The Maze

The end game of plexing in Eve - the famous Maze. A 10/10 plex in northern nullsec this will test a tank and find a weakness.

A series of deadspace gates linked up together in such a manner to cause players without the secret of the maze to end up back where they started. However, if the right gate sequence is followed, you end up in a room with a Gurista Space Station throwing 30k torps at the unfortunate tank and an opportunity for some nice loot.

Last night 5 of us ran it, one of us a Gila tank with 83%EM resists (the shade of hurt the torps deliver), a shield logi, 3 Drakes and myself in an Astarte mixing it up with the blinky red crosses at spitting range. It took us 90minutes because some nice person had been there before us and had cleaned the place out as far as the last room. All we had to do was get to the last room, kill everything and loot! The tank shields on our watch lists told us why the previous occupant had bugged out, at one point the Gila was bleeding armour, his shield gone and all of us looking at the short trip home in a pod, but the next rep cycle picked him up and allowed us to reduce the Gurista ships to a manageable number.

The trick to the gates was this. Align your actual view so that you are looking directly down on the gates from above. Then open F11 and align your view (the white cone) to the north of the map. The gate pointing towards the following numbers is the correct gate to take.
Room 1 - 4 o'clock gate
Room 2 - 8 o'clock gate
Room 3 - 12 o'clock gate
Room 4 - 9 o'clock gate
In between the main rooms there are small antechambers with one gate in it and defenders to disuade you from going further.
The station dropped a container containing 3 pieces of Gisti loot that should sell for about 1.4billion between them. 250million for the five of us for an evenings work isn't bad!

Joining BSCL

Slayfoe's Bull was a year in SI Radio. I got to play in Providence, Great Wildlands and then Tenerifis. It was my first nullsec outing (WormHole space is different in my eyes) and showed me what Eve Online has to offer at the deep end. I can whole-heartedly say that I recommend it to anyone that feels like playing Eve.
For the beginner, it helps to have a few skill points but it isn't strictly necessary. The guidance you get from the corp members will be invaluable. A shield drake is enough to do 0,0 ratting, mining is monetarily rewarding and you can help groups in plexes with salvaging or even a bit of dps. But above all you will learn game skills that you'll never get in Empire - scouting, agression mechanics, sovereignty mechanics and fleet survival skills. You'll also make friends because you will be relying on people like you never have to in Empire.
Once you get used to living in NBSI (Not Blue, Shoot It!) coming back to Empire for the odd shopping trip is strange. Space is crowded, you can't ses everyone in local and you can buy anything you please at your local supermarket system. But best of all, the Empire folks will buy anything you bring back from deep null sec, generally ABC ores.
When you live in nullsec you live a different game, who is at war with who matters. Will the station you logged off in before the weekend still be yours in Monday evening? Will your space be full of roaming gangs? Has your alliance decided to take space from someone? You check the sov maps daily, you keep and eye on the rag called Eve24 and ensure your escape routes are clear. The really organised make an alt able to pilot a jumpfrieghter and ensure you live within jump distance of low-sec, but that requires money and time. Well organised corporations will offer this logistical ability to their members.
But the good times come to an end. In my case we lost the head of our corporation and alliance. And with the head cut off, the body failed. So now Slayfoe's Bull runs with BSCL out of Deklein, a good bunch of friendly players willing to help each other out and not take anything too seriously.

Not a Failscade

Players of Eve Online tend to be of the more dedicated, even serious, types of gamers. Sometimes we take a break, sometimes real life intrudes but on the whole a lot of us have played and invested in the game quite heavily. This is particularly true once you take sov in null-sec and the reason it hurts all the more to be kicked back to Empire by the Red Juggernaut.

It looks like the final station timer on our erstwhile home of KW-0AM will happen shortly and there is nothing, absolutely nothing that we can do about it. In my mind we would all go down in flames fighting to the last Stealth Bomber in a guerilla harrassement campaign, getting back to the station by pod express. Of course saner minds prevailed and all assets have been evacuated back to Empire space.

