Ecliptic Rift

The Bei tower has come down. Not due to hostile activity, nor (in a nod to some surreal rumors started by the NER executor) due to escaped velociraptors. Unfortunately, the return on investment just hadn’t appeared. I’d burned enough ISK via fuel and figured I’d had enough. Ecliptic Rift remains in NER for now, however, mostly because I have no compelling reason to leave at the moment.

So last night, I’d just docked my Cheetah in Hek when the SYNEPUBLIC channel lit up with reports of a Sansha raid in Vylade. Out of curiosity, I checked the navicomputer. Only eight jumps, high-sec all the way. I had a Sleeper-fit Drake in my hangar, too. I had my pod moved over, checked to make sure I had enough heavy missiles in the hold, and undocked.

As I made my way out there, I joined the fleet structure. An ad hoc coalition of pilots had assembled quickly; we had a hair under 50 pilots in our fleet, and I know of at least two others present. When I arrived at planet II, the warp-in point positively swarmed with Nightmares and support craft, not to mention lots of independent capsuleers to oppose (and support) them. After identifying the nearest cruiser-sized vessels, I set to work. We eventually destroyed all the Sansha craft, including the additional Nightmare squadrons they continued to send through their wormhole. I didn’t see any capitals present this time, although some capsuleer sympathizers destroyed a CONCORD command vessel on the field.

I don’t really know why I went out there. Nation managed to “harvest” 65 thousand people from the planet, which might seem like a lot but could have been worse after the million lost yesterday. It just seems like we shouldn’t tolerate turning regular, normal people into True Slaves (or whatever Kuvakei does with them).

Still, I need to get out of here. I’ve liquidated quite a few of my assets and almost reached the point where I can get out of Republic space for a while. Soon…

So, what’s in your hangar?

Most of my ship names consist of trying to find something that sounds technical and might relate in some (tangential) way to the ship’s purpose. Occasionally, I give them names for specific tactical purposes, like naming a ship after another ship class, to confuse inexperienced pilots who might pick me up on the directional scanner.

Let’s see…

1x Fenrir, “Ootini”: I use this ship when moving bases, though in reality I suspect I may free up the invested capital for other things that have a better ROI. It shouldn’t take a lot of thought to figure out the name’s origin.

1x Orca, “Quantum Heliophase”: I use this ship primarily for POS ops and sometimes as a mini-freighter. This provides a pretty good example of the naming style that has served me for a long time (though I occasionally deviate from it slightly sometimes now).

1x Mastodon, “Normal Vector”: My day-to-day low-sec hauler

1x Hoarder, “Fuzzy Waffle”: I don’t remember how we named this remnant from W-space ops. I can neither confirm nor deny whether alcohol played a part in this.

4x Drake: Several of my exploration ships came from a player no longer with us, and he named all his tank-heavy W-space exploration ships “<adjective> Soul”, like “Unwavering Soul” and “Vigilant Soul”. I retained those names. I also have one named “Asymptotic Security” because of the heavy passive shield tank it carries.

1x Myrmidon, “Meshigator”: I took “Mesh Navigator”, realized it sounded too much like other ships I use for low-sec exploration (see below), and just smushed it together.

2x Cheetah, “Lattice Navigator”: Almost exclusively dedicated to exploration with some light low-sec courier work, using these ships to find deadspace pockets full of goodies led to another faux-technical name.

2x Claw, “Parabolic Series” and “Exotransportation”: These interceptors get used primarily for courier work and sometimes salvaging in lowsec. Sometimes I find a battle, like a gate camp, then wait it out and clean it up. “Exotransportation” should be particularly obvious, I suppose, though I also named it while perusing a blog about exoplanetology.

3x Heron: I use these for exploration on the cheap, often in high-sec. One of them remains unnamed, but the other two are “Neutrino Interval” and “The Seer”. Pretty sure that last one came from W-space as well, probably left over when we had to pull out quickly.

1x Maelstrom, “Meganebula”: I kept the same initial letter, but shield boosters have this odd connection to nebulae in my mind, and since this ship gets a bonus to those, the name just sort of congealed in my mind.

1x Dramiel, “Vikarion”: Named for the pilot and friend who gave me this ship for free. Well, not free. He wanted Casiella’s immortal soul, and she figured she didn’t really need it anyway.

1x Cyclone, “Whirlwind”: This name actually doesn’t refer to the hull type but to its function (gas harvesting). Not my best moment, to be quite honest.

1x Buzzard, “Dark Lightning”: Null-sec courier. You should never see it…

Bleh, clearly I have entirely too many ships.

