Epic tale of WH pain. And gank.
Posted: 2010-01-26 Filed under: eveonline | Tags: c5, c6, capital, covertops, dominix, eve online, gank, industry, podded, pos, profit, pvp, ships, tower, WH, wormhole 7 CommentsMan…hoooo man… have I got a post today. It all started a few days ago….
We had run out of gravs n sites, so the idea to scan the neighboring C6s for a good move target came up and a’scannin we went.
First system sucked. Four ladars(It’s always #@*%ing ladars), our k162 and a static C6. Which went to a C5. Which went to ectera, ectera, ectera:
us->c6->c6->c5->c4->c5->c6->c5->c6->c5->c5
at which point I gave up and went to bed. Woke up, decided to try and close the static. Looked it up on WH thingy, says there’s 2.13 mil mass. Alright, I thought, that’s four orca passes and two BS passes. Easy!
Fitting a probe launcher to Blake’s domi, I jumped through and watched for 16 minutes as the orca went through n back, through n back. Finally getting to the last jump, I jumped the orca through….
And watched as the WH shrank to nothing, stranding me and Blakes t2 fit domi on the wrong side. Grumbling, I went to the last WH in the chain and started scanning. In a dominix. w/ tech one probes and launcher.
An hour later, I successfully pinned a nullsec. Not wanting to bear another hour of scanning, I hopped through. Setting destination, I got six jumps before getting the shit blown outta me.
Warping the pod out, I warped another four jumps before getting caught in an intricate warp bubble system and getting blown to bits, ruining my track record of three months in a WH with a full set of +3 implants.
Waking up in unfamiliar highsec, I made triply sure to update my clone and instructed the new guy on how to scan, and waited a few hours before he found the following route:
us->c6->c4->c3->highsec.
I made my way back in, we collapsed the WH without incident and scanned a new C6. I went through in my buzzard, and noticed that we had found a cataclysmic C6 WH, or as my reaction in corp chat was:
haav ->OMFG AWESOME 100% BOOST TO RR AND CAP!!!!
I then scanned, and found ->
haav -> OMFG TWO RARIFIED CORES AND FIVE OTHER GRAVS!
I then found the static.
haav -> oh boy, static C6. I love scanning an exit.
Well, two outta three is good enough for me.
Plans were made for a move. I went to the PoSes, unloaded all the reaction thingys, and started unanchoring.
Four hours later, one of the Poses was done being unanchored. I announced our plan to move by setting up the small tower first, then the two larges over the next two days. Our corp leader intervined:
corpleader11oneeleven –>umm…. dudes, I was gonna anchor a pos tomorrow.
I negotiated it to, we would set up one large tower today, he could set up his tomorrow, then we would setup the second the day after. So, I filled an itty w/ fuel, grabbed a dominix and gave the new guy a myrm of mine so we’d look intimidating, went into the C6, picked a nice looking moon and started anchoring.
The moment we started anchoring, scan probes appeared on scanner. “Shit” was the general thought.
Then two other scan ships showed up on the scanner over the next 20 minutes. With four minutes till the PoS was anchored, our dude watching the static C6 of our static C6 said, essentially:
Cheetapilotlollol –> my word, I believe these fellows do intend to assail us!
Cheetapilotlollol –> I do believe you good fellows should expedite your retirement from our large tower, less you be smited!
Cheetapilotlollol –> I do believe they have amassed a vaga, manticore, armageddon, an oneiros and phobos! How charming!
haav –> My word, the blighters have gone and disabled my warp drive! Come, my comrade, and let us see the blighters off!
myrmpilot –> My dear chum, how I would love to assist, but I do believe our attempt at flight has rendered me beyond our remote repair range! How disastrous! Fear not, I shall try to close the distance!
haav–> good show chap! Blake, what possible endeavor has blighted you from joining this rollocky amusement?
