I was done in my Red Giant, the sites all gone and the Vargur fit tested successfully. I was ready to move on. When I got a decent empire-connection I pulled down my small POS and moved my ships back to Amarr.
When I one day later stumbled upon a C4/C3 and over 20 combat sites, I decided to move in. The system was inhabited, but they did not seem to be very active or dangerous. They certainly did not want to run their sites! I saw no reason why I could not just move in and run the sites while they where busy elsewhere, or simply not present.
After I spent some time in the new system watching the locals (which more or less only was one guy trying to run the sites in a Tengu) I decided to play nice and actually announce my intentions of moving in, at the same time offering some help with the plexing, boosts and whatnot. The answer was positive but a little bit tentative. Not strange, all things considered.
I moved in, setup my small POS and got settled in. I might have surprised the system inhabitants just a little bit with the quick movement, but I had no reason to hang around. The static C3 made for plenty of potential low sec routes. Occasionally you even get a C3 with a high sec static (statistically that's about 1/5 of the time I think).
After speaking some with the locals, I understood that several corporations were involved. There was an old one nobody seen in ages but that owned the POCO as well as two other corps that had presence in the system in the form of one POS each. Now they might form an alliance together. A third corp that had operations in null sec where potentially also moving in, so in short - the system was a small brewing pot with a high chance of producing a new w-space alliance given some time. Remember, you heard it here first!
As it happened, I never got around to flying much with all this nice people because after one day in the system almost all the sites de-spawned and I only got around to running five or so. What a pity.
I moved out after a few days in the C4/C3, but made a few friends in the process.
Showing posts with label C4. Show all posts
Showing posts with label C4. Show all posts
Friday, March 21, 2014
Monday, March 17, 2014
Architecture of a small gank
Who said you could not mess up as a carebear? Even with the new system scanner, and even if you do everything right. Even if you do things by the book, and have securing systems for plexing down to an art, there's still room for messing up. I just lost 2 billion in Rattlesnakes because I forgot to look at the scanner for new sigs. Possibly it was slightly bugged and did not display fully automatically. In any case, my point is; idiots still die.
I was on my last day in Gamma (or so I thought). I had tested the Vargur enough and now I wanted to go do something else. I still had 12 sites in my system and the idea was to quickly bring in my old trusty rattlesnake workhorses and kill those before I pulled down the POS. So I was 5 Frontier Barracks in, going on the last wave in the first Information Sanctum when all of a sudden a Legion appears on grid with me.
I was honestly quite shocked to see anyone manage to sneak up on me because the system was totally mine, all the sigs was known and the static was closed before I started plexing. I also watched the scanner for new sigs indicating a possible new K162. Something in all this had obviously failed, but I had no time to investigate further because now I was not fighting sleepers anymore!
As more ships appeared on grid with me, my first action was a futile attempt trying to run. One of my Rattlers was already scrammed by the sleepers and the Legion pointed the other one (lucky!). So I was screwed. Well, at least I could give them as good fight as possible before I went down.
I started to lock up the ones that had arrived. Legion, Proteus, Devoter and a Helios that probably was the bastard that found me. I had Gardes out and the covops was not moving enough, so I quickly popped it. Because the pod did not warp away (most likely because of dualboxing) I could lock it up and kill it. Next on the list was the Legion. He was already in armor from the sleepers when I got the Gardes working on it. When it popped, the sleepers and my two rattlers had brotherly divided the damage equally.
After that it got harder. I now had another Legion and Proteus to deal with, and since they were so close my Gardes could not hit them very well, even with tracking scripts loaded in all three links. My only other choice in drones was Bouncers, Warriors and Hammerheads. None of them was any good. I switched to Hammers in a desperate attempt to at least scratch the paint of the remaining T3s. Would I have had a set of Ogres they would have applied full 2K damage, and that would definitely have been a factor. With the new scripted omni-links you can get awesome tracking out of Ogres, they now kill sleeper-frigs as well as Warriors even if they still travel like stuck in syrup.
While this was going on, the group seemed to have problems breaking my tank. I had to overload my mids and forgot (naturally) to turn it off in time, so I burned out one of the invulnerable fields. Their response was neuts. But even if I would have had some Ogres to fight back with, I was not going anywhere and it was all over when they brought two Guardians. These guys probably found me while rolling their static, and were not quite ready for a gank, hence the late arrival of some of the ships. Had it been made in a proper way they would of course have had the Guardians on grid from the start and no one would have lost a ship. More then me that is :)
I was on my last day in Gamma (or so I thought). I had tested the Vargur enough and now I wanted to go do something else. I still had 12 sites in my system and the idea was to quickly bring in my old trusty rattlesnake workhorses and kill those before I pulled down the POS. So I was 5 Frontier Barracks in, going on the last wave in the first Information Sanctum when all of a sudden a Legion appears on grid with me.
I was honestly quite shocked to see anyone manage to sneak up on me because the system was totally mine, all the sigs was known and the static was closed before I started plexing. I also watched the scanner for new sigs indicating a possible new K162. Something in all this had obviously failed, but I had no time to investigate further because now I was not fighting sleepers anymore!
As more ships appeared on grid with me, my first action was a futile attempt trying to run. One of my Rattlers was already scrammed by the sleepers and the Legion pointed the other one (lucky!). So I was screwed. Well, at least I could give them as good fight as possible before I went down.
I started to lock up the ones that had arrived. Legion, Proteus, Devoter and a Helios that probably was the bastard that found me. I had Gardes out and the covops was not moving enough, so I quickly popped it. Because the pod did not warp away (most likely because of dualboxing) I could lock it up and kill it. Next on the list was the Legion. He was already in armor from the sleepers when I got the Gardes working on it. When it popped, the sleepers and my two rattlers had brotherly divided the damage equally.
After that it got harder. I now had another Legion and Proteus to deal with, and since they were so close my Gardes could not hit them very well, even with tracking scripts loaded in all three links. My only other choice in drones was Bouncers, Warriors and Hammerheads. None of them was any good. I switched to Hammers in a desperate attempt to at least scratch the paint of the remaining T3s. Would I have had a set of Ogres they would have applied full 2K damage, and that would definitely have been a factor. With the new scripted omni-links you can get awesome tracking out of Ogres, they now kill sleeper-frigs as well as Warriors even if they still travel like stuck in syrup.
While this was going on, the group seemed to have problems breaking my tank. I had to overload my mids and forgot (naturally) to turn it off in time, so I burned out one of the invulnerable fields. Their response was neuts. But even if I would have had some Ogres to fight back with, I was not going anywhere and it was all over when they brought two Guardians. These guys probably found me while rolling their static, and were not quite ready for a gank, hence the late arrival of some of the ships. Had it been made in a proper way they would of course have had the Guardians on grid from the start and no one would have lost a ship. More then me that is :)
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Upgrading the old C4 Rattler
I feel that I have tried the plexing Vargur as much as I want to.
In fact, I have quite a lot of them, and the system is now clean and nice. I have my trusty Orca and closing Scorpion in here and could easily secure the system. I was on my way moving out since I already got a bit bored - 20 minutes per site is a bit to slow, even if salvaging as you go gives you a little bit more to do while the guns dispatch of the sleepers.
I decide that before I pull down the POS and leave for something else, I should at least clean the remaining sites. After all, it should be worth closer to two billion, even with the nanoribbon prices of today. I won't go through the pain of grinding them in the Vargur thou, instead I will just upgrade my Rattler-fit to be able to cope with Information Sanctums. One night of plexing should do it.
