Fitting for Low Sec is Fitting for High Sec

As many High Sec residents are learning, High Sec by no means is an indication of safety. Sure High Sec is safer, because there is a less pronounced and less spontaneous PvP activity in high sec, but it is not safe. Nearly every high sec PvP victim is a result of fitting with the false expectation of safety.
So what does this mean for the everyday eve pilot? It means that no matter what you are doing, what task you are performing, or what ship you are flying that you fit and prepare for PvP. PvP does not necessarily mean fitting for in your face battle. It means fitting your ship so you can respond appropriately when under threat. In some cases this means fitting your ships for in your face pew pew, but it can also mean fitting your ship for evasion and being able to get out of dodge before it’s too late to get out.
I fit all my industrial type ships (Industrials, Exhumers, Orca) to be able to evade threats. My ships are fitted so that when flown properly, I can bust through gate camps without a scratch. My hulks are fitting to get to warp under 4 second. I also fit most of my ships with ECM or EW modules and a flight of ECM drones that will help me to escape in the unlikely event I do get snagged in a trap. No they don’t guarantee I will get away, but they grant me a dice roll 2nd and 3rd chance to get away.
My mission running and ratting ships are fitted pure ‘poke you in the eye’ PvP. They are not the most efficient for PvE, but when I get snagged, I am not sitting in a PvE ship, I am sitting in a PvP ship. This is something many aggressing PvPers are not counting on. They are counting on you to be fit like rib racks with those little chef hats on each tip, in other words, to die under their fire. However, you can turn the tables on them simply by being ready.
Another long term affect this would have, is if all pilots fit for PvP of one sort or the other (evasion or poke you in the eye), then aggressing PvPers at large will all think twice about your ship being simply a tasty morsel on the buffet table. Beyond your individual survivability, Eve as a whole will change for both the PvP and non-PvP playstyles. There will no longer be the jaded division between pirate and carebear, but the division will more equivocal. Yes it means PvPers will bring larger teams and fly solo less often, but that is good for you, because it means the roams will likely be more condensed, less profitable for the pirates, and therefore a less frequent encounter. Of course that only will happen with a paradigm shift of basic fitting styles at large.

Low Sec Hulk

Yes that's right. After much thought and deliberation as well giving up time after time, I finally have come up with a low sec hardened Hulk setup. In fact I have two sets of fittings for different circumstances.

Due to the safer nature of the Orca setup, I  recommend moving hulks into, out of, and around low sec in the Orca's Ship Maintenance Hanger with the Hulk agility maxed. (2x T2 Istabs and 2x T2 Low Friction Nozzles). The agility fittings provide a 4 second align to warp which if you are on your toes is most likely safe and suitable for safe mining so long as you follow proper safe low sec mining protocols (bookmarks, distance from belts, etc). Not everyone can do this though, and so here I have two setups, the one briefly described above, and the one that follows.

The following setup is safe for busting through gate camps as all my low sec hauler setups are, but they have an additional training componenet to make the setup work; Thermodynamics. Overheating your Y-S8 Hydrocarbon After Burner gives you just enough boost to push you past the minimum 75% warp speed needed to go to warp as you decloak. It's tricky getting the fittings on, and it requires fill Engineering Skills training to make it possible.

Highs:  1x Improved Cloak II
Mid: 1x Y-S8 Hydrocarbon Afterburners
Lows: 2x Micro Auxiliary Power Core I
Rigs: 1x Low Friction Nozzle Joints II, 1x Ancillary Current Router II

How you chose to fit your other slots is up to you, maybe if you sprung a few more ISK for Micro 'Vigor' I Core Augmentation variation of the power core, you could give yourself even more power grid and fit some extra shields, ECM Bursts or whatever. I choose to fit for max evasion so anything that gives me an extra slice of time to get away, I fit it. That's shield extenders, ECM Burst, ECM Drones.

Now, the procedure. Although it's nearly identical to the Occator and Orca and just as those two ships have slightly different operating procedures, so does the Low Sec Hulk.
1. Align to warpout.
2. Overheat Mid Rack
3. Start Afterburner
4. Initiate Cloak
5. Turn of Afterburner
6. When AB is EXACTLY 75% complete, turn off cloak (this gives a half second of extra AB boost while decloaking before actual warpout occurs.
7.Immediately hit Warp.

This procedure is exact. It must be followed precisely to maintain invulnerabilty between decloaking and warping out. You will gain a few percent of AB boost between decloaking and when your AB cycles down, and that pushes just past the minimum warp velocity. Any deviation from 75% increases the amount of time while decloaked, and leaves you vulnerable.

I am very happy to present these Low Sec Hulk Fittings, and I hope you find them to be of good use.

Yours Truly,
Escoce


EDIT: For those of you who haven't thought about this yet, you can carry a third strip miner in your cargo hold, get to where you want to mine, dock up, refit stripper and Istabs. When done, redock refit Cloak and Power Cores and AB to move to next system. You are using bookmarks to undock right?

