Low sec fun

Well, the missions continue - as do the rewards.

Myself and Jax had a mission session on Tuesday (I think) - week has gone by so quickly. Completed several cosmic Anomolys, as the system was emptied of signatures of interest... Some of these in 0.1 space are interesting - you're talking missings with only BC's and Battleships in them. Decent bounties, and salvage a plenty - one mission alone took the salvager 2 round trips to complete.

Since Tuesday I've only really been able to login to change skillplans - which are now sorted until next week thankfully....

Due to this the hauler is almost full of refinables for high-sec use, so a hauler run back to base can be expected shortly. However I'm not actually around much this weekend so this will have to be postponed for a while... Maybe until 2 loads are ready..

Also I noted through my view of market trading that people seem to be buying in bulk from my stores recently (but not completely selling me out to resell). I think this is someone building up their own corp hanger, not manipulation by another player, due to them not buying the entire stockpile. This is resulting in some small stock shortages on the market while I catch up & recover stocks to their usual levels..

I have a very rauchous stag weekend planned back on Earth.... 8 men, a undisclosed location, with some Exotic dancers, dog racing to be attended (that isn't the dancers btw), Friday lunchtime -> Sunday lunchtime. What will occur? I'm also working in London Friday and Monday - resulting in effectily a long weekend when I'm not getting a long-weekend. Hope to see you all online during Sunday however... even though I'll be getting an early sleep.

Enjoy the long weekend for those who enjoy it. See you guys on Easter Sunday/day after.

Life in Low-sec #1

Well, it took a while, but the corporation now has 3 offices:

One, in high-sec in a market hub, Oursulaert.
One, in high-sec in the Unour constellation, nice and near low-sec (but NOT in it). This was chosen simply so flights into the Verge Vendor/Placid low-sec areas could be got into quicker than if flying from Oursulaert. Doing exploration in Old Man Star would I imagine not be a clever situation, so mainly I enjoy roams 4-5 hops in.

The new office is in deeply low 0.1 low-sec space - where I made some "friends" over the weekend. I also lost the Carbonater (the first AF). It went up in flames from a pirate in the "Pain" system while I was scouting for possible locations for a new home. My mistake though, I'd asked the ship to dock while the Helios "Mighty Mouse" scanned the system, and assumed it was complete while concentrating on radar sites in the immediate system - luckily I got the pod docked before it went pop though.... Pain is an apt name as I did suffer it here. I had no qualms about replacing the ship as its made > 1billion of profit or close with its combat skills, and is, I think, the ideal low-sec combat ship - it can warp out of low-sec gate camps prior to scram being applied every single time from the experience so far.

As mentioned, I've made a few friends in my new home, and even a lot of the flashy reds are leaving the corporation alone by mutual agreement. I am still on edge however - keeping a cloaked ship by the 1st acceleration gate does provide some warning to incoming hostiles, and allows both ships to dock up if required. No-one has decided to bother us however in reality thankfully so far.

The downsides - well so far 0.1 space has less decent scanning loot than the 0.5-0.7 high-sec systems in Verge Vendor/Essence I was frequenting before... Some missions are exactly the same, some a bit harder, but all are still soloable in a AF. Hope to get decent loot soon, or will have to consider wormhole space, hopping in via low-sec.

The good news : The personal wallet is, er, good right now. Sold some of the higher-value individual site findings, and have a cool 300mln available instantly. Also still got at least another 500 mln in modules available to sell if required. 300mln is nothing, but I didn't want to flood contracts with 2 or 3x the same module as I can make a lot more money trickling the items on the market. How many people can afford a Medium Armor repper than retails for 100-150mln.