Since I used a pair of Rattlers for C4's last time, a few things have changed;
This is what I came up with;
The faction invulnerability field and two tech 2 shield transports instead of one should hopefully be enough to compensate for the lost tank. I really don't like to have to fit CPU-mods in the lows, but in this case I think it's worth it.
I have also replaced one of the Drone Links with one of those nifty smartbombs I had so much fun with on the Vargur (remember: Red Giant effects!). Yes, yes, I know, it is totally incompatible with using sentries, I guess I just have to either pull drones or range when using them. This is really just for clearing the 12 sites I have left.
Little did I know that I only would get halfway through those sites before my failure to be vigilant would punish me in the worst way possible.
In fact, I have quite a lot of them, and the system is now clean and nice. I have my trusty Orca and closing Scorpion in here and could easily secure the system. I was on my way moving out since I already got a bit bored - 20 minutes per site is a bit to slow, even if salvaging as you go gives you a little bit more to do while the guns dispatch of the sleepers.
I decide that before I pull down the POS and leave for something else, I should at least clean the remaining sites. After all, it should be worth closer to two billion, even with the nanoribbon prices of today. I won't go through the pain of grinding them in the Vargur thou, instead I will just upgrade my Rattler-fit to be able to cope with Information Sanctums. One night of plexing should do it.
Since I used a pair of Rattlers for C4's last time, a few things have changed;
- The resist bonus is now 4% instead of 5% (per level).
- The Omni tracking links now run scripts
- I'm now going for Information Sanctums which is a little bit harder than Frontier Barracks I used to prefer.
This is what I came up with;
Rattlesnake, upgraded C4 plexer
High power
2x Large Remote Capacitor Transmitter II
2x Large Remote Shield Booster II
True Sansha Large EMP Smartbomb
1x Drone Link Augmentor II
Medium power
2x Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
1x Dread Guristas Adaptive Invulnerability Field
1x Gistum C-Type EM Ward Amplifier
3x Federation Navy Omnidirectional Tracking Link + scripts
Low power
1x Damage Controller II
1x Co-Processor II
4x Drone Damage Amplifier II
Rig Slot
1x Large Egress Port Maximizer II
1x Large Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer II
1x Large Drone Control Range Augmentor I
Charges
1x Targeting Range Script
Drones
5x Warrior II
5x Hammerhead II
5x Garde II
5x Light Armor Maintenance Bot I
5x Bouncer II
The faction invulnerability field and two tech 2 shield transports instead of one should hopefully be enough to compensate for the lost tank. I really don't like to have to fit CPU-mods in the lows, but in this case I think it's worth it.
I have also replaced one of the Drone Links with one of those nifty smartbombs I had so much fun with on the Vargur (remember: Red Giant effects!). Yes, yes, I know, it is totally incompatible with using sentries, I guess I just have to either pull drones or range when using them. This is really just for clearing the 12 sites I have left.
Little did I know that I only would get halfway through those sites before my failure to be vigilant would punish me in the worst way possible.
Saturday, March 15, 2014
Optimizing the C4 Vargur
Today I tested some new stuff while plexing my Red Giant C4 with the Vargur.
I tested what I would benefit from most when it came to drones; a flight of Hammerheads to help with dps or an mix of target-painting and webbing-drones to make my guns hit better. With the excellent tracking the Vargur have it looks like my biggest problem is range, so while I could not see any difference (I timed one site) while using the e-war drones, the hammerheads shaved a minute or two off my normal time of 23 minutes. So hammerheads it is!
Also since I had two highslots over I decided to try out some salvaging while killing. Even if the Marauders still have their bonuses to tractor beams I wanted to try out the new Mobile Tractor Unit that will do the tractoring and looting for you. Sounds very nice. But would it keep up and would the sleepers attack it?
I discovered that not only did the sleepers show no interest whatsoever in the tractoring unit after I dropped it, it could keep up just fine. And with two tech 2 salvage on the Vargur, so could I. The result was that I could do the sites and salvage, with one pilot, and without the need for time consuming salvaging in that slow Noctis after/during.
As a bonus, I did not have to loose any loot if I had to abort prematurely due to unwanted company. Also, this meant I only needed to warp to each site two times (bookmark + Vargur) instead of three (+salvage) further simplifying things. Simple is good. That's what I'm all about now.
This might actually be a bigger deal than what it at first appears to be. I never liked the Noctis. Don't get me wrong, its a great ship and with skills it does a fantastic job of munching wrecks into salvage, but that's the only thing it does. It is also huge, and for me that's a big deal because I need to fit it into that Orca. Fact is, the function of savage takes up more than half of the ship hangar, and stops me from bringing other ships that would be more useful.
But this new way of doing things makes the Noctis unneeded, and could potentially unlock a lot of other possibilities for my little setup.
I tested what I would benefit from most when it came to drones; a flight of Hammerheads to help with dps or an mix of target-painting and webbing-drones to make my guns hit better. With the excellent tracking the Vargur have it looks like my biggest problem is range, so while I could not see any difference (I timed one site) while using the e-war drones, the hammerheads shaved a minute or two off my normal time of 23 minutes. So hammerheads it is!
Also since I had two highslots over I decided to try out some salvaging while killing. Even if the Marauders still have their bonuses to tractor beams I wanted to try out the new Mobile Tractor Unit that will do the tractoring and looting for you. Sounds very nice. But would it keep up and would the sleepers attack it?
I discovered that not only did the sleepers show no interest whatsoever in the tractoring unit after I dropped it, it could keep up just fine. And with two tech 2 salvage on the Vargur, so could I. The result was that I could do the sites and salvage, with one pilot, and without the need for time consuming salvaging in that slow Noctis after/during.
As a bonus, I did not have to loose any loot if I had to abort prematurely due to unwanted company. Also, this meant I only needed to warp to each site two times (bookmark + Vargur) instead of three (+salvage) further simplifying things. Simple is good. That's what I'm all about now.
This might actually be a bigger deal than what it at first appears to be. I never liked the Noctis. Don't get me wrong, its a great ship and with skills it does a fantastic job of munching wrecks into salvage, but that's the only thing it does. It is also huge, and for me that's a big deal because I need to fit it into that Orca. Fact is, the function of savage takes up more than half of the ship hangar, and stops me from bringing other ships that would be more useful.
But this new way of doing things makes the Noctis unneeded, and could potentially unlock a lot of other possibilities for my little setup.
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Marauder in jepardy
While getting tired of the Frontier Command Posts, I decided I would try a Frontier Barrack. The max damage one have to tank in those is a bit more than in the easy mode Command Posts, but I figured I was so overtanked I would hardly notice any difference. Well, you still have to avoid messing up yourself, there's no fit for bad judgement.
I had done dozens and dozens of Barracks before, but never in a Vargur, and never solo. It's a pretty bad site for the Vargur since most of the battleships are either spawning 100km out, or tend to orbit at 60km. With barrage and one Tracking computer running range scripts, my falloff was 100km. At 60km, the killing-speed started to get painfully slow.
Anyhow, when the second wave spawned, I made the mistake of not going for the neuting battleships (there's three of them) at once. After downing the second cruiser I noticed to my horror that my tank was actually breaking! And not only that, I was getting real close to peak recharge on my cap too... With no capacitor my tank would definitely fail, so quick thinking was required. After I had checked that everything was still running and boosts still was up I had to wait out the bastion (1 min cycle and no moving or warping while it's active) and warp back to my POS to regroup. Keep in mind that the bastion is the thing that make you able to tank in the first place, so if you cant tank with it running, you wont have much time when it shuts of.
