I Am Escoce

Welcome to the eighteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the
monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by none other than
me, CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of
gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a
week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting
articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead
serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the
EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out
other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!


On May 6th 2010, EVE Online celebrated its 7th Anniversary. Quite a
milestone in MMO history, especially considering that it is one of the
few virtual worlds out there to see its population continually grow
year after year. For some of you who've been here since the very
beginning, EVE has evolved quite a lot since its creation. With the
expansion rolling out roughly twice a year, New Eden gets renewed and
improved regularly. But, how about you the player? How has you gaming
style evolved through the years or months since you've started
playing? Have you always been a carebear, or roleplayer? Have you only
focused on PvP or have you given other aspects of the game a chance -
say manufacturing. Let's hear your story!



I am Escoce. I have always been Escoce. I do not have alternate identies and Escoce grows and deals with the consequences of all my actions, whether that is doing well on the markets, mining asteroids, busting gate camps with more vocal bravado than normally recommended or not. That is who I am and who I will always be within New Eden.

If one wishes to read all the details of my history they can start at te beginning of this blog with post #1, because I have kept a loosely organized journal of my goings on. However, I'll try to sum it up briefly with what I think the greatest changes are that I have made.

I started out very timid, mining asteroids in the cistuvaert system. I was afraid of getting lost and didn't even jump out of the system for at least several days. I had no idea how detached one really is from their home system. I think I made my first excursion out of Cistuvaert when there was no asteroids left to mine. I had no choice but try another system. I found one next door called Aidert. I minted for a bit there, and learned about NPC pirates and I got my little frigate blowed up if I recall and I became scared of 0.6 security systems. I tried to stay in cistuvaert as much as possible since I didn't know of any other 1.0 systems near by (remember I was a newb who had no idea how small geographically or astrometrically the game actually is to a more experienced player). I ran into my first player pirate can flipper from Whiskey Pete's Dry Cleaning, and got my butt handed to me. Later when I could fly a vexor, which I used for mining I also started carrying flights of drones and I ventured out into aidert once again and let the drone take care of the rats while I ignored them.

The same can flipper showed up, flipped my can. And I went ahead and sicked my drones on him. I actually almost had him, he was deep into hull before I went pop. Ah well I felt pretty good for the try, but I was still mostly broke as new miners typically are. So I started again with the frigates. I graduated to industrial ships and when I didn't have time to mine with 1 minute cycles into cans, inwiuld park my uterine of various grades over time next to the asteroids and jus let the laser fill the cargo bay before thenroids went pop. It was still really slow progress. I could barely afford new skills let alone ships.

Anyway I kept in mining until I could fly and mastered mining with the hulk. I went into debt to get the hulk sooner, but had to work hard to pay it off. All that work soured me to mining. I was so sick of mining.

I figured i could still deal with minerals since I know what they are worth and I sold my hulk and used the capital to start buying minerals in Arnon and its neigbors and selling them in Oursulaert and Jita if the price warrented the longer trip. As I could afford rigs, I fitted them (this was when they were still one size and ultra expensive). My Iteron V was gradually become more costly than an obelisk, but it was a little at a time. After about six weeks of all night back and forth, I was about halfway togetting a freighter.

I ended up borrowing a billion isk from a total stranger (believe it or not), and I bought my freighter, realizing after the fact that I still had 4 days to go to complete Spaceship Command that I needed to train Advanced Spaceship Command so I could fly the darned thing. So anyway started hauling with the freighter and the ISK started to flow. Over a period of a few weeks, I started carrying mining equipment to Arnon to sell as a loss leader to get the miners working in Arnon and neighbors to stay put and mine more rocks for me. It worked. I started pulling 3-5 freighter loads of tritanium out of that constellation every single day since people don’t like hauling Trit. It takes more time to haul the Trit to Oursulaert than it does to mine an equivalent amount of ore for the other minerals.. After some time it dawned on me that the names of the people dumping minerals on my buy orders were rather random looking and I realized I was buying Macrod minerals. I filed a petition saying that look, I wasn’t doing anything wrong, but I think I am buying illegal minerals in a legitimate manner. The GM told me so long as I procured them in good faith at a fair price and I wasn’t buying them for something like 0.01 ISK, that I was safe and thanks for the notice. Well that combined with my internet connection going out for 10 days or so, the whole market collapsed. I tried to restore the mineral market, but my steam was gone, and it was no fun and a constant trade war with the other people who moved in while I was gone. So I changed everything and became a low sec trader.

