Windows of vulnerability

Sad to see Jester's Trek stopping. It was an interesting perspective on many things EVE, and I think it contributed to the idea that blogging about EVE is a thing, and hence the start of this blog. Not that I write much here, but still. So I will try something other than a list of things that I did recently, since that wasn't much. It will probably sound much less coherent than it does in my head, but here goes.

Some of the, lets say, discussion around griefing and ganking and such made me think about how the mechanics actually balance that. And I realized that one thing about EVE in this respect is that for all the talk that it is primarily a PvP game all the risk versus reward balancing present takes into account what I really want to call tangible reward. Except ISK is of course not tangible even in universe. I mean ISK, minerals and loot of all kinds, as opposed to killmails, "tears" and the like.

Most anything that gives in-game rewards requires risk. Which is fine, but the problem is, the older the thing is, the more it shows the early timesink design reminiscent of most other MMOs. And that is the worst kind of risk, since there is relatively little a player can to do deal with it, and even if one can effectively survive, the reward is usually lost even if an attempt to attack failed.

Mining and missions being the worst offenders, since they require hanging in space in mostly defenseless and slowly warping ships for long stretches of time. Hauling requiting moving in a defenseless ship through easily camped chokepoints.

Exploration, since it was added later, at least shrinks the window of vulnerability by allowing the explorer to be cloaked most of the time. On the other hand since Odyssey the minigame exists to distract from local and dscan, making the window narrower, but increasing the scope of the vulnerability. Of the most recent, both security tags and I'm assuming similar newly added in Kronos Mordu's Legion belt rats are small, simple encounter that can be completed in a reasonably fast combat ship in a few minutes.

This clearly shows that CCP is aware that the timesink design is a problem and is moving away from it. But unfortunately it seems that can't and/or won't actually remove the already present elements of that. Which is understandable since the reaction would likely be loud and negative, and rebalancing all that content around non-timesink design would require effort CCP probably wants to spend on new things.

What the timesink design does, other that creating an obvious, but boring, path for new players, is empower the gankers, since around any popular mission or mining hub they can find at basically any time a large number of targets just sitting in space. The same goes for highsec wardec corps, if the dec a PvE/mining corp, their targets either have to hang in space vulnerable or effectively stop playing the game the way they want to.

The gankers or wardec corps are vulnerable only for the few minutes, if that, it takes to undock, land on grid and destroy the ships of the targeted players. There is no effective way to retaliate, or even stop them, since if they see a prepositioned defense force that could actually do anything, they can simply choose to attack elsewhere. And their window of vulnerability is so small than no force can arrive in time to do anything. Certainly in the case of suicide gankers, where even the infinite DPS of Concord showing in thirty seconds or less is too late.

And it is largely the same in lowsec and nullsec, certainly below capital level or timer fights. As evidenced by the many stories of roams that roamed for hours without finding anyone to fight, there is nothing pinning a PvPer in place to make a fight possible. Even the most stationary of gatecamps can just scatter or log off with fifteen seconds of warning and the reform immediately once the threat leaves.

What I feel the fighting system in EVE could really use is some slowing down. The level of DPS and repair per second compared to typical buffers barely makes sense in typical fantasy MMO, with humanlike beings and healing magic, but with giant piles of advanced composites that form spaceships it just feels silly. What I would like is greatly reducing DPS while making a ship ineligible for any kind of local or remote repair for a time after receiving damage, combined with some sort of stacking penalty for damage. This would make smaller groups punching up more viable, move logistics to their place outside the direct battlefield and decrease the importance of alpha and absolute focus fire. It would also extend the vulnerability window for small engagements.

Unfortunately this is not ever going to happen even if most everyone agreed this is a good idea, since it would require rebalancing every ship, most modules, basically all PvE… and it took six months each for CCP to balance a class of ships. And people hate change in general. Which is another reason why CCP prefers to pile on new things rather than to fix existing ones unless they are severely broken. Unfortunately, that can only continue for so long.

Counting anomalies

No post in almost three months? How the time flies. I am still playing EVE a bit. And looking at my notes I started to write a post back when I finished training Gallente Cruisers V and flew through some level four missions with a blaster Deimos. Which was kind of fun. Not that I kept doing that, because missions get boring very quickly, but apparently Deimos can tank four Serpentis battleships while not moving at all. Which is kind of silly.

In the meantime the CSM election came and passed. I even voted, although mostly on Sugar Kyle, because blogs I suppose. Not really clear on what other candidates represent. Not that it matters that much, I suppose.

I still mostly do invention and manufacturing of T2 modules. Between work, other games and even occasionally having a life I just don't have time to do much more than update the queues and transport materials and stuff from Dodixie. It is not much, but I still like reading about EVE, and somehow feel that it wouldn't make sense to read about it without an active account. A single one.

At least I won't be surprised by the industry changes. Release schedule apparently is going to change, and I still am not quite sure, how that is going to work? Will the complete industry changes from the dev blogs be release in June, or will they be phased in? I could search for that, but then I could just wait. At least since I am not manufacturing anywhere near Jita, and not that close to Dodixie either I should be hit too hard by the cost increase.

I wonder how this will effect material efficiency research. It is a one time cost, so especially for cheaper items it should be fairly easy to max out the blueprints. Right now what is mostly stopping that is waiting times, since you have to get pretty deep into null to get freeish slots, and otherwise the slot is just waited for weeks.

Hopefully it won't crush my tiny income stream, because where else can I even get ISK while playing fifteen minutes per day? Although how much ISK do I need to play fifteen minutes a day? I suppose I am hoping that one of these days I will have more time and play more EVE.

Although I did play a bit more, and spent relatively a lot of ISK recently, when I remembered that since I have Gallente Cruisers V, I could just get a T3 cruiser. So I did. At first configured it for nullified cloaky exploration ship. Even got a bit into null, but then I got stressed and came back before even launching my probes.

