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[Rince Wind]

Was your cane a shield ship, or armor as well?

I know it sounds hard, but lvl 3 is barely enough in most cases. Allowing alphas to fly BS and then capping at 3 is kind of a trap here.
If you can tank well enough I would recommend 800mm autos for missions. Arty is hard(er) to fit and if you miss you waste like 15-20 seconds. Though you spend way less on ammo with arty.

About the Probe: being nigh unscannable is not as useful as it might sound. It helps you in safe spots, but most people that hunt in WHs don't scan for ships but for the sites. More than half the time they probably already scanned the sites and only wait for someone to come in. They might watch you probe and wait until you start running the sites. DSCAN can tell them which site you are in pretty easily, as they just have to look for the relics and datas (tried data sites in december, still crap, better off ignoring them and to just do the relics).
Afterburner/MWD is almost as good a defence: while you scan align to your exit or another safespot (2nd is better, because the direction of the exit can betray you) and keep moving in that direction. When they do scan you down (which you should see most of the time, combat probes are a dead giveaway, but experienced players can narrow down your position via dscan very well [deep space safe spots make that harder] and might only need one cycle.) they won't land on top of you, giving you the time to get away usually. And when you have to fly 60km without propmods, or warp there, bookmark, warp away, come back in, that is quite a bit of time better spent someplace else.

If you are going into WHs let me suggest a mobile depot. Drop off your loot after each site, and once you are done with the hole scoop it in just to deploy in the next one where you run a site or three. Just don't forget the bookmarks, and even if you do get ganked you can still get your loot out. So far I have never seen anyone bother to scan my depots down.

[lordcooper]

On top of what Rince Wind said; being unprobeable isn't really a thing, particularly for a t1 ship, particularly in w-space where pretty much everyone has a scanning alt with all the relevant skills maxed and a full set of virtue implants.

In addition to that, you should be fitting an mwd to scanning ships rather than an afterburner.

[xaritscin]

i just saw it as a cheap fit, shouldnt cost more than one million actually. like, if you die you buy another and start again or something like that. the instarwarpy one is more expensive due to the T2 items.

as for the mwd, well it bumps your signature radius so i saw it as not proper for this cases. i only turn on the AB for certain stuff, usually in pulses. try to stay on short align times. im not new to whs actually.

as for the hurricane. it has the following fit (was originally planned for a C1 wh or combat sites but i thought it would be best to just run L3s for a while)

[Hurricane, Nencatacoa]

Damage Control II
Gyrostabilizer II
Gyrostabilizer II
Gyrostabilizer II
Tracking Enhancer II
Tracking Enhancer II

10MN Monopropellant Enduring Afterburner
Medium Shield Booster II
Limited Adaptive Invulnerability Field I
Limited Adaptive Invulnerability Field I

650mm Medium 'Scout' Artillery I
650mm Medium 'Scout' Artillery I
650mm Medium 'Scout' Artillery I
650mm Medium 'Scout' Artillery I
650mm Medium 'Scout' Artillery I
650mm Medium 'Scout' Artillery I
Core Probe Launcher I

Medium Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Medium Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Medium Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer I



Hobgoblin I x7

EMP M x2052

only mission that makes me warp out is guristas blockade.


EDIT:

huh nevermind the ship. got the station mission again, everything seemed fine until a third BC spawn came with a bunch of jammers. im just gonna stick to exploration for now. made a lot of money anyways but not close to what i had before. need to lift what i spent in injectors.

