Some Analysis

Seriouslycasual asks:

Given the amount of Isk/hour one can make in a wormhole system with a small organized group, they cut their losses on the POS costs and went looking for another hole. Seems odd that you guys sat and watched them evacuate the valuables though… perhaps there is more to the story.

A good question and some more situational details and analysis would be appropriate. So here goes.

1) AMC is a multi-wormhole entity. The J160739 system (aka Paw's Grotto) is one of the systems that the alliance has settled in. It should be noted that this was the first system we settled in and although we've found better systems to operate out of as an alliance, one of our corps is full of Caldari ship pilots and finds the pulsar in this system rather comforting and since most of the alliance is in a different wormhole, the resource return rate is not over farmed by having too many pilots basing out of there.

2) We've now been operating in wormhole space for over 4 months. As such having intruders in our wormholes are no longer quite the nail biting afair it used to be and a more calm and considered response to situations can be considered.

3) At no time was there any attempt by the No Fear Buccaneers to enter into diplomatic contact with any member of my alliance. This is wormhole space and we're NBSI so it effectively means they are actively hostile.

4) Following their battle clinic history looks like they come from a faction warfare recent past and want to try wormhole PvP. Their tower setup backs this up. Their ships flown back this up. Look, The Grotto is a class 3. This means you need VERY well tanked BC or BS (or HAC/SC) to go after combat resources here and we didnt' see any harvester (mineral or gas) ships. Apart from a few combat sites they were not setup to go after the resources that are to be found in a class 3 wormhole (not to mention that we kept the grotto pretty sparsely populated in sites). They were flying mainly recons and looking to PvP anything that came in the Grotto.

Looking at all that, and having a conversation with the guys operating out of the Grotto, we kind of went: "humm looks like a typical new to wormhole operations corp. Let's let em stew for a few days while we figure out a good plan to go after that tower if they don't take it down by the time we decide to go for it". This decision also gave us plenty of time to analyze their operational habits and times. It really had minimal impact on most of the alliance operations and even those who were in the Grotto could simply come to one of our other wormholes for a few days if they needed to do some mining or run some sites if necessary.

The scouting proved itself out since we were able to determine that they were mostly euro time zone and were logging off when most of our strength was logging on. This feeds into the POS reinforcement timing. We also determined that there were not all that many of them. At one point another set of intruders jumped on them and got an Arazu and a Pilgrim. Reportedly that was amusing to watch from the sidelines.

Look due to their numbers and online times they were never a serious threat per see. They were not going to attack a well defended large POS with the forces at their disposal and they were off-schedule for us. I'm also not sure they realized how much we had them under observation while they were operating. Also The Grotto is a pulsar system (friendly to shield tankers), why did they pop a tower down in a systems where they had a PvP disadvantage flying Amarr and Gallente ships???

There's also the psychological issues to look at. They probably thought that wormhole space would be the milk and honey of easy kills and constant PvP. My blog has already gone over how this is not really the case. First of all any inhabited system tends to weed out the easy kills on the part of the occupants (heck most of my alliance losses lately have been pilots wanting to go to low sec and chase pirates - they are doing this under their own initiative not as any alliance level operation). On the constant PvP side, nope, sorry you're deluded there. I think Mynxee's bunch has the right idea for making use of wormhole space for PvP purposes - use it as a roaming base and operate in Low sec. But except for weeding out the idiots (in which case you're doing us a favor in the long run) most PvP in wormhole space is pretty sparse or inconsequential in the case of the toe dippers.

So we purposefully decided to let them stew for a few days. PvP'ers have decidedly short attention spans. If you can bore them then bring the hammer down they tend to break. Sure enough this is what happened.

As for watching their evactuation - well we had a single scout but not enough personnel online to do anything active about that when it went down. Remember they were mostly euro time zones and our euro time zone players were operating in different wormholes. All in all from their point of view wormhole space must have been very disappointing. Which was the idea we want them to get of course. Very little to do and practically no active PvP until someone comes along with enough force to squish the POS (and a small POS with only 4 small guns is eminently squish-able).

The problem is that if your corporation/alliance is not prepared to fully exploit all that wormhole space can offer, then you'll find it rather lacking. The best thing from my point of view is that for once I was not lead on this operation. Some real life issues (man what's with all my friends and family moving in august?) kept my online time to a minimum. Which meant that others in the alliance had to step up and work together.

