Moving On - Goodbye Shaitann

When I started EVE Online I looked in EVEMon and saw a Wyvern mothership and fell in love. Something about that form and style appealed to me in a visceral and inappropriate manner. But then I saw how much they cost and how hard they were to obtain and my dream evaporated. I settled for aiming for a Chimera, a ship whose aesthetic was far more jarring and abrasive. Over time I learned to love the rugged and angry look of the Chimera but never forgot my first crush.

Then, a few years into the game, I realized I was wealthy. I had tons of assets and liquid ISK and suddenly saving up for that Wyvern supercarrier seemed possible. I scrimped, sold assets, worked hard, and found a seller. And on April 21st, 2010 I became a supercap pilot.

While I was living in null sec as part of the Northern Coalition I got to use the ship a few times in structure bashes, but ever since coming back to live in low sec for the past couple years, I never get to use it. Its been gathering dust, a victim of my casual playstyle and sub-cap majority theater. I could try and breka it out for the occasional IHub or POCO bash but a supercap being used in low sec with minimal support is like blood in the water for Shadow Cartel and Pandemic Legion sharks.

So faced with the fact that my playstyle and area were not going to change, I decided it was time to let the ship go on and face its destiny in another's hands. Last night I sold Shaitann and bid her a tearful farewell.

On the upside, I have some spare ISK in my wallet... whatever shall we do with it?

Stuff It In

So the corp is busy in the throes of another asset move to a new home. For me, I have to wait until I get enough time online to move my assets but at least it won't take very many trips.

The Wyvern has a Ship Maintenance Array like regular carriers but its 2.5 times as large (i.e. 2.5 million meters cubed) and its Corporate Hanger array is 5 times as large (at 50,000 m3). What this means is that the supercarrier can hold 5 assembled battleships, or fewer and a host of other ships. I got a battleship, two battlecruisers, and over 7 cruisers and a few frigates in my Wyvern and still have a regular carrier's worth of space left. The corp hanger is already full of mods and fuel for the ship itself (spare utility cap mods are huge) so my spare stuff is jammed into the Chimera's corp hanger. That still leaves me with 16 spare fighter bombers and a load of ship fuel, but it can wait until I have my freighter up and running again (less than a week now).

Now that everything is packed up, the hard part is next: actually making the journey.

For a supercarrier, low sec is safer and more dangerous. Safer because there are no dictor bubbles and only the Heavy Interdictor Infini-point is capable of keeping the ship in place (as supercaps are immune to electronic warfare); but more dangerous because you don't have your alliance telling you where the bad guys are in intel channels and you never know who is nearby and if that alt is a prober or just a passer by.

Its debatable if its safer to travel alone doing ninja jumps into empty systems near downtime, or to travel in a pack of capitals. The former takes a long time and if something goes wrong you are on your own, but in the latter the coordination is harder and you make a far more noticeable target. I look forward to when the corp has more supercarriers because, after all, a fleet of supercarriers is an offensive threat but a single supercarrier is a target.

Drought Is Over

Last night I logged in for my weekly night of Eve action and found... nada. No corp ops, no alliance ops, no coalition CTAs. There were lots of fleets in fleet finder but nothing appeared local and I wasn't sure about randonly trying to join a non-RAGE fleet when I wasn't familiar with the North that much.

(I even checked the combined caps channel to make sure there was no need for the Wyvern and considered sending a message to Kesper saying "I'm here!! X-ing up now!!" but figured he might not get my frivolous sense of humour. )

Plus I had some logistics to do.
- The Wyvern parking alt is ready to park the supercarrier so I needed to get her the bookmarks of the region and move her into place.
- I'm pulling Kla'strit out of M3 to save on corp taxes as having two extra alts in corp is not needed once Kirith is able to be  useful combat character again. That means moving his clones and ships out of null sec.
- Once Kirith is free, he needs to go get some stuff from the south in Empire and begin pulling together a fleet of ships for use in ops.

I started working on this when I so a fleet invite link in Alliance chat. It was not for a RAGE op but a Razor/Morsus Mihi op forming up for a roam. I checked the rally point location and saw it was merely 11 jumps away. With Kesper's indictment still ringing in my ears ("XTFU!") I decided logistics could wait and set destination and got on comms.

