Explorapalooza!

from flickr user KAlexanderson

It's been a few days since I have been able to write here, but I got in a lot of exploration time. I missed our corp fleet night on Sunday but I had plenty of time to establish a nice routine of exploration. I *did* try and do the right thing for my corp and run plexes but I couldn't find a plex that wasn't defended by an NPC.

Remember, my starting point is a low-skilled pilot (Astrometrics 3, Hacking 2, Archaelogy 2) in low-sec flying a cheap ship (Imicus) with the cheapest equipment. And I was still able to raid about 10 exploration sites across 15 star systems for a total haul of approximately 80M ISK, in about 5 hours. As my scanning skills improve (Astro 4+, Pinpointing etc) this should speed up a lot. It currently takes me 3 scans just to identify if a signature is a wormhole/combat site or not.

I used the star map to pick out two "branches" of systems that were mostly low-traffic. In each system I created a "safe spot" bookmark and sat there, cloaked, while scanning. I'd estimate that 1 in 6 signatures were data/relic sites. Friggin' combat sites. Friggin' wormholes.  When I found and ran the data/relic sites I never encountered anybody else or found a site that had been partially run.

The hacking game itself can be tricky, but if you leave the white dots till the end, and make sure you're not clicking so fast that you miss picking up a useful tool, then lose it because you've uncovered a trap in the next node, you'll have a good chance of getting to the loot. I also found that I can start the game as soon as I'm under 5km from the tower, because the ship will continue to approach while I'm hacking, and when the loot spills I'll be sitting at 0 distance from the tower. 

Basic Scatter Can Guide: At a data site, decrypters are in "Parts". At relic sites the salvage is evenly spread between "Parts" and "Materials". At BOTH types of sites, Blueprints are in "Data". This will cover most of what you'll want to find.

You must use a cargo scanner and say to yourself what cans you're looking to pick up. See the guide at the bottom of this Eve Uni page for this golden information! For example if the scanner shows two good decrypters and a blueprint, I say "parts, parts, data" to myself and watch what I'm collecting to make sure I'm getting the decrypters (and not just junk parts). A good tip to see this is to have the Inventory window open and scrolled down to the bottom. As new stuff enters your cargo, the icon will appear and the inventory window will keep scrolling down, so the item most recently picked up will always be visible.

Your ship has a built in tractor beam that you didn't know about, and it will retrieve a scatter can up to 3500M away with a SINGLE click. While retrieving a can you can also click on a different can. The first will be colored green, then second will flash to indicate it is queued up for retrieval. Don't double click, or you'll move towards a can and maybe get out of range of half the good stuff!

After running the site I always go back to a local station and drop the goods safely into the hanger. Most other pilots carry their treasure around until they have an amount they are happy with, then return home. I'm still pretty paranoid and don't mind waiting till later to retrieve the loot.

Paranoia

While flying through these systems I found a gate that was surrounded by wrecks. They were all looted and the overview showed nobody around. If you've read my earlier postings you know this is what I've been waiting for! There was even a couple of "elite" wrecks, which would drop T2 salvage. But I decided there was a chance that it was a trap; that a cloaked Destructinator was waiting for me. It was difficult, but I left it alone. It was made a little easier knowing that the last few stray wrecks I'd salvage yielded very little of value, so I think I'm cured of the salvage bug for now, at least while using an Imicus. Perhaps in a Noctis and working with a level 4 mission runner, it might be worth doing.

Ship Used

[Imicus, Data and Relic Sites]

Warp Core Stabilizer I

Nanofiber Internal Structure I

Damage Control I

Data Analyzer I

Relic Analyzer I

Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I

Cargo Scanner I

Prototype Cloaking Device I

Core Probe Launcher I, Core Scanner Probe I

75mm Compressed Coil Gun I, Antimatter Charge S

Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I

Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I

[empty rig slot]

The gun is optional. The Gravity Capacitors make your scanning more effective. You MUST have the Core Probe Launcher & probes, Cargo Scanner, Data/Relic analyzer and cloaking device to do this safely and effectively.

