My Precious Ribbons

As many of you may know, us wormhole dwellers don't make any bounty ISK from killing sleepers in w-space. The exploding of red crosses is simply the first stage in earning our living out here in the deepest darkest recesses of inhospitable space. Once the sleeper drones have been sent to their final sleep we have to loot and salvage, not because it makes extra ISK, but because that's the only way we make any ISK. The main items of interest from looting are 'blue loot' (so called because of their blue icons) and melted nanoribbons. Thankfully blue loot is taken care of from NPC purchase orders around New Eden which means we are guaranteed a certain payout for running sites. The coveted melted nanoribbon has a price dictated by market forces.

Mountainous 12 Month Profile

Selling melted nanoribbons today makes me a very sad capsuleer so I've stopped. If you take even the slightest of glances at the above graph you will easily be able to tell why. From a twelve month high just three months ago we have fallen to a twelve month low today. Recently I could sell a nanoribbon for as much as 6.4 million ISK yet now I am lucky to get 4.4 million. That's almost a third of the price vanished into thin air.

What is causing these low prices? Nanoribbons are a key component in T3 ships. The decreasing prices must be due to an oversupply of ribbons. You can also see the graph tapering off in volume sold each day as fewer and fewer people elect to sell their ribbons on the market. Yet still the price is in decline. My theory is New Eden currently has a dire lack of conflict. I don't follow the news on nullsec politics particularly closely but I'm not aware of any large wars going on. No Tengu fleets eating up ribbons while trying to claim more territory to install dirty renters into. This makes me sad for two reasons: One, EVE is a game build around war and conflict so without war and conflict EVE is lacking something. Two, I can't sell my nanoribbons and make vast chunks of wealth for my corp. So, when and where is the next big conflict coming from? Mittens, it's over to you.

Sleepers and a lock out

It was Friday night and our home system had been filling up with anomalies all week, thirteen anomalies to be exact. It was decided that we would have a hole cleaning session and maybe make some ISK. We've been living in our C4 for long enough now that shooting sleepers is just a pretty light show backdrop to a random conversion over some drinks. That said, even burning through thirteen anomalies and a radar site does take an awful lot of time, drinking and conversation.

I don't think the Sleepers like me here

All told it took a few hours to clear out and loot everything with nary a tense moment as I was neither watching a wormhole nor acting as FC. I could just sit back and shoot what was indicated as the next target. There were a couple of pilot substitutions as the night wore on given the length of the Op but by 4 am it was declared mission success and the corp loot hanger was a lot fatter.

By this time someone had been off exploring in our new static which we had deliberately kept closed during the site sweeping activities. For whatever reason it was declared a terrible neighbour and the call came to close the hole and look for something better. I volunteered myself to jump into an Armageddon to speed things up just before heading to bed. First pass through the hole and back went fine. Second pass I forgot to turn on my MWD and this was going to be my undoing as upon the completion of our second pass the wormhole went critical where we would normally expect it to collapse.

At this point the method to finish the job is well documented and involved an Interdictor and its bubble. However, as noted above, there had been alcohol consumed and I decided that turning off all the plates on my geddon would drop my mass enough to allow a return trip. How wrong was I? After I jumped the wormhole lasted just long enough for me to think it was all good, and then it collapsed dashing my hopes on rocky shores. At least we had scanned from C4a to C4b so I headed that way hoping nobody was watching. I got into C4b with no problems and, deciding that scanning in a geddon at 5am whilst intoxicated was a bad idea, went to bed.

I wish we could occupy these lovely structures

Waking somewhat sleepily the next morning I resumed the hunt for K-space. It turned out that the owners of C4b were either on vacation or liked having lots of signatures to scan. In a moment of sheer luck I found their static C3 connection quite easily and took a break for lunch to hopefully throw anyone off the scent who had seen my probes. Post lunch, and with a scream of "banzai!!" I warped to the C3 hole and landed around six clicks from it. Stupid deadspace signature variances. Battleships move increasingly slowly the more you will them to speed up. Still, I jumped through safely and found the other side clear. Even better, this C3 wormhole had a static lowsec - sure a hisec would have been sweet but I was really expecting 'Bob' to be cruel and deal me a nullsec static.

Of course, the other thing this C3 had was twenty signatures to plough through. Rolling up my metaphorical sleeves I got to work. Twenty signatures in an Armageddon is never going to be fun though, and it wasn't. Eventually I found there was only the one other wormhole to my entry point and that took me to Naga in Aridia. Damn you Bob. Still, at least it had a station where I could dock up and go about my day. I was happy to leave my escape from Aridia to another time.