The fleet was asking for long range HACs or Battlecruisers but Kla'strit had already discharged all ships except for a Rapier into the transportation back to empire. Figuring that a force recon capable of heavy tackle, scouting, and making warp in points would always be welcome I saddled up and hit the warp lanes. I arrived as the fleet was moving into position to take out a AFK Hurricane in a safe spot and he provided no resistance as we melted him and the pod.

We continued the roam into Cobalt Edge and soon an Intrepid Crossing gang was moving to intercept. At this point I was struck how I was in completely new and unfamiliar space, flying with people I had never met or worked with before, against an alliance I used to be part of, and how much I was loving the game.

We got ready for a tussle and saw that the enemy fleet was mostly in battleships with a few battlecruisers so we were going to have to really rely on our superior agility to avoid getting smacked down. They jumped into us and the fight was on. I helped kill the initial Mrymidon that we primaried but was just out of range of the Eagle we killed next, it going down just as I got to the 34 km range of my webbers. We retreated after that kill and regrouped, killing an Eris interdictor that got too close to us near a planet.

The next engagement found the enemy getting a drop on us and we lost a couple ships, but then they pulled back to a station one system over. We baited them out but lacked the DPS to kill the Drakes and battleships fast enough with the station to dock into right there. Instead we decided the gig was up and the odds growing against us so we headed back towards home space.

With the two killmails I was in on the monkey on my back was gone and I felt a little better. Nowhere near the goal of 10 for august but at least I was out there killing something instead of dying. Had I brought a proper sniper HAC I could have gotten in on  a couple more killmails and been almost halfway to the goal in one night. Just goes to show I need to overcome my fear of new situations and, as Kesper so eloquently put it, XTFU.

Here's to a better September.

* * * * *

As an update to the parking alt stuff: this morning before downtime I successfully exited the Wyvern and installed the alt into it, freeing Kirith to dock for the first time since... well, I don't remember when. I then jumped cloned to down south to retrieve my carrier and ships...

wait a minute....

why does the ticker say the region is ... Providence?

AH CRAP!

Wrong jump clone.

The Last Bits

My Shopping List For Finishing the Wyvern:

- Nanite Paste for overheating damage. Can't dock up to quickly rep mods you know.
- Sensor Booster Scan Resolution script. Yeah, I forgot to get one when I bought my mods. Shut up. PS CCP: I would pay good ISK for tech II versions of these.
- Boosters. Specifically Mindflood for increased capacitor and Blue Pill for shield boosting.

The Mindflood drug is the most important for my supercarrier because using it can give me more energy to keep those all important hardeners online. Improved Mindflood gives a 15% increase and Strong gives 20%. The penalties are to things such as armour and shield repping, missile explosion velocity, and turret optimal range; none of those apply to the buffer tanked Wyvern so its a win-win.

For the odd occasion when I swap out to a capital shield booster, the Improved Blue Pill gives a 25% bonus to shield boost amount to the relative risk of capacitor and shield amounts. Its useful for those times when you just want to stay on top of the incoming damage.

Its Designed To Frustrate Me

Last night I roped up some corp members to help me retrieve the Fighter Bombers and Fighters from a distant low sec system and bring them back to base. Since these drones are 5000 m3 each the only feasible way to do that is jump freighter.

I had actually considered jumping the Wyvern to the system with the materiel (definition for Tony) and having my alt ferry the drones out 3 at a time in an industrial but didn't remember until after the jump that I still needed a ship with a ship maintenance array to put them in the drone bay which is the only spot big enough to hold them. Sigh. Orca is coming, another month to go.

So my corp mates stepped up, and one jump freighter and two cynos later everything was back at base. Another corp mate brought out his carrier and we attempted to have the jump freighter drop stuff into my corporate hangers where I could transfer to the drone bay using the other carrier's ship maintenance array to facilitate.

Nope. Freighters and jump freighters can only access corporate hangers at starbases. Well, better to learn that now instead of in a war zone.

