Down the rabbit hole

CSM X

Corwin

CMSX voting is open. Lots of candidates this year and I admit I have a hard time voting (again).  There are some aspects of the game that I don’t really know enough about … at least not enough to make an informed choice as to which path would be the best one. Some of them sound like a candy in short-term , but I suspect rotten teeth in long-term. So, with those I’ll go with the gut feeling. The ones that I know (or know about and like what they do/did/done) would be the following :

  1. Steve Ronuken – API 3rd party software input. I develop my own EVE tools and he knows exactly which problems to address here.
  2. Corbexx – Wormhole guy. This is a part of EVE that I didn’t try yet, but have plans to do at some point in the future. And his vision mostly overlaps with what I envision a wormhole mechanics (life) should be like.
  3. Corebloodbrothers – Local Provi pilot and regional skirmishes vs. big battles in null supporter.
  4. Sugar Kyle – a workhorse with good ideas all around. I know her focus is low sec , to which I have no real opinion except ‘like , maybe’ (huh, indeed) , but there is the new player experience field (and several more) , for which she deserves re-election. Not to mention the only candidate that at least wrote “Exploration” , albeit only in passing. Edit : I stand corrected. Thanks, D.
  5. Chance Ravinne – I cannot help not liking this guy. I still think he’s a snide little fucker (endearing term in my book) , but his approach and fervor is infectious. He’ll stir up stale waters for sure.

Now off to read up some more & hopefully I’ll have missing 9 people by the evening.

07

Edit : In the end, after confusing myself and a couple of people with my interpretations , I  voted only for my shortlist.  With Sugar moved to #1. Steve doesn’t have a real competition in his field of expertise , so a second place should not hurt him. If it does, I wow here , before my 2 readers , that I’ll delete last 3 revisions of my tools source code.

Complacency

Corwin

A while ago I’ve learned that happily hacking cans in null with someone else in system is a “Mash D-Scan” situation at best. And cloaky explorer killer waiting for a sucker at worst. It was the latter. And ended with a boom. Few weeks of inty zipping through gatecamps , bubbles and ambushes forward.

Now I’ve got the feel for this little ship. Due to fast align time , I wasn’t worried about other interceptors. Bah, they have damage mods in lows for sure. I’ve laughed at the chatter in local about “get him on the gate” and seemingly explored with impunity. But still got a sore spot about my aborted expedition to the Outer Ring. What is to see there ? Any beautiful space vistas to rest my eyes upon ? Epiphany ? Relic cans that have some actual loot in them ? It’s time to check it out.

Unload loot , oil Inertial Stabs and get ready for another uneventful journey. Right ? Wrong.

I’ve picked the most remote system in the Outer Ring and let the onboard AI plot the route. Shortest path, of course. I’m in an align-fitted interceptor after all. From where I was starting out , the shortest path was through Syndicate. Specifically the choke point of TXW-EI -> 5-FGQI -> 8V-SJJ. First jump through null, second jump … oh, people on the gate. What do I care , another gatecamp, bah. Pick next system on route , initiate jump. Oh, why I’m not warping … bleep bleep bleep … scrammed, webbed , dead.

Mittelwerk , meet Competent Gatecamp with an instalocker. Competent Gatecamp , meet Mittelwerk’s corpse.

Maybe, If I wouldn’t be a cocky idiot and tried to burn back to the gate instead, this post would be about “something completely different” (TM).

07

 

raptor002

Serpentis Ruins

Corwin

Two posts down I was wondering about “Ruins” cans … if their loot table is a bit lacking in substance vs. difficulty. Well , this kick into nether regions just stole the cake (It’s so delicious and moist!) :

2015.02.22.16.02.14.png

This reminds me of my father talking about Christmas celebrations in his childhood. He and one of his sisters were usually getting (mostly) coal in their stockings. For the myriad of small heart attacks given to their parents throughout the year. So, CCP knows I’ve been a bad boy. Paranoia attack incoming in 3 … 2 …

07

Great Wildlands trip

Corwin

gwNext three days I spent in Great Wildlands. This is an NPC null region owned by Thukker Tribe. No player built stations there, just a few Thukker ones. Great Wildlands is situated on crossroads of many other regions and the transit lines are semi busy throughout the day. Didn’t see any apparent fluctuation in number of people passing through in different login sessions at different times. But if you take a turn left or right , you can find yourself in blissfully empty constellations. Data and relic sites here sport salvage & items of Angel Cartel flavor.