So I got back and reconfigured it for highsec combat-exploration. And then remembered that they changed it so that you can't enter combat sites with a T3 cruiser. But I mostly wanted to clear some anomalies, including the new ghost sites. I still keep a running count of anomaly by type and the number of faction spawns that appear. It is still very low. Looks like about 2%. What is even the point, really. Unless this varies by anomaly level more than I would expect. It is possible, but it is difficult to find enough anoms in highsec to be get good numbers.

I still plan to go to lowsec eventually in something reasonably cheap and work on my situational awareness. But I don't really want to go there in a T1 frigate, because it can't do anything other than die, and I would at the same time prefer to at least do some PvE. I have used a T1 cruiser and an assault frigate before, but that goes into tens of millions. Which is not that much.

I don't think I even cashed out on the loyalty points I got from those times I did do L4 missions. I just can't deal with how horribly broken the loyalty stores are. With the baseline ISK cost bigger than the price of equivalent T2 items most faction items are useless even before you get into the whole tag nonsense. I know that you can just use a calculator and cash out on whatever gives most ISK/LP, but come one.

The way things are going it is unlikely that this will improve. Or anything related to missions. I still think missions break the core design of EVE, since most everything else is finitely available, and hence at least possibly subject to competition and overcrowding (even asteroid belts get completely stripped in super populated systems), and missions just gave infinite ISK and loot at the press of a button. But that just means that leaving them in the state that they are is even worse.

Ticking down

The longest training in my Skill Queues Online yet is going to finish soon! Well, it is not quite that bad, I don't just update the skill queue. Usually I also update the invention/manufacturing slots! And recently, as I wrote before, I stated to do some missions again. Not the most engaging gameplay, perhaps, but I still like starships.

In any case Gallente Cruisers V has about a day left. Although I did poke my missioning Deimos plan in EFT and I think I need another two weeks of training gunnery and stuff to make it more viable. Hopefully. I don't really have a feel for how much damage is mitigated by distance versus signature and speed, so it is quite possible that having more effective tank on the HAC than on my current sniper Megathron would not be sufficient if I actually go for a blaster boat. A sentry Ishtar seems to be more traditional for missioning in Heavy Assault Cruisers, but what would be the fun in that?

Not that I expect the missions to suddenly become that much more fun, but a new ship class is a new ship. And at least with a microwarpdrive the flying between acceleration gates will get very much reduced, and a cruisers aligns and warps faster than a battleship. So that would be nice.

I still plan to try that "PVP" think people are writing about, but I am apparently affected too much by risk aversion. I have about 1.4e9 ISK enough to throw away a bunch of even assault frigates or T1 cruisers, much less T1 frigates, but I just hate to see that number going down. Not that it is that actually much, considering I pay for subscription and have been playing for over a year. That is what happens when you can't be bothered to make dedicated research alts.

That is in theory what the missions are for. I'm not focused enough to get a hundred million per hour or whatever people claim, but twenty-thirty million appears maybe reachable. Although the variance between missions seems kind of high. At least with the new Mobile Tractor Units looting is finally not tedious, and with a Noctis even salvaging is fine, since all wrecks are pulled into a ball inside salvager range.

I tried to cash in the loyalty points from Federal Administration, which I have been doing missions for because ages ago I picked them for reasons between liking the name and having stations in the place I wanted to base myself. It turns out that their Loyalty Store is not really great. With almost no blueprints, I should have gone for the traditional ammo and implants. Although I should probably have gone for that even if there were blueprints. But since I bought all those Caldari Commondore tags since last time I posted here, I wanted to use the for something.

So I bought fourteen Federation Navy Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane. Because why not. At least they seem to have some sort of volume in Dodixie. Although so far not one of them sold, because I don't update the prices all the time. Or mostly ever. I keep forgetting. And I don't have or want a dedicated market alt, either.

Anyway, since at least that got rid of the accumulated loyalty points I looked for a better nearby agent to do missions for. Rodan Shipyards appears better. More blueprints! Loyalty Stores unfortunately appear as broken as when I first started playing. What is even the point of most of those modules? Why is the base ISK cost larger that the price of equivalent T2 module, before you even count the cost of tags and loyalty points? The answer is obviously because CCP rarely touches anything that already exists, to the point where basic ship rebalancing becomes the primary content of the "expansion".

But I did not have standings with Rodan Shipyards for L4 missions. Or for L3 missions for that matter, but those came from Gallente standings I have from that time when I grinded out standings for jump clones. Not that doing storylines actually contributed to that, since apparently the nearest storyline agent of the faction triggers, not the corporation, so all those standings went somewhere else, but at least faction standing came in handy now.

But that sill left only L3 missions. So I grabbed my good old Myrmidon battlecruiser and updated it for skills I got in the meantime. The fit from that time was, well, it worked back then. Why did I have both a tracking computer and a target painter? Anyway, I built a basic rail and drones cap stable Myrmidon and started doing missions. Now that I think about it I went all the way to eight doing L3, because I got a battleship fairly recently. Which was when I got burned out on missions.

At least getting to five should be fairly quick. Especially since now I have T2 rails, and even T1 sentries seem to be pretty powerful. Dumb NPCs are dumb and are burning straight into me, which means than cruisers got pretty much full sentry DPS for great results. And that is without any drone buffs beyond Myrmidon inherent bonus. Enemies are dying so fast that they are not even getting through my shields most of the time. And of course I am ignoring loot and salvage.

I am still playing basically alone. Because I am both apparently vaguely antisocial, and also playing on a fairly erratic schedule. Also of course joining a corp in EVE without coming from an external community appears somewhat, let's say, unreliable. Also I did get kind of used to the CAS chat, and you can't return to that. Without creating an alt, of course.

Theoretical numbers

Is the CSM election really getting somewhat close? I joined EVE just in time to be able to vote in the last one, which means it is almost a full year. Go figure. Of course, I'm still reading more than playing. The skill queue is ticking along at least. I mean, the worst thing about good old Progress Quest was that you had to actually keep it running to "progress", and in EVE you don't even have to do that, just log in once in a while to update the queue.

Although despite the fact that I finally started Gallente Cruisers V and could leave it alone for three weeks I recently started to play a bit more than updating my manufacturing and a Dodixie run for materials. Mostly I just did play a bunch of level four missions in my trusty Megathron.

