Just Call me the Drone Commander

Just a short one.

Yesterday I experienced my first armour tanked wormhole PvE fleet. Previous to this point I've always flown in shield tanked fleets, which are a slightly rarer breed. I really enjoyed the experience, especially since the fleet was huge, so we raced through a good number of sites.

I was piloting a Loki which is great for taking out the Sleeper frigates. Fit it with two webs and some autocannons and those frigates just go pop! Although I have to admit, maybe that was because I had about 40 drones assigned to me! The number of drones we had on the field was crazy, and controlling them was great fun - all the Sleepers just melted against them. When I have a bit more experience of armour tanked fleets I will be writing a comparison between shield and armour tanking. I'll be able to discuss the different setups and give you a good idea of fleet composition for each.

In other news, the new patch Tyrannis has arrived. I'm enjoying it so far, but that's not really because of any new content, I'm just enjoying the game at the moment. In fact my favourite thing so far is that I don't have to listen to that horrible Dominion load screen music ever again! Hopefully I'll be able to play with some of the new features in a little more depth soon.

But I'm afraid that next week I'm off on holiday. So I've taken the opportunity to put some nice long skills on train. I'll be back and posting again on June 5th.

One last thing. If you have anything you'd like me to blog about when I return, just pop it in a comment, or send me an evemail to Banear. It could be a question about wormholes or ship fitting or anything really, I'm just curious about what you would enjoy reading.

So How Much Can You Earn Per Week?

The title of this post is a question that gets asked a fair bit by applicants to our wormhole corporation in the public channel.

Funnily enough, of all the things they could ask, this one question is probably one of the toughest for us to answer. Really the only valid, short answer to the question is 'it depends'. Unfortunately this often isn't enough to satisfy potential recruits and we have to explain why it's so difficult to come up with a salary for wormhole life.

The first thing we try to make clear is that the potential isk stored away in wormholes is massive. Tapping into that potential requires coordination, teamwork and a lot of logistics. So it's important for applicants to realise that, isk will only end up in their wallets after a large concerted group effort by the whole of the corporation.

For your consideration here is a potted summary of what is required in our corporation to convert our wormholes into isk.

- It starts, as many other things in wormholes do, with a scanner. This person will scan our home system to find our static class six exit
- The class six wormhole must then be fully scanned and combat sites will be bookmarked
- Adjacent wormholes to the class six will need to be checked for any possible threats
- A fleet commander has to form a fleet consisting of at least 8-10 pilots
- The fleet commander may delegate different roles within the fleet, such as the logistics pilots, a target caller and a Sleeper frigate killer
- The fleet will begin attacking the Sleepers while other pilots may be asked to keep an eye on the surrounding wormholes for any signs of trouble
- After a site has been completed, salvagers will need to be brought in to mop up the salvage and loot
- The Fleet Commander will then need to submit a report detailing who was involved in the fleet
- Those responsible will then, if necessary, have to begin to process the loot towards becoming T3 components
- Any materials needing to be sold will have to be transported safely to Empire space
- The materials will have to be listed at competitive prices to get the mopst isk for our effort
- The profits must then be divided up between all involved

As you can see, it's not a simple matter of blowing up ships and receiving isk for it. Not only are there multiple people who need to be rewarded for their effort, but the entire process from killing a Sleeper to seeing your wallet flash with the sparkle of isk may take weeks, even months!

So you can perhaps understand the difficulty we have when trying to answer the question. The best thing we can say is, the more effort you put in, the more isk you will get out. But if you're active and part of an active team, then there is no reason why living a wormhole won't make you a billionaire many times over.

It just so happened that today was a payday for me. My wallet flashed and I was 800 million isk richer.

How did it get there? - Some mystical process.
When did I earn it? - Some time recently I guess.
What did I do to earn it? - I couldn't really say.

Was it worth it? - Definitely yes!

All I really know is that for the amount of work I put in, isk seems to appear in my wallet in astounding amounts. And for me, that's all I really need to know.

Escalating

Due to maximum jump mass limits on wormholes it can be tricky to move high mass ships around. Ships of Battleship size and larger can be unable to jump through certain wormholes. Wormholes with higher maximum jump mass limits tend to connect to the higher class wormholes. The practical outcome of this is that those living in class one wormholes may find bringing in Battleships tricky. And those inhabiting wormholes from class one to three will find bringing in Carriers and Dreadnoughts all but impossible.

But for corporations in the higher level wormholes, it is a much easier matter. Having Carriers and Dreadnoughts becomes not only possible, but also advisable, because if you can bring a Carrier into your wormhole, there is nothing stopping somebody else bringing one into your wormhole. A scary thought perhaps. Our corporation lives in a class five wormhole, and we are lucky enough to have both Carriers and Dreadnoughts in system.

Carriers in particular have many uses. For example they are great for forcibly closing wormholes. But one other ability they have is to 'escalate' a Sleeper combat site. Basically, if you warp a Carrier onto grid in a Sleeper combat site that still has active Sleepers, it will trigger an extra spawn of Sleepers to fight. This is a nice bonus that can be exploited to get the most out of your combat sites in your home wormhole.

For an added bonus Sleeper sites can be escalated more than once! The first Carrier to warp into a combat site will trigger a spawn of six Sleeper Battleships. The second Carrier will trigger an extra spawn of eight Sleeper Battleships. After this second spawn, warping in extra Carriers will do nothing. But this is where the Dreadnoughts come in handy. Warp in a Dreadnought and a third spawn of a further six Battleships will be triggered.

Now at this point I have to turn from practical experience back to theory. As a corporation we have done combat sites with three escalations before, but that is where we have stopped. You see, from all the reading I had done on the subject, I was told that the fourth and final escalation of eight more Battleships would be triggered when another Dreanought warped in. This would mean that you could trigger a total of twenty eight extra Battleships by escalating each single combat site.

A couple of days ago we finally had enough pilots and a large enough fleet to test this fourth escalation for ourselves. The first, second and third waves were triggered and dealt with without incident. But when we warped in our second Dreadnought - nothing happened!

So we were left scratching our heads and wondering what had gone wrong. Maybe there is something extra about the mechanics that we are not aware of. Maybe it might be something to do with living in a class five. Until we get the chance to do a bit more testing we're not sure exactly what happened.

Anyway, that is a bit of a rough guide to escalations. It would be great to hear from readers about your experiences of escalations and especially if you can tell me more about triggering that fourth and final escalation.