Moving slowly to citadels

At some stage soon, the Foo wormhole corps will be moving to citadels.

Our large Minmatar POS are currently costing approx 700M/month to fuel, and citadels don't have ongoing fuel costs just to exist.

Astrahus - the medium citadels is what we will set up in our C1 and C2 wormholes.  The C1 is for those that prefer the comfort of highsec nearby, and our C2 is for those that prefer to remain in wormholes with a little better PI.

The first citadels of are built in POS, with a significant time efficiency bonus.  (Well maybe not the Palentine Keepstar - but that is a 'unique' proposition.)

Just because I have my eye on the 700M/month prize, does not stop me from keeping an eye out on citadel prices.  When they first came out, the medium citadels were costing 9B, and are currently fairly rapidly.  I expect that the mediums will settle around the 1.5 Bil mark for a while and I will be looking for a few more days of stabilised prices before I go on a spending spree.

From Fuzzworks - my current preferred market history site

https://www.fuzzwork.co.uk/market/link/10000002/35832

I am also after a Fortizar for our C5.  Yes ... the lure of capital escalations exists for some of us, and we will get around to it again one day ... honest (Nullsec is keeping me very busy, and Bob only knows what I am even training at the moment.  All I know is something random I set up quite a while ago).

Unsurprisingly the Fortizar's are not heavily stocked.  At roughly 10 times the cost price, and (I believe an even longer research time), they will be slower.  Where there are a lot of mediums on market, there are precious few of these large citadels.  I would like to spend 15B but I might be pushing it somewhat.  Until now the Fortizars will be POS built, with the station based large citadels starting to come out very soon.  I expect that will drop the prices somewhat once station based citadels come out ... maybe.

https://www.fuzzwork.co.uk/market/link/10000002/35833

The Keepstars are not even available yet.  30 days for the first citadel off an unresearched blueprint, so the first off the factory lines that are POS based will be approximately 19 May, with the station based builds ones coming out roughly 28 May.

You got stuck out of your wormhole?

If you live in a wormhole, one day, that shifting door will shut down behind you.

It is embarrassing but it happens.  A little preparation goes a long way towards fixing this.

If you are flying in a wormhole, you have a probe launcher and 16 core scanner probes with you.  16 because sometimes the first 8 get lost.

Before you enter a wormhole, do a 'show info', and compare the text with this page.

Having access to probes and a launcher is even more important if you see any of :

• This wormhole is reaching the end of its natural lifetime
• This wormhole is on the verge of dissipating into the ether (I have never seen this message)
• This wormhole has had its stability critically disrupted by the mass of numerous ships passing through and is on the verge of collapse
• (or if you are in a capital, an orca, or a higgs rigged battleship: This wormhole has had its stability reduced by ships passing through it, but not to a critical degree yet

Please remember to make sure you have bookmarks for both sides of any wormhole you fly through.  

How to have probes regardless of what ship you fly

On a combat ship, a mobile depot and probes + launcher in the hold works well.

On my Epithals, my probe launchers are offline as I don't have the fitting for shields, stabs and launcher.  If I ever get stuck I can offline a shield, online a launcher and get back to empire space. Some ships have so called 'utility slots' that are unused for weapons

There is also the alt account.  Every Eve account has 3 pilots. Send in an alt with a T1 scanning frigate, prototype cloak, scanning mids, nanofibre lows and gravimetric rigs before you send in you pricey combat ship.

I have some 'recruit a friend' trial accounts for scanning alts.  21 days of training gives plenty of time for training astrometrics 4, astrometrics rangefinding/pinpointing/acquisition at 3 on 3 pilots.  Grab the same scanning frigate as above, but put the cloaking skillbook into the cargo hold.  Log off two of these pilots in any wormhole you may need (either defensive for getting home - or offensive for invading someone later).  When it comes time to activate your emergency pilot, you will get either a month of gametime or a plex on your main, essentially making your emergency alt very close to free.  You still need to pay approximately 10M ISK for skillbooks and a basic scanning frigate.

Note: you can not be logged into a trial account and a real account on the same computer at the same time, but you can create your alt, swap accounts and send ISK then log back in again.

If you are stuck in wormhole space

So, for better or worse the above advice is not followed.  Maybe your scanner had an encounter with slightly used ammunition.  Maybe the wormhole was collapsed by your scanning pilot returning home.


Are you truly stuck?  Did a corp member already scan down other exits?  Check your corporation and personal bookmarks.

If you get really stuck in a wormhole without a scanner, your options become limited. If you are in a cheap ship with a cheap set of implants (or even no implants), self destruct your ship for the insurance, then self destruct your pod.  This will be painful but may save you a lot of time.

If you are in a ship or pod too expensive to do this with, you are permitted to break the golden wormhole rule, and ask for help in local.  You are already in trouble, and maybe someone will help, or maybe they will help for a price.

http://www.torpedodelivery.com/wormhole-location/ may be worth a look.  I have never used their service, but would not rule it out either.

Look at the owners of any Customs Offices or POS (or even citadels?) in system and contact their CEO's or diplomats (from corp or alliance descriptions).

Watch the system in Zkillboard (eg https://zkillboard.com/system/31000477/ - just a random wormhole) looking for kills.  If someone is in there, you might be able to get bookmarks from them.

If you end up in a bad place in known space

If you get back to known space and are in an expensive ship, but are in a horrible place, pirates all around or hostiles between you and highsec, then note what system you are in and logout.

Grab another pilot, corp member, alt, or even a activate an emergency 'recruit a friend' alt.  There are some options for ships : A Yacht (Stats , Pricing ) - ideal for a brand new alt, an interceptor with scanner and cloak, ideally a T3 cruiser interdiction nullified and covert with plenty of stabs; and escort your main home.  This escort may be flying +1 system checking for camps or bubbles, or it might be scanning down wormholes or both. It might even be with an extra mobile depot in the hold and a set of warp core stabs (See also http://foo-eve.blogspot.com.au/2013/12/how-to-transfer-mobile-depot-in-deep.html )



Getting stuck without a scanner in a wormhole is something I try to avoid, but these are some tips to recover from disaster.

Should you set up in a wormhole to do P4 planetary interaction?

I recently received an evemail.

Hi there.
I've been following your blog with interest for the last few weeks and was wondering if I could ask for some feedback on a PI setup?
I'm considering setting up 4 toons doing PI in a wormhole, hopefully producing p4 products. 
I know this is going to set me back anything from 500m to 1b in startup costs, but I'd like to know if you think it's a feasible option for me to look into?

If you would like to try out wormhole PI, you could join one of our wormholes. They are setup and ready to go.

If you want to create your own wormhole setup, the following points are worth considering.

Getting a suitable wormhole

It can cost 500m to buy an entrance to suitable empty wormhole.  wormholesales.com is a good place to look. http://www.torpedodelivery.com/wormhole-location looks interesting but I have never used their services.

Make sure it has sufficient planets of the correct kind to support your PI, or to make sure you have the ability to import your local shortages.  http://eveplanets.com/ can show what any given wormhole can produce,

If you want to find a suitable wormhole (it will take you quite a while), find any wormhole with a static that is suitable, and learn how to roll wormholes (http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Wormhole_Campus_Static_Rolling_Guide is a possible starting point.    Rolling wormholes is a topic all on it's own)

Grinding out your customs offices

I have both bought and destroyed existing customs offices.  Buying is faster and potentially cheaper (especially if you use the replacement tanked afk laser myrmidon). However buying means that you need to give 'them' an entrance to your wormhole, something that I am loath to do if they have managed to lose it.

Each customs office you grind out will require : 24M damage done, with a 500 hps peak shield regeneration.  A couple of replacement tanked afk laser myrmidon can do it (empty clone, come back the following day with a 50% chance of a dead poco, 50% chance of brand new shiny clones back in empire space).

My budget of a customs office replacement is 100M/customs office (gantry plus upgrade mats).  The spot price is currently closer to 120M/customs office.

Ongoing costs.  

If you are going to do PI for 4 pilots, you will need a lot of storage.  You can go cheap and use a system's other customs offices, but it will be painful to manage.