Off with the Tracking computer (this was before my finalized fit and I ran with a single Invulnerable field and two TCs instead of the other way around) and instead fit a second Invulnerable field. There! That would hopefully give me the time to kill one of the neuting battleships to lighten the pressure on my capacitor enough to be able to stay on field. Which it did, I finished up the site, salvaged the wrecks the Mobile Tractor Unit had pulled in and limped back home to base.
In a C4, I would probably be better of running a cruise Golem, no range-problems there... Only problem is I'm liking the Vargur a bit to much to give it up just yet.
I had done dozens and dozens of Barracks before, but never in a Vargur, and never solo. It's a pretty bad site for the Vargur since most of the battleships are either spawning 100km out, or tend to orbit at 60km. With barrage and one Tracking computer running range scripts, my falloff was 100km. At 60km, the killing-speed started to get painfully slow.
Anyhow, when the second wave spawned, I made the mistake of not going for the neuting battleships (there's three of them) at once. After downing the second cruiser I noticed to my horror that my tank was actually breaking! And not only that, I was getting real close to peak recharge on my cap too... With no capacitor my tank would definitely fail, so quick thinking was required. After I had checked that everything was still running and boosts still was up I had to wait out the bastion (1 min cycle and no moving or warping while it's active) and warp back to my POS to regroup. Keep in mind that the bastion is the thing that make you able to tank in the first place, so if you cant tank with it running, you wont have much time when it shuts of.
Off with the Tracking computer (this was before my finalized fit and I ran with a single Invulnerable field and two TCs instead of the other way around) and instead fit a second Invulnerable field. There! That would hopefully give me the time to kill one of the neuting battleships to lighten the pressure on my capacitor enough to be able to stay on field. Which it did, I finished up the site, salvaged the wrecks the Mobile Tractor Unit had pulled in and limped back home to base.
In a C4, I would probably be better of running a cruise Golem, no range-problems there... Only problem is I'm liking the Vargur a bit to much to give it up just yet.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
No plexing for Dominixes
Wait! Were there not eight sigs before? Now there are nine here in Gamma, my new C4 home. Well, I better get the old sisters out to find out what's new...
It turns out it's a incoming C4 with two towers and a bunch of Russian (I think) piloted battleships, mostly Dominixes. Now they are hanging there, but I have the distinct feeling they are gearing up for something. Could they have plexing in mind?
It turns out they are. But not their own system. When they all start to align, to my surprise they do so towards my C4! The hole is relatively old, and I just got back home, so chances are they have not seen anything of me yet. That is, more than my small, poorly defended 4-man corporation POS with a single floating Scorpion, and that is not scaring anyone.
But, but, those sites are mine! They are my training-ground for messing around with a Vargur! We can't have this. Must, must stop Dominixes!
Since my entire "pvp-fleet" consists of two ships, with hardly 400dps between them, I'm somewhat limited in my response. But if I know carebears, they will be easily spooked. No shoots needs to be exchanged. I doubt they will have the nerve to plex an active system. Just for me to show some pretend muscle and they will probably change their mind.
When all 4 of their Dominixes land on my WH in their system I'm jumping after them with the Astro I'm flying. On the other side I decloak, orbits and throws an point on a random Domi. They must have been pretty surprised to see me there.
They hanged at the WH for a bit, setting up their cap-chain. I could almost hear them reasoning about what to do. They eventually decided to withdraw and jumped back.
Now I was left with a decision to just log for the night or mess up their hole, making sure they where not to come back later to steal my sleepers when I was not looking. Putting an Orca heavy back and forth through the hole would do it. Since I figure these guys was not that experienced, I betted I could surprise them and get away with a sneak Orca-attack against the hole. If they had a scout that was on the ball, they could potentially tackle me long enough for the Domis to come back and give me trouble.
I had Ashi in her Tengu on their side of the WH as I let Tashi throw the Orca at the WH. On return, a Anathema decloaked. I don't know if he tried to tackle me or if he just got scared about mass and wanted to get back home, but in any case the Orca got clear. A few domis did land on their side of the WH when it did thou, so they where really trying to get it. "A" for effort, but my Orca live to see another day.
After that they disappeared and I finished the night by closing the WH for them with my Scorpion.
It turns out it's a incoming C4 with two towers and a bunch of Russian (I think) piloted battleships, mostly Dominixes. Now they are hanging there, but I have the distinct feeling they are gearing up for something. Could they have plexing in mind?
It turns out they are. But not their own system. When they all start to align, to my surprise they do so towards my C4! The hole is relatively old, and I just got back home, so chances are they have not seen anything of me yet. That is, more than my small, poorly defended 4-man corporation POS with a single floating Scorpion, and that is not scaring anyone.
But, but, those sites are mine! They are my training-ground for messing around with a Vargur! We can't have this. Must, must stop Dominixes!
Since my entire "pvp-fleet" consists of two ships, with hardly 400dps between them, I'm somewhat limited in my response. But if I know carebears, they will be easily spooked. No shoots needs to be exchanged. I doubt they will have the nerve to plex an active system. Just for me to show some pretend muscle and they will probably change their mind.
When all 4 of their Dominixes land on my WH in their system I'm jumping after them with the Astro I'm flying. On the other side I decloak, orbits and throws an point on a random Domi. They must have been pretty surprised to see me there.
They hanged at the WH for a bit, setting up their cap-chain. I could almost hear them reasoning about what to do. They eventually decided to withdraw and jumped back.
Now I was left with a decision to just log for the night or mess up their hole, making sure they where not to come back later to steal my sleepers when I was not looking. Putting an Orca heavy back and forth through the hole would do it. Since I figure these guys was not that experienced, I betted I could surprise them and get away with a sneak Orca-attack against the hole. If they had a scout that was on the ball, they could potentially tackle me long enough for the Domis to come back and give me trouble.
I had Ashi in her Tengu on their side of the WH as I let Tashi throw the Orca at the WH. On return, a Anathema decloaked. I don't know if he tried to tackle me or if he just got scared about mass and wanted to get back home, but in any case the Orca got clear. A few domis did land on their side of the WH when it did thou, so they where really trying to get it. "A" for effort, but my Orca live to see another day.
After that they disappeared and I finished the night by closing the WH for them with my Scorpion.
Monday, March 10, 2014
A C4 Vargur
Ever since I came back to eve after the Rubicon patch, I have been wanting to try the new marauders. With the "mini-sige" mode the bastion module offers, they're now a totally new ship. Perfectly targeted for mission-runners, or maybe even more so for anybody that want to kill some sleepers efficiently.
Back in my mission-running days (yes, I actually did that for a brief time) I used to run a torp Golem, and since then i have skilled both Minmatar and Amarr battleship 5. Skill-wise I was therefore quite well setup to try them all out. Well, except the Kronos then, but with the engagement range of the sleepers in C4s, I don't see how that would work. Rails? Nah.. never liked them much.
ISK wise it looked dire. When I came back to game I had 5B in my wallet, but now I had almost blown half of it on different stupid ships, implants and stuff… I could fit one marauder and try, but I would not have ISK for a good C4-fit for a Vargur, Paladin and Golem. I decided to start with a Vargur, find a good C4 and simply run the sites, making the ISK for the next ship. After all, the whole point of the marauders was to make ISK, right?
I guess there's plenty of different schools when it comes to how to fit, but what I did was just take the fit from Lord Planck and his C5 Vargur, and scale that down to work in a C4. I wanted an enjoyable experience, calm and relaxing, with as little micromanagement as possible. I wanted a fit where I could perms-run a 1.5K tank and that would reach out to 80km with as much dps (obviously!) as possible.