So my jump frieghter buddy docked up and put the fighter bombers in his carrier's drone bay (he's rich by the way) and brought them out in that. Then he used the other carrier's ship maintenance array to unload them from his drone bay and drop them into my corporate hangers. Then I could use the ship maintenance array to load them into my drone bay. Woot!

With that operation successfully complete, the Wyvern is fully operational although not optimal. Still need Caldari Carrier V for that.

As another side note to this story, this morning I thought I would rearrange some extra drones with my alt. She could drop stuff into my corporate hangers, but not take stuff out because she was not in my corp despite being in my fleet. Dear CCP: fix that shit and give my more control over my ship, thanks.

Supercarrier Disucssions - Part 5 - Veteran Advice

Previously:
Part 1 - Drones
Part 2 - Tanking
Part 3 - High Slots
Part 4 - Cargo

This is the last entry of this series, so readers totally bored of supercarrier posts can breathe a sigh of relief after today.

I was contacted earlier this week by a veteran Wyvern pilot who read my posts and wanted to help me out with some advice. The following chat log is the result and has been heavily edited to protect his identity and to remove a lot of irrelevant chatter (like me going "wow" and "cool" and "nice!"). It seems like a good way to close out the series which I will add to my Masterclass library. Enjoy!

(2:50:23 PM) : Anywho, I would say your highs are doable while solo albeit generic. I would suggest in a fleet of 40+ caps to drop the nuet, smartbomb, and cloak for 3 DCUs.
(2:50:43 PM) : Dont run around normal with DCUs, but in a large cap fleet they are far more useful to the fleet as a whole
(2:50:54 PM) : In your CHA keep shield recharge mods should you get out of a fight at low shields
(2:51:04 PM) : Not boosters, shield rechargers and shield power relays
(2:51:22 PM) : And cap mods like cap rechargers and cap power relays
(2:51:52 PM) : Also I try to keep ozone, cynos, extra nitrotopes, and other capital shield/armor/hull transfers
(2:51:55 PM) : in my CHA
(2:52:24 PM) : in my SMA I keep at least 1 cov ops, 5 disposable cyno frigs, a recon, a few dictors and a bunch of t1 tacklers
(2:52:46 PM) : Your mothership is your home away from home. It needs to be able to run completely on its own if your alliance gets screwed into oblivion
(2:53:06 PM) : Your fit is fine, you were right to drop the shield booster
(2:53:15 PM) : It takes like 3 hours of running it to get even a quarter of your shields
(2:53:27 PM) : Dont even bother carrying it in your CHA, its wasted space on a supercap
(2:53:42 PM) : I would suggest getting at least Gist X types. they are relatively cheap and very similar to pith x types
(2:53:51 PM) : Huge EHP difference
(2:53:59 PM) Bill: I got pith X-Type hardeners last night
(2:54:01 PM) : Do *not* count gang bonuses or titan bonuses into EHP. You almost never get to use them
(2:54:12 PM) : Ah, your fit has gist B types and that concerned me ^_^
(2:54:38 PM) : Even when youre in a gang with a levi all the time like I am, actually recharging that shields takes hours and hours or a few triage carriers willing to rep you upe very time you swap systems or someone moves in and out of squad command
(2:55:12 PM) : Always try to be in squad command or wing command in a fleet so you dont get gangwarped by a hostile spy and die like this http://rawr.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=1988093
(2:55:19 PM) : Also dont fit your hsip like that one
(2:55:26 PM) : T2 shield expander rigs are teh way to go.
(2:55:35 PM) : *extender
(2:55:35 PM) Bill: *nods* got them last night too
(2:55:52 PM) : A few DCUs in a large fleet lets you outdamage anything that lacks them
(2:55:58 PM) : And I mean anything
(2:56:07 PM) Bill: nice
(2:56:23 PM) Bill: thanks for the tips, this is good stuff and hard to find in general
(2:56:33 PM) : I suggest keeping a faction point and a few more 29km faction nuets in your CHA for solo OH SHIT IM TACKLED work
(2:56:38 PM) : 2 nuets can cap out a hictor very fast
