Try Another Ship!

I have to say upfront that I really like stealth bombers. They are fun ships to fly and can be very useful in certain situations.

But a number of recent experiences have led me to the conclusion that many people, especially wormhole dwellers, fly them badly. Not only do they fly them badly, but they fly them in totally the wrong situations.

I suspect the proliferation of stealth bombers in wormholes is due to a number of reasons. Firstly, everybody in a wormhole has a Covert Ops ship, otherwise they wouldn't be able to do anything. And since Stealth Bombers require most of the same skills I guess it makes sense for wormhole dwellers to fly them. In addition to this, they are light and can cloak, which takes advantage of both the wormhole mass restrictions and the lack of Local Chat in wormholes.

So far , so good. I'm not claiming that Stealth Bombers are bad to fly in wormholes. But every pilot should learn one very important lesson, they are paper thin! They have no tank! None.

This means that you should take the utmost care when putting them into a situation where there is the possiblity of them getting damaged. The biggest tip I can give you is:

Be prepared to flee

Make preparations before a fight to get out. During a fight, keep aligned to a celestial object and if you start to take damage, push that warp button. Keep out of both Scram and Disruptor range. If any of your enemies launch drones, you may as well exit the field straight away, because I bet they will head for you.

Ultimately Stealth Bombers are guerilla fighters. They are meant to be used for quick and decisive action that shatters the enemy in one go. Then they disappear.

But too often I've seen Stealth Bombers being used as a some kind of staple fleet ship. People are using them to camp wormholes and tackle enemy ships. They are being used as DPS ships in long extended fights. Of course they can be used like this, but only with great care and the addition of supporting ships to control the enemies range and give them an alternate target to shoot at.

So my suggestion is, if you find yourself a little too reliant on Stealth Bombers in wormhole PvP, go grab a nice T1 Cruiser. It might not be able to pack quite the punch that Stealth Bombers can, but it will have a decent tank and will be able tackle invading pilots. Not only that, but it will hurt your wallet less if things don't go to plan!

Staying Safe in a Wormhole

Wormhole space is currently the least densely populated area of the Eve universe. Unfortunately this can have the effect of lulling people into a false sense of security. Often in a wormhole you won't see anybody who isn't in your corporation for days; it may begin to feel like nobody else plays the game.

This attitude can often lead to complacency, and complacency will get you killed. Because the reality is that wormhole mechanics mean that wormhole space is the most dangerous place in Eve that you can be. More dangerous than Highsec, or even Lowsec and Nullsec.

The key reason for this is the lack of local which enables other people to enter your system unawares. Also new wormholes can spawn at any time, giving people an ideal opportunity to surprise you. For these reasons, wormhole space is the easiest place to gank people in Eve.

This matters very little if all you are losing is perhaps one Drake per month, especially when compared to the riches that can be harvested from wormholes. But once you start mining in Hulks or hauling Sleeper loot in your Iteron V or running anomalies in your Tengu - a gank becomes a whole lot more worrying.

So here are a quick few tips for wormhole safety.

Stay Cloaked

There is no better way to remain safe than cloaking. Not only can your enemy not see you, but they also don't can't even know that you're there. You can be 5km away from a totally unsuspecting target. Use cloaking as both an offensive and defensive tactic.

Stay in Your POS

Minimise the time you spend outside of the warm and comforting embrace of your POS shield. Just be aware that people may be watching you. So if you suspect there are hostiles in the system, warp away to a random position before warping to your true destination.

Keep Some Probes Out

There is no excuse not to have probes out whenever possible. If you are running a mining operation or a Sleeper combat fleet be sure to assign somebody to keep an eye out for any suspicious new signatures in the system. There is no better way to surprise someone than jumping out of a newly opened wormhole.

Keep Spamming D-Scan

The Directional Scanner is your dim torch in the darkness that is wormhole space. It won't spot everything, but it can save your life. Just make sure to uncheck the option to use your overview settings, this way you are sure to notice scanner probes.