This is what I came up with;
I will not go into details about the fit, it's not that interesting or unique in any way. The variations I tried was small, and mostly focused on the three high-slots. A nos for the cap-conscious plexer, or two smartbombs instead of one for more effective killing of frigs? In the end the faction large smartbomb both had enough range and dps to clean the frigs just fine. It was possibly one of the better investments I have done for this ship.
Since the introduction of the Personal Tractor Unit, the life of the solo-plexer have drastically gotten better. Even if a Noctis still is more effective, there are something really nice about salvaging as you go. You don't have to dual-box, and having to visit each site just once is nice too. Especially if you are "ninja-plexing" under the nose of somebody else (with smart scouting of course) you really appreciate that you can just pick up and bail whenever, not leaving your hard earned wrecks behind.
What I said about just visiting each site once showed to be not quite accurate. Unlike lasers or missiles, the nature of projectile guns means that they will work almost totally in falloff. Unless the sleepers are so close they block the light from the sun, you will not do full damage - hence; the closer the better. To achieve this you really need a bookmark for the sites so you can warp to the center, not ending up 90km from the first wave.
I found a C4 system with a lot of sites to try my new toy in, and set up a small tower, and got to plexing. I like the small POS'es because of the short ancho/un-anchor times, if I want I can pick it up and move it to another system in under one hour.
Back in my mission-running days (yes, I actually did that for a brief time) I used to run a torp Golem, and since then i have skilled both Minmatar and Amarr battleship 5. Skill-wise I was therefore quite well setup to try them all out. Well, except the Kronos then, but with the engagement range of the sleepers in C4s, I don't see how that would work. Rails? Nah.. never liked them much.
ISK wise it looked dire. When I came back to game I had 5B in my wallet, but now I had almost blown half of it on different stupid ships, implants and stuff… I could fit one marauder and try, but I would not have ISK for a good C4-fit for a Vargur, Paladin and Golem. I decided to start with a Vargur, find a good C4 and simply run the sites, making the ISK for the next ship. After all, the whole point of the marauders was to make ISK, right?
I guess there's plenty of different schools when it comes to how to fit, but what I did was just take the fit from Lord Planck and his C5 Vargur, and scale that down to work in a C4. I wanted an enjoyable experience, calm and relaxing, with as little micromanagement as possible. I wanted a fit where I could perms-run a 1.5K tank and that would reach out to 80km with as much dps (obviously!) as possible.
This is what I came up with;
C4 Solo Vargur
High power
4x 800mm Repeating Cannon II
1x True Sansha Large EMP Smartbomb
1x Bastion Module I
2x Salvager II
Medium power
1x Gistum C-Type Adaptive Invulnerability Field
1x Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
1x Gist B-Type Large Shield Booster
1x Shield Boost Amplifier II
1x Cap Recharger II
1x Tracking Computer II
Low power
3x Republic Fleet Gyrostabilizer
1x Damage Control II
1x Tracking Enhancer II
Rig Slot
2x Large Capacitor Control Circuit II
I will not go into details about the fit, it's not that interesting or unique in any way. The variations I tried was small, and mostly focused on the three high-slots. A nos for the cap-conscious plexer, or two smartbombs instead of one for more effective killing of frigs? In the end the faction large smartbomb both had enough range and dps to clean the frigs just fine. It was possibly one of the better investments I have done for this ship.
Since the introduction of the Personal Tractor Unit, the life of the solo-plexer have drastically gotten better. Even if a Noctis still is more effective, there are something really nice about salvaging as you go. You don't have to dual-box, and having to visit each site just once is nice too. Especially if you are "ninja-plexing" under the nose of somebody else (with smart scouting of course) you really appreciate that you can just pick up and bail whenever, not leaving your hard earned wrecks behind.
What I said about just visiting each site once showed to be not quite accurate. Unlike lasers or missiles, the nature of projectile guns means that they will work almost totally in falloff. Unless the sleepers are so close they block the light from the sun, you will not do full damage - hence; the closer the better. To achieve this you really need a bookmark for the sites so you can warp to the center, not ending up 90km from the first wave.
I found a C4 system with a lot of sites to try my new toy in, and set up a small tower, and got to plexing. I like the small POS'es because of the short ancho/un-anchor times, if I want I can pick it up and move it to another system in under one hour.
Sunday, February 9, 2014
Change of plans
Sometimes the circumstances just talk to you. Point you in a specific direction. Telling you; this is what you should do, what are you waiting for? Or at least so it feels.
I could not decide exactly what to do with the C4 system I found. I wanted to move stuff in there, but did not know what. Just log an Orca and a Vargur in there? Scan out the system and when it was empty and silent, log them on, quickly setup a small, temporary POS for changing ships and do some plexing? It was tempting to try and do some ninja PVE, but at the same time I had never tried a Vargur for soloing C4s. Without a permanent POS I could not take more ships with me than I could fit into a Orca and/or log off with. It was a cool idea, but maybe I was trying to bite over more then I could chew? For instance, unless I wanted to do hole-closing with a 2B ISK Vargur I had to find another solution for that.
I still like the idea of not having more ships than you could just pack together and log off with if anything happened. You can take more risks and you are much more mobile if you can move all your stuff in one go. When I was living in a C4/C4 doing plexing with two rattlers, I did not have pilots for both the rattlers and the Orca (one rattler-pilot also had to fly the Orca), therefore I had to anchor a SMA if I did not want to leave ships floating.
Anyway, today I changed my plans. I was scanning out the static C2, as usual. My hosts where hanging afk in their POS, as usual. In the static C2 I found another C4, which turned out to be as full of combat-sites as it was empty of inhabitants. It also had a static C2 (easy access to HS) and it was a Red Giant which gives a good boost to smartbombs. Normally you don't care about that effect, but my Vargur happens to be equipped with a smart-bomb to take care of frigs so I could actually get some use out of it.
Now, the whole idea of living extremely light is to be able to move quickly and capitalize on opportunities like this, is it not? Should I therefore just move into this new system instead? Would that be a better place to try out my Vargur? It would take getting my ships out of Beta and getting a replacement long term scout since I was not ready to leave Beta just yet. I also had to fire up the old Orca I had in Amarr and get that into the new system (Gamma?) to setup a POS and that could take some time depending on how far away from Amarr I currently was.
When I checked out the HS in the C2 I ended up in Sarum Prime, that's one single jump from where I had my scout and the Orca! It could not be a better chance, all the planets sort of aligned up for me to just jump over into the new, red giant C4.
I could not decide exactly what to do with the C4 system I found. I wanted to move stuff in there, but did not know what. Just log an Orca and a Vargur in there? Scan out the system and when it was empty and silent, log them on, quickly setup a small, temporary POS for changing ships and do some plexing? It was tempting to try and do some ninja PVE, but at the same time I had never tried a Vargur for soloing C4s. Without a permanent POS I could not take more ships with me than I could fit into a Orca and/or log off with. It was a cool idea, but maybe I was trying to bite over more then I could chew? For instance, unless I wanted to do hole-closing with a 2B ISK Vargur I had to find another solution for that.
I still like the idea of not having more ships than you could just pack together and log off with if anything happened. You can take more risks and you are much more mobile if you can move all your stuff in one go. When I was living in a C4/C4 doing plexing with two rattlers, I did not have pilots for both the rattlers and the Orca (one rattler-pilot also had to fly the Orca), therefore I had to anchor a SMA if I did not want to leave ships floating.