The bad news: All this new cash will be spent by Friday on new ships - to be brought this weekend:
New toy 1/ A blockade runner transport ship (to get large volumes in/out of low-sec)
New toy 2/ An Enyo assault frigate to compement the Ishkur in low-sec.. + a backup Ishkur hull + fitout in case the 1st Ishkur gets ganked. Blockade runner should in theory be able to take both back to low-sec in relative safety.
New toy 3/ A fully rigged Iteron mk5 (for high sec larger volume transportation)
New toy 4/ Start of purchasing of small or medium POS, guns, and ammo + POS fuel + a moon harvesting array, corp hanger array and science labs. Need to investigate exact specifics of setting up moon mining arrays in next few weeks. Do not plan on immediate setup however, until we have POS gunners available in Corp.
New toy 5/ A load of moon probes, got about 50 moons to scan over weekend so need at least this many.
New toy 6/ Some more basic +3 implants

Quick industry update. Close to going over 500mln on market + 250mln mineral stash - will update more later in week. Approx 300mln cash in industry funds. We need to go blueprint shopping at the weekend for the next items we wish to build - I suspect a Battlecruiser blueprint may need to be purchased, along with frigates/destroyers from other races.

Jax is also back regularly logging into EVE and using the mineral stockpile to increase his stocks of items for sale - I do need to find out exactly what volume of items he has up for sale at some point. He now can fly AF's similar to me, and thus we both may be doing low-sec activities shortly..

Low sec shenannigins

Last night was interesting. To save face, I'd hopped into Jump clones without any implants - so if popped could not worry about the pod.

1st incident occurred when flying my JC's down from Ours to the FOB we have setup (which is in one of those pockets of highsec with no route in except via low-sec). On the entrance gate.... I see a fleet of 20 guys all with -2 standings. A fleet who follow me through - then again chase me in Interceptors to next gate. Luckily however I am flying a frigate and a shuttle, so they never manage to lock me until I'm safely back in high-sec.. but did chase....

2nd occurred when Jax got an escalation off an anomoly. In a low-sec system. We setup a fleet and went en-route, sending a scout ahead. Scout spotted a pirate in a assault frigate sitting at gate (in destinantion system) who immediately opened fire upon the scout when he decloaked. Luckily I made it back to gate intact with 50% armor remaining (this thanks to fitting a MWD, and suffering one hit from the hostile).. But lesson learn't - When entering system with hostile at gate in a scout ship, warp out, then warp back to gate..

Apart from above - last night was pretty uneventful - 2 radar sites were tanalisingly out of reach - I just couldn't scan them out - despite having good coverage from probes... I'll need to see about differently deployment options & will hope better skills sort this (about 2 weeks off). Got one combat site which yielded some drone bits...

Lesson learnt: Don't fly tired.

Last night, myself and Senx Trelligan were on a mission VERY late.

It was a multi-part storyline mission and unfrotunatly it sent him into low-sec for a combat leg - so he messaged for assistance. I had ran missions in low-sec before, but in relatively safe space. This was far from that, and well past my bedtime already at 0:30am. 14 guys in local but no gatecamp and seemingly not in space (or in scan range). Senx warped us in and we started the mission knowing we were in full danger of being scanned out. L1 and L2 of the mission were fine, we were watching our backs. We then got sloppy and stopped paying attention to our on-board scanner. Too late....
Doom Armada alliance warped in with 3 guys, and ended up podding Senx, and killing me (but my pod did make it out alive). Was impressed with 2 things... - one being their warp scram range at 27km (from what I can remember). Second was just how efficently they went about killing us. The use of Navy ammo must help them a lot with dps also...

I personally should have done a lot of things better than I did - one being using AB to fly away from the scrambler (being deadspace this may have got me out of his range)... But as this was my first PvP encounter in EVE for 9 months... I'm rusty - and being 0:45-46 at the time was very very tired too. I'm also not skilled for T2 anything, and have pathetic support skills. So basically NOT a good place to be.

Lesson learnt:

1. If missioning in low-sec pay attention to scanner... it will alert you to guys coming towards you.
2. Don't fly tired - it leads to 1/
3. Stay aligned at all times.
4. If you see bad guy on overview hit warp. Don't collect drones, don't pass go, don't get your ass handed to you on a plate. Warp.
   
5. If you are getting targetted and are scrammed and knowing you can't survive make some attempt to get out of range of the scrammer. Don't just sit there. Really. Don't.

PvP is an aim for the combat char, but it's 9-12 months off - I'm resigned to doing missions till them. But I'll definitely pay more attention in low-sec next time. So thanks for the combat lesson Doom. One day I hope to be able to be as efficient at PvP as you guys were.