[lordcooper]

I give up

[xaritscin]

ehhhh, i play for relax nowadays, playing optimal is only worth when you are actually time limited. playing as an alpha has its downsides but i dont have to worry about loosing isk, only getting it.

anyways, after loosing my tutorial thrasher while doing low sec ratting (you can only dodge T3s so much, fuck instalock fits, i dont give a fuck if you need it to catch ceptors, its still too much).

i decided to find another way of living. C13 wormholes sound like the place to be, if not for a little problem. they are hard to find, and most of the guides talk about Confessor fits (so much for dank ticks). since i dont give a fuck about dank ticks i fitted an armor Rifter with a 40m3 stock of ammunition (16K units of EMP s, cheap, lasts for a lot of time) and some vital stuff like mobile depot and 3 expanded cargohold IIs, i missed the hull repper, gonna have to add one in the next port.

anyways, i spent a lot of time in heimatar looking for wormhole entrances, finally got a link to an abandoned C3 which linked to another C3 but still shattered wormholes, found a link to a C4 with a C1 connection.

i finally decided to settle in that C1 since its pretty barren (there's 2 POS towers but no upwell stuff). got 3 safespots just in case but im probably gonna need to make more if i want to stay. total cargo with everything leaves 30m3 of hold open to carry blue loot. so i decided to drop the mobile depot there and farm whatever sites i can (as long as i dont get traffic in the system).

the plan was originally to use the rifter in a shattered hole because of the armor tanking potential. but i couldnt find an entrance to one of those so i instead went to test the fit against the sleeper drones in normal conditions (no special effects in system).

before that i checked the google doc that everybody uses in order to see which sites were the less dense in rats and which of those could pose a potential threat. i neglecte all the sites that had neuting (i can keep the ship at 60% capacitor right now, but i dont wan to take chances to get capped out when i depend so much on repping and afterburning)

so the only formal combat site that was avaliable was the Perimeter Ambush Point. there's only 2 threats there, first one is the webbing frigate at the start, but testing showed that it dies pretty quickly and the ship can still tank while in stasis long enough to release itself. the second threat is the lack space to orbit the sentries (i use autocannons, mostly because of the close range against larger targets), i've already got a chunk of hull taken out because the ship got stuck so i have keep an eye on it.

outside of those two the site can be done with a meta4 gunned frigate, the Rifter has enough lows to have a high resistances profile while still being speedy enough to sig tank and perma rep itself with a combo of cap battery + cap recharge while saving rigs for extra armor resistances. in some cases the rats were landing 150-200 damage hits but a single rep was more than enough to keep me way above half armor.

there were only 2 of those in the system, but i could make use of the gas sites and ore anomalies, the most common ones dont have cap warfare or webbing rats which means i can hunt them down as a complement to the anomalies.

the idea is to fill that minimum of 30m3 with blue loot if possible (should account for 150 million with just Sleeper Data Libraries) or if things are better, use the 3 expanded cargoholds to make even more money.

EDIT:

mistakes were made. now i know that Perimeter Camps cannot be done (neuts == wave triggers -> focusing in the neuters spawns more neut == dead). i went and tried to made an even cheaper fit that could survive.

a passive tanked Slasher works as a charm, lost the first one in a Perimeter Hangar at a C2 due to the battleships (i dont realy know what happened, sig radius is still lower than even a destroyer or regural frigate so i dont get why i got one shotted at full speed by a missile or anything, there were not other players either).

anyways, ALREADY REPLACED! im gonna try and find a proper C1 hole this time. 8K ammunition is more than enough (arties) to run the sites and i wont probaly get stuck on anything this time. but if i bleed to the other hitpoints i still have an armor and hull reppers in the backpack. still having 30m3 worth of space for blue loot.

autocannons ate roughly 3K units of ammo per site, that amount should be properly half or less with arties but i have to make the most out of those 8K. anyways, im gonna keep going with this.

EDIT2:

NOPE!, passive tanked slasher with arties or autos cannot do anything in the ambush points. LML breacher with perma tank + prop is the real MVP in this case. reliable damage thanks to missiles and drones and enough boosting power to keep running even with a meta4 module which allowed me to churn in a BCUII on the fit, upping the DPS a bit.

it took more or less 9 loads of missiles to finish a site (even when timing the launch). so 5K units of light missile should last for a while before i have to refill again. until then im gonna spend as much time as i can on this C1 i recently discovered.

the system is relatively small so i can keep an eye with the scanner. there's a raitaru and an astrahus along with 4 pos towers but im nto sure if they are running, havent seen anything on scanner yet. there's a lot of anomalies but im only focused on the ambush points for now. hopefully i wont have to abandon the place tomorrow,.

