Exploration Log 22-June-2014

Welcome to the Exploration Log. The semi-regular updates where I report actual exploration game time along with the results.

Game Time: Approx 4 hours

Location(s): Blood Raiders Lowsec, Angels Lowsec

System Count: 9

Sites Run: Combat 3, Relic 1

Ghost sites seen: 0

Ship(s) Used: Tengu, Stratios

Profit: ???

Comments: I am back with my primary Tengu and re-supply area.  Home for now I guess.  I also have a couple of Cyclones (for pvp) and a Stratios at this base.  This area of space is pretty crowded and well trafficked.  My theory was I could hang out here for while, run everything 3/10 to 6/10 and chase away other explorers using the Cyclones.  It hasn’t worked out all that well.  Mostly, I have been too busy to run sites and the site runners I have seen are usually in pairs or threesomes.

Today there was an Angels’s 4/10 in the system – a great way to try out the Stratios!  I have flown it around a few times, but this is the first time I am using in in actual exploration content.

Here is the Stratios Fit that I used:

[Stratios, combat sites – angels]
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Damage Control II

Pithum C-Type Medium Shield Booster
Pith C-Type Kinetic Deflection Field
Pith C-Type Explosive Deflection Field
Shield Boost Amplifier II
Republic Fleet 10MN Afterburner

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
425mm Medium ‘Scout’ Autocannon I, Republic Fleet Fusion M
425mm Medium ‘Scout’ Autocannon I, Republic Fleet Fusion M
425mm Medium ‘Scout’ Autocannon I, Republic Fleet Fusion M
425mm Medium ‘Scout’ Autocannon I, Republic Fleet Fusion M

Medium Capacitor Control Circuit II
Medium Capacitor Control Circuit II
Medium Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I

Valkyrie II x5
Warrior II x5
Salvage Drone I x5

With my skills, it is cap stable and tanks about 370 Angels dps and deals about 380 dps with the Valkyries (with max skills, it would be 450dps).  It costs about 300M ISK for the Stratios and another 300M isk for the fittings.

The fit did fine in the 4/10.  I kept my distance (drone control range is 50km) and pretty much just killed stuff with drones.  I did use the auto-cannons on a few frigates that closed in on me.  In the second room, I took too much damage it I tried to engage the Overseer immediately at close range, but kiting was fine.  For a bit, I thought I didn’t have enough dps to kill him with just the drones, but that was because I was still using Warrior drones.  Once I switched to the larger Valkyrie drones it was fine.  He didn’t drop anything good – I think I picked up maybe 10M in loot for my trouble.  I found that I am not used to using the drone interface and trying to focus fire on ships was more cumbersome than using missiles.  Perhaps I am not cut out for drones.

Overall, the ship performed well.  I know it is supposed to be armor tanked, but my shield skills are better and I wanted to run with 3 DDA’s.  I probably could have done better than a Nanofiber Hull in my last low, but I wasn’t sure what I needed.  I think if I were more used to drones it would have been better.  There is no way it will ever replace my Tengu though.

After I was done with the site, I shipped out with the Tengu to wander around a bit.  I love seeing all the new LS to LS wormholes out there.  In fact, I am setting up to wander from area to area using these wormholes and follow my main with a Blockade Runner full of missiles and back-up equipment.  I found a wormhole to Genesis and I ran a Blood Annex there.  It didn’t escalate and didn’t drop much either.  Maybe another 10M in loot.  Coming back to my wormhole, I saw a pair of Besieged Covert Research Facilities.  Since it was a fairly quiet area, I decided to warp in and engage.  I did learn that they only web out to about 25km so if you can stay farther than that, you at least aren’t webbed.  They still scram out that far though.  I cleared the site and picked up ship skin (Blood Raiders Coercer) and a 10 run BPC for an Experimental Hyperspatial Accelerator.  The BPC was listing on contract for 250M ISK, The modules are listing for 55M at Jita – not sure how long that will last.

The second site despawned as soon as I completed the first one so I wasn’t able to run it.  I returned via the WH to Angel’s space and called it a day.