And another POS goes bye bye

About a week ago a "PvP" corp (or Pirate corp - sometimes it's hard to tell) setup a small POS in one of our inhabited systems. After scouting their tower out for a a few days, the plan was firmed up by various pilots in AMC. To quote one of my pilots "I stare at them, they stare at me". We analyzed their presence and took note of their online times and all that normal intel work. Once things were in place (strategy - BS fits etc...) my pilots rolled in on friday night.

After an un-eventful putting the POS into re-inforced on friday night we found out that they had only put 17h of stront in their tower. Unusual but fair enough. So the 2nd phase was set for the next day at 23:00 eve time.

The end result of all the fun was that we observed them during the day evacuating the posessions they could. The final event proved to be un-opposed POS kill the next day. Once again proving that small towers are rather vulnerable. Still one would have expected a "PvP/Pirate" corp to have a little more fight in them than leaving our wormhole with their tail tucked firmly between their legs...

RL

Well RL well and truelly put the whamy on me this week. Helping move the equivalent of the family home put the hurt on the old body. Ah well, I'm sure Cozmik will commiserate.

I've managed to get some mining done. I've managed to get a kill on a Hulk. While it wasn't surprising that I managed to get a kill on a Hulk while flying a Tempest. What was surprising was that I managed to get a kill on a Hulk, flying a tempest while getting warped onto said Hulk by one of my newbies getting a lock on him with a T1 scanning frigate.

Here's the story. I logged on that day and got news that a class 4 we were connected to was inhabited. Not particularly wanting to deal with intruders (I was looking for some nice quiet mining), I decided to close the hole. So I got in my close range Tempest and proceeded to start the wormhole dance (out with AB on, wait 30 seconds and back with AB on, wait 4min and repeat like the Cha Cha).

While I'm doing this one of my pilots asks if he can check it out before I finish. I say sure and that I'll warn him when I get close. As I continue the dance, he tells me that um... the system isn't inhabited... I'm going to have to have some words with some of my pilots about the importance of correct reporting. There's a difference between "Inhabited" and "Has some visitors"... Meanwhile the the Hulk I had seen on d-scan still had his mining drones out. Ok I'm pretty quick with the "approach, ab on, jump" sequence but if he'd been paying attention he'd have twigged since I messed up my timing on one of them and was scanable for 30 seconds at one point. not nailing a scan on the cov-ops one of my pilots was flying was possible.

So at this point I'm peeved that the Hulk pilot is so blind and flying stupid in wormhole space. Well let's find out just how idiotic he is. My cov-ops pilot does not have combat probes in his current boat (fail) but one of my newbies volunteers to jump in one of my loaner scanning boats (win). Now there are 8 ships that I always keep in my POS. 4 Astrometrics frigates WITH all 3 probe types on board, T1 cloaks, and 2 Gravity rigs each. 4 Destroyers with 5 salvagers, core probe launchers, 2 tractor beams and 2 salvage rigs. The point is that any of my pilots always knows he can scan and salvage if he operates out of my POS. So out he comes, pops out the combat probes and cloaks while I wait on the other side.

The cov-ops pilot gives a planet and a general direction to scan near so it goes relatively quickly ( a bit of a mistake means that I had jumped in too early (100% hit but not warpable since it wasn't done by all 4 probes - it can happen). He eventually gets the 100% warpable scan and calls in his probes. I wait out the 4 minute timer and jump back in with my cloaked newbie in wing command position and the other pilot setup as scout in case he was on grid. Interesting fact: a cloaked ship can start a gang warp that warps the fleet/wing/squadron even without getting sent off himself since he's cloaked. So my newbie gang warps my Tempest right onto the Hulk.

Fail fit Hulk flown by a fail pilot. With all the mistakes we made engineering that kill he should have had plenty of opportunity to get out of dodge. Dude you didn't spot combat probes sent out by a pilot doing it FOR THE FIRST TIME... You didn't spot the BS sitting withing scan range without a cloak for 30 seconds - the d-scan timer is 2 seconds. Anyways lesson taught. Use your d-scanner or loose your ship.