I played with EFT a little, and apparently a HAC with T2 medium guns can get better DPS that a T1 battleship with T1 large guns pretty easily. Although I guess if is spent that month training T2 large guns rather than T2 cruisers it would different. But cruisers are faster and more agile, and with Rubicon changes they warp faster too. While the difference is not that big for missions, which are one-two jumps away most of the time, it is the most boring time. And a blaster brawler somehow seems more exciting that a sniper battleship. Although most likely not more effective.

I looked around the planets around the system I base myself in. Apparently the effective tax rate for many POCOs is actually, even with three levels in Customs Code, lower than it was before in highsec, at just 9%, even before you factor in the lowered base costs. So I build a basic P1->P3 robotics factory world, because why not. I don't even sell those directly, just feed my production with it. Not a very efficient PI setup, because I can't be bothered to update it every day, and it eats quite a lot of P1 resources. I should make or find and understand a spreadsheet that would show what the actual good P1 price point is. But can't really be bothered to.

Also placed a buy order for some Caldari Commodore tags. The return on faction modules is a bit questionable, or at least volume is, but faction ammo and implants are boring. And since I do about one mission per day anyway I don't really need volume, just something to use up the LPs. I don't even blitz the missions, because I like shooting spaceships.

Intermittent

Still not quite dead! Although I think I am spending more time reading about EVE than playing it. But I don't think it would be fun reading about it if I didn't play at least a little. Even if what I mostly do is push the skill queue and invent and manufacture mostly T2 hybrid guns. Not even enough to plex the account, just accumulating a little ISK so that if I ever actually want to do something, I could fit a ship to do it with.

One thing I did do is get an interceptor and fly to Syndicate to find a station with free material efficiency research slots. Rubicon changes make take much less stressful, even compared to doing it in a covops frigate. No bubbles! Although I saw on the killboards someone with much the same idea, and they still go caught in PF-346.

I still chose to go for it, because that one was hours before, and there were no kills noted since then. But apparently the gatecampers had nothing better to do, since when I passed the gate the exact same people were sitting there. At least they moved to cover the bubbles, so I jumped through without issue.

So now I got a bunch of blueprint with some ME points for Gallente frigates and some of the hybrid guns. No significant gains, since they are still not really worth it to manufacture themselves, and for T2 production the cost of T1 component is not really significant. But it is something.

Skill training continues in haphazard manner, as I don't actually want to commit to purely industrial character, since that would be giving up of sorts. I went for third level mastery on Thorax. Even though masteries aren't any more sensible that certificates are, it just seems neater. I wonder if sensor compensation skills, or whatever they are called, actually have any noticeable effect? Not that I plan on getting jammed, but you never know.

I passed through lowsec a bunch of times on my way to free-ish copying slots, and apparently low level anomalies, which were added to lowsec in Rubicon, don't bunch up there as much as I would hope. Apparently people are completing them, I guess.

Unfortunately I get discouraged from trying anything somewhat risky because my connection keeps randomly dropping. Usually for less than a second. I know this is not EVE fault, because IRC resets as well. Recently it got a little worse. Maybe due to lower temperatures. In any case, it is somewhat irritating when flying around highsec, in low/null it could be a really dumb way to lose a ship. And losing a ship though out-of-game event is somehow more annoying than otherwise. I wish EVE client-server could just reestablish the socket without full relog.

Prices do go up

This time I'm posting before a month has passed! Barely. Things remain similar. I wonder how long will I keep at it, just barely playing EVE to iterate T2 production and update the skill queue. Still, numbers going up is kind of nice. In a way. And a single subscription is not really significant.

I passed a billion ISK, so I stopped updating sell orders very often. Mostly because I'm manufacturing in Everyshore, and selling in Dodixie, and while crossing regions only needs five jumps or so, it is still good ten minutes. With Rubicon changes it should be faster. I even almost trained Interceptors at some point. Anyway, the other reason is that I just don't feel I need any more ISK quickly, so the sell orders can just sit there. And it even turned out that the prices did eventually went back up and hit my sell orders.

One of them was bought up in bulk, so I guess that was the price rising in Jita and someone doing arbitrage. Or maybe someone just needed seventy T2 medium railguns. Two other did sell a few at a time, so that was a genuine local upwards price movement. It is obvious that this must happen, because all prices would land at material costs very fast, but it doesn't feel that way if one is getting 0.01 ISKed all the time.

Incoming Rubicon changes look interesting. I wonder what siphons will do to moon material prices. I read somewhere that they were nerfed, or made more recently, after tests, because they would destroy moon mining otherwise. They still might. We shall see. Warp speed bonuses look really nice, finally small fast ships will feel fast.

And apparently they are adding low level anoms to lowsec. Some time ago I tried to do anoms in highsec to measure how often factions drops do drop, but those are rare. Recently they feel even rarer for some reason. Or maybe I spend too much less time flying in circles. In lowsec the anoms are usually there, but they are too difficult to be ran quickly, and some are too difficult to be run solo in a ship that can paid for by running anoms if it is lost.

But, if many fewer people will do anoms in lowsec they will accumulate there, and then it will be possible to complete them rapidly in a relatively cheap ship. Perhaps even a PvP fit cruiser. Not that would matter at all if I get dropped by a Loki or some other silliness. Or a gang.

Metallurgy delayed

I didn't post anything for over a month? Strange. I meant to, because in my notes there is at least a title of a post. Somehow I never found time to write about that. It was Metallurgy, I meant to write about the time when I tried to go into Syndicate nullsec to find a station with a short queue on material research. And I did, and tried to research ME on some rig blueprints only to realize they require Metallurgy. Which I didn't have, or so I thought. So I raced to the nearest station with skillbooks somewhere on the edge of Solitude. And once I bought and tried to inject it, I found out that I do in fact had Metallurgy, at level zero.