Too Many Sites

It had been quite a while since I last did any major site running in our wormhole. Others had also been lazy at cleaning our sigs and as a result we had nine sites available. Whilst I like keeping a couple of sites around, having nine is a bit ridiculous. Another corp mate also decided this and put out a call for everyone to get online and we would clear our the nasty sigs in record time.

Unfortunately the organiser had to pull out of hosting this sig-busting event (something about very good painkillers) so I stepped in to ensure a fun night would be had. I logged in to find our nine sites had become ten. I also found almost nobody else had logged in. Maybe the notice was too short, maybe they all have so much ISK they don't need to murder sleepers. Whatever the reason we were only running with three people. Guess it would be only one site at a time then.

As much as I dislike FCing site running I took the lead whilst keeping my alt on wormhole guard and combat probe duty to ensure our safety. I also had wine, which helped. We ploughed through the first site and were moving onto a second when another corp mate logged on to find themselves directed at the nearest Noctis. Great, at least we don't have to pause to salvage.

After getting through six sites with the Noctis pilot swapping between salvaging and shooting one of our number had to call it a night (again, more top-notch painkillers). Now we were three but I was on a mission to kill each and every sleeper infesting our home. The seventh and eighth sites were fine but I would be lying if I said I enjoyed running the final two. It was a relief to see them die and get salvaged.

I headed off for a sleep at 3am knowing I would only get five hours sleep at best. My wallet was padded by over 300 Million ISK but I really didn't care. Ten sites is at least four too many.

A Weekend Deployment

I was all set for a relaxing weekend. I had prepared a couple of cruisers for the 40th RvB Ganked roam on the Saturday and I had no other fixed plans. For anyone who hasn't been on a Ganked roam, you should go on one. Just remember that you will not be taking your ship or clone back in one piece. Something has gone very, very wrong if you don't wake up in a new clone with a message from the insurers of your former ship. But I digress.

We had been aware for a while of a visitor in the class 2 wormhole system which houses our academy. He had been seen on d-scan and had been chatting in local. I'm not sure if he actually tried to blow anyone up. If he did try he definitely didn't succeed. At some point he decided to blow up a couple of warp bubbles my corp had left there when we handed the wormhole over the Corp that now runs the academy. Being a little bored I decided to have some fun. I sent the visitor a bill for 30 Million ISK and requested a written apology for the inconvenience.

Sadly his response was neither imaginative nor particularly polite. My reply pointed that out to him and I was delighted to receive a response he attributed to a corp mate:

In my travels through wormhole system J######, I found my ship battered and encumbered by multiple warp disruption bubbles belonging to your corporation. During that time, my travel was detrimentally effected. I lost valuable time (which is ISK). During my harrowing navigation, my ship suffered multiple scratches and dents, both when I ran into your warp disruption bubbles as well as when I was hit by pieces of debris when I disposed of them. I expect compensation for my time and damages to the tune of 30,000,000.01 ISK. Please remit payment ASAP to avoid further loss of your corporation assets and additional monetary damages of time and maintenance. Furthermore, I expect a written public apology on the EVE Gate forums for your negligence and oversight. Please also refrain from leaving your shit all over space for people to have to work around.

Now that was more like what I was hoping for. For his part I tried to sent the 0.01 ISK balance between what I requested and what he wanted for his ship. Sadly the EVE client will allow 0.10 ISK as the minimum so I chose 1.01 and a suitable reply. I also figured I might as well ask why he was hanging around the academy. If it was for easy kills he was going to be a bit disappointed as those guys are pretty savage against single targets. His reply was slightly unexpected as he told me his alliance was invading the C2. Ooo, change of weekend plans then.

After our success at forming a local defence against nothing it was good to now be testing how successful we were as an alliance at deploying from our local wormholes and meeting up in the academy. At least with a static lowsec wormhole it would be easy to get to the destination, but with the other corps living in class four systems there was going to be luck at play for good routes to K-space.

Plans and fleet compositions were drawn up by people with more knowledge than me. Money was deposited in a kitty in case anyone was short of ISK to buy what was asked of them. Come Thursday I scanned a very nice route out of our home system. Very nice apart from the 32 jumps to Jita. I then went shopping and bought the ships I was planning to take. I do like wilful shopping sprees that aren't just the result of a ship loss.

