January Screenshot Collection

Posted: 2010-02-02 | Author: | Filed under: screenshot | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

January was the month of new ships for my characters. My main got into a Thanatos (Gallente Carrier) while my alt got into an Obelisk (Gallente Freighter). Here are some screenshots of their maiden voyage, mining in WH space (as always), and some attempted ganks by WH pirates.

  1. New Obelisk heading out of The Forge link
  2. Sleipnir stealing Arkonor from our jetcans after a failed gank link
  3. Mining a 150,000 unit Bistot roid link
  4. Tengu, Megathron, and Drake taking on sleepers in a C3 link
  5. Three Mobile Medium Warp Disruptor I‘s around a WH link
  6. A Helios approaching a Lava Planet link
  7. Route back to Jita from deep in 0.0 link
  8. Oneiros remote repping 3x ships during a WH camp link
  9. Gank during the onlining of a Large POS link
  10. ECM fun with a corpmate link
  11. Pretty POS shot in front of a planet link
  12. 5 Hulks and 1 Orca on a Arkonor roid link

Let me know if a monthly screenshot collection is something you guys want to see as a continuing feature.

Wormholes: how not to die

Posted: 2010-01-28 | Author: | Filed under: eveonline | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 18 Comments

1. There is no way not to die. You are going to die.
2. Possibly quickly.
3. Protect yourself from financial ruin by buying and hiding in a PoS
4. Protect your PoS from ruin by having stront and 2-3 weeks of fuel, at least, at all times.
5. Never enter an outgoing or incoming WH without either a fully insured unfitted ship and an alternate route back in, or a scan probe launcher and a shitload of patience.
6. Did I mention you are going to die?
7. The directional is your friend. But it’s a shitty friend. It’s a way around getting ganked so the gankers have ways around it. Expect to die.
8. If you find yourself outside your PoS for any reason, be aligned to a planet.
9. Don’t forget to cloak when scanning.
10. There are people who get their giggles by killing people like you. They are, statistically, much better at killing you than you are at not being killed.
11. Never leave your PoS without some method of getting back to it from highsec. This usually means having a scan alt logged off in system or in the PoS.
12. If you don’t have a scan alt, you may as well kiss your assets goodbye and start waiting for PoS fuel notifications as your base dies cold and alone because you got podded and didn’t have a damn scan alt.
13. Any WH connecting you to somewhere else is a potential threat. Be aware of incoming WHs, because someone opened that door straight to you and you better believe that they’re gonna use it.
14. If you see a ship you don’t recognize on the scanner, run. And possibly alert anyone you happen to be with.
15. If your corp mates say run, run.
16. If your corp mates start shouting, run.
17. if your corp mate types a sentence fragment, spelled poorly, consisting of any two of the following words, run.
“Sisters””fuck””combat probes””probes””directional””crap””dead””podded””run””any ship name you or he is not currently flying””back to pos””damnit””ANYTHING in capslock””gibberish”
18. Pick some symbol on your keyboard, like # or %. Rename all the ships at your pos with that symbol. If you see a ship without that symbol, run. Warning, easily countered.
19. NEVER assume that the designated Dir scanner dude is scanning. If he has a heart attack or takes a piss, you’re fucked and he could just say they had good scan ships.
20. Did I mention you’re going to die?
21. Getting whatever you came for safely inside the PoS does not mean it’s safe. Get it to Jita first, then call it safe.
22. Anchor your hangar and maintenance array next to each other. Bookmark one of them and call it “PoS” warp to it in case of speedy ship swap.
23. Heavy interdictors are small ships that mean you can’t run away, and by the time you see one on the scanner, you’re already fucked.
24. DO NOT BRING A T2 RIGGED FACTION FIT HULK INTO A WH, YOU ARE A FUCKING IDIOT IF YOU DO SO.(Yes, this has happened. Lost it in under 3 hours. No, it wasn’t me.)
24b. Hell, don’t bring ANYTHING faction fit or t2 rigged unless a) you’re rich enough to buy two more of em or b) you don’t believe in Murphy’s Law.
25. Do not rig your hulk with drone mining augmenters or cargo expander. Use low-friction nozzles, they decrease align time and have saved my ass when there was literally a second difference between getting scrammed by a Loki and getting away.
26. Active tank for sleepers, buffer fit for PvP, mix of both if the site isn’t too hard for gank insurance.
27. If you are attacked during a sleeper run, target the ship and try and scram him. If you didn’t bring scrams to a sleeper fight(understandable) shoot him. The sleepers will eventually switch to him.
28. If a corp mate types”Hey, is that your ____” start aligning and getting up to speed with the nearest celestial until clarification is obtained.
29. If you see a scan ship on the directional, scan again and it’s not there, do not assume that he has left, or so help me I will tear a hole from my WH to yours through sheer rage and beat you over the head with a cloaking device.
30. If you live in a class 5 wormhole, remember iambeastx has a static class 5 entrance and will find you…. eventually. Assuming he figures out how to work a scan ship.
31. If you came into the WH to fight, there are people in here already that fight better than you. If you came here to mine, watch out for the first two groups.
32. Some people will build carriers and rorquals in places that mass limitations would not usually allow them. If a carrier drops on you in a C3, don’t be surprised.
33. Carriers can get into C4s, but not easily and only from a nullsec or incoming link from a C5 or C6. Don’t be too worried.
34. When in a C5 or C6, be worried about carriers. One carrier can shut down an entire mining op until they get bored, and a carrier w/ support fleet can screw over anything else. Except…another carrier with support fleet. Have fun.
35. If your PoS has no guns, jerks will shoot it. If your PoS has guns, they will send interceptors to extinguish your ammo. If you employ webbers, they will warp out and rep. If you employ warp scrammers, they will spider tank. The goal of a WH pos is not to destroy but to annoy the fuck out of. If they have a small force, then they’re not a problem for a PoS. If they have a large force, then they’re not gonna be bothered by a few turrets. Employ shield hardeners, SB ops, and jammers to make them lose interest.
36. Have the max amount of strontium. Or you will regret it.
37. If you afk outside the bubble of a PoS, you will probably die. If you’re cloaked, you may get uncloaked. It happens.
38. C1-C2 are soloable with few skills. C3s take some skills, C4s require two people and RR, C5s require at least five people and C6s require at least ten attentive people.
39. You are going to die.
40. Do not bring implants into a WH and expect them to last over a week. I bought a set of +3s, they lasted 3 months, then I got podded twice in the same 3 days.
41. Skilled scanners can scan out a mining op and only have the probes visible to you for seven seconds. And in the WH, the scanners operate. Make the connection?
42. Never assume that the ships you see on the scanner are the only ships in the wormhole.
43. Whs will make you obscenely rich, assuming you can find an unoccupied one, not get ganked within the first week and get whatever you came for out of the wh.
44. A wormhole in your system is not active unless you or someone else warps to it. Do not activate your static WH unless you need an exit, or you’ve got one more route people can use to find you.
45. By popular opinion, a drake is a good, cheap ship for running up to class three WHs. Don’t forget, popular opinion in an internet spaceship game doesn’t mean much.

