Bits and Bobs, This and That

Narcotics Warehouse, India

Refuge --> Narcotics Warehouse

My main activity of late has been testing how quickly I can run Serpentis Refuges so I can find lots of Narcotics Warehouse escalations (difficulty 3 out of 10). I can then run those with corpmates or solo, or give bookmarks to corpmates if I'm unable to play.  I'm now running the Refuges with a Vexor Navy Issue; the five sentries with three Drone Damage Amplifiers make short work of them - about 2 minutes each. The escalations are up to 10 jumps away, so I take my railgun Algos there with 3 warp core stabilizers to give me a reasonable chance of avoiding gate camps. Once there I make a safe, deploy a mobile depot and put my fighting shoes on. I'll put both my fits at the bottom of this post.

Here's why I've chosen this combination of sites: Refuges are plentiful in highsec and often overlooked. They can be run quickly and seem to have about a 1 in 9 chance of escalating. The Narcotics Warehouse site has four rooms and the first can be bypassed by having a Traffic Management key in your cargo. That means anyone who probes me down and wants to chase me will have to clear the first room themselves, or know the site and go get a Traffic key too. That gives you a nice buffer of safety, unlike other sites where interlopers can reach you immediately. I think this will produce a really nice results, having a 10M isk ship producing 30-100M of loot per site.

So last night I ran two of these sites and it was a very interesting experience. I took a blaster-fit Algos Ane (a low sec island in the middle of Essence) and Aeschee. I thought Ane would go easily, but locals seemed to know and hate Aideron, naming our CEO, a present and a past pilot and insulting them. I figured this wasn't going to go well, and it didn't. They probed me down, so I refit my warp core stabs and left. They even tried to catch me on the other side of the out gate. Back in highsec I saw another Refuge so I ran it, got a nice, and quite rare, 70M Shadow Serpentis loot drop!

Here's where I had a brain fart. The route to Aeschee took me through the Genesis region; just before jumping into Villore, a know heavily gate-camped system in Essence, I decided that dropping my 70M of loot in Genesis was inconvenient (because I use public contracts to move loot around) so I'd just take it to Villore and drop it there. And I forgot or didn't care that I was not wearing my Warp Core Stabilizers. This was really quite stupid. I jumped into Villore and got caught by a Garmur and Legion. I'm just glad the 70M loot didn't survive - hah! If I'd had my stabs fitted I'd have slipped away. Next time, fit the stabs and avoid Villore if at all possible.

I was expecting Aeschee to go badly too: it's Shadow Cartel's home system and a Sisters of Eve mission hub; how could an Algos go undetected for 15 minutes or more?  Luckily my Narcotics site and my safe spot were both out of dscan range of everything in system. I ran the site (badly, as it turned out) for about 30 minutes and never saw anyone on dscan, let alone scanner probes. I picked up about 30M from this site.

Why did it take so long? The idea of putting blasters on the Algos didn't work - I had imagined the rats all swarming close my ship, but they stayed a little too far away, even with Null ammo. I had to leave at one point because I couldn't tank the incoming damage. I'll switch back to railguns for the next attempt, keep my distance and pick them off.

Fightin' 

I joined an RDraw fleet that was running Faction Warfare level 4 missions in stealth bombers, we had a slow start but eventually got rolling. Gallente pilots usually have problems running FW missions because the Caldari rats use jammers, but the jams were defeated by having large numbers in fleet. We accepted missions in a limited area of the war zone to minimize travel - five people requesting them, came up with about 20 missions total, yielding about 65k LP at the end, which I've already spent on high-grade spur implants that trade nicely at Jita if you're patient.

I also helped with RDraw attack on a Carpe Noctem Gila fleet, I derped and warped to 0 in my Griffin but got on 2 kills worth 1B isk :) We won the fight and the FC kindly directed dps ships to send 2M to each logi and 1M to each ewar, which was a nice way to do it. Next time, warp at range!

Trade

T1 rigs are making 200-300k per unit profit, up to 300% profit in other cases, and various datacores and PI items all had price spikes...I made a killing. I spent the 800K LP I earned running FW missions a while ago, and those items are all sold too. I'm pretty sure I've reached my 100B net worth target, so whee! for that. I have 8 Jump Freighters again, but 20B cash to go with it this time and the prices are healthier. I'm holding out for higher prices yet :) I also found some skillbooks to trade using eve-central trade finder - it's nice to have a trade where one of the prices is fixed in stone, since you buy them from NPCs.