Come Friday I had the ships hauled up to a staging point near the appropriate lowsec system and flew my gaggle of ships into the C2. It was a bit like going home. That system is where I started my wormhole career over a year ago. It gave me a fuzzy feeling inside to go back. I even still had my 'safe' bookmarks. During this time we became aware that our visitor and one of his alts had left the C2. Watchlist triggered d-scans also meant we suspected the other alts had also left as we didn't see any ships appear when he logged off. Had our visitor gone? Sadly we received confirmation of this when we announced some other corp activity meant there would be no action for us. Not being particularly trusting we decided to maintain watch anyway just in case.

At some point after several beers and boredom I decided to wander off in a bomber to Tama with a slightly inebriated Emergent Patroller. This had the expected result of us losing both our ships to pirates. I'm fairly certain that would probably have happened if the beers hadn't been flowing given the expectation of tonight had been to lose ships or die trying. It just wasn't meant to be in the pirate bolt-hole of Tama.

For all the weekend didn't provide in combat activities, it did give us good practice at a defensive deployment to another wormhole system in our alliance. I found the planning and execution of this good fun as well. Rather than just logging in to hope there were people or sleepers to shoot we had a proper mission to execute. Great stuff.

Now if only CCP could find some way to make NPC missions involved and meaningful like that.

Fishing with the Sleepers

I think the discussion about reworking POSs is all good and well, but what about in wormhole space? In the sparsely populated areas I call home CCP have a great opportunity to do something truly different. While it is accepted that we can take a POS structure through some wormholes and assemble it to call home, how about further differentiation these unknown regions of space further buy creating a second choice?

This idea of mine has cropped up a few times in various random discussion on comms but this is the first time I've tried to actually write it down. I was prompted to scribble this down having seen the very basic gameplay demo for Incarna toons exploring Sleeper structures. Forgive me if I wander in my thoughts.

In wormhole space we should be able to capture, occupy and live in some Sleeper structures.

This is my home, there are many like it but this one is mine.

How does that strike you as a genious idea?

Fleshing this out now. How would this work initially? Well, CCP would define a subset of Sleeper structures that would be inhabitable by Capsuleers. Maybe some new artwork to create additional structures would be in order to create something suitable. But I would be quite happy with owning something like this structure.

Obviously we wouldn't want this to be an easily attainable structure to acquire so there should be a new, hard to scan down signature type 'Sleeper Domicile' could be a good name. The spawn rate of such signature should be kept really low. The idea being that players shouldn't be able to move into a wormhole expecting such structures to appear within any particule time frame. The slow spawn randomness would also make it harder for a corp to hire someone in advance to do the hard combat. The very nature of this site would push it to be the hardest type to run requiring a large investment in player combat to clear the site before they could think about taking control. Actually, by control, what if this meant something similar to the incursion or faction warfare mechanic? Sleeper control is reduced by running numerous sites and only once sleeper control is removed does the 'Domicile' become vulnerable.

Clearing the 'Domicile' site isn't the end of this though. In order to gain access we need three areas to be hacked within a limited time frame. This time frame should be too small to allow a single player to hack all three alone but large enough to take into account the random chance of hacking success. Once control has been passed to the player they own it but cannot use it. There is still a risk of despawn.

To make the ownership permanent there would be a final step similar to assembling a customs office where a set number of PI products need deposited in the structure to make it inhabitable for Capsuleers. I have no idea what a suitable level of item volume should be here. It needs to be something feasible to achieve given the mass limits and potential poor routes to haul stuff into a wormhole system. Maybe tuning the requirements to what can be made through PI in each wormhole would work. A wormhole with the ability to make all top tier PI outputs would have a requirement spread across all their possible outputs; a wormhole with only one or two top tier products would require a higher number of each of the two outputs plus some lower tier items. Probably an upgrade process could be in order here so 'stabilising' a structure to not despawn is readily achievable but  actually being able to dock all your ships requires time and coordinated effort.

There also needs to be some form of fuel requirement. There is a temptation to say this should fully consist of things found in wormhole space, but that would take away from some of the current challange of living in wormholes. I'm also not sure what facilities should be available in the structure - should it just hanger space and "Captain's Quarters"? Should it be shared storage as in POSs or more like the privacy afforded in empire-based stations? What about manufacturing, research, invention facilities? I think this should really be kept in traditional POSs with the exception of T3 reverse engineering and construction. This would be the perfect time to allow us wormholers to actually follow the T3 production process from start to end in completeness in the wormhole. The missing piece being able to assemble the subsystems in W-space. What about forcing this to only be possible in W-space?! Well, the reverse engineering and subsystem/hull manufacture anyway. It's a bit much to expect a capsuleer to buy the parts in Jita then haul them to W-space before flying their new ship.