An orca isnt big enough.  A freighter does not have a cloak.  This means you need to think about a POS.

A small POS (roughly 250m setup, 125m/month for fuel) is an invitation for casual bored passers by to take potshots.

A medium POS (roughly 500m setup, 250m/month for fuel) will keep away casual passers buy, but those looking for a rumble can take out your pos.  Have a method to easily extract your value (possibly freighter, or just keeping your POS 'lean')

A large POS (roughly 1B setup, 500m/month for fuel) in a low class wormhole will keep all but the most dedicated away.

Please note: Citadels are coming, and will replace all the above.  My crystal ball is cloudy, but my gut feel says a medium citadel will have roughly the costs of a large POS (though possibly less fuel ... maybe).

Do you want to take time off the game?  Your POS will still consume fuel, or be blown up if it runs out.

Supporting P4 PI with 4 pilots.

If you build from scratch, with 4 pilots, it will be difficult to make enough raw material to support a single 'hard' P4 factory (eg integrity response drones).  (Yes, P4 factory, not planet of P4 factories).

It might be more feasible to make supply an 'easy' P4 like sterile conduits (requiring 2xP3 and 1xP1).

As an alternative, especially for P3 and P4, consider 'Make 2, Import 1'.  It takes Gel-Matrix Biopaste (very profitable), Hazmat Detection Systems (marginally profitable) and Planetary Vehicles (incredibly loss making).  Consider making the profitable parts, and importing the rest.

The same applies to most levels.

Possibly you could look at the component costs on manufacture tab of my PI spreadsheet.

Why P4?

No PI is used directly by capsuleers shooting each other, red crosses or giant rocks.  It is used by other industrialists.  These industrialists will often want to move rather than make stuff where it is. P3 has better ISK/m3 than P4.

TL;DR  

The setup costs of a wormhole PI exceeds the costs of just the customs office.

1K+ DPS recommended for AFK POCO bashing.  3K+ DPS recommended for at keyboard bashing. without more than 500DPS, you cant beat the passive tank.

POS fuel costs (at least 250m month, 500m/month recommended - will change come citadels but I dont know what way yet).

100-120m per customs office.

I hope this helps

PS. 

[Myrmidon, replacement tanked afk laser]

Drone Damage Amplifier I

Drone Damage Amplifier I

Drone Damage Amplifier I

Drone Damage Amplifier I

Heat Sink I

Heat Sink I

Cap Recharger I

Medium Shield Extender I

Medium Shield Extender I

Medium Shield Extender I

Medium Shield Extender I

Heavy Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I, Multifrequency M

Heavy Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I, Multifrequency M

Heavy Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I, Multifrequency M

Heavy Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I, Multifrequency M

Heavy Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I, Multifrequency M

Medium Energy Burst Aerator I

[Empty Rig slot]

Medium Energy Collision Accelerator I

Ogre I x4

Cost 60m, most of that in the hull.  Unless you are doing your last afk bash, it is worth insuring.  An all 5's pilot will pull (according to Pyfa) 671 DPS.  Approach your poco and stay entirely stationary and you may do a litte more with your guns.  A pair of these are sufficient with 1/2 way decent skills.

The shield tank is there only because you may actually be at keyboard if (when?) a gank happens.   So far, I have about a 60% chance of completing an afk poco bash and waking up the following morning with the ship intact.  (These days, I have other, more intensive methods - but the afk bash is how I first started).  Tech 1 laser ammo does not need to be reloaded nor do drones.

Any laser or drone boat can fulfil this role, chose one according to your skills.  (If you are using cruisers or below, you may wish to 'phone a friend/bring an alt')

Some days ... I am the moron.

Well, it was bound to happen one day.

I have been playing in a few different locations in Eve, and I took my eye off the ball on one of them.

All my POS are set up so that all corp members can see POS fuel.  However, we all were not paying attention, and I let one run out.

So congratulations to EyEs.Fr for cleansing wh space of an unattended POS.

Just ow.

Testing escallations with a new partner

After my last post about C5 wormhole escalations, I have a new triage pilot in our C5.  My previous partner has a very demanding first life commitment, and while playing, is just after simple pew pew after 70 hour per first life working week

So off to singularity (the testing server) with my new partner.  In part to see how he will work out, and in part to see how I will handle the webbing loki component.

We know that we want at least federation navy stasis webifiers, for the increased range.  The problem is, how to get them.  I don't know of an eve-central service for the test servers.  I possibly could point a crest based scraper at one but .. end up finding 6 of them by flying around.  Most major trade hubs were sold out. My nullsec region had a few left, with only 3 days remaining.  And one of the highsec regions (Sinq Laison I think), had 1.  My partner had 2 from some source, so between us we could fit out 2 lokis.

So, the good news is that you can find faction gear on singularity markets for a time at least.  The bad news?  Those player orders sell out and expire.  The best news?  Part way through writing this post, singularity was re-mirrored.  Be prepared, buy some parts and put them aside for testing.  I recommend that you buy what you need rather than buy everything out there.  (http://wiki.eveonline.com/wiki/Test_server_rules "Do not make mass market purchases or create oversized stacks of items. ..." )  Also do not expect your items to be available in Jita.   Someone else has probably bought them out already.  Hunt the secondary markets or source systems.

Finally, if you are more organised, on tranquility (live) have a couple of ships fit with items you might want later.  Then on Singularity (test) there is a /copyships command that clones (almost) all your ships from the last mirror and places them into one of the nullsec combat systems.   From there you can /moveme to your relevant type of space (trade hubs, different wormholes etc)

After much stuffing around getting fits, off to Singuality's /moveme C5 and then the neighbouring static, where I promptly lose the Moros to sleepers.  Sleepless guardians orbit at 35k and scram and web to 40k.  Which means my baby boosted Loki, is outwebbed with only 35k .  (I can web one or 2 but they are continuously leaving range) Even more annoying is the bear's mistake of not overheating for the additional range.  My partner warps in his better skilled loki and webs for me, and I grab a second Moros (we were not entirely disorganised), and all of a sudden the sleepers die a quick death.

The following weekend I have Minmatar Electronics 5 on my Loki pilot and it goes well, no stress, sleepers falling one after the other.

How to get that magic 40k (without overheating)?

Module : Federation Navy Stasis Webifier has a base range of 14km. 
Module Loki Electronics - Immobility Drivers with Minimatar electronics system Level 5 increases webbing range to 35k.  This is not enough to reliably web the sleepers.
Booster : Unbonused battlecruiser with  Skirmish warfare link - Interdiction Maneuvers 1, with Skirmish Warfare Link Specialist 4. This reaches the magic 40k with some room to spare, and now I out-range the sleepers webs and orbit.

Tech 2 links and boosting ships with bonuses (command or strategic cruiser) would be wonderful for another 6k range but ... instead do what you can with what you have (while training for better).

Capital Escalations are dead. Long live Capital Escalations.

This post is made from 100% tin foil hats, and has a large dose of speculation. 

I have been looking at C5 capital escalations, using Jack Miton's 'Like a Baws' guide. https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=144954

Jack also has a Carrier + Battleship guide at https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1808468#post1808468

I have run some sites on singularity with a corp member on the other side of the world, and really need to get organised to run them on live.  Sometimes real life gets in the way, and I am currently the junior partner (skillwise) in the C5 sites.


To run the sites, as I understand it:

• Roll open wormholes.
• Set up your booster ships (x2)
• Triage Archon warps in (escalation 1)
• Webbing, target painting Loki warps in, calls targets.
• Siege armor dread warps in (escalation 2), blaps sleeper battleships for roughly 10K DPS, using anti structure guns (hence the need for webbing and target painting).  Things get hairy.
• Once most battleships are down, warp in armor dread #2 (escalation 3) (and maybe a second webbing loki).  Blap stuff easily.
• Warp in Carrier #2 (escalation 4).  Rush to kill something before the dreads do.
• Maybe a ECM boat to keep a trigger alive but harmless. This allows a full site respawn (or so I have read - not confirmed yet).
• Salvage and loot with Noctis and Mobile Tractor Unit, while the DPS wing goes to the next site.

