A toast to the disolution of BoB

This month’s topic comes to us from Quintrala of Speed Fairy . She suggests to ”write a short fiction story about the dissolution of the BoB alliance. It could be from BoB’s point of view, the Goons’, by neutrals in 0.0, civilians in Empire, NPCs or even rats. Write about before, during or after the coup; give us stories of market, war, people or love. In-character or roleplay. We want to know what happened, from those fictional characters that, in your mind, were part of it.”

(OOC: Well I'm not much of a role player but I'll give a more in character view of what was going on when I first heard the news)

The Electrolux II had just docked up in the K25 station, and I was busy dealing with the usual minutia of the capsuler's life. Sorting through the meager remnants of the Gurristas pirates my Battleship had dispatched. I will never understand what goes thru the minds of the crews and captains of those ships. The level of violence that a Capsuler vessel can put out is an order of magnitude greater than the piddling offense that can be generated by a normal vessel. I've lost count of the number of pirate vessels my various ships have blown to scrap. And it's not like the they can't know that there's a Capsuler alliance claiming this space...

I mentaly shrug and continue working with my cargo crew to sort the various pieces we've picked up. Most of it is destined for the recycling plant in station, but some of it might be worth saving to put up on the market or keep for my future needs. I let the crew know that we'll probably be docked for the rest of the evening and that non-critical shore parties were released for liberty in the crew section of the station with instructions not to get into too much trouble. Although the risks to a capsuleer vessel are lower than for the those poor damned souls flying for the Gurristas, there are still various other alliances who would like nothing better than to disrupt our control of this constellation. The same is not true of other capsuleer vessels. So the smart capsuleer allows his crews the chance to blow off steam from time to time.

While this is going I have my neocom continue scanning communications of interest. Even with my current allegience of convinience withing the Mobile Alchool Processing Units corporation, I keep my electronic ears peeled for interesting chatter in many areas of space. Even though I was at one time the leader of an empire based alliance myself, I was still more pugged into the more unconventional news sources than the usual capsuleer. Contacts in distant space kept me up to date on various comings and goings of the larger alliances of New Eden. Living out here in space that is un-claimed by any of the larger empires, you learn to keep your fingers on the electronic pulse of the neocom.

Suddenly I did a doubletake. A small news item communicated by an acquantance over in some undisclosed area of space flickered over the necom. My surprise was such that I initialy disguarded the information as the usual crazed rumor going over the communications grid. The communiction was short:

> BoB has disbanded.

With a level of incomprehension I contemplated this rediculous statement. A capsuleer alliance with the strenght and sophistication of Band of Brothers would not just up and disolve. Corporations, leave and join yes. Disolve no. I could not conceive of an entity with the strenght to rival the established factional empires. I remember seeing the coronation ceromony for the Amarr empress and counting the number of Titans on display and thinking:

*The known count of Band of Brothers Titans stands at 20 or so. And although there are more Titans on display during the ceremony there are not that many more. And I'd have to give the edge in combat experience to the null sec residents.*

It's a good thing for all empire residents that the empire cyno jammers are so well defended. With that cold analysis I could not conceive of a reason for the alliance to disband. Not after surviving against the combined might of most of the null sec alliances but a few months ago. So Initially dismissed the concept as rediculous. Especially something so easily disproved.

With that thought I sent a query thru my neocom to the Yulai databases of current corporations and alliances and pulled up the public information on the Reikoku Corporation. Initial unease set in as I noted that there was no current allegiance indicated. This means that the corporation was currently un-affeliated with a capsuleer alliance. I quickly flicked to the section dealing with corporation alliance histories and my mind froze up in shock. The last entry read:

> Band of Brothers [Closed]

My mind reeled. This news was too stupendous to take in. I immediately got in touch with my CEO and passed on the information including a direct link to the data proving that for once the rumor under stated the degree of impact of this event. The implications for null sec politics was enormous. The subsequent economic impact uncalculable. I could hear the stunned shock of my CEO as he contemplated the changes that were sure to come.