Blake –> no answer
haav –> My word Blake, you seem to have made a grave error! You appear to be in a Helios, a ship most unsuited for this rambunctious tomfoolery! My, but the blighters are tearing into you!
myrmpilot –> My word! Haav, despite your best efforts, it seems my armor cannot hold, despite your carefully well thought out tank and RR balance!
Haav –> Oh dear!
Blake –> Oh my, for what reason do I find myself inside yonder station? I merely left my console for more tea and crumpets, and return to discover loss?
Haav –> Blake, dear boy, your absence could not have come at more an unfortunate time, the day is lost.
Blake –> How terrible!
So, everyone in the new static got podded, the tower was anchored and was under fire, we lost a cheetah somehow, and went to bed expecting to wake up to our home system in reinforced.
Waking up the following morning, both PoSes were fine, but our connecting wormhole had been closed. Somehow.
I scripted a plan to activley collapse our static wormholes until we found the C6 again, this was met with agreement once we got an exit and got all the dead people back in w/ replacement ships.
Everyone was in, my orca pilot was moving through the WH chain to home system, being escorted by an alt of mine, when they found the c4-C6 link gone. Turning around, the c4-c2 link was also gone. After some extremly AMUSING hours of scanning, my alt with four probes and no scan skills managed to get the orca pilot out, at which point my main scanned another exit route and got the orca back in.
One hour before we were going to start collapsing wormholes. At 3:36 in the morning, my time. Set times for 3 hours and went to bed. Woke up six hours later, cursed, and logged on.
Apparently we had had several k162s before I came on, but nothing had come out. We scanned a c6, warped to it, looked for the tower, closed it if it wasn’t there, scanned a new one.
Eventually, we spotted scan probes. We figured that we were collapsing WHs fast enough that they couldn’t get a good scan (stupid, stupid, stupid!). We watched the incoming WH for a while, and after a cheetah went through, and came back, and went through the static of the moment, we decided to pull a dick move and trap him in the static hur hur.
We all warped to the WH, and found a tengu waiting for us. We panicked as a group and jumped through the WH. I then panicked as a person and jumped my orca and dominix through, starting a 4 minutes timer until i could jump back through the WH and giving me a 40 second cloak right next to a tengu and a mega specifically specced to keep large ships and others from running away.
My cry of “SHIIIIIT” could be heard for regions in several directions.
Still cursing, I relayed my idiocy to the rorq pilot, who promptly logoffskied. On the wrong side of the static. I uncloaked, launched drones, turned on my tank, targeted the tengu with hopes that if I scared him off, the two warp stabs on the orca that seemed silly a few minutes ago could save my 400 mil ship, which I had just realized had about 1-200 mil of reactants and pos modules in it because I had forgotten to empty it.
Another cry of shit followed.
Then another tengu and a falcon warped in.
“shitshitshittityshittiyfuckfuckcrapcrapfuck”
Too late to decloak, I tried to make my domi as attention-grabbing as possible, launching hammerheads, priming guns and targeting everything I could.
I was then locked down w/ ECM and scrammed.
Figuring this was as good as I was going to get, the orca decloaked just as the typhoon we had been using to close WHs.
“fuckshit R**** I’m an idiot for the love of god web me”
He was jammed, of course.
Hoping that the four experienced russian pvper(Did I mention they were Russian?) would simultaneously go blind from vodka poisoning, I toggled my AB for a cycle and started to warp to the PoS. Twenty seconds later, I watched amazed as the orca warped to safety, and with even more amazement as it didn’t get stuck in a warp bubble halfway there.
Tabbing back to the domi, went through shields, armor, hull uneventfully, didn’t put a scratch on the tengu, as my track record could’ve told you (0 kills 38 losses).
Annnd now I owe blake another new domi, because I was using his because mine got killed trying to sort the large tower up that we were currently trying to get. I popped, warped to a planet, warped to the PoS, grabbed my scan ship and tore through them into the WH in case they collapsed it and left the Rorq in a C6 without scan support.
Yes, it had a probe launcher but that would take forever.