Friggen noobs who can't fly their ships properly and think 0.0 space is hello kitty land... Don't get me started...

Over the weekend.

This weekend was a mixed bag as far as things went. On one hand I had real life commitments, and as a consequence I did not get a lot of game time. On the other hand my alliance seems to have made better use of class 4 wormholes than previously. The summer doldrums continue apace with some people being away from the game for extended periods. Various burnouts are also affecting things as well.

*shrug* these things happen.

We haven't been lucky getting any core ladar sites recently and that is definitely going to start affecting things. Most salvage are coming in bucket quantities. Even with the new NIM drop rates there will only be a gradual shift of the bottleneck (and corresponding price rise) to Melted Nanoribbons.

On a more personal scale I finally hit Heavy Assault Ship 3 and Recon Ship 3 over the weekend. At this point the plan is to finish getting those to 4, then switch to some tank skills and make sure I can use tech 2 shield boost amplifiers and get hull upgrades 5 in place. Once I do that it'll be missile skills for a while till I get my frigate and cruiser sized missile weapons up to the tech 2 range. Then the vague plan is to go back and pick up the necessary skills for reverse engineering of all T3 related relics. And finally at some point get Frigate Construction 5 which will allow me to pretty much invent and build all T2 ships I can fly.

Gha, so many skills to get in place...

Pilot Attitude

Time to get off the "what I did" type of posts. Lets' take a look at pilot attitudes and how they affect their EVE experiences. Some analysis and conclusions about EVE's design will follow.

First a caveat: I'm going to look at two extremes of playing styles. The scary part is I can call up examples of both in my head.

Carebears: Although this is used to indicate combination of skill and attitude in most parlences for the purpose of this discussion I will be addressing more the skill emphasis rather than the attitude difference. For me the true mark of the carebear is that they emphasise skills that are either industrial in nature of PvE in nature. It is also marked by a distinct laser focus on the aspect of the game they are personally interested in. Because of this they are actualy very vulnerable to any interaction with other players. It no only interferes with confrontational encounters but also with their interactions with their fellow pilots. These types of pilots become so specialized that they are essentially useless (in their own minds) and any other form of play in EVE. Since they can't see their presence contributing to any group effort they blithely assume that they are better off not contributing to any other effort. These are the guys who always bring a PvE fit battle cruiser to scout a PvP situation and wonder why things go wrong. And since they never bother interacting with other players (because they don't see how they can contribute) they never learn from their mistakes.

Peeverps (PvPers): This is the other end of the scale. These are the guys who do nothing but specialize in combat. Most of these end up as pirates or in 0.0. These are the guys who realize that PvP calls for self discipline (mostly) and being able to work as a group. They tend to be highly focused in ship combat skills with an emphasis on those skills that are geared to PvP. The problem with these guys is that they are so specialized they again have limited options within eve. These are the guys who are always begging for isk. They are also the guys who can't do anything without a gang. They are also horribly offended when people are slow or not prepared at all moments to be in a gang killing other players. They are horribly offended by the carebears especially since their lack of presence in the group indicates a lack of willingness to prepare for combat. The carebears also thing these guys are a whiny bunch of emo-retards since they can't do anything alone and always whine that they need someone else around them even if that someone else is totally unsuited to what they want to do.

And there ladies and gentlemen is where 95% of the friction in EVE arises. PvP is a highly grouped activity in EVE. Although there is place for the solo combat pilot, the truth is that any significant combat in EVE is always large group based. The industrial side however - although it takes many different players to get things done at the scale of the EVE economy, most of us do our work in isolation from each other since the tools for coordination between the industrial elements of EVE are sorely lacking. The only true tool of cooperation (the market) is also it's primary tool of competition. PvE is HIGHLY SOLO work in EVE.

So you get a situation where new players mostly fall into the PvE side of things (with some exceptions) and then later on have to break their acquired bad habits in order to group effectively in the PvP side of things. The biggest problem is that there is no scaling benefit to working in PvE situations with others since all it does is dilute the rewards. This dilution of rewards is due to the time wasted coordinating any activity. In PvP the rewards for grouping are immediately evident: You win more often and/or are capable of tackling bigger enemies. Grouping in PvE always causes someone to make less as part of the group than they could solo. Sleeper sites are a nice step in the right direction since the rewards scale commensurately with the difficulty making it worth while grouping in PvE in order to increase the individual reward. But overall it is still better to work alone than in a group in industry.