 

Pilgrim’s Adventures: 21-May-2014

“2 Machs and a Hack”

Pilgrim opened his eyes and attempted to orient himself.  “Computer – where am I?”  The current system flashed across his display and recognition slowly settled in.  Ah yes, back in frontier – many, many jumps from the famous Jita market where he remembered being yesterday.  Clone jumping was an amazing technology, but it left him disoriented every time.  Thank goodness he didn’t do it every day.

Pilgrim consulted his navigation charts and plugged in the desired path for today’s travels.  He planned to explore some of the conflict area currently being patrolled by the Minmatar militia.  He undocked from the station that housed his ship and body while he was attending to other matters.  It felt good to be in space again.  His Tengu Strategic Cruiser smoothly entered warp drive and off he went.  It was a couple of systems before he saw another capsuleer and bothered to activate his cloaking device.

As he was performing a blanket scan of the system, something unusual came up.  The readings indicated it was a Covert Operations Facility.  Although it is not all that covert now that CONCORD had freely given out improved scanning capabilities to every capsuleer that wanted it.  Sooner or later the pirates that ran these facilities would have to catch on.  Perhaps they felt secure knowing they had a fast response team in the area.  Ship scan didn’t pick up any hostile ships in the area, so Pilgrim warped in to the site.  He knew he only had a few minutes before his presence was detected.  One by one, he performed a deep scan of the four facilities.  And one by one, he was disappointed.  Apparently, these pirates weren’t very far along in their research.  There were only a few tools and some shattered wheels – hardly worth the effort.  Pilgrim re-cloaked his ship and left the site.

The next few jumps were fairly routine.  Ship scan picked up a Venture in close proximity to some gas clouds, but Pilgrim really wasn’t in the hunting mood.  Finally, his scanner probes found something interesting – an Angel Mineral Acquisition Outpost!  Pilgrim knew from previous experiences that the ships guarding this Outpost could be “persuaded” to give out information on the whereabouts of their Commander.  And Pilgrim was sure that the Commander was just aching to part with some of his ship’s superior (and valuable) equipment.

Ship scan showed lots of activity, but none in the immediate vicinity.  Pilgrim launched the mobile depot that enabled him to remove his cloaking device and replace it with more missile launchers.  He took the time to upgrade his ballistics controls and shields as well.  Such marvelous technology that allowed refitting huge chunks of his ship while still in space.  Once everything was correctly running, Pilgrim scooped up his re-fitting depot and anchored a secure container full of extra equipment.  He wanted to save space for any new equipment he might pick up while conducting “negotiations”.

Pilgrim was just beginning his introductions when his ship sensors sounded an alarm.  Apparently, there was a Machariel battleship very close by.  It wasn’t on visual yet, but it was closer than it should be – especially considering how hard this outpost was to find. Pilgrim re-calibrated his sensors just in case it was just passing through.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t.  In fact, it was joined by a second Machariel and some sort of logistics ship.  Checking their affiliation, Pilgrim noted they belonged to a fairly well-known pirate corp.  Could he take out the logistics ship and possibly both of the fearsome battleships?  That would be a fine notch in the belt.  Slowly, Pilgrim looked at the row of empty drinks by his console.  Perhaps the bourbon was clouding his judgement.  Pilgrim aligned his ship and warped out.

After refitting his covert operations cloak and picking up his stashed gear, Pilgrim left the system.  It was getting late and he had little to show for his efforts.  After scanning three more systems, he again found something interesting.  The signal was very faint, but with a few tweaks he was able to lock in on the signal of a very discreet drug manufacturing operation.  Again, Pilgrim performed a deep scan of each of the operating sites.  This time he was pleased with what he saw.  After slipping back out to a nice quiet spot in the middle of nowhere, he again refitted his ship.  This time, he boosted his shields to near maximum and onlined his hacking modules.  There was no time to kill all the pesky guards at this site – he would be in and out before they could scratch the paint on his Tengu.  One by one the facilities fell to his hacking abilities and yielded valuable blueprints and skillbooks.  Pilgrim wasn’t much of a drug user himself, but could definitely understand those that felt the need to use some performance enhancing drugs from time to time.  Mostly, he was just glad that the while the drugs were illegal, the blueprints were not and they sold quite easily at the Jita market.