All I knew for certain was that this left the Delve region of space effectively defenseless. The comming weeks would be crutial to see what would happen to that area of space now that it was un-controled. Sure enough calling up the strategic map I could see the tracings of what was going on as hour by hour the cyno count in certain systems climbed and the number of gate traversals in certain areas went up in barely visible paterns.

This was too much to take in. By now my crew had heard the rumors as well. I called down to my officers and told them that 24h leave was authorized for the entire crew as we would not be moving the ship until I had gauged the impact of this news. I had my pod transfered to my captains quarters and proceeded to head to an upscale bar frequented by fellow capsuleers I felt in need of some light stimulents and fellow pilots to talk over the implications of this change of fate and to analyze if these events would have any effect on my future plans.

An hour later I was at the bar lifting a shot of Aged Patorian whiskey (Mechanics swear by it as a paint remover) and toasting to the new galactic order, whatever it may be. There is profit to be made in change.

How many Orca trips???

As those of you experimenting with wormhole exploration will by now know, establishing a forward base in a wormhole is rather fun. You end up with the feel of a wandering POS as it randomly re-connects to New Eden every day or so. And although a large corp or alliance will deplete the T3 resources of said wormhole system in relatively short order, it's still a useful forward base. On top of which my miners are finding it fun. Ores that they are not used to are to be found and asteroids that are not chewed up are plentiful. Very nice that.

So on the most recent move (i.e. the wormhole that was 6 jumps from Jita close up and the next exit wormhole was located) we found ourselves with a wormhole 6 jumps from our Alliance HQ and 2 jumps from a major trade hub. Can you say "logistical move time". I figured it would not last too long but OMG. By the time I went to bed last night various Orcas had done at least 7 round trips. And the hole was not even into critical! Heck the hole in Esoteria only took 2 round trips to close up. So there are some rather large and stable wormholes out there, you just never know what you've got till you start using it.

In other news I have now build 6 of the 11 T3 component types (76 components built so far) with more on the way by the end of the weekend. ATM I only have one polymer missing from the 9 and that will block 2 component types from being completed. But that should be do-able in short order. I suspect that by next weekend we will be selling T3 component packs on the market. I.E. all the components necessary to manufacture a subsystem or a hull on a single contract.

At one point I was getting worried with the ratio of combat specialists to gas miners I had was going to screw things up. But after runnign the number, nope I need my combat guys to kick it up a notch or two and get cracking. You don't need too many gas miners to bring in quite a bit of gas so that side of things is working fine. And I"ll be able to burn thru most of the orange salvage.

Oh right, as this has been going along and I've been digging into the numbers, some new descriptive terms have been emerging:

• Blue Loot (the new mobile bounties - think tags)
• Orange Salvage (looks like T1 salvage)
• Blue Salvage (looks like T2 salvage)
• Piramid Salvage (looks like some of the cosmos sleeper stuff)
• Comon Gas (1 cubic metre)
• Uncomon Gas (4 cubic metres)
• Rare Gas (10 cubic metres)
• Key Components (The six T3 components that use blue or piramid salvage)
• Common Components (the 5 T3 components that use only orage salvage)

The ability to manufacture hulls and sub-systems thought will take time to get online. The skills sets are rather on the steep end. There is quite a bit of cross polination with T2 but still:

• racial Starship Engineering V (so there are 4 of those)
• Cruiser Construction V
• Jury Rigging V

Not counting acquiring the new T3 manufacturing skills and their pre-requisites as well. The pool of characters that had all this ready to go before Apocrypha hit was probably quite small. These guys are going to make a mint for the next month or two.

You're doing it wrong

I dipped into the eveonline forums yesterday. And I noticed a similar thread of comments coming out of various rather pessimistic trolls that Apocrypha came "pre-nerfed". Ahem. To all the trolls who say that, I point to the title of this post. They're a bunch of twits.