Anyway, today I changed my plans. I was scanning out the static C2, as usual. My hosts where hanging afk in their POS, as usual. In the static C2 I found another C4, which turned out to be as full of combat-sites as it was empty of inhabitants. It also had a static C2 (easy access to HS) and it was a Red Giant which gives a good boost to smartbombs. Normally you don't care about that effect, but my Vargur happens to be equipped with a smart-bomb to take care of frigs so I could actually get some use out of it.
Now, the whole idea of living extremely light is to be able to move quickly and capitalize on opportunities like this, is it not? Should I therefore just move into this new system instead? Would that be a better place to try out my Vargur? It would take getting my ships out of Beta and getting a replacement long term scout since I was not ready to leave Beta just yet. I also had to fire up the old Orca I had in Amarr and get that into the new system (Gamma?) to setup a POS and that could take some time depending on how far away from Amarr I currently was.
When I checked out the HS in the C2 I ended up in Sarum Prime, that's one single jump from where I had my scout and the Orca! It could not be a better chance, all the planets sort of aligned up for me to just jump over into the new, red giant C4.
Friday, February 7, 2014
The kings of afk POS-spinning
I have found them! The ones that essentially manages to not do anything, but still be online most of the time. I'm talking about the guys in Beta, the C4 I'm decided to covertly "move into" and try to use as it's my own.
I have now stayed in their system for a few days (long enough for my cleaning up crappy sigs is starting to show, now there's just four sigs to scan down instead of 20) and I have not seen this guys do anything of the normal stuff people do. I saw them haul something in/out once, but that's it. The ubiquitous Tengu they have piloted and floating at the POS normally do not move an inch. He log in and out of the same position.
They don't plex, they don't mine or suck gas (at least I have not seen any of that). It's also clear that they don't do PI. They don't even own the POCOs. This is a 100% industrial endeavour, it might be just one dude. Makes me wonder how many pilots they have in here. I have only seen three so far.
I wonder what they/he would do if I started to run the sites while they/he was on? My original plan was to just run them during their off-time, but since they hardly have any such time, I might need to reconsider...
I have now stayed in their system for a few days (long enough for my cleaning up crappy sigs is starting to show, now there's just four sigs to scan down instead of 20) and I have not seen this guys do anything of the normal stuff people do. I saw them haul something in/out once, but that's it. The ubiquitous Tengu they have piloted and floating at the POS normally do not move an inch. He log in and out of the same position.
They don't plex, they don't mine or suck gas (at least I have not seen any of that). It's also clear that they don't do PI. They don't even own the POCOs. This is a 100% industrial endeavour, it might be just one dude. Makes me wonder how many pilots they have in here. I have only seen three so far.
I wonder what they/he would do if I started to run the sites while they/he was on? My original plan was to just run them during their off-time, but since they hardly have any such time, I might need to reconsider...
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
The parasite is moving in
The system I'm checking out for potential my idea of leechy living looks good enough. The inhabitants are very inactive, I have hardly seen them doing anything when they are on, I still need a few days to get to know them proper. I called the first of my solo-systems for Alpha, so this will be named Beta.
It's a C4 (I wanted carebears), with a static C2 (good for solo shenanigans), it had a bunch of gas- and ore-sites (the inhabitants clearly don't care so much keeping it clean - which is a sign they are not that into scanning) as well as a bunch of combat sites (obviously they don't do sleepers either) and only one indy-tower setup (makes it much easier to keep track of what's going on).
So this might be a pretty nice system to "move into", and start basing out of, as if I actually lived there. Well, I will be living there but I obviously can't setup a permanent POS of my own as that might spook them into some kind of defence behaviour. The idea is to see just how much things I can do out of this system, without getting to much attention from my host. I'm going to be a well-behaved discreet leach, at least for starters.
Wherever I log my Orca, that's my home.
So what's on the todo-list?
Lets go to it!
It's a C4 (I wanted carebears), with a static C2 (good for solo shenanigans), it had a bunch of gas- and ore-sites (the inhabitants clearly don't care so much keeping it clean - which is a sign they are not that into scanning) as well as a bunch of combat sites (obviously they don't do sleepers either) and only one indy-tower setup (makes it much easier to keep track of what's going on).
So this might be a pretty nice system to "move into", and start basing out of, as if I actually lived there. Well, I will be living there but I obviously can't setup a permanent POS of my own as that might spook them into some kind of defence behaviour. The idea is to see just how much things I can do out of this system, without getting to much attention from my host. I'm going to be a well-behaved discreet leach, at least for starters.
Wherever I log my Orca, that's my home.
So what's on the todo-list?
- Get a backup/primary scout in there so I don't lose the system. Also this will enable me to use non-scanning ships more freely.
- Learn about my hosts. Get them on watch-lists, learn what they fly and how they do their business. Intel is king!
- Clean up the signature-mess! Even if they don't care, I do! It's going to be a lot of scanning, and I want to optimize it not having to go through a bunch of worthless gas and ore each time I look for the new static. Therefore, I should initiate all sites I want to get rid of.
- Do a few strategic bookmarks.
Lets go to it!
Monday, February 3, 2014
Parasitic living?
This new idea have taken root in my deranged brain. When looking for new ways to explore the unknown while being solo, I have started to think about how to base out of an inhabited system. Could you just move in, and use the system as your own?
Way back when wormholes was first discovered, and C2 systems started to get inhabited, some people grabbed a stealth bomber, selected a active system and started to mess with their operations, making it risky for the inhabitants in their own home. What good is closing your static HS if you already got the vermin snuggled up together with you?
A C2 with a static HS is an easy system to do this with, and since you only have one, or a few, ships that you need to do both scanning, sneaking and killing in, your targets are somewhat limited. But what if you, as a solo-player, tried to push this idea a bit further? Could you find a system, "move in" and use it as a base for simple, low-scale pvp? For pve? Could you even make enough ISK from it to cover any losses? When the inhabitants where not there, you could do their sleepers. When they where there but inactive, you could just ignore them and when they did something you could harass them as best you could. A pure win-win? or.. rather.. well.. you get the point.
It would really be a different approach, to say the least. No POS (at least no permanent one) means that you need to log in what you flew. And what you did not fly you needed to stuff into an Orca and use that as a true mobile home.
I might have found a system. It's a C4 with a static C2, one tower, quite big system, lot of sites, lots of gas/ore sites. Small corp. Looks industrial. Lots of crap on scan, a truly dirty system. Maybe they want some help doing the sites? :)
Way back when wormholes was first discovered, and C2 systems started to get inhabited, some people grabbed a stealth bomber, selected a active system and started to mess with their operations, making it risky for the inhabitants in their own home. What good is closing your static HS if you already got the vermin snuggled up together with you?
A C2 with a static HS is an easy system to do this with, and since you only have one, or a few, ships that you need to do both scanning, sneaking and killing in, your targets are somewhat limited. But what if you, as a solo-player, tried to push this idea a bit further? Could you find a system, "move in" and use it as a base for simple, low-scale pvp? For pve? Could you even make enough ISK from it to cover any losses? When the inhabitants where not there, you could do their sleepers. When they where there but inactive, you could just ignore them and when they did something you could harass them as best you could. A pure win-win? or.. rather.. well.. you get the point.
It would really be a different approach, to say the least. No POS (at least no permanent one) means that you need to log in what you flew. And what you did not fly you needed to stuff into an Orca and use that as a true mobile home.