If you fail, you will lose your fleet.  If your triage Archon disconnects, say good by to billions of ISK.  Sleepers remote repair each other, so high applied DPS matters.  The tricky point I found in the above method was the second escalation.  We want to get the number of sleepers down before the logi runs out of capacitor.


Assuming you want to keep the site alive, salvage this site while the DPS squad does the next site, then 5 pilots in a DPS squad, 3 ignored alts (Boosters and ECM), and a salvager.  Lets call it initially 10K DPS for dread #1, ramping up to 23K DPS by the time second dread and carrier land.  Including concurrent salvaging, this is moderately comfortable for 3 players with alts.




With the new capitals, there are some changes.

Firstly, it wont be a triage Archon landing, but one of the new Force Auxiliary capitals.  As a guess, it will be the Amarr one for increased armor resists.

The next question is what will be the preferred DPS platform vs battleships?  I have read that CCP want dreads to be the 'in your face' DPS ship, doing 2-3 times what a battleship does.  Different bloggers are suggesting 2k or maybe 3k DPS vs battleships.  In comparison, I am reading about (but do not yet fly) 1.5k DPS Vindicators.

However, another ratting carrier pilot I know claims 3k DPS with 13 fighters (and he doesn't have full skills yet).  So one of the following will happen.  Carriers will remain the preferred anti battleship platform, or dreads will do more than 3k, or carriers will be nerfed.

The siege armor dread won't be able to use an anti-cap gun, but will need to use a battleship gun.  Guesses suggest DPS in the 2-3k range, but ... will carriers do more?

Assuming that there will still be capital escalations, and that a force auxiliary escalates the site (neither a forgone conclusion), and that once I get 10K DPS on field with only 2 capitals, I can then smash the site out no problems, I still see something for the new capital escalation site running.


As a rough idea:

• Roll open wormholes (no change).
• Set up boosters (plural, no change).
• Triage Force Auxillery warps in (little change). Will this escalate?
• Probably the webbing Loki (webbing range still helps)
• 3 Bling battleships to clear most of the first escalation.
• Highest DPS vs battleship of armor carrier (probably Thanatos) or Dread
• Capitals to complete escalations in turn.  (possibly by BS pilots swapping to capitals)
• Maybe an ECM to keep the site alive (assuming this still works - I heard that CCP wanted to stop this)
• Salvage and loot with a Noctis and MTU.

Assuming you can keep the site alive, salvage this site while the DPS squad does the next site, and swap 2 battleship pilots for capitals as the site progresses;  then it is 6 pilots for the DPS squad, 3 ignored alts (Boosters and ECM), and a salvager.  Lets call it initially 4K DPS, slowly rising to 9K DPS (swapping BS for Caps).  That is, I see it taking 2-3 times as long to run a site. I also see potentially a 4th real life player on field, as juggling battleships for dreads will take extra attention.

I have chosen armor, it is what I am most familiar.  Given the setup and not automatically triggering escalations, then maybe shield might also be OK.

I have some experience with what I am talking about, but not enough.  There will be holes in the above speculation.  Feel free to poke holes in it.


For lesser skilled pilots trying boosting, I sometimes use Gnoboosts.  Put whatever useful links that your well skilled booster does not have.  It is replacement tanked, and I would much rather lose it than the rest of the fleet.



[Gnosis, Gnobooster]

Co-Processor II
Co-Processor II
Co-Processor II
Co-Processor II
Co-Processor II
Co-Processor II

Command Processor I
Command Processor I
Command Processor I
Command Processor I
Command Processor I
Medium F-S9 Regolith Compact Shield Extender

Skirmish Warfare Link - Evasive Maneuvers I
Information Warfare Link - Sensor Integrity I
Armored Warfare Link - Rapid Repair I
Skirmish Warfare Link - Rapid Deployment I
Armored Warfare Link - Passive Defense I
Armored Warfare Link - Damage Control I

Medium Processor Overclocking Unit I
Medium Processor Overclocking Unit I
Medium Capacitor Control Circuit I

Wormole Polarization Timer

For a September release we are getting a wormhole polarization timer while on grid.

https://twitter.com/CCP_FoxFour/status/635770834494337024


https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=5988778#post5988778

https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/3i6tak/praise_be_to_bob_for_this_day_he_is_satisfied/


For those that live in wormholes, this is a big deal.  Yes we currently have work-arounds, including the only use for local in a wormhole (turn your date/time on in the channel), or alt channels where you type in/out every pass.


I have noted positive comments from wormhole hunters and hunted alike (mostly hunters).  I have seen negative comments from otherwise respected names that live in known space.

@CCP FoxFour, I don't do twitter, but I do like this change.

Things to check when setting up in a wormhole

There are some things you should check when setting up in any wormhole.

My muse for this post is an unwanted POS that appeared in one of our wormholes.  It is gone now, cleansed with fire.  The loot fairy was unkind.

Getting access to a Foo corp wormhole is almost as easy as reading our recruiting page. Even simply doing PI in our wormholes (i.e. paying a small amount of tax) is generally enough to get me to chat rather than shoot.

Is it occupied?

You should check for a forcefield.  This means not only checking inner planets, but also all of the outer planets as well.  Have a look at the system information, or even the overview.  Make sure you have a dscan that covers every planet.   A forcefield means the system is occupied.  Any storage array (ship maintenance, corporate, personal or assembly) without a forcefield means it is time to pop a loot pinata.  Any POS that is coming online, anchoring or offline is a gank opportunity with a timer.  An offline POS with none of the above is (most likely) abandoned.

Be aware that if you move into an occupied system that the locals may be invested in defending.  If you are looking for a fight, maybe that's a good thing.  If you are looking for that fight, make sure you are ready for it.

Do you have spare scanning ships and pilots?

Far too many pilots only have one scanner in a wormhole.  This is what alts and other corp members are for.  There is no point in having 2B+ of assets in a wormhole that you can not get back to.  Pilots will almost always shoot pods in a wormhole, as it will generally take you that much for hostile pilots to return to the field.

Does your POS have defence?

A small POS should be treated like a glorified mobile depot.  It is disposable.
A preferably large POS should have a desired mix of short and medium weaponry, ECM, neuts and a (initially) balanced resist profile.  Others will promote the merits or disadvantages of Deathstar vs  Dickstar.
Guns should be scattered and not grouped together.  Attacking fleets love it when you group your guns as it makes it much easier to position your fleet.

No fuel means no defence, no access to POS.
No strontium clathrates means no reinforcement timer, and hostiles can grind you down in one sitting.

Will your POS shoot (only) the wrong people?

Outside of highsec, your POS generally should shoot neutrals.  That is, attack if standing is lower than 0.1.  Setting Attack if at war also is a good plan.  All the POS guns in the world don't do any good if they don't know they need to shoot.
POS have no idea about pilot standings; they only pay attention to corporate standings.  As far as I know (and partially tested), POS are aware of inherited corporation standings if you set an alliance to blue.

I want that ship

I like big ships.  The bigger and slower, the more I like them.  This is not always what is rational, nor what is particularly the flavour of the month. 

As was suggested in a previous post, I have recently trained up for a new ship class, with the skills to fly it.  A Kronos.  We have a baby squad booster as squad leader, and we 'wing' warp with my Kronos as wing leader.

T2 fit, over tanked (3 low resists, 1 T2 repairer, 1 ancillery repairer, repair boost rigs). Woo hoo. Nothing can hurt me now.  Nearly cap stable.  Still I am paranoid.  Lost ships hurt.

Van is back from leave, and our C2 issues seem to be resolved. We take on an easier site in our C4.  I am so rusty.  Dual boxing doesn't make me any sharper, but when I can't even find my drone window I just shake my head.

Even with my bumbling we clear the first two phases, everything is doing well.  My only job for my Kronos is to take on the NPC battleships, the T3's will clear smaller stuff. 

And ... I am out of capacitor.  What?  Why? How?  I am not sure.  I was obviously paying insufficient attention, made worse by dual boxing.