I found a nice way to help new pilots: I created a buy order for tritanium in a starter system and I'm sending 5M to whomever sells to me. I figure only actual new players will be mining in the perpetual "Asteroid Remnant" anoms in those systems...though so far nobody has written back to me.

Speaking of writing to me, I got an email in-game from a pilot who moved some of my public contracts around. He wondered what the hell I was doing and was it some sort of scam?! I guess not many people use that technique :)

Fits Used

This is a very tight fit, and is the next variation I'll be trying. Downsize it by swapping the MWD for an Afterburner, 125s for 75s or removing the Salvager. Rig to taste.

[Algos, Narc Warehouse]

Drone Damage Amplifier II

Damage Control II

Small Armor Repairer II

Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I

X5 Prototype Engine Enervator

Sensor Booster II, Scan Resolution Script

125mm Railgun II, Spike S

125mm Railgun II, Spike S

125mm Railgun II, Spike S

125mm Railgun II, Spike S

125mm Railgun II, Spike S

Salvager I

Small Nanobot Accelerator I

[empty rig slot]

[empty rig slot]

Hobgoblin II x5

Hobgoblin II x5

Hammerhead II x1

--

This is the Vexor I used before getting a VNI for the job. It's almost as fast and will do fine. See my earlier posts for usage.

[Vexor, Highsec Anom Runner]

Drone Damage Amplifier II

Drone Damage Amplifier II

Magnetic Field Stabilizer II

Damage Control II

Medium Armor Repairer II

Omnidirectional Tracking Link II

Tracking Computer II, Tracking Speed Script

Phased Weapon Navigation Array Generation Extron

Sensor Booster II, Targeting Range Script

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

Medium Hybrid Collision Accelerator II

Garde II x3

Hammerhead II x2

Hobgoblin II x3

Hobgoblin II x1

Hammerhead II x1

--

Here's m'new baby: 760 dps, leaning heavily away from tank and into gank. The VNI can only fit two guns and is NOT bonused for gun damage, so I went with 3 DDAs and only 1 Mag Stab.

[Vexor Navy Issue, High Anom Runner]

Drone Damage Amplifier II

Drone Damage Amplifier II

Magnetic Field Stabilizer II

Drone Damage Amplifier II

Damage Control II

Medium Armor Repairer II

Omnidirectional Tracking Link II

Tracking Computer II, Tracking Speed Script

Phased Weapon Navigation Array Generation Extron

Sensor Booster II, Targeting Range Script

250mm Prototype Gauss Gun, Antimatter Charge M

250mm Prototype Gauss Gun, Antimatter Charge M

[empty high slot]

[empty high slot]

Medium Sentry Damage Augmentor I

Medium Drone Scope Chip I

Garde II x5

Ogre II x2

Hammerhead II x2

Hobgoblin II x1

Life Speeds Up

Life Speeds Up...then it goes away

Faction Warfare Missions

I've had a productive couple of weeks lately and I think there's enough material to tell a story or two. I have been out with friends and run Level 4 faction warfare missions, earning about 360K lp in two sessions, totalling about 5 hours. The second set of missions we run seemed to be cursed from the start: my friend undocked his Proteus and the Eve server crashed. When he logged back in he found himself on the station undock, but luckily nobody had attacked him. We set off on our route and suffered two more disconnects. Most of the first missions were mine and we happily blasted through them, noting how quiet the systems were. "I've probably jinxed it now!" said my buddy.

Yes. Yes he had.

When we warped to his mission in Asakai he found a Succubus on the gate, waiting for him. He got scrammed...I landed just behind him and jumped into the mission. I wondered if he could use the acceleration gate too, but it seemed that being scrammed prevented him jumping in with me. I pressed ahead, getting into the field of rats, wondering if I should bounce out and go help my friend.

As in many engagements, the question arises, "whose friends will get here first?"...presumably our attacker had allies coming and we had nobody...but wait! Who just jumped into system?! X Gallentius, a well-known Galmil FC. I quickly convo'd him and asked if he could help. He said yes and we waited...my friend's armor was going down and a Pilgrim had landed to help the Succubus. He was being neuted too, and it was starting to look bleak.  Still no sign of our blue buddies landing.

Into structure and a couple of galmil began to arrive, but it was too late. The Proteus turned to wreckage, but the Succubus and his friend were scrammed and destroyed. The gal-bros were kind enough to send some ISK to my friend to help pay for his next ship.

