Wednesday, September 15, 2010

An ALTernate Problem

I discovered a flaw in all my machinations this past week. Too many eggs in one basket.

Allow me to elaborate. I have my main combat character Kirith who does combat in various ships and nothing else. My alt Korneilia does hauling (Freighter, Orca, and Transport ships), cynoing for Kirith's caps, probing, and Planetary Interaction.

The problem arises because I decided to set up planetary interaction in a wormhole (another post about that some other day) and realized that having one solid alt to do all alt activities leads to problems, such as:

- Korneilia cannot fly the Orca for storage in the wormhole and a hauler for picking up safely from planets

- while Korneilia is in the wormhole I have no cyno alt

- if Korneilia leaves the wormhole I have no holding alt to probe my way back in

What about secondary combat alt Kla'strit you say? He's even more focused on combat than Kirith was and has no cyno skills, no hauling skills, and no probing skills, and his sec status means most of high sec is unavailable.

To combat this issue of too many responsibilities being handled by Korneilia alone, I'm training up two other alts to help out. Old alt Korannon who is my trading alt is getting some fresh use by becoming a cyno pilot, while I'm training a new character up as secondary prober and hauler. This won't take long and will give me some flexibility in managing my combat life and my industrial side projects.

2 comments:

  1. This was my main use for my 3rd account. Serial training of scanning alts. Once my main alt finishes up his orca skills, the research alts on that account are going to cross train scanning. A wormhole resident can never have too many scanning alts. Ever. One day when I get a jump freighter or carrier I'll probably cross train all the scanning pilots to cyno pilots.

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  2. Anonymous8:15 pm

    Letrange said ... A wormhole resident can never have too many scanning alts.

    I agree with Letrange. While I am way more junior to you guys I 'live' in a C2 and very carefully guard my insurance-policy scanner alts when I am off holidaying in k-space ... a major, and poorly advertised, downside of w-space living being the absence of spa-pools in POSes.

    Like Kirith I have a support alt who is a pretty good probe scanner, and also a maxed-out PI manager ... but that's about it so far. Unless I have other scanners remaining in our w-space system this character is not allowed any closer than 100km from a wormhole. I also don't send him through any WHs, unless it's a hisec K162 AND I have someone watching the WH from inside our w-system (Lost a ship in the 1 - 2 minutes it took me to WH-jump to hisec, dock, contract WH BMs to corp-mates, undock, and get back to the WH ... to find the w-space side camped).

    I just can't afford the risk of him being podded and having no way to reconnect with my little w-system. Even with this I have a second character, on same account with only the starter skillset, also in the w-system with the necessary basic skill books in the POS. If my system-caretaker-scanner alt does wake up in their medclone, and I don't have my main in there to scan, then I have a basic scanner backup alt available in a day or two of training ... more eggs, and more baskets.

    When I lived in 0.0 most of the players capable of cyno-jumping had multiple cyno alts that seemed to be scattered all over the universe. I hate to think of the logistics hassles they faced relocating these alts when we move from Fountain to Spire, and then back again to Fountain a few months later.

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