At some early point of playing EVE I bought every cheap science skillbook, or actually most every skillbook which was cheap and injectable without level five prerequisite. But I didn't train some of them. I didn't think back then that I was going to research ME on anything. And definitely not in a chained way on a POS, which is where the percentages would matter.

So there I was, pointlessly flying through NPC null. At least I didn't die. CovOps cloaks are nice. I hear that in the next expansion there is going to be a T1 frigate with a CovOps cloak. Which is nice, I suppose, especially if it will cost the same as navy frigates. Because I doubt it will cost as much as pirate ships, considering Sisters have agents in highsec, and missions are infinite. Which is a fundamental disconnect with core design of EVE, but there you go.

Anyway, researching ME on those blueprints wasn't really worth that much, because I didn't set up full production for those rigs anyway. Got scared by the costs I guess, hundreds of salvage pieces per rig add up. And I am getting close to first billion ISK. Mostly through basic T2 small hybrid gun production. Recently started to make some drones.

I keep forgetting to update the planetary production. I wonder how the Rubicon change here will turn out. Unless war declaration system is shaken up I fear that POCOs getting dominated by large alliances is something that will happen. Limited wars should really be a thing, limited to a system or a constellation that is. It would at least tie stakes to something.

In the meantime I built a missioning battleship. A rail Megathron. Basic one, not enough ISK to throw at a navy battleship. Also a Noctis. It seems to be doing reasonably fine, although obviously I am getting ISK at lower range for L4 missioning. Still, twenty million per hour is a lot considering how much can you get from ratting in lowsec, at least without enough backup to bring a battleship there. Or having a T3 I guess, although that seems risky, because someone would coordinate to jump that.

Alas, fundamental flaw of PvE in EVE is that it is designed as a time sink. Which is the nature of the subscription base game, but it means that one remains exposed to attack for much too long. And in lowsec these days someone will attack, usually within minutes. Occasionally seconds, if at a warpable location, like a belt or anomaly.

I doubt this will be resolved. Even if there were resources to rework PvE in EVE, which there clearly are not, it is not easy to designed a system which would actually work and be fun. Giving up a time sink, or at least moving the time sink from something requiring being exposed to something secure, with only short smash-and-grab operations, would help immensely. And it would be much more similar to PvP as well, which I am lead to believe consists mainly of waiting for other people, whether enemies or fleetmates, to show up.

I still ignore PvP. Or other people in general. Actually I don't play EVE all that much recently. I pay for the subscription and update skill queues and manufacturing though. It is somewhat relaxing, seeing numbers go up. And I am interested in the development process, still hoping that the promises of new space and such things will go somewhere. And it would just not be the same if I wasn't playing the game, at least minimally. I still like starships. Maybe I should one of these days get a bunch of simple frigates and go on a quasi-suicide lowsec roam. Or, how much DPS do you need to need to bring down a bubble, anyway? I find that I dislike drag bubbles. Do the owners get notified if those get shot at?

Not all that epic

I did the Blood-Stained Stars so called epic arc finally. Because why not, and I got eight percent Caldari standings, so that's something. With a six month character and a cruiser it mostly involved flying around, occasionally deploying drones to shoot a bunch of frigates. Ah, the time of level one missions…

I'm also thinking about finally training Hull Upgrades V, which I have somehow forgotten about at some point, and build a L4 missions battleship. It seems like a thing to do. With local repair boost in Odyssey 1.1 EFT tells me I can reach thousand gank plus tank without T2 guns. Tank heavy, obviously, but maybe I will be able to drop a hardener for another DPS boost. Or something. That is still for next week, because without T2 tank I doubt there is much point.

The epic arc stopped my production, so I missed the chaos when EVECentral feeds stopped working. Probably for the best.

Lessons not learnt

Back in May I noticed a Nemesis wreck on a highsec anomaly and I wrote a post mentioning that torpedoes don't work on frigates. But I chose to try that out for myself anyway. In null. There were only two of them! Also two battleships, but those immediately went out of range. Unfortunately, one of those had a scram and the other a web. And so… I lost my shiny new bomber to two NPC frigates.

Not a significant loss, because I have just about enough time during week days to push forward T2 production. Not doing much more beyond that. After stupidly losing the bomber I got discouraged for a bit. Don't like losing ships, even if I can afford them. Not an attitude good for playing EVE, I know.

I tried exploring in a Helios, but nearby NPC null has still a bit too many people to really get into it, and the problem with wormholes is that I get bored with scanning in the time it takes to find a null exit. Even if the neighbouring wormhole has a null sec static, it is still many signatures to go through. At least I managed to not die on a bubble. The first time I flew into one there was no one around, and after that I actually read up on drag-bubble mechanics. I wonder if that was by design, or is CCP just bad at math and got tired after finding out the intersection point. Why would a bubble drag ships away from the exit point? Weird.

Number going up

Not quite dead yet! I am still playing EVE, although not that much. The weekend before last I was on a vacation away from my computer, and last weekend I spent my computer game time trying to complete a completable game before having to go back to work. And during the week I just don't have time to play EVE enough to do anything. Other than cycle manufacturing, research and planets.

While I realize that once one starts posting things like "not dead yet" the blog and quite possibly playing EVE at all is quite doomed, I am still playing at least a bit. Not that I did a lot on this weekend, either. Anyway, in the meantime I finally trained Electronic Upgrades V, so I have access to CovertOps frigates. Also bombers. I trained basic Torpedoes just in case, but I wonder if there is much point with minimal missile skills.

While exploration income has generally crashed I hear that you can still make quite a lot in null. The problem is getting there. Somehow I don't think that just flying into it, considering the chokepoints, is a good idea even in a covops. So, wormholes.

I even found a direct high-null wormhole once, but it lead into Vale of the Silent, on apparently sov boundary or something, because there were people there, and onlining TCUs, and no signatures in the few systems I jumped through, so I left before I flew into a bubble or something. Other wormholes lead to wormhole space, with no null exits inside, and I did not try to navigate a wormhole chain yet. To afraid to get lost. At least you can't lose probes anymore.

