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Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Apocrypha

Well it arrived while I was at work. And may I thank those who can get a hold of me while I'm at work for letting me know that they were going in when I was still stuck there... grrrrr...

Anyways It will take a few days to get into all the new content. We'll have to see how it all goes. So, what's been happening? Let's see:

Apoapsis Multiversal Consortium has official revived from mothball status. It'll take me a few more days to get my main installed in the exec corp but that's coming (needed to take the opportunity to create an alt corp with high standings). Too bad I hadn't realized they changed the corp standing mechanic. Characters have to be in corp 7 days to affect standings if they affect standings at all. Ah well just a couple of days. Then it'll be time to hit the recruitment zones.

I'm finaly 99% installed in my new home for the foreseeable future. The freighter and orca run made that much less painful. Still a few things left in the old home like that last can I can't fold up yet and some researching BPOs in a nearby system. I'll get those as they come out of research. Took one last zip of the old scanning system before downtime on Monday night.

So then there was the update. No specific horror stories. Worked fine for me, only problem was I run two clients and you can't update a client while another is working so my alt will have to wait an extra day to get back on. That's cool as he's got plenty of time left on the skill he's training so no panics there. I can see that I'll have to get him skilled up in scanning post haste though.

Some observations on the new scanning system:

1) Strength counts, finding things with my cov-ops (rigs and level bonus) was much faster than with a ship that had only a core probe launcher.

2) The core probe launcher works fine and in any squadron going to w-space a few should be on some of the combat ships in spare high slots.

3) The clutter of hits you get in W-space makes for difficult scanning down of any one particular site. Again strength of scanning and individual skill will make the difference.

4) Combat scanning down of enemy ships takes much longer (partially due to the newness of the system, partially due to the fact that it will take longer to scan people down unless you have the sites mapped out.

So after grabbing a core probe launcher BPO and rapidly manufacturing a single core probe launcher before putting it back in the oven to manufacture more, I manufactured more modules to outfit a T1 exploration Rupture. I got the rest of the people that were getting ready to do the same. The reasoning is simple. Until we get a real handle on how operations will conduct themselves in w-space risking valuable T2 ships on what can turn into a one way trip is contra-indicated. Also they are maneuverable enough to avoid battleships while strong enough to deal with the new rats in the kiddie end of the pool (we're exploring in high sec so most of the time we'll end up in relatively tame w-space systems - well the rats will be tame).

As an aside people, if you're paying more than 60k for a core probe launcher I, you're an idiot. Because that's all it takes to buy the BPO, and manufacture a single one for yourself if you have the mere skill of Industry I...

In the end a small squadron of 5 T1 fit cruisers headed out to w-space. Some alliance members had been in earlier but I had been at work. Another managed to get himself stuck in w-space before logging off for bed. But after getting our T1 ships fit and read, off we headed to look for a wormhole. Afterward I realized that having a dedicated cov-ops might have been better for scanning speed, we were a small enough gang that I didn't want to sacrifice the combat power.

So I find a wormhole and off we go. Some jumping the gun just a bit. We're going to have a bit of a chat about combat discipline and just how suicidal that was when the rest of the fleet was not ready to come to your aid...

After finding out that yes indeed the system had others and that we needed to be careful as they out-massed us quite a bit we got to a safe to scan down some possible sites from. Note to self: get some decent overview settings because right now they are borked for wormhole space work. We eventualy found some sites and it was decided to send one of the cruisers back and switch out for a ships with gas cloud harvesting.

Although we eventually got chassed off we managed to get all our ships out intact with over 500 units of the C-84 gas which would be enough for 5h of reactions once we get either of it's complementary gasses. (C-84 is used in 2 reactions). At that point it was quite late and it was time for most of us to hit the sack and even though I ran into some invisible rats (must get overview fixed) we decided to head back to high sec anyways and get some zzz's.

Not particularly profitable but the experience gained was invaluable. I look forward to future expeditions.

12 comments:

Benoit CozmikR5 Gauthier said...

This is the second I read about being chased off... by what? Sleepers or players?

And yeah, coming from a pure PvP alliance with very strict com and fleet discipline (despite all the goofing off) I hope to participate in the setting up of some decent SOPs. Maybe not too stiff but I don't want to put on a "who the hell just jumped" face too many times.

Letrange said...

Players, 3 out of 5 of our ships had full cargoholds and we didn't feel like risking tangling with 2 domies and a typhoon with full cargoholds and it being 12:30 it was time to call a close to the op anyways. So we simply got out of dodge and back to high sec. Seeking an engagement with cargoholds full of loot is not the way to profit.

Benoit CozmikR5 Gauthier said...

2 Domies and a 'Phoon... I smell a Gank Fleet support op for those resource gathering trips :)

Anonymous said...

Letrange,

Did you have to scan down a specific Ladar site in Wspace for the gas? Or did you find it in those NPC sites that are cosmic anomolies?

Dia

Letrange said...

We scanned down a ladar site. I also found a grav site that had rats in it but when we closed down the operation it was too late to take advantage of the knowledge.

Diametrix said...

Thanks for the info.

So, you the Domi/Typhoon party crashers didn't show up in your Ladar site did they? That would suggest they scanned your cruisers down while in Battleships. That would be bad.

And, once in the Ladar site, were there NPC spawns?

Thanks again.

Diametrix said...

BTW,

My team entered a hi sec worm hole last night and got a message about local anamolies that could affect our ships systems. Dominating the sky was a huge red 'pulsar' or quasar or something with radiating beams. Cool background we thought.

In a fight w/ some Sleeper NPCs all of my hi slots spontaneously overheated w/o me ever activating the overheat buttons. In fact, when I noticed the heat building and module damage I thought I misclicked but the little mini-button beside the shield readout wasn't active.

I haven't checked combat logs but I wonder if this was a local effect as described in dev blogs or some kind of new weapon used by the Battle Cruiser class NPC we were engaging.

Dia

Letrange said...

Oh we knew we were being scanned down. There was a helios that would pop up on the directional scanner from time to time (and I think his probes). So we knew we were on borrowed time. It's just that when the BS finally showed up all our ships were over 30km from the entrance point and on top of that it was past midnight with our total cargo capacity in system at over 66% full. Really easy decision: "Everyone warp to the wormhole and exit to high sec - go go go". The rats were not in the ladar site (didn't see any while we were there). What happened is that with the Helios scanning us down I figured that checking out that grav site I'd pinged earlier and seeing if some rats had spawned would be a good idea, giving us stuff to do if the gas mining was intererupted (we were already over half full, so no reason to go looking for a pvp fight with loot on board). The call that the ships at the ladar site suddenly had company caught me on the way to the grav site. After I arrived at the grav site I took a few seconds to ascertain that everyone had gotten out of the ladar site. While replies came back that everyone had gotten out safely i suddenly noticed i was taking damage. but didn't see anything on the overview. Now knowing that my overview was not setup correctly I followed my own instructions and warped to the wh and waited to make sure we all made it out.

Diametrix said...

The sleeper NPCs are different classes of ships than we are used to. You just right click and add each kind to your overview settings.

Letrange said...

Yep I realized that afterward, but the middle of combat is not the place to be fiddling with overview settings...

Benoit CozmikR5 Gauthier said...

n00b Apocrypha questions here: are you obligated to add the Wspace stuff to the overview only when you see it, or can you add it in the comfort of normal space?

Anonymous said...

"chassed"?

You illiterate fucktard.