Of course, these structures should definitely be destroyable by hostile players. They should be tougher than large POSs but I'm not sure what the defences would consist of. If there are people docked in a structure when it explodes they should find themselves back in Empire space in a new clone. If they had any possessions in the structure they get destroyed. Simple. While this is harsh, it gives a real goal to fight for if you are invaded. Reinforced timers give you a chance to be organised and also for invaders to get bored and leave.

So, what do you think?

Visions Of New Eden - VIII

Sleeper Information Sanctum

Living in a wormhole system we find many opportunities to visit Sleeper sites. The residents are not usually too happy but if you look closely you can see the wrecks which indicate how well we treat them.

I Only Fly Gallente...

...or at least I used to. As a Gallente pilot I naturally understand that Gallente designed ships are the most beautiful and well designed ships available in New Eden. The problem seems to be that style over function is sub-optimal logic when choosing a particular ship for flying around dangerous areas of unknown space.

These days I am more often found flying in Caldari designed ships. My justification to allow my morals to slip was that in times of danger you should use the best tools available to you. Living in wormhole space means my time is largely dangerous.

It was a gradual change to Caldari ships. The initial catalyst came in the class 2 wormhole system we used to occupy. I had an double-rep armour Myrmidon set up to fight against Sleepers. I could run sites with one other person but found that if they needed to warp out for some reason I would struggle to tank the damage. I was aware others could solo these sites in their Drake so I took a look at some fits. At the same time another Gallente pilot with weaker morals than me went and bought a Drake and we worked on the fitting for it together. The other pilot reported such a world of difference between the two ships that it became hard for me to ignore the potential gains to be had by switching. Even if the ship I was switching to looks like a piece or armour blasted off a supercap ship.

Self-propelled armour plating from a capital ship?

I slipped further when I was asking for recommendations for a ship to use in combat against other capsuleers. I was told in no uncertain terms that I should go for a Drake at battlecruiser sizes. Around this time I found myself in Empire space so just went out and bought one without thinking. I was still running sites in my Myrm, but everyone else was in Drakes and I had relaxed my guard enough for it to become a no-brainer.

On our move to the new class 4 wormhole system I completed the transformation. I added a new Drake for running sites and did not bring my Myrm with me. The Myrm is stashed with all my other Gallente ships gathering dust in a hanger somewhere in Sinq Laison. I do have access to an Iteron in our class 4 so I can relax in comfort. No matter how much better the Drake is for actually earning ISK, style is always something we Gallente require to truly relax.

Shooting Sleepers

After this afternoon's double hisec discovery I was intrigued to find out what my corp. mates were up to this evening. I had been otherwise engaged and paying no attention so I was surprised to find a small number of people active but not actually doing anything. I quickly realised I had a strong desire to shoot at something.

Sadly nobody was willing for me to loose off several rounds of rockets at them so we considered our options for killing Sleepers. A quick chat came to the realisation that we probably didn't have enough ships present to run our combat sites efficiently, so we checked the alternatives. Still a couple of Ladar and Grav sites. Well, needs must.

Jumping into the first Ladar site with two Drakes and we make short work of the handful of frigates present. As my first taste of Sleeper combat in our new home this was something of an anti-climax. Was that really it? Okay, second site and this time a slightly more challenging mix of frigates and cruisers. The draw of activity proves to much for the rest of my corp. and we also field a slightly more challenging offensive fleet of Tengus in addition to the Drakes. The result is, of course, a rapid and overwhelming defeat for the Sleepers.

Now the real excitement begins - sucking gas. Unfortunately I don't have a ship set up to partake in this paramount of excitement, so I have to pass the honours on to a corp. mate while I head back to the tower to have a drink and a sleep.

Random Rats

If there is one thing that mystifies me, it is the incredible predictability with which Sleepers in an anomoly or signature will attack. This is not an unusual think to encounter around New Eden, but the increased ferocity with which Sleepers organise themselves would seem to lend itself nicely to some unpredictability in the tactics them employ.

To illustrate, if I find myself in a class two wormhole system running a Perimeter Checkpoint I know I will find a couple of sentry guns, a couple of cruisers and a couple of frigates. I also know killing the final cruiser will result in reinforcements arriving. I also know the reinforcements will be two classes of cruiser and which class will be the trigger.

It seems to me there is something artificial about this situation. I would have expected a more random variability in the composition of sleeper fleets and arrival times of reinforcements. Don't get me wrong, this predictability is great from a capsuleer point of view. As long as I am able to withstand the onslaught of damage coming from the initial forces, I have the information to control the field. Life is good.

But still, it almost seems like the attacks follow some predetermined template and not any form of sentient logic and intellect which is capable of analysis and learning.