Mining & Industry Changes

So, New Eden recently underwent a couple of changes when it comes to one of my favourite pastimes: mining! In more specific (and relevant to me) terms, the drones of an Orca have lost some of their mining bonus but the Orca has gained the Large Industrial Core which technically is a Siege Module which boosts many of the Orca’s defining traits but in turn make it immobile for quite some time and additionally uses fuel. All in all this again reinforces the Orca’s primary purpose; many people are seeing the Orca as a mining ship but it’s actually not, it’s a mining support ship! You’re supposed to have a hord of real mining ships around, like Mining Barges and Exhumers!

This past weekend I have for the first time tried to use one of the new Industrial Cores and I have to say, they do take some getting used to. First of all, you need to be really slow when you activate it. Optimally, you are at a complete standstill because once you activate the Core, your ship will coast at its current velocity until you either deactivate the Core (only possible after a complete cycle which takes two and a half minutes) or you bump something or something bumps you. Have you ever spooled up a Micro Jump Drive and somebody got too close, sending you 100 km in a random direction and you could neither steer nor brake? Exactly that can now happen with the Orca.

And then it doesn’t have an immediate effect on currently running boosts but its changes will only take effect on the next boost. That your boost range switches from 90 km back to 45 km only because you planning to unload is something that needs to be communicated to your mining fleet as long as they don’t really know how this Core thing works.

Other than that, this new module is really fine! With one Covetor, three Procurers, one Retriever, and one Venture it takes about 30 minutes to fill up an Orca — which in turn uses about 20% of the Heavy Water in the new fuel bay… one more thing to pay attention to!

Another thing that has changed as a part of this patch are the mining crystals. While before you needed a specialized crystal for each and every type of ore there was (except moon ores) you now only have six broad categories of crystals, reducing the amount of crystals you have to pack for certain endeavors. I really like that!

And there’s at least one more thing in the works to look forward to: at some point the Orca will gain in-space ore compression using this new Core! I totally can’t wait for that to happen! 🎉

Doctor Who Crossover

Some days ago CCP announced a Doctor Who crossover event that is going to start this week. And for some reason many people on many Discord servers, forums, and other platforms are complaining.

Because apparently it is not allowed to like both a TV show and a video game. And of course there cannot actually be an overlap between people liking a sci-fi TV show and a sci-fi video game. Whatever these people are smoking, can I have some of that?

One of the most ludicrous “arguments” (if it can be called that) was that a Doctor Who crossover would somehow “break the immersion.” Are you bloody kidding me?! You are playing a space-based video game where ships move like they’re under water, top speed has nothing to do with acceleration, energy is basically free, asteroids respawn like clockwork (and their distribution depends on the social construct “security status”), you can be cloned, your consciousness can be transferred over many lightyears within fractions of a second, assembling a ship that is 15 km in length takes literally 0 time — but a Doctor Who crossover breaks the immersion? Get the fuck out of here.

Apart from that I can understand the reluctance in accepting mixing intellectual properties (or fandoms, if you prefer) like that. What has worked for others (LEGO vs. pretty much everything comes to mind as something that’s both fun and incredibly successful) doesn’t necessarily have to work for EVE and/or Doctor Who. I do have the feeling that EVE players will have more problems accepting this crossover than Doctor Who fans; Doctor Who is a show that thrives on change and the inherent challenges whereas while you could say that EVE is also a lot about adaptation to changing circumstances usually the first reaction of reddit and other forums frequented by EVE players is to throw hissy fits left and right as soon as one value changes from 0.123512 to 0.123511. In an environment like this CCP can only lose, no matter how awesome the event turns out to be…

Anyway, while it is totally possible that New Eden exists somewhere in the Doctor Who universe we all know that the Doctor usually hangs around near Cardiff, Wales because apparently that’s where all the alien action happens! I am for my part looking forward to see what events there will be and how much of the Doctor Who feeling they will actually have. And when it’s over I’m sure New Eden will be back to its usual old self…

Killmark!

Do you know what else there is in wormholes, except valuable ores and gases? Right. Other people who also want a piece of that!

So there I was, sitting in an Ordinary Perimeter Deposit, nibbling away on a piece of Arkonor when I spot this Venture on D-scan. I immediately cloak up and prepare to wait for what is going to happen now. Only seconds later, the Venture lands on the beacon of the Deposit and starts burning to the rock right next to me! I put a bit of distance between me and the rock they’re going for so they don’t accidently uncloak me when they overshoot. They start mining without a care in the world and so I decide that maybe I could try to take them down? I knew that at least on the first try I was very unlikely to succeed because they were in a Venture which has built-in warp core stabilization and I didn’t even have any warp scrambling equipment so the chance of them warping off before they took serious damage was very high…

So, I moved closer to them, uncloaked right on top of them and set my drones on them. After a few seconds they responded by launching their drones (but not sending them towards me because I never took any damage) and after a few more seconds they warped off, leaving their drones behind!

