Nomadic behaviour

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.

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 :)

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.

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.

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.

First plexing with Vargur

Now I have done a fair bit of sites in my Vargur, and I must say, I really like it. I can't help but to compare it against my previous experiences with "solo" plexing C4s using two Rattlesnakes. Those chewed up any C4 site in between 10 and 15 minutes, whereas the Vargur needs at least 20 min for a Frontier Barracks. But that includes booth salvage and looting.

I discovered that the preferred site for the Vargur was actually the Frontier Command Post and not the Frontier Barracks. This was due to less battleships spawning out at 80km. Normally one would shy away from the Frontier Command Posts due to the first wave that is pretty much useless (frigs and sentry-guns). But with the short range, smartbombing Vargur it does not add many minutes to the total running time. However, for that I need a BM for the centre of the site, which brings me to the fits lack of Micro Jump Drive.

Marauders have a nice bonus to the reactivation delay of micro jumps The ability to warp to a non-bookmarked Frontier Barracks, aim the ships at he first two battleships 90km away, and just a few seconds later be able to hit them from 10km with high dps Hail would have been really nice. But without a much more expensive fit or boosts, I did not want to be without the second Invulnerable Field.

The Vargur costs more than both Rattlers together and is slower, but for me, the ease of piloting a single ship instead of two, not having to setup cap-bouncing and keep track of remote-reps makes up for it. It's simply a more relaxing experience for an old man with lousy multiboxing-skills like me.

It also unlocks one account for a scout, which is very important. With the marauders three utility-highs, the ability to kill frigs with a push of a button (I'm seriously in love with that smartbomb!) and two salvager to take care of the wrecks the Personal Tractor Unit (which really is more of a looting-robot) have dragged in range the whole endeavour is much simpler than all the hoops I had to jump trough to get the Rattlers setup and working.

Since a lot of the time is spent scanning, scouting and closing WH's the actual time spent shooting sleepers is actually quite low. At least for me. Final call is that 20 min/site incl. salvage using one pilot is better than 10 min for two - where you either need to go back for the salvage afterwards or have a third account just for the salvage.

I must say that the combination Red Giant and a True Sansha smartbomb rocks. All your frig problems are just a memory, they die like the pesky flies they are. With the effect of the C4 it gets a range of 12km, more than enough. I could even have used a normal tech 1 and it would probably have done the job. For the latest in overkill - use it on a Vargur in a C4 to kill the sleepers in the gas- and ore-sites. Even if you are not interested in the gas or ore, killing and salvaging the sleepers might be worth your time, I got 80M out of my 12 sites in Gamma.

Since my non-marauder pilot happens to be both my Orca-pilot and a fully skilled siege/armour booster, I simply had him refit the trusty old Orca to a booster. Not that you absolutely need it, not even for the Information Sanctums, but the margins goes from need-to-be-on-the-ball-and-not-make-too-much-misstakes- to can-leave-vargur-tanking-worst-spawn-while-on-the-phone -level.

I started with some Frontier Command Posts since I think those are the easiest ones. My Vargur turned out to be a bit overtanked for C4s (as expected) so I really got no need for boosts. I was planing on using the Orca as booster since Tashi, my Orca-pilot, got pretty good skills for that. Just a quick refit and some 22% bonus to resists, boosting and cap efficiency - not bad considering I get it "for free" with just a quick refit of a ship I need anyway.

At some point I even left the Orca cloaked at a WH to have ears on it and to be able to de-cloak and boost if I totally messed something up. But usually I just had it boosting from the POS.

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;

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.

Getting a replacement Rattler

Day Eleven

The plan for today is to get a new Rattler in since the last one, well, it expired somewhat unexpected :)

I have a incoming C5, so before I check out my new static C4, I have a look at that. Hmm.. not much action, a lone tower and like 10 sigs to scan down. Better get to it, you never know, C5s get a lot of empire-K162s, maybe I get lucky and find a HS 2 jumps from Jita...

After a few minutes of scanning, I have found a EOL null sec and a EOL low sec, so I jump through the low sec to have a look. hmm.. Lamadent. 10j to Jita. Trough Rancer and Crielere... That's a possible route at least, I'm in a cloaky T3, it's early afternoon far from peek EU and US, and I'm feeling like a lucky punk. Lets go to Jita and build a Rattler! The WH might not be there when I going back, and I'm certainly not taking a Rattlesnake through Rancer, but having one ready in Jita is a good first step.

The trip there is uneventful, I buy a Rattler for 512M, rig it for 150M and get replacement mods for what did not drop. All T2 stuff, thankfully. This means that my systems crash cost me around 700M in assets and one night of plexing.

