An SI Radio Roam in the Great Wildlands

So Sunday night rolled round and I was fortunate enough to be able to log and play with SI Radio. The first corp roam I had participated with in Null Sec. Nothing is ever simple in Eve. The fleet was split in two with half in Teon the other half in N-D so first order of the day was to regroup. Naturally the half in null sec ran smack into a Brick Squad (Red) gang at the second gate. Some had aggessed, some hadn't. Those that hadn't aggressed managed to jump through up the pipe to Teon leaving the rest on N-D the side.

We spent the rest of the evening playing with the Brick Squad and other reds coming down from Etherium Reach. Result: 1 Republic Firetail (Minie faction frigate) 1 Vagabond (Minie Heavy Assault) and 1 Hurricane (Minie Battlecruiser) on their side to 1 Crusader (Amarr interceptor) and 1 Omen (Amarr cruiser) on our side. Materially we came of the better though for a while it looked like I was going to add my Myrmidon to the loses, after all I still hadn't taken part in a fleet op in GW without losing a ship!

We had a series of fc, Errik did very well, Stryker had a go. We were safe and got our kills in ambushes. We took our loses to another Brick Squad gang in small fast ships that would land and get away before we could target.

We had rolled out in an armour BC fleet with plenty of dps, an Onieros doing armour reps and two cov ops for scouts. The scouts were deployed ahead and behind. They did an excellent job. out forward scout in particular, Lynn, did an excellent job at reporting targets.

The BC was a mixed bag, plenty of drones, short range and medium range guns. vv01r in the Crusader was the fastest ship we had but wasn't enough to catch the small fast ships coming though the gate. We were 14 ships for most of the roam.

In summary: though we were short a method of locking and tackling very fast ships we got some victims and had a very enjoyable evening.

Taking down the Sansha

Well the Sansha decided to attack and made a slight tactical error. 

It all started a bit earlier as the word got out that an anomoly had been spotted near Amarr. Quickly space began to fill with capsuleers all out to kick Sansha back to where they came from... at least 99% of capsuleers, well maybe 95%...

As local filled with capsuleers the inevitable happened and someone targetted someone else. Several misunderstandings later Concord were on the scene. Quite near the wormhole as it turned out. So as the last Sansha battleship died and the Sansha Carrier deployed, it deployed quite close to Concord. And then the carrier opened up with smartbombs. 

Needless to say Sansha will need to revise their modus operandi, aswell as find a new carrier...

On the positive side my sentry drones managed to knock some paint work off the carrier so SI Radio got on the killmail and Slay's personel performance shot up to 98%. Only one way for that indicator to go...

SI Wormholing

 SI Radio went sperlunking. And it was in style! No RR Domi fleet for this corporation, tech 3 cruisers with logistic backup dove into a type 5 and set about clearing the sites.

The corporation lends the ships to the members for corporation ops. I was lent a Blaster Proteus. I must say Slay felt quite naked with only 35k armour between him and the sleepers. The usual RR dominix had at least twice that amount. Bu the logistics were easily able to keep up, even when a trigger was set off early the gang never got into difficulty.

The other difference from a RR Domi gang was that I had to chase sleepers to get them into range of my blasters. But once I did the damage was impressive ~450 while in sleeper armour and up to 1600 while in sleeper structure.

It went well and we cleared two sites in just over an hour. I retired to bed then but all in all SI Radio proved that they knew what they are about in wspace.

First night in 0,0 fleet

Well even after playing Eve intermittently for three years there is lots I have not yet done. Slayfoe's Bull has recently joined SI Radio and moved down to Providence to take part in the local wars.

SI Radio live in Noir Space in Providence and take active part in defending this space. So last night I joined up and went to look at how things are done. I was given access to the Noir vent and shadowed the fleet in my Nemesis stealth bomber until I had an idea what was needed and wasn't about to make a fool of myself or SI Radio.

tltr version: I need to get myself a long range POS bashing machine - they were all using Drakes, I suspect the passive shielded Myrmidon would do just nicely with some long range guns and sentries. You have to be able to target the POS tower to damage it's shields - and blasters just don't have the range.

Lesson learnt: I need more ships.