In space, it’s always night time, despite the nebulae that set the sky on fire. In the dark little corners of the Metropolis slums, some constellations just don’t see as much traffic as one might expect. Occasionally, a gang of thugs moves through, looking for honest pilots to assault. Or Local will show a small squadron of militia looking for complexes in the shifting tides of war. Even the occasional solo hauler flies through, trying to get through the dangerous rookery as quickly as possible on her way to taking care of business.

So when I spent some time looking for more data centers, I didn’t hesitate to dodge through some of the more dangerous crossroad systems and head right to where I could find the sort of action I wanted. After all, the Angel Cartel swarms all through Republic space. They inhabit the little deadspace crevices where the Fleet doesn’t look. Actually, I have an arrangement with some groups inside the Cartel, but that only goes so far. When I fly out to Curse, I play by their rules, but on my turf, anything can happen.

But a cosmic signature appeared in Arnstur, one that didn’t fit any of the “standard” templates for Cartel facilities. I spent a bit of time with my Cheetah cloaked up in a nice little intermediate safe, and it didn’t take long before the system just reported back “ruins“. I noted the exact location in my navigational systems and flew back to a nearby station where I’d stashed Asymptotic Security, a decent Drake battlecruiser that had served me well.

The crew moved my pod over to Asymptotic quickly. After a quick preflight check of all core systems and fitting, we undocked and headed back. A Hurricane on the Todifrauan gate in Evati didn’t bother us any, nor even hail us on local comms, so we pressed on. Once there, we warped quickly to the deadspace pocket and found an ancient Amarrian station, almost certainly pre-Rebellion.

Vented gas surrounded the site and debris floated nearby. I immediately noticed that we had company in the pocket, though: rogue drones swarmed everywhere, ranging from tiny frigate-sized creatures to behemoths that had captured and infested Dominix-class battleships.

Threat management systems didn’t detect any sort of sentience at all among this hive, so when they engaged us, I turned on the hardeners and set to work with my Scourge heavy missiles for the larger enemies and a flight of Hobgoblin II light drones for the smaller ones. At the same time, though, the local open communications channel would occasionally show the presence of other pilots coming through. I kept a close eye on the directional scanner, and when one of the other podders finally deployed some combat probes and got within 4 AU, I recalled my own drones and warped out. At the time, only my hunter and I showed up on Local, so I couldn’t have any doubts as to his quarry (not that I would have stuck around much longer to find out). This breather gave me the chance to go fetch the Cheetah back, and when I got back into Arnstur, I noticed he had a corpmate in system. The corpmate disappeared a few moments later and my hunter returned. Cat-and-mouse games only entertain me for a short bit, so after a few minutes I headed back to Helgatild where I’d left my crew and the battlecruiser.

The Republic Fleet stationmaster feigned an obsequious sort of politeness, but his charade didn’t really matter. As far as I care, the Fleet can go hang, for all that they’ve done (or not done, truth be told) over the last several years. Even after the Elder War, I don’t believe for a moment that the corruptive poison has left the Republic, and the Fleet represents some of the worst of it. So after a bit to recheck everything and attend to a few minor business matters, we launched back out and headed into Arnstur. No other podders showed up, so we finished off what remained of the drones.

One wrecked part of the station drew particular attention. My systems detected light activity inside. I couldn’t tell whether the drones had a hive inside, or whether some sort of devolved human society inhabited it, or something else entirely.

After pondering this for a few minutes (and salvaging what remained of the twisted wreckage from the drones themselves), I decided to obliterate this active section and let whatever souls might have breathed their last in this ancient graveyard rest.

For whatever reason, I’ve had trouble turning an ISK in trading lately. Maybe I’ve lost my touch, maybe regional differences matter more than I really thought, or maybe the New Eden economy has fundamentally changed lately.

I’d thought to get back into tech II ship production. However, that hasn’t really worked due to intensely volatile moon resource prices causing shortages of key components. Supply and demand: not just a good idea, it’s the law. Never expected so much trouble getting quantum microprocessors at a decent rate!

So for now, I’ve refocused on tech I ship production and some limited tech II activity, at least where the numbers work out. Drones still make really great margins, so I’ve churned out those advanced Hobgoblins and Hammerheads as fast as my staff and labs can work. I intend to get some Ogres moving soon as well, but that might take another week or so before I see real results. Barrage ammo might work as well since projectile ammo has come back into vogue. Sometimes the simplest things still work the best, as an old Brutor boyfriend used to tell me…

Anyway, I have to say that the SCC might qualify as the worst-managed organization in the history of for-profit human endeavor (which is to say, our entire history). Everyone knows that their premiums can’t possibly cover their settlement payouts, so that business line must really hemorrhage ISK into the greater capsuleer economy. Maybe their market management works, because they get a piece of nearly every market transaction and contract out there to manage the data flows and maintain some semblance of order and regulation, but the insurance does not even approach something reasonable.