[Rince Wind]

You should bring in a probe for the relic sites as well.

[xaritscin]

i have all the essentials, mobile depot, armor repper, hull repper, a set of probes and the launcher to use them. only thing missing was an MTU. the probe launcher is only used for scanning holes, the sleeper relic and data sites have too much neuts for the amount of cap the ship has (even with Cap Battery) so i have to stick only to ambush points and ore sites.

the sad part is that the only direct upgrade from here is to the VFI (Vigil Fleet Issue) which is specifically bonused for rockets and i cant make use of the web bonus unless i intend to do PvP. i mean, its the best faction frigate for my lvl because i can make use of that Minmatar Frigate IV compared to say, cross training to Caldari to complement my Gallente frigate skills to pull a Worm/Garmur.

i could use a Firetail or even a Dramiel but missiles are better in this case because of the 100% accuracy alpha damage, even when i have close to full turret skills (except for T2 weapon skills) arties are terribad when you're going at 1000+ m/s. on the other side of the coin autocannons require you to pull close and usually the orbit range is beyond optimal so you cant deal full damage to targets.

sleepers are too fast to shoot at orbit and i cant keep low transversal because they would be landing hits on me too so missile kiting is the only proper strat here.

 

[Rince Wind]

Oh, about the ship you lost earlier, did you by any chance fly right at someone? Because that is deadly in a frig.

[xaritscin]

Oh, about the ship you lost earlier, did you by any chance fly right at someone? Because that is deadly in a frig.

some recaps:

1. the original C1 rifter i used was lost trying to do a Perimeter Camp -> neuted and swarmed by the frigate triggers

2. the first passive tanked slasher was one shot at a C2 -> battleship spawn somehow was able to deal damage despite having a fairly small signature radius

3. second passive tanked slasher was brought down by the second wave -> shield regen wasnt enough to keep up despite having speed as additional, too much damage when aligning

UPDATE:

there's 3 ambush points pendant to run, i was close to finish one but a guy entered the system with a heron then came back with a ferox alt and tried to scan me down. tried dodging him by returning to empire space (needed to get drones again, fucking disconnects, at least there's a mission hub 1 jump from the staging system so cheap acolytes!).

cant keep going on until that guy gives up or i dont know. i even flew to one of the structures (the raitaru is 14 hours missing or so to anchor, guess i'll have to abandon the hole in the future). so i waited until combat timer expired, kited him into the engineering complex then warped back to a safe and logoffski.

im gonna jump to my new caldari alt for a while. hopefully this guy wont be in the C1 by when i return, my only complain is loosing the 8 million or so of that site, now there's only perimeter camps there but i cant run those.

UPDATE2:

i got to more or less finish the site, but only got to loo 3 wrecks. still i had made one last ambush point before. and another spawned to take its place. the constellation this system belongs seems to get their anoms cycled pretty fast or its because i dont clear them too fast and thus respawn a few hours after i finish.

anyways. an impel and an anathema appeared in the scanner but they were probably travellers, the man in the ferox appeared again and there was also a navy brutix. i didnt get scanned this time for some reason.

however, a mobile depot was left floating in space, so someone is settling in. the main entrance collapsed at last but i found a new one 4 jumps out of Amarr. so im going to restock and try to get my hands on an angel data site that spawned, along with perhaps, some tackle items to see if i can bait explorers or get some salvagers to get extra stuff.

UPDATE3:

cant fit an expanded probe launcher on the Breacher (CPU is not enough even if i take out all the other modules, must be that missing lvl in electronics or something), so i cant scan down that mobile depot and take it down (or check if i can steal stuff from those abandoned POS towers).

anyways, the rest of the stuff was able to be hauled from Amarr without any cargo mods. replenished the 5K stock of missiles, a pair of drones, scram + web (not sure if i'll be able to pull out that one on a explorer but its worth bringing somehow), a single salvager along with data and relic analyzers.

the angel data site only got me 3 successfull cans for a total of more or less 6 million.

doing another ambush point gave a bit over 12 million counting blue loot + drone salvage. so my income improved, the key is to be able to manage the change of modes, specially after restocks since i need to be able to both change modules and carry the mobile depot (dont want to risk it, i depend on it heavily).

the good part is that all the goods are below in volume to the ammunition and since i burn roughly 1K of missiles per ambush point i get to release that pressure quickly. perhaps i should not round to 5K and instead carry the 4800 flat just to save those extra m3.