Last night two of my pilots went to town on a few sites in the wormhole we've set up shop in. After duo'ing for a while they took a break and packaged up their loot and salvage in a can for eventual shipping to high-sec. Later on they went out again with 4 other fellow pilots.

At this point I do a run into the wormhole with my hauler to get the goods out. Segregating the loot by op picking up the reaction results and other stuff, It all gets out and over to where the stuff has to go. Side note we're running a share system for the T3 resources since the turn arround on that risks being rather long as per my last post - serious demand will wait till more manufacturers come online. So count up the resources and send out the shares. Then I take care of "the blue loot"...

That's when I ask them how long they were at their duo kill fest... 1h you say... Holy f**k...

First op blue loot: over 100mil split 2 ways. 2nd op over 100mil split 6 ways. Note that this is without selling a single piece of salvage or converting it into components. Just the Blue loot. Just in isk (from the equivalent of bounties) they made 50mil each in an hour then made 17mil each more in a probably much shorter period of time. Now both these pilots are rather skilled at drake tanking. And a system with shield bonuses helps that out immensly. But still that was a solid income. Not to mention when we get this stuf converted into T3 components they'll have a share of that and eventualy manufactured sub-systems and hulls.

That flat out beats ratting in 0.0. It flat out beats level 4 missions. I've come to the conclusion that wormhole space is NOT pre-nerffed. The trolls simply lack skill to take advantage of the oportunities offered. I'm glad I didn't listen to the nay sayers. I suspected they were blowing smoke up peoples asses, glad that my suspicions proved correct.

I suspect that w-space income is going to scale much better with player/character skill than the mission system. There are a lot of pilots in my alliance that would not have been able to duo what these two did. The rest of us need to re-fit and re-arm to take advangate of the situation and learn from these two. But even the lower income level was very respectable when compared to level 4's. My conclusion is that if your skills allow you to sleep thru level 4's then wormhole space potentialy offers much greater rewards. If not it's simply another option compared to level 4's (should those get a bit too repetitive).

I have come to the conclusion that Sleepers, although they definitly are better than the standard rats and you do need to come in groups to reap the benefits, they are sill not PvP equivalent. For one thing they do not warp out when they notices they are taking a pounding. CCP needs to start having the rats do that if they want to truely get things on a PvP footing. Not sure it will happen. What they need to do is once a wave has taken 50% casualties they need to warp off and then come back with wave 2 and warp back onto the battlefield. And the 3rd wave needs to warp off and re-inforce another site randomly in the system. Then we might start seeing closer to PvP fits in W-space.

Learning to delegate & on the T3 road

One of the differences that you notice as your alliance fills up and you start having a few more people involved in what's going on is that you need to learn that you can't do it all on your own. Knowing how to do everything - yes that comes in handy when you get frustrated pilots and giving them answers that solve their problem or at least give them the right direction to solve them comes in rather handy (they are likely to listen to you later on). But doing everything - not enough time in the day.

That's what your Minio... fellow alliance pilots are for. As an example After the first couple of weeks we now have enough T3 resources to start examining production and maybe getting some of that phat lootz up on the market. So one of my pilots (precocious type) went and plopped a tower in wormhole space to get some reactions out of it. The next day a different pilot (see below) went and got the resulting polymers out of wormhole space and into high sec, after keeping a bit for some projected manufacturing, we went and used part of the rest to fill a buy order and the rest is up for more than the buy order. With that act we've managed to move up a rung from being purely T3 resource gatherers to T3 manufacturers (well the start of it). The next step is obviously to get more of different polymers and be able to manufacture the T3 components.

I was in high sec attending to setting up my income stream while all this was going on. Kind of funky quarterbacking things happening in different empires while staying in one place.