My luck held and I completed my sixth and final mission on my own and headed back home, where we turned in our missions and collected our reward.

Jita Trading and PI

My Jita alt has added some Planetary Interaction skills so I could take advantage of a low-ish tax rate on a good set of POCOs I found near Jita. I did a little math and found a setup that I think will work. I screwed up my first batch and sold them for one-tenth the cost I was looking for, but I'll make that back shortly. I'm using the Customs Code Expertise to lower that tax rate even further. I'm sticking with the same setup I have in Fliet, buying level 3 PI materials and producing level 4s. I could have tried going from level 2 to level 4 but that's frankly more logistics that I care to deal with. Three-to-four will make me about 80-100K profit per unit produced, which I'm perfectly happy with.

The jump freighters I bought are on the verge of returning to higher prices so I can finally sell them. It was an interesting experiment, but too slow to be worth it. I'm going to return to the quick flip, even if the profits are lower.  Some of the other items I've been stockpiling have just had a nice price spike so I'm trying to offload them now.  I've also written a piece of software that will be capable of watching that information for me, when I get around to writing that part of it.

Level 4 Agents Unlocked

Finally unlocked all level 4 Caldari agents

Missions

I reached another milestone, completing the last storyline mission I needed to push my Caldari State standings over 5 (5.18 to be exact), thus making all Caldari level 4 agents available to me. I ran a few level 4 distribution missions just to get a feel for it: they pay about 500 LP and 200-300K ISK each, and require up to 7000 m3 of cargo space. I've found a loop of systems around Hirtamon, 2 jumps from Jita, and doing all the level 3 and 4 distribution agents there will be a nice sideline. The level 4 agents tend to want to send you further away, though, so remember to ask twice if the first offer's destination is too far away. If the second offer is bad too, just click the Delay button and wait four hours - no standings hit :)

You can see from the picture that the storyline missions came pretty quickly; I did six of them on Feb 15th alone. Those include level 2 and 3 missions...remember, you get a storyline mission for every 15 regular missions at each difficulty level, regardless of which corp you run them for.

Jump Freighters

The jump freighters are all tradeable again, with a 300-400M gap between the buy and sell orders. With my broker fees reduced from 0.54% to 0.36% (thanks missions!) I'm saving about 20M in fees on each flip. So I currently own four, one of each model! They're all listed for sale, but the sale is usually slower than the buy.

First Wormhole Visit

I finally made a trip into a wormhole - there was a class 2 entrance in Fliet so I got my exploration Helios and went a-scanning. I'd always wanted to try the nullsec relic and data sites and since CCP added them to wormholes a few months back I'd be able to do so more easily. I'd read a couple of guides to handling wormholes, so I knew to d-scan a lot and also bookmark the entrance and any exits I used. I checked who owned the POCOs in the system and looked up their corporate zkillboard, and did the same for the wormhole itself. Not much activity in either place, so I was probably safe.

I found and started a data site, but quit halfway through: the loot was worth very little...about 500K from 3 cans. I kept probing the system and found a relic site...15M ISK, that's better! I'm going to follow the advice I've read recently and remove the data analyzer, replacing it with a rangefinding midslot module to make the probing go faster.

On the way back to my home station I flew through what I heard described on corp comms as "an instalocking gatecamp" - my Helios wasn't caught, thanks Cov Ops Cloaking Device!

Boosting Standings Through Distribution Missions

• The Jump Freighter trade that has been so lucrative for me has dried to a trickle; I haven't successfully bought, let alone sold, one this month.
• Planetary Interaction is also minimal this month.
• I've added Small Energy rigs to my manufacturing rotation, make for ~15K, sell for 60-100K.
• I skilled up to running 9 production lines at once.
• I've bought a Proteus and some Asteros and can, time allowing, go run some level 4 faction warfare missions and small exploration combat sites.

My Distribution Mission Layout (approximately)

Why Run Distribution Missions?

Those are the bullet points for what's happened in the last couple of weeks, but the area that's been the most fun is running Level 2, then Level 3 distribution missions in order to raise my standings with the Caldari State, which I'm doing to try and cut my tax/fees bill, currently running at 2-3B ISK per month! Prior to doing these missions, my broker fee was 0.54% (it's now 0.46% after maybe 8 hours of missions). The Caldari Navy corporation, which owns Jita, already loves me lots (7+), so boosting my Caldari State standings (it was 2.7) is the most obvious improvement I can now make.

