Living Next Door to Brave

We're finding out what it means to have a disgruntled former child star living next door. They visit, break your stuff and attract the attention of seriously well-equipped ne'er-do-wells.

Brave Newbies left nullsec a little while ago and some of them pitched camp in Heydieles. Over the past few days they put some of our POCOs into reinforce. Last night we showed up to repair one and they sent a few Tornados to harass us as we did so. Just as we were about to upship a cyno appeared and a Snuffbox fleet poured out: a lot of Proteuses plus a Phoenix.  We called for help from our friends in Rdraw but the most we could do was take out the small cormorant fleet that Brave had on-field and watch as our POCO went down and a new one was put up in its place. *sigh* I made a lot of money with that ol' POCO, she was a good'n.

We've had things our own way in Fliet for a long, long time. We moved in in December 2013 and haven't been seriously threatened since then. But this new combination of Brave plus Snuffbox is worrying; I guess we'll see what comes next and also if we have any friends with sufficiently big ships to push back.

Edit: Next day, the same thing happened. Another POCO came out of reinforce and we showed up to defend it...and Snuffbox's Proteii poured out of a cyno.

Billy Daniels' tweet sums it up pretty well.

I may be changing my PI setup anyway -- I've found that it's getting really difficult to buy the P3s I need to assemble into P4s.  I had set aside one planet for making P2s into P3s and that is going well enough that I am planning to expand that operation to other worlds. I think I can make more profit by having a P2-P3 operation running steadily, versus the occasional P3-P4 run.

First Experience with Wormhole Combat Sites

I had a great time with my Aideron Robotics corpmates last night! We run regular "Money Monday" fleets, where we look for PvE content and hope for sweet loot drops. It's a good formula and I'd encourage other corps to try it too.

You scan down all the signatures you can find and make corp bookmarks for the combat sites that are worth running. If you find a wormhole that doesn't have a recent history of activity (i.e ships getting blown up), probe down all the sigs inside it too. We even check where the exits go to in case there's good content there.

We used a Dominix battleships with remote armor reps, an Oneiros for more reps, Exeq Navy Issue and a couple of other ships. It was the first time I'd actually flown my Dominix, so the fit needed a little tweaking between sites. It was actually quite a juggling act to attend to the health of my drones, repping my fleet mates and dealing damage to the Sleepers...I was a bit awful at first and lost five drones pretty quickly. But I only lost another two through the rest of the night and got the hang of pre-locking them all, plus staying still in space so I could pick up my sentry drones as needed.

We only netted about 250M for the night, which wasn't great considering we did about ten sites in the wormholes and two Serpentis Phi Outposts (difficulty 4 of 10). The Outposts both let us down terribly: a meta 4 warp scrambler and an ordinary 200mm railgun! That was a surprise.

It was a nice way to spend a couple of hours, chatting with corpmates, and learning some new ship/drone management skills.

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On the trading side, my Jita character is having a lot of success! I've sold two of the four Nomads I had, for 6.5 and 6.6B. There's been a nice spike in T1 rig and Planetary Interaction prices, so I've been cashing in on that.

Battalyst Fleet Part Two

Hendrik has posted this excellent video of our fearsome Battalyst fleet in action, with the highlight being the last fight, in which they tear apart all comers.

If you want to be in such fleets, apply to Aideron Robotics.

Aideron comms in the spotlight

A recent post on Crossing Zebras caused a minor kerfuffle, mainly about the way that Aideron uses Mumble instead of Teamspeak for communications. I believe we do this for security reasons; it's easier for us to automate the identification of those present and screen out non-Gallente pilots. The original text was even more harsh...apparently some GalMil pilots call us "little North Korea".