We're getting some amusing stories out of these adventures. For example After the initial entrance in high sec disappeared the next one was over in Esoteria and some shmo from Atlas popped in at one point and threatened to grab a fleet to kill the tower. I shudder at the risks, but my pilot proceeded to calmly wait till the 0.0 resident went away (whether just to go away or to get some buddies and come back) then ran his orca back and forth to kill the wormhole. He got lucky and made it back to the wormhole side. Since there was at least one other scanner pilot on the WH side he figured that investment in POS > Orca cost so if he lost the orca - *shrug*. Well, HE shrugged, personally I think I have some new white hairs. The next system it connected up to was in high sec Amarr space as described above. Relatively quiet system so it lasted a good long while but what was amusing was that even though connected to high sec, he was stuck in the wormhole system even more effectively than if it had landed in Delve or somewhere since he is KOS in amarr space (ran a few too many 'kill the amarr ships' missions so his standing after diplomacy is -6.8 with Amarr).

He also learned that the "care package of modules" that needs to go in the ship maintenance POS module needs to be a bit more completest than he initially thought (spare hull and remote hull repairers do come in handy for example - maybe some spare mining lasers modules for that osprey so you can pass the time away if you're stuck in system).

Personally I learned that when you're in a class 5 system and you're on the 3rd spawn of a radar site and your Cyclone is all alone near the spawn and they've got scrams, it's not a good situation... Ah well, next Cyclone please.

During one of the jaw sessions about what we were learning various pilots were commenting about my insistence on starting with T1 Meta0 ships. Which I have been sticking with. I needed to be clear that my insistence was mainly for a few reasons that did not apply in their situation.

First of all I was insistent because I don't want pilots ending up in the situation of one of them where he brought a rigged out T2 equipped Myrmidon to wormhole space and managed to get it blown up. Then proceeded to inform us that that was it no more wormhole stuff for him for the next week because it would take that long to refit. This is where, as a leader, I start having problems. There are people in EVE with wildly disparate income levels. Some pilots try to fly the same ships as the richer pilots (keeping up with the Jones), but without the bank roll. That was the reason for the instructions to keep to T1 Meta0 ships for the first two weeks. As a leader and occasional FC, I'd prefer you to be on ops in a T1 ship able to contribute rather than missioning to replace ship losses you couldn't afford in order to fly a T2 equipped ship. A T1 ship that's there regularly contributes more than a T2 ship we see for 2 days out of 10. I'd rather have a newbie in a frigate giving me intel on all the ops than A mid life pilot that only attends one op in 10 because he's constantly missioning to replace his lost ships. If you've got the bankroll to support the losses, fine, but if not please stick to ships who's loss rates you can support. Since my personal income stream is not yet setup, I'm sticking to the cheaper stuff for now.

Onto some commentary on the T3 front.

We'll be running into some interesting mechanics over the next two months. The requirements for T3 manufacturing pretty much reduce the pool of pilots that could do it out of the box. Even with certain pilots concentrating in certain areas it'll probably be a month or two before we'll be able to manufacture some sub-systems or hulls. The bottleneck won't be the BPC's or the Reactions as i initially thought but the availability of pilots who can actually BUILD the darn ships and sub-systems. This should solve itself over the next 2 months as those who didn't have all the prerequisites slowly get them filled in, but it remains that we'll see demand for T3 resources and Components/BPCs relatively low for the first two months and then pick up gradually.

This means I'm expecting the resource prices to drop steadily for the next 1-2 months as the supply way outstrips the manufacturing capacity. People who had the prereq skills will have a field day and make a killing on the ship and subsystem sales. This means we'll see a reduction in supply costs with the ship prices staying rather high for about the next month and a bit, then slowly as additional manufacturers come on line the demand for T3 resources will increase pulling resource prices back up or at least stabilizing them while the prices of the ships will finaly start to drop at taht time. Don't expect price stability in the T3 market place for at least 3 months though.