I am in bastion mode, another 40 seconds to go.  Mmm.  We make the decision to warp out my Kronos when I can so it can recharge.  Hull damage is not pleasant, but I get of some ancillary repair cycles.  They repair lots.  But I still need to get out of bastion and into warp.  I am not MJD capable, that would have taken slots already used.

I finally get out of bastion, and initiate warp.  Somewhere, anywhere. ...

... I am finally up to speed.

I think.

I am in a pod.

I am still wing leader and not in squad.  Which means no boosts.


Which means I lost an expensive, very large ship, entirely due to stuff-ups:

• Not being boosted, when booster available
• Not watching capacitor
• Not bringing our reserve healing 'agro attractor' (remote cap/rep dominix).

I wanted that ship.  Nice, new, (t2) sparkly, probably teribad fit.

For some, PVE is boring.  I don't do much of it, mostly doing PI to earn my ISK.  But I still have things to learn, new ships to fly.  When PVE gets boring I will stop it.  It's not boring yet.

Oh and for the record.  Our Domi fleet clears that site easy.  The 2 T3's had no problems at all with those battleships.  Afterburner fit meant that they only got glancing blows at best, even when I wasn't paying proper attention.

Unauthorised tower part 2

We have a new tower in our wormhole, and it isn't ours.  First life isn't helping, with both work commitments and getting our kitchen repaired taking priority. 

One more piece of information I check for; PI taxes. If there is evidence of PI tax paid, I will have to talk to them before doing any shooting.  We have good tax rates, and three times had pilots simply move in and pay tax.  Sometimes they asked first, other times they asked later.  If you do find yourself in a Foo wormhole and want to do PI, just let me know.  We don't mind.

I finally get online, to some incredibly pleasant news.  They are taking their tower down.

Whether they scouted and finally found our tower (really - they are not that hard to find), or seeing our defences come online, I do not know.  This tends to rule out invasion as their plans. 

They have started to unanchor their tower.  We have seen an Orca, one that is currently cloaked, as well as flashes of T1 scanning frigates.

We still don't really know what we are up against, but then you never do.  The C2 has pilots, but not our preferred pilots.  Most of my so called skilled pilots are still on their way into the C2, but we have an hour.  The real issue is that the C2's lowsec entrance is about 50 jumps away, and the route via the C2A is via an end of life wormhole.

We decide the lesser of risks is to bring our ships into system rather than wait for the tower to be un-anchored.  To be seen is better than not being here.

So, we are cloaked or deep safed well outside of dscan.  Those cloaked are sitting on grid, but outside minimum warp distance.

The timer expires, and their tower is free for the taking.  I have bloodthirsty pilots who are geared up for a fight, where I would be happy with transient unwelcome guests rather than permanent ones.  "An Orca kill plus a free tower is better than just a free tower" is the comment.  Having friendly wolves is nice.  While I am here for the tower, I accept that wolves need to be fed fresh meat. 

So we wait. Nothing.  While you can uncloak a ship by proximity, you have to be uncloaked yourself to do so.  We wait longer.

After 20 minutes past the timer, even the bloodthirsty can't sniff blood any more.  It looks like we were spotted coming into the wormhole.  A chance we felt we had to take.

We try to fly around where we guess the Orca might have been 20 minutes ago, but cant find it.  The cloaky pilot wasn't even sure where the Orca was.  When I fly cloaked but am suspicious of possibly being spottted, I don't stay still either.   When trying to decloak someone by flying within 2k of them, space is big.  Even with a swarm of pilots and drones.

The bloodthirsty are disappointed, but I am happy.  A 'free' large tower instead of needing to do a POS bash?  I will take that any day.

New unauthorised tower in our wormhole

In first life, I am just about to head to work in the morning, and was checking skills and mails via Evemon.  Quick, easy, just to check on things.

My Eve skill queues are up to date, but I get an evemail.  A new 'neutral' large tower is in one of our wormholes.

If my first life self is to work on time, there is no way I can deal with this right now.  Work can not be skipped today.  ... ... Ok.  I have to go to work but can be a little late.

Our pilot that found the tower has made on grid bookmarks.  That helps. What does not help is that my personal combat pilots (and yes even I have them) are in the wrong spot.

Their tower is prickly without any storage arrays of any kind, but has an Orca in it.  Mmm.  The Orca gives them ship maintenance and storage, without requiring powergrid/cpu.  Properly set up that could be a pain.

Empty then off-line industry POS modules; start on-lining (more) defensive/offensive modules. Move some loot into Enormous freight containers in case the POS becomes reinforced.  I am really short of time and our directors are not online. 

Check notifications.  Nothing.  Check zkillboard for recent activity by either 'them' or our system.  Nothing. 

Send Skype, evemail messages, and update our intel channel's MOTD with what little we know, which isn't much apart from a corp name and that of a couple of pilots. 

Ok, in first life I am officially late for work, but ... I will park close. There are some advantages to living in a town rather than a 'city'.  Probably offensive to the natives to call their Capital a town though.

One of our directors contacts me on Skype. He has re-configured our infrastructure for siege rather than industry.   Good.  Other pilots have brought up their corporation's membership, and kill history, and added them to watch lists.

Pilots that have quietly been doing PI in our holes that I have not heard from in weeks pipe up and offer to 'play' with our visitors.

While I could wish that I was better set up, things have been worse.  Now all I need to do is get home from work, and do something about this.

T1 scanning ships - Home system

One of our corp members lost a scanner recently while setting up bookmarks.  This post is to inform others about how I do most of my scanning, using T1 ships.

The T1 scanning frigates are Heron, Magnate, Probe and Imicus.  It really does not matter what frigate you use, so simply use the one you have highest racial frigate for.


While a T2 scanning frigate  (Anathema, Buzzard, Helios, Cheetah) are a superior scanning ship, a lot of our scanning is done in alts.  We are a series of Wormhole PI farming corps, and not all of us have access to our well skilled mains are off doing their thing.  Often it is our basic skilled alts left at 'home'.


The goals is efficient scanning and efficient bookmarking (including tacs).  Not losing your ship is part of efficient scanning.  My personal fitting preference is that a ship be good at a primary role, with any secondary duties (eg dps) very much a secondary consideration.

An example of what to fly

[Heron, BasicScanner]

Nanofiber Internal Structure I
Nanofiber Internal Structure I

1MN Microwarpdrive I
Scan Acquisition Array I
Scan Pinpointing Array I
Scan Pinpointing Array I
Scan Rangefinding Array I

Prototype Cloaking Device I
Core Probe Launcher I, Core Scanner Probe I
Light Ion Blaster I, Iron Charge S

Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I
Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I
[Empty Rig slot]


Hornet EC-300 x3
Acolyte TD-300 x3
Warrior I x1

The core of this fit is:

• Probe Launcher and probes
• 2 rig upgrades
• Prototype cloak

The probe launcher and probes are obvious, you can't scan without something here.  Sister probes and launcher or maybe the T2 launcher has some marginal value, where either you have a low skilled alt or you are in a combat situation (eg blockade).  The rigs are there as a performance improvement as well.  Keep one or 2 sets of probes as spares.  I have occasionally lost launched probes due to a DC, and even a reconnect didn't work. Also spare probes can be reload while you are scanning.


The prototype cloak is for when you are scanning away from home.  If you are scanning it is easier if you don't also have to concentrate on bouncing between planets; making and using safe spots.
 
The MWD is for making tac bookmarks (more later). Also mildly useful to pulse then cloak if you find yourself having jumped through a WH into trouble, at a cost of additional align time.
 
Semi optional are the 3 Scan Arrays, ... I think.  Rumour has it that mid slot scanning arrays might becoming 'active' modules in an upcoming patch.  This rumour is still unconfirmed. If this change does go ahead, you will not be able to cloak and still use them.  If you are in a system that you have a POS, they have benefits.  If you are in dangerous space and don't have access to a POS forcefield, they become situational; i.e. when scanning fast is more urgent than staying alive.

The gun, drones and nanofibre are optional.  These are merely options that might make a difference if you get caught.  If you need them, you are most likely toast anyway.  They might make a difference, but I doubt it.  WCS are an option for lowslots, increasing your align time from 2.96s to 3.84s (perfect skills) but giving you another option.  I prefer the faster align time.

