The High Sec Carebear has finally moved to 0.0, Adventures with TEST awaits.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Ninja mining wormhole space.

A while back I found a wormhole, I was out scanning with a friend, the system was quiet and the scan on the inside showed nothing, so we thought "What the hell, let's try".
We hopped inside and scanned for sites, plenty of sites showed on the initial one and we went for the gravimetric sites right away (or whatever they're called inside the WH's).
After narrowing one down we bookmarked the WH on both sides and went in for some cheap ships.
I opted for a Covetor, fully insured off course and my friend went in with a Prophecy Battlecruiser, we figured we'd play it cheap and safe since we really hadn't done this before and if nothing else the Prophecy has a good tank.

It was a fairly uneventful endeavour, which was just what we wanted really, a couple of sleepers spawned once in the belt and the Prophecy had no issues dealing with them.  We had a couple of safespots set up so we could warp between them if we needed to and we kept the scanner running the whole time.  My friend also warped around a bit and found nothing even resembling a PoS or any sign of humans, I stayed in the belt and mined Arkonor and Bistot frothing at the mouth from the mere sight of it.
I've not been to 0.0 for a long time and even back then I didn't stay long, didn't get involved much out there, I've spent most of my days in highsec empire regions and the sight of all this ABC ore was just to much.

The ABC ore presented a problem though, there was so much of it and it takes up a lot of space, I also wanted to grab as much as possible of it while we were out there.  I kept jetcanning and after a while I'd filled 4 full can's and we were starting to plan the logistics part of it.
My friend warped out and fetched an Itty 5 for the hauling, I Stayed in the belt with the scanner running and provided the "mobile" warp in point for the Iteron.
The station I was basing out of back then was in the same system as our WH so it wasn't a long trip, it did still take a little while to get it all out however and we weren't quite sure on how the collapsing wormhole thing worked either.  I've rarely felt so lonely in EVE as I did sitting in there, thinking about all the horrible things that would happen to my poor Covetor if someone jumped me or if the WH collapsed as my friend went out.  In the end though, no one jumped me, we got all the ore out and the WH didn't collapse until I got my non probe fitted barge out of there.  We did get quite a few hauls of ABC ore out of there which promptly went in to producing several Drakes.  Money was made and pats on the back was had for braving the dangers of unknown space, we felt pretty good about the whole thing to be honest.

Our little expedition back then has kept returning to my mind though, how viable is it to jump in, mine like hell and get it all out.  I have to say I'm not to fond of the idea of living in a WH, I like empire, it may be safe and cozy, but it's also very convenient.
WH has the ore though, the ABC ore, the same ore I really need for production and it's all there waiting to be mined.  So disregarding the idea of living in there and struggling with the logistical nightmare of PoS'es, manually collapsing WH's into other systems before someone else finds them and hauling everything back to empire from God knows what exit you'll find.  I've kept thinking about wether it's viable to just go in and grab what you can.

I'll need a fresh entry WH's that can take the mass of several hauler trips, I'll also need a quiet entry system to reduce the risk of others scanning for the WH's as well. I'm assuming populated WH's will have very few sites to mine and also be somewhat hostile, understandably, to someone coming in to mine or run sites.  Ideally there would also be a station in the entry system to reduce the travel time of haulers running the ore.

The operation would ideally consist of T1 ships, inferior to Hulk's in every way, they do have the massive advantage of being throw away ships and fully insurable.  The loss would be acceptable when/if something went horribly wrong.
A battlecruiser of something similar would be required for dealing with any spawns, again keeping it cheap and preferably a prober with a cloak scouting the system while the miners did their thing and in the event we'd need a new way out.

It seems like a possible operation, I'm not sure how viable it is though as I've not tried it with more then two people.  I'd also need to convince the other participants that it's a good idea, in the event of total failure however the ships involved would not represent a horrendous loss.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.  Braving new space is after all what EVE is about.
That and money off course.

Fly safe.

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Eve Tribune Invention and T2 Production guide

Excellent read from the Tribune this week, if you're looking to get into T2 production you may want to give this one a try.
I'm considering taking the step into T2 myself, if nothing else just to try it a little and see if I can turn a profit on it, and I'll be sure to keep this guide close at hand.

Eve Tribune #17, Year 5 - An Industrial Guide to Invention and T2 Production