Anyway, the rorq pilot runs his typhoon through the WH and gets himself to safety. After the tengu and mega show up and start taking potshots at our shields(all the guns were taken down in preparation for the move), I send my scan ship back through, the rorqual comes back through the static, collapsing it and I web the Rorq to a planet where it promptly logs off.
Whew.
*miningzen is now listening to: We built this City*
The dudes leave (presumably) and we start anchoring some guns again. Guns go up without incident.
R*** scans the new static, two cores, cataclysmic variable so we move right in, setting up everything else.
Fly paranoid. Cause they’re out there.
PoS shenanigans
Posted: 2010-01-22 Filed under: eveonline | Tags: eve online, gank, heavy interdictor, interdictor, lowsec, occator, onyx, pos, pos management, viator, wormhole 2 CommentsLast night, I had an Eve-related dream. I was dual boxing, moving one character on a haul run to empire out of a wormhole, and running a sleeper site on the other in a dominix. In the dream, I kept falling asleep, and waking up and seeing the hauling character floating visible at a WH with a dude flashing red approaching me. I kept telling it to run, then tabbing to the sleeper fight and managing drones, falling asleep again, ectera. Eventually, I screamed “I can do this” in the dream and woke up.
The probable reason behind that dream, besides too many cheese sandwiches, was that the day before, through a varying series of coincidences, I found myself with 900 mil and no idea what to spend it on. After laughing and joking with several people, the responses were:
Market investing
“give it to me lulz”
buy a rattlesnake
Save it
Go capital.
Buy a covetor BPO
After realizing that none of the above options really had any profitable reward, I remebered one of my Eve-resolutions: to manage a PoS. So, asking around in corp, ny alt’s corp, my alt’s alliance, the channel “wspace colonists” and “pos funtime” I had a general idea of what to expect.
Most of the responses told me that Pos management was like trying to keep plates spinning, and managing W-space PoSes was like keeping plates spinning and only being allowed to touch them every six hours.
Disregarding the negative comments(like the idiot I so often am), On the next trip out I bought two simple reaction arrays(24 mil), some minerals(10 mil), and some silos(15 mil). I anchored them, onlined them, took them back offline, put the right BPs and materials in them, onlined them, put them online again, unanchored them and moved everything closer together, onlined it again, cursed at the PoS management tab for a few minutes and finally had everything running smoothly, with cadmium and mercury going in one side and unrefined dysporite coming out the other.
Later, while buying iced tea, saltine crackers and nacho cheese I thought about tech II components, how everyone was whining about how much they cost, so, figuring it was only a small step forward, decided to revamp from small time alchemy to big time minerals to complex materials reactions.
Later still, while enjoying nacho cheese, saltine crackers and iced tea(10$ for three day supply), I scanned an exit to lowsec and headed to jita, buying a large tower(350 mil), fuel for a few days(10 mil), materials for a few days(150 mil, effing dysprosium), a complex array(22 mil), a simple array(10 mil), and assorted blueprints(10 mil), and a small amount of guns and ammo(15 mil). Hauling all of this to our lowsec entered(lowsec->c3->c5->c6->c6->c6->c5->us), I got into home WH, and started anchoring the tower. Things went well, I put the fuel I had purchased in the fuel thingy, and pressed online.
I was immediate informed that I had forgotten liquid ozone and heavy water, and that the static had just gone end of lifetime.
Sneaking over to the PoS already established by a corp mate, who also handles the K-space hauling(Let’s call him Captain Forgiveful), I removed some heavy water and liquid ozone from our rorqual fuel tab in the corp hangar, leaving an IOU. Fifteen minutes later, I realized I had forgotten strontium. Another trip and IOU followed.
Eventually, I got the complex array and simple array anchored, the silos and coupling arrays arranged in a tasteful, yet convenient fashion, and everything running smoothly. I went to bed(4 am) and woke up the next morning, waited for the static to collapse, scanned a new one, scanned a route to K-space(c5->C6->c4->c4->c3->lowsec).
Have I mentioned that I reeeeeeeally hate scanning?
