Minority Retort

The number one feature of W-space that draws me in is the lack of a local chat. The unknown. The fact that you just have to assume that there's a cloaked Proteus watching your every move. The upsides are obvious, you can take your time hunting your prey, present a hard counter to whatever it is you're likely to face or choose whether to engage at all. But when you're actively hunting in space with no local chat and systems so vast you can't possibly D-Scan all at once, you absolutely need to know if your quarry is even online still. Who knows how many hours are now going to be wasted stalking people who aren't even logged in, never mind actually active, all because of one little change.

I can remember almost a year ago when Chance Ravinne floated this idea on the EVE Online forums. Although he's not the first to suggest it, he was summarily shouted down by most of the posters on that Wormhole sub forum. Wingspan saw it as interfering with their play style as when they camp someone's system, those being camped can know if their enemy are active in system. The easy answer would be to move system and stop terrorizing harmless bears, but no, that wouldn't do. We must change the game to suit the Wingspan style of play, not adapt to the way it is.

Well, the times they are a changing. Now it is us, the Wormhole community, that must adapt to the play style of camping douche nozzles like Wingspan. Judging by the Reddit thread I appear to be in the minority opposing this change but I suspect that's more because the Reddit community doesn't have the obvious Wormhole bias that I do. I accept that and I'll adapt. It just blows my mind that we'd elect someone to CSM to represent the Wormhole community and then sit back and applaud as he lends influence to a content reducing change to the region. Essentially, this makes watch lists redundant. You want to keep tabs on a war target? Nope. Want to know when that guy selling his Wormhole is online? Nope. Want to know if the guy that was ratting earlier is still online? Nope. I mean really, what is the point of the watch list at all under these circumstances? So friends can keep tabs on friends? Asinine.

Cue the butthurt posts.

ISK in the Nether Regions

The move to a HiSec pocket started with a bang, but work commitments from pretty much all of our pilots have really hampered much in the way of PvP content over the last month. As such, with the limited time I've had, I've started poking about in the LowSec regions around us to see what sort of a living can be made running the various 3-6/10 rated DED sites.

First order of business was to fit out a ship capable of doing the job solo. I don't like dual boxing at the best of times and frequently getting called away from my screen means it must be a Covert ship so I can just warp out to a safe spot until time permits me to return. I looked at the various T3 options but in a Covert configuration they have positively anaemic damage output. The Stratios really is the only option.

As I'm going to be using it primarily in Blood Raider sites, a lean toward EM/Therm resistance and damage was necessary. I tinkered with the idea of a shield fit for the pure DPS a pair of Geckos could crank out with three or four drone damage amplifiers on, but it just wasn't tough enough to handle a 6/10 site solo. So, taking advantage of the ship's bonuses, I developed the loadout you see on the right.

Blood Raiders have a tendency to tracking disrupt the shit out of your guns, so I decided to make this an exclusive drone boat. Moreover, their tendency to use energy neutralizers meant there was a few less capacitor hungry modules to feed, freeing up high slots to fill with a Drone Link, Probe Launcher and some Dead Space Nosferatus to help nullify the effects of neuting. The extra range you get from the Dead Space variants is absolutely worth it. They're cheap to buy and with fall off you can gain cap from over 30 km 's away.

My primary drones will be Geckos, Curators and Ogres, so a Drone Navigation Computer and a Tracking Link will do wonders for drone flight time and damage application. An Afterburner to keep some transversal on my targets and some capacitor regeneration modules finish off the mid slots.

The low slots, predictably enough, will be where the tank and DPS upgrades reside. I went with a Dead Space repairer for the capacitor savings and a faction hardener. They're not woefully expensive and you should cover the cost of the fit in pretty short order.

As for the drones, it's always a good idea to carry a couple of large Logi bots around so you can repair on the fly. You won't always have access to station repair facilities and even undocking in LowSec carries its own dangers.

In a pinch you could carry around a depot and some different drones and hardeners should you stumble into the space of a different faction, if that's likely for you, it'd probably be worthwhile changing the rigs slightly.

With the theory crafting done, I got to scanning. Aridia isn't highly populated so the space doesn't get farmed all that much meaning I don't have to travel very far or for very long to find appropriate sites. But it's been profitable. With only a very casual effort and minimal man hours, I've collected about 1.5 Billion in loot so far. So I'm well in front with the ship cost and able to pretty low stress PLEX an account as needed. It's not as lucrative as W-Space, but it is at least different.