Faction standings are more than twice as important (says Eve Uni wiki) as corporate standings when it comes to determining your broker fees, so you want the Caldari State to think you're the bees knees. You can most easily raise this by running 15 missions of one type and level (i.e 16 level 2 security, or 15 level 3 distribution) for agents of ANY (ANY!) Caldari company. The company doesn't matter, do 'em all.  When the 15th is completed, a Storyline Agent will contact you and offer you a "mission which will greatly impact your faction standings." This is the juice!

The missions are easy; so far I've seen "Clear The Path", killing three easy waves of Gallente ships (done in a Rapid Light Missile Caracal), Materials of War (buy and deliver 10,000 Omber). I've done each of these several times and my faction standing is now 3.8.

Many people will advise you to track how many missions you've done, and make sure the last mission is near a Storyline Agent, because their missions give a big boost to your standings for the Storyline Agent's corporation too. I was less interested in that, so I didn't bother tracking; I just chewed through as many missions as I could.

So I bought a Nereus hull, equipped cargo optimization rigs and Expanded Cargohold IIs, learned the MWD+Cloak trick and brought up the Agent Finder. I set the Faction filter to Caldari, mission type to distribution, and went to the nearest cluster and picked up missions.

Backtracking a little: I've already done some security missions, but its been a slog. Each one takes a while, and though you can accept more than one at a time, you can only been in one mission site at a time, shooting one set of rats.  The nice thing about distribution missions is that after accepting three, four, five missions and setting off on the journey, you're working on all of them at the same time! And when you dock to deliver one cargo, you can often pick up another at the very same station! Put simply, you can do a lot of these missions, and quickly. In four hours of play, I received and ran THREE storyline missions. This raised my faction standing from 2.7 to 3.1, which unlocked all the Level 3 Caldari Agents.

Shaping The Cloud

You want to avoid accepting missions that send you too far out of the way, and I also prefer to avoid low-sec deliveries, which carry greater risk but offer no higher reward. My Nereus carries about 15km3 of cargo (soon to be more), and Level 3 missions require cargo between 1800 and 4000m3 each, so I'm usually working five or six missions at the same time. In my experience (hah!) a Level 3 Caldari distribution agent is never more than 1 or 2 jumps away.

When you talk to an agent, look at the delivery point. If its on your current route, take it: easy decision there. If not, make a note of current length of your route. Then right-click the deliver system and Add Waypoint. Then click Optimize (you're going to be using this button a lot!) If the length of your route changes by more than 2 or 3...meh...if it changes by 4 or more..that's a long way to go for just one guy.  Are there more agents along the way, and do you have the cargo space to pick up more? The more full you are, the more you want the delivery system to be very close to where you're already going. You ain't got no time to go wandering off your route for a single delivery.

With each agent you get two bites of the cherry; you can decline their first offer. Here's the new trick I just learned. You can talk to them again AND "Delay" the second offer if you don't like it. I used to never Request Mission a second time because I thought I'd be obliged to take it or have to Decline, thus taking a standings penalty. But you can safely ask again, then click "Delay" if you don't like it. The mission offer will eventually (a week later) expire and you'll get an email from the agent expressing disappointment, but you'll not be penalized. Or you can wait four hours and safely decline the mission.

The Agent Finder (I've mapped Shift-Alt-F to it) won't indicate if you're carrying cargo for an agent, so keep the journal handy (Alt-J) and make sure, before fly to talk to an agent, that you're not already working for them!

Ignore the fact that you'll miss out on most of the bonus payments; you're probably doing this for standings, not for the ISK or even the loyalty points.

Safety and Mistakes You Might Make

The stuff you're carrying is mostly worthless, but gankers sometimes kill industrial ships for the lolz. You should learn the Cloak+MWD trick, and use it if you see any combat ships at the gate when you arrive on the other side..I saw a surprising number of Tengus that just sat on the gate. Most of the time, however, I've seen mostly industrial ships or nobody at all.

Mistakes in the missions mainly means you're flying less efficiently; try not to get sent really far out of the way, especially if you're close to full already. You'd like to be making a pickup or delivery every 2 or 3 jumps.  Just last night I flew an extra five jumps to a station, just to talk to an agent. And my ship was already full, d'oh! I couldn't have accepted his mission even if I wanted to! Don't add too many agent's stations to your route just because you'd like to get missions from them. Three or four agents can fill you up.