Getting a tally of fuel and materials, I only had 7k m3 of product to haul out, but was going to need like 35k m3 of fuel and materials. So, I fit my Occator for maximum escaping capability(+6 warp strength, 33k tank), and headed through lowsec with 50 mil of product in my cargo, as well as the can “Haav’s painful memories”, a can with a long and meandering story. Essentially, I had it with me mining in highsec, had my first hulk in it when I went to nullsec, was the only cargo container to survive when we were violently pushed out of nullsec, used in W-space to hold personal belongings for the last three months, ectera.
The first jump went smoothly. On the second gate(I was scouting w/ my alt in a capsule), there was a red pirate Abbadon. Hoping he didn’t have four warp scramblers fit, I started warping to the next gate. To my surprise, he warped with me. The next gate had a typhoon and two other Bss, one of which opened fire. Panicking, I jumped through the gate and warped to the next one before the other two could lock me. The gate was clear, I jumped and saw two BSs and an Onxy. I briefly mused on what an Onyx was, and getting no other mental connection than a rock-type pokemon that evolved into Steelix, engaged warp and watched unhappily as he scrammed me completely, painfully reminding me that in addition to tail whip, tackle and screech, an Onyx was a heavy interdictor that could fit a script to get a warp scrambler with infinite strength. The The Occator popped, I warped my pod out, posted a humorous comment in local and continued onto Jita. With my meager funds, I purchased a day of fuel, and went back through the pipe in a Viator (cloaky hauler) and an unfit itty to distract people so the Viator could hide. Both ships made it back into the WH safely w/ a day of fuel.
Reactions are currently underway at a projected profit of 5 mil/hr, and I am currently flat effing broke :P.
Later, I bought the container back from the scramming dudes for a mil, after selling some product. I know it could’ve been another container but figured my odds were good.
Ooooo, shiny. Heere, shiny shiny shiny
Posted: 2009-12-20 Filed under: eveonline | Tags: gank, profit, ships, sleeper, wormhole, Zephyr 3 CommentsDon’t propel footwear at me, but I’m gonna reference another MMO. Most if not all of you were young at some point.
For those of you who have suddenly been transported to the hippie era, catch up to me when you can.
When I was in middle school, a friend told me about a new, free, exciting online game called Runescape. By Eve standards, a terrifyingly simple game where in your dps was determined by your strength and attack stats, your tank was your defense stat and whatever armor you happened to be wearing at the time, and that was it. The market would sell items and buy items from players at a price set by GMs, it was infested by L33tspeakers, ect, ect.
The reason I cornered you and started rambling about how online games stunted my childhood is because of one specific item in Runescape, called the Party hat. Way back in 2000 or some year before I started playing, Jagex (the makers of Runescape) released party crackers on new years eve. These things, when pulled, would make a small sparkle animation give one of the pullers a party hat, an equippable, tradable item that had no effect on anything at all, except to make the players around you think “Hey, that guy knows how to pull a party cracker”.
At time of last checking (six months ago), party hats are worth 30 million gold pieces. In Eve terms, that’s about two to three bil, and in comparison, the last thing I did before quitting Runescape was utilize the game’s only passive income mechanic and, after four or five months, buy a set of the best, coolest-looking armor there was, with a matching scimitar, battleaxe, longsword, 2-hander, and boots for 10 mil.
Anyway, the point I was trying to make somewhere was that, even in a carefully-controlled market, people want what can no longer be found. The Zephyr is an example of this, since the moment people got their hands on them for the first time, they were going for 50 mil in dodixie. The big difference from Runescape, tho, is that resentful people who want the Zephyr and don’t want to pay for it are going to blow you out of the sky faster than you can say “Hai guyz lookit mai cul ship”.