No Eye for Business

In the process of trying to find a backwater C1 Wormhole for my alts to farm PI from I was unfortunate enough to bump into a chap called Doc Hofman today. He's asking a very reasonable 800m ISK for a C1 system with the right planet layout I need and the POCOs contained within. Seems like a good fit so I sent him a mail indicating my interest and he convo'd me a few hours later so we might finalize the sale. Or so I had hoped.

The good Doctor was insisting on using a third party to broker the ISK exchange. That's not particularly unusual, but I have an aversion to paying ISK to someone who's essentially done nothing to earn it. I've got more ISK than I know what to do with so I offered Doc 400m ISK as a down payment so I could get a scout in system and then a further 50m ISK as each of the eight POCOs was transferred. He gets his 800m ISK, the broker gets nothing and the worst case scenario for him is he's 400m ISK richer.

Seems simple enough, right? Well, apparently not. Doc continues to insist on using the broker. I ask why and he tells me it's not worth the risk. Seriously Doc, did you bump your head? What risks are you taking you monosynaptic mouth breather? Do you really think I'd pay you 400m ISK to seed an invasion fleet? That's some backward economics right there, especially for a C1 system. Not to mention the fact that I'd have to grind through eight POCOs and their subsequent timers. So instead of moving in, I was stone walled by a mindless fuck sock who hasn't the slightest fucking clue when he's onto a good thing.

After my rage settled, I tried a compromise. I told him if he insisted on using a broker the only one I would use would be Chribba as the one he proposed I had never heard of. Well guess what... no deal. Apparently this guy has no clue who Chribba is either. *sigh*

I really have to stop thinking intelligent people inhabit this universe. All evidence is to the contrary.

FAux Pass?

The most recent Dev Blog regarding the Force Auxiliary Capital ships is essential reading if you're a cap pilot. Due to player feedback, or most likely head explosions, CCP have decided to do away with the Force Auxiliary skill books that had been seeded on Tranquility and decided to just swap any carrier with a triage module for the racial equivalent Force Auxiliary when the March release lands. It seems like a common sense move considering how essential Capital Logistics are to Null Sec entities; sovereignty may have come down to who won the race to build the most FAux Caps the fastest. Now at least those who are dependent on these ships won't be too inconvenienced by the change.

But I'm not a dedicated Capital pilot and I don't really give a rats arse about NullSec, either. I've got Amarr, Caldari and Gallente Carrier and Dreads to level IV and the frequency at which I use them means I'll probably never train them to level V, but I am forced to assess what to do with my current Archon and Chimera as they slowly rust to dust in Aurohunen. The idea of a DPS Carrier has a certain amount of appeal even if it has limited usefulness to me but on the flip side, the ability to use those Capital reps can come in handy from time to time, too. So do I fit a Triage module or take a pass and see what sort of a monster drone boat I can turn my Chimera into?

This is probably going to seem profoundly vapid, but I think I'll be going with the Force Auxiliaries just because they're the shiney new thing and because of the terrible pun I made in the title of this blog entry. After all, the models do look pretty damn sexy. That said, I'm open to arguments for keeping the old carriers, too. The prospect of the double or triple Capital Ancillary Shield Booster fit Chimera with lows dedicated to Drone Damage Upgrades and the remaining mid slots for DPS application sounds like a metric shit load of fun. But who am I kidding? It's not like it'll have enough CPU to fit all of that anyway, it's still Caldari.

So what's your plan?

Death by a Thousand Cuts

It is with great interest I read of a proposed new module for Captains of Battleships and Capital Ships to help them deal with a variety of situations that would normally render them helpless to a mosquito fleet. The Heavy Stasis Grappler will, in its Tech II variant, have an 85% velocity reduction on the targeted ship, the only downside being its limited range of just one kilometre and a fall off, with reduced effectiveness, out to ten kilometres. Interestingly, overheating will increase the optimal to four kilometres, so make sure you have your Thermodynamics skills trained up.

This proposed new module will be unaffected by Stasis Webifier bonuses as you see on the Vindicator & Bhaalgorn but regardless, it opens up some interesting scenarios, especially in Wormhole space.

