First trip into 0.0 sec

The Surkanan Alliance that MNEE (Slayfoe’s corporation) joined is friendly with a 0.0 space alliance called CVA. They control a part of the Providence Region at the south end of Amarr Empire space, not far from Tash-Murkon. The nice thing about CVA is that they have an anti-pirate policy and allow anyone into their space that obeys their rules.

So I fleeted up with Jayden and Smint on Sunday, jump cloned down to Surkanan and travelled south to the edge of Empire Space. I took Hazelnut II, a blaster fit Thorax with cloak, stab and inappropriate tank. Unusually, Providence space edges onto high-sec space in a system called Kish or Kesh or some such name. It turned out that the adrenaline of travelling towards 0,0 space was worse that actually jumping out of empire. No one was waiting there or anywhere up the short line of systems to Deliverance, a CVA outpost in Providence. They charged 22,400ISK to dock, repair doesn’t seem extraordinarily expensive but they don’t have a market.

With the station bookmarked we wandered of to a dead-end tube and went ratting (killing pirates for bounty). Where the largest pirate I have seen in low-sec was a battle-cruiser, we were treated to battleship spawns in 0.0 space. The spawns are Sansha Nation ships – delivering E/M and thermal death – hence my need to refit a decent tank against these damage types. The spawns come in various sizes:

1 battleship with accompanying 3 frigates
2 battleships with accompanying 3 cruisers
2 cruisers (possibly battle-cruisers) with 3 accompanying frigates
1 cruiser with 2 frigates
5 cruisers/ battle-cruisers

I can handle spawn 1, 3 and 4. Battleships are not a problem once you get up close and orbit them – they simply can’t hit a cruiser. Cruisers and battle-cruisers are a real problem though – they can melt me. The battleships have bounties of between 500k and 950k. It really makes sense with this sort of return to rat by yourself or with no more than 1 other person. You can make money quickly but can’t get rid of the loot, there are a lot of un-looted wrecks floating round space waiting to be salvaged.

Once I get some decent money together I am thinking of coming back with a battle-cruiser. The cruiser is too small for some of these spawns though once I get it properly fitted out things might become easier.