In other games the way to solve this issue was to make sure it was always more rewarding to do a group activity than to do a solo activity especially in PvE. This is where EVE with it's current PvE design fails it's players horribly. You have two game mechanics (PvP and PvE) that reward the players for diametrically different behavior. This leads to enormous problems in getting the players to switch from one side to the other. I suspect it's also one of the contributing factors for the major imbalance between 0.0 and high sec.

The interesting thing is the effects of wormhole space operations realy do favor jack of all trades style of gameplay. The reasons for this are the variability of resources available mean that someone who is too specialized will find himself with sections of time where he has a very dis-satisfying experience. Mainly because the resource he is specialized to take advantage of is not available. JOATs on the other hand can always do something. The other thing is that you need to be mentally quick to switch over to PvP footing and good at threat analysis to determine when it's safe to stand down and go back to PvE. Pure PvP is useless as there is not usually enough to go around and they have to work to go chase it. Pure PvE is useless since they'd spend too much time quivering behind the POS shields. Wormhole space calls for a mixed style of game play for two reasons. The first is the mixed environment. The only reason to be IN wormhole space is resource extraction. But since there are vulnerable ships in there it gives a reason for the pirates and PvP'ers to come calling. The difference with high sec is the carebears have to learn to keep an eye out and how to transition from PvE to PvP and back again. The small size of the systems ability to support a set number of players also means that it is important for everyone to contribute to PvP when it happens. This means even if your only PvP capability is to fly a noob ship you can still provide scouting services in high sec (and it's not like you can continue mining while the pvp is on).

In the end in order to provide a better link between the PvE and PvP aspects of eve, CCP is going to need to keep coming up with ways like wormhole space to bridge the gap they themselves have created by their design decisions of the early years.

I finaly get some mining in.

I spent yesterday evening in high sec. Got my minerals refined (also finally tracked down a perfect refine station 5 jumps from my main base). The last few days saw some actual mining getting done. The most annoying thing was with all my spread out skills, I discovered I wasn't actually ready to go after Mercoxit. So I had to look at a 10000 unit Mercoxit roid taunting me. Ah well, got plenty of Arkonor out of that belt.

I also finally got my Hurricane BPO in working order. BPOs for copying and sale of BPCs need higher research levels, but for just profitable use I find that 10ME and 10PE is usualy sufficient. ME 20 would be better, but I have a LOT of BPOs to get through.

Woah

Well, one can't accuse those vikings of staying away from the ragged edge of game development. A quick perusal of the keynote speech from CCP at the GDC Europe 2009 conference would indicate that a new console game is heading our way.

Here is the concept: Have an EVE based FPS console game where objectives and cash for success can be set by EVE players and the FPS crowd shoots it out and the success/failure becomes one of the components of the sovereignty equation.

Now I'm not sure of any other triple-A title that has gone as far as to merge two separate game styles as EVE-Online and an FPS into the same universe. You can't accuse CCP of leaving the envelope un-stretched. Should CCP pull this off and merge genres like this and should "walking in stations" (or whatever it is eventualy called) prove to be some sort of bridge between the two genres within the same persistant universe (pure speculation on my part but it fits the fact that WIS seems to be pushed back till after DUST 514 arrives - And I'm speculating it's arrival as being "soon" since it's supposed to affect sovereingty and sov changes are coming in the winter expansion) then they will have effectively blown past any and all competition (not that they had much as it stands).

I also predict that the larger EVE entities will not have any problem forming ground elements in DUST 514 to prosecute their objectives. Another safe prediction is that there will be virulent discussion about this both before, during and after it's released. Some people will love it. Some will hate it and quit EVE altogether (um... can I have your stuff - just contract it to Letrange on your way out of the game... k... tks... bai...). But few will be left un-engaged. I just hope some sort of joint EVE-DUST account is possible for those of us who will want to play both.

Ah CCP, I see you subscribe to "screw your puny expectations" theory of game changes.

Mexican Standoff with Ivy League

Humm, quick catch up since last time: Got some mining done. Got some T3 shit handled. Killed some sleepers. Got in some "pseudo PvP". Had a standoff with Ivy League.

