ninja! ninja! salvage!

Well, xxDeath came into our WH again with covops and stealth bombers (this makes the third time), since we again have a nullsec connection to their space. It seems odd that we keep finding nullsec connections, and odder that every other connection is within 5 jumps of xxdeath territory. So, since there was no way in hell I was taking my 190 mil hulk out w/ dudes on the loose, I went to my alts.

Sergeant Scowlyface, the salvager alt, has completed his salvage training.(tech 2 afterburners, MWDs, salvagers, and destroyers). Unfortunately, morleena, my combat alt, had her skill training put on hold once I realized that my current Orca skills on herleena, another alt on the same account, gave me a grand total of 2 seconds off my cycle time. So, I’m training mining director to IV and picking up the warfare linking skillbook once we get an enterence.

Anyway, having a salvager in Dodixie, I asked politely in local if anyone needed their missions salvaged. After the missions runners and mission ninjas alike laughed at me, I started training astrometrics to learn about this ninja salvaging hoo-haa. Three hours later, I undocked with basic combat probes and an expanded launcher only to have a  covops frigate explode directly in front of me. Looting the wreck and docking immediately was exhilarating, and netted me a sister expanded probe launcher and five sister combat probes, among other things that I couldn’t use.

During the 15 minute wait time while the victim moaned about losing his ship and the killer moaned about losing the wreck and the pod, I fitted the scanner and probes to my imicus and watched a short video. Undocking, I warped to a safespot and launched probes, hit scan, and waited to see ships I could warp to.

Fifteen seconds later, the scanner gave me…no results at all. Rechecking the video, I was told to set my filter to battleships and command ships. So, I set my overview to just command ships and battleships. After a few more minutes of cursing, I asked in local for help and learned that I was supposed to set my scan filter, not my overview filter, to battleships and command ships. This done, I scanned down a Rattlesnake, got into my Catalyst, and warped to him.

I found myself at a warp gate, and went through. I found myself in a sea of yellow wrecks, and proceeded to salvage my heart out. By the tenth wreck, I was already irritated at how slow my catalyst was, so I docked, buying a tristan at the station I was docking in, along with three small salvage tackles, 3 overdrive injectors, an 1mn AB II, and two cap rechargers: total fitting cost: 6mil. Total ship cost: 200k.

I warped back to the gate to find the gate gone, so I redocked, got my imicus, and scanned a new dude down. BMed, warped to w/ tristan. The mission was Worlds Collide, and after I salvaged the initial room, I went to the second room and began salvaging.

Four wrecks later, a catalyst shows up and begins salvaging the wrecks. I immidiatley angle towards the wreck he’s tractoring, lock it, and arc past, salvaging it before he can. I was immidiatley awash with the feeling of out-manuvering someone with an extreme tactical advantage, and proceded to out-salvage him for the next five wrecks before leaving to help close some WHs in our home.

So, ninja salvaging. So easy, less than one mil SP chars can do it, assuming they know how to work the scanner and an afterburner. Not very profitable by WH standards (400 mil paycheck yesterday), but extremley profitable from a dude flying in a navitas’s standpoint.

The moral standard in Eve is somewhere below a toilet in a sewer in the mob-run part of Detroit, so don’t expect anything you don’t nail down to still be there in the morning. At heart, ninja salvaging is a pretty tame moral deviation, since half the time the runners don’t even care about the salvage and the other half, they’re so sick of ninja salvagers that they made a salvage alt. So, if I find a bunch of unattended wrecks, I’ll assume that they’re fair game.

No-one take me up on this, but it seems to me that if a jerk in a destroyer can kill a hulk, he should be able to kill a frigate before getting concorded. If people are really annoyed by salvagers, then using a destroyer to suicide gank them and getting paid, then using the salvage the ninja salvaged to pay for a new destroyer, seems like a niche someone could fill pretty easily.

No-one do that tho. It’s stressful enough when a BS rat starts shooting at my tankless frigate, someone in an anti-frigate ship shooting at me will ruin my  whole day.

Fly safe, as I probe you.

P.S. I’ve decided to name my third char on my main account “Indigo Montoya”, but have no idea what to have him do. My main is gallente BS and miner, I have a salvage alt and can’t think of a third role I want to pay right now.