One case in point: evidently, they base their settlements on a mineral basket price from years ago. As we all know, mineral prices vary wildly (and I should really spend more time talking about the factors influencing those another time). Here lately, those prices have plummeted. This does great things for production costs, of course, but that also means that the supply-demand equilibrium point has fallen, since we can sell our products more cheaply and still turn a profit. In a competitive marketplace (without collusion or other external factors), that means prices drop as well.

That ends up meaning that ship production costs have fallen below SCC insurance payouts.

Said another way, the SCC will actually pay you more than the cost of the ship.

But it gets better. Their contract lawyers must have let their kids write the documents because they will pay you under any circumstances. That includes intentional self-destruction of the insured asset. Yes, the SCC specifically covers scuttling.

When my senior staff brought this to my attention, I thought that they had to have made a mistake. Even as poorly as the SCC economists have done their jobs, I assumed the lawyers would have done theirs. I mean, we’re talking about the human equivalent of slaver hounds, right?

So I built some Drakes in Oursulaert for about 24.4m ISK. The net payout on a Drake at Platinum insurance for 26.6m. (In fact, for a bit, Drake market rates in that system dropped below the insurance payout). I took on just the barest minimum of crew, enough to get us out of the docking bay, and as soon as we were clear, I shut down the engines and had them evacuate the ship back into station.

Then I engaged the self-destruct timer, waited a couple of minutes… and made about 10% margin. (I let other folks grab the salvage, but certainly you could do this at a safe spot and go back for the salvage yourself.)

Now, I could keep doing this all day long and suck money right out of the SCC’s pockets. Even though the market rate for a Drake usually exceeds that 26.6m ISK, you have to wait a little longer for somebody to come along and fill the sell order, so an immediate 10% compounds more quickly than 15% that takes a day or two, at least in raw return.

Really, this kind of feels like insurance fraud. But since the contract explicitly allows this, I don’t think that it actually defrauds anybody. They just made an incredibly bad business decision.

I still don’t like it, though. I mean, I’ll take advantage of somebody else’s mistake, sure, but it seems like an even bigger waste never to let the ship do its thing. Not every ship looks nice, but these vessels represent something approximating the pinnacle of our species’ technical achievements. They should at least get the chance to do their jobs. Maybe pilot error loses them sooner than anticipated, of course, but that seems like a separate problem.

I know this sounds a little irrational. Anthropomorphizing a podder ship? Yeah, my implant probably needs a service visit. But I’d rather see the SCC get its act together, implement some sort of dynamic settlement payouts (and hey, while they’re at it, take a look at payouts for tech II and tech III ships).

Until then, I’ll keep building ships and making them available to pod pilots for slightly better return. No promises when market rates drop completely below insurance payouts, though…

Image credit Boogies with Fish

After wrapping up a short move (Oursulaert to Villore), I thought I’d go exploring and relax a little. So I jumped out to my exploration Drake in Hostni, finished final preparations (refitting the probe launcher, refining some trash loot I’d picked up, selling the minerals), and immediately tracked down a wormhole in the same system.

As soon as I jumped into the class 1 system, the wormhole collapsed behind me. That seemed like a little bit of a shame, since Hostni didn’t have anyone in it. But at the same time, it meant that perhaps it wouldn’t have any K-space openings and I’d fly in peace.

The system didn’t have any podder activity in it that I could find, and it had over 20 signatures plus several anomalies. The signatures all led to gas or mining sites, plus another class 1 W-space system. So, instead, I just ran a Perimeter Camp anomaly, picked up 5 melted nanoribbons, and eventually probed out an exit to Amarr low-sec.

In fact, I ended up in the famous Dead End system, so I went out to 5-5 and visited the monolith. I like the proportions, in relation to squares of the first three integers (1:4:9). We don’t see much of that sort of simplistic elegance these days. I docked up in Angur to rest for the night.

After all that, I thought I’d fly back out to Rens. I dodged an overly-anxious Rapier but got caught on another gate camp who really got fortunate with the loot drop. So the whole operation met a “Dead End”. Hope the crew got away before the local slavers descended upon them…

I did make it to Rens safely in my pod, though, where I can make preparations for my next little project.