Goal - ships for Providence

Myrmidon

Passive shielded POS basher with sentries and rails or artillery, Something that can target and hit a POS tower from outside the shields or about 40k - about 60mISKies

Ishtar

Passive shielded Ishtar for running Cosmic Anomolies - hard to do these in a Thorax - about 110mISKies

Proteus

Wormhole operations ship - about 400mISKies

Slayfoe joins SI Radio

Well, here I am again updating Slayfoe's blog. He has decided to leave his friends in MNEE behind for a shot at 0,0 fun in Providence. While working in Dublin I got listening to podcasts and very much liked Planet Risk. They kept me sane while filling out concrete panels schedules!

SI Radio are based in Providence under the protective umbrella of Noir Mercenary Corporation. Of course maybe this is the Noir Protection Racket Corporation, who am I to say? Either way I was interviewed, accepted and have spent the last night station spinning while going through the required reading in the forums. Hopefully when I get back from a weekend on the continent I will actually get to do something with them!

Pretty pictures will have to wait till then.

Eve trading: Ships

I strikes me that trading ships is out of my league because of lack of capital that I really don’t want tied up in ships sitting in stations waiting for people to want to buy them. I understand that making tech 1 ships is fiercely competitive and tech 2 ships are out of my league.


I thought there might be a market is shipping some cruiser hulls into Providence and selling them in the CVA stations. Carraig should be able to fit about 4 or 5 of them into and Itty therefore risking about 30m a run. Say I sell them for 1m mark-up I need to make many safe runs to make this worthwhile. Eve-central shows this might not be very promising.

This is a snap shot of ships being flown taken from the 2009 Q3 Economic Report released by CCP.

Ship type	No. of ships	% of total
Hulk	16,258	2.49%
Drake	13,628	2.09%
Kestrel	11,269	1.73%
Rifter	10,998	1.69%
Retriever	8,923	1.37%
Raven	8,677	1.33%
Dominix	7,056	1.08%
Catalyst	6,866	1.05%
Bestower	6,680	1.02%
Condor	6,576	1.01%
Rookie ships, shuttles and capsules	276,002	42.32%
Other	279,205	42.81%
Total:	652,138	100%

Ships that I have both the ability to move in quantity and capital to buy include the Kestrel (Caldari Frigate), the Rifter (Minnie frigate) and the Punisher (Amarr frigate).

The Rifter is infamous as the best frigate for PVP and piracy. As such this should sell well in low and null sec trade hubs. According to Eve-Central the market in Providence is all ready well supplied at very competitive prices. There is a lot of movement in Tourier/ Alentene because of the Red v Blue.

Not sure what the Kestrel is used for and who flies it. It is a shield missile boat that fills the slot occupied by the Incursus in the Caldari line up. It appears to be sold everywhere.

The Punisher is the top of the line Amarr frigate (occupying the Tristan spot for the Gallente readers). It has a very nice armour bonus and is known for it’s ability to take punishment but not able to keep up with other frigates.

In conclusion
For the purpose of making money with the capital I have, ships does not appear to be the way to go. They are expensive, in good supply and bulky to move.

A look at trading in Eve

One of the various activities that I haven’t yet approached in Eve is trading. Seeing has how both characters are approaching their goals of having multiple R&D agents working for them, I am looking round for another goal. Trading might be suitable.

I suspect that I am like many people, I look through my hangar at the mess, shuffle it into containers and forget what is in what container. At the moment the containers are labelled, ‘Valuables’, ‘Recycle’, ‘Salvage’ and ‘Fittings’. When I am short money I go to the containers and starting at the top start selling to whoever is buying in Auvergne, Sinq Liason that day. I strongly suspect that this isn’t the path to riches, at least not for me, the guy buying the stuff off me probably carts it off to Jita and makes a nice mark-up.

So the next few blogs will be a brain dump on this subject. Any comments that anyone might have are welcome (Drifnir…)

Just because I have a nice screenshot I am tacking this onto the bottom – yes it is possible to fly through a hollow asteroid!

To get a handle on the market I am dividing I into the following categories.

1. Ammo & Drones
2. Ships
3. Tank modules
4. Gank modules
5. ECM and other specialised electronic stuff (hacking, archaeology, salvaging)
6. Implants
7. Manufacturing and invention

I will examine each of these areas in the following blogs keeping to 1 subject per page so I can update and correct areas as the trading experiment goes on.