Epic o.O? and planning

Well after melting some ships (man those 3 paths give you WAY too much lootz) on my newbie alt and hying my way over to the Sisters Of EVE station to start the epic mission arc, so far I must say that it's looking pretty standard. Sure there are agents outside a stations but I've done COSMO missions before so nothing special there. I guess I just haven't come up on a fork in the road yet. At least no obvious ones. If the forks are not obvious I think we'll find this Epic mission thing is going to be a bit of a bust, especially if I can't go back and do it again or what not. Here's hoping it's just because it's too early. So far COSMO missions are kinda winning (and mainly because of the funky terrain in some of them).

Anyways back to my main. Ok I've gotten the alliance back in motion, been doing that whole leader thing with politicking and trying to pick up new/old corps for the alliance and trying to get everyone in the various corps that we're a going concern again. But I think it's time I took a bit of a break and got my personal situation in order. The problem with being a CEO let alone an Alliance leader is that when you're dealing with stuff like that you're not actively making a lot of iskies. Time to get a store underway, get some mineral supply flowing etc... Get into some Level 4 missions and get the isk flowing in to my coffers instead of out.

I also need to start recruiting combat pilots for my own corp and getting them setup. Because althouth the T3 stuff looks like it'll be crazy profitable down the road it's got a long lead time before you see the returns so you need to make sure that pilots don't abandon their other isk making activities entirely.

In totaly unrelated news I can now fly Minmatar Heavy Assault Ships. I can also (barely) fly Minmatar Strategic Cruisers but then again that's mainly on the off chance we run into someone flying a one and he decides to eject in order to save his skill training.

Right now my personal skill plans are prety solid, get the skills necessary for T3 manufacture. This will also fill in some T2 on the way thru. Got to love synergistic training.

So time to get planning for my own isk flow and what I'll need to do to get it moving, plan out the development plan of my hauler alt and what I want him to be able to do. He just finished getting his learning skills to the point I want them to be, so I've been training his core standard skills. I've got various ways I can go. On one hand I can get him into freighters and/or orcas on the but that's expensive other hand I can train him up as a POS gunner (We'll need those), I need to make a decision in the next few days.

Box

Well I got the box. I must say the price compared to other games is quite excellent, especially with the time cards included. The bummer of course is that to get the shuttle you need to start a new account (sneaky CCP, sneaky). I predict this will lead to a slight bump in population that will settle over time in about 1-3 months and the normal growth rate will resume.

On the flip side I decided that since I created a new character I would see what the new player experience is like. Seems to be the in thing at the moment.

Ok, so it starts you in with a quick tutorial that is designed to get you moving. So far not so bad. Then it directs you to a station with 3 agents who each give you a 10 part mission that loads you down with lootz and the missing skills they didn't give you this time round.

I decided for a change of pace to try out the Amarr side of the pond. After rolling myself up a Khanid character, I set out upon my jaded odyssey through the new player experience of EVE. My god the rookie chat! Toxic soup.

I just about immediately retreated to corp chat. That at least was survivable. After that numbing experience, I went thru the initial tutorial missions (that use the noob ship). So far not a big difference. Then onto the station indicated with the 3 agents and their career opportunities.

Holy cow! Newbies have no idea what they missed. By the end of the 10 mission combat path I owned 2 ships and had gotten rid of my noob ship and was a 1mil is up and with plenty of lootz. By the end of the 2nd I had a hauler, 1.6mil and the remains of a bpc good for 4 more mining vessels as well as my previous ships...

At one point I took the opportunity to get a close up shot of a Punisher and the intricate scroll work on it's outer hull. Something I was not usually used to seeing up close (trying to shred with autocannons from 1km away, yes, but not admire up close). It realy is quite a pretty little ship.

Punisher up close

I still have the 3rd path to do before I head on to the epic mission arc. But so far it's been worth doing if only for the isk you get. Looks like I'll be getting out of the tutorial with plenty in the way of ships, skillbooks and iskies.