Low Sec Orca Fitting

UPDATE: In the fittings, I changed T2 Covert Ops Cloak to T2 Improved Cloak. My mistake.

Ok I have been researching fits for the Orca, and I have dramatically improved flying safely in an Orca for Low sec. I feel as comfortable flying my Orca through low sec as I am now with my Occator. You too can fly an Orca safely through low sec. That is if you have a few billion ISK to spend.

Implants in your head: Full Set of 6 Nomad implants, Alpha through Omega

Faction implants have secondary effects in addition to the attribute boosting effects most people are accustomed to. The Nomad faction implants give you +2 to each attribute, but in addition to that primary effect, they also grant a boost to your agility. With a full set of 5 implants, you get a raw 15% agility bonus, plus 10% bonus for the set of 5 implants granting a total of 16.5% agility boost. If you have the sixth Omega implant, you get a further 25% boost to the bonus giving up to a little more than a 20% bonus to agility. Better agility lets your ships turn and accelerate faster. These cost approx 2 billion isk at time of writing, though haggling can get them for less though. I got mine for 1.5 billion ISK by haggling with people who had contracts up for 2.1 billion ISK. That’s a 600 million ISK savings. Of course if you have 400,000 loyalty points or so with the right corporations, you can buy them from the NPC corporations that sell them. Phoetec Pharm makes them; I don’t know who else sells them for loyalty points.

Ok so you are asking, “Why would you spend 1.5 to 2.1 billion ISK for 20% boost to agility? You can get that with a T2 I-Stab”. Well mate, yes you are right, but consider this. My low slots are ALREADY filled with T2 I-Stabs and I still need the extra agility. “So why don’t you just use Low Friction Nozzle Rigs?”. Answer, I did that, but it still wasn’t quite enough. Plus I _discovered_ Engine Thermal Shielding, which boosts my MWD duration by 20%. Two of those and my MWD cycle is 14.4 seconds rather than 10 seconds. That’s 144% duration to my MWD cycle, the length of the MWD cycle means I have more time to align to warp WHILE CLOAKED. Which means I stand a MUCH better chance of being in warp before my cloak has dropped. So…..implants, these give me that extra sliver of agility that guarantees that I am in warp before my cloak drops instead of _almost_ in warp. Being _almost_ in warp, means you are going to eventually be _not almost, but actually and really_ dead.

That 1.5 billion ISK has let me fly my Orca in low sec with exactly the same confidence I have flying my Occator through low sec. What does that mean? That means, with my skills, I am able to fly a transport style ship through low sec that can carry 34,500m3 in the main cargo hold, 40,000m3 in the Corp Hanger, 50,000m3 in the Ore Cargo Bay (if I carry ore, which makes sense to carry some ore instead of minerals for this purpose). Plus several assembled (depending on size) ships in the Maintenance Hangar. My Occator could carry a little more than 38,000m3 which is pretty big, but this is MUCH bigger. No it’s not a freighter, and it’s a bit smaller than a jump freighter too, but I don’t need a Cyno team member, nor an alt…e-gad…and I fly normally carrying a lot more than the largest regular industrial ships you see flying around.

What are the drawback? The cost obviously…I have a lot of ISK in my head right now, so that really means I have to stop auto piloting around…even in high sec…unless I am flying a ship that can take a beating while waiting for CONCORD to come and clear the area for me. Last night, on my way to picking up the implants, my Helios was destroyed and I was sitting in Jita in my POD. On the way back I Auto piloted again (dumb mistake), and when I got back, my ship’s armor was gone and half the hull was gone, but my shield had fully recharged. CONCORD successfully intervened just moments before my ship was destroyed. I shouldn’t have been auto piloting a little light ship like that anyway, but it was REALLY stupid of me to do it with so much ISK on the line now. Never again. If you are going to autopilot through hisec, make sure you are flying a ship with enough raw hit points and resistances to take a good beating until CONCORD shows up.

Ok so the fitting:

Implants:

Nomad, full set of 6

Rigs:

2x Engine Thermal Shielding, for a 44% increase of MWD cycle time.

1x Ancillary Circuit Router (gives extra Grid so you can fit an MWD)

High Slots:

1x T2 Improved Cloak

2x of whatever else you want(I fit tractor beam and salvager)

Medium Slots:

1x Meta 4 MWD (You can’t fit a T2)

1x T2 ECM Burst, so you get another roll of the dice to get away if you do get caught.

1x Large Regolith Shield Extender for extra hit points to your shield so you last longer while trying to break target locks with WCM Burst and ECM Drones. Invulnerability Shield Hardener for Resistance Boosting (Giving you even more effective hit point on the shield)

Low Slots:

2x T2 I-Stabs, for more agility…i.e. faster align and acceleration times

Drone Bay: 5x Medium ECM Vespas (to gain more dice rolls to let you escape if you get caught…If you are doing mining support in low sec, launch these drone ahead of time so they automatically lock an aggressor, also keep your distance from the belt and stay cloaked until you need to tractor a can in, your tractor beam can pull from MUCH farther away with ship role bonuses.)