I'll give this much to eve-U, when they don't get caught with their pants down, they are pro at closing wormholes. Just a little pro tip: The guys closing the wormhole? Get them in close range BS, not snipers. Seriously.

So there we are minding our own business, aware that the class 4 next door is inhabited, but mining away contentedly when the neighbors (one of Ivy League's class 4 settled systems) send in a scout. Well after the mad scramble to a scratch response force (which went much better than the keystone cops efforts of a few days ago - alliance leader is much happier). We have a scout in system scoping out what they are up to.

Humm they are closing the wormholes they are connected too. But close examination of the weaponry involved indicates that they are doing on the wormhole operations with long ranged weapons. They also have a Chimera on call, even if it's not always occupied. Once the force is assembled at one of our POS'es we head to the connecting wormhole with the intention of getting some PvP in. It's not like they've bothered establishing diplomatic relations with us and they interrupted our mining op. We figure we may not get much in the way of kills before the carrier makes thing hot. But we'd play things by ear.

Just as our scout gets us to the hole and jumps the fleet in, the enemy Devoter arrives at our hole and pops his bubble just as a Dominix and an Apocalypse arrive . We immediately engage the Apoc as we uncloak, but lack of spreading points means the rest of Ivy League warps away (I think there was a 3rd BS as well but I got tunnel vision at that point and was concentrated on). This engagement pretty much typifies the rapid engagements we tend to get at wormholes. It's fairly evident that we surprised the enemy because the Devoter and the BS's ran and otherwise did not support their fellow pilot as we killed him.

After a quick scoop of the loot we got back to our side and setup an ambush on our side. While they got their act together and got 6 BS supported by the carrier to our wormhole. It's at this point that the Mexican standoff started up. Our scouting indicated that they had fighters out and assigned. We had 4 HACs a BC and a BS. By this time one of our HAC had switched to a Recon class ship and was scouting the enemy deployment and we had been reinforced by a tackle Tristan.

This tactical situation was now fairly static. With the carrier's fighters out and assigned, we were not going to jump into them. With our advantage in close range firepower and agility their sniper BS were not about to jump into us. Stalemate. So they proceeded to send 1 BS at a time to our side to slowly pop the hole. They made no mistakes and we were unable to bump any of their BS off the wormhole in order to force an engagement on our side. Eventually ending the engagement with all our forces back on our side and all of theirs back on their side when an Ivy League Thorax simply closed the hole behind them.

This engagement was fairly typical of wormhole entities who know what they are doing. Low loss count. Both sides know and exploit the tactical environment of the wormhole itself. I'd like to thank the Recon pilot for excellent scouting during the entire engagement. Things would have been considerably different had the BS on the other side been close ranged armed. As it is all fights right on wormholes tend to happen right on the wormhole itself. This means the engagement ranges tend to be 5-12km which is knife fighting range. Long range armed ships are at a tactical disadvantage right on the wormhole itself. Sure you can setup sniper positions to support the defending side but that gives up the tactical flexibility of being at the wormhole itself. There is also the issue of limited mass and if you push a BS sized force through to the other side, it may not be coming back.

Don't get me wrong. BS obviously have their place in wormhole combat, but the environment favors cruiser flexibility as far as the tactical options go. Intimate knowledge of the size of any wormhole a fight happens at is critical to your deployment decisions. Once their initial surprise was over with though I'd like to congratulate Ivy on not making too many more mistakes. Except they really need to re-fit their "at the wormhole" ships for closer range. Especially since they tend to fight defensively. If you're at a wormhole and the enemy is jumping through to you then you know the initial engagement will be at point blank range for ships at the wormhole itself. If you're going to operate ships AT the wormhole they then need to be close range fit.

Oh and Cozmik finaly gets in on a kill and doesn't have to gnash his teeth in frustration at having missed the pew pew.

And we get some class 4 action going

So BBW has a nice class 4 connected to it when I log in Monday evening. Since most of those online were either killing pirates in low sec or wandering lost in high sec, I decide to go and run it down. I proceed to jump in my cov-ops and chase down the various sites in the class 4. 3 ladar, 2 grav a mag and a radar later, I decide to kick off the resource sites.