Travel there was uneventful (one gatecamp , muchos bubbles) . The few people that were in off-highway systems were all busy with non-PVP activities – I think. No combat probes on scanner, at least. So I didn’t have to run and hide … much. There were some guys from xXDeathXx chasing me through a few systems , but gave up on this particular prey when I reached one of my safe spots , engaged cloak and went to do the house chores. First day I was more or less zipping around , doing sites as they came and made a few safespots per system. Just in case. On second day I scanned a small constellation of 5 systems. It had 3 usable sites (non-combat or wormhole) scattered around. Since I got three sites there for a longish time – once I’ve done one, some other system in same constellation sprouted one – there is some merit in the “respawn-in-same-constellation” theory.

Loot wise , I’ve got max 25mil from a Relic can. Others were usually around 1-5 mil. There is something fishy with “Ruins” can. It’s hardest from them all and it dropped zero loot 30% of the time, minimal loot (<500k) the rest of the time. Only one of those yielded 18mil in t2 salvage. All in all, I got out of there with approx 280 mil in loot , 1 T2 rig BPC , 10 normal BPC’s and 2 Domination Small Artillery Battery faction BPC’s – 3 runs each.  I’ve always thought that faction blueprints drop only from data sites , but one of those dropped from normal Relic site can.

And few beautiful vistas snips.

 

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07

Drifter Wormhole and BS

Corwin

While poking around the Great Wildlands (more about that in the next post) , I’ve stumbled upon an “Unidentified Wormhole” together with already known “Unidentified Structure”. Warp to 100 and hope nothing oneshots me. Landing on grid, I spotted a red cross in space … that wasn’t on my overview … hmm. New type of ship obviously – a Drifter Battleship , which was slowly cruising around a wormhole. After a few minutes of fiddling with camera and taking snips , the BS warps away and four Circadian Seekers warp , starting their data xfer routine into the beacon. After a minute or two, those warp away too. Now I’m alone on grid with a lot of target-able structures. A braver man would yell Feuer Frei! and open fire on that vise-like structures spanning the wormhole. Well , I didn’t. In my defense I can only say that my cargo hold was already 3/4 full with yummy stuff , which would go towards my PLEX for next month. But I did snip some pictures. That should count for something, right ? Right ???

07

 

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Manticore Ninja Ratting

Corwin

I went to hunt the elusive (and pricey) Elite Drone AI. Since It drops from Rogue Drones BS’s (and some LVL4 missions that you get once in a blue moon) , I had to brave SOV space once again. Hopefully It’ll be as sparsely populated as it was a few days back. Inty wouldn’t do , so I fitted a Manticore and set out to do some ninja belt ratting. After consulting Dotlan , I found a nice backwater system with no station, lots of belts and minimal activity (no kills & <10 jumps in last 24 hours). Perfect. Voyage – uneventful.

First belt : 2BS , 2 Cruisers. Set orbit to 40km, AB on and let em’ have it. If I knew that nothing would touch me at 700+ m/s , I would fit more gank and no shields. Torps were doing 1.1k to 3.5k to BS’es and it was over rather quick. Loot : Zero. Hm , so it isn’t a 100% drop.

Second Belt : 2BS , 2 frigs. Loot : Zero

Third Belt : 1BS 3 Cruisers. Loot : 1 Ancillary Shield Booster

Fast Forward to Belt 14. 2BS , 2 Cruisers. Loot : Still goddamit zero.

This is turning into mission impossible very quickly. And I would need 300 of the little buggers to roll all 60 runs from that faction BPC. This put a huge hammer to my naive enthusiasm and prospect of wealth , fame and glory. Well, strike #2 and #3. #1 would suffice in this case. Feeling not one bit suicidal to press on, I packed my missiles and headed back home to slice off my profit margin with a blunt axe.