That went slightly better than expected. I collected their drones and as they were still visible on D-scan, I cloaked up again. And guess what? Only a few seconds later they warped back in and approached the same rock as before! How… what… WHY?!

Anyway, I repeated the little dance: uncloaked on top of them and set my drones on them, only this time they didn’t have any drones to respond with so they warped off again.

At this point I must shamefully admit that I got a bit blood-thirsty. I went back to high-sec and my corp’s HQ which was only two jumps away and has a corp hangar full of useful stuff. I switched my Shield Extenders for two Warp Scramblers and made my way back into the wormhole system. And behold, the Venture was still in there!

Only now they apparently switched to gas huffing so they did refit somewhere which probably also meant they re-equipped some drones (or at least one would hope so). Anyway, I warped in to the Reservoir they were at and imagine my surprise when I found them sitting directly on the beacon! That couldn’t have been easier!

In a few seconds they were warp-scrambled and my drones were once again at work. They did have a Shield Booster installed so every now and then the red bar shrunk slightly but all in all it kept growing. They launched a drone (and one drone only) and targeted one of my drones but it couldn’t get to work fast enough… after about a minute my drones had chewed through all of the Venture’s defenses and I got the killmark you can see above!

All in all there are quite a number of things that could have and maybe even should have gone differently. I initiated a conversation with them and asked them if they wanted to talk about what happened but I never got a reply. Anyway, here’s a list of things that I would probably do different, had the roles been reversed:

  1. D-scan. D-scan, D-scan, D-scan! When jumping into a wormhole, your D-scan window has to be open and visible all the time! So upon entering the system I would have spotted an Endurance and would have known there’s somebody out there.
  2. If you know somebody is out there, try to find out where they are. Change your D-scan settings to smallest angle (5°) and scan all anomalies to see if they are in one of those. If you do this in your first minute after jumping into the system you have the advantage that you can see them but they cannot see you, due to the cloak of the wormhole. Invaluable!
  3. At this point I would have known exactly where the Endurance was. Great! I would have warped a couple of times around the system and created a small number of safe spots. While doing that I would have noticed that the Endurance is now no longer visible on D-scan. As all known anomalies and celestial were well within D-scan range (it was a small wormhole system) this means that it has either cloaked up or left the system. No way to know for sure.
  4. Alright, so, I want to mine. Where? Definitely not in the same Deposit where I spotted the Endurance earlier! There were two other Deposits in the system and I would have picked a different one.
  5. Okay, I picked a Deposit and started mining. Oh, there it is, right on top of me! Okay, I’m not being scrambled so I know I can run at any time. Drones, do your thing! Shield Boost, do your thing! Cap Boosts, do your thing, too! Dang, their drones are better than mine, plus they have one more. Not fair! 😢
  6. I’m still not being scrambled so I’d grab my drones and head out. See you!
  7. Now the Endurance has disappeared from D-scan again. I know in which Deposit it just was, and it’s either still there, cloaked up again, or it has left the system. Which means I will now pick the third Deposit to mine at.
  8. Wow, another Endurance decloaking on top of me! Weird where they all come from! 😀 Anyway, not being scrambled I warp off and everything’s fine.
  9. If it had gone this way with the Endurance chasing me through two Deposits I would at this point probably have ditched the system altogether. Wormhole ore is fine but even losing a Venture over it is not my idea of fun. But let’s assume for a second that I would now decide to still go back but now try getting some gas out of it.
  10. I jump back to high-sec, to a station where I have some gear, equip the gas scoops and go back into the wormhole. Initial D-scanning shows an empty system. Awesome! Off to the Reservoir it is!
  11. There are two Harvestable Clouds, one directly at the beacon and one about 70 km off. I pick the second one so if a hunter is not using Combat Probes (which show up on D-scan) I can see them coming for 70 km.
  12. D-scan shows an Endurance again. Is it the same as before? Oh shit, it has the same ship name! I warp to my safe spot and try to see where they are, watching D-scan all the time to spot Combat Probes. Now, I either spot the Endurance again at some point because they decided to decloak and go about their business and when they are not where I want to be I’ll come out to continue gas mining (always ready to warp off when they arrive) or I will at some point decide that today is just not the day to mine in this particular system and will leave, to probably never see that system again. And good riddance, too, it’s full of Endurances that want to kill me! 😄

So Much Mining

Happy new year, everyone! While everybody has been out celebrating New Year’s Eve, I have used the opportunity to mine the more valuable stuff from all those places that are normally a lot more dangerous than my usual mining grounds: low-sec and wormholes.

With just a couple of an Endurance’s cargohold’s worth I have collected almost enough non-high-sec minerals to build a full Combat Battlecruiser. That’s really not too shabby for a few hour’s worth of mining!