The downside to this orderly withdrawal has been the end of the alliance. We didn't fight together to hold the space so we disperse on the wind with well-meaning goodbyes and fly safes. The more aggressive immediately seeking out other null-sec homes, the more industrious to the ice belts of Empire Space.

A Failscade can be defined as the end of an alliance in an undignified manner. Perhaps not an appropriate description in this case so lets just call it a fitting end to a null sec adventure.

It is called a 0,0 lagfest for a reason...

Last night we participated in the defence of 46DP in southern Tenerifis as part of the -A- block. The station was coming out of reinforced at about 2300 suiting late Euro/ early American tz. With 2 hours to go various fleets had accumulated round the area, an -A- BS fleet, a carrier triage fleet to rep the station and a sub-capital fleet made up of associated coalition alliances.
With 30 minutes to go local spiked from 600 to 1200 and the fight was on. Red Alliance entered 46DP-0(Tenerifis) from 77S8-E(Detorid), bubbles went up, defense warped to the gate, the overview loaded and for the next 30minutes it was very hard to ascertain what had happened. Brackets are off, overview is limited to enemy logistics targets and still it is hard to make out what is happening. Your modules appear to cycle, from time to time apparently random damage registers, your ship keeps going in whatever direction it was going when you entered grid. I am fortunate to have a second computer with another client running in the home station and kept expecting to see my main appear in the clone bay.
After an hour I logged off to see if it made a difference and on re logging I found my stealth bomber off station, apparently I had warped there sometime in the last hour. The fleet is a mess, wing commander slots are mainly empty, fleet bonuses are apparently not being passed on. I warp back to the engagement by warping to a fleet member that is cosying up to Red Avatar. As local begins to drop from 1300 towards 1100 things begin to move again. Overview appears to be more 'correct' than the visual however you still get plenty of messages saying that so and so is no longer on grid when he is still in overview. Trying to find a target on grid becomes the priority. Unfortunately for the titan pilot, he is the biggest thing reliably rendered on everyones screen, he is called primary, various reports of how far he is in shields/ armour/ structure are called then he is no longer there.
An anxious wait later and he appears on the killboards! First titan on our killboard, though I doubt my railguns did more then scratch his paintwork... then again maybe a hybrid antimatter shot penetrated the backup reactor through an emergency exhaust at the end of a trench...
A bit of chasing ensued as the remnants of White Noise and Red sub capital fleets made for adjacent systems, SBUs dropped last Monday by the invaders popped in quick succession. Yours truly ended up in the wrong system and while admiring the titan killmail (read: trying to find how much damage I had done :-) I get popped by a small gang. It is 2 in the morning, time to call it a night.

Astarte Ratting Ship (Angel Space)

So why am I using an Astarte as a ratting ship? Well, I am Gallente and am fed up ratting in an Ishtar (even Beserkers IIs take forever to break an Angel BS tank). So next class up is battlecruiser and their tech 2 brethren, the command ship. Enter the Astarte.
At the moment it appears to me to be a tech2 Brutix, full rack of medium neutron blasters with improved resistances inherent to a tech2 ship. The first time I took it out, I MWD over to the rat BS, opened up with the blasters and was a bit disappointed. As usual I have over-tanked it. The rats shot away the shields and made no in road into the armour with only 1 rep running.

Astarte: current fit
Highs-----------------------
7 x heavy neutron blaster II
Mediums---------------------
10MN MWD II
Tracking SomethingOrOther
Lows------------------------
MAR II
MAR II
EANM II
Explosive Hardener II
Tracking computer II
Rigs------------------------
CCC
Grid augmentation rig
Drones----------------------
5 x Hammerhead II
Ammo------------------------
Faction antimatter
tracking script

I noticed that tracking the Angel BS are not a problem, so I can probably remove the tracking devices. On top of this I'll give the null a go, even with it's tracking penalty I should be able to hit the big ships. The only problem will be if I miss local spiking and get jumped.