Of course I try to "help" my fellow newbies. Directing those who want imediate action to the nearest low sec system (must find out how the pirates like the flood of newbies the box set has brought). And I have observed the following classic statement:

"This game is too complex, I'm heading back to WoW, k, tks, bai"

o.O

You'd think word would have gotten around by now, but it seems not. On one hand, I realize that we need more newbies to grow, on the other hand... there is such a thing as newbies we don't need.

I'll be getting into the epic mission arc tomorrow. I'll let you know how it all turns out.

The satisfaction of an alliance pulling together

As the regular readers know, I un-mothballed the alliance a few weeks ago. Since I've also indicated a change in direction for the alliance and new overall objectives with the idea of using W-Space as a mechanism to keep the combat pilots interested and occupied (harder to do in High Sec without them becoming pirates or griefers or just leaving for low sec/0.0).

Starting up an alliance is a bit of a chicken and egg operation if you're doing it from high sec. This is mainly because your pool of available combat pilots is rather restricted depending on your objectives. So as a leader you look at your options and set some realistic objectives for what you have on hand.

Then you start making your pilots aware of the changes (note that I made sure they are aware of what they are getting into before I re-activate the alliance). But you're never sure how the various corps and pilots will adapt to the new regime. Will they all hang together and do things as an alliance or will it just be a group of corps doing their own thing. As a leader you worry about this things, although there's not a lot you can do except lead by example.

So last night as I was stuck in a high sec station making long time love with my spreadsheets, I was gratified to hear that without my prompting various corps had spontaneously gone on ops in w-space multiple times and that very good things were accomplished. Even with the loss of one of the pilot's Myrmidons to a random player BS fight, it was a successful evening. And I didn't have to herd cats, or harangue or anything.

As for me? Part of the evening was spent in talks with other corps, part trying to work out a T3 Resource scheme that would be fair and equitable to all the pilots involved in getting said resources out of w-space. Planning out the transformation of said resources into T3 Production. Spreadsheets were involved. The combat oriented probably went screaming away when I said that. Didn't get to undock all evening. But as has been observed - EVE is a complex, very complex, game. It's part of it's appeal. To some of us. Probably only about 4% of us according to Dr. E. I still find it amazing that only 4% of EVE consistently manufacture stuff. Some of us like this kind of stuff I guess.

Still all in all a good evening for the alliance and that made me quite happy even if I was stuck doing the CEO stuff.

Stuck in Wormhole Space

Weeeeeee, managed to get our little squadron stuck in wormhole space this night. Two got out to switch ships to handle a gas cloud excavation when the wormhole closed behind them trapping the rest of us.

Personally I'm glad I stuck to my own orders and had a T1 Meta0 Cruiser. I think last time I calculated it my net loss should I decide to self destruct will be 1.65mil or so (mind you add in the clone). I also have no implants in this clone. I've got probes but those can take a bit to nail a site since they are not in a dedicated ship. And there are a lot of sites to go thru -.-;

Oh well should be fun trying to get out tomorrow night, someone else already self destructed.

Late Edit: Well A alliance pilot skyped me just before I left the computer. They managed to find an exit. After logging back in apparently it was critical after they got all their stuff out. So I asked for a volunteer in a pod. One who was still nearby went through and I warped to him, then had him go back. I jumped through last and lo and behold the wormhole collapsed.

So in the end with only one suicide we managed to get everyone out. Good fun was had by all and some of the mid range gas was exited.

The weekend crazies

You know it's been a busy weekend when you wake up Monday morning and look forward to a nice relaxing week of work.

Getting an alliance underway again is a lot of organizing, trying to recruit up my own corp at the same time is also "interesting". Coming up with a loot system for any alliance level T3 stuff is also "interesting". Also "Time consuming". Add to that cousins in town, an EVE meet, dinner with friends, exploring new aspects of EVE, etc etc etc...

