And then I discovered Vindicators

I have been playing Eve Online on and off for four years. In that time I have never been rich. Money flows through my wallet with such surprising ease that I have never had 1 billion in my wallet. It was during a corp day (taxes bumped up to 100% in order to raise cash for the corp) that I first watched a Vindicator in action. It was scary. They can single shot battlecruisers and make light of battleships. I had to have one.
The problem - the hull alone costs just over 1 billion. To fit it out correctly costs another 2 billion.
The solution - sell everything that looked vaguable valuable from my hangars. The Gila BPC, shadow serpentis disruptors, a plex that I got from a buddy programme and the real boost - a snake omega implant that dropped on Sir Question as he casually flew into a Placid icebelt and found a Shadow Serpentis waiting. It went to Jita and made 420million for the Vindi fund.

Loosing one of these to a hot drop while ratting will cost you a 250m fine in BSCL so you want to be a bit careful how you use it. I have mine fitted out with tech II gear atm and for the first time in Eve I am looking at purple loot as more than something to make a money out of. I am looking at fitting faction and deadspace mods to a ship I fly. For PVE it turns out that shields are the way to go. These leaves your low slots available for magstabs and tracking enhancers - Gurista melting modules or cash making modules. This is the way I plan to proceed. Make enought money to buy a set of three Fed Navy magstabs. Then slowly upgrade my shield booster and only then, if I am feeling flush, invest in a set of Crystal implants for a clone.

[Vindicator, Vindicator PVE]
Federation Navy Magnetic Field Stabilizer
Federation Navy Magnetic Field Stabilizer
Federation Navy Magnetic Field Stabilizer
Tracking Enhancer II
Tracking Enhancer II
Tracking Enhancer II
Damage Control II

Large Shield Booster II
Shield Boost Amplifier II
Heavy Capacitor Booster II, Cap Booster 800
Kinetic Deflection Field II
Thermic Dissipation Field II

Neutron Blaster Cannon II, Void L
Neutron Blaster Cannon II, Void L
Neutron Blaster Cannon II, Void L
Neutron Blaster Cannon II, Void L
Neutron Blaster Cannon II, Void L
Neutron Blaster Cannon II, Void L
Neutron Blaster Cannon II, Void L
Neutron Blaster Cannon II, Void L

Large Anti-Thermic Pump I
Large Anti-Kinetic Pump I
Large Hybrid Collision Accelerator I


Hammerhead II x5
Hobgoblin II x5
Vespa EC-600 x5

This set up gives me just under 20m a tick. I am told that once I know what i am doing this should reach closer to 40m a tick. Insane, just insane money.

Low sec exploration

A colleague expressed and interest in Eve.
1 buddy account later... I am bumming round Gallente low sec in a character I made, but never used, in 2008 before CCP changed the character generation system. I am flying a Federation Navy Comet, he is flying a Celestis cruiser. To anyone casually checking out my character (as I do to anyone that enters the low sec system I am scanning in!) they will see a 2008 character that has never left the Federation Navy. Of course the reality is that the character has only 900k skill points. This takes some adjusting to when you are used to your main having 60million skillpoints!

The path I took the first time I played Eve was pretty usual, high sec mission running avoiding low-sec as if it had the plague. On the other hand, my colleague has lost 3 cruisers to other players in low sec inside the first two weeks, but half a plex accounts for a lot of cruisers so he isn't yet deterred. Joining him in low sec was a revelation. Whereas I am used to living in wormholes, highsec and denseley inhabited null sec (Deklein) I have had little experience of low-sec. So it came as a great surprise to find that most systems I enter have multiple signatures in them. Discard a quarter of them to wormholes, another quarter to ladar (gas) and gravimetric (mining) sites and you are left with a nice amount of unknown, radar and magnet sites.
You have to be selective about the sites you run, the Comet is a fabulous ship but a little low in the dps when it comes to taking out 200k bounty cruiser/ battlecuiser rats. However, unguarded radar sites are just money waiting to be scanned out.
The real jackpot came when I jumped to an ice belt to see what was there. Waiting for me was a Shadow Serpentis cruiser with a tag, a Serpentis EANM, faction ammo AND a low grade snake omega implant. That NEVER seems to happen in null sec. So it came about that my lowly starting toon is funding a Vindicator for my null sec main.

Here is how I have fitted it out. EFT says it has a dps of 43(150mm rails with spike) + 27.7(hobgoblin II drones) and can do 2852m/s with very little navigation skills. Killing things is simply a case of orbitting at 25-30km and shooting them outside their range. No rat can come close to touching me and I only scan from a safe moving upwards at 400m/s. Anyone else enters local I keep an eye out for probes but in faction warfare systems (which seem to have the most signatures!) no one seems bothered about scanning people out.

[Federation Navy Comet, Comet lowsec explorer]
Damage Control II
Small Armor Repairer II
Shadow Serpentis Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane
Adaptive Nano Plating II

1MN MicroWarpdrive II
Cap Recharger II
Codebreaker I

150mm Railgun II, Spike S
150mm Railgun II, Spike S
Sisters Core Probe Launcher, Sisters Core Scanner Probe I

Small Ancillary Current Router I
Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I
[empty rig slot]

Hobgoblin I x3

Sad to say, CCP removed the flashy blue light from the model in game...