Astarte: modified for ratting
Highs-----------------------
7 x heavy neutron blaster II
Mediums---------------------
10MN MWD II
Tracking Somethingorother
*Web II*
Cap recharger II
Lows------------------------
MAR II
EANM II
Explosive Hardener II
*2 x Magnetic stabiliser II*
Rigs------------------------
CCC
Grid augmentation rig
Drones----------------------
*5 x warrior II*
*5 x EC-300 Hornets*
Ammo------------------------
*Null*

This set up assumes no problem with tracking, or if necessary a web to hold the warp scrambling frigates in place while I blast them. It 'might' even catch an interceptor/ Dramiel. I have changed the medium drones for more smaller ones. That the can catch the small fast rat frigates and any Dramiel that jumps me. I also have the back up of EC-300 drones if I want a chance at getting out of there with my expensive ship :-)

Command Ship (Carraig naTairbhe)

With 11m skillpoints in leadership Carraig has been trained up to support Slay while in system either siting in an Orca or, ideally, a command ship. Seeing has how shields are the flavour of the month out in Tenerefis I should choose the Caldari Vulture which has bonuses to its shield warfare command modules. Carraig already has the command skill but this isn't enough! Command ships have requirements beyond those that of the Command Ship skill - namely racial cruiser V, logistics IV and all the support skills required for this (long range targeting V).
Because I ignored cruisers with Carraig and jumped straight to BCs, I never bothered with any racial cruiser (BC is non-racial). As such I can make the decision to specialise in any racial and Caldari seems like the best bet though Minnie was close behind. Caldari Cruiser V will get me access to both the Vulture (shield command ship) and the Basilisk (shield logistic ship).
So 9 days to long range targeting and then a decision: 27 days to wing command V (allowing fleet command and multiple wings) or skip that and go straight to ship command (perception and willpower) for Caldari Cruiser V and Command Ship V.

Command Ships (Slayfoe's Bull)

I have always liked battlecruisers, enough cpu and powergrid to fit a full rack of guns while not requiring large gun skills. My first was a Myrmidon which saw me through my early carebear days missioning out of Auvergne as an armour tanked, multi-purpose dps/ salvage ship able to do L3 missions with ease. After a while I looked into passive shield tanking, my beautiful Myrmidon was re-modelled and I no longer had to switch out hardeners for the different missions. In fact, it's tank is so hard, there are only a few L4 missions that can't be done without warping out.
In those days 100m isk seemed like a lot of money and tech2 command ships seemed beyond what I could afford so I went down the route of heavy assault cruisers (the Ishtar is THE perfect Gallente passive shield mission boat). Now, thanks to a few iskies made from selling prime arkonor, Slay is the proud owner of an Astarte, the tech2 version of the Brutix. Much to my disappointment, the first Angel BS I came across in the belts of KW didn't melt on the first volley, or the second.
I have always protected my investments (roaming BC are considered throw-away) by overtanking them. Looks like I will have to drop the second armour rep for a magstab, perhaps lose the EANM2 for another and load up on faction antimatter. I might even lose the tracking computer for a third magstab... After all, I am only really after the BS in the belts, the smaller stuff can simply be ignored or, if warp scrambling, taken out with warrior2s.
Drone complement: EC-300 Hornets x5, Warrior II x5.

Alliance Drama

You find a nice group to play with, you have a good work/ play balance, your character isn't broke, excitement comes calling at least once an evening and you like the people on teamspeak.
Then the powers that be announce change. One of the corporations that make up the alliance is leaving. Unfortunately they are taking with them the services they provided: empire logistics and a mineral buy/sell programme, both of which made life in nullsec a lot easier.
Unfortunately I had sold the programme 45m trit the night before along with 340m iskies worth of ark, bistot and miscellaneous stuff. The high end stuff isn't a problem, but replacing the trit in KW is going to be much harder. So not only can I not make ships, I can't import them.
Boo.
The other side is the lose of people. I don't like mentioning individuals usually but Jovial Krill [Ro5] has been exceedingly good company and we will miss him on TS.
Double boo.