Image credit Malinkrop

I had worked up some substantial frustration after looking at component prices to build the new command ship blueprint my labs had produced. Seriously, when the cost of the Fernite Carbide Composite Armor Plates alone will nearly equal the market price of the entire Sleipnir, something has gone wrong. We had managed to drive the materials budget down fairly low in our blueprint research, but I can’t really skimp that much or the whole thing will just vent into space. I understand that the moon materials market has started to fluctuate wildly, partly due to speculation and partly due to changes in the supply coming out from nullsec.

So, after I snapped at a few research assistants for petty little things that not only didn’t matter but really didn’t even have anything to do with them, one of my senior advisors pulled me aside and quietly suggested that maybe I needed a vacation. I didn’t really want to do it, but he convinced me after a bit. I poked around my inventory and realized I had an exploration Drake and a jump clone out in Khanid. I hate leaving assets all over the cluster and figured this seemed like a good time just to fly it back to base.

One of the local station staff really irritated me, though, with her condescending manner and preachiness. After the third snide, under-the-breath remark about uppity heathens with no soul, I let myself accidentally stumble into her, then started yelling about an assault. My security staff ensured she’ll be off work for the next week or two.

All this really just explains why I decided to take the scenic route from Ashi to Oursulaert, and look for whatever Blood Raider cosmic anomalies I could find along the way. That means the trip will probably take a few days, but given my temper, that might be safest. Nobody will miss a few slaving vampire wannabes, right?

In the next system over, I found a Blood Raider refuge. They have drugs, gambling, female prostitutes… some set of believers! The image above shows what I found. As soon as my Drake showed up on their scanners, they launched their frigate guards, but a few well-placed Scourge Heavy Missiles took care of those Corpii types. The gas silos didn’t succumb so easily, so I let loose some volleys on their bunkers and warped out.

Once I reached the following system, I found some burrow of theirs. Same result, though this had less in the way of built-up infrastructure. I think they used it for mining and production, more than anything else. See below.

Ring around the weirdos... lots of veldspar

Storage silos and bunker

If you look, you can see the other one in the background

I thought that would do it for this run, and I’d just dock up and sleep in my quarters on the ship. But in the last system I checked, I found another stinking Blood Raider burrow. This time, they had a lot more production infrastructure, including a shipyard. The nearby junkyard full of wrecks gave me the creeps, and I don’t mind slamming a few missiles up their tailpipes or showing them the business end of my Hobgoblin IIs.

Shipyard in a burrow

The fate of the survivors in those wrecks doesn't bear thinking about...

Time to get these factories busy again.

While BKAT regroups and consolidates a little, I thought I’d take a bit to restart my factories and labs. Trading generates more profits, but manufacturing provides steady, reliable income, generally with less time invested. Plus I like doing it, which really drove the decision more than anything else.

As my comrades will tell you, I really hate mining, so I find it easier to buy my inputs (minerals and components) on the open market rather than try to go get them myself. So I picked up enough to build a Cyclone just to warm up, then put in jobs for a full run of Merlins (30 units) and Hurricanes (15 units), plus some Large EMP Smartbomb II blueprints I’ve had sitting around for far too long (close to a year, I think). The Cyclone didn’t generate enough profit, but I think the margins on the Hurricanes will help. And I have a Drake BPO coming out of the lab in the next day or two, if I remember right.

Also, I put in several invention tries for Sabretooth Fury Light Missiles, since I need to burn through some BPCs. I haven’t checked on the results yet, but I expect to do so in a few hours when I finally stir out of my suite here in the Oursulaert III Fed Navy station. (Why have I moved back into Federation space? I don’t know, either. But I do like the clubs on this station.)

So what will I do next, industry-wise? Probably move into a little more research and invention. I might get back in touch with an old associate and find a nice little C1 wormhole with a static link, or maybe he’ll find a way to set up in high security space someplace, and get a research station going again. I need to find something with enough volume and margin to make the time investment pay off, especially while I fly off having fun with the corp. (More on that tomorrow, I hope.)

Image credit Funky64

Colonies depend on towers

For a long time, I’ve dreamed of a world without centralized power structures. A world where people work together in an effort to build something new, with their efforts rewarded with freedom and liberty.

My dream just took another step on the road to reality with the establishment of a starbase for the Back Alley Trading Company in a wormhole system.

Granted, it took a bit to find our foothold. We’d spent several days scouting every wormhole we could find, looking for a place that met our criteria. One of my scouts found a promising connection in the Khanid region, but a couple of other pod pilots had gotten there already for a quick raid. I vectored in another scout and raced across 17 jumps to reach it myself in my Drake.