The issue is, since I don't want to pay for more accounts, I'm doing everything on one account and one character, because I don't want to split up training time. Which means I have to return every day to my base region to set more manufacturing. So I don't want to have my main stuck somewhere. Which means it is hard to do anything with wormhole space without multihour gaming sessions. Oh well.

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.

Cascading annoyances

That wasn't particularly constructive. Well, at least I trained the basic skills, invented some blueprints and produced thirty T2 modules, which I don't think sold because I have no time or patience to play 0.01 ISK games. I will one of these days go to Dodixie and change the price. But I don't think modules are worth it for casual production after all, the profit per module is too small to bother. I have queued Mechnics V, so will check out ships during the week.

The annoyances which gave the post its title started on Saturday, when I tried to do some belt ratting in lowsec. It was in some ways even more empty than usual, except one guy who quite apparently stalked my ship. From curiosity I even backtracked and watched the gate cloaked, and it was Loki. Well, there are reasons why lowsec is mostly deserted, and it is mostly my fault by still not joining a corp or anything. If I was playing the, after all, massively multiplayer game as it should be played it would have been probably fairly easy to set a trap or something. But alas.

In any case, that was merely annoying, but then I chose to do some missions, because I started forgetting why I stopped doing them. That might have not been the reason at the time. I wanted at some point to bring up Caldari standings, so I started doing L3 Caldari missions. When did I get standings to five with Caldari Business Tribunal? Well, factoring the Connections skill, but still.

What I did forget was how long sixteen missions take. But once I started I didn't want to give up. So after several hours of missions, and I also forgot that L3 missions do not actually give all that much ISK per hour, I finally got a simple delivery storyline. And it brought my Caldari standing high enough that with Diplomacy skill it was positive.

What I forgot about was that I had Gallente standing at just above three, which gave me access to all Gallente L3 agents. Including the Roden Shipyards agent I started research at. It doesn't stop research, I think, although maybe it does, but definitely blocks those small courier missions R&D agents give. R&D is kind of crippled right now, what with datacores dropping from exploration and sold in Faction Warfare LP stores, but still. It just bothers me.

So, I started doing distribution missions for Roden Shipyards, while watching things on my tablet very near a keyboard. So, almost not AFK. It took hours and the corporation standing is still nowhere. I got one L2 storyline, but it didn't bring Faction standing above three. I still didn't get another one, but I probably just will. It will most likely bring Caldari standing back into negatives, due to the way these numbers work.

What I should have done is finally do the Bloodstained Stars arc, which I have never even started, since it apparently gives a standing bonus with a faction without penalty for other factions. And I could even read mission descriptions, because that is where part of the lore comes through. Why aren't there any intermediate epic arcs, anyway? Maybe I will start it, but first I want to get Gallente standing back above three, then use epic arc bonus to offset Caldari penalties.

Quick update: I decided to finish doing those L2 distribution missions to see how the storyline goes, and it did push me above three for Gallente while still barely above diplomatic zero for Caldari. And yes, I know zero standing isn't the actually significant point for anything, I just want the buffer. Also I remember reading that R&D agents require specifically corporation standing, but it seems to work anyway? Maybe that changed at some point.

Update update: so apparently you need corp standing two less than normal requirement. That works. Not that L3 agent produces many Research Points.

Science!

When I was writing the post last week I realized that I am finally getting close to invention skills. Well, actually I was looking at Large Armor Repairer II and apparently it requires Mechanics V. And then when checking what else requires it, I remembered that a number of science skills do. I looked at those when I started playing, because I like science in principle, but then stopped thinking about it because they were going to get so long to get to.

In the meantime my perspective on what a long skill has changed, especially after starting Gallente Frigate V, which I know is not even that long compared to some, but it is as long or longer than requirement for basic invention. And I trained Science IV at some point for some reason, Engineering V for obvious reasons, as well as Mechanics IV and Electronics IV, so the remaining time is both fairly short and I need those skills anyway.

So I read up on invention and it seems that it should be doable casually without a dedicated POS. There are some copying slots more or less available, and while a POS should work about four times faster, considering the queue times, even on lowsec, since I don't plan on focusing on invention to keep my slots occupied it doesn't matter that much.

So I set Science V in the queue after Gallente Frigate V. Who needs focus. But once I get Mechanics V I will be able to train Assault Frigates, which would be my first T2 ship, and it should make pretty good lowsec belt ratter. At least with T2 guns, which I think need five more days of training. But that will wait a bit, because I want to play with invention first, so at least let Science V finish, train Production Efficiency IV, because while production efficiency doesn't seem to matter that much for most T2 items, it still matters. Of maybe it matters a lot and my numbers are wrong.

This is probably not the best time to get into T2 production, because the moon products were changed, and the prices seem to be in a state of shock, at least those that require the new moons, which don't yet have established production lines. Not to mention the whole war thing. And there appears to be plenty of stock with old prices. But right now I plan to just tinker, without sinking more that few tens of millions into this.

I played with EVEIPH a bit, and apparently there is still basically no ISK in producing any T1 module, at least without researched blueprint and Production Efficiency V. Which makes sense. I am hoping that since ME on invented blueprints is locked that matters less. And there should be some actual demand for T2 modules, because with many meta-modules usually available at reprocessing prices, why would there be for T1.

The other reason for thinking about trying invention was crashing decryptor prices. If I can't make ISK selling them, or finding them for that matter, even lowsec seemed stripped of sites when I tried it this week, then maybe I can make some using them. Not sure how worth it is will minimal invention skills, but I guess I will find out. Eventually. I have set copying for some blueprints, at bought some others of contracts, which should be researchable only with science derived from Engineering V. So maybe during the week I should try inventing something.

In the meantime I took out the Brutix I bought recently and did a bunch of anoms in lowsec. By which I mean two. It wasn't particularly constructive ISK wise, compared to even L3 missions, but more about that in a moment. Also did some belt ratting in Thorax. An assault frigate could really be better there, cost about the same, the effective DPS should be similar, much smaller signature, a bit better speed and much better agility. I haven't checked EFT for details, because I think I will leave that for after I have done at least some inventing.