Life in Null Sec (part 1)

I joined SI Radio when they decided to have a go at the null sec game and looked for volunteers to join.
Providence
At that time CVA had been chased from Providence and SIRadio had acquired the rights to a few systems there. About a week after I arrived I was scrambling along with the rest to evacuate back to high sec as the latest (I believe it was Kadeshi?) round of conquering capsuleers took over.
Great WildLands
So while alternative arrangements were sought, I reactivated my alt, bought an Orca, polished my exploration skills and began exploration. I was just getting used to entering low-sec when our great leaders arranged space in The Great WildLands, NPC null sec in the east. That was my first experience of being (a small) part of larger fleets. The local alliance we were friendly with were called Old Republic? and had some moderately successful fleet commanders.
Tenerifis
However this stopgap came to an end when Against All Authorities (-A-) reconquered space taken from them by The Initiative in the South. SIRadio formed SI Alliance and became a renter in Tenerifis, the marches of -A- space. For a while we settled in, mined the prime arkonor, ratted and had a go at local exploration.
At that point the anomoly nerf took place and the true sec of a system suddenly mattered again. No longer was it enough to have any old nullsec system and simply upgrade it. To maximise profits alliances wanted -10 truesec systems. This had an enourmous effect on all alliances as the map of what was valuable changed overnight. -A- found Tenerifis more valuable than Catch, renters moved out and -A- alts moved in.
Then as the war that ended NC up north got serious, -A- moved in to retake the rest of Tenerifis. It was pushing an open door, there was no resistance and the Region changed ownership over a fortnight.
Of course, once the steamroller is moving, it is hard to stop and Detorid has even better true sec than Tenerifis...

Life in Null Sec (Part 2)

Detorid
In Spring 2011 Tenerifis and Detorid were largely owned by White Noise. They has gone north to take out the NC and claim their Technetium moons leaving almost no one at home to mind the fort.
-A- organised small/ medium corporations to move into this space. SI Alliance was part of this push along with SOB, Imperial Order and various others. Space was divided out, SOB were going to get the valuable low true sec systems down south and SI Alliance got various ones up north on the border with Red Alliance Space. I helped take our Detorid base system went on holiday and came back to find that the alliance had helped itself to a further 20ish systems.
Unfortunately for us, the NC had failscaded and the PVPers from the grand eastern coalition that were looking for fights came back south to retake Detorid. They brought with them their IWIN buttons, supercapitals.
SuperCapitals
It is hard to explain to someone not used to nullsec just how good these beasts are. They are summoned straight onto the field of battle from several systems out by a cyno boat. They deploy fighters and bombers which are in effect giant drones with the toughness of a cruiser in flights of up to about 20. They are immune to ECM, they have millions of hit points, they have special repair bonuses and are in effect untouchable to an alliance the size of SI. Naturally they roams in packs.
The Goonswarm have managed to counter them in the last month by deploying hundreds of battleships with massive alpha strikes. This allows a fleet of sub-capitals to take down capitals without them getting the chance to repair.
Our Detorid adventure lasted about a month, now it is full of Red Alliance renter corporations and a place for us to roam. SI Alliance is back in KW licking its wounds, making money and readying itself for the apparantly inevitable invasion by Red once the situation between them and the GoonSwarm resolves itself.

Tenerifis

Tenerifis is conquerable nullsec in the south of the cluster. It is a long chain with small loops off the main chain and with some small branches.
The Angel Cartel are omni-present. According to the forums one of the Angel Officers has been present in this region - I've never seen him!.

Stations:

10 outposts in the region at the moment spread from the top to the bottom. These have all the services you will need (if you can get to them!)