Another option is some cap recharge for the MWD for low skilled pilots.


You will note everything on this ship is T1, and the only even partially expensive item is the cloak.  I don't want to lose any ship; but if I lose this one so be it.  I don't think I have ever seen a scenario where meta modules fits would have made any difference to one of my T1 scanners.   Any pilot with the skills to use T2 scanning modules can probably fly a covops frigate anyway.

The specifics of the fit are less important.  Nothing is sacred in the above fit, and many pilots will tell you that it is 'fail' for so many different reasons.  I sometimes like to get 2 pilots with strongly held fitting ideas into the same conversation and enjoy the popcorn. 

How to fly them

We generally make tactical bookmarks around choke points.  The most obvious of these is the wormhole entrance itself.  We want this more than 150k away from the wormhole, and my preference is on grid, so generally less than 250k. 

The 'paranoid' method of scanning at home is:

1. Warp to nearby but offgrid safespot.
2. Lauch probes
3. Warp back to POS
4. Scan until you have found the WH's you were looking for. (All WH's will be within 8AU of a planet; most are within 4 AU)
5. If the WH is not within Dscan
• Warp to a safespot or 70/100 k from a nearby POCO, Moon, or Planet.  If you lose your ship by flying into a hostile POS in your home system, consider the lost ship a valuable lesson.
6. Dscan, looking for bubbles/ships.  If you see unknown ships or bubbles, let your corp members know.  For us that is via an intel mailing list as well as in game chat.  Whatever works for your corp is fine too.
7. Warp 100K to the wormhole. Bookmark the wormhole from your overview (exact) NOT from your scanning window (within 5k).
8. If overview has ships or bubbles on it either cloak or run away.  Decide quickly; either answer is fine.
9. Assuming you did not run away, fly either up or down until you are at least 160k from the wormhole.  
• If your overview and dscan remains clear, use MWD
• If your overview or dscan has neutral or known hostiles, but no combat probes on dscan, MWD, cloak or warp away
• If you see combat probes, even on dscan, the MWD is not enough.  In this case either cloak or run away.
10. Once you get at least 160k from the wormhole; roughly either above or below it, bookmark that spot (from people/places)

As an alternative to step 9 above, while you are still 100K from the wormhole:

• Warp  to a safe spot or celestial that is away from the wormhole but not on a direct line to your POS.
• Warp to 100K from this intermediate bookmark.  If you are within about 160k, rinse and repeat.

The bookmark is not in a direct line from your standard approach, assisting in avoiding to avoid bubbles.  It is either up or down so that orbiting ships won't de-cloak you if you decide to cloak.


I use the 160k bookmark as a base of what I fly my industrials to.  Often to 50/70/100k from that bookmark.  From this bookmark, you can see what is on the wormhole, yet still be able to warp to it.  I don't know of any ship that can point you at 160k, there are few enough camping ships that can lock at that range.

The reason I prefer at least 160k is you often coast a little when coming out of warp and I want at least a small distance buffer.  Any distance between 160k and about 250k works easily.  Much more than 250k and you risk being off grid; still valuable in their own right but not what I generally use.

The above method is paranoid and a little longer than simply flying to a wormhole.  9 times in 10, there will be no-one on the WH when you first scan in your home system, especially if you have only the expected number of wh's scanned (2 for C2's, 1 everywhere else).   You could decide to simply eat the few ship losses by not bothering with this.

However, the cost of losing a ship is more than just the ISK value; but also the possible loss of a scanning pilot for an unknown duration.  You might be podded. It might be the start of an extended camp or even worse, an eviction.


I don't know that I can get my pod away on the loss of a ship. I don't know when I will be able to get home after a podding. I would rather not lose a ship in the first place, and will generally perform all/most/some of the 'paranoid' steps above.

Where I have lost scanning ships is by simply not paying sufficient attention.  Being called AFK while warping to a wormhole, especially when deciding you can warp directly to a wormhole, is not always the safest of activities.

The reference to 'Home System' is because this article is long enough and I intend to write an 'away system' post soon(tm).

Nothing in Eve is perfectly safe, nor do I want it to be.  I have been on grid with neutrals, and escaped in these ships, with this method.  That is good enough for me.

Does it belong in a wormhole?

We want to be safe, think that obscurity in our low class wormholes will keep us safe. 


Some days you get to cause the trouble, some days you are the one in trouble.  Those of us that are bloggers cause ourselves more trouble than we need to.  Today I get to read about someone else's trouble, and consider what I should do.

I intend to remain in wormholes, making (or not making) my ISK.  I encourage others to make their own ISK to fund their own EVE goals, or if nothing else, to share in mine.  I enjoy creating my mini-empire. I enjoy seeing corp members running sites, sucking gas, organising trouble.

BUT ... given a recent wormhole eviction of another blogger, it is time for everyone who uses POS to re-evaluate how we use them.

If you want your assets to be kept safe, put them in the nearest highsec NPC station, where you can get someone else to haul it on a courier contract with sufficient collateral.  Not entirely dangerous is in your own division in a POS (and some would say your own POS), though clearly it can be made to disappear by hostile forces.

We should be asking ourselves the following questions : Am I currently using this ship/PI goo/blueprint/extra tower:

• To make ISK, for PVE, for defense or offence; and am I using it now?  If not now, then when?
• Am I holding it here but probably will never use it?

Regardless of what it is, if you are using it now, then great, please continue to do so.  I don't care if you use it to make ISK or war, or even to orbit the POS staring at it, while soaking up EVE. 

If you are planning on using it soon, please consider if you need all of what you have.  Does someone else in the corp need it?  Will you sell, trade or give it to your corp mate?

A couple of spare ships in your POS makes sense.  We keep spare shuttles and scanning frigates, and of course Epithals.  There are also a few disposable PVP(ish) ships in case of need.  Refitting modules, spare probes, drones, ammo are all good to have.  As are skillbooks you will need soon, and command centers for when you inevitably want to redo your planet.


But if you are planning on never using it (regardless of what 'it' is), take it out of the wormhole.  Truth be told, I am not as good at keeping a spartan wormhole as this blog makes post makes out, but even I will do better.

My drones go rogue

TLDR, just because your drones are shooting your fleet mates, does not mean it is the games fault.

Last weekend I have finally managed to log back in to do more than PI reset or POS refuel, for the first time in way too long.

Normally we run combat sites together with several dual remote repair Domi ships.  We are conservative in what we chose to run, completing Frontier Baracks and Frontier Command Post, leaving Sleeper Information Sanctum sites.  The ISK is ok, but my partner's primary aim is to keep the WH clear(ish), and mine is to actually go out and shoot things with this ship I have trained up.  Heretical concept - shooting rather than being shot at.  We are a little too fussy to shoot cruisers and below and leave Integrated Terminus alone.

We use drone assist to focus fire, with one of my Domi pilots being the ‘assisted’ drone bunny using a target painter; and something other than a Domi to clean up frigates.  Though we know that swapping a domi or 2 to light drones also works.  (I am already giving out too much information - I won’t give players like Penny our exact composition ).

I do not have my target painter to auto repeat.  I won’t swear to it, but drones seem to respond when I manually apply the target painter (roughly every 2 seconds), but do not respond simply because the target painter cycles.

This time, we have two new pilots to integrate into our fleet, so we should be able to move up to do Information Sanctum's as well.

Also, with the new pilots we are re-organising our cap chains.  Previously each Domi pilot was responsible for providing cap to the pilot above and below them in the fleet list. This time we went with pairs (two pilots simply providing capacitor to each other), and a single ‘triplet’ (where it was back to providing capacitor above and below the fleet list).

There were the traditional new pilot issues.  Mumble not installed, not working, lack of targeting skill.  These were solved by just using the fleet channel and swapping some training around.

With the extra DPS on the field, picking of the NPC’s was much faster, as you expect.  On just about every change of wave, my alt domi would be targeted by almost everyones sentries. Ouch.  That many sentry drones hurt.  Combine self inflicted hurt with a new wave of ships, and we have anxious moments.  Select a hostile target, and reapply painter quickly.