(2:56:49 PM) : Ive yet to see a hictor float int hat 1km space where he can tackle you but faction nuets dont work
(2:57:11 PM) : Remote ECM Burst is a killmail whore machine
(2:57:12 PM) : Use it as such
(2:57:34 PM) : It is also great to break focus point locks obviously because hictors have low sensor strength
(2:57:57 PM) : As for your drones, try to keep at least 3 flights of everything you plan on using. 1 is decent if you somehow never lose a drone but you will and restocking can be a bitch
(2:58:26 PM) Bill: You use any ewar drones besides the ECM ones?
(2:58:30 PM) : I dont use fighters at all, I know fighter bombers cant be assigned but they have way way more EHP, do more damage to everything that fighters can hit and I dont sacrifice anything keeping them
(2:58:33 PM) : I use all ewar drones
(2:58:38 PM) : target painters, webs, nuets
(2:58:45 PM) : I dont use sensor damp drones because lawl
(2:58:56 PM) : Target painter drones let fighter bombers absolutely demolish bs
(2:59:03 PM) : 3 of those and 20 fighter bombers is an alphad bs
(2:59:06 PM) Bill: oh... never thought of that
(2:59:27 PM) : Now at some point someone is going to try and kill your FB
(2:59:35 PM) : Be it with bombs, pos guns, or just shooting them
(2:59:52 PM) : If you warp, your fighter bombers enter warp instantly. A very good way to avoid damage with them if you have that kind of freedom.
(3:00:14 PM) : If you dont and the target is within 58km, you can deploy the bombers, tell them to attack, wait till their missiles are fired then immediately recall them and redeploy
(3:00:23 PM) : The missiles still do damage even if the fighter bombers arent out
(3:00:29 PM) Bill: ah, cool
(3:00:33 PM) : And so long as the target is within 58km
(3:00:50 PM) : I keep 30 fighter bombers at any given time and about 1800 other drones
(3:01:04 PM) : But I also keep both t1 and t2 variants so I can just send out wave after wave of t1 heavies or mediums if the need arises
(3:01:15 PM) : I also keep rep drones of both types. Large only
(3:01:29 PM) : If your drones are fighting something more than 150km from you and you recall them
(3:01:36 PM) : They wont MWD to you, they will warp to you
(3:01:48 PM) : Which is nearly instant
(3:02:00 PM) : If someone tries to bomb your fighters never ever ever recall them
(3:02:09 PM) : They turn on their MWD and instead of taking 14+ bombs to kill they take 2
(3:02:33 PM) : Unlike fighters, fighter bombers have the HP of a tech 1 battleship but with a much much lower sig radius
(3:02:36 PM) : So bombs do diddly o them
(3:04:12 PM) : 4 SC of fighterbombs can outright alpha a carrier or dread
(3:04:36 PM) : 3 supercarriers can incap a fully armed deathstar in a little over 20 minutes.
(3:04:46 PM) : They can outright kill every mod on it in about an hour.
(3:04:54 PM) : They can kill mods on online pos with relative ease
(3:05:04 PM) Bill: wow
(3:05:11 PM) : If your fighter bombers are on a carrier and he warps out then tries to align and war somewhere else
(3:05:20 PM) : You fighter bombers will kill him before that second align is done
(3:05:29 PM) : If they are set to chase
(3:05:50 PM) Bill: I can see how that could be annoying
(3:05:54 PM) Bill: for the carreir pilot
(3:05:59 PM) : They are an I Win button
(3:06:12 PM) : 10 supercarriers can demolish a 60 man dread fleet
(3:06:15 PM) : and not lose a single one
(3:06:42 PM) Bill: If I didn't own one already, I'd go out and buy one after hearing that. Good sales pitch ;)
(3:07:51 PM) : Lemme see if i notice anything else about your fits
(3:07:59 PM) : Your mix of FB is good
(3:08:07 PM) : Dont ever get just one damage type because then you can be thulsa doomed
(3:08:16 PM) : Where a fleet designed to kill only you is hardened to your damage type
(3:08:31 PM) : Caldari Navy PDS are the best PDS for a supercap.
(3:08:36 PM) Bill: got em
(3:08:39 PM) : Good deal
(3:08:47 PM) Bill: last night was expensive in mod buying
(3:09:00 PM) : I use 1 pith x type of each damage type
(3:09:02 PM) : 2 of EM
(3:09:13 PM) : and then 2 invulns and a sensor booster
(3:09:23 PM) : Which it seems you already have
(3:09:25 PM) Bill: I have CN invuls, should I upgrade?
(3:09:28 PM) : No
(3:09:33 PM) Bill: that's what I thought