I might have found a system. It's a C4 with a static C2, one tower, quite big system, lot of sites, lots of gas/ore sites. Small corp. Looks industrial. Lots of crap on scan, a truly dirty system. Maybe they want some help doing the sites? :)
Monday, July 8, 2013
Closing C4 WHs, solo-style
Day Nine
Closing a new 2B wormhole is as easy as jumping an heavy (100MN prop mod on) Orca six times and a single heavy battleship two times through it. In most cases that closes the hole just fine. You want to make sure you have your ships on the right side when it does thou. And you don't want anyone else to interfere. The battleship can be considered a throw away ship, but it would hurt to lose the 800M Orca. Still, it needs to be done. Closing wormholes is the basis of any safe carebearing.When I'm stalking people I use information from what ships they jump into, if they align, and most importantly, what I have seen them do before. If I have seen an Orca do a quick appearance on a WH its most likely a closing op going on. If they don't have multiple Orcas their polarization timer is my time to set something up till catch and kill the Orca. If they do it easy for me by announcing their plans way in advance, well, so much better.
This have made me formulate a quick and cloaky policy for my own doings. Always assume there is eyes watching you. You want as little information-leak to these eyes as possible. Just showing a piloted Orca will tell them a lot. And attract interest.
- Never be uncloaked at your POS. The more you can get them to guess what ships you have, the better.
- Never announce intent in advance. Don't jump into a BS + Orca and align to a WH.
- Never be uncloaked if you can help it. If you warp to a zero on a WH you do so with the intent of jumping.
- Make it quick. If you think the coast is clear, you have nothing to gain from lingering. Any extra time uncloaked is a chance for information-leaks, or worse.
- The more time you can spend cloaked, scouting a WH out in advance, the better. The absence of you seeing somebody jump is not the same thing as "safe" but if you have not heard WH activation the last 20 min it's not very likely there's somebody else there. Unless you have drawn attention with juicy targets before of course.
Since I only have one Orca-pilot and I need to do three trips back and forth, I have two timers to wait out. This goes against the whole "be quick and cloaky" approach, but I try and come as close as possible.
Typically I scout the WH with a cloaky Tengu first. Check the inhabitants. What ships on scan? What pilots on? Any POS'es out of d-scan? The more activity, the more time I spend on the WH pre-scouting. Showing a cloaky Tengu also raises the bar for what "my side" fly. A cov ops is only a scout, a Tengu is a potential pvp-ship, even a cloaky one. I want anyone to think twice before warping anything to the WH that could potentially be dangerous for my closing ships.
First Orca jump is quick, just warp there, jump in, jump back, and then warp away and cloak up. Anyone not spamming d-scan should miss it completely. For anyone paying attention, it's good if they don't realise that's the first Orca-jump in a closing sequence. While I wait out the polarization timer, I stay on the other side in the Tengu. Checking for signs of new activity. Scan probes? Anything warping to the WH? Anythig jumping?
After exactly 5 min, I do the second Orca-jump. The less time I give people to react the better. If I see a set of combats probes go out after the first jump, this is no reason to hold back on the second, giving them even more time to figure out what's happening. After the second orca-trip I stay for a few minutes at the WH with the Tengu and then jump back home, and switch it out for a Scorpion. When both timers are out, I do the last Orca-jump together with the Scorp. The Scorp is then working as a scout, and bait. The idea is that if anyone jumps the gun on the Scorp I might get away with the Orca. I also have the mass on my side. Anyone that wants to kill me will have to do it while following me through, because I will close the WH on the way back with the Orca.
Unless I have reasons to believe there's nasty things lurking, I stay cloaked with the Orca on the WH while waiting out the polarization. That way, the Orca works as a scout while I switch from Tengu to Scorp for the last jump.
Sunday, July 7, 2013
My closing Scorpion fit
Day Eight
Same stuff as yesterday, check the static, decide if I want to bother with some plexing or not. Checking POSes. Scanning down WHs. Closing WHs.Talking about closing, while explaining my plexing-routine I mentioned my closing Scorpion. Lets have a look at that one, shall we?
While fitting a closing battleship, you have a few options. Do you want to go for a pure defensive fit (warp core stabs) or do you want something that would have a chance of causing some trouble (ECM, neuts, etc...) to anyone that wanted to interfere with your doings?
A pure defensive fit would be focused on getting away, and fitted with both cloak and warp core stabs would not have a chance to lock anything in time for it to matter. It would take a bubble or two to catch it, but it would be useless in evacing the Orca from a closing that turned to hot to handle. And its really the Orca you don't want to lose, a closing BS should be considered collateral waiting to happen.
So I went for a compromise for my Scorp.
Scorp, 'WH-closer/escort' bastard
High power
1x Improved Cloaking Device II
1x Core Probe Launcher I
1x E500 Prototype Energy Vampire
2x Heavy Unstable Power Fluctuator I
Medium power
1x Sensor Booster II
1x ECM - Ion Field Projector II
2x ECM - Multispectral Jammer II
1x ECM - Spatial Destabilizer II
1x ECM - White Noise Generator II
1x Prototype 100MN Microwarpdrive I
1x ECM - Phase Inverter II
Low power
1x Damage Control II
2x 1600mm Reinforced Steel Plates II
1x Signal Distortion Amplifier II
1x Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Rig Slot
1x Large Particle Dispersion Augmentor I
2x Large Trimark Armor Pump I
Drones
5x Warrior II
5x Hammerhead II
The cloak make it terribly slow to lock stuff, but it gives it the ability to scout holes unseen for a longer period of time, and that's extremely valuable. In all other respects it's fit for messing with tackle while the Orca tries to break free.
A bubble and a web would of course spell doom, but if anyone had managed to get that to the WH without me spotting it, it had failed in its role as a scout anyhow.
Thursday, July 4, 2013
3 days away - security concerns
Day Seven
I have security concerns. I will be away for three days and a lot of my security is based on me being around to take proper measures if someone would actually go for the POS. Unlikely, but you never know.I live out of a Medium Amarr tower with just a few defences. Enough to force a proper fleet, I don't want it so poorly defended so just any pair of Oracles could do a stront check. At the same time, I don't want to spend a lot of time hauling and anchoring/un-achoring defences when I move. I even had a small POS from the start since they are really quick to get up and running, but after some consideration and the fact that I would not actually be able to move the three billion in ships I have if the POS got reinforced (Don't have pilots for both Rattlers and the Orca for simultaneous logoffski) I went with a medium one.
The defences are just a few scramblers, a few ECM, a web, a neut, a few small lasers and one medium. Lowest resist is 25% (2 hardeners). Only thing that's anchored in the POS is a CHA and a SMA and I never leave anything floating, making the potential rewards for anyone killing it quite small.
But as I said, it's all based on me being around doing things during any eventual reinforcement timer. Now I would not be for three days, so should I put the rattlers in empire? Jumping them around is also a risk, and in this case I think it will be a bigger risk I lose them doing that than someone would manage to REO my POS during my short absence.
It's decided, the Rattlers stay.
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
Plexing my static C4
Day six
This is what I came to do. Plexing the sites in my static C4. Doing an estimate on how safe it would be, and how I could make it as safe as possible. Losing Rattlers would take a big bite out of my profits, obviously I want to be involved in as little ganking-the-stupid-carebear-in-his-faction-battleships-action as possible.My routine have become something like this;
I log on, scanning out my own system. If there's any incoming wormholes that's not interesting (easy indy-kills, good quick route to empire etc..) they gets closed.