So after many of these waves, I watch more carefully.

What I am meant to do is :

• Before fleet warp, activate lowslot tank; activate midslot sebo/omni tracking units.
• Align (or be lazy and follow the leader)
• Be fleet warped
• Launch drones
• Start Locking big hostile tower or ship.
• Swap to alt, lock lead pilot
• Start locking friendly cap chain ships.
• Lock other hostiles
• Hostile Lock has finally occurred, so target paint first hostile and apply drones
• Friendly locks have finally occurred, apply cap chains
• Chose a hostile and apply target painter.

The lock list is added to one at a time.  As each locked ship dies (or is manually dropped), the lock defaults to another ship, until the next one dies

As each hostile dies, by default the next oldest locked ship becomes my default target.  Sometimes a target dies immediately before applying the target painter, and default ship (my alt) is painted, and drones have a feast.  Umm. Ouch?

Solutions:

• Manually change the order of locked ships.  Friendly ships are dragged to the left and away from hostiles.
• Do not apply target painter to a well damaged hostile if it is the last hostile, take time and smell the roses.  No rush.  Most importantly do *not* apply target painter if hostile is at risk of dying in 1 second.

After our teething problems and finally understanding why our drones take an unhealthy liking to our friendly ships, we have a go at the inner sanctums.  Whatever ship they target seems to hit 50% armor in phase 2 before our remote repairs land, but apart from that, they are fine.

I don’t have a firm grasp on what draws NPC agro yet. I do know that if you give an NPC a choice of a sentry drone and a remote repair or target painter or sentry drone, the sentry is ignored every time.

P.S. I am again around after a few weeks out of town, and some posts planned. This weekend I finally got all my PI planets refreshed. No promises but things appear to be heading back to normal.

The alternative newbie wormhole experience

Another blogger has a grand idea on how to set up in wormholes for new corporations.  What I like is the defence force.  What I don't like is that such a defence force is currently lacking the backing to make it happen.  It seems a very expensive plan.

For the last 2 weeks the Foo corps have not been recruiting, as we been under wardec.  Now a highsec wardec is not much of an issue for existing wormhole players.  We do our PI and sites with a certain level of paranoia, as it is wormhole space and there are cloaks everywhere.  What a highsec wardec does mean is that we potentially have pilots actively trying to access our 'special secrets', namely our wormhole entrances.  Then a stupid CEO logs out in the entrance highsec system and can be found with locator agents.  Such a stupid CEO might just share the same surname with this blog.

For those players looking to set up something similar to what we are running, the costs are roughly as follows:

• 300M for a bookmark to an empty system  (wormholesales.com)
• 1B for a large tower and fittings
• 1B for customs office gantries and upgrades
• 500M/month for fuel

For the large tower fittings you will want:

• 1 Personal Hanger Array.  This provides a small amount of secure storage to pilots, for sleeper loot, ammo, fittings.
• 1 Large Ship Assembly array (or X-large, probably does not matter either way: they hold the same volume). This provides bulk 'secure' storage to 7 players (i.e. one or more pilot/player)
• 1 SMA that is online for holding ships and refitting.
• Optionally a second off-line SMA, requiring elevated privileges containing defence ships, a large industrial with spare guns and fittings, and a hoarder with spare ammo.  Advantages are that it is secure storage.  Disadvantage that is makes your POS look 'expensively full of loot'.  According to my tests on duality, this SMA can be onlined even if the POS is re-inforced, and new guns (not missiles) can be onlined and restocked.
• Optionally 1 Mobile Laboratory and/or Advanced Mobile Laboratory charging 10K/hour for ME and Copy slots.
• Guns and hardeners to suit.  Look at http://talocanunited.com/wordpress/designing-a-pos/ and http://talocanunited.com/wordpress/pos-permissions/ . Have at least sufficient guns so that even if the POS is re-inforced, you can use your entire powergrid on newly onlined guns.  Consider even more guns that this.

The divisions in the SMA can be hired out for those doing large amounts of PI and mining, plus those looking to store expensive ships securely.  Somewhere in the vicinity of 50-100M / month is reasonable.


You will probably want to own your own customs offices. On a structure bash; you can never have too much DPS.  They are boring.  At 700 DPS, a pos bash is an all night affair.  At 3000 DPS it is a couple of hours. At 5000 DPS, it is 'short work'.  Consider the merits of taking the time to roll wormholes vs the time lost by leaving a scout on the wormhole.  This is a challenge for a couple of newbie pilots.  3 afk cruisers (vexors or coercers) with drone and laser dps can do the job, albeit with a certain risk of ending up in highsec with a replacement


In 2 of our 3 wormholes, we blew up the existing customs offices, and replace them with our own.  In the third wormhole, we purchased the POCO's in place from a corp that we thought was 'zombie' but had a 'low profile' approach.  It was so low profile we thought that it was abandoned and moved in.  We paid a little over the replacement price for the Poco's, but did not need to spend the time to bash them down.

POCO tax can be set wherever you want it.  As a simple option, roughly 5% tax is considered OK by most pilots.  You can have a lot more tax flexibility if the corp that owns the poco's is not the corp with the pilots.

In terms of defence, having big friends is useful.  Gevlon found Noir to be good hired friends.  He also found that his dread was a trouble magnet.  I previously found Daktaklakpak. a wormhole PVP corp looking for something to kill to be valuable.  A large POS and a small wormhole are a daunting proposition.  Gevlon's fleet took 4 hours with a dread.  Not many pilots are willing to devote a 1B ship to evict another pilot on the off chance that they might have something worth looting.  If you ever do have a hostile dread attacking in a low end wormhole, advertise it.

Having ships set up to fight at a moment's notice is also needed.  Having ships to escape a blockade (covops frigates and haulers, interceptors) should be considered high on your todo list.

You must be able to 'eat' ship losses; they are a fact of life.  Sometimes you will be the cause of other pilots losing their ships.  Bashes of properly set up POS with fuel happen far less often.

The thing I most dislike about Gevlon's plan for wormholes, is that "replacement tanking" is cheaper.  We are in our wormholes for the long term.  I would replace my entire infrastructure several times over by not paying his rates.  We are however interested in mercenaries to defend us when there are significant fights to be had, and are willing to enter into 'mutual invite' best intention groups.

The single biggest risk for any wormhole corp is having a CEO that is prepared to worry about logistics and keeping the POS fuelled.  This a far bigger risk than setting up an undersized POS, or hostile fleets or awoxing.  I have seen corps suffer due to invasion. I have personally seen more corps die to lack of fuel.

The Foo style of wormhole corp does rely on a moderate level of trust, but certainly not excessive.  It certainly seems more reliable than trusting that highsec customs offices will have a reliably accessible customs office with a reasonable tax rate.


If you would like advice on how to set up the same style of corp that we have, please contact me; either on this blog as a comment or in game (DoToo Foo).

How to set up POCO's to have different tax rates to different groups

Player owned customs offices are the essential infrastructure that a player corporation needs to set up.

I was chatting with an otherwise experienced player in our corp, and he didn't know that I could set up different rates to different pilots.

We are doing this because in our corps; some pilots would like no fixed commitment. They might only be on a few times/month and are not sure the next time they will be on.  Other players have Command Center 5, Interplanetary consolidation 5, with more pilots than they are prepared to count.

The first pilot wants casual, easy come, easy go.  The second is considering putting up their own POS, bashing their own customs offices.  However even the most ardent PI player considers the cost of a wormhole POS, and many solo pilots will have difficulty bashing their own customs offices.

Our method of distinguishing between these two types of player, both residing in the same POS, is to use two corporations.

We have more than one wormhole; we have more than one corporation anyway.  Each corporation has 7 divisions; so I can provide 'secure' storage many players (depending on a certain lack of large hostile fleets); one corporation based in each wormhole.

Our C2 corp but owns the customs offices in our C1 wormhole.
Our C1 wormhole owns the customs offices in our C2 wormhole.

(No I have not said where we live;  anyone with a modicum of research can work it out).

We have a corp tax POCO rate of 4%, light blue tax rate of 4% and a deep blue tax rate of 0%, and a default tax rate of 5%.