I had trained for bigger and better ships, and I started flying occators through low sec to pickup minerals I bought with region wide orders than I could get cheaper than staying in high sec. I hauled those minerals for cheap out of low sec (for a fair price, just a better price for me). I did just fine with that and the extra margin made up for the loss of volume. I stopped trading tritanium because now it wasn’t worth it for me to haul it anymore since I couldn’t use my freighter to pick up minerals in low sec, and I started hauling the higher valued minerals (Pyrite was never good for trade for me). With the fit I had with the Occator, I was pretty much invincible with the shield extended up the wazoo and I carried WCS in my cargo hold in case I found a heavy gate camp to bust. I did just fine with ammo bouncing off of my shields until I went to warp until I ran into my first Heavy Interdictor in low sec. I didn’t know they could use their Warp Distruptors in low sec with a special script, but I learned it that day. All low sec operations halted while I figured out how to make this work again. I finally developed the Invulnerable MWD/Cloak/Warp for the Deep Space Transports. I haven’t lost another Occator since.

Every since then, I have been figuring out how I can draw more people out to low sec to reap the benefits of low sec, and increasing available space for all pilots by spreading out a little and all the other benefits that go with that…more targets for pirates, better targets that are harder to catch and so more fun to hunt, safer grounds for the industrialists that aren’t too carebear-ish for low sec. I began developing “safest” fits for industrial ships like mining frigates, mining barges and exhumers. I started an alliance meant to foster this education and use of low sec (which is still very much in development due to lots of spring time outdoors AFK from many alliance members, but mostly me).

Finally, the piece de resistance, the low sec Orca fit I recently developed and wrote about. I have been using it to bust camps with great confidence and non-chalance since, moving tons more stuff through low sec than ever before possible without a jump frieighter (requires alts or cyno team mate and 5 billion isk for just the ship). It can be flown solo, and carries roughly half the stuff the jump freighters can carry. Good shit!!! My mission is to continue to help develop low sec, write an article for E-ON magazine describing how to fit, fly and behave as an industrial based character in low sec in order to survive and thrive. I will continue to be very vocal about the benefits of being in low sec and how one can fly there safely if one follows the basic rules of low sec piloting. One might even be safer in low sec than in high sec if one considers that they let their guard down in high sec. I honestly can say that since I have lived in low sec that I have lost more ships in high sec than I have in low sec…all because I drop my guard.

That’s who was a timid miner afraid of leaving his home system to become, low sec trader, low sec developer, low sec industrial educator and crazy ass pilot finding ways to make the big ships safe to bust camps.

I am … Escoce



Participants:
CrazyKinux's Musing: The Heroes with a Thousand Faces
StarFleet Comms: Life. Evolved.
A Carebear's Journeu: This Carebear Thinks He Is Developing Teeth
The Elitist: Our ventures in EVE
A Mule in EVE: From a guppy predator
Travels of the Ronin: Evolution and Adaptation
The Ralpha Dogs: The Past Through Tomorrow
Where the frack is my ship: A journey, not a destination
I am Keith Neilson: 7 Year Itch?
Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah: Evolution Me
EVE Opportunist: A long history of a short time
Roc's Ramblings: Things Change
Guns Ablaze: Onwards and Upwards
EVE On Real Life: Haven't you grown up yet?
More as they get published...

[Delicious Tag: eveblogbanter18]


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

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.