Then I turn my attention to the static C4. I jump through, check d-scan, check wormhole.es for statics and inhabitants (it's not right all of the time, but its a good input). I warp to any POS checking ships floating, and if it's empty of active pilots (as in not logged on) and have a decent amount of sites I can do, I elect it for some bearing. If not, I roll my static. Rinse and repeat.
First thing is to 'secure' the system. I scan down all the sigs, ignoring gas, data and relics, but pinning any wormholes I find. The important thing is to know what's in there. In w-space, intel is king. I don't want any open holes while plexing, so I quickly scout those, starting with any K162 if I can (don't want to open the static until last moment). With my faithful alt-brother flying an Orca that I bring into the static, I start closing the wormholes, including the static. Since I have to wait out the polarization timer, the time it takes to do this is actually not dependant on the number of WHs, it takes about the same time to close three holes as it takes to just roll the static.
So first two jumps through each hole goes with Orca + scouting Tengu. I prefer the Tengu over a cov ops because I think it scares any other carebear a bit more. It does not scream "scout" just as much, and it's a potential threat to other non-T3s. I want them to stay away. I just want to close the darn holes. For the last jump I switch the Tengu for a 'closing' Scorpion. I need the mass, and it could potentially save the Orca if somebody managed to get something in position to tackle it.
A digital egg-timer helps a lot.
When all wormholes are closed, I can be pretty sure the only open WH is the one from my system. If somebody rolls into the plexing system I will see it (hopefully) as a new sig on the scanner. No need to have a probe out any more. This is really the key to me being able to do the dual-rattler thing in the first place. Before the changes to the scanning, I occasionally solo'ed C4s using two chars with a Rattler/Basilisk-pair. The very reason for me choosing the Rattler over, for example, an Nightmare was that I had a high-slot over to fit the ubiquitous probe-launcher on the Rattler. No probe - no plexing. With the changes, all the Rattler pilots have to do is to watch for new sigs, which they can do without any probes. That two Rattlers kill sites twice as fast as a Rattler/Basilisk is really just a bonus.
So with a list of sigs scanned down and copied to a corp bulletin as later reference, and all WHs closed or rolled, I can switch the Orcas/Scorp for the Rattlers. When warping into the first site I have taken exactly 2 light Orcas and 2 light BSs through the WH (250 x 2 + 100 x 2 + 100 x 2 = 900M), so I'm just closing in on half-mass (it usually goes half when I jump the Rattlers back). This means I have plenty of mass if I wanted to take a break and park the Rattlers back home in Alpha and then come back.
I make a little fleet of my rattler-pilots and a third account scout that I keep in Alpha on the static C4 WH. Why? Because my rule is to know that there is no incoming WHs, that the static is new and not opened (because I rolled it and I have not seen any probes on scan since) and have scouts on any other incoming there is. And my home is an incoming WH. It's a big mistake to think that that somehow would be safer just because I live there. You never 'own' or 'control' a w-space system just because you have a POS there. In fact, last Orca we (R-NAT) lost, was just because we had failed to make sure to cover our six with a scout in our own system. Wont happen again. 'Home' is not safer than any other system. Failing to realise that will get you killed, sooner or later.
My alt in Alpha is really more ears then eyes. He got the WH zoomed in so I will hear any activation. The reason I keep him in Alpha and not in the plexing system (which would give me time to get info on anyone that just jumped) is that I regularly can check for new sigs (read potential k162) in Alpha, which is almost a perquisite for anyone finding their way into my plexing system. Normally you have your ears on the 'inside' so on the sound of activation you got time to do a info on the jumper before he re-cloaks. Again, info is key.
I tend to focus on the Frontier Barracks because they are so easy to do with just Bouncers. I'm lazy I guess.
One rattler pilot have a sige mindlink so I set that one as booster for some extra HP. I do squad-warps with my 'main', but basically just duplicate any action I do on both rattler-chars. I thought about putting a target-painter on the main, and just assisting the drones on the second rattler, and even if that does work, due to the cycle time of the TP, you end up losing a lot of time.
Land in a site. Lock up the primary, lock up the other Rattler, get drones out, start the double cap-bounce up, put on one of the shield transport, and start putting the hurt on the primary. I'm not a good enough multi-tasker to be able to do something else in the meantime, like reading a book or a blog, so it does not really matter that I have to click around some. I have to do something, could just as well micro-manage a bit.
Like this, each Frontier Barracks goes down in 10 min, and with my salvage-skills it takes pretty exactly 5 min to salvage each site. Usually I get around 100M from a FB and with 15 min/site that would translate to 400M/hour. However, this is excluding the half hour or more it took to find and secure the system in the first place. Not to mention the several days I've spent to get settled. Sometimes I have to discard several systems, and spend a lot of time rolling. It's decent ISK, but it would be much better if I lived in a C2/C4/HS just doing this when I found a good C4, not wasting time actively looking for it. I think this is hoe most C4s are getting plexed. And how many sites you do matters a lot, if you only do one site like this, the ISK/h would be terrible. If you do marathon plexing, killing 10-15 sites in one go, it's quite good. But then again, I play to have fun, not to optimize my income.
Two monitors make the process if not possible, so at least a lot easier.
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
C4's - the deepest of w-space?
Day Five
Most would argue that C6 is the "deepest" you can get in w-space. And maybe it is. If you mean what it takes to live, defend, farm and pvp there I guess you could say that it's the hardest. Or at least where the stakes are the highest. But logically, and most definitely logistically, it's not the deepest. That would be a C4/C4 - no question.Why? Well, C4s is unique in the sense that they will never connect to k-space. Ever. And if your static is also a C4 you have a guaranteed route to empire of 2 or more systems. If you also take into account that a static in a C4 is much harder to roll than a C5/C5 for example, and the fact that C4's more often than not just link to another C4 it is much more work to find empire from a C4/C4.
Today I had some new sites spawn, like gas and ore sites. I initiated them by starting a warp to each of them. I want to keep the system clean so I don't have to re-pin a lot of gas-sites each day. Of course, knowing what each sig represent is vital to any kind of operations in a w-space system. That piece of information gathering is something you just can't skip if you expect to live long and prosper.
I had discovered that one of my scanning alts had a clone that was way outdated. He needed to get to k-space to update it, ASAP. I found a C5 that led me to a C6 that had a static low sec, so that would work. Only possible problem was the C6 was the home system (or one of?) of The Last Chancers, a well known and active w-space alliance. They might have a lot of active eyes on things and even be rolling their static in a heartbeat, so if I wanted to get back the same way I needed to be careful and quick.
Not to many ships on scan in the C6, and when I jumped out to low sec I got the explanation. They where all out doing some shenanigans because they had a nice little 15 man T3 gang hanging on their static. And I was right in the middle of them! Yikes. But as I burned away from the WH, I could re-cloak safely. I started to look for a station where I could update my clone. I wanted to get back in as soon as possible.
When I got back to the TLC's low sec system they was still on the WH, but now they had a interceptor there. I guess they wanted to have a better chance of catching me when I got back. Or the ceptor was there for some totally different reason. It was not easy to know, but since I was the only extra one in local, they probably knew I was coming. Together with a bit of bad luck and a bubble on the other side of the WH it could potentially spell pod-kill for me. New clone or not, I preferred to live, so I just waited some.
Patience is another piece of the w-space puzzle that's really important, especially if you are solo. In this case, they got bored before me, the interceptor jumped back home, and a few minutes later I followed. Back home in a new clone I logged for the night.
