How to Fit a Covert Ops Ship

Yesterday I lost my Helios Covert Ops ship while attempting to tackle a Proteus, a T3 Gallente Strategic Cruiser.

If you think that sounds a bit stupid, then you are right - it was stupid. It was just one of a number of mistakes I made yesterday.

Another mistake I made was tackling the same pilot in his own Helios Covert Ops ship and letting him escape before I could kill him with my one drone. In my mind this was by far the biggest mistake I made because it was a mistake in the way I fit my ship.

Let me explain - on my Covert Ops I fitted a Warp Disruptor, so when I tackled the Helios he was able to simply use his MicroWarpdrive to get out of range of me, before warping away. If instead I had fitted a Warp Scrambler, then he wouldn't have been able to use his MicroWarpdrive at all, and I would probably have a nice Helios killmail to show for my efforts.

So it got me thinking about how to fit a Covert Ops ship, especially since I had to go and buy myself a new one. Here is my short guide to fitting a Covert Ops ship.

1. Firstly fit a Covert Ops Cloaking Device II. This cloak is built specifically for your ship and you wouldn't be 'covert' without it.

2. Fit a Scan Probe Launcher. The primary purpose of your Covert Ops will be to scan in wormholes, so this is an important piece of gear. You have a number of options here. If you are intending to live a life of pacifism and not get involved in any PvP then you might want to use the Core Probe Launcher I. This launcher will not be able to use Combat Probes, but it will free up CPU for other modules on the ship. The second choice is an Expanded Probe Launcher I, which will allow you to use both Core Probes and Combat Probes. Both of these items have a Faction equivalent, the Sisters Core Probe Launcher and the Sisters Expanded Probe Launcher. If you have the isk, they are very worthwhile. They both give a 5% bonus to scan probe strength.

3. Fit a MicroWarpdrive or Afterburner. In conjunction with your cloak the propulsion mods will keep you safe from harm. The top speed of your ship isn't terribly important, so your only criteria for picking which module to fit should be based on what other modules you're hoping to fit on the ship. The MicroWapdrive is better from a safety perspective, while the Afterburner will enable you to squeeze more utility modules into the mid slots.

4. Fit two Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I rigs in the rig slots. These will each give a 10% scan strength bonus.

5. Fit speed and maneuverability modules in the low slots. Which modules you fit is a matter of taste. But any mix of Inertia Stabilizers, Overdrive Injectors and Nanofiber Internal Structures will work nicely.

6. Fit some tackle. As I found out this should probably be a Warp Scrambler. If you are interested in wormhole PvP you will find that in most cases a Covert Ops ship will normally be the first on the scene and it's useful to tie down a ship before everybody else arrives, just in case they get away. The Scrambler can be well paired with a Stasis Webifier to stop fast targets in their tracks. Some fits can also include both a Scrambler and a Disruptor if you need.

7. Fit some pewpew. This is only really an option if you have any CPU or PowerGrid left. In my case for my Helios this is simply a matter of putting a light scout drone in the drone bay. For other Covert Ops ships it will mean putting a weapon in a spare high slot.

8. If you have any space left it is likely to be in the mid slots. So try and squeeze in a capacitor mod, such as a Cap Recharger II.

Don't worry if you haven't managed to fit a module in every space. A Covert Ops ship is not one that requires a very neat fitting - just try and squeeze in the modules you want it to have. I hope that helps!

Gas Mining the Easy Way

Scanning is key to enjoying wormholes. If you are not able to scan, you are often quite literally stranded. But if you can scan, a door of opportunity opens. It so happens that your door of opportunity becomes somebody else's door of misfortune.

This was the case today.

I had just entered a class 6 wormhole in my trusty Helios covert ops ship. My initial d-scan showed a Moa, a Caldari cruiser, with a single cargo container that was named with a timestamp. It doesn't take a genius to realise that any container with a timestamp means somebody must be mining. Moas are also fairly commonly used as gas mining ships in wormholes. This was a prime PvP target!

When these opportunities arise, the preparation required to get the kill is easily 90% of the work. PvP scanning in wormholes is both technical and time-consuming.

The first step is to launch combat probes without giving the target the opportunity to notice. This means launching the probes while out of d-scan range, which is around 14AU. In most wormhole systems it is possible to use the planets and moons to get the required distance from the target. When the probes have been launched they should be sent immediately to scan a point that is out of d-scan range of anywhere in the system, this ensures that the target has no chance of noticing them.

Once combat probes are out, then comes the tricky business of narrowing down the target to a rough position. This requires intelligent use of both the angle and range filter on your d-scanner. Finding the angle is a fairly simple business, but to approximate the range you will need to use a km to AU conversion chart.

When a rough position of the target has been found all that remains is to place probes in this location and hope for the best. Sometimes it will take repositioning and multiple scans to locate your target. In my case, with the Moa it took two scans, which must've given the Moa around twenty seconds to see my probes on d-scan. In practice this is a very short time, especially when someone is semi-afk gas mining. With my 100% signal I warped into the Moa at 100km away. The reason for this was that the Ladar gas clouds have a sneaky habit of decloaking covert ops ships.

Even though I was 100km away from the Moa it was the work of a moment to bookmark his jet can, which was only, at most, 2500m away from him. Perfect! I love jet cans!

At this point I warped back to a neighbouring wormhole in order to guide my PvP support group who had been patiently waiting. I gave them the can bookmark and jumped back into the hole, only to see on d-scan that the Moa had GONE!

Questions run through your mind. Did he see my probes? Had he just finished? Was all that work just for nothing? Wormholes can often be like this, PvP targets will evade you, hours of scanning won't find you exits. Things might just not go your way...

But suddenly a Badger MkII appeared on scan! Fantastic! The Badger is a Caldari industrial ship and obviously the miner was coming back to transport his gas.

I called the fleet to warp to the site and we tackled the Badger. Once tackled he gave us the slip by quickly ejecting and warping his pod away; a smart more if your head is full of implants. We quickly stopped firing since a Badger full of gas is worth more than a killmail (in terms of isk that is). One of my corpmates piloted the rigged and T2 fitted Badger back to our POS while we celebrated our victory!

Our winnings:

1 Rigged and T2 fitted Badger MkII
1000 c32
1500 c70

That is gas mining the easy way!