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.