UPDATE4:

i finally was able to finish the rest of the ambush points without interruptions (some explorers here and there but no combat probes or combat ships in scanner). total blue loot of those 3 sites along with the few wrecks from the uncompleted one, full salvage of each site and the few loot from the data site yielded a bit over 43 millions in total.

i got to chronometrate the time it takes to clear a site, with current equipment and skills it takes aprox 50 minutes to clear a site in perfect conditions. upping the DPS to 100 should fix it to a degree, have to check the avaliability of some of the stuff and revise the fit. the Breacher isnt exactly bonused for damage, so the rate of fire only improves a bit of the stuff, perhaps changing to rockets but i like having a good degree of range. its not exactly a life or death situation, but i'd like to clear these things faster.

now that the ambush points have been cleared i dont have much to do, gonna check if there's new signatures that i could run. im also doing 1000 km bookmarks to the structures for extra watching spots.

[xaritscin]

second day in the Red Giant system:

not much to do outside of scanning new signatures. a serpentis data site appeared but only got to do 4 cans from which only had a handfull of low cost bulkheada and parts along with some decryptors. the main canister exploded (too much stuff blocking the way, by the time i reached the matrix i didnt have enough to bring it down).

i made a revision of the relic and data sleeper sites. Forgotten Perimeter Power Arrays and Unsecured Perimeter Amplifiers can be done with this breacher as long as i can keep range out of neuts durign the second wave, take down the neuting frigates and then bring down the Awakened Escorts which deal big damage from long range.

was able to loot, salvage and hack a complete power array site, but the amplifier was bursting me down. to make things worse, i had to leave the mobile depot in a safespot to be able to haul some of the relic loot. and by the time i warped back to it there was a Lachesis waiting for me.

it was by sheer speed that i was able to warp out before he locked on me, the system has a high sec static so i was able to jump into empire space for the time being, the wormhole connected 5 jumps out of Dodixie so im going to sell this stuff and wait.

those scan inmunity ships are as annoying as the instalocking ones. i hope i wont have to leave the wormhole due to this, but if that's the case i have enough money to replace the mobile depot, i didnt left anything else behind.

UPDATE:

well, waiting for a while in high sec was more than enough. the guy put the depot in reinforced mode but i returned in a rookie ship and was able to scoop it back to safety (must have got bored and leaved).

outside of the Lachesis there was a Cheetah that seems to live in the wormhole too. it started scanning for sites while i was in the middle of another relic site.

i was able to finish the data site and was planning on doing the rest of the relic sites but the interruption of the covert ops ship made me move outside of the system for a while. thus one relic site was left. on the good side, the second relic site had a Talocan frigate among the containers, pretty cool find. however, in some of the waves i had to overheat to keep tanking, pretty good way to survive using the bonuses of the system phenomena, allthought i had to go outside and get repped by structures, cant use nanite paste.

the full loot and salvage of all the sites at that point was close to 150 million aprox. sadly, it seems the market for them i actually quite low so i only made a part of that amount. i had to get rid of it quickly because the yellow loot is too heavy to carry and i had to empty the equipment into the mobile depot.

i'll probably need to do the same with tomorrow's loot depending on if there's new sites to be done. im still waiting for new anomalies to come but it seems no one is passing by the system to help clear the Perimeter Camps.

with today's sites i've already got my wallet over the 200 million mark again, trully a feat of strength to be honest. doing high sec PvE in a bigger vessel or exploration felt like it took ages to get the same results, so i guess im going to have the required money to fund the Dramiel after all, with spare in the wallet for anything else.

i just wish there were more options for Minmatar besides angel ships. blood raiders mean injecting lasers whereas serpentis means injecting for hybrids. having a missile option would be good.