Keep a Scout on a Wormhole

If there are any dangerous wormholes and you have the luxury of an alternate character that can cloak, put them next to the wormhole. The wormhole activation noise is very distinctive and will be a tell-tale sign that you have a visitor. This is the only definite way to notice somebody entering into your wormhole.

There are many other precautions that you can take, but these are some of the best and most basic ones.

Pick which precautions to take based upon what is at stake. If you are gas mining in a Tech 1 Cruiser, then perhaps some of the precautions are more trouble than they are worth. But alternatively if you are flying around in your swanky faction fitted Tech 3 Strategic Cruiser, then it might be a good idea to protect your investment well.

I am sorry to say that despite these saftey measures, you will still get blown up at some point. It's just a fact of wormholes. But nothing so lucrative should be risk-free.

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.

This is a Live Event Right?

Recently CCP have reintroduced Live Events to Eve. A Live Event is an in-game story scripted and coordinated by CCP Devs, in which capsuleers can participate. The Live Event currently being played out in Eve revolves around the entity Sansha's Nation who have been manipulating wormholes in order to launch attacks on systems all over the universe and kidnapping citizens of various planets.

I'm afraid I'm not going to give a potted summary of the story so far. Firstly because I don't know most of it myself, but also because I have to talk about what happened yesterday.

Although I personally haven't been able to get involved in any of the actual events, one member of our corporation, Darkcoro has been heavily involved in many of them. He was recently mentioned by name in a news article when a Sansha's Nation wormhole was collapsed by a fleet he was helping to lead. So he has been a really useful and interesting to source to have around while the events have been ocurring.

Yesterday, the 25th of May, a rumour was circulating that a Sansha's Nation invasion event was going to occur one hour before the Tyrannis patch downtime. Since I hadn't been able to witness any of the previous engagements, I felt it was time I should make the effort and see what it was all about. Darkcoro gave both myself and other members of our corporation an invite to the Operation Bad Moon fleet. Operation Bad Moon are a group of roleplayers who have been at the forefront of player interaction with the Live Events.

Once in the fleet, we were told that information had been leaked regarding this invasion event. Apparently it was to occur in a lowsec system called Maut, which is one jump from Gallente Highsec. Other rumours suggested that the CCP Dev players were going to bring a whole cap fleet, incuding a Leviathan Titan to the engagement! The fleet started to gather in Auvergne, Gallente Highsec, and the lure of getting on a Titan killmail eventually pushed the number of pilots in the fleet above 200.

This number of pilots was something that the Operation Bad Moon leaders weren't prepared for. Fleet discipline was becoming difficult to maintain and many of the wing commanders seemed rather clueless as to what the big plan was. Attempting to use Eve Voice was not a success as it seemed to be a bit tempremental so I ended up just joining the corp Vent channel.

Our corporation had our own squad in the fleet. I decided to go all-in and bring a PvP fitted, armour buffer Typhoon Battleship. In our squad we had a couple more Battleships, some Stealth Bombers and a Cruiser. We ended up at the highsec gate to Maut waiting for the action to begin.

At around 01:00 Eve time a report came through that a cyno had been lit in Maut. Through this cyno came a Nyx Supercarrier and Carrier support. In the Operation Bad Moon fleet it was assumed that these ships belonged to players who had aligned themselves with the cause of the Sansha's Nation invasion and that the actual Sansha fleet would follow. Further reports started to come in about more cynos being lit in system. Eventually our fleet was ordered to jump into Maut.

Local in Maut numbered around 600. So once grids had loaded the fleet was warped to the cynos that were close to planet six. Upon arrival our 200 strong fleet was greeted by the sight of a staggering number of Carrier, Dreadnought and Supercarrier capitals belonging to the Nullsec alliances Morsus Mihi, RAZOR Alliance, Wildly Inappropriate and Pandemic Legion, just to name a few.