The rule is actually more nuanced than that: Aideron-led fleets will use Mumble, but if we join someone else's fleet, we use Teamspeak. We have also built channels for all other GalMil corps to use.
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For my own update, it's just more of the same: trading, making T1 rigs, assembling ships for the corp. I did have a breakthrough in understanding WTF Crius did to blueprints, though. I had some T1 rig BPOs that were partially researched; I only needed 1 or 2 ME points, pre-Crius to make them "perfect" (i.e no material waste when manufacturing), when I made the rig. Crius had a hard limit of ME 10 for the BPO to be "perfect", no matter what your personal industry skills were.

Lets take the example of my Small Hybrid Collision Accelerators, using fuzzwork's BPO calculator. "Perfection" used to be 4-3-5 (4 Contaminated Lorentz, 3 Charred Micro and 5 Fried Interface). Post-Crius this went to 4-3-6, an extra Fried Interface. I took me until just a few days ago to grok that the BPOs ME level applies best on a big job. Building ONE HCA, even with an ME 10 BPO will cost 4-3-6, but building ONE HUNDRED will not cost 400-300-600. It will cost 360-270-540, a ten percent discount on material wasted.

I've moved almost all my manufacturing out of Jita, since I can make the same items near Fliet for much less cost, then move the output to market with our corporate jump freighter service. I've also started selling BPOs at Jita; there's quite a nice markup on some of them if you find the right ones, and you get to buy them from NPCs, so the supply is limitless.

[Update Oct 2014: I moved a bit of manufacturing back to Jita, for the items that I intend to sell there. Why? The fee is trivial compared with the markup on the items. I can easily buy the needed materials there, build the finished items and sell them for triple what it cost to make, without ever undocking. It's not a huge amount of money, but it's better than leaving the lines unused.]

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I'm going to finally use my third character slot soon! Yes, I've played for almost a year with just two characters: my main and my Jita trading (and occasional high-sec missioning) alt. My wife had started playing Eve, but it didn't catch on, so I've been using her high-sec Gallente character as a hauler. However, her account will be timing out soon so I'm going to roll up a new hauler, and possible mission runner, and let the other account go to sleep for a while. I've been turning a very nice profit buying certain rat loot items in Essence, then rounding them up into piles, then using public contracts to get them to Jita for sale. I started this right after the Mordu's legion rats were added to low-sec asteroid belts, figuring that the increased traffic would result in a larger flow of valuable rat loot, and it did!

[Update Oct 2014: Still not using the 3rd character slot! I use public contracts to move my piles of purchased rat-loot into bigger piles, then on to Jita for sale. If I had more time to play, I'd make another PI character, but I don't...there's barely enough play time to make use of the two I have now.]

Defending the Head of Kirith Kodachi

A bouncer does his work, from Wikimedia

On Sunday night Aideron Robotics partipated in the "Bring Me The Head of Kirith Kodachi" event, wherein our corpmate Kirith sacrificed a carrier on the altar of content creation. Aideron pilots would act as a defensive force, trying to extend the event as long as possible.  We actually fielded two carriers, which repped each other (I think?) as our 40-strong fleet of Vexor Navy Issues, Mauluses and other assorted ships did our best to take on the attackers.

Video from Aeonicentity

We did too well! The first wave of sniping Cormorants were seen off with Warden sentry drones. The next wave of Caracal cruisers, plus support ships, were taken out with Gardes. Things get a bit blurry here, but I'm pretty sure there was a third wave of something...I fired at a lot of Ruptures. We had some tracking issues and when the opportunity came to dock up we did so, and added some Hammerheads to our drone bays.

Nervous laughter rippled around the fleet as the remnants of the last wave warped out - "Did we hold the field?!" Yes! Our carriers were still healthy and our pilots who had lost their ships had the chance to re-ship. We had been expecting a visit from Pandemic Legion carriers and other heavy ships, so our survival was a surprise!

I think at this point the FCs decided to downship to our regular brawling ships, to give the attackers a better chance. One of the carriers docked up, leaving Kirith alone, with us, to face whoever came next. A Brutix fleet arrived and there ensued a long rumble. I was in an Exeq and got a lot of repping done until I lost my ship. I came back in another Exeq and continued repping; I was actually repping Kirith when he finally went down. And dammit, I forgot to get on that killmail!