Winter Mining

So, while Lissy is busy hunting down Sansha’s Nation (as she usually is) I have been clearing the mining sites that follow the ice storms that are currently roaming New Eden. It seems that under certain circumstances the sites disappear from the Probe Scanner window but do remain active and even respawn the asteroids after a while, giving you pretty much uncontested access to as much ice as you can mine. A miner’s dream come true! 😍

Optimizing the Tempest

So, as I have written previously, I am using the Tempest to run level 3 and 4 missions when I’m not doing Incursions. And I’m still optimizing the fit; just recently I have found a real quality-of-life upgrade for it: throw out the measley 100MN Afterburner, put in a 500MN Microwarpdrive! (Find the current version on EVE Workbench.)

Yes, it’s not cap-stable with all of it running at the same time but it doesn’t have to be. With the Microwarpdrive I can get away from the targets and when I’m so far away they can’t even hit me, that’s the perfect time to repair the shields. And it’s really way, way cooler to burn 60 km when you actually do 1.1 km/s and not only 397 m/s… stay tuned for more updates! 😀

Now NOT to PVE…

Shield 0%, Armor 0%, Hull 50%, Modules Overheated
Shield gone, armor gone, half of hull gone, all modules overheated – what a way to die…

So, I tried one of the Winter Nexus event combat sites in highsec and the above image is the result. I was severely pummeled by the Sansha’s Direwight Stormlord and I barely made it out alive. If I really want to continue trying these sites with a Tempest I clearly need to think of some kind of miracle…

Trying New Things

Finally the Crimson Harvest event is over, drop rates are again back at the usual 50% and EVE Rookies are doing their incursions again! 🎉

We’re always working hard on improving our performance, even with the ragtag group we’re flying. So yesterday’s plan was to send in Sasha’s Vargur in first to draw (and simply ignore) aggro and it worked quite well. In fact it worked so well that at one point Oli decided to see if a single Basilisk could provide enough repping power for a whole site. Short answer: yes. Oli slacked off for two sites and not a single problem was encountered; I even drew aggro at one point but Kshal’s Claymore’s repping power was more than sufficient to keep me well out of armor. Of course we will still always use two logi ships because you never know what might be happening and with this fleet composition it is simply safer that way but it is very good to know that in case of whatever emergency we will not immediately all die. 🙃

All in all, last night’s performance was quite stellar! We flew for a bit more than 2.5 hours and managed to get to almost 90M ISK per hour, completing multiple sites in only 4 minutes, slowest site being 7 minutes.

Due to prior engagements there’s not going to be a fleet on friday but if the focus stays up long enough we’ll fly again on sunday and I’m really looking forward to that!

In other news: I asked my little sister whether she wanted to fly with us as well and she said, “eh, why not?” She is completely untrained, though, so getting her up to speed might take a couple of months but I’m sure we can expect great things from Narraja! So proud! 😁

Ganker Protocol

Yesterday was sunday, and it was a good one. I was running with Warp To Me for the whole day (from 8:30 in the morning until the spawn went down at 16:something) and during that time we had two instances of ganking! Fortunately not in our fleet — or unfortunately? Because, as it turns out, the gankers were incompetent little shits (check kills on November 7th) and didn’t manage to kill a single ship. Well done! Apparently they were going for the ships that were already under the attack of the Sansha and, yeah, I can see how one can think “hey, let’s add more to that damage” but those ships are also the ones that are already locked up by all logi ships, and usually each logi ship has ample repping power left for emergencies so a small number of not-even-polarized Catalysts really doesn’t pose any threat.

Anyway, our FC switched to “ganker protocol” which means that new pilots who wanted to join the fleet were told to stay docked and ask for “undock status” (as opposed to warping to FC and asking for gate status). If you already were with the fleet you were safe (because lots of logi around) but if you weren’t, get your ass into a station and stay there! So, yeah, quite exciting! How was your weekend? 😃

New Spawn Is Up!

Holy moly, I have been flying with Warp to Me today and it was pretty amazing.

First, I got into a Headquarters fleet and apparently was thrown directly into a True Creations Research Center (aka TCRC) which is supposed to be the hardest of all HQ sites… but as I was completely new to all of it and totally overwhelmed by all the action on the screen I didn’t really notice any difference between the three sites at all so I guess that was fine? 🤷‍♀️

I flew with them for a bit more than an hour, had some dinner, then decided to X up to fly some more and had the opportunity to also take a sneak peek into what Assault sites are like. The fleet is smaller, around half the size of HQ fleets (so 20 pilots instead of 40) but for logi the difference is not really noticeable. All in all it went without any problems (except for my ultra-slow faction afterburner which needs to be switched for an abyssal at some point), and after a short time we managed to upgrade our fleet to an HQ fleet as one of the other fleets running at the time stood down.

So, that was my first day with Warp to Me and I am very happy with how it turned out. I will be flying with them a lot more in the future as long as they’ll have me but — and I’mma be honest here — I am looking forward to running some nice relaxing Vanguard sites with EVE Rookies tomorrow night! 😀