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.