Now the mag, radar and various combat sites are a little beyond my meager tanking abilities atm. Even with the Loki. But it sure made short work of all the resource site spawns. Note that kicking off and killing all 5 resource sites is about the same as a single class 2 combat site in dificulty. The trick here is to do multiple sites BEFORE coming back to salvage since I'm trying to save some wormhole mass for later operations that evening. So, I kick em all off (this refers to warping to a resource site in order to start the spawn cycle) and start killing. It's an eclectic mix of basic and medium sleeper ships. Once I get thru all of them, I go back and grab my salvager, salvage them all. Then I decide to tackle one of the gas sites and go get my gas miner and an alt with a hauler.

Meanwhile my alliance one of my alliance pilots started trying to solo one of the combat sites in a Nighthawk. I do believe his adrenaline fix for the evening was achieved. Getting out of a scrammed situation with 14% armor left in a Nighthawk is not a comfortable feeling. Good thing the sleepers like drones as much as they do (tech 2 drones are cheaper than Nighthawks). He then organized an RRBS gang to go after things properly. This worked much better. I was unable to join as my only armor RRBS was not setup correctly for the type of operation involved AND was back in the base in high sec. Not worried about it too much I'll eventually get one in here.

As we start working with RRBS gangs in neibouring wormholes we will however need to start paying attention to wormhole mass limits. Haulers and smaller do not usualy need to worry about the number of transits to change ships they make. But once you start taking small squadrons of battleships thru, mass limits realy start hitting.

Well that was pretty inconclusive

Last week's preparations having born fruit, I was now ready to move my tower into it's new home. The weekend started on Friday night with some heavy hauling. The usual run around and buy some fuel. I have a nice reserve now. This was followed by getting an alliance member to use his freighter to haul about 2/3 of the stuff while I hauled the rest in my Orca to the jump off point. With a fresh wormhole, and some escort, I was ready to add our 5th tower to the system.

I proceeded in with the riskiest part of the operation, the initial anchoring. That went on without incident. With the corp hangar array installed and online, it was time to move all the supplies, ships and remaining POS modules in. In the end I moved in 388k m3 worth of POS, ships and supplies.

And after 5 Orca transits, the use of a hauling alt and one trip to pick up a ship assembled in station all that was left was to anchor and online the initial defenses. In a side note, I apreciate the offer of one of my newbies to help out but a) he wasn't in my corp which imposes some logistical constraints and b) at 11k m3 hauling capacity he'd be more of a hindrance than a help.

Saturday was mostly spent onlining more stuff at the POS, sending the alt back to the high sec base and doing T3 project administration on my alt. Many people turned in shares in the project for shiny T3 ships and subsystems. There were many happy pilots in the alliance on Saturday. I also managed to get some production planned out and had my alt load up his hauler with the necesary resources to execute this plan once he reached BBW.

Sunday consisted mainly of continuing the anchoring of industrial modules in the POS and starting up some of the T3 production aluded to on Saturday. This included the manufacturing of a Loki subsystem for my own Loki.

As is usual with a new fit, I was using a suggested fit from someone else (subsystem wise) and didn't like it. So I switched out the defensive system a few weeks ago and liked the shield tankyness of the loki (PvE permatank style). But futher jiggering and noticing the massive leftover PG meant that I could do better. I got rid of the LSE and substituted a large cap battery II, that improved the cap situation to the point where I was about at the same cap situation as before but with 2 Gyros instead of no Gyros. Less buffer, and about the same tank with more gank. A much improved fit. But still with a massive PG leftover.

I then turned my attention to the engineering section. Some comparison pointed out that there was another engineering subsystem with the same effect on the high slots as the current one but with much better power distribution. Substituting that one in EFT allowed my modified fit to become cap stable. This is the subsystem I proceeded to manufacture Sunday evening. There's a story about my going out to fit that subsystem, but first some discussion about the propulsion subsystem.

I currently have the Loki Propulsion - Chassis Optimization. This is the top speed chassis. But I'm not liking the lack of maneuverability of this subsystem. Especialy on an afterburning PvE fit Loki. I suspect I'll be manufacturing myself a Loki Propulsion - Fuel Catalyst subsystem to try out and see if I like it better. The good news is that this will not change the rest of my fit at all. Once I find out if this is indeed the subsystem/module load out I'm looking for in this PvE version I'll probably rig it (most likely with shield resistance rigs possibly with 1 shield extension rig) once the patch hits.