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone, so deal with any mispelling, grammatical errors or strangly out of place words caused by mis-autocorrection.

The Occator

Ok it's time I talk about a hauler ship and fittings for use in Low Sec. As the title implies, I am talking about the occator. A lot of people continuously recommend I fly a Viator instead, however I believe the Viator really is a weak choice for Low Sec hauling. Let me explain why.

Firstly, my first fitting for an Occator was totally invulnerable to attack. I fit it thusly:

Highs:
Small T2 Smart Bomb (for keeping interceptors and frigates out of blaster range)

Mids:
2x F59 Shield Extenders (double shield HP, and therefore double shield recharging)

Lows:
A mix of Cargo Expanders and Warp Core Stabalizers (depending on cargo needs and danger level of the system)

Rigs:
2x T1 Cargo Optimization Rigs

This ship resulted in a hauler that could literally just sit there and take a pounding while waiting to go to warp. Never had any group of PvPers or Pirates broken past 50% of my shield. Until one day, I learned about HICs in Low Sec being able to destabalize your warp core no matter what level of warp strength your ship is fitted for. I began that encounter not worried in the least bit, until I realize that I wasn't warping. It took 12 minutes for that ship to take me out, but between being distrupted and being webbed to something like 12 meters per second, there was nothing I could do to escape. I lost a VERY expensive ship, and my cargo, and therefore a month's worth of income. Ouch.

So a Viator DOES seem like the best option. Well no, I still don't think so. First off, it's cargo hold is WAY too small to have any positive advantage to going out to low sec. One tiny shipload at a time, over and over and over isn't a lot of fun. The risk of low sec is still there, and the more back and forth between two systems in low sec, is just asking for more trouble. The ONLY advantage the viator has is it's covops cloak. That's a big advantage for sure, but honestly, I can mimick most of that advantage with an MWD and an Improved Cloak. You might ask how? Well, all cloaks stop working if you are too close to your station, so you can't cloak until you get outside the 2000 meter circle, so you are vulnerable while trying to get to 2000 meters, and if you get target locked before you cloak, you won't be able to cloak at all. Therefore those of us who fly slower ships should use Instant Warp Undock Bookmarks. Even a Freighter can warp instantly out of a station if you have a good bookmark setup. So make your bookmarks. Use a fast ship like a the faster frigates, interceptors or covops ships to find the spot WAY out in space that you can warp to instantly, and book mark it. Test it, because if it's a little off, your Occator is going to take a moment to align first, and you are going to get Warp Disrupted by a HIC. If the bookmark is "perfect", you will warp within 3 seconds of seeing your ship in space and while still inside the ring of protection of your station. Then you have a few moments to get your bearings, and warp off where you need to go without worrying about that red blinky blinky that was on your screen at the station.

If you work on your timing, you can do something similar to using an instant undock bookmark at the gate. This involves coordinating your use of the MWD, cloak and warp drive. The sequence of events goes like this. After you jump and while gate cloaked, hit "align to" where ever you are going (gate or station), then hit your MWD, and then hit your cloak. You will align quickly, and be accelerating towards your warp point. As your MWD is about 75% complete in it's cycle, turn off your cloak, and hit warp.

You may ask, so what does that do? Ok well, the MWD does two things. It helps you align really quickly, and it builds your speed up, and you'll be at about half speed with your MWD one when you hit the warp controls. However, when your MWD turns off at the end of the cycle, because your MWD isn't on anymore, your speed is now somewhere between 75% and 200% of top speed. Thus....Insta Warp.

If you mess up your timing, either forgetting to shutdown your MWD or missing your high speed window of opportunity, you'll just have to wait to go to warp, hopefully you don't get scrammed before then by a HIC. (slight chance only, but still very real)

So how do we fit this occator?

High:
Improved Cloak (for higher speed and agility)

Mid:
f59 Shield Extender (trust me you want some tank)
T2 MWD

Lows:
6x Cargo Expanders (the 2+ native warp stabalizers should be enough for the extremely short moments you are vulnerable)

Rigs:
2x Cargo Optimization Rigs

You really need the Shield Extender. I have been caught and shot at before, even with the warp schemes, and this saved my life. An occator "CAN" be brought down in a single Volley by a heavily enough armed ship. One pirate even took the time to ask me how I survived that one shot before going to warp. The answer my friends is that Shield Extender...in one volley, that pirate brough my shields down to almost 0%. If I hadn't been trained in my Shield Skills, and been Shield Extended, my ship would have popped in one shot like an Iteron.

So let me restate this. You REALLY need to train all your shielding skills.

The occator is a great ship to fly in low sec, so long as you keep your guard up and don't get lazy and keep up on your keyboard and mousing skills, you'll have a wonderful time moving through low sec carrying your merchandise with ease to and from your Low Sec Market hubs, and watching your various pirate nemeses get frustrated with you constant slippery nature.

Remember this is a Low Sec fitting, not a 0.0 fitting, the rules are different, and you'll get caught with your pants down in 0.0 if you try to use this setup out there (think bubbles).

Happy Flying