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.

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