Piper Came Calling

Four years ago, when I was first getting into capital ship construction with Orcas, I had a business arrangement with another industrialist who sold me Orca and component BPCs while I was building up my collection. He got burnt out and lent me multiple researched BPOs for my usage while he took a break.

After two years of using them and not being reminded they were loaners I started treating them like my own property. I got out of Orca building, moved into capital ships, and I didn't need some of the blueprints anymore... but I did need some ISK for new blueprints. So I sold them.

Fast forward to last month when I get an evemail from my old associate saying "Hey, remember those blueprints I lent you? I'm back in game and looking to start up production again!"

Oh crap.

Some of the blueprints I had and could just return, but four of them I needed to buy off contracts and they were not cheap! Since the blueprints were "owned" by me and not the corporation, I had to sell my personal shares back to the corporation for ISK to buy the contract to give back to the real owner, costing me out of pocket roughly 10-12 billion ISK.

For investors, there is no cost to the corporation since the ISK for those blueprints did not have to come out of the wallet. Liquid ISK went down, but that is about it.

Well, there is the pesky problem that I no longer have the complete set of BPOs for cap production...

Next week I'll get around to the late corporate audit and the next steps for the corporation.

Eagle Has Landed

After the failure of the Navy Vexor I opened up the ship simulator and put together an Eagle Heavy Assault Cruiser fit and sent it off to my Acquisition Manager to retrieve it for me.

[Eagle, Pharlap]
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Assault Damage Control II
Tracking Enhancer II

Large Ancillary Shield Booster
50MN Microwarpdrive II
Large Shield Extender II
Stasis Webifier II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Optical Compact Tracking Computer

200mm Railgun II
200mm Railgun II
200mm Railgun II
200mm Railgun II
200mm Railgun II

Medium Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I



Hobgoblin II x5

Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M x1430
Navy Cap Booster 200 x42
Tracking Speed Script x1


I went with 200mm as the 250mm are more power hungry and I don't think needed for this use case, and I threw a Medium Ancillary Shield Booster more of as a crisis responder than a constant tank. I tried a couple Tier 2 "agitated" abyss pockets and it completed them successully, but not easily. The main problem is not the tank, which held up just fine, but the enemy ships that got under my guns (i.e. closer than 10km) and even with the web I could not track them which meant either sending my drones out to engage and watching for them to switch targets to them, or turning on my MWD to speed away from them and lower the transversal as they gave chase.

But by god, watch out for that terrifying red grid of the edge of the pocket.

A solvable problem, but frustrating.

I feel like missiles would be a more flexible solution so I'm considering trying this fit for a Cerberus:

[Cerberus, **Abyss Cerb]
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Assault Damage Control II

50MN Cold-Gas Enduring Microwarpdrive
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
EM Ward Amplifier II
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II

Heavy Missile Launcher II
Heavy Missile Launcher II
Heavy Missile Launcher II
Heavy Missile Launcher II
Heavy Missile Launcher II
Heavy Missile Launcher II

Medium Anti-Explosive Screen Reinforcer II
Medium Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer II



Warrior II x3

Scourge Fury Heavy Missile x2000
Scourge Precision Heavy Missile x2000
Caldari Navy Mjolnir Heavy Missile x5000
Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile x5240
Nanite Repair Paste x100

Less drone firepower, but the missiles should still apply damage on the close frigs. I think.

I'll try the Eagle a few more times before switching though.

Not Exactly As Planned

Since my Eagle got blown up coming out of an Abyss site I switched to an old Caracal I had sitting in the hanger (that's a theme by the way, I have so many old ships just sitting around) and tried some more sites in it to mostly success.

The fit:

This has decent tank, nice range, and a couple drones for extra frig killing. After I took that picture and posted it on Twitter, I realized the disruptor was a waste of space and swapped out for a Medium Ancillary Shield booster for that extra protection.