It is safe to say that at this point nobody in our fleet had a clue what was going on. There didn't seem to be any Sansha around to shoot. A primary was called but a 200 man mixed sub-capital fleet couldn't make a dent on anything. After a while battleships began to be picked off including my Typhoon. At this point lag was making the game unplayable and there was a small node crash. I ended up being thoroughly confused, logging off in my pod just before the patch day downtime hit.

So this morning I endeavoured to find out what had actually happened. Where were the Sanchas? Why were so many Nullsec alliances involved? If CCP was involved why wasn't the node reinforced?

The brilliant and hilarious truth of the matter?

This was not a CCP run Live Event.

From what I have been able to make out a rumour was started by a number of Sansha sympathising players about the Live Event which the RolePlayers fell for totally. The players spread all sorts of rumours about there being an invasion in Maut just before patch downtime and there being a possibility of a Titan kill. The initial cyno in Maut was lit by these sympathisers who jumped in the Nyx piloted by ECHAeries with two triage carriers in support. Cry Havoc opportunistically lit the second cyno in Maut and jumped in a sub-capital fleet. They were then jumped by both the Morsus Mihi and Pandemic Legion capital fleets. Another cyno was also lit by United Star Federation who also brought in a few carriers. These were all joined by our large sub-capital fleet and possibly other fleets as well. I know for sure there was an Eve University fleet in the area.

It seems that ECHAeries' Nyx was primaried but due to an interdiction mistake it was able to warp out when deep into armour. The capital fleets then picked off random capitals before turning their attention to any of the sub-capital ships that remained. As downtime approached the fleets moved out of Maut and the fight ended quickly.

So far I have managed to find killmails for 1 Chimera, 3 Thanatos, 1 Moros and an Archon, along with plenty of sub-capital losses, mine included. None of the Nullsec alliance fleets seemed to suffer any losses.

All in all it was an incredibly entertaining evening, and even more so now that I know the truth of it. Is there a game like Eve where a single rumour can trigger an engagement on this scale? Tyrannis is currently patching and there will be some nice new features to play with, but it's worth remembering that sometimes it's the players that create the best content.

Interesting Links

Pandemic Legion Battle Report
Morsus Mihi Killboard
Eve Forum Thread
Scrapheap Challenge Forum Thread

Sorry, I've Been Enjoying Eve Way Too Much to Post!

My title for this post is really the only legitimate reason I could come up with for not posting properly for so long; and the best thing about it? It's totally true!

The benefit of this little break from posting is that I have tons of stuff to talk about. But let me first tell you what's going on.

With an alt character I have joined SI Radio, an ex-wormhole dwelling corporation who are known for the show Planet Risk produced by two senior members Luminus Aardokay and Quivering Palm. Planet Risk is a great show that revolves around wormhole exploration and exploitation. SI Radio were recently forcibly evicted from their class six wormhole by the Lowsec pirate alliance Rooks and Kings. They now reside in Providence as renters living in a small pocket of nullsec systems owned by Noir Mercenary Group.

But despite living in Nullsec SI Radio have not lost their love for wormholes, otherwise I would not have joined! Nullsec systems can now be fitted with sovereignty upgrades that increase the amount of wormholes that spawn. So the big plan is to continue battling Sleepers in wormholes from the base in Nullsec, while also getting involved in the PvE and, more excitingly, PvP of the region.

The region Providence is very active and exciting at the moment. It was overrun by the big alliance Against ALL Authorities or AAA earlier this year. Rather than owning the systems themselves, they have installed other smaller alliances in the systems under strict orders not to engage in sovreignty warfare. The smaller alliances are often called 'pets', they are used by bigger alliances to live in space that the bigger alliance doesn't have the members or inclination to use properly.

As a result, Providence is a busy place, filled with small alliances. The region is currently partially united in its efforts to expel the remnants of the old sovreignty holders from the region. In particular two alliances, Curatores Veritatis Alliance or CVA and Paxton Federation who are making things as difficult as they can for the new alliances settling in. But once they have gone it is to be hoped that alliances begin to reset their standings towards each other, and the region is likely to become a haven for small gang PvP. The new space-holding alliances are very diverse in nature and play-style, from the professional mercenaries for hire, Noir Mercenary Group, to the Minmatar roleplaying alliance Ushra'Khan and many more that I currently know nothing of.