The apparently simpler (but I could not get to work) method of selectively setting your own pilots to deep blue within corp did not seem to work; Corporation rate overrides standing.


I never expected to use our default tax rate.  Who would ever setup to do PI in a system with an established tower, with customs offices all owned by a player corp?  Well it happened.  After our 'interlopers' set up, they then found our towers and ... decided that ours looked far more 'prickly' than theirs did and sued for peace before a shot was even fired.  I like industrialists, and we exchanged light blue.

Exact vs Close enough wormhole entrances

When you scan down a wormhole entrance, your initial 'warp to' point is 'close enough'. Generally this is about 10K from the wormhole entrance itself.

Lets assume you have already scanned down your wormhole, per http://foo-eve.blogspot.com/2013/07/basic-scanning-walkthrough-for-finding.html



Now, 10K is a long way to travel in an Iteron full of loot, or even an outclased PVP ship trying to get away.

Fortunately, there is an option.

Warp to 50/70/100 K from your initial warpin point.

Take a second bookmark from your overview.

Warp away (to a safespot, celestial, anything).

Warp back to zero on your new bookmark.  You now land at zero instead of 10K; and can immediately use the wormhole.

The fish that got away.

We sometimes look for highsec exits to shift stuff to or from our C2 wormhole. 

As normal, this means finding a neighbouring C2 and wishing it has a highsec exit; about 30% of them do.  It also involves wishing that they are empty of active traffic; about 80% of them are. (numbers are subject to confirmation bias; nothing scientific in them at all).

So scan down our neighbouring C2's entrance; hop in there, drop probes; warp somewhere; cloak up; Scan.  DScan.  I tend to use T1 scanning frigs.

Your initial scan pinpoint is pretty crappy, and may leave you 10K off the wormhole.  Warping to zero to this scan is like autopiloting in (quiet) lowsec.  You can do it.  I would not advise it.

So instead, I warp to a distance off the initial bookmark.  Depending on the day; this might be as little as 30k; as much as 70k.  I don't use 100k as I think in the past I tried it and didn't get a 'good' bookmark out of it.

So you warp to 30k; bookmark the exact location and warp somewhere else.  I tend to do this for both of the neighbouring C2 bookmarks.


You can then warp back to zero and actually land directly on the wormhole (disruption bubbles excepted)

Well tonight I did my standard warping, and when I finally landed on the B274 (C2 to Highsec) exit, there was a hunter.  Mmm.  Plenty of notice on the overview; Select the wormhole even before leaving warp and spam the Enter wormhole button on the 'selected item' window.  No warp bubble and land at zero, no problems. 

Elevated pulse rate, but that's ok.  So what to do now?  After my last effort, I am not bringing my Iteron fleet through this wormhole.  Mmm.  I know, I will orbit the wormhole and cloak up, just to see what they do.

Why do I have wormhole transition effects?  Oh dear.  I entered the blessed wormhole.  At least it is not Asakai.

I look at the overview; and now there are two blessed hunters, and I am polarised.  DON'T PANIC.  (ok you can panic a little).  No useful bookmarks worthy of the name, but there is a planet not too far off a direct line of site.  Ok.  Try to warp to a significant distance away from it's customs office.  Activate defensive mods.  Pray.

Ok something worked.  I am in warp, and not even any chirping.  As soon as I get out of warp, change direction, and activate my prototype cloak.  (Prototype cloaks are cheap, relatively easy to learn even on a scanning alt).

See on the overview that the vagabond chased me, but warped to planet.  Silly vagabond.  I like my cloaks.  Nice cloak.

Watch scan a bit more.  Oh; you like multiple warp disruptors and cargo containers, Vagabonds (heavy assault cruiser) and Broadswords (heavy interdiction cruiser).  I don't like HIC's; at least not in enemy hands.

Hmm.  I don't like losing ships even if it would probably be faster.  Lets make a deep(ish) safe spot by warping to a far off planet and dropping a bookmark part way there, then warping back to it.

I attempt to 'safe log off';  Dscanning for combat probes.  And succeed.

I am not out of the 'danger zone' yet, having left my ship in a wormhole that has some overlap in timezone with me.

I would much rather practice this in a throw away frigate rather than ... some other ships.

P.S. Between drafting this post and finally hitting publish, I got my frigate out, no problems.

A well executed wormhole gank

Metaphorically, I had a role in the opening scene of a ‘TV murder mystery’.  As the victim.

The Foo corporations currently have 2 wormholes; a C1 wormhole with a highsec static for those that require a highsec connection, and a C2 wormhole with a very good set of PI planets, having static connections to lowsec and another C2 wormhole (generally called C2A).

It was time to take some PI to market, and replenish our reserves.  Before downtime, I scouted out a C2->C2A->Highsec connection, with an easy run to Amarr. 

My primary PI hauler 'doctrine' is that the fewer trips the safer.  Every trip should be as full as I can make it.  Yes that means expanded cargo and rigs.  Previously I tried tanking Iterons in lowsec.  Tried and failed.  Admittedly I was flying lower class iterons back then, but ... it makes no appreciable difference.  Losing a ship in 10 seconds or 12?  My primary 'tank' is the bait ship.  Throw it into the water and see if there are any sharks around to bite it.  Bait ships are not foolproof but better than not having one.

I don't have a lot of pilots available for every run; and even if I did, I would rather fewer trips with more haulers.  That said, my normal process is to run once with a scout/bait first before heading into other systems.

We assemble Iteron Mark V's into a fleet, full of PI and warp as squads to the C2A, then to highsec.

 

Flying through the C2A, I thought I saw a ship change on dscan, from a wreath to a heron, but I was not sure.  My fleet jumps out into highsec and finds a Flycatcher (Interdicting destroyer) on the hisec side of the wormhole.  Mmm.  No local stations? Scatter ships to a distance from whatever celestial is easiest to find.  This would be a profitable gank.

Ok.  Breathe. Find nearest station.  Jump there, make a red frog contract.  I will fly my own items to the wormhole as they are 'elapsed time critical'. If I dont use the fortunate connections now the chances are it won't be there later.  I generally import ice based fuel components, topped up with cheap PI. I don't fly my own high end PI in highsec to market, I would rather explore my T2 equipment manufacturing business or update PI or ... anything else.  I only have one

Ok.  So I am mildly concerned about that wormhole connection;  I fly my now empty (and largely boring) Iterons off to Amarr and fill up on supplies, wait for downtime and do first life tasks.

After downtime and then some.  Even with extended downtime, I had extra first life tasks.

I swap one pilot out and put a disposable alt pilot into a disposable frigate: t1 frigate with t1 scanner, cloak, afterburner and very basic tank.  The frigate flys the Home->C2->highsec route.  It's clear.  I attempt to fly it back again, but misclick and polarise myself in highsec.  Could be worse.  While waiting the Iterons fleet up and wait on gate 1 system away from our wormholes home.

Ok, polarisation is clear.  Jump through all the way to home.  Nothing unexpected on dscan, nothing found.  Cloak up and orbit nice and close in our home system on the wormhole.

Iteron fleet jump in to the highsec system, jumps into the C2A; all is clear.  Nothing on dscan, but I can't see the K162 home on dscan either.  Warp to the K162.

Oh ... bless it. Bubbles.  Pretty, bubbles.  Deadly bubbles.

Pray, I have a bit in ECM midslot modules; hit them and hope.  Align to 'anything'; afterburners on where fitted.  I have a few Iterons caught in a bubble, 50k from a wormhole.  I am up against a T3 and 4 T2 ships.  Pop. followed by more Pop.

Well done to the hunters; so few of you have the discipline to not grab the first ship you see.  I assume the hunters had a 6^th cloaked ship just inside the highsec wormhole, to know when to drop the bubbles.

For the record; Much much more ISK hauled out successfully than I lost (including embedded implants).  I would like to pretend that the losses were trivial.  But a lost hauling run is not just the loss of ship, but also a loss of time.  The loss of cargo, ships, implants bother me somewhat.  That I was caught despite thinking how 'clever' I was with my scout ship bothers me too.  Oh well. Every loss is a learning opportunity.