To date, I’ve lost two hulks, a covetor, a vexor, a thorax, several Itty Vs, two pods, three domis and a large tower to the WH.
BTY if anyone finds the tower “Calculated Risk” floating in a C6 somewhere and can get me a route there, drop me a line.
45. Don’t type a blog post while mining in a C6.

Eve Communication IRL

Posted: 2010-01-27 | Author: | Filed under: wormhole | Tags: , , , | 8 Comments

As I continue to become more involved in my corporation’s wormhole efforts, communication between members is more paramount than ever.  Alerts on ganks, bad nullsec links, moves to a fresh wormhole, and which grav site is currently open are critical pieces of information. There is only so much a MOTD in your chat channel can communicate.

Have you ever used any tools besides TeamSpeak/Ventrilo to communicate with your corpmates such as a phone conversation, text message or email? Do you feel like this encroaches on your real life? Is it a step towards Eve addiction?

I have used text messages and emails to coordinate wormhole moves and getting ore out to empire for refining and I have found it to be very convenient.  Getting a quick email about a wormhole move and letting my corpmates know that I will be online in 6 hours to help with the move has been working out very well for me.

Directional: How not to die

Posted: 2010-01-18 | Author: | Filed under: eveonline | Tags: , , , , , , | 8 Comments

For those of you who don’t know, in WH space local chat is delayed. This basically means that if someone is in system with you, you don’t know unless you tell a joke so good that they type “lol” in local out of habit, or they uncloak in a stealth bomber and launch a bomb at your unsuspecting self. Considering that, again, anyone and everyone can and will try to kill you, you need to have an alternate method to detecting other players before they sneak up on you and give you a prostate exam with an interdictor, hence your directional scanner.

Most miners, highsec and nullsec, don’t give two units of tritanium about the directional scanner. If there’s someone in local, and they’re red, run, if not, keep mining, or get in a battleship.

I can only assume that the other denizens of other places besides WH don’t care about the directional either.

Anyway, the directional scanner works like a local chat, if you bought said local chat secondhand at a flea market from a dude with a shotgun and basset hound. It can’t see cloaked ships, only has an effective range of 14 AU, and, most damning of all, has to manually be pinged for new information.

If you ping your directional with active overview turned on, you’ll see whatever ships, etcetera are within 14 km of you. If you turn off “active overview settings”, then you get EVERYTHING within 14 AU of you, including moons, planets, and every single PoS module your tower has.

You may be asking why you’d ever want to turn off active overview settings, which seems reasonable at first, but shrivels away into idiocy with two key points:
Point one: By the time you see a ship on the scanner, you’re already dead.
Point two: Unless you turn your active overview setting off, you can’t see scan probes.

Scan probes are a very, very important thing to see on the directional.
The only way for someone to find and kill you is by using scan probes, the directional can see scan probes, there’s no problem, right?

