Friday, January 8, 2010

The grass is greener...

Today's C2 exit brought a surprise in the form of a packed system - so much here in fact (~60 sites) that I decided to move my entire base of operations into this adjoining system:

The move was long and complicated - long gone is the "Mongolian lifestyle" of hopping systems with my trusty little Small POS, Corp Hangar and Ship Maintenance Array. No, this was a 6-hour ordeal, even with twin, max-rigged Iteron 5's. With a month of fuel, all the defenses, the silos and other components for hybrid reactions, and subsystem construction, we are talking serious transport and logistics.

Turns out that this new system also contains static C2 and LowSec, so I lucked out and ended up in a new system and the same recurring exits. This system does not enjoy the shield regen bonuses my previous system had, however, which was noticeable when it came to clearing radar sites - I had to remote rep my Drake briefly for the first time in ages.

Ironically, just about the time I had finished up the move and was anchoring defenses, some visitors started coming through a new exit in my "old' system. I quickly acted to close the WH, but I could only get it to "Verge of collapse" as I did not know the remaining mass and did not want to risk leaving a ship on the other side.

Later, I found that a pilot had jumped through that critical WH (assuming it closed behind him/her) in a Helios and for some reason ran out of (or gasp! did not have) probes! I discovered the abandoned T2 Helios sitting right at the closed WH location - it also had heavy armor and structure damage, so not exactly sure what happened, but I now have a spare, fully fitted Helios... BTW - I love having the Ship Maintenance Array and the Corp Hangar. I simply swapped fittings on my alt for remote armor and remote hull repair and in less than 2 minutes I had a good-as-new second Helios.

All quiet now and I have cleared the 2 Radar and 8 of the sleeper sites. Will continue to clear while conditions are optimal (e.g. no visitors). Lots of sites to clear!

Fly Safe!

9 comments:

  1. Congrats on your find, and good luck in your new home!

    I've been searching for a new home such as this via my static C2 for quite some time now... alas, every system has been either heavily occupied or devoid of sites. It's disappointing, but it's also good to know that such bountiful systems DO still exist, even with the current WH population!

    If you don't mind my asking, with two accounts and a great deal of wormhole experience, is there any particular reason you haven't moved on up to class 3 wormholes? Are 2's simply more lucrative and 3's not worth the extra effort, or is there a different reason?

    Again, best of luck in your new home!

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  2. I'd like to understand. Are you running all this alone ? If so, how much skill point do you have ? Is it very complicated to have the fuel required and everything to keep the POS alive ?

    I'm very interested in moving to a WH-System but I never had a POS before. Maybe two of my frined would come but that is not sure at all since they don't wanna risk there ship and stuff... We all stay in Empire and never really had LowSec or Null sec experience. I went into wormhole a couple of time but always made sure there was no one in it and it was never above a class 1 or 2.

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  3. Idassa - keep up the search - you will find a good system. It has taken many folks (including me several times) up to 2 weeks to find a good W-space home.

    I actually started my WH experience with C3 and I do not see a real yield difference between C2 and C3 (web scramble and frontier sites are just marginally harder assuming you keep to the spawn sequence), but it really simply boiled down to the WH search. The first good, uninhabited W-space that had a recurring C2 or C3 happened to be a C2. And again with this most recent move, it was just another C2. If I would have found a C3 first, then I would be running C3's. Ask anything, anytime!

    Mahahou - Yes, My main (Star Defender, ~23M SP) and Alt (LightTraveler, ~24M SP). However, I would say most of my skill training in the last 9 months has really been on probing, all aspects of T3 products, and getting my mining skills up to par. My offensive and defensive skills are not really much higher than before Apocrypha launched, which means not much since I dropped out of LowSec exploration site running.

    I started this blog having never even considered deploying a POS and learned everything along the way, with the help of fellow bloggers and info sites. I would say that deploying my first small POS was one of the best things I have ever done in EVE, as it opened the door to so many facets that I had not considered before and/or were new to EVE.