Notes to learn.

• I have alternative pilots. No need to haul miscellaneous cargo through wormhole space with +4 implants.  This was a significant part of my loss.
• Be safe: Set up safe bookmarks with a cloaky frigate.  Ensure I have a cloaky frigate on hand.  Warp to 250k ? 500k? off the wormhole, not in line of the highsec exit.  DScan from this spot.
• The bait ship should be a hauler, not just a frigate.  I had an Iteron full of bacteria in my fleet, total value of cargo probably worth nearly as much as my cargo expanders.  It would have been an ideal bait ship.

Basic scanning walkthrough for finding wormhole entrance and exits

The Foo corps (i.e. more than one) are wormhole based.  We require our members to be able to scan their way out of a paper bag if absolutely necessary. 

Someone I was chatting with ruled themselves out of our corp due to the scanning requirements.  This post is for that player, and countless others like him.  Scanning is no longer hard, if you know how.  This post is not about fancy tricks or special sauce.  This post is about basic, routine, get back to empire space scanning with minimal skills.

I have chosen the 'weakest' of my scanning pilots for this walkthrough, with Astrometrics 2, Astrometrics Rangefinding 1.  This requires 3 hours of training on a brand new pilot.

This pilot has poor skills for scanning, yet will be able to scan his way out of a wormhole.  He will be flying a disposable ship.  The fit is to scan, everything else can be added to suit your tastes.  My real scanners have a real fit, but that is for another post.

Probe (7.5% bonus to scanning)

• Core Probe Launcher 1 with 8 Sister Core Scanning Probes (10% bonus)
• Prototype Cloaking Device I (for use when in hostile systems)
• 1MN Afterburner (Not mircowarp drive)
• 1 Damage Control Unit (just because)

Total cost at Jita : 2.5M ISK, most of that for the cloak.  Total ship training time including the cloak : 22 hours, 5M in skill books.  If you forgo the cloak it is 3 hours, 2.5M ISK in training.

Click on any screenshot to get a larger image of it.  I highlight parts of some images with yellow circles (red being a scanning in-game colour).

Launch Probes

You can not be in a POS shield or cloaked.  Warp 100K from something.  I tend to choose 100K from a random customs office.  Launch probes.

Get Safe

While scanning, I don't have the mental resources to also be hitting dscan.  'They' might see where you launched your probes.  Warp back to POS shields (if you have them) or 100K from a different object and cloak, and point double click somewhere in space away from anything to have your spaceship slowly moving.  This will make it hard (some would say nearly impossible) to find you.

Choose system view :  

You will want to chose the system view, either from the scanner window itself, or F10.

Default Scan

The default scanner shows you roughly where the signatures are as red spheres.  This post is about scanning for wormholes, so we will turn off anomalies. 

Look at the default scan.  (Almost?) All  signatures will be within 4AU of a planet.  What outer planets have spheres near them?  Don't worry too much about identifying which inner most planets have signatures, as they are all so close together anyway.

Today we have 6 signatures; Planets 6-8 we will scan individually; planets 1-5 we will do as a a group.

Chose your view.

First we want to be looking down at the system.
Hold your left mouse button and move your mouse 'up' will give you a top view.
Mouse scroll wheels zoom in and out. (can be given a keyboard shortcut)
Double clicking on anything centres your screen on that object.
Hold right click and move your mouse to manually centre on anything.

Centre on a planet.

I start on the outer most planets.
Click on the launch pinpoint formation.

Move the probe by clicking on it; dragging it to centre over the planet.

Double click on the probe and scroll in, adjusting so you are over the centre of the planet.  (I went back to a scroll wheel mouse primarily for Eve and scanning.)

Adjust your view so you are now side on, zoom in, and adjust your probe again.

View adjusted, now you need to move the probe down a little.

Swap back to top view just to check, and if necessary adjust one more time.
Then click the Analyze button.

Hopefully resulting in a red 'dot'

Scan down that red dot

First the top, then the side we repeat the above steps but this time around our red dot instead of around our planet.

Change your distance down by 1 step

I select all 8 probes from the list, right click and change the step down to 2 AU.

Bring your probes closer together

While holding the alt key down, drag on one of the arrows.  I drag the probes in until the selected probe is just overlapped by 2 extra probe spheres.

And scan again.

I have found a gas site; not what I am looking for; so right click on the signature and 'Ignore Result'.

Next Planet

This is a repeat of our last planet, but this time on planet 7.  We know that planet 7 had a signature from our default scan.

• Launch pinpoint formation.
• Centre on the planet, both from on top and the side. Scan.
• Centre on the resulting Red dot, 
• Align probe to red dot from top and side, 
• Reduce range 1 step.
• Reduce the space between probes
• Scan.
• Repeat this until we, unfortunately, find yet another gas site, so we ignore this result too.

Next Planet, again.

This is a repeat of above, but this time we learn we have a wormhole.

The yellow inverted arrow scanning is the same method as the red dot scanning above.

Got it at 1 AU.  Woo hoo.  I often resolve them at 0.5AU, and sometimes need to resolve at 0.25AU.  Save a bookmark, (right click) but do not warp there yet.

When saving the bookmark, note what you are saving.  Some use the signature only, others will include what planet or even the date (to make it easier to find from the main screen's context menu).  I simply use the signature name.

Scan the inner planets

The inner planets are within 4AU of each other, no point in scanning each planet individually.

For this scan .... 'Oops', I did not centre the probes on the main part of the screen, and got a circle instead of a point.  (Normally I can get a circle result without trying)

A 'point' means that 3 probes can see it.
A 'circle' means that 2 probes can see it.
A 'sphere' (like you get on your initial scan) means that 1 probe can see it.

All is not lost, I also got a gas signature from this scan, so will ignore it.

Generally, I target the strongest incomplete signature each time, but for the sake of the exercise will target the circle instead.

For the Circle (and sphere), centre your probes in the middle of it.  Do not reduce your range, and possibly consider even expanding it by one.  I note that for this scan, my probes cover the circle of where the probe will be.  I will keep the same range, and scan.  Again, I used top and side to work out where to centre my probes.

Oh, its another gas signature (I get a lot of those), ignore it.

Repeat scanning based off the sun until the inner planets are complete

This is just a rinse and repeat of scanning around the sun, until all of the inner planet signatures are located or discarded.  All my remaining signatures proved to be gas planets.  Even though I was in a C1, there may have been more wormholes.  The most I have found in our C1 was 4 wormholes.

Final spread formation 

Finally do a  spread formation to check for any recent (or missed) signatures.  You may need to do this 2 or 3 times centred on different planets if you have an exceptionally large system.

Other notes

• If you miss a signature, expand your radius by one step and try again.
• Some sites are inherently harder to scan than others. Try 3 times before moving onto the next signature.
• When you recall probes, any (cloaked) hunters will be vigilant, expecting you to go where the probes last were; do not simply recall probes and immediately warp to where you last scanned.  'Stretch your legs' first.
• The first bookmark you get from scanning is 'near enough', and may be 10K out from the actual location.   This gives hunters an opportunity.  Initially warp 50K to the bookmark, and grab an actual bookmark.  Go away somewhere else, then warp back to your second, more accurate bookmark.

Scanning no longer is hard.

Early in my scanning career, I was stuck relying on a backup scanning pilot, in a newbie ship, with basic scanners.  I could still scan my way, but it did take over an hour to do the system.

I re-did the missed 5 signatures, in 14 minutes.  I am not a good scanner, nor did I have a good ship or skills.  The 5 signatures were fairly easy (all gas), but 3 minutes/signature is a reasonable time for scanning newbies to aim for.

As your skills and equipment improve (both player and pilot), you save additional time (for example by doing things like jump 2 steps - 4AU directly to 1AU).

Scanning your way into or out of a wormhole system is within any pilot's reach.


For an alternative approach to scanning, from a 'hunters' perspective, read http://www.tigerears.org/2011/11/28/how-to-scan-the-penny-ibramovic-way/

Edit 28 Aug 2013 : Correction to the highlight on the pinpoint image