Players:

Situation as of April 2011
In April 2011 it is divided between AAA renters (AAA Citizens) and White Noise. EON are a small French Alliance in the centre. Very much a NRSI policy in effect with effective intel channel through the region.
Situation as of July 2011The area is under control of -A- renting out systems to SI Alliance (around KW), EON (near DG7) and others down south. It is at the border of -A- and Red Alliance space.


The region is DANGEROUS.

Connections:

To the north and east, Tenerifis connects to Immensea (2 connections, one at each side of the region) and Detorid.
To the south and west, Tenerifis connects to Impass, Omist and Feythabolis.
To the north and west, Tenerifis connects to Catch.

Central Angel Sparkling Tower - Radar Plex

Radar in 0,0

Hordes and hordes of small frigates and cruisers with a ring of missile towers. Some webbing, some target painting, no obvious warp distrupting. Clear the nasties and you can use a codebreaker on various Angel computery gadgets. On cracking open the Angel Database 4 more cruisers warp in - but by then I had looted the database and was off with my loot!

Loot

Datacore - Nuclear Physics x 14
Datacore - Mechanical Engineering x 9
Decryptors - Minmater, Advanced Theories
Decryptors - Minmater, Circuitry Schematics
Skillbook - Minmater Encryption Methods
Cryptics Data Interface Blueprint
Materials and Compounds - Construction Alloy x 85
Materials and Compounds - Data Processor x 94
Materials and Compounds - Electric Conduit x 96
Materials and Compounds - Mechanical Parts x 71

Ship

Passive shield Ishtar with codebreaker II, prototype cloaking device and 3 x 220mm projectile weapons.

Angel Cartel Naval Shipyard

Where: Tenerifis

How: scanned down an unknown signature in a Helios  (Slay needed to bring Sister Probes down to 0.25au with very good probing skills and cov ops V!)

When: 15th March 2011

Description: So while searching for WH for the corp to pillage Slay came across this DED rated 10/10 complex. Enough people were on line, Errik volunteered to tank, two were volunteered to do the logisitics and everyone else outfitted in dps. Eight warped to the complex deadspace gate, Eric warped in to get the aggro, we followed and in short order we had chewed up the rats.

Loot: Most the bosses refused to drop anything, we got the static drops of overseer stuff, some T2 loot of one of the bosses but it wasn't till the last boss that it became worth doing. This one dropped a Marcharial bpc along with some x-gisti shield somthingorother. It went into the pot, Errik volunteered to jump to high-sec to sell it off and distribute the loot.

We each made some million from bouties, there was a load of salvage but until the final loot stuff is sold and distributed it remains a corp group pve exercise.

Suggestions for CCP: harden the fuck up! Unlike sleepers rats there was no aggro switching and the whole thing was a walk in the park - the rats shot the unbreakable tank - we shot the rats. The whole exercise could be done with 2? boats if you were willing to take your time about it - 1 tank with drone dps and 1 logi with drone dps - mind you it really would take a while...

Last thoughts: apparantly you need a Leadership of V to be able to enter these 10/10 DED complexes. A shout out to Luminous Ardokay for for his reading of the colour text :)

Back to Wormholing

When: Wednesday 10th March 2011
Where: J140135 entrance in JK-Q77
Who:
Sarek - cov ops/ stealth/ industrial
Sakisakhr - Nemesis, then another Nemesis :)
Slayfoe - Myrmidon gas miner
Carraig naTairbhe - Myrmidon gas miner
N'ascent - Cov ops
What happened: logged in to find Sarek and N'ascent playing with a cov ops from a C5 WH in JK. Joined the chase round the system before the intruder headed back for the WH and wasn't seen again. The WH had 13 anomolies, 1 grav and 12ish ladar sites - none with C320 or C540 that the corp required. Sakissakhr made the POS owner happy when he got the might of THIS FULLY OPERATIONAL deathstar in the face and got one-shotted while admiring the Moros in the shields.
Slay drained a Sizeable Perimiter Reservoir with 2 x gas mining Myrmidons - KW really needs some Gas Harvester IIs. Had to go fetch the Ishtar and refit for armour repping to kill 6 sleeper frigates.