(BTW This is all from memory, since my video recording software decided that Eve is unsupported, and I might have to come back later to revise this timeline.)

My thanks to the shield logi that kept me alive several times through this fight! I think that might have all been from the carrier?

My finally tally was 52 kills (see Jun 29th, around 01:00 AM and 1 loss (an Exequror). That includes 12 final blows, a lucky surprise since I was doing comparatively little damage. Our corp suffered 6B in losses, including the carrier, but made 7B in kills! Fliet was reported to have seen 835 kills in the time we fought; dotlan says 1031 in 24 hours, so that's feasible.

Lessons Learned

I learned....wow....lots! Firstly, I couldn't figure out how to switch my drones using the carrier. The Fed Navy Gardes in my drone bay wouldn't leave, no matter where/how I dragged them and if used the carrier's Fleet Hangar or Fitting Service. The need to refit on the fly was a lot more important than I realized. Just before we left our POS to begin the event we heavily refitted our Vexor Navy Issues. Also during the fight the order came several time to switch between Gardes and Wardens, for short/long range work. Our neuts didn't get much use except when we were ordered to neut out a group of Scythes.

I also got into a jumpclone for the first time, just before this fight, in the event that I got podded. I don't know where most of the loot ended up; I think there were some loot-grabbing specialists following the battle; we scooped up what we could.

All in all, that was a really great night of Eve! Thanks Kirith!

Outnumbered in Oinasiken

I can't think how I forgot to post this here! I worked really hard on this video, learning a lot of new (for me) techniques. This is a great fight we had on March 30th 2014, in which we lost no ships (except an Atron, piloted by a new pilot) and killed eight out of sixteen enemy ships. Our five Vexors (cruisers), two Algos (destroyers) and 3 Exeqs (cruiser repair ship) took on not only a larger fleet, but they also had several battle-cruisers on their side.

If this kind of fighting interests you, please use the links on the right to check out Aideron Robotics, the corp I'm proud to fly with!

Gallente Ascendant

From flickr user gary dawson

It's been a week since I posted here but I've been a busy worker bee. I've been editing a video of a really good fight that Aideron Robotics had last week, learning how to do voiceovers, freeze frames etc. The fight shows how effective logi can be in helping your fleet win fights and I can't wait to share it here.

I've also been doing a lot of PI operations: I'm sticking with my plan to focus on making P4 commodities (such as Nano Factories, Broadcast Nodes and Sterile Conduits) directly from their P3 inputs. The stars have re-aligned and I'm selling good amounts of all three items at about 200K profit per item. A full load of inputs on one planet takes about 30 hours to produce about 270 items for 54M ISK profit.

While I wasn't paying attention, the Caldari side of faction warfare has fallen apart...I did notice we had been winning more than usual, but I wasn't aware of the problems on the other side. Fliet is still stable and over the weekend we took Deven and Hasmijaala. I was there for the Hasmijaala ihub bash; we got a visit from a Sniggwaffe Thorax/Celestis fleet. We lost 3 cruisers and 2 frigates and killed 24 of their fleet, which might have been the whole thing. See this link, from 2014-04-07 at 03:00.  Twenty minutes later we receive a followup visit from a kitchen sink fleet of frigates that was easily stomped, though coincidentally they arrived just as some of our fleet were warping out after we'd finished bashing the ihub.

Aideron Robotics has been growing really well! We have secured Fliet, taken and defended POCOs and we now number 171 pilots, making us the third largest Gallente militia corporation. We do a lot of fun stuff so if you're considering coming to low-sec please join us!

Our First Exploration Fleet Night - great fun!

After reading my Grass Is Always Greener post from last week, one of the Aideron directors made the wise decision to ask me to organize a night of alternative activities for anyone that wanted to participate. After some discussion in the forums about what kinds of exploration we could do, I settled on an exploration roam through low-sec. Last night we got into various cruisers (from memory Stratios, Ishtar, Deimos, two Exequrors for logi and several other ships, mostly dealing sentry drone damage) and went a-roaming!