Waving good-bye to the helpless guards still wasting their missiles on his shields, Pilgrim warped off to the next system.  He checked his display and saw that it was quite late.  He still needed to refit his ship to something more travel worthy.  Since there was no one around, he slipped into a handy station for a quick refit (and a shower) before returning to the glorious void of space and phasing out for the night.

Exploration Log Supplemental

Short follow-up to yesterday’s log.

I finished the final escalation of Angel’s powergrid today.  I was kind of on the fence about finishing it because it is in a fairly active area of nullsec and completing it before it expires would require changing my personal schedule around a bit.

The first nullsec system I went through had 48 occupants.  Fortunately, none of them were camping the gate at the hour I passed through.  The destination system had 2 permanent occupants and 6-10 on a transitory basis.  I set up my bookmarks, refit and warped to the gate of the complex.  Gates are nice because at least you get a little warning if someone is coming.

I cleared the first room in about 7 minutes.  Traffic spiked at one point and I saw core scan probes, but never combat probes.  (There were no signatures in the system, not sure if the scanner was a noob or if they meant to launch combat probes and didn’t have them).  In the second room, you only have to kill the commander.  I orbited at 60km and fired a few rounds of Javelins, just to test his tank.  His shields were dropping pretty fast so I continued with the Javelins.  At this point, I am more worried about someone scanning me down to steal the complex than I am about dying.

Anyway, the Commander explodes, and I bookmark his wreck and warp out.  I wait a couple of minutes for the complex to despawn and warp back to the wreck.  The wreck is completely empty.  He doesn’t even drop ammo or meta modules.

Sometimes you get nothing.

Exploration Log 27-30 April 2014

Welcome to the Exploration Log. The semi-regular updates where I report actual exploration game time along with the results.

Game Time: Approx 5.5 hours (over 4 days)

Location(s): Angels Lowsec, Guristas Lowsc

System Count: 16

Sites Run: Combat 6 (3 sites and 3 escalations)

Ghost sites seen: 0

Ship(s) Used: Tengu

Profit: ~610 million isk

Comments: (I have been kind of slacking on the blog front lately.  I have had some problems with wordpress and haven’t been motivated to correct them.  So I have a few blog posts hanging in drafts that I should probably publish eventually.)

I was making my way to Guristas Space, but took a tour through Angels Lowsec first.  I was able to run a pair of Angel’s Red Light Districts in the same system.  They were pretty straightforward, but only modestly profitable.  In addition to the bounties and guaranteed OPE drops, I picked up a Cynabal BPC and a Gistum B-type shield transporter.  I was continuing on my merry way when I found an Angels Annex.  I don’t think I have run one of these before, I so looked up what I might expect on the official wiki.  I had an Angels Platinum Tag in my cargo, so I skipped the first room.  The second was quite fast.  I basically just shot the shipyard to trigger the Overseer and then killed him.  That barely warrants a guide, but I suppose I will write one up anyway.  The site escalated and the Overseer dropped some junk modules and a Domination 100MN Afterburner.

At this time, I was pretty low on missiles, but the first escalation took me past one of my supply caches.  It is a Giant Secure container anchored in space and full of missiles.  I exchanged some loot for missiles and continued to my escalation.  I didn’t actually run it until the next day, but I got to the system and set up my bookmarks.

I used a mobile depot to re-fit and went in.  The ships were all about 60km out.  I just used my Javelin missiles (range 65km) and set orbit at 60km.  The Overseer battleship popped pretty quickly.  He must not have had much tank.  I bookmarked the wreck and warped out to refit.

I came back to the wreck and found some faction ammo, a Halo Epsilon implant, a Domination Warp Disruptor, and some other forgettable faction loot.  Not too shabby for an escalation.  And the site escalated again – bonus!