"Ask me for anything but time" - N. Bonaparte

But as I finally have a moment to reflect back on this, I have to say it was overall a good weekend. I am going to have to herd more cats though. A good chunk of the alliance fell back into their existing ruts once the first two or three days of apocrypha wore off. To a certain extent I'm glad as I was not looking forward to the weekend's bloodletting as the PvP'ers discovered wormhole space in force. Also I think I need to get the loot handling system in place before we start doing regular expeditions. I also need to give time for everyone to get their ships together.

Ah the worries of a CEO... Funky to have them again after the last 6 months of just drifting from objective to objective. The good news is that with all the concentration on other things, I really don't have any of that "hurry up and finish you damn skill" effect. For me these day's it's more like "oh crap another skill is finishing, quick what's next on the plan before i forget".

I've got pics on my home rig, but don't have access to them atm so no pics with this post. Was just too tired to pre-load them in the draft of the next post last night. So no pics of the funky new artillery animation.

Hopefully as things get underway the crazy will slow down.

Woah, busy

Man have I been busy over the last few days. Forum posting, getting the alliance worked out, going on expeditions to wormhole space, figuring out how to handle expedition loot equitably, writing up expedition reports, working out manufacturing costs, working out new fits, learning the new scanning mechanic, looking at all the purdy new graphics....

Must get some sleeeeeeep

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.

Darned alt corp standing change

Well I found out that one of the changes that happend a while back and I didn't notice was he way that corp standing adjusts faction wise. Apparently you no longer need a storyline mission to kick it of - just 7 downtimes. grrrr.

This may delay getting me back in the alliance for a bit. Ah well.

And ugh, moving 200k m3+ of stuff is a pain.

This will probably be my last post prior to the Apocrypha patch, so remember to start a looooong skil.

Ka-Zinnnnng, Crash, Bang, booooom...

And there you see the shattered hopes of the tech 2 moon crud market. It was confirmed today that there will be NO moon minerals in W-Space.

After trying to project in my head the warfare consequences of moon minerals in W-Space I must admit that I'm of two minds about this development. On one hand I've got the part of me that says: "awwwww, no T2 moon crud", but then there's the part that says: "At least we won't be fighting the Russians for moons in W-space".

In the end I think it was the right decision. Exactly how this all pans out will really depend on the hybrid gas bottleneck. Pirates will be annoyed, it just cut down by half the amount of targets they could find in W-space.

Back in high sec

Well I managed to get all my ships up the pipe into high sec. Time to take the opportunity to make some alt corps with high standing before getting back into my main corporation.

Doh! forgot I need to get a storyline to kick that off once it's created.... Guess I know what I'm doing tonight (blitz mission running ftw).

[snip meandering diatribe]

Man good thing I made use of the edit button on that one. I think things will pick up as Apocrypha upsets a lot of apple carts. Especially since a lot of apple carts are already upset.

Bemused amusement

So I've been in 0.0 for over a month now. And up till this weekend I've been unable to make use of my manufacturing skills in 0.0 (various reasons just take it as a given). This was not particularly problematic for me as my reason to be down in 0.0 was to observe how 0.0 alliances operate on the PvP side of things as opposed to the industrial side of things.

My original intention had been to keep myself in T1 ships and modules by my own resources. Due to the lack of facilities available, I eventually donated the BPC collection to my host corp as a thank you for allowing me to experience 0.0. Since I will be going back up to empire sometime this week, I figured it would reduce the amount of stuff I need to bring up and at the same time.

Then I a saw "can anyone make xxx large ammo for our POS operations" in alliance chat. After re-directing him to the now holder of the BPCs, wouldn't you know it they needed someone with the manufacturing skills to actually make the ammo... So it was with high amusement that I got to gum up the available manufacturing slots at the instructions of various alliance CEOs for the next 4 days.

Once those jobs are done I'll be passing over the goods and heading on up to empire. Should be tomorrow night. At which time I will get busy with the preparations for un-mothballing the alliance. The web site has got it's initial configuration consisting of a forum, a killboard (oh the fun of updating it when Apocrypha comes out) and a wiki.

We'll see how it goes from there.