The first run with the Tengu

Just thought I'd drop a quick post about how the first WH experience went with the tengu. I spent awhile today scanning down systems and WH's looking for the perfect one for me to inhabit. Didn't find it. I did find an unoccupied C3 with lots of combat sites though. Perfect time to test the new Tengu.

Man....it is such an upgrade over the Drake. I don't even have the subsystem skills where I want them to be yet and it is leagues above the drake. There are two main differences. The tank: I don't have to ever worry about the Tengu taking dmg. The ROF: the Tengu just spits missiles out like a big leaguer spittin' sunflower seeds. It made a very big difference when it came to completion time on sites. Definately glad I made the jump to t3.

So in my little WH raid I only ran about 5 or 6 sites. Ran the loot to my favorite trading hub for a total of 248 million isk. Made back a chunk of the Tengu already. Another two runs like that and it'll be just about paid off....

It's gonna be a new approach

So let me start this post by telling you how I wrapped up my adventures in my last WH. As you know, I had a small POS with no defenses as my only POS in the hole. Only a little protection, but only a little risk. When I logged on this morning I had two DED mails. The first telling me that someone had taken some pot shots at my POS. The second, that my POS's shields had gone below %50. Great....I warp in on a reinforced small POS.

Fortunately, I followed the cardinal rule of POS managment. Make sure to have plenty of strontium in the tower! Unfortunately, I found that while the POS is reinforced, you are unable to access anything in your corp hangar. It was at this point that I found out just how awesome it was that I always log off with my valuable sleeper salvage in my cargo hold. I was able to access the ship maintenance bay so I decided to make a break for it.

Yes, I made the extremely difficult decision to leave my small POS behind.

Along with all of the modules I had in the corp hangar, I'm estimating that I have abandoned about 120 million isk in w-space. That's a lot of isk. Not an easy decision. But, that's what they say about W-space, it's only a matter of time before you lose stuff in there. I'm happy that I made almost a billion isk with this one :)

Escaping the WH turned out to be an adventure in and of itself. I entered and scanned down the adjoining static C4. From there I moved into another WH and scanned it down. And another. And another. I couldn't believe my terrible luck. I went at least 4-5 WH's deep and didn't find an exit to hi sec or lo sec anywhere along the way. And I was VERY thorough. I actually reached a dead end where the only WH's left to go through were about to collapse due to time and I was not about to risk leaving my ships in W-space.

Next option...close the WH. As some of my readers will know, I've been on the wrong side of a closing WH before. Not fun. But a capsuleer's gotta do what a capsuleer's gotta do. So I bring out the domi and begin collapsing the WH. To finish it off I close it off with two jumps with the orca. A risk, I know, but I really really wanted out of that WH.

The next WH opens up. I scan it down and find........a Hi sec exit!! Very close to Jita at that. Perfect escape. So about 45 min later I have everything out of the WH not attached to the POS and I bid a sad farewell to Antioch...it served me well...

Needless to say, I wanted back in W-space, and quick. But before I just jumped in, I decided to take the next step in escalating my w-space effectiveness. Thanks to the 482 million isk I made from the loot I carried out with me, I was able to buy.....

Can you guess?

Yeah...it's a Tengu.

(awesome name pending)

So I'm gonna consider this an escalation of the Boblakov vs. sleeper war. It's gonna be good.

So, what it looks like now is I'm gonna be looking for a C2 or C3 that has a static C3. This would seem to be the best option at this point for making the most isk. Especially since I am having a friend join me for this next stint in w-space. He will also be bringing a Tengu. We'll see how a gang with two Tengus and a Domi does vs. how I did with one drake and a domi.

If I find the WH described above I believe that I will set up the med POS. A WH like that has the potential to be a much more permanent home. Wish me luck in my search...

What a DAY!

I certainly did not know when I logged on today how much adventure I was going to have. Some good. And some not so good.

Let's start with the not so good. Needless to say, I had my first WH experience with PVP. I have had my fair share of fights in K-space, but it certainly feels like a different animal in a WH.

So I log on to find a Tengu and a bunch of wrecks showing up on d-scan. Start looking for him. Within a minute or so the Tengu dissappears off scan. A few minutes later a Drake shows up and the wrecks start dissappearing. Fishy. Nobody in there right mind uses a Drake as a salvage boat. I finish scanning down the ship, which I really need to get better at btw, and find him slowly flying towards the last wreck....at 50 m/s. Fishy. I in my cloaked cov ops open up a convo with him. After a few minutes of talking, and playing tough guy, I fall for his I'm-an-ignorant-WH-noob routine. I basically tell him to leave my sites alone and he flips me the proverbial space bird.

So I BM'd the wreck he was moving to and when he was about 20 km away I warp back to my pos (having already logged Ant in the Domi) and switch out the cov ops for the trusty ol Drake. I then fleet warp to the wreck. When I show up on his wreck...my first sign that I had made a stupid mistake was that he didn't warp off. No. Instead he sped up. Right at me. And out of the ether uncloak 3 buddies. Eff...

The Domi got primaried and both of my ships were ecm'ed by the Falcon they had brought along. They also had a vagabond and the drake plus one other ship I didn't mark down. They scrammed the domi right away and I was able to warp bob in the Drake back to the POS. But while watching the Domi tank like nobody's business...I started to get my hopes up. I WARPED BACK!! (p.s. that was the second mistake) I was very impressed with the domi's ability to tank and I don't know that they would have been able to break it but it just so happens that I got disconnected. Yeah. It's all about timing right? First time in weeks that I DC'd and it had to be then. So it takes me at least 2-3 min to log back on and by that time the domi was done and the drake was on the way out. When I DC'd the domi's reppers had shut off. Kinda hard to tank with no repping AND no buffer. I quickly warp Ant's pod back to the pos and decide there's no hope for the Drake. So I eject and warp to the pos before they can lock me.

