Thursday 28 November 2013

Reminder about Epithal flying

The Foo paranoid method of flying Epithals in wormhole space to and from Customs offices.


Do you really need to warp to every planet every PI cycle?  Customs offices hold a lot of PI.  You are vulnerable at the customs office.  Consider deferring some planets until next cycle.
  • Dscan
  • Warp to Static Safe Spot.
  • Warp to Tactical Bookmark (or Tac) off Customs office.
  • Warp to customs office.  Transfer goods.  Warp out.  A bookmark in your current tac to customs office line is best (similar to an insta-undock but from space) good enough is POS or safe spot.
  • If you still get caught then empty hauler back into customs office; and align to a warpout to get pod clear.
  • Mix order up.  If you have just completed PI on planets 1, leave planet 2 until later.
Fit includes: DCU; stabs, alignment rigs; cloak; offline probe lancher; shield extenders, adaptive rigs.
 
I have mildly edited the evemail exchange below, with commonly used terms, and removing names and fits to protect the guilty.  If you really care, zkillboard and eve-kill exist.

Epithal kill ...
From:
Saissore Foo
Sent: 2013.11....
To: yyyy, xxxx (where yyyy is hunter, xxxx is hunted)
Hiya

You caught one of our so called perfect fit Epithals the other day, I assume at a customs office.
Loot fairy was mean; the only thing you got of any value appears to be the T2 invuln field.

Congrats; If our pilots get caught, its our pilots fault.

Secondly, what were you fit with?

Thirdly, did he warp directly from POS to Customs Office?

Fly well

Foo



--------------------------------
Re: Epithal kill ...
From: yyyy

Sent: 2013.11....
To:
Saissore Foo,  xxxx
Hey,

It actually was quite tough.

I expected the epithal to have more stabs so i tackled him with three short points.

I hard a hard time following the pilot but it was when I realized he was running the planets in order so I was able to get ahead of him.

As well, I'd recommend your pilots fly to a safe above or below the POCO prior to starting their PI run.

No hard feelings, Hope to you see you out there.

Fly safe
yyyy

--------------------------------

Re: Epithal kill ...
From:
xxxx
Sent: 2013.11....
To: yyyy, 
Saissore Foo


Good to know information. I'll mix it up more. Safe -> Random POCO  -> Safe -> Random POCO, instead of in order. Isn't it funny how the mantra of when you get lazy you lose your ship holds true still? Right Foo ;) ?

I had 3 stabs on it. Would 4 of made a difference? I thought for a SB that is fit for catching Epithal (like I think yours was), then it doesn't matter.

When you mean above or below having a tac at a POCO, do you mean on grid or off grid? I take it this is for someone who might be following? They uncloak on the POCO, while I would uncloak 150+ km and then warp to safe to play with my goo another day.

Thanks for the feedback! Fly Safe!



--------------------------------

Final comments.

An on grid tac at roughly 200k makes it even harder for hunters.  If they decloak too soon (to shed recalibration delays), then you can see and be somewhere else instead.

Our Pilot had 3 stabs.  The hunter had 6 points.  No stabbed fit Epithal can escape from 6 points by themselves.  Potentially an Epithal gun/damage mod fit might have saved the day in this instance?  Maybe.  Another friendly pilot with ECM may also have assisted.  I think it is worth the very occasional loss of between 5M & 10M ISK rather than tie up another pilot for guard duty.


PS.  I agree with some other bloggers that these structures should be called COCO's (corporation owned customs offices); or maybe even PCOCO (player corporation owned customs offices); but I will get more google hits using the common terminology, regardless of technical correctness or otherwise.

3 comments:

  1. Hi there. I just found your blog and thoroughly enjoyed the posts I've read; your writing style is solid.

    My corp recently went through a progression similar to yours. We moved from a C2 system to a C4>C2 in May and again to a C5>C4 three months ago. We were seriously considering a C4>C4. Although we were not quite ready to do C5 sites unescalated when we moved in, in hindsight we are really glad we went the C5>C4 route.

    We spent our first few months running sites in the C4 static, much like you are doing now with your K162s and what you'd be doing in a C4>C4. The extra traffic from k-space connectuons was worrisome at first, but wasn't as bad after we got used to them. It does add time and risk over a C4>C4. We can go days without a NS or LS connection or we might get three in a 24 hour period. NS K162s are the most common, but remarkably benign. They mostly originate from nullbears checking their system security or looking for a safe route out of NS. Solo/tiny null gangs are disproportionately afraid of the lack of local. We will often run sites in our C4 static with open NSs at home, often without a scout if they have few locals, are in renter space, or the NS is EOL. We arent so brazen when we are connected to LS; those people are crazy. We close these if at all possible, or watch it if we decide rolling it is too risky, but we want to run C4s. Sometimes these are close enough to HS to be useful. Direct HS's are uncommon but a welcome advantage over the C4>C4 system. We get a direct HS about every 1-2 weeks.

    As for incoming C5/6s, these are not too bad. Half of the time these open from someone scanning out which opens up the possibility of ninja'ing some C5/6 gas or sites later. Half of the time its a C5 corp looking for a group their size to engage, caps to gank on site, or they are looking to jump a carrier in and single escalate your sites with a T3 gang. If you are POS'd up, 95% of the time, all three groups will promptly roll the hole for better opportunities. If its not busy in there, put a small gang on the WH and close it with corp-insured Orca runs.

    Is there an increased risk of siege over a C4? Maybe. We haven't been sieged during our 3 month stay. Our POS would be tempting to me if I were in a larger PVP entity. Precautions include onlined POS hardeners, offlined defensive mods, and floating freighters/Orcas with a pilot for each. If you train an Orca/Freighter for emergency asset retention, do it on an alt that logs off in a fast frig. You may have to keep cargo logged off for weeks until you can anchor a new POS. If your main is in that freighter that will be inconvenient.

    Those are the downsides and they aren't that bad. The upsides you know about, cap escalations are a great source of isk. We built a Rorq and its nice taking the ore through direct HS for a perfect refine. It can be jumped into an empty NS/LS and clone vat used to bring in podded out pilots. It's nice knowing the caps we've built aren't stuck in here. And lastly, but most importantly, we didn't have to move from a C4 twice. C4s suck to move from.

    ReplyDelete
  2. If that was too long, the short version is consider a C5>C4, you can grow into it. I'll add we did our first cap escalation after living here almost 4 months. It was a long growth period, and it couldn't be done in a C4>C4.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks anon; sometimes my writing style is a little too 'solid' and a little uninspired.

    As far as growing into your wormhole; well ... our approach is to fill wormholes and grow into additional ones. So far up to #3; when we out grow that; we will move into #4.

    We have essentially a recruiting wh; a solid C2 core and a growing c4 group. We will move into something more later.

    ReplyDelete

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