Anyway, the belt ratting was actually better that anomalies, because I got lucky with high meta loot, and I got good twenty million in drops in an hour or so. Unfortunately no faction or tac4sec spawns, which could have pushed that into great category. One courier and transport spawn, but filled with tritanium, and didn't bother to bring an industrial into lowsec for a few million ISK. Maybe if I had a blockade runner. But that is something for the future.

Getting tired of missions and trying to do other things brought me to a realization what was bothering me about missions before. Everything else in EVE is a limited resource, at least on a time and system basis. Anomalies, exploration sites, belts rats, even asteroid in belts run out in most populated systems. If in any place there are too many people trying to do too much at the same time, the system becomes depleted, which exerts population pressure and encourages people to spread out.

But missions are not limited in any way. Anyone can go to an agent, well, anyone with proper standings, which is beside the point, press a button and a fresh instance full on bounties, loot, salvage, occasionally even ore asteroids springs into existence no matter what anyone else is doing. And then, no population pressure. No point in competing for limited resources. This really seem to be antithetical to the nature of EVE.

Of course nothing will probably be done because it would necessarily seriously nerf highsec, because missions are essentially the only thing that allow highsec to maintain its population density. Well, I don't actually know this, but how many people could actually make any ISK from anoms and sites in highsec? Mining and industry are a whole other thing, but at least they are nominally limited, even if they could support in high sec alone probably ten times more people. And they are not an ISK fountain.

What I would like to happen is contracts or something with agents, limited by new skills per agent type, analogous to R&D agents. Every agent would generate a number of missions per twenty minutes or so, put them in a pool, then send out the missions in a pool to randomly selected contracted capsuleers, giving the a notification in the same way storyline missions happen now. Only those who have no outstanding mission offer from that agent count, obviously, and missions that are declined or incomplete after say, four hours, go back into the pool. This way missions would be a limited resource, but they would be distributed fairly. And people not doing missions would not block other people from getting missions, because the pool of missions would keep growing until enough people who actually complete them get them. And if the proportion of missions available to people contracted was displayed in the agent finder it would encourage people to spread around. And it would make missions feel at least something that is actually happening in the universe, as it were, rather than getting triggered by button push.

Leaking money

Didn't play EVE a lot this week. But I did spent ten minutes mining ice in a lowsec system, just because it was there. Not something particularly sustainable, even if it wasn't very boring, because there are too many people passing through the system. Or apparently jumping in and out every few minutes, as the case might be. Scouting I guess? Also mined a Retriever hold-full of ore in highsec, just to remember why I gave up on mining. Because it is boring.

It might still gives more ISK than anything else I can do in EVE, now that exploration loot prices crashed. Even with decreased prices of highsec ores. Although a proper lowsec exploration pass should still be better per hour. And I guess L3 missions might make more, if done properly. But I am still mostly burnt out on missions after getting the jump clone rating, and don't really want to build up to L4. I am relatively close, I think I need Mechanics V and Hull Upgrades V for full T2 tank, and a long range Dominix build should be viable, although it might need T2 drones. Or at least Drone Sharpshooting V for whatever module boosts drone optimals and just hit them with micro jump driver and sentries.

I should have bought a Dominix before the Odyssey hit. I was even aware that the mineral cost was going to be risen as part of tiericide changes, but since I didn't really plan on hitting L4 missions I just decided to wait. And now it about tripled in price. I still have enough ISK for that, but it would take a lot.

I am considering L4 missions more because I bough and fitted a Brutix, nominally for lowsec ratting. But seeing the ISK counter dropping made me worried about losing it too much. Especially since it is probably a bad idea, a blaster Brutix that is, because rail Myrmidon could kite rats while keeping alignment if necessary. Assuming a Brutix with my skills can even complete lowsec anoms. It should, since I beat one of those very slowly in a Thorax, and probably definitely if I finally train for T2 armor tank, but who knows.

It is fit with a cloak and a microwarpdrive, so it should be able to jump through most gatecamps. Or at least most opportunity pirates. Which works on a Brutix much better than on cruisers, at least Gallente cruisers, since I didn't really look at other ones, since it has an utility high slot. And an improved cloak costs almost as much as cruiser. But I am sort of afraid to find out. Which is silly, since I could afford about five more of those before I ran of out ISK. I would feel better though if I could afford to replace it without dropping below half-billion ISK. Which while I don't need for anything, since pay subscription normally, and for now shelved the idea of plexing training for the second character. I mostly gave up on FW for now.

Not that I even expect lowsec anoms to make that much ISK. But really, I just want enough to replace the ship I'm flying, so that I don't play extremely defensively. Right now somehow lowsec feels overpopulated, despite there still being between zero and ten people in most systems. What would be neat, and more explicit than the security rating, is just straight up put on player profile time since last getting suspect/criminal flagged. Not that that would guarantee anything, but it would allow at least a degree of risk management. Honestly, the systems in EVE start feeling very small once you start feeling threatened by other players. Between d-scan and combat probes an enemy can be dropping on you with no warning inside warp disruption range within seconds.

I think I might be leaning towards the opinion that L4 missions should be removed from highsec, or at all, because their presence tends to loom over everything else that I can be doing. I suppose it would be different if I cared about PvP, but I don't that much, and solo PvP in EVE doesn't make much sense anyway. It would also be different if I joined a properly run player corp, but I am this week in even less of a mood to interact with people that usual, and the usual is not very high, so that will have to wait even more. In any case, I was doing things because they are fun, rather than because they make ISK, but then I saw my ISK dropping… well, such is life in EVE.

New Eden

My general impressions on Odyssey are in a previous post. This is my "what I did in EVE last week" post. Which, with an expansion coming out during that week, is quite related. The first thing I did, as a lot of people, is get a scanning frigate and go see how that changed, since it was, after all, ostensibly a focus feature of the expansion.

I scanned down a Combat Site right in the system I base myself in, switched to my trusty cruiser, and for once completed it first. Someone went to it after me, but they left after I grabbed the pass items. I am not entirely clear how that works, but I got to the end, and got a Daredevil blueprint! I manufactured the ship and it is not in my hangar. I could sell it, but I don't need ISK that much and maybe someday I will use it for something.

