Caught Plexing

I started playing a little earlier than usual so I decided to once again indulge my new found enjoyment of exploration. Once again the loot fairy was kind and put a data site in our home system, which I ran in about 15 minutes and came away with 10M ISK of decryptors, salvage, blueprints and skill books. I'm disposing of these through sell orders and just now sold 3 decryptors for 12M ISK.

After running the data site I thought I should stick to my corporation's wish list, so I looked for a plex to run. I'm in my cloaked Imicus and the steps I outlined in an earlier post are now almost second nature to me. I captured a novice plex with only a fellow militia member for company.

A Diversion: Low-Sec Exploration vs. Low-Sec Salvage

I salvaged four wrecks that were in the plex when I found it (nothing but junk...I'm losing interest in salvaging as I find the odd wreck here and there and never get anything exciting, even when it's an "Elite" wreck that drops T2 salvage.  Let's contrast it with exploration, salvage is found sporadically and is mostly worth very little. You can d-scan for wrecks, but not probe for them, so the only way to find them in large amounts is to follow a level 4 mission runner or perhaps find a gate camp. Either way, you have have their cooperation or hope they will leave the wrecks behind when they depart the area. And you have to wait for them to leave so you can uncloak and start salvaging, unless you don't mind getting shot at.

Exploration, on the other hand, involves only you (unless someone follows you). You can find sites pretty easily using the cheapest probes and launcher. The loot is generous, about 8-10M ISK per site, and that's after I've blown up one or two of the more generous towers due to not being able to get past their hacking defenses. You can use the star map to find systems near you that have very few pilots in space, to give you the best chance of being left alone as you run the exploration sites.

Conclusion: I'm going to leave salvage alone for a while and do exploration when I can.  My skills are still low (astrometrics 3, hacking 2, archaeology 2) so I can only improve from here.

Plexing And Fights

After taking the first plex I head over to another and after a few minutes we are joined by a group of fellow militia that turns out to be my corpmates! I join our voice comms and decloak and hear "Vic, what are you doing in an Imicus?!" "Plexing for the greater glory of the Gallente!" "Well, get in a fighting ship and join us in Fliet."

We finish the plex without incident, which gives me about 10,000 LP for the night. I head back to Yvangier and change into something more threatening.  I rejoin the fleet in Fliet (or "fillet" as it is sometimes named) and we run into a pretty big fight. I recorded this fight, but sadly it is corrupted and I can literally only play it and watch in real-time, no editing is possible.

The short version is that we lost. We killed four of their destroyers and lost five frigates, but our frigates were much more expensive. During the fight I was told to attack their Hobgoblin II drones, which I did, but the FC forgot that I was in a very weak ship. I was able to kill one drone and almost finish another, but it took far too long and I was the only one ordered to attack them. They wore us down.

When we returned to Yvangier we went over my skills to see if I can get into any more useful than what I'm flying. It's close, but not yet. I thought I'd be ready Sunday night, but I didn't notice there's another four day train that I'd need before it would work. So we're modifying an existing design, simplifying it a little, so I can survive longer and do more damage.