Monday, July 1, 2013
A C4 carebears dilemma
Day Four
After wasting time scanning routes to reunite my chars yesterday, I finally get to do some C4 plexing. I had four Frontier Barracks, two Information Sanctums, some Command Posts and a few Integrated Terminus that I could do. The Frontier Barracks is the preferred ones because you can do them without even switching drones, if you manage to snipe the three frigs in the last wave before they get to close, it's Bouncers all the way. Easy. The Command Posts demand much more work. Initial wave is best handled with warriors or hammers, and the cruisers in the second Gardes. The Information Sanctums is as scary as they come in C4, the second wave is four battleships, and the trigger, the Sleepless Safeguard both scram and neut you while the Sleepless Defenders do quite good damage. There's no warping out from that one if you cant handle it. I will most likely not be doing them in my double-Rattler setup.After have killed and salvaged all the sites except for the Information Sanctums, the value-approximation on my loot-tab in the CHA reads just over 800M. Not to shabby for one days work. It remains to be seen if I can find the same efficiency when doing the sites in my static C4.
The current fit I'm running with is the one that sort of became the corp standard for PVE in Reconfiguration Nation. The power lies in the range you get from the Sentries, to be able to reach out to 100km and touch stuff with 700dps is amazing. It's what make the fit so efficient. Even if switching drones is a bit of a hassle, you can, so you will always have a way of dealing with sleepers, no matter what range or size.
Rattlesnake, C4 plexer
High power
1x Large Shield Transporter II
1x Large S95a Partial Shield Transporter
2x Drone Link Augmentor II
2x Large 'Regard' Power Projector
Medium power
1x F-90 Positional Sensor Subroutines
2x Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
1x Gistum C-Type EM Ward Amplifier
3x Federation Navy Omnidirectional Tracking Link
Low power
1x Signal Amplifier II
4x Drone Damage Amplifier II
1x Pseudoelectron Containment Field I
Rig Slot
1x Large Egress Port Maximizer II
1x Large Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer II
1x Large Drone Control Range Augmentor I
Charges
1x Targeting Range Script
Drones
5x Warrior II
5x Hammerhead II
5x Garde II
5x Light Armor Maintenance Bot I
5x Bouncer II
You need a CPU implant to fit that.
Two of these can easily do any combat site in C4's with the exception of the Information Sanctums. They don't perma-tank all the spawns, but they kill them fast enough for it to not matter. Normally I just have to use one shield transport, which I lazily just put on each Rattler at the beginning of each site and then let run. Rarely do I need to micromanage the tank by adding a second repper.
The cap-bouncing is very effective (especially with good skills and the rig) and a good defence against the neuting. Double cap-bounce goes up first thing on warp-in and is not touched during the site.
If you got tree Rattlesnakes like this, you could most probably perma-tank any spawn in any C4 (including Wolf Rayets if you are feeling masochistic), but you would not need to because then you will have the dps to take down the spawns before they become a problem. In fact, with three ships the sleepers are dying so quick that things like lock-time, numbers of targets and focusing fire comes into effect.
So how much bling? By fitting cheap ass Rattlers you minimizing risk/reward ratio, but on the other hand you might end up losing a ship that you would not have lost if you had spent that extra on the tank.
Adding faction inv.fields would increase tanking enormously, both because of the extra resists, but also from the fact that you then get CPU to upgrade the shield transports to T2, which would increase the repping-power by 10%. But would it be worth it for me just to be able to do the Information Sanctums?
Sunday, June 30, 2013
Scout in the wrong system
Day Three
When I log in I discover that I got a incoming C4. Not surprising if you consider the amount of C4/C4 out there, they need to connect somewhere, right? I jump in and get a glimpse of some combat scanner probes. But there's nothing interesting in the system, and I plan on doing the sites I got in Alpha (my C4/C4 home), so I decide to close this and roll my static to get a safe work-environment for my Rattlers to carebear in.I log on a scout to make the closing a bit safer. As I routinely do a scan just after logon I see a Retriver on scan! Wth!?! somebody mining in my system! How dare they!? What blatant behavior! And how come I did not see him before? Oh, wait.. I'm not home. I'm in a foreign system. But a system that's remarkably familiar... It's the system from yesterday, I simply forgot to jump my scout back home before logging off, and now the connection is gone. I must say that juggling four chars on three accounts is something I'm not that accustom to, and I'm making silly mistakes. Like forgetting where to hang my hat.
Now I need to both scan my scout out, as well as scan a route out from Alpha if I want to get him back home. And I would like that. Even if I can scan with all my other chars in Alpha I like to keep a backup scanner there at all times, if I somehow would get locked out. I even have a fourth alt just logged in the system as a backup to the backup. In case of someone making a serious attempt at killing my POS I'm going to need as many scan alts as I can muster to get friends in for defense.
Anyhow, I start to scan my scout out at the same time as I check out the static C3 in my incoming C4. C3s are good if you want to find empire since they always have a k-space static. This one is a low sec; Pout.
In the meantime my lost scout have manged to find his way out through a C4a-C4b-C4c-C3a-LS-route. See? the C3s as gateways between C4 and k-space once again. The low sec is Usi, which is 42j from Pout. Well, I guess I can't complain, the autopilot will take care of most of the mundane work. In a frig it's really not that slow.
Thursday, June 27, 2013
New beginnings...
Day Zero
Lets say you had decided to try your hand at living alone in a C4/C4 with the intent of making ISK from plexing. What would you bring, and how would you do it? I decided early I wanted to go as light as possible. I did not want to have anything with me that I did not absolutely needed for the task at hand - farming some C4's.I had two characters that could both fly Rattlesnakes and one of them could pilot an Orca. That would be the basic fleet. The rattlers to kill the sleepers and the Orca to haul my tower in, and of course to roll wormholes with, something I was planing on doing a lot.
Another "must have" was a cov ops for each character to do scanning and scouting in, as well as a Noctis to bring in the salvage and loot the wrecks.
That's really the minimum of ships I needed for my quest; Orca, Rattler x 2, Buzzard/Helios, Noctis.
But since I already had passed the line where I couldn't move everything at once (and put any un-piloted ships into the Orca) I could just as well bring a few extra ships that I knew I would need to make life easier, in particular the closing of wormholes.
Now, I would need to close and roll a lot of 2B wormholes during my stay. I needed to close any incoming K162 to safely plex my ownl, as well as the static, system. But I also would need to roll the static when I wanted to find something better. Wormholes in C4s are closed by jumping an Orca "heavy" (100MN propulsion on) six times and a single battleship heavy twice. I could do that with my Orca and one of the Rattlers if i fitted an afterburner to it, but it would not have been optimal.
For starters, the rattler would need to be refitted each time, and running around 1B each, I figure they are a bit to expensive to risk for a job that a 100M ship can do just as well. Or even better.
Secondly, you sometimes end up with critical holes you want to deal with. The six orca-jumps + the battleships is not enough to close the biggest holes (the actual mass on wormholes varies with 10%) and then you end up just critting it instead of closing it. Other times somebody else leave a WH critical. For these times what you want is a Heavy Interdictor. Thats right, a HIC. The thing with the HICs is that they can be fitted to be really, really light one way (into the critical WH you want to close) but quite heavy on their way back, thus closing the hole with you on the right side. Two bubbles reduces the mass of a HIC to half that of a shuttle, while on the the other hand a 100MN AB makes it more then half as heavy as a battleship. So: Bubbles up on the way in, AB on on the way back.
This made me bring two additional ships; a closing Scorpion and a Onyx for closing critical wormholes.
The covert ops, the Onyx and the Noctis got to ride in the Orca when moving the Rattlers around. That kept the number of roundtrips just to get ships in to a minimum.
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