Now for the most inconclusive PvP encounter (I can't realy call it a fight) I have ever had in EVE. So I finish manufacturing my subsystem. Jump in my Loki, shove the oven fresh subsystem in my cargo hold and check overview. No HIC on scan although there is an unknown Drake. I shrug as there are no bubbles on scan that aren't our own and head off to the wormhole. Sure enough there was a Drake at the hole. Now I'm at the hole, so it's not like I'm in any danger. But sure enough he locks me up and starts firing. Humm opportunity to test my tank and gank. So I reciprocate and light up the guns.

Within 2 minutes it's evident that we're not going to break each other's tank. One of my newbies tries to warp in and apply some extra DPS since I did get him down to 40% shields. But his Myrmidon just didn't last long enough before he had to warp off. Note that when I started orbiting the wormhole with my afterburner on, the DPS from the drake dropped so much that I was effectively at 98% tank for the fight. It would stabilize at 90% if I stood still. Not that in reality either of us was in any danger since we were fighting at the wormhole. Remember there is no jumping delay for agro at a wormhole. You simply jump out if you're withing 5km if it gets too hot.

/me shakes his head.

Talk about dipping your toe into the shallow end of the pool. Why even bother to go into a wormhole system just to sit at the wormhole...

Anyways, since it's a stalemate I decide to go on with my buisness and get my subsystem fitted. After a conversation in wich the Drake pilot tries to get me to come back for some 1v1, I point out that we've effectively established that we can't break each other's tank and that I wasn't going to waste any more bullets. I do like the tank on my Loki though. When I get my 2nd one and fit it properly for PvP it should rock and roll. More gank and a proper PvP fit (i.e. a point) should make things more interesting. But still the Loki is definitly an impressive ship. It's definitly arround the powerlevel of a T2 battlecruiser, with more maneuverability and a smaller native signature. Once the price comes down to reasonable levels it should prove to be very competitive with the likes of the Sleipnir and what not.

The last engagement of the evening happend against a much better Drake pilot backed up by a Myrmidon (or was it a Brutix?). Again a wormhole engagement with very low risk for all sides. But between a Loki, a Dominix and a Cerebus on our side, the other side was chased away. I must admit that we went into this engagement simply with the intention to chase them off rather than sucker them deeper in order to kill them. The jump out of this drake pilot colaped the wormhole so we'd see no further harassment that evening. We were getting tired by this point. Once again using my PvE Loki in a PvP situation, I came out nicely impressed by it's tank.

And goodbye to Mystic Worlds

(Not an EVE post except loosely)

In my explorations of various EVE and gaming blogs I came across Saylah's blog Mystic Worlds. As one can see by it's entry she's closing it down. Probably for good. Since that entry doesn't have a comment section, this is just a post to say:

Vaya con dios, Saylah. I've enjoyed your Blog. See you around the internet (or not as the case may be).

Shake and bake

Getting a reserve of spare ships together:

Shake and bake ships

As you all know, I get "loaner" ships setup for my POS in order to make sure that there are enough of various utility ships available for people to use. Here is what this looks like when it's prepared to to out to a new location. Note that I still have many holes to fill (combat cruisers other than minmatar, etc...

Moving the POS

Well I've decided it's time to move my corp POS over to the other settled system. So it's off to BBW I go. Thank god for Orca's. It's still a lot of hauling.

/me puts on his trucker's cap.

Pouring it on

Interesting weekend. Through out it all I managed to get some delivery of T3 subsystems and hulls to various alliance members, get my Loki fit out, actually get some people in Emo Town getting some experience. Totaly muffed up an interceptor tackle (oh good lord I can see that I'm going to need to practice with those...). Lost the Claw involved in that tackle, naturally. Managed to get a good shot of my Loki in action against the sleepers (mmmm I like this much better than battlecruisers).

Pouring it on in a black hole system

In a side note: Before I tell someone: "yea, if you warp to planet x moon y, the POS will be there", I will make sure that the corp standings are set correctly so that my POS does not shoot him...

Ah, EVE, always a learning experience...