Anomaly levels

Easiest
(Faction) Burrow
(Faction) Hideaway
(Faction) Refuge
(Faction) Den
(Faction) Yard
(Faction) Rally Point
(Faction) Port
(Faction) Hub
(Faction) Haven
(Faction) Sanctum
Hardest

NullSec Anomalies

After having spent a month exploring high-sec and dipping my toe into low-sec, I am trying out nullsec exploration. It is, as one might imagine, a TOTALY different kettle of fish. I brought an Ishtar out here and dropped into an Angel Haven to have a go. Two volleys from the defenders and I fled flames following me all the way back to the repair-shop.

So last night I tried again in a Dominix with a corp member, Avail, in a dps Mymidon. The dual LARII tank was severely tested and at one point we had to warp out, recover and come back in. Angel rats put out a range of damage, stacking explosive hardeners doesn't do it.

The long and short of it is: need to improve speed/reward ratio, we simply didn't make that much money in the hour we shot the angels. To improve I plan to change my Dominix so that:

• it uses explosive drones;
• has three railguns;
• has a cap booster
• take off recharger and replace with webifier

With this ship Slay would be able to do the anomoly I did last night by myself, but it was faster and more fun with someone else.

A New Home in Tenerifis

SI Radio has a new home in KWsomethingorother in Tenerifis. Sitting in the middle of the system is an outpost held together by duct-tape and magic shields.
The magic shields work like this: When the place belongs to someone else you shoot it. After a while the outpost become invulnerable. After 24ish hours you can shoot the remaining shields off the place. Then, by magic, they spring back to full with your name over the door!
So I sat with 40ish other alliance members at point blank range in a neutron blaster domi with Garde II sentries blasting away. When you don't need any tank they can put out an impressive amount of dps! We then took down the TCU and SBU and all the other TLAs, put up our own and hey presto! We had a home.
The market has a surprising amount of useful stuff on it which surprised me, the repairshop is free, their are plenty of belts, loads of anomolies and more Arkonor than you can possibly mine. It is my first real taste of alliance life in nullsec and so far things have gone quite well. N'Ascent, our inveterate prober found a direct high-sec WH yesterday, took the opportunity to fill up on some bits that I had forgotten to bring out, if that happens much then Arkonor is being shipped straight out to Empire!
We got our moment of fame when we appeared on the login news page and life has settled down remarkably quickly. The alliance certainly needs to recruit some more EU tz peeps but I am enjoying life out in the depths of nullsec.

Cosmic Anomolies

So I thought I would record my exploration activity in order to make sense of it. I already know that I would make more money running L4 missions but then I wouldn't still be playing Eve! I was exploring Placid, a generally quiet part of Gallente low-sec space. Not sure if all low sec is this quiet but I picked here for the twin reasons that it was near and that it had few pilots in it in the last 30 minutes. On such careful research are futures decided!

It quickly turns out to be as empty as Verge Vendor to to take out my frustration I turn on the Seprentis in the local anomolies of which there are LOADS. 6 x Serpentis hideaway, 1 Serpentis refuge and another hideaway later and jackpot! The 7th hideaway spawned a shadow commander, must have been a poor one though, he only had his tag and some small shadow ammo.