We started with a data site and a 3/10 Rogue Drone Asteroid Infestation. This wasn't a lucrative site but we wanted to start with something small and safe so we could shake the dust off, work out how we'd travel as a group, call targets etc.  A couple of other combat sites were run, including a Serpentis Lookout that led to an escalation in high-sec. We didn't take that, because several of our pilots can't go there. We ran a data and relic site, then one of our two probing ships found The Main Event: Baynex found a Serpentis Logistical Outpost Not only is this equivalent to a 6/10 combat site, it also always escalates, meaning you are given the choice to take another fight with even tougher opponents in another system.

Our ships tore through these sites easily. Our two Exeqs (one piloted by me) easily repped our ships. One thing we hadn't considered was making sure the logi overviews were set up to see friendly drones, who took aggro and got damaged. We solved this by having people broadcast that drone as a target so logi could lock and repair them. Actually, now that I think about it, seeing them on the overview wouldn't help; which drone is taking damage? The broadcast method is better.

We lost no ships during the roam and spirits were high during the fights (thank you Phyridean for FCing!); I think everyone was pleased to be able to use ships they rarely undocked, and best of all, we got to use them together!

Overall we were out for three hours, got about 450M in loot, 7.5M each in bounties and a nice improvement in security status (for those that like such things :) ). It's my job to monetize it and distribute the proceeds among those present, except those who graciously declined to take a share.

While we were gone our corpmates continued to d-plex Fliet, which was down to 11% contested at midnight [Update: At 6AM Tuesday morning, EST, Fliet is now stable! 0% contested. More exploration roams!!) And, in a burst of what must have been good karma, my trader character sold a billion ISK of stuff overnight even though I didn't update her order prices before going to sleep!

Special thanks to Oreb for coming back for this event and staying with us so we could take the second escalation, even though it was ARGH o'clock in the morning in his time zone!

What Could Go Better Next Time?

We didn't find as many cosmic signatures, and thus less combat/data sites, than I thought we would. More scanning in advance would have given us more targets to pick from. We got lucky with finding the Logistical Outpost, but next time I think having three or four known combat sites would be better. This way, everyone can get in fighting ships and quickly run the combat sites in each system.  And its more fun to run a site together than it would be to split up and run them separately.

Alternatively, if you're looking for a smaller scale event, just go out and scan down some sigs yourself one night. If you find something juicy, make a corp bookmark and let your fellow pilots know. Those that are available can come and run it with you. The more there are of you, the faster it will go.

We spent some time working out what we wanted to do or not-do. Wormholes were a particularly sticky topic: when you probe down a wormhole and enter it, you get a lot of war-stories/opinions from those assembled about what kind of ships/fleets can/should go into that class of wormhole. In the end we didn't run any, but I think an exploration night should either focus on wormholes or avoid them altogether.

Despite some talk of salvage before heading out, nobody actually brought a salvager or salvage drones.  We moved quickly, so I don't know if there would have been time for the main fleet to wait for salvaging to occur. We could have had someone designated to salvage all the wrecks -- there were a lot more than I thought there would be and it probably would have added up to a significant amount of ISK. A salvaging Catalyst would have worked well. [Update: actually one of our pilots went out afterwards and looted/salvaged an additonal 19M of stuff, and that didn't include everything.]

Dividing the spoils: we're having everyone give their loot to a single person and have them work out the value and pay out a cash share to everyone who participated. You can use evepraisal.com to give a fair estimate of the value of the items in the contract before accepting it. That person would then organize for the items to be sold to reimburse themselves for making that payout. It's a good idea to have everyone contract their loot to that person, so they don't accidentally lose track of the looted items when they get mixed into their hanger.  When you do a "Trade" in station, the items go directly to the hanger...I'm not sure if you can drag them from the trade window directly to a station container, can you?