Scratch one Domi and one Drake.

So after I run back to the POS to cry inwardly, I continue my conversation with the pirate. Turns out that he's a 'nice' pirate. He even gave me some tips on how to gank ppl with my POS. What a nice guy. hehe

After they ganked me and took all of the loot from my ships they left the system..never to return.

So, instead of emoragequitting I decided to hit the lo sec exit and see where it came out. Turns out it was within 10 jumps of Amarr so I ended up taking the time to take both ant and bob out to replace their lost ships. Much isk and *sighing later, one new drake and one new domi back at my POS.

So let's get on with the good adventure for the day. I mentioned in a previous post how I was going to explain my next venture soon. Here it is. I've decided to upgrade to a Medium POS. While the small POS offered me the ability to not care too much if I lost it, I felt vulnurable. After the encounter with the pirates I could only hope that they wouldn't come back to completely wipe me out of the system. Fortunately that wasn't their game.

Over the course of the last few days I've been collecting items for my new WH kit. This one wouldn't fit in an Itty V so I've decided to involve my Orca in this venture. I wouldn't normally risk it in W-space but I can now afford to replace it if it is lost (thanks WH :).

So after I flew my new Drake and Domi into my WH I went back out with my cov ops to scout for Roblakov in the Orca. Got it in np. Was a little frightening waiting for the huge thing to make it into warp at the lo sec gates though...ughh...

I actually just finished setting up my POS and am almost done disassembling the small. My POS is a version of the classic 'dick star' and is certainly more of a detterent than the small ever was.

So tomorrow will be a day of site clearing and hopefully I will learn from the mistakes of my fail pvp actions and benefit from the added feeling of security from the Med POS.

A quiet night, because you can't hear the sleepers scream

So today I actually found that I didn't have anything else I needed to do in Eve. I checked out the day's new C3 exit. Turns out that it had a few residents with a large POS. The only exit was to a lo sec system. So no new home for Boblakov. Oh well. I checked the system on DOTLAN maps and found that the residents had not been on in over a day and that nobody had been clearing NPC's for more than a day as well. I decided it was a perfect time to get back to sleepering. The fuel won't pay for itself...

I ran 4 sites, all the same. In total, it took only about 1.5 hours. I had Boblakov in the Drake, and Antiochian in the Domi. I really had no problems at all and no visitors bothered me.

If the isk I made from the previous C3 sites remains fairly constant, then I probably made about 160 mil. Pretty good for 1.5 hours! I'll post the actual amount when I have a chance to make it back to k-space.

Some great WH action

So today I log in to find my gracious WH hosts just about ready to hit the adjoining static C3 for a day of pillaging sleeper strongholds. They had someone scanning down sites while the rest got ready. I was invited. For the next 2 hours or so we ran through about a dozen (maybe a little less) frontier sites. This C3 must not have been farmed for awhile cuz we got the hang of the Frontier Stronghold sites and kept running them. Each time becoming more familiar with the spawns and such than before.

For awhile we had 2 drakes (one was Boblakov), a Tempest, and Antioch's Domi. Hope I'm not leaving anyone out. Didn't take us very long to run through sites. The Domi would shield rep the drakes and tempest as necessary while the tempest would rep the Domi when she needed help...which was relatively often. After awhile the Tempest pilot had to go so we changed our group a bit and ended up with 3 drakes and the Domi. Lotta tank in our fleet :)

What's better than 2 Drakes and a Domi?

3 Drakes and a Domi :)

So I had to leave to grab some dinner with the family before everyone was back in the home hole so I'll get my share of the loot tomorrow. Will definately report on the profits then. Was a good day of sleeper blasting and flying with a great gang. Another shout out to the pilots of Stack All!

Where I'm Starting From

Alright, so I have done a rather large amount of reading about how to go about this WH adventure. But reading can only get you so far. At this point I have 3 active characters:

Boblakov: my main, he's the combat guy. Right now he flies a Drake (with all t2 fittings), and a Raven (also t2 fittings). He's also the only one of my chars that can scan. I know that's a problem and am working on the other two chars. At this point in time he is moving (slowly) towards piloting a Nighthawk.

Roblakov: my oldest char, he is the industrial alt. He mines in a Hulk and flies an Orca. Gives great mining bonuses too. He is really the only char at this point who can fly a ship with any sort of meaningful cargo capacity. He's gonna be riding out these first few missions in an Itty V.

Antiochian: the youngest of the bunch. This char can fly a hulk with decent mining skills and is now training fully in combat skills. She flies a Domi with mostly t2 fittings right now but is training to finish out the t2 fit. Has decent drone skills already so will be useful on the sleeper sites.

So that's the team. From what I have read I have assembled my WH kit and am waiting to find the perfect WH. More on that in another post.

The Kit:

• Small Amarr Tower
• 1 x corporate hangar array
• 1 x ship maintenece array
• one week of fuel

This all fits into the Itty V, so Roblakov has his job.

Ships:

• Drake (Boblakov)
• Covops (Boblakov)
• Salvage boat (Boblakov)
• Domi (Antiochian)
• Itty V (Roblakov)

It's at this point that I see my first potential problem. And I don't know if it's a problem yet. But 3 of the 5 ships, Boblakov has to fly into the hole. We'll see if that ever ends up being a problem in the future...

So that's the setup I'm taking into the first suitable hole I find. Suggestions are VERY welcome!