Hypersynaptic fibers

T2 production is ticking along. I'm not sure how much ISK I'm actually making, because I refuse to make an actual spreadsheet, but the wallet appears to grow, so that is good. Broke through six hundred million ISK with materials for the next batch already bought. I ran out of manufacturing slots, because apparently T2 ammo takes lots of time. Eventually I should train Mass Production to five. But I think I will pause industrial training and train some more combat skills. Because who needs specialization.

Probably T2 drones would be a good idea. I am still flying around lowsec trying to rat. With T2 guns and Void ammo an assault frigate is reasonable, if not that great. A drone assault frigate, whatever it is called, might be better for clearing belts, at least with T2 drones. I have been trying to read about belt spawn mechanics, but it is difficult to find anything accurate, because Retribution apparently partially changed it.

I tried chaining a battleship spawn, which doesn't make that much sense in lowsec, but I wanted to see if that actually works. It didn't, when I came back, and there was no one in system the whole time, the spawn was replaced by a hauler spawn. But there are people who claim that chaining still works. Additional investigation is required.

Also apparently there is a limited number of spawns per system which can exist at the same time, approximately half the number of belts. So system with too many belts are not a good place to rat after all. This would explain why I encountered so many empty belts.

I have seen only a single faction spawn so far, and it dropped a tag and some ammo. Belt ratting in lowsec doesn't appear to be particularly worth it so far. But then, no one really said it would be. Doing Yards and Rally Points makes a bit less than L3 missions, and with much greater risk of player pirates dropping in. At least they are much faster to loot and salvage, since they have only one room.

And as I written before, unlike missions, belt rats and anomalies are a limited resource, and sometime they just are all cleared or refuse to spawn nearby. Although I have read somewhere that anomalies respawn per constellation? I doubt I could gather enough data to check it. But remembering which systems belong to the constellation I mostly fly around lowsec in might help. In any case, it just somehow irritates me that infinite missions exist in EVE. It seems against the basic design principles, for something to be excluded from competition this way.

Anyway, I'm doing ratting mostly because I like spaceships and shooting things in them, not because they make any noticeable amounts of ISK. Which is a problem, because I could, in principle, engage other people, and not only rats, but then I would start losing ships and my production efforts are nowhere near enough to pay for enough of those. At least not the kind that would have any sort of chance and could rat at the same time.

I have been playing for five months and still haven't joined anything. Probably suboptimal. At least when flying though lowsec I have local open, obviously, and haven't got enough screen real estate to keep corp chat open, so I don't keep getting used to CAS chat. Not that I ever say anything there.

Too many battleships

Well, I didn't make a post for more than two weeks. But I am still playing EVE, even if with limited time.

I tried to do bigger anomalies in my assault frigate, but apparently while I can more or less crack a lowest tier battleship, the kind with 400-500 thousand ISK bounties, I have nowhere near DPS to destroy anything tougher, at least not in any sane amounts of time. I am still training towards T2 small guns, EFT says I should get at least 50 DPS more with Void ammo, even with my still kind of low support skills. This won't make Ports or Rally Points with adjectives very practical, since they spawn a dozen battleships, but at least will make Yards and normal Rally Points quicker.

I can complete a Serpentis Port in my battlecruiser with about 420 DPS, at least after killing everything but battleships in the frigate, but I had to dock two times to recharge, so that is not very efficient. I tried to kill as many ships as possible in a Forlorn Rally Point, but apparently cruisers are triggers and it ended up with aforementioned dozen battleships. All shooting at my little frigate and doing no damage. It was pretty funny, at least.

On the other front I am still working on T2 manufacturing. Apparently ship prices, at least T2 frigates, are lagging behind the rapidly rising moon material prices, so that plan is not going to end well. Although I checked the Helios only, which might be undergoing some kind of post Odyssey bounce. At least T2 small guns seem to be selling fairly well. My industrial activity is strictly small scale, but I still seem to be depressing Dodixie market price once I drop only eighty small guns on it.

Assaulting Yards

I got myself an assault frigate. My first T2 ship. No T2 guns yet, but small Meta4 guns are pretty cheap. I fitted a blaster Enyo, purely for Serpentis PvE, so I left the glaring explosive resist hole alone, put a nanofiber structure on it, and hope that I can warp out before any other players can lock me. Or fully land on grid, I am not sure how long the time is between appearing on overview and being able to move, but I think there is some?

The ship is pretty brilliant for belt ratting and, which took me a bit to realize, lowsec anoms. With its bonuses, great accuracy and faction ammo it destroys cruiser rats pretty quickly, one shots many frigates and maybe three shots destroyers. Which is effectively quicker than when I did this with a cruiser, since it locks things much faster. And small ammo is cheap enough to just use faction ammo all the time. And I still don't have Small Hybrid Turrets to five. With that and T2 guns I should get another ten percent DPS. Or more, depending on what is considered base.

It even takes out battleships reasonably fast, a bit slower than in a Brutix, but there aren't that many in lowsec. And it has small enough signature that it is pretty much immune to anything cruiser and above. Unless I mess up traversal, but even then it has enough resists to recover. I have actually not tried to do a Serpentis Rally Point, because there were too many people in systems where those happened to spawn when I was flying around, but I can complete Serpentis Yards just fine.

I even got an escalation of one of those, but leading to a Serpentis Logistical Outpost, which, if the description is in any way accurate, is way too much for my little frigate. Blowing up a battleship or two is fine, but then would get boring, and I don't like the mentions of missile sentries. It is good to know that escalations are actually a thing. I wonder what the odds are for highsec anom to escalate, I did a good hundred of those probably, and never seen that.

On the other hand I have never seen a faction spawn from lowsec. Or belts for that matter. I have seen some tag rat spawns, a courier twice, but no faction. But then I either play in bursts to short for belts to respawn, or get scared of some pirate. And I read that belts work in cycles. Although I saw them at many points of those cycles, including special spawns, so I wonder, do they start at those points or I just happened to hit a belt someone left in that state? I know that happened at least once since, I got a special spawn in a belt where there were still wrecks from the final cycle stage.

Another thing I did in my new Assault Frigate was a highsec combat site, Serpentis Narcotic Warehouse. It had so many frigates and destroyers that they actually got pretty far into my armor, even though they died pretty much in one shot, but I beat them all. And the overseer structure dropped a Coreli A-Type 1MN Afterburner. So that is nice. I don't have much use for it, but assuming it sells, it is another thirty-something million ISK.

I got one of those better Tags4Sec tags, apparently worth about fifty million. Assuming it sells, the market seems a bit weird on those right now, some sort of introduction bounce I think. In general, pretty nice. I need some ISK because I want to start producing T2 ships without cutting into my half billion reserve. I still need the interface and skillbooks. And datacores. And materials, but I want to stick to frigates at first, so it is not that much per unit. But then, invention and manufacturing is a hobby within a hobby, really.