Making ISK misses gooing
13th April 2013 – 3.34 pmI'm still looking for other pilots. Hey, there's one. Hi Fin. 'Just scanned the wormhole, did not open it yet. Updated the bookmarks.' Nifty. ...is it just the static wormhole at home? 'Yes, ma'am.' Do we want iskies? 'We probably should.' Yeah. We have enough anomalies in the home w-space system to keep us busy for an evening. Let's do it.
We keep our system's static wormhole unvisited for now, which probably means it remains closed to whatever destination system it will connect to, so that we are better isolated from potential threats. Swapping from scanning boats to paired Sleeper Tengu strategic cruisers, I select the nearest anomaly and warp the both of us in to combat. Or nearly, anyway.
Our heavy missiles no longer reach quite so far, which leaves us a little time of manoeuvring closer to the Sleepers before we can inflict any damage on them. It's no big deal, though, and we are soon raining as much destruction on the drones as the searing cloud of evanescent pain is to our eyes. I am pretty sure this amount of bloom could be considered cruel or unusual punishment for attempting to make some ISK.
We push through the blindness, which is easy enough once actually blind, and operate on instruments alone to clear the first anomaly, repeating the exercise for a second. A few disconnects, no doubt caused by excessive processing needed to render so much white so intensely, hamper our efficiency, but the third and fourth anomalies pass more smoothly when the cloud is reduced to natural luminance levels.
Clearing four anomalies is a pretty good effort for us and should reap a decent reward, if we can get the loot home. A quick sweep of the system reveals no new signatures, so there is no change in whoever was watching us before. Tengus are swapped for Noctis salvagers, and we warp off in different directions to claim different piles of wrecks. No one interrupts as we loot and salvage, and we both return to our tower with intact ships stuffed with potential ISK. If we get it to empire we should be a little under half-a-billion ISK richer.
It's not a thrilling start to the evening but its occasionally necessary, particularly when we like to throw strategic cruisers at other pilots when we can. Oh, right. Other pilots. I was looking for them. Now I can be a bit more active than checking the corporate communication channel. I get back in to my Loki, warp to the bookmarked wormhole, and jump to the neighbouring class 3 system to see what I've missed.
A tower and Iteron appear on my directional scanner in C3a. It is hardly an inspiring result, but the hauler could be piloted and preparing to pick up planet goo. Nope, it's empty, which locating the tower shows me. Scanning is straightforward too, one anomaly and five signatures showing the local six-pilot corporation to be quite active, or the system to be well-visited.
Only two signatures are chubby enough to be immediately interesting, one of which is just rocks and the other being our K162. But it's the slimmer signatures that are interesting, with two resolving to be wormholes. One wormhole smells of null-sec, which I leave be to warp to the second, which turns out to be a lovely outbound connection to class 1 w-space. I wonder if there's anything soft to shoot there.
An Iteron appears on my directional scanner. Nothing else. Just the hauler. That catches my attention. I bookmark the wormhole, because it only takes a second, as long as I don't bother to also label it, and start sweeping d-scan around each planet in turn. Of course, I may be pointing d-scan at the planet, but I'm actually checking the coincident customs offices. And there's the Iteron. I'm in warp.
Before I reach the customs office I know the Iteron has moved on. D-scan shows me nothing directly ahead and, unfortunately, nothing within its range. Or fortunately. There's a tower now visible, brought in to range by warping away from the wormhole to this planet, which leaves only one planet now out of d-scan range. The Iteron must be there, and hopefully getting cosy with the customs office. Once again, I'm in warp.
I don't find the Iteron directly, but again by using d-scan. A second tower lies in this direction, which the hauler was aiming for instead of the customs office. Locating the tower is simple enough, where I finally get eyes on the Iteron, and although I hope the hauler will head out for more planet goo, her disposition, far from a hangar in which to dump the current load, says no.
A second hauler, a Badger, appearing on d-scan gives more hope, particularly as the Iteron goes off-line. Maybe a secondary installation requires the attention of an alternative capsuleer. I watch and wait, but only to see the Badger float passively until replaced itself, this time by a Magnate frigate, a somewhat less-capable hauler, but only briefly. The Magnate too goes off-line moments later. I have to tell Fin to stand down, and she takes her interdictor away from the first planet's customs office, where she was tentatively waiting for a fly to catch, back out of the system and home, with me following behind.
3 Responses to “Making ISK misses gooing”
Two Tengus doing C4 anoms? Using EFT, I compute about 1000 DPS can be tanked per spider Tengu, minus one. So with two you should be tanking right about 1000 DPS. And yet, two of the four C4 anoms reportedly have max incoming of 1500 or so.
Are you just doing the easier ones? You have better tanks than that? Have an off-grid booster? Or, relying on enough outgoing DPS to reduce Sleeper BBs before you get killed?
Yes.
We clear the profitable anomalies, which spring up regularly enough for us not to have to bother with the others, maximising our time/ISK ratio. Wether they're the toughest or not I don't know. We also have to rely a little on popping a BS or two before they start to properly threaten us.
Mostly, though, you're missing one factor: our friendly pulsar. Strengthens our shields, weakens the Sleepers' armour. We last for longer and take down the Sleepers sooner. It's a nice little racket we've got going.
Aha! Didn't think of wspace effects. That is a nice little racket you've got.
Me, I just figured out how to get EFT to show the effect of offgrid boosting... and wow. Yeah, I gotta get me some of that. Pity about the half-year training time.