On the way back I learn something new about safe travel in low sec. I have stopped using frigs and shuttles for travelling in low sec since all it takes to ruin your day is a few smart bombs and a scout on the incoming gate. If you have implants it can get quite expensive as well. Of course you can warp to the outbound gate from an alternative angle, but that complicates things and makes the travel-time a lot longer. I prefer something that can warp cloaked, don't have to bother about bubbles in 0.0 and wont die to a few smart bombs. Hence my Tengu.

Now, warping cloaked is all well and good, forcing camps to rely on scouts on gates to know what and when something is coming. However, what you can do while warping from one gate to another in a system with a lot of folks in local and that are usually camped in one way or another (like Rancer!), is scan the gate you are warping to.

If you do that, and warping to the Crielere gate in Rancer, like I did, you will get a healthy heads up on what kind of camp they got waiting for you. So, for instance if you see, like I did, over 10 Rokhs on narrow scan on a gate you will be landing on, you can bet your faction scram that you will be landing right into a pipe-bomb. Which I did. What I for some reason did not do, was to act on the information in time. Seeing a smart-bombing gang on short, narrow scan, the right thing to do is probably to de-cloak and activate whatever hardeners you got. If I had, maybe I would not have had to dock and rep half my armour :)

As I flew my Tengu now they stripped all my 8k shields and half of the little armour I had. Way to close for comfort. Without hardeners and DC running my little Tengu only got 22k EHP with my standard scouting fit. With them running, it becomes over 30k. And if I had been really smart I would have used a travel-fit, sacrificing the tackle for more tank and a MWD for burning to gates. Then the EHP would have been the double.

Tengu, WH scout, refit for travel
51k EHP, 78/91/86/86
dual prop for burning back to gates when cloak/warp failed

High power
1x Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
5x Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II (one off-line to fit the MWD)
1x Sisters Expanded Probe Launcher

Medium power
1x Gistum C-Type 10MN Afterburner
1x Experimental 10MN Microwarpdrive I
1x EM Ward Amplifier II
1x Explosive Deflection Amplifier II
1x Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
1x Republic Fleet Large Shield Extender

Low power
1x Damage Control II
1x Power Diagnostic System II

Rig Slot
1x Medium Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer II
1x Medium Core Defense Field Extender II
1x Medium Warhead Rigor Catalyst I

Sub System
1x Tengu Defensive - Adaptive Shielding
1x Tengu Electronics - Emergent Locus Analyzer
1x Tengu Propulsion - Interdiction Nullifier
1x Tengu Offensive - Covert Reconfiguration
1x Tengu Engineering - Augmented Capacitor Reservoir

Well, you learn all the time, and there's always something to improve upon. That's Eve. Besides, if I had used a shuttle or frig for the Rancer-crossing, I would have lost my pod and would have to do it all over again. That would have been a real drag.

Rattler down!

Day Ten

I lost my first ship today. One of the Rattlers went down. No, the inhabitants did not log on and killed me while plexing, I make sure I'm in scan-range of the POS and they are usually not savvy enough to log off in something cloaky. No, neither did I lose it at a WH-camp, all holes I jump through are much to scouted for that to be likely. And no, I did not try anything really stupid, like doing Information Sanctum in a Wolf Rayet with only two Rattlers.

I had just started the third wave in a Frontier Barracks, which happens to have tree frigs that actually scram you, when something in my graphics card went belly up and the whole machine crashed. Never happened before. Real bad timing I must say. When I logged back on, I saw that Tashi was still in his Rattler but Ashi was flying a pod. Dammit!

Well, nothing to do more than to recover what I could and crawl back home with my tail between my legs. If I had one, that is.

I logged on a scout and checked the wreck out. Hmm.. the scramming frig-bastards was still there, and since I had lost half of my PVE-fleet, I had nothing to finish the site with. Which meant I had to hot-loot what dropped from the Rattler, somehow get Tashi back on, and out of the site.

Here goes nothing! Uncloaking a Buzzard in a C4 is usually not a bright idea, but Ashis Rattler had managed to drop all the faction-stuff (thanx Bob!) so it was 200M worth of loot in the wreck - well worth a try. I managed to loot almost all of it, and got away in half armour. Phew.

Now to getting Tashi back. Loggin on he would do the reverse-emergency warp back to the point where Ashis Rattler died, and surly get scrammed before he could get out. Depending on just how low into armour or even structure he was, it could be hard to actually kill the frigs before their two BS and four cruiser sleeper friends popped me.

Fortunately he was in perfect health, so I could just pop some warriors, kill the scramming frigs and get out. Half shields, but safe.

Now I had to get to empire and get a replacement Rattler in. But that's a project for tomorrow.

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.

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.

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?