[xaritscin]

the Ferox player appeared again today. im not playing cat and mouse for some damn wrecks so im going to abandon that hole and look for a new C1. really, i dont know what he wants that he even tries to convo me. im not interested in corp stuff or anything.

anyways i discovered that you can do Perimeter Camps safely if you have a cap battery fitted on the ship.  so its 2 anomalies, relic and data sites from sleepers and the normal pirate sites for the whole expedition.

the higher anoms and sites have too much neuting power or webs and thus require additional cap batteries to negate some of the energy drain. it wouldnt be good for a shield ship but an armor vessel could get those 2 batteries going for 50% reduction in energy drain, not to mention the higher capacitor recharge to help mitigate the rest.

im gonna fix some market orders and haul myself to jita before planning the next move.

[xaritscin]

there's a lot of skills pending so i bought the necessary skillbooks and 4 alpha injectors. will have to stay un the trade hub for a few days while checking on the skills. shield, armor and support skills are close to maxed (on alpha constraints). gunnery and missiles come close, with most of the large grind being on bringing some of the stuff to lvl4-5. Drones were untouched for a lot of time so it will probably eat the bulk of the injectors, interfacing,  sharpshooting, durability and navigation wont probably get past lvl 3 (sp requirements for the last 2 lvls mean a lot of money). can use medium and heavy drones now too.

the rest of the other skills didnt change much with Lifeblood. as for Spaceship Command related. Gallente ship skills are at lvl 3 at most (no battleship, i dont have interest in the Machariel at all), bringing them to lvl4 would be the ideal in order to squish out those last bonuses for the Angel ships.

once i've finished with this im gonna look for a new wormhole and check how much improvement i got in terms of clearing speed for the sites. current simulations are getting close to 70 DPS (drones included).

if things keep like that, im gonna consider adding Amarr frigate to see if i can add the Astero to the list of vessels, my problem with the ship is that it costs more than the Dramiel and i dont have cloak, so the only things justifying the cost are the armor and exploration bonuses along with the lightweight attributes. im not sure if that 20% bonus per lvl to drone HP helps at all in wormholes taking in account the damage of the NPCs.

[Toady One]

(removed spam and some replies)

[xaritscin]

thanks for the bot control Toady.

as for thread related stuff.

TIL overheated modules repair themselves while in the cargo when doing repairs (or at least that's what happened while i was fixin armor and hull during some site clearing).

it took a bit of time to find another C1 opening, at least one relatively far from the forge. the new system doesnt have any special effect but it seems uninhabited so far. there's not much anomalies but there were lots of sites (mostly gas and wormholes). so far there's a perimeter camp pendant while i do some perimeter amplifiers.

alpha injectors were fully consumed and got to lvl some needed stuff, but there's still a lot of stuff pending and i dont seem to see much improvement in DPS, only a few numbers higher. however, this should ease getting to the 100 DPS mark. just need the money for the ships.

[xaritscin]

the Assault Frigate changes have been shipped along with other stuff. March's release will come with changes to Sov Warfare, Jump Fatigue along with some Citadel stuff and changes to HACs. in addition, CCP will be migrating the chat system to its own hosted server while still working more or less the same way and with new stuff (something has been talked about looking at the chat from mobile sources, nto just in your PC). freeing some work from the main server cluster for probably more people churning out ships in fights.

however, the currenty hype as of now comes from Singularity. there's models for a new line of "Triglavian Collective" ships which seem to point to a new Amarr related "pirate" faction or a completely new faction into the game which has mixed hardpoints (regular ship hardpoints along with a new Drifter related weapon that can be mounted on them).

to accompany those there's also a new Drifter cruiser and a new set of Drifter weaponry along with the ABC energy weapons that are coming up for those Triglavian ships.

there's also a model for a SoCT "battleship" for the 15 years aniversary.

things are getting more or less exciting i must say. hopefully my new Caldari alt will be able to participate on something.