Where Are My Wormholes CCP?

Just yesterday I lost a Minmatar Blockade Runner ship, a Prowler, to a Nullsec gatecamp. In total I lost around 400 million isk, which is a fairly large sum. In order to deflect accountability for this mistake from myself and attempt to stem the guilt for producing such a horrible dent in our killboard stats, I've decided to blame CCP for this tragedy.

To explain, I live in a patch off Nullsec where there isn't a very well-stocked market. So I rely on Highsec market hubs to re-supply all my needs. To reach these hubs I try and always use wormholes which are, arguably, a lot safer than attempting to traverse the perils of Nullsec and Lowsec. I will scan down a wormhole in my Nullsec home and continue scanning to try and find a route through to Highsec. I can then use this path to bring back to Nullsec anything I particularly require.

So how did I manage to get caught in a Transport ship in a Nullsec gatecamp? Well, for around four days the pocket of seven Nullsec systems that I call home hasn't contained one single wormhole. This, despite the fact that at least one of the systems has been upgraded with the Quantum Flux Generator, a sovereignty upgrade that is meant to increase the chances of a wormhole apprearing in the system. This lack of wormholes caught me at a bad time and forced me to attempt the more dangerous route to Highsec, and I got unlucky.

Maybe the lack of wormhole spawns in the systems is also just a result of being unlucky, but I'm inclined to feel that the Quantum Flux Generator is not doing its job properly and is not attracting as many wormholes as it should be doing. For this reason I feel justified in blaming CCP for my loss.

In addition to my inability to plunder the Highsec market, our corporation as a whole has been starved of wormhole PvE. Although we live in Nullsec, it is a key desire of the corp to exploit high level wormholes from our Nullsec base. Many days we have had plenty of people online and plenty of shiny ships ready to go, but no wormholes to raid!

This method of wormhole raiding from Nullsec is a legitimate interaction with wormholes that I think CCP should support. So I'm intending on gathering some evidence on the wormhole spawns in our pocket of Nullsec and examining the effect that the Quantum Flux Generator is having on spawns. I would be really interested if anybody else has any information to give on this as well. If I feel the effect granted is too small I might ask the CSM to present it to CCP as an issue that needs looking at.

But, moaning aside, wormholes can be exploited in a large variety of different ways and it would be really nice to have Nullsec wormhole raiding as one of these ways. It should be able to provide a viable source of activity and income for a small Nullsec corp, and I could definately use a little bit of that income right now.

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.