A Maller and Myrmidon evidently paid no attention while my scouts stalked them, so when I arrived, I had a scout give me a warp-in point. I landed on the grid and started spewing missiles from range. Of course, we didn’t have any warp disruption on them from that range and didn’t want to use covops frigates for that purpose, so they fled back to K-space. In reality, while I wouldn’t have minded a kill or two, this accomplished our primary tactical goal of clearing the system. I had little intention of actually destroying their ships (though I would have done so if they’d chosen to engage).

When I chased them back into Ashi, the wormhole closed behind me, with my scouts still inside. Perfect.

We hurriedly arranged logistics while they probed out a new entrance and set up our starbase. We’ve already cleared out quite a bit of Sleeper activity, plus some gas clouds. I left pod for a while and came back to find that my associates had lost a couple of barges due to not watching their directional scanners or staying aligned. As I told them, I don’t mind losses, but I do mind losses from which they learn no lessons. I think they got the point… actually, I know they got the point.

A few other lessons I learned: in tower management, you can choose which roles can perform various tasks on specific structures in the base. The settings for Ship Management Arrays and Corporate Management Arrays have selections for Starbase Fuel Technician, Config Starbase Equipment, Corporation, and Alliance. I set those to Corporation and then created a title, “W-space Pilot”, for the folks out there that gave them access to the proper hangars and such. This lets everyone do their jobs without having the ability to take the whole thing offline themselves. Security matters, and I’ve learned paranoia in my years as a podder. (Fortunately, I had a consultant come in and help us with the organization, so we have the needed bureaucracy already in place to grow quite a bit.)

Also, if you want your tower to shoot at neutrals, you need to set the defense AI to target anyone below 0.1, not the default 0.0. Obvious in hindsight but I just did too many things at once.

Later we’ll move to a system with a higher rating, but for now, this system gives us a great opportunity to work out the kinks in our operation and get some of the newer pilots accustomed to flying in space without CONCORD’s paternalistic protection.

Okay, EFT warriors and those of you who know the Drake inside and out, does this look like the canonical PVE Drake? Just making sure before I go invest millions of ISK tonight in a setup for plexing in quiet corners of nullsec and possibly W-space.
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While looking for data storage facilities in Heimatar last night, I ended up tracking down an Angel Provisional Outpost, sort of a way station for their smaller craft. Frigates and cruisers buzzed all around but couldn’t provide a real threat to the Dark Perigee II, a well-equipped passive-tank Drake and my flights of drones. After I entered their complex, the Angels sent several flights of reinforcements who never returned. I picked up what I could from their wreckage and kept going.

However, they’d built this outpost in a pocket of deadspace in low-sec, meaning I needed to keep a close eye on my surroundings to stay safe. In this sort of situation, my directional scanner is maybe the best tool I have. The non-podder ships don’t provide much of a threat, so I set the range to 1 AU and 360 degrees to see what lands close by. If a probe or (worse!) a recon ship show up, I’ll align to some warpable object and leave as soon as somebody comes into the area. This assumes I’ve reached a safe distance from the warp-in point. I’ll also align the camera drone back in the direction of the original gate and bring down the range to 15k km, scanning from time to time.

After I’d reached the last section of the complex, however, and happily let my drones and missiles clear away a large chunk of the frigates there, the scanner showed a Brutix and a Lachesis and another battlecruiser in that 15k range. At this point, I didn’t want to stick around just for the chance of an escalation, I aligned and warped out with no trouble. I guess I left a few wrecks behind for their troubles.

But when I cleared the gate into the next system, Gusandall, I saw an Ishkar and a Megathron belonging to the Mean Coalition and KenZoku sitting about 12k km away. This didn’t look good, as the Dark Perigee II‘s align time won’t break any records. They scrammed and webbed me pretty quickly after I started to align to the next gate, so I targeted the Ishkar who had already come under sentry gun fire and let my drones and missiles fly.

As you might expect, these didn’t do much more than scratch his armor, not even coming close to breaking his tank, and I lost the ship. I saved the pod, obviously (how do pilots lose these at low-sec gate camps?), issuing the warp command as the hull started to disintegrate around me. I made my way back to my forward operating base in Emolgranlan and informed Vikarion of the loss.

I just hope they picked up any surviving crew after I exchanged a few friendly words in the local podder comm channel with them. Sometimes you need to swallow your pride a little, even when it stings going down.