    I say go for it, but never forget the much-spoken mantra: Never fly a ship you cannot afford to lose (which also applies to POS stuff). I had built up to my first 2 Billion ISK in the wallet just before Apocrypha launched and decided the worst that could happen is that I lose my ships and my POS setup and I was OK with that.

    With considerably more than that in the wallet now (thanks W-space!), I can look back and say it was the best decision yet.

    Looking forward now to seeing if moving into T3 production was a good move...

    Fly Safe!

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  4. POS life really is a marvel when compared to living out of hangers in stations. I shudder to think of ever going back to that limited existance.

    So many options open up once you have control of your own POS and can adjust the set-up as your desires dictate.

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  5. great find SD!

    and I absolutely agree with Minuit! No way I am ever going back to running missions and following agents!

    As for the T3 production stuff - if you can handle the extra logistics and the spreadsheets then it's absolutely worth it - ISK wise - although it's quite complicated and very skill-demanding.

    as for your move... man you got some balls!!
    You didn't get into much detail on how you did the move, and I suspect you used a small POS on the other side, but besides the actual move and unanchoring and anchoring that is a bitch - the whole thing is really risky.

    Just tonight we found some folks that where setting up a POS in a nearby class 5. If we had arrived only a few minutes earlier we would have caught them with their shields down. Only a 2 man corp and they would have lost everything... We did try to attack them but didn't manage to pod them so we went back to our PVE farming since bringing down a large tower - even semi-anchored would take a lot of time we didn't want to spend..

    I can only imagine the risk of moving a complete setup with just 2 toons. You sir have balls!

    QP

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  6. Wow, what a marvelous find. Not only am I giddy to know that those treasure troves still exist but that this one has fallen upon someone who will actually utilize it before the sites despawn. Hope you brought a lot of spirits and exotic dancers to celebrate!

    I have a new question for you too :D
    How would you say that your profit margins have evolved since you began your adventures? For example, in the beginning there was a lot of mainstream combat with a small POS for a base. As your experience grew, you ventured into Radar and Mag sites, and even farmed a little gas. With time different loot (i.e. NIM's) changed in drop rate and value, and you adjusted your play accordingly. Now, as I understand it, you've got a finger in every inch of the pie that wormholes have to offer with T3 production and biochemical silos.

    So what's your playstyle like now? How do you divvy it up between running different sites or even managing production at the POS?

    I understand it's a little personal, so please don't hesitate to dismiss the question, but I thought it'd make an interesting insight not only for your readers but for you as well. A humble reflection of your experiences and how they've shaped you as a capsuleer is always healthy, especially in the presence of such good fortunes.

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  7. Good to hear from you Quiv. Yes, I staged a Medium POS in the destination system, unanchored all the POS gear while the Medium/Staging POS went online and shields up.

    Once shields were up I moved a Corp Hangar over and then LOTS of trips back and forth with the dual-Itty's, both regularly D-scanning on both sides of the WH.

    Then, after downtime, deploy the large POS and move everything one last time. Note to self - would be a LOT easier to stage a large and avoid the second transfer, but large POS takes SO long to anchor and online... Wanted to make sure I got everything out of the "old" system before downtime.

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  8. LordRay - great question. Although I have begun to expand into other facets of Apocrypha, namely T3, my main income remains sleeper sites.

    Although NIM yield dropped, Melted Nano's took their place and although I would say wreck loot yield has dropped substantially in the last 8 months, it is still more profitable for me than LowSec plexing, which was a steady earner.

    If there is anything that has changed, it is my perspective and attitude about earning ISK -vs- expanding into new areas. With all the ISK that W-space has put in my wallet, I was able to continually reinvest in bigger operations, netting higher yields, but I would have done it for nill, as I am just enjoying being a noob in production, reactions, etc.

    In terms of managing time, the reactions and production runs are "fire and forget" and run for hours, so the only real things that have changes are setup (this post tells the tale) and that I typically begin or end the session with starting a reaction/production/refining job.

    Thanks again for the comment.

    Fly Safe!

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