(3:09:34 PM) : Unless you really wanna throw money at it
(3:09:44 PM) : I have over 400b and even I think officer invulns are a wast eof isk
(3:10:22 PM) : In your cargohold try to keep the boosters that increase cap recharge
(3:10:32 PM) : none of the negative effects will hurt you in any way without an acive booster
(3:10:36 PM) Bill: I noticed
(3:10:46 PM) : Stront is very bulky and you may not want to carry any
(3:10:53 PM) : Always make sure you have enough topes to get out of your region and into empire
(3:11:55 PM) : Keep enough ozone though for at least half a dozen cy nos
(3:12:01 PM) : 6 cynos can get you pretty much anywhere in the game with JDC V
(3:12:31 PM) : Now for the part that youre going to think im crazy for
(3:12:42 PM) : Nothing in the game can run anomalies faster than a MS. Except a ragnarok.
(3:13:00 PM) : But if youre going to do it, do it under a jammer and always aligned to a pos or safespot
(3:13:19 PM) Bill: interesting. I'd heard of anom-supercarriers
(3:13:26 PM) : I use mine for it pretty regularly
(3:14:44 PM) : oh
(3:14:52 PM) : if a CCP trailer for an expansion shows a wyvern in it
(3:14:59 PM) : We are going to get fucked out of one of the features in that expansion
(3:15:10 PM) : Im totally not kidding
(3:17:55 PM) : One more thing
(3:18:09 PM) : If youre operating alone a lot for some reason or jumping around to cyno arrays that could be camped
(3:18:12 PM) : have a cap booster fit
(3:18:41 PM) : People will laugh at your lossmail but if dropped on by nueting BS a cap booster is the difference between you taking 6 minutes to kill and taking an hour to kill
(3:19:01 PM) : You may still be fucked, but your support will have more time to arrive
(3:19:06 PM) Bill: Ok
(3:19:15 PM) : And good luck :)
(3:19:26 PM) : Ive been flying these things for years. Ive always loved motherships more than titans
(3:20:38 PM) : Anyways enjoy your blog sometimes. Not big on eve blogs but the capsuleer thing has them and I saw your wyvern blogs :)
(3:20:45 PM) : Always lookin to help a new wyvern pilot. I <3 mine
(3:20:55 PM) Bill: I appreciate it
(3:21:57 PM) : But I dont mind if you list them all and dont mention they came from me.
(3:22:01 PM) : People will disagree with some of them
(3:22:05 PM) : Like DCUs and the cap booster
(3:22:06 PM) Bill: people always do
(3:22:13 PM) : DCUs were worthless for years
(3:22:22 PM) : But fighter bombers do such an insane amount of dps that 3 more is a huge boost
(3:22:37 PM) : Its actually larger than the 25% you figured 5 did. EFT doesnt accurately represent their damage
(3:22:45 PM) Bill: Oh yeah?
(3:22:55 PM) : Ya, its why nyx do so much more damage with a 25% boost
(3:23:18 PM) : Each fighterbomber gets that boost just like each one gets the boost from the fighter bomber skill. In a long drawn out fight against one target, sure its 25% boost
(3:23:27 PM) : In a cap fight where you may get 3 volley soff per ship, its a lot more
(3:23:59 PM) : FB are alpha centric
(3:24:07 PM) Bill: right, I get it.
(3:24:36 PM) Bill: the time between salvos is shorter
(3:24:50 PM) : I am decently sure the skill just increases the damage of a volley
(3:25:55 PM) : oh
(3:25:57 PM) : ECM burst skill
(3:25:58 PM) : Does nothing
(3:26:03 PM) : Train it to 1 and never look at it again
(3:26:18 PM) Bill: *nods*
(3:26:26 PM) : If CCP ever fixes it you can train it up
(3:27:52 PM) : and please dont lose it to ushra kahn.
(3:28:04 PM) Bill: rgr that
(3:33:32 PM) Bill: Didn't Crystal implants used to work with cap mods?
(3:33:37 PM) : Nope
(3:33:43 PM) Bill: hmm, wishful thinking
(3:33:44 PM) : They may eventually give us shield slave implants though
(3:33:55 PM) : Which will make the wyvern higher EHP than anything in the game
(3:34:06 PM) Bill: yeah
(3:34:22 PM) : The levi will have more if you factor in its bonus but the levi never gets to use its bonus since the shields are taken away to add it. You never get the hours needed to rep them before you start getting shot
(3:34:32 PM) : I suggest if you have gang bonuses available take cap recharge or armor over shields
(3:34:40 PM) : Due to the way shield bonuses are applied
(3:34:51 PM) Bill: ok