The next escalation was actually in Guristas space.  How convenient!  Less convenient was that the route was several jumps through null-sec space, but I refit to my Interdiction Nullifier and blazed through it.  The space was actually semi-populated, but there were no gate camps.

The next escalation dropped nothing but faction ammo and a tag.  It escalated again to Guristas space about 3 jumps away.  I ran that escalation and again got nothing but faction ammo and a tag.  I got the final escalation to null sec, but was out of time.  Hopefully, I can get back before the 24 hour timer.  Side note:  I am very unhappy that CCP changed it so that you can no longer extend escalations.  That was a very useful thing for those of us that can’t play everyday.

 

Exploration Cut Short

I had about 2 hours to play today.  About 1.5 hours before downtime and about 30 minutes afterward.  I wad fairly deep in Angels nullsec wandering about.  A couple of days ago I found a C3 wormhole with a connection to highsec only 4 jumps from Amarr.  I dropped off my loot and loaded up on missiles.  In fact I switched out all my lows for cargo expanders and hauled 2 medium secure containers full of missiles back into nullsec with me.  Each container holds 26,000 missiles so I had a good stock for a while.

In my scanning today, I found a wormhole that connected directly to lowsec.  I popped through to investigate and found myself only 4 jumps from my PI planets.  I used the opportunity to empty my launch pads and move a Command Center from an underperforming Gas planet to a Barren planet.  I then hopped back to nullsec and continued scanning.

I found an Angels Fortress.  This is an unrated complex with the possibility of escalating.  I used my mobile depot to refit and put my extra modules and missiles into medium storage container.  I picked the depot back up (leaving the medium secure container in space) and warped to the site.

It is a 2 room site with about 12 battleships and other misc ships in the first room.  I cleared it.  In the second room, there are about 20 (seemed like anyway) webbing and warp scrambling frigates.  I cleared them and went to work on the elite cruisers.  After clearing some of the dps off the field, I attacked the battlestation.  Taking it down to 75% shields triggered some more elite frigates with TP’s so I took them out.  At this point, I was about 5 minutes from downtime.  I decided not to risk it and warped out to wait for the server reboot.

After the restart, I warped back to the site.  The first room was still empty.  In the second room, all of the frigates had respawned so I had to kill them all again.  I took out the battlestation, but didn’t get a faction spawn or an escalation.  Oh well.

I warped back to my medium secure container and launched my mobile depot.  Except my medium secure container was GONE.  I double checked my bookmarks (I always bookmark it twice, just to be sure).  Yep – in the right place.  I checked d-scan.  I saw some Large Standard Containers, but no medium secure container.

Retracing my steps in my mind, I think that I did not anchor the container.  However, I am pretty sure I have done that before and they did not disappear.  Also, I know you cannot anchor secure containers in space above 0.7 security, but they don’t disappear at downtime.  Anyway, I didn’t have a ton in it.  The biggest loss was my sisters core launcher and sisters probes and maybe a faction target painter (which I never use).  There were also a couple of inexpensive Tengu subsystems (nullifier and electronics one).  Total loss was probably less than 150M.  I opened a petition to CCP, but having never done that before, I am not sure what to expect.

The bigger loss was that I was now deep in nullsec with no probe launcher, no interdiction nullifier, and in a PVE fit.  I did keep my cloak and covert subsystem with me, but I still didn’t fancy another 20 plus jumps back to civilization.  Since my WH to lowsec was only 2 jumps away, I decided to go there.  So I am now back in lowsec and near my PI base.  I don’t know if the 2 medium secure containers full of missiles are still in Angels nullsec or not.   They were anchored so if that was the difference, maybe they survived.  I have about 25 days to visit them before they disappear.

I am not sure if I will make it or not.  Generally, I find nullsec to be less conducive to my exploring tastes than lowsec.  There are fewer signatures and the combat ones take a lot longer to run (and more missiles) for a roughly similar reward.  As much as I want to like nullsec, lowsec just seems like home.