting speed and opens up Logistics and Recon Ships (@ V)
  5. Navigation V – Maximize sub-warp speed
  6. Evasive Maneuvering V – Maximize ship agility
  7. Acceleration Control V – Maximize afterburner and microwarp drive speed boost
  8. Cloaking IV – Allows you to use Covert Ops Cloaking Device II which is good for Covert Ops ships.
  9. Propulsion Jamming V – Minimize warp scrambler and stasis web capacitor requirements

After these three groups are train up, I will feel comfortable focusing on Shields and Missile skills in order to make this a good Drake/Raven Character.

Wormhole Thanatos

Posted: 2010-01-02 | Author: | Filed under: ships | Tags: , , , | 4 Comments

This Thanatos setup is meant for fleet support when opening up Grav and Ladar sites.

Any advice?

Carrier Class

Posted: 2009-12-29 | Author: | Filed under: ships | Tags: , , | 1 Comment

I’ve done it before so why should I be nervous? I’ve crawled my way up from a frigate class ship into a Battleship and have commanded my Dominix in many successful Sleeper encounters. Going into Capital ships is just another logical step, right? Not to me.  The ships are big, the modules are expensive, and the entertainment value is high.

After 1.5 years of playing Eve, I am entering a time when I am stepping into an entirely new philosophy of ships – Capital ships – massive, slow to align, Oxygen Isotope consuming behemoths. Some have big guns, some repair things at great distances, some huge Cruiser sized drones, and some crush a hangars worth of ore down into an Iteron V.

I’m sure you have faced the “what am I going to do with my character now” point in your Eve career. Invention wasn’t calling out to me, I can already produce with Material and Production Efficiency V, I have good Dominix skills, so maybe now is the time where I should go play with the big boys in Capital ships.

After pulling up the current contracts, I found a Thanatos in a station with insurance. I read the contract twice, read it again, check the price, confirmed the item again, check the price again, ahhh OK, *click*

I picked up my Thanatos, the Agamemnon I, in the Lonetrek region on a contract for 700M. It is currently docked in station awaiting the completion of a few more skills before I bring it into WH space.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading on Carrier ships and here is what I have learned:

  1. First and foremost, a Carrier is a support ship. It is not a tackler or a DPS ship. Its main role is to repair your DPS, electronic attack, tacklers, or other capital ships.
  2. A Carrier is not a toy to be bounced off of large asteroids (!).
  3. You can be taken down by a single frigate. (There is a good killmail floating around somewhere where an AFK Carrier pilot was taken down by a frigate. (Help, anyone?))
  4. You can be prevented from jumping by a single warp scram.
  5. Items that you put in the corporate hangars can’t be scanned by a cargo scanner.

Now, what to do with a Carrier in WH space:

  1. Use it to kill Sleeper Battleships and support your mates at Gravimetric and Ladar sites. Note that warping a Capital ship to a Mag or other encounter site will trigger 5x additional Sleeper spawns (yikes).
  2. Keep it at the POS as a show of force. If you were not very aggressive and saw a few Battleships, a Carrier, a Rorqual and lots of POS modules, would you continue to scan or move on to the next WH system?
  3. Conversely, if you were an aggressor and saw such juicy targets as a few Battleships, a Carrier, a Rorqual and lots of POS modules, would you camp the system and hunt us down?
  4. Haul ships and modules when relocating to a new WH. A POS in WH space is like a campfire while out on a long nature adventure; you setup camp, do some activities, put the fire out and move on. After you anchor a POS in your system, the site respawn rate drops significantly. Moving ships one by one is a pain so putting a few ships in the Carrier will drastically lower relocation time.
  5. Close those pesky WHs as not all WHs are welcome. Sometimes you get a hot nullsec WH that everyone wants to come have a peek in your system. A jump with an Orca and Capital ship will close that right up.

Sounds like fun, aye? Hopefully you might run into me someday in WH space launching some Bouncer II’s or closing a WH.

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