Functionality wise, it’s a scan ship without bonuses, slower than a shuttle. It’s only saving feature, that Sleepers won’t try to kill it, will lead to some nice screenshots but that’s about it. The lack of defensive, offensive, or cloaking capabilities means that you had best know how to avoid combat probes should someone else be in the WH with you, with an actual scan ship which, from past experience, has enough offensive capabilities to kill a frigate sized ship. Since the average new eve online player as of a few months ago doesn’t know what combat probes are, I’d say that as soon as killmails start accepting the new ship data, we’re gonna see lots of wrecks in wormholes.
Actually, it’s other saving feature, the fact that you can fly around pretending to be Count Dooku for a few brief, wonderful moments until the aforementioned blowing out of the sky shenanigans, makes it a nice ship IMO. The unique model and jerks(read again: players) destroying everyone else’s Zephyr will ensure that four to five years from now; you’ll probably be able to trade one for a Mothership. Sorry, super-carrier.
I see local spiking!
Posted: 2009-12-18 Filed under: eveonline | Tags: capital, carrier, gank, industry, killed, mining, nullsec, profit, pvp, ships 4 CommentsWell, today has been a very, very laggy day. I have been told that there has been massive fighting in nullsec, and according to a brief message that flashed on my screen, gates have been shut down.
I’m kinda wondering if the fighters filled out CCPs new “hugeass bitchin fleet fight” form.
Anyway, since the nullsec before Dominion was like a bucket of squirrels fighting over a bunch of acorns, Dominion seems to have effectively covered the acorns in grease. Lots and lots of lovely fighting, and all the squirrels losing body parts which stimulates the squirrel body part market so the cyborg squirrel manufacturers can sell bionic arms to the squirrels…..
Tortured, yet funny extended metaphor aside, the freighter ganks were interesting, but the amount of sovereignty gain and loss over the last few days, now easily viewed from the yellow sovereignty button, is fairly unnerving:
Hurray for MS paint. Anyway, All this fighting has been expected for a while now, but one thing is for certain: these warring dudes are gonna run outta ships eventually, and then the power shall return to the place it belongs: the miners! muahaha!
In all seriousness, I’m a bit worried that this will only make t2 prices rise, as pvpers are gonna want ships NOW, immediately, before the dreads finish cynoing into their home base. Where Eve goes from here, no-one knows, but following chaos theory I predict AAA and goonswarm wiping each other out, being beaten to pieces by xxdeathxx, who form an alliance with atlas, while a relative unknown manages to establish a nullsec trading post and manages to keep it going by the policy of setting all station campers to red so they can’t use the station and letting everyone else come and sell/buy. And maybe, just maybe, they call the station…Milliways.
Predictions/dreams aside, we had a very, very nice day in the WH and made quite a bit, top of the head calculations gives 230 mil apiece between 6 people(or however much 3.1 mil m3 of bistot goes for nowadays). One of these people is a new member in the corp, new to the WH op, so as is our custom he can’t take from the hangars and has to end and begin every sentence with the word “sir”.
From a personal standpoint, I’m suspicious of every new person regardless of background, and now that I have an orca I’ve moved everything that I consider mine into a GSC, given it an eight-digit password, put it in the secure box of the orca and log off with it at a safespot, with my blockade runner and hulk inside.
I give it… 3-4 weeks before I trust anyone new to the corp, because after 3-4 weeks, the wait has reduced their profit-time ratio to below mining veldspar in an osprey :). This is countered, unfortunately, by making about 100 mil per day in the WH./facepalm
Trust is a very, very good thing to have. I can count the number of people I truly trust in eve on one hand, mainly because I’ve known them for over a year now. It’s my philosophy that if you can’t physically punch someone in the face, then they have no reason to not cheat you in a game about internet spaceships.
P.S. hulks at 175 in Jita, what the hell? Also, I really wish I could write less time-sensitive blogs so that I could stagger them better than three in a day after 5 days of nothing, but life’s an isk spammer. I’ve got 2 more slightly less time sensative posts in drafts, and should be able to get back to a one every 2 day schedule, assuming goonswarm doesn’t dissolve in the next week or two or something amazing like that.
This post written while WH mining, apparently I have a death wish >.<
k162space 