Back out and .... Refuge (0.6), S. hideaway and qith a quick visit to Serpents Coil (a local site of interest with very little at it) before finding a S. Forlorn Hideaway (0.6) x 2,  a S. Forsaken Hideaway, a S. Den, another S. Hideaway, and another before hitting 3 refuges in a row. At this point I am no longer picking up the loot or salvaging, just blowing the pirates away.
Then as bed time approaches I do a last s. Refuge and find a Shadow Serpentis Trooper hiding at the back. He had some ammo, his tag and some Shadow Serpentis Reflective Plating (about 4m on contract). At this rate I am getting a Shadow Serpentis Spawn every 7th/ 8th site.
The ammo I am dumping in the Orca, the tags aren't worth anything, the only reason I am doig it is for the drops, and these aren't certain. This certainly has been a good way of making money but I am wandering round areas I wasn't used to and getting more understanding of north west Gallente space.

So, to summarise, Cosmic Anomolies in high-sec aren't worth it, faction spawns are too rare and the loot is frigate sized, salvaging as you go takes too long and the bounties are small.

Another approach to exploring

I had some time to kill this morning so I took out my trusty Helios, scanned myself down the system to find someone had already done it leaving behind WHs and Gravimetric sites. So I went next door to find that there were 3 WHs in system but nothing al that useful for me. The third system in a row eventually yielded a Magnetometric site. Off to get my site running Vexor went I only to fnd that there was only 1 can and it had some second hand stuff in it. Boo.

Rather than log of in disgust I decided to take my frustration out on Serpentis in the local anomolies, of which there were plenty as they appear to be beneath the inhabitents of Placid. I am finishing of the first anomoly when in warps a Shadow Serpentis something-or-other Frigate. 2 passes of the Hobgoblin IIs and his wreck is mine - Shadow Serpentis Explosive Armor Hardener, some Shadow ammo and his tag.

Now perhaps it has happened to me in the past and I haven't been careful about the wrecks that I made, but I didn't know that you could get Shadow Serpentis to spawn in highsec anomolies. Now his loot doesn't amount to a hill of beans (about 4m on contract in Jita) but it is certainly easier than scannign down everything.

So of through high-sec Placid go I. Another 8 anomolies later and no further faction spawn. Now to be fair half of these were Drone Anomolies that don't spawn faction but tongith I'll have to try this out again.

While browsing I found this http://explorationalmanac.blogspot.com/ a very well written guide to becoming Indiana Jones from the word go.

The unprobe-able Proteus

Looks like a recent patch made unprobe-able ships a thing of the past....


[Proteus, Unprobable Explorer]
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Armor Thermic Hardener II
Armor Kinetic Hardener II
Medium Armor Repairer II

Conjunctive Magnetometric ECCM Scanning Array I
Conjunctive Magnetometric ECCM Scanning Array I
Conjunctive Magnetometric ECCM Scanning Array I
10MN Afterburner II
Codebreaker II

Heavy Neutron Blaster I, Antimatter Charge M
Heavy Neutron Blaster I, Antimatter Charge M
Heavy Neutron Blaster I, Antimatter Charge M
Heavy Neutron Blaster I, Antimatter Charge M
Heavy Neutron Blaster I, Antimatter Charge M
Salvager II

Hybrid Collision Accelerator I
Capacitor Control Circuit I
Capacitor Control Circuit I

Proteus Defensive - Adaptive Augmenter
Proteus Electronics - Dissolution Sequencer
Proteus Propulsion - Gravitational Capacitor
Proteus Offensive - Dissonic Encoding Platform
Proteus Engineering - Capacitor Regeneration Matrix

The Unprobe-able Ishtar

This ship cannot be scanned down with probes.  Apparantly when the ratio of the ships signature radius to it's sensor strength drops below 1.08ish, it becomes impossible to find with probes even with implants, max skills and the best equipment in the game. Quick research later and it becomes clear that not many fit the bill, the most quoted being the Tengu, the Caldari tech 3 cruiser. But also on the list is the Ishtar:

On non-tech 3 ships not much can be done to reduce signature radius (warfare link that reduces signature appears to be it), but the sensor strength can be increased with ECCM modules (mid slots) and backup arrays (low slot). 

