Well Connected

With Hyperion nearly a week old the changes made are most definitely being felt in my corp. With the addition of a second static to class four wormhole systems we knew for sure that life would be busier. Instead of having one or occasionally two holes connected to our home system we would have two and occasionally three. It turns out, however, that we were very wrong. The new norm seems to be we have a whopping four connections into our system at any given time. This is not something we were expecting and massively changes the nature of our home system. Instead of being an outpost system in w-space we seem to be very much a thoroughfare. Even more mental adjustments need made than was expected and the number of online pilots to ensure proper security just quadrupled. Not terrible for us but the really small corps will feel the pain there.

The changes to jump distance based on mass has had it's desired impact on hole rolling. I've rolled our C3 static with my Orca once so far. This seemed to take a lot longer but had no more risk than before Hyperion as we had well scouted the system before declaring it dead. The C5 wasn't any better as we've not yet tooled up for running anything in C5s. Since then we've mostly been using battleships for rolling duties but more on that later. Thankfully, the increased length of chains and/or number of direct connections to home has given more potential for places to go scouting thus reducing the need to roll holes. With these longer chains we can keep ourselves amused by at least the prospect of finding someone to explode. Case in point, last night we went three or four jumps through wormholes to kill a poor miner. Even better, a C5 crew didn't like the look of us and tried to roll us away. I look forward to more opportunities like those.

These big changes to wormhole space have necessitated a change to how we will be composing our fleets in future. Until now we have had our PvE ships, mostly Tengus with remote reps, and our PvP ships were just about anything else we fancied flying. For hole rolling we used Orcas, sometimes with but often without support. Now our plan is to be flying PvP-ready ships all the time. Logi support, points and webs spread on ships, maybe even some EWAR waiting in the wings. If we're running sites the same fleet should be able to warp to a hole for unexpect pewpew without a second though. Hole rolling will be in a similar vein - out go the Orcas and in come properly fitted battleships. Truth be told I've been wanting to make a switch to something like this since we tried to take on some site runners in a C4 connected to use some months back. They swatted us down like just another wave of sleepers, a fairly easy wave at that. Until now there hasn't been the motivation but it seems wormholes just got more dangerous.

So far I'm liking the changes. Time will tell if I keep that frame of mind.