07

Edit: Put up both “Augmented” blueprints on a contract for 1.45Bil ISK , which got accepted today. Getting almost 2x PLEX worth of ISK vs. getting batshit insane is usually worth hefty consideration. But not in this case.

Drone Regions , Day 2

Corwin

day2-hostDay 2 of Drone Region exploration was in Etherium reach. Entry from high into low/null was as problematic as the day before. Read : not really. Those drone regions are really sparsely populated. If I see people jumping into local I immediately cloak and check d-scan (learned the lesson) … but all I saw were haulers/industrials. Far from me complaining about it , tho. In Providence there are always some reds to shoot (or in my case, run away from) , but this region felt really desolate. The most exciting sight was a bubbled gate. I hang around cloaked for some time with no activity in the system. Went to make myself a cuppa … still nothing. Maybe a gang in some adjacent system ? Nada. A little googling and the reason for desolation was clear. Apparently drone loot is … somewhat lacking in marketable department. To put it mildly. Stopped reading after a few pages. Man can take only so much moaning.

Amount of data sites was same as the day before. Roughly 12/1 in favor of combat signatures. Even systems with lots of sigs usually came out empty. This is what I saw a lot:

scan-day-2

At least got one data site escalation , which cam out empty too. Not even an ‘Integrated’ blueprint. But a lot of stunning sight to see.

Checked out the Unidentified beacon and the cloak is gone. Snipped a few pics of the uncloaked structure. It’s really big. My inty was like a speck of dust in comparison. No signs of drones or new Drifter battleships … yet.

Loot was  … Integrated. With some materials for drone manufacturing.

day2-loot

The Augmented BPC’s from the day before are still sitting in contract system. Not holding my breath about a shower of ISK from that direction. Maybe I’ll manufacture them myself … if I had some 300 Elite Drone AI’s stashed somewhere. Which I don’t. Was trashing that stuff for years. Grumble. Or I could try to do some ninja belt ratting in a Manticore to see how the drops are. If it’s 100% drop from BS’s , I might stay a bit and rat in this desert.

07

 

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Drone Regions , Day 1

Corwin

day1

 

First day of testing my new Inty. Target for today was The Kalevala Expanse and the host was - for the most part - Shadow of xXDEATHXx . The journey was very uneventful , but Inty performance was everything I've hoped for. It blitzed through systems , warp bubbles and a halfhearted gatecamp or two without a glitch. On the whole , I felt much safer in this little mad buzzard than in CovOps. CovOps cloak or no cloak.

As far as data sites go ... they were rather rare. Or I was just unlucky. From 40+ sites scanned , only 3 were Data sites. The rest was Combat. Hacking with my skills , rigs and T2 Data Analyzer was a breeze.

On my way back I run into a beacon called "Unindentified Structure". Of course I had to go for a look-see. What I found was rather ... um, disturbing. A few things that looked like sleeper drones (Seeker #1 and #2 in the slideshow below) was orbiting a cloaked structure and shooting beams of light into it. They ignored me for the most part, up until one scanned my ship with that beam. Then proceeded to shoot the beam back into the structure. I wonder what was that all about. Now they have my DNA, the suckers! Snip a few pictures, a video and plot a route back home.

Spoils of the day :

loot-day-1

Integrated ones are common as muck, but Augmented ones should fetch some ISK (i hope).

07

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New skills , new ships

Corwin

raptor

Providence exploration & scanning competition is ramping up and I'm in a need of a break from Sansha space anyway. And if I want to ninja explore other null regions , the trusty CovOps frigate will have to stay in the hangar. I need a ship to blitz through bubbles and gatecamps. I know CovOps is able to do all that, but there is a better option out there. Interceptors.

Interceptor training is finished, so i can try out a fit suggested by JonnyPew. You can look it up here (and the rest of his videos. Lots of good stuff there).  I just fitted Sisters Core Probe Launcher instead of T1 , because I had a few in cargo hold - from my missioning time for Sisters of Eve. As a destination I've chosen part of the NPC null, namely the Outer Ring , which is under sovereignity of  ORE - an npc corporation. I had no clue if site loot there is good or not. I just wanted to check it out. To the hostile pastures we go. 

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