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.

A Busy Night in New Eden

Long post today, so here's the tl;dr --
I returned to an activity that I keep hoping will cough up huge rewards for very little effort and found that it's not as easy as the youtube videos make it look: Salvage. Specifically, I wanted to loot and/or salvage elite wrecks, which contain T2 components. Then I tried to find level 3/4 mission runners, without success. I also gave exploration another try, without much success. At the end of the night I rejoined my corp for some plexing and made more LP/ISK in ten minutes than I did in ninety minutes of salvage efforts.

Salvagers at work on USS Oklahoma, 1942
From flickr user Kernon01

Salvage / Exploration

First step was to add a cloak to my Imicus. I spent some time running around buying and moving components. I should add another small salvage tackle to this.

[Imicus, Imicus Scan AND Salvage]
Nanofiber Internal Structure I
Co-Processor I
Co-Processor I

1MN Microwarpdrive I
Data Analyzer I
Cargo Scanner I
Relic Analyzer I

Prototype Cloaking Device I
Salvager I
Expanded Probe Launcher I, Combat Scanner Probe I

Small Salvage Tackle I
Small Salvage Tackle I
[empty rig slot]


Hobgoblin I x4
Salvage Drone I x4

I added the cloak so that I could go into low-sec or null-sec, make a safe spot and sit there, cloaked, while I scan the system.  I'm using the very CPU hungry (220!) Expanded Probe Launcher because I want to able to scan for ships and drones as well as cosmic anomalies.

On the theory that data/relic sites would be more plentiful and untouched in low-traffic system I went to two nearby high-sec systems (I chickened out on the low-sec route) and ran three sites. They yielded mostly crap, but I got two decryptors and the total take was about 2 million ISK. I missed out on a 3M ISK drop by, I think, focusing on the wrong kind of canister. I'm going to keep trying it, especially in low-traffic low-sec systems, but only after I learn the cloak/MWD trick for getting past gate camps.

Plex Wrex

There's a salvaging guide that got me fired up a few weeks back and the system of Heydelies is a perfect place to try the techniques it describes. Focus on Elite Wrecks, which are destroyed ships that had T2 components on board. Most Faction Warfare fighters don't bother salvaging -- some don't even bother looting, and I dream of finding a field of yummy wrecks that I can pick through and get Space Rich.

So I flew to a safe spot in Heyd and d-scanned the three existing plexes. One was occupied, but no wrecks, one was empty, and the third....2 elite wrecks, 3 regular wrecks! And 4 occupants. Damn, I'll have to wait them out. 

While waiting I contemplate my options. Ideally, I would be left alone in a plex with wrecks (Dr Seuss on line 2), but of course you can't expect that. What I think will work best is to nip into a plex, bookmark a wreck, then come back in 15/20 minutes, when the plex is gone. The wrecks it contained will now be floating in deep space and you're almost guaranteed to not be discovered. This is something I'll try later. Remember to write down the identifier of the plex so you don't confused it for a new plex of the same type when you come back later.

So, I keep watching the crew of scumbags that are sitting on my wrecks...Tristan...Kestrel...Atron...Navitas. Hmm, this looks familiar. A new ship shows up. Name of "High Drag Podcast!" It's Kyle! Hah! They're my corp!

I get on comms and ask if it's ok if I salvage the wrecks, get the all-clear and give it a try. The result wasn't as lucrative as I thought and took a MUCH longer time than would be safe in hostile space. I think this was a medium plex and one of the wrecks must have been a larger/more complex class. It took about 5 minutes on that using only one salvager and four salvage drones.

Here's the kicker though: I looted two Caldari Navy ships, the two NPCs that defended the plex, and each dropped a 2.6M Navy dogtag. I made more from those tags than all the salvaging, and it took mere seconds.  Add to that the approximately 10000 loyalty points I picked up for the three plexes we completed, and salvaging looks like a mug's game.

The bottom line is that salvaging is a gamble and I'm doing it for fun, to scratch an itch that MAY one day lead me to a field of juicy T2 wrecks that only I can locate. That's going to be a fun time!