After that I realized that since NPC were supposed to be removed from lowsec Relic/Data sites, I could try my luck with that. Since I still get attached to ships, even little T1 scanning frigates, I bought a new one. For a change, a Heron, since apparently I trained Caldari Frigate IV at some point. And it does have an additional middle slot, which I put a scanning upgrade in, nano structure in low, no tank or guns, and went for lowsec.

In particular went along the path to New Eden. I am not very strong on EVE lore, since the sandbox approach minimizes the impact really. But why not. There is stuff there, like the monolith and the violent wormhole thing. And not very many players there. In three hours or so I managed to run quite many sites and get about hundred million ISK worth of loot. Fairly good success in going though second difficulty level minigame, although occasional failures happened. Managed to return without incident.

The ISK per hour might not be that great, compared to min-maxed mission running or whatever, but considering I got all than in a T1 frigate with three levels in most relevant skills it is pretty great. Exploring is now a viable career for new players, and encourages them to get out of highsec.

Speaking of lowsec, I got back to the cruiser I stashed there, and hit some belts. On the second one after Odyssey I encountered the new tags4sec NPC. And the tag sold for twenty million. After a few days. I haven't seen them afterwards, so that might have been very lucky, but then I don't clear belts very efficiently, because there are too many people around.

There is also the blue ice anomaly in one of the system. Which no one seems to mine ever, because lowsec. I am kind of tempted to get a Procurer in there. I actually bought one, because why not, but there seem to be a perpetual gate camp on the route. Today they even locked and scrambled my frigate as I was moving though. Using a frigate rather than a shuttle because I want to carry at least some of the loot from ratting. I got away, because I used two stabilizers and they didn't have a faction scram, but still, annoying. Sooner or later the frigate is going to get it, which is not a problem as such, but losing the implants would be worse, although what are the odds of losing the pod in lowsec not AFK? Unless they bring out the smartbombs, which is possible since I think there was at least on battleship there.

Mining ice doesn't seem to be very constructive, ISK-wise, especially in lowsec, but it is just something I want to do because it is there. Hopefully a Venture can carry ice in its ore hold, because otherwise I am not getting a block out of there. Assuming I can get a procurer to the system at all. It is often completely empty, so I should be able to mine a block or three. Just because.

I wonder if moon changes combined with the nullsec war will increase the price of T2/T3 ships and components enough that people will start to actually care about their ships. Or maybe gatecamps are so low risk that they don't lose their Tengus and stuff like that ever. But I looked at the prices, and right now you can make, with a high-skill character, enough money to buy and fit one of those with few hours of L4 mission running. Which seems like it screws new players who can't fly those things. I know right now I could afford better ships than I can fly. But on the other hand I can't afford to lose best ships I can fly repeatedly. Risk management in EVE is all kinds of wonky.

Although one of these days I want to move a battlecruiser into lowsec and do some of those anomalies. Assuming there is a hole in the gatecamp. Not on a weekend, I guess. I could go somewhere else, but that would require effort and reading maps. For the number of lines maps in EVE have there is an amazing number of chokepoints.

I guess I am annoyed by gatecamps because they make moving though lowsec not so much impossible, as really tedious. Especially without a second account. And I don't plan on paying a second subscription or playing the game enough to get a PLEX a month, at least not anytime soon. Moving not in the sense of travelling, where you can scout a route once and then travel fit and have a good chance of getting where you want to go if you are paying attention, but moving between systems to rat or whatever.

Although I have to try that once. Is an overheated afterburner enough for a cruiser at least to jump back before they can apply enough DPS to kill me? Depends on who "they" are, I guess. I still don't really have a good feel for how much DPS is a lot, how quickly it can be applied, and so on. The numbers seem to vary wildly between sources, and there are too many variables to calculate anything with any degree of accuracy. The general consensus though seems to be that damage has increased faster than effective hit-points, and most player-versus-player fights will end very quickly, to the point where a small gang can one shot smaller ships.

Odyssey

My first EVE expansion arrived. Although expansion seems to be overstating it, but if CCP wants to call their biannual major patches that, then why not. It's good that EVE is still changing after ten years running. It is kind of a pity I didn't start playing earlier, when I had more time. But less money. Such is life. Anyway, onwards to Odyssey.

Shiny!

Cosmetic things first. I like the new radial menu. The old one I immediately moved to the middle mouse button and then forgot about it, since it was a set of small, I think either unlabelled or labelled with a twitchy tooltips small icons, which only got in the way of navigating in space. The new one I still keep under the middle button, but with zero delay, which allows issuing commands with quick gestures. And it both looks nice and is labelled. And you can fluidly adjust navigation command ranges by dragging from the center, which is neat, if not extremely useful.

Jump animations are also nice. And the UI seems to working the whole time, rather than freezing for a moment during loading. Or disappearing completely, which I read was what happened on the test server when the feature was introduced. The undock button makes more sense where it is now, even if I still habitually move the mouse to the corner of the screen. I imagine that must be much worse for players who are playing EVE for years.

Scanning

Apparently the scanning effect annoys some people, but I barely even notice it. Even when it glitches and the arc just kind of jumps back repeatedly. I also barely notice of pay attention to brackets in space, because why would you. The list is infinitely more convenient. Especially since why would anyone care where in space the anomalies or signatures actually are? You just jump to them, and the only thing their position affects is the few seconds of warp time more or less. I guess it could matter for aggressive d-scanning. Also the exploration brackets and their window popup look completely different than everything else in space. But who needs consistency. Maybe they will change everything else to big colorful icons. What could possibly go wrong?

The scanning is streamlined, which I on the balance of things is a good thing. It means more competition, but after a few days most people appear to have gotten bored, and I like the saved time on initial scan, both for anomalies, and initial position of signatures. Automatic probe formation and scaling is also fine, since it only saves the tedium. And in some cases for very faint signatures I still had to adjust the position of individual probes manually, which is good.