Difficulty with the Ishtar is it's offensive drones can be probed making it silly to make the main ship unprobe-able. Anyhow, here is the fit atm:

 [Ishtar, Unprobable]
Medium Armor Repairer II
Magnetometric Backup Array II
Armor Thermic Hardener II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Damage Control II

Conjunctive Magnetometric ECCM Scanning Array I
Conjunctive Magnetometric ECCM Scanning Array I
Conjunctive Magnetometric ECCM Scanning Array I
10MN Afterburner II
Codebreaker II

Salvager II
Small Tractor Beam I
200mm Prototype I Gauss Gun, Antimatter Charge M
200mm Prototype I Gauss Gun, Antimatter Charge M
200mm Prototype I Gauss Gun, Antimatter Charge M

Capacitor Control Circuit I
Capacitor Control Circuit I


Hammerhead II x5
Vespa EC-600 x5
Warrior II x5
Ogre II x3
Hammerhead II x5

Exploration

I have played Eve for a while now, occassionally letting it slide when life gets busy but always coming back to it. Most of this time I have spent in Gallente highsec missioning slowly building up a few ships and skilsl to fly them. I then shifted to wh space and spent a few months there before getting bored of waiting for guild members to log on. This time in WH space did cause me to buy a second account that spawned a fully capable miner and now orca pilot. I then wandered of to Red v Blue to pvp some before joining SiRadio for some 0,0 shenanigans. unfortunately they were turfed out of Providence shorlty after I arrived. After a while in the Great Wildlands I returned to high sec to try out exploration.

I immediatly got lucky as the first site turned into an escalation, it wandered through Gallente space and eventually out into low sec. I managed bought myself a lowly cruiser so not as to risk my shiny Ishtar and pulled it off for some nice shiny loot that sold for enough to cover an unfortunate foray into WH space where I lost my Ishatar. Haven't managed to get to lucky since.

In an effort to up my success rate I decided to have a look at Placid, Gallente low sec with a high sec island in it. Like many explorers before me I came across a few problems. To scan I use my rigged Helios with Sister Launcher and probes, this with the recent skillpoint re-imbursement due to the learning skills being removed has me scanning things down quite easily. Once promising sites have been bookmarked I then return to a local station to pick up a combat/ exploration ship...

For high-sec my combat ship was passive shield Ishtar which was over tanked for anything it came up against. But an Ishtar is quite expensive to be flying through low sec so I began to look round for something else and came across the ship that cannot be scanned out with probes, the unprobe-able ship. Whatever is chosen it must be able to fight battleships spawns not unlike L4 missions, this rules out T1 cruisers. On the list is:

Myrmidon BC: dual rep set up with codebreaker, analyzer, salvager, drones and blasters - to hell with the signature radius, cheap
Ishtar HAC: high armour resists, single MAR, exchangeable mid slot, 3 rails - medium expense, not probe-able, drones a risk
Proteus T3C: high armour resists, single MAR, exchangeable mid slot, 5 heavy neutrons, not probe-able, no drones, v.expensive

Exploration: Serpentis Phi Outpost

Well the exploration game continues with mixed results. Needless to say the first rush of success has not been followed up, it turns out that escalations are not common. however I have got much better at the scanning.
Yesterday I logged on to discover that Carriag had come first in Aelius' lottery that he held to celebrate playing the game so long. 600million ISK! I have never even had half of that in one place before :) So with my new found wealth I went back to doing exactly what I did before - exploration.
Serpentis Phi Outpost had a nice juicy battleship that dropped Overseerer Effects - a type of tag that local NCP bought for 1.2m which on-top of the 2.5m bounty for the ship made it a very juicy BS indeed! He also dropped a Corelum medium remote armour repairer, seems that remote repairers are a trend.
Today I found a Magnometric Site - needed to get down to 0.25AU with my Sister Probes to find it - nothing remarkable except for the whole idea that developers will hide aspects of their game and make it hard to discover back story. 5 containers to salvage, 4 contained tech 1 salvage, no hostiles.