And except for one time I let a rogue drone battleship get to close its had very little problems with various types of Tier 1 Abyssal sites, getting me some decent low level Abyss loot.

However, the goal was never to stay in Tier 1 so I decided to get a go at a Tier 2 site. So I grabbed a 4 year old Vexor Navy Issue from Bring Me The Head of Kirith Kodachi III event and a Tier 2 filament and headed out.

[Vexor Navy Issue, Kirith Kodachi's Vexor Navy Issue]
1600mm Rolled Tungsten Compact Plates
Damage Control II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II

10MN Afterburner II
Faint Epsilon Scoped Warp Scrambler
Warp Scrambler II
X5 Enduring Stasis Webifier

Small Gremlin Compact Energy Neutralizer
Small Gremlin Compact Energy Neutralizer
Heavy Electron Blaster II,Antimatter Charge M
Heavy Electron Blaster II,Antimatter Charge M

Medium Trimark Armor Pump I
Medium Trimark Armor Pump I
Medium Trimark Armor Pump I

Ogre II x5
Warrior II x15

"Surely," I thought, "a faction cruiser will be more than enough to handle Tier 2!"

Well, I was wrong.

So I made several mistakes, and learned some lessons. First, I should have went after the escorts first and not the battleship as it turns out they were repairing all the damage. Secondly, a ship with drones as the main damage is not ideal as there are many structures that love to mass attack your drone wings, plus the NPCs will switch to them as well. Finally, a tank that does not recharge itself and is passive only will be a problem if I make mistakes; active tanks are more flexible in these situations.

Laziness got me this loss, so having learned that I am setting out for building a ship from the ground up to continue my tier 2 and higher adventures. Stay tuned.

Dipping into the Abyss

I finally got some time to get into the new content last night and I snuck into EVE and prepared to go Abyss diving.

First off what ship to use? I had a slew of old ships in the hanger but since I used to run level four missions way back in a railgun Rokh, I felt nostalgic and grabbed an Eagle I never had a good use for and refit it for diving into pockets. 

Here's the fit:

We'll talk more about why its a killmail later.

The ship has a decent shield buffer, a booster for emergencies, optimal range around 44 km with antimatter. Judging on what I read it was vast overkill for tier 1 and 2 pocket rats, but I didn't want to go too small at first since I'd done no diving on Singularity.

I went on the market in Dodixie and paid a heavy price for 5 Calm gamma filaments. These types of pockets were tier 1 and gave a boost to ships' shield strength. I wasn't taking any chances here.

I did my diving from low sec (since I can't go safely into high sec, natch) and did five dives. Lost some drones here and there as I learned about the structures that automatically targeted "rogue automata" and a couple times activated the shield booster, but for the most part I had no trouble at all in the sites and completed them in 10-15 minutes easily.

In five sites I picked up 6 more filaments, three calm (tier 1) and three agitated (tier 2), some Cystalline Isogen-10 and Zero-Point Condensate used in manufacturing of the Abyss ships and modules, a Medium disintigrator (cool!), and three Decayed mutaplasmids (which is the lowest quality of four types), a medium shield booster, x-large shield booster, and a small shield extender.

On the return from the fifth dive, there was a hostile Magus waiting for me. And to make matters worse, there was a null sec fleet going on and I didn't want to call for help to distract from that null doing important things. I tried to give the Magus a run for his money by targeting his drones and after a while he was running low on them and I knew he would never break my tank at this rate, but I also knew I had no chance of shaking him off or killing him and I wasn't going to call for help. He, however, had no issue calling for backup and two battleships arrived to finish me off. Oh well, #SpaceRich.

Back in station, I decided to use the mutaplasmids to see what I could build:

The Medium Shield booster turned out nice, small shield extender is a bit of a bust, and the X-Large shield booster got really hit hard in the powergrid usage department for modest gains in performance.

Overall I had fun, and plan to run some more once I get a new ship ready and get an alt equipped to back me up for when I come out.