Removing NPCs from Relic/Data sites was great in that it makes it possible to explore low/null in a T1 frigate that anyone can afford to lose, rather that a Tengu or some sort of multiboxed setup.

The hacking minigame is, at best, serviceable. Restoration nodes seem extremely unbalanced. Why do they increase coherence of defenses beyond initial values? I think someone doesn't quite grasp the definition of the word "restoration". Otherwise the minigame requires a minimal amount of pattern recognition, and with that the only remaining factor is luck and character skills/ship loadout. I guess that's fine. The loot appears to be a bit better from both relic and data sites, although I didn't do that much exploration before Odyssey to have a good comparison base.

The can spew is less annoying than expected. Apparently it was adjusted late during the testing to reduce the speed and number of cans. This makes it possible to most of the time capture all cans of a given type. And after cargo scanning the container before you can know which type of cans actually contains the valuable loot. I think I miss what I want about one in five times, which is tolerable. I guess this changes in nullsec, where there can be multiple types of good loot in a single container, and probably they spawn more of them moving faster.

Will Tag For Sec

I don't really plan to do anything that would drop my security status, so this doesn't affect me outright. But it is still a thing, especially since I recently tried to do things in lowsec. One issue I have is that it makes security statuses below zero essentially equivalent, since the only things it means now is how much someone cares about not having low negative sec status. Before, it was at least a vague indication of how much time someone is spending attacking other players to shooting NPC. On the other hand, it is a nice lowsec belt ratting loot.

Other stuff

I am not playing long enough to be affected by ship balance changes, so I nothing much to say about those. I can now fly Iteron V, which is nice. Although Iterons makes even less sense now than before. I only dabbled in mining, so I have no idea how mining sites being moved to anomalies will change anything. Probably increase the amount of nominally lowsec minerals coming from highsec, because the anoms will be now mined out quicker, and so respawn faster. No clue about ice changes. Even less about moon changes, although I guess a null-sec war is something to read about.

So, in general the expansion didn't seem to break anything that affects me, it improved a bunch of things that do. That, I suppose, is a success.

More rally points

I bough a Thorax some time ago with a plan to try to in it into lowsec sometime. But instead I tried chasing after anomalies. And then I thought that if I lose it I wouldn't have anything to chase anomalies in. I could just use the battlecruiser, but the cruiser is a bit faster to align, and I decided to collect loot from anoms after all, since it is fast in a reasonably agile ship and it adds up.

So, I bought a second Thorax, and this time, moved it into nearby lowsec region immediately. Almost, there was a two Proteus gate camp on the way, but they went away after an hour. So now it sits in the station in the middle of somewhat small lowsec region. But I don't really want to move permanently, so it has to be nearby. It is still very empty most of the time. It is kind of amazing actually, how the population drops immediately from twenty-sixty to zero-five. Not really unexpected, considering how a single pirate can shut up all non-PvP activity in a system or five.

Not that this was particularly constructive. In a T1 cruiser I can clear belts of rats, including the single battleship spawn I saw once. which could be handy once Tags4Sec arrives. Although the system I parked my ship has relatively few belts. I could jump to a neighbouring systems, but I am too afraid of gatecamps. Should stop worrying, because where is the fun in that? Also the cruiser cost about twenty million, so why worry. And I could just scout and then assume no one set up a camp in the last hour, because scouting without a full alt every time would get old really quickly.

Also tried anomalies, but there are mostly Rally Points, which I still can't complete in a cruiser. At least a blaster Thorax. I probably should rethink that. The main problem is that I have not nearly good enough tank. If I fit a medium armor repairer I will run out of capacitor extremely quickly. With a small I still run out of capacitor, if slower, and it can't really keep up. I finished a single Rally Point to see how long the spawns are, but it took me several trips back to the station.

On the other hand I fit in a way which should maybe, in principle, make it easier to escape from attacking players, with a Damage Control and and Explosive Membrane, which gives me about 50% of an armor omni tank. Replacing that with active kinetic/thermal hardeners should cut incoming damage from Serpentis rats by half. Which should make it sort of doable. And honestly, if someone actually scrams me then I probably won't get away, especially if already damaged from fighting rats. Hard to tell without trying, though. How much DPS do pirates usually mount? Considering one guy dropped on me in a Sleipnir, probably a lot. I warped of before he locked me, at least.

Maybe I should buy a third cruiser, since I for some reason don't like to completely reconfigure ships. Between PI and highsec anomalies I almost have enough ISK. I even got a twenty million faction module, although from an unrated complex, not an anomaly. A faction cruiser rat spawned on a Serpentis Den, but it only had ammo and a tag. Highsec anomalies are somewhat rare, or more likely, overharvested, so at least half the time I spend jumping. That was part of why I tried moving into lowsec.

I did buy a second scanning frigate, fitted with warp stabs and a nano, and used it to carry loot from lowsec back to highsec base. Lowsec belt cruisers seem to drops more stuff than anom cruisers. Which makes some kind of sense. When I was doing that there was a gatecamp with two Tengus and a Hurricane, but fortunately no instant-lock shenanigans, so the frigate got though without problems. Where do they get ISK for those, anyway? Also did a scanning sweep, but there were no signatures whatsoever. Disappointing. Oddysey makes scanning easier, which will make signatures even more scarce. At least it will be quickly obvious when there aren't any.

In general, still not bored of EVE, and there are things I want to do. Hopefully Oddysey won't break everything.

Apparently torpedoes do not work on frigates

After adding the post today I flew some more anoms. Nothing interesting NPC wise, but in one I saw a wreck of someone's Nemesis. Which is apparently a Stealth Bomber. Why would anyone try to run a high-sec anomaly, composed of frigates and destroyers only, in a Stealth Bomber? I though for a moment about looting or salvaging their wreck, but forgot if salvaging triggers the suspect flag, and I unloaded Salvagers by mistake from the ships cargo hold. Good thing I noticed that, so far salvage from faction spawns was marginal, but you never know. Anyway, I didn't really want to risk losing my cruiser in highsec, or taking the security status hit, so I left that alone. It was interesting, at least.