It can be hard to remember, after a lot of adding/deleting waypoints, why a particular waypoint is on your route. The "Agents and Places" screen (Alt-E) will help a little, but you have to look at each set of places yourself. If you don't see a delivery to that system listed, you had planned to talk to an agent there, but maybe you've already picked up all the cargo you can handle.

Helping Out The Little Guys

You can, of course, work for Level 2 and Level 1 agents as well. They have, remember, their own counter to 15 missions and will generate storyline missions for you, albeit less lucrative ones. Their cargoes are much smaller and they tend to send you to closer systems, which can be a nice easy gain. I won't fly to a system JUST to talk to them, though, I pretty much only use them if they happen to be in the same station I'm already in.

I don't accept these cheaper missions if they require me to go somewhere else, pickup a thing, and bring it back to this agent. "They, Robots" comes to mind.

UI Improvements

It's easy to lose track of why a particular station or system is on your route: am I delivering there, or is there an agent I wanted to talk to? Looking at the agent finder, do I already have a mission from that particular agent? Which of these agents are along the route I'm flying?

The information to answer these questions is available, but its in several windows. One easy improvement I see is for the agents in the Agent Finder to have their names colored green if you already have accepted a mission from them. Their system name, or agent name perhaps, could be in a different color (yellow?) if it lies on your current route, just like the Market window already does.

It would be nice if the "System" list on the agent finder was restricted to the current region you were in. If I choose "The Forge", that's where I'm interested in looking.

Extra Benefit

You can run these missions easily while doing other real life tasks, such as cleaning the kitchen, and earn spouse LP :) I put the laptop on the stove and click the "jump" button every 45 seconds or so.

Tension...

Before I switched corps to Aideron Robotics, I was flying about looking for lost T2 drones. This is a fun and profitable way to pass the time in Eve: it takes about 5 minutes to pick up 2.5M worth of Tech 2 drones, if there are any around.  For a change of pace I scanned down a cosmic signature and it turned out to be a DED 4/10 "Serpentis Phi Outpost". This is a more difficult kind of room to fight in so I switched to my Algos and entered the room.

The was already a ship ahead of me, clearing pirates like there's no tomorrow.  I managed to kill 3 or 4 rats, salvaged them and followed to the next room. He'd made short work of this room too; I killed a few and the room was done.

He messages me: "do you want these wrecks and loot? You need them more than me." He has checked my pilot history and sees I'm only a 1 month old player. "Sure, thanks!" I say, and wait for the wrecks to turn blue. 30 seconds go by....and he has left the room with the wrecks still yellow (i.e he still "owns" them. I could salvage them, but not take the stuff inside without being flagged as a suspect).

I open up a chat window with him and ask if he could please abandon the wrecks so I can loot them. "How do I do that?" comes the reply.

First alarm bell: I checked his pilot history...5 years....how does a pilot with 5 years experience not know how to abandon wrecks?

I say "You need to right-click on a wreck and choose the 'Abandon all wrecks' command"

He says "OK I'll find a rat, kill him, and do that"....hmmm....that's not right. He can't just kill and abandon any random pirate, he needs to come back and abandon the wrecks in this room.  I wait a bit; maybe there's a way I don't know about. The wrecks here stay yellow and I'm worrying that new players will soon show up and start salvaging.

"I think you need to come back here and abandon these wrecks" I say.  I assume that since this is a cosmic signature, he would have scanned the room down, bookmarked it and could come back easily.

Second alarm bell: He says "Can you fleet me so I can warp to you? I can't jump back in there otherwise".

Hmmm...doesn't that mean he could blast me....yep, as I add him to a fleet the game warns me that fleet members can shoot me without any punishment. (Edit: Nope, I was safe, since he was in a different corporation.) Unfortunately I clicked past this warning too quickly to read it carefully.

So I'm waiting. My heart rate increases...what have I done!? He's taking a long, long time getting here....is he bringing friends along to get on the killmail?

I start flying away from the wrecks, in case that might help put some distance between us.

He arrives.  I turn on my adaptive shield and watch him.

*bing* The wrecks turn blue...my eyes pop open! Wow! Maybe it's for real!

I watch him some more....off you go, scoot, move along, thank you :)  He begins to move but doesn't warp....then he warps - gone!

He messages me "Sorry about being a bit rusty, I'm just coming back to the game after a long break". "No problem, thanks again for the wrecks!" I say. I offer to give him a portion of the loot if there's anything valuable in there, but he declines.

The total take was about 4M ISK in loot and salvage. I flagged him as in excellent standing and went on my way.