Nope.

Because of mining drone’s giant sig radius, and a hulks moderate sig radius, it’s fairly easy to find a hulk. This means that you, as a miner/sleeper killing dude, need to be very, very on the ball when it comes to scanning the directional. Or you die. Maybe not immediately, maybe not in a few days, but It’s almost guaranteed when you find yourself in a bubble you weren’t watching the scanner.

Of course, a jerk could, hypothetically, scan out a grav site, then come back in a combat ship a few hours later and gank whoever mining with no warning whatsoever, or have such good scan skills that he pins you w/ probes @ 16 AU or some way to counter the directional scanner.

The downside to having active overview settings turned off, which I’ve stated before, is that it picks up all the planets, moons, ectera nearby, making it hard to pick out probes. This is somewhat countered by a strategy I developed of watching the little scrolly bar on the right side of the directional box. If the thing changed, I scrolled through the box to see if scan probes had appeared. If the size didn’t change, I assumed I got to live another five seconds.

Crazy Genius!

Posted: 2010-01-11 | Author: | Filed under: eveonline | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 15 Comments

is what I’d like to refer to myself to as, but with my current self-esteem issues the closest I can get is “Lucky Idiot” in that most of my incredibly stupid ideas work out in an awesome way. I think this is the result of my analytical mind complimented with Attention Deficit Disorder, so I think of crazy ideas, then make them plausable, then convey them in a humorous enough way that everyone is attracted enough to actually think about it and maybe do it, see my afterburner/orca and ECM hulk ideas.

Alright, the ECM hulk didn’t work out very well, but my idea to fit low-friction nozzles to help us run away faster instead of cargo optimizers was a great idea and now everyone in our WH has them >.>

My point is, most of these ideas are gems while a goodly percent turn out to be ridiculous. With that in mind, here is my latest silly idea:

Because all the gankers in hulkageddon need minerals to buy ships to kill us, let’s hold off on selling minerals for a week or two. This may actually help megacyte’s current price.

No, that isn’t actually my idea nor the idea I had in mind. THAT idea is, *drumroll*, Static WH mining.

People will say that WH space is completely random and silly, and use the analogy that K-space is an empty glass and WH space is a pile of BBs you just poured into the glass. And you enjoy shaking the glass every 24 hours and listening to the people living in the BBs curse.
Anyway, that’s not necessarily true. WH space is really like a three dimensional series of orbiting spheres interlocking, rotating at different speeds, which, if someone ever actually mapped that thing, would look insanely beautiful and would probably help a lot of WH miners and such.
Oh look, there goes my brain, feeling euphoric at the possibility of learning how to program something like that.
Anyway, what that analogy was talking about is that some/all WHs have static links, I.E. whenever you scan, you are guaranteed to find a WH leading to that type of exit. If the WH leading to that type closes through whatever means, a new link will be established to another WH of that type.

Another bit you need to understand is site despawning. Once you completely shoot/mine/explore the crap out of any specific site, it vanishes next downtime. As you do whatever to more and more sites in one specific WH, the sites spawn slower and slower until you’re stuck sitting there watching Stargate SG-1 reruns until a new grav spawns in a week or so.

Anyway, here’s my idea: Since we’re currently in a C5 with a static C6, why not mine the gravs in the static? That way, we’ll never run outta sites and have nigh infinite ore available. Here’s how I think this will play out:
We find a C6.
We move an orca and a few BSs into the WH, the Orca sets up a PoS with some guns while the BSs open a grav site.
The BS pilots go back to the pos in the C5 and get hulks(or Covetors) and mine in the C6, while the orca pickups and drops the ore in the small pos corp hangar, and once the op is done, the miners use T1 industrials to haul the ore out through the WH to preserve the integrity.
The orca has scan ships and/or a probe launcher fitted in case of the second worst case scenario or less:
Worst case scenario: we lose 6 Covetors and a fully insured Orca. Losses: not very much.
Second worst case scenario: we lose the mining ships and the orca gets locked down in the small pos, attackers wait it out and close the link to the C6 from the C5.
Counter: the orca warps to a safespot and cloaks/and or logoffskis. Logon/decloak later and scan an exit.
Note that this has to be done AS the hulks are being destroyed >.>

Stupid idea? Really stupid idea? Stopped reading halfway through because of the stupidity? Genius idea? Already thinking of ways to counter it? Tell me!

P.S. Orca with a scan ship fitted to it… hehe… that gave me an image of an Orca with a buzzard welded to the side…

Edit: corp mate gave me the idea of using a BC for boosting in hostile WHs, eliminating the need for a PoS and reducing losses, if an itty V, myrm and 6 covetors are use for mining, to…lessie…
6 covetors: 10 mil to fully insure
1 myrmadon: 30 mil.
1 rigged itty V: 30 mil
so 120 mil if we get completely screwed, compared to
6 hulks: 1.2 bil
rigged orca: 400 mil
so 120 mil minimum risk for obscene profits.

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