Back To Shooting

I dropped my salvage/loot back at base and re-shipped into an Atron. The fighting in Heyd was slim tonight so we went to Old Man Star, where we found a doozy of a fight. By this time our fleet was eight strong so we scared off quite a few potential fights. But for our final fight a Stabber (cruiser) arrived and sat on the gate for a while. He jumped in and we attacked. He was quickly joined by at least three more cruisers and we lost three thrashers. I wasn't attacked or pointed, probably because I was not the juiciest target in the room and was able to warp out cleanly when the order came.

It was a busy couple of hours, made some ISK, scratched my exploring itch (including a couple of ideas that didn't pan out) and had a good time chatting with my corpmates, one of whom sent me a nice gift afterwards -- thanks!

Missed it by *that* much!

From flickr user neeravbhatt

Plexing

It was a fun night! Five members of Aideron Robotics jumped into frigates and looked for a fight in Heydelies.  The first encounter was with what everyone agreed was an interestingly fit Atron, flying solo. It took out me and another fast tackler before succumbing to our weight of numbers. And if you're counting ISK expenditure, this 15M Atron only took a few million worth of our ships with it.  I'm credited with being on this kill, but I don't know why. I did no damage and was unable to warp scramble him. Maybe I distracted him by exploding in an interesting way?

I've been blown up in what feels like the same way a few times now. The target will web or scram me so I can't use my MWD to get close to them, then pull away and start shooting. My guns are very short range so I can't do any damage. Perhaps I should switch to afterburners instead? I've had no reason so far to need the MWD since we mostly fight in plexes and I don't need to do long, fast dashes across space. The consensus on this forum post is to stick with MWD if your role is fast tackle; you need to be able to pin down someone who is trying to run away. And I guess I'm taking a hit for my colleagues in their more expensive ships, which makes sense; when the enemy has me pointed he can't also point them.

I zipped back to base to re-ship and asked the corp for a new ship to be put in my hangar.  I fumbled with the contract interface and the delay meant that I missed the next fight. The Atron pilot came back in a 66M ISK Imperial Navy Slicer and leaped into the teeth of our 5 man gang. Was he drunk? Or brave? Overconfident, perhaps?  Whatever the source of his bravado it didn't help him and he went down fast [Update: he had been damaged badly in a fight with QCATS pilots. Still doesn't explain why he entered a plex...perhaps didn't remember to check if it was occupied?]. The oohs and aahs rang loudly as we picked through his loot and examined the kill report. His microwarp drive alone was valued at 31 million isk! It's odd, because his kill record is pretty darn strong.

It was very nice to hear encouragement from my corpmates to get there quickly so I could get in on the kill; unfortunately my window of opportunity closed as I was reaching the acceleration to the novice plex where all this went down.  And had I gotten there earlier I'd have encountered the Slicer OUTSIDE the plex, alone, and surely gotten chewed up and spat out.

To cap off what was a fun night the loot division resulted in a windfall for me!  Those carrying the loot asked how it should be divided up and the boss said split it between those that got killed. My hanger has about 27M ISK of new shinies in it :)  Thanks guys!

Low-Sec Salvaging

In extra-curricular activities I'm thinking about running around in a cloaked Venture (because it has +2 warp core stability baked right in to the ship) like this. The shields will, hopefully let me survive an initial attack and the extra stabilizers mean it'll take a lot of effort to pin me down.

I got the idea from this Johnny Pew video.

[Venture, Low Sec Salvage]
Warp Core Stabilizer I

Medium Shield Extender I
Adaptive Invulnerability Field I
Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I

Salvager I
Salvager I
Prototype Cloaking Device I

Small Salvage Tackle I
Small Salvage Tackle I
Small Salvage Tackle I


Salvage Drone I x2

I also tried my luck in a Velator (free noob ship) with just 2 salvagers attached (no other modules at all), but didn't find any wrecks to try it on!  I got chased from a gate back to my home station and actually survived it! Still, I think the cloak will be a better idea.