SI Radio is a tiny part of this. We rent systems from Noir Mercenary Group. So maybe that makes us AAA's pet's pet. But, whatever we are, I'm completely new to Nullsec so it feels like a whole new game for me!

So, there's your update of what's going on. I now have one character living in a class five wormhole and another in Nullsec. My focus for the blog is still going to be wormholes. But don't be surprised if some of my Nullsec exploits also begin to creep in!

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.

Timing is Everything

Anybody wanting to PvP in Eve needs to get used to timers. Timers in Eve control a great number of things, such as when you may dock, when you may jump through a gate, when you may shoot at another player or when you may be shot at. PvP in wormholes is no exception to this.

There are two distinct timers that will come into play when you jump into a wormhole.

The Session-Change Timer

The Session-change timer is a standard one throughout the Eve universe. The timer is triggered by many player actions, including undocking, ejecting from a ship, jumping through a gate and joining a fleet.

In our case the timer is triggered when we jump through a wormhole. It will last for thirty seconds, and during that time we will be unable to perform any of the other actions that could possibly trigger the timer. Essentially this means that we will have to wait thirty seconds before we can jump back through the wormhole again. But you can get caught out by it in other ways as well. For example, joining a fleet just before you land at a wormhole will trigger the timer. That thirty seconds you have to wait is more than enough time for somebody to lock and even possibly pop your ship.

So the session timer is something you should always be mindful of. Luckily for us, rather than having to count to thirty, there is a visual setting that can be enabled to show us the session-change timer. From the Eve Main Menu go to the 'General Settings' tab then tick the option box in the top left corner labelled 'Show Session-Change Timer'. In-game the timer will show up in the top left of your screen as a very small whirling icon. Holding your mouse over the icon will tell you how many seconds are left until the timer expires.

Make sure to familiarise yourself with which actions trigger the timer and be careful you don't get caught out by it.

Wormhole Polarity Timer

The second timer to affect wormholes is the polarity timer. This timer is designed to prevent people avoiding PvP by constantly jumping back and forth through a wormhole. The timer is triggered when a pilot jumps twice through the same wormhole in quick sucession.

I couldn't find any concrete data on how this timer works, so I did a bit of my own testing. This is the conclusion I have reached. I believe that after the first initial jump through a wormhole a timer is started that is approximately five minutes long. During this five minute period you can make a second jump but are unable to jump a third time. If you try and make a third jump a message will pop up warning you that you are unable to jump. It will also display the time remaining until you can jump through again. This time remaining will be the five minutes subtracted by the amount of time hat has passed since the first jump.

In practice, the longest amount of time you will have to wait before jumping through the same wormhole the third time will be somewhere between 3 minutes 50 seconds and 4 minutes. This is because the two session timers caused by the first two jumps through the wormhole will already subtract 1 minute from the polarity timer and system loading time may subtract even more.

The polarity timer is linked to one specific wormhole. So the timer will not be triggered if you are jumping through different wormholes.

This timer is very important to remember if PvP is occurring on a wormhole. Any PvP targets who are being beaten will attempt to flee by jumping through the hole, and if they are then tackled on the other side they will most likely jump through the hole a second time. At this point they will have a polarity timer, so they can be easily dealt with.

In theory the polarity timer confers an advantage on the 'defender' of a system. The 'attacker' will have to make one jump in order to enter the system. Once the battle has started the 'attacker' will have to split their forces in order to prevent the 'defender' from using the polarity timer to their advantage. This can often make fighting at wormholes a bit frustrating, but it is important information to remember if you engage on a wormhole.

I hope that summary was useful. Feel free to leave a comment if you disagree with my theory of the polarity mechanics, or if you have any good/bad experiences of wormhole timers.