Consider the frigate wormhole and the now very effective doctrines many Wormhole groups use to take advantage of them. Combat HICs, Bomber wings, T3 Destroyer gangs and T2 Logistics frigates can, with only a handful of pilots, bring down a pair of Battleships without too much trouble. Even a Marauder can't deal with a small group of frigates and when you consider it's a 2 Billion ISK ship compared to about 200 Million ISK worth of ships, that's a little imbalanced. I do like CCPs thinking here; they can't give Battleship sized weapons uber tracking without turning EVE into Battleships Online and they certainly have to address the issue that basically any buffer fit Battleship can be subjected to death by a thousand cuts by a well fit Frigate. It must be tempting to give Battleships secondary weapons to deal with the tiny menace, indeed it's what I thought Battleships in EVE Online would be when I started out, but I understand that for the sake of balance that isn't an option. The Stasis Grappler changes everything without affecting balance in a negative way as far as I can tell.

Take for example a standard buffer fit, Mega Pulse Laser Abaddon pitched in a duel against a Condor with rockets. The Abaddon is going to cost you around 400 Million ISK fitted, the Condor, maybe 20 Million ISK. All the Condor has to do is a little drone control and the fight is effectively over. That Abaddon will die a slow, horrible death, blasting lasers into space with futility as the Condor slowly chips away at its armour whilst taking advantage of the poor tracking of the Abaddon's lasers. Now throw the Stasis Grappler into the equation. The Condor, needing to be close to its target for its rockets to land, is reduced to 85% of its velocity and is now in serious danger from the primary weapons of the Abaddon, not to mention much easier fodder for his drones. Throw on another conventional Stasis Webifier and you will bring the Condor almost to a stop and certainly to its death. At long last, the Battleship will again be capable of engaging all targets effectively.

This may well have dire consequences for the Astero, the light tackle/scouting ship of choice for most W-Space dwellers. I've lost my fair share of Asteros tackling everything from Marauders to Rattlesnakes, but I've always lasted long enough for the fleet to land and finish the job. That may not be so certain now; with primary weapons coming to bear on my heavily webbed down Astero there's every chance the target would escape before the fleet even lands. But I'm fine with that, reward without risk is dull.

In all of this I've failed to address how this might effect Capital ships, if at all. I really can't think of a situation where I'd like to have one on a carrier, it seems almost redundant. Dreadnaughts however, post some interesting options. I lost a Moros once upon a time and in that situation, this module would have been a Bob send. From close range, after having destroyed a Chimera and a few sub caps, I was pinned down by a gang of Command Ships, eventually neuting my tank off with an Armageddon and grinding me down with the dozen or so Battlecruisers. I was lucky enough to alpha one Command ship off the field who was careless enough to not be orbiting, but the rest I was unable to track, even with dual scripted tracking computers. Add the Stasis Grappler to the mix and suddenly there's an Armageddon down, capacitor restored and a gang of Command Ships trying to get the fuck out of dodge. Oh, that which might have been...

That is highly situational, however. You'd be best served just carrying one in your cargo hold and fitting off a depot or carrier should the need arise. Oh, wait... you can't do that any more. Nevermind :S

Maths is Hard

Much is being made of the dollar cost of Skill Extractors in the New Eden Store on various blogs, Reddit and the EVE-O forums. Because of exchange rates and the fact I don't actually put any real life monies into EVE any more, it's all pretty foreign to me. So let's take the perspective of a space rich Capsuleer who buys their Aurum on the market, currently valued at about 570 Million ISK for a 1,000 Aurum token.

I'm that guy that never buys a six pack of beer, if I'm going to buy beer, I buy a box. I know I'm going to drink it eventually, who am I trying to kid? I shall adopt the same approach with the Skill Extractors. If I'm going to buy one, I'm buying ten.

Therefore, 8K in Aurum on the EVE Market is going to cost me 4.56 Billion ISK. That investment will net me ten extractors to fill with 5 Million Skill Points I have no use for and allow a new player to inject five million skill points, instantly. The instantly part is where the value comes from. The only way you can do that under normal circumstances is via a character trade. It'll cost you significantly less, yes, but you don't get to choose your name, your race or where those skill points are allocated for maximum efficiency. There's value in all of those things to the right person.

