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.