Trading Up

Inner Space Merchant

I've been a busy space cadet! Our corp is cranking up the level of activity after a winter break and we had our annual all-hands meeting. The future direction of the corporation (Aideron Robotics, for those playing along at home) was discussed, and a bright and glorious future it is. We have over 100 pilots now and big plans in several areas. It's nice to be part of active and supportive corporation.

Trading

My trading character has done really well and currently has 430M in sell orders, 1 BILLION in buy orders (thanks to Margin Trading III) and a big wad of cash burning a hole in her pocket.  My station trading pattern is pretty simple: I'm going for thinly traded items with huge markups! Look at the Apparel group and for Faction/Deadspace items of all kinds. I look for items where the buy order is half the price of the sell order, and at least 5M ISK difference between them. My biggest sale was also very quick; I bought a large capacitor battery for 80M and sold it a couple of hours later for 135M, though my efforts to acquire a second one have not worked yet.

I then check the price history - you're looking for the following characteristics: at least 1 order each day (the odd zero is ok, but not too many), sales at the buy order AND the sell order price at my station (Jita). There's no point putting in a buy order if nobody ever sells to those buy orders. This happens more frequently than you might think, so watch for it.

The other alternative is to try and participate in quickly traded items, with hundreds of sales a day, but small profit margins. I haven't tried this yet, though the frustration of trying to buy/sell these big items can be annoying and could drive me to that option.

Either way, the more often you update your orders, the more sales you'll make. Over the weekend I updated my orders at least every couple of hours; it only takes a few minutes. The quickest way is to put all the items that you're trading into a folder in the quickbar. Then you can simply click on each item and make sure your orders are at the top. And don't forget that you can use the mouse scroll wheel to shift your order price by 0.01 ISK while the cursor is over the "Modify Price" popup form.

Ippy Dippy My Spaceshippy

I have graduated to the next TWO classes of spaceship and am now able to fly battlecruisers and battleships. I've acquired my first Brutix, which I'll be using for PvE, running level 3 missions. I fit it thusly: 

[Brutix, Lvl 3 YouTuber]

Magnetic Field Stabilizer II

Magnetic Field Stabilizer II

Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II

Armor Explosive Hardener II

Armor Kinetic Hardener II

Medium Armor Repairer II

Optical Tracking Computer I, Tracking Speed Script

Cap Recharger II

Cap Recharger II

10MN Afterburner II

250mm Prototype Gauss Gun, Antimatter Charge M

250mm Prototype Gauss Gun, Antimatter Charge M

250mm Prototype Gauss Gun, Antimatter Charge M

250mm Prototype Gauss Gun, Antimatter Charge M

250mm Prototype Gauss Gun, Antimatter Charge M

250mm Prototype Gauss Gun, Antimatter Charge M

Small Remote Armor Repair System I

Medium Hybrid Collision Accelerator I

Medium Capacitor Control Circuit I

Hammerhead II x5

The basic setup came from this video.

Obviously the two Armor Hardeners can be switched for whatever the mission rats call for. I have a mobile tractor unit and mobile depot in the hold, as well as Iron M and Thorium M charges.

I find this aspect of the game a bit weird: CCP must know that nobody goes on a dangerous mission without looking it up OUTSIDE the game (on eve-survival.org, for example) to determine what damage to protect against. And if you don't do so, you could lose your ship, so everyone makes sure to do it. So why doesn't Eve itself tell you what to do? The agent's text could include a line about damage types: "Be sure you take X and Y damage protection, capsuleer!" The only people who are hurt by NOT doing this are noobs that don't yet know about damage types and won't understand why the rats are tearing them up so easily. They'll get mad at the game for being too hard, and be more likely to quit.

Community Spotlight on Aura & Aideron

Congratulations to our corp CEO Marcel for being recognized in CCP's Community Spotlight! If you haven't used Aura on your Android device, you should give it a try.