So now you have to question, what is the value of the skills being extracted? The most logical way to assess the value of training is with the cost of play/training time, or PLEX. With optimal implants and correct attribute mapping you can train about 1.6-1.8 Million Skill Points a month. For the sake of argument, let's call it three months of training. In PLEX value, three months of training is about 3.75 Billion ISK. So now let's add those numbers together.

10 Skill Extractors: 4.56 Billion ISK
5 Million Skill Points: 3.75 Billion ISK

Total: 8.31 Billion ISK. Divided by ten, that's 831 Million ISK each, and that's before you take into account the profit that a seller may think is reasonable. Let's call that 10%, although demand may cause that to go North or South of that figure.

The final cost? Somewhere around 900 Million ISK for one 500K SP Injector.

If that doesn't sound very attractive, and it shouldn't, consider then if you are a bitter vet with over 80 Million Skill Points. Your investment of 9 Billion ISK for ten injectors will allow you to inject a paltry 1.5 Million Skill Points, not even one month of training.

Clearly this is only of benefit to one player, the newb. He will spend a couple of hundred dollars on PLEX to jump into 5 Million skill points and, if enough of them do it, probably crash the PLEX market in the process. As someone who PLEX's two accounts each month, I can only say thanks. As someone who thought they might make use of Skill Injectors, I say thanks for nothing, CCP. In their efforts to avoid making this mechanic "pay to win" they've just made it stupidly pricey to fast track skills. I find it hard to comprehend that they could run these numbers and find this result reasonable. I won't be surprised if we see another Jita uprising, frankly.

CCP have released this graph to show the cost in PLEX to train up a character to various levels, taking into account implants and attributes. Notably however, it's the cost excluding the price of the injector, an item that will make up roughly half of the total cost. I don't know if that's an oversight, deliberately deceiving or just stupid, but if it isn't any of those things, well... that's even worse.

Endurance Boosting

Whilst I certainly don't consider myself a miner, I have been seen in HiSec ice belts before because I'm either such an enormous tight arse that I won't pay for my own POS fuel, or I'm just so industrious that I insist on making my own POS fuel. Yeah... industrious. I've got well skilled Exhumer and Orca pilots, a few days of ice mining every three months or so isn't a big deal. It's almost therapeutic, right up until the time you feel like putting a gun in your mouth.

Anyway, ever since Shattered Wormholes came around and CCP trolled the crap out of us by putting ice belts in systems only accessible to frigates and destroyers, I've longed for the opportunity to harvest that high grade ice for convenience's sake and the obvious time saving. The Endurance frigate has now made that a reality, but how do you get yourself those dank mining boosts without an Orca?

You use a Stork, of course. Conveniently, it was only a short cross train on my Orca pilot to have him able to fly a Stork Command Destroyer for the express purpose of boosting a fleet of Endurance frigates and, as it turns out, the difference in the effectiveness of the boosting is remarkably small.

Obviously, this is hostile space, so one thing more than anything that is vital for this boosting Destroyer is that it be impervious to Combat Probing. I've solved this issue with a truck load of Gravimetric ECCM and a Back Up array and even tried to combat probe it out with a very high skilled Buzzard pilot with scanning mods and a full Mid Grade set of Virtue Impants to get a result of around 80%. So yeah, no one's going to probe you out, only a dumb safe spot will likely get you killed. Moreover, the fit isn't so specialized that you'd even need to dedicate a Stork to the job, you could just re-purpose your PvP one when the situation calls for it.

Now, to the miner nerd stats. Boosting the Endurance fit you see in the top part of the image with a maximum skilled Orca pilot with a Mining Foreman Mindlink will give you a yield of 1,691. Don't ask me to put that into cycle time seconds, because I can't/won't. Unboosted, the yield is just 1,144, so it's an appreciable boost in efficiency. The surprising number is that boosts from the Command Destroyer fit pictured yield a return of 1,591, just 100 less than the max skilled Orca. Of course, it's not just ice harvesting this will work wonders for, Gas and Ore are equally affected should you choose to bust out a Venture or Prospect for similarly small wormhole connections.

So there you have it. Go mining in W-Space; it's totally safe and super efficient.