Supercarrier Disucssions - Part 4 - Cargo

Previously:
Part 1 - Drones
Part 2 - Tanking 
Part 3 - High Slots

Beyond the usual cargo hold and drone bay, capitals have ship maintenance arrays and corporate hangers. On a supercarrier, the ship maintenance array is 2.5 million meters cubed (enough to hold 5 battleships) and the corporate hanger is 50,000 m3, bigger than an industrial ship's hold. Beyond logisitical operations, these facilities must be put to good use.

Cargohold:
With the additions of fuel bays, these spaces can be dedicated more to utility items needed in the course of a battle. Nanite Repair Paste for fixing overheated modules is a must for one thing. Another is having some boosters on hand. For a passive buffer shield tanked Wyvern none of the boosters is particularly inviting except perhaps the Mindflood booster which boosts capacitor energy, useful for powering shield and energy transfers. If you throw on a shield booster, the Blue Pill booster which boosts the amount of points you get from a booster is best. For armour tankers, Exile boosters improved armour repairers.

Corporate Hanger:
Beyond having a back stockpile of jump fuel, the best thing to have in the hanger for other pilots to access is ammo, charges, and strontium for carriers' triage mode and dreadnoughts' siege mode. Also, you might keep a set of extra modules for your own ship for hot-swapping during an operation. For example, you might be configured for POS repair and you get hot-dropped by an ambitious enemy fleet. You just access a wingman's carrier's ship maintenance array to allow you to swap out modules to a more aggressive/defensive fitting.

Ship Maintenance Array: 
Holding five extra battleships is not going to help much because your battleship pilots are most likely in a snipe fleet and probably not as close to the action as a supercarrier is. But what will help? Extra Tech I tackle frigs and cruisers are a good idea as the support fleet usually gets chewed up the most; some logistic ships are popular, both Tech I and Tech II; covert ops and recons; a cyno ship or three for calling in reinforcements; Interdictors as they suffered as much as interceptors do to enemy fire; basically anything that can be spared and is useful to the fleet in the heat of the battle when a station might be too far away. You can fit a lot of smaller ships in a supercarrier, so make use of that space.

Supercarrier Disucssions - Part 3 - High Slots

Previously:
Part 1 - Drones
Part 2 - Tanking


Of all the slots on a carrier and supercarrier, the high slots are perhaps the most contentious because the ship has no "preferred" weapons like a battleship or dreadnought. So let's take a look at the Wyvern's relevant bonuses.

- 50% bonus to Shield and Cap Energy transfer range per level
- 99% reduction in CPU usage for Warfare Link modules
- Can fit one additional Warfare Link module per level
- Can fit Projected Electronic Countermeasures
- Can launch 3 additional fighters or fighter bombers per level

So in those bonuses we receive some hints as to what we should fit, but we should not let ourselves become blinded by those hints.

The first approach is to maximize the drone damage of the ship and throw on five drone control units so that a well skilled supercarrier pilot could launch 25 Fighters / Fighter Bombers / Drones instead of just (!) 20. But while a 25% increase in damage is attractive, you have to take into account what you are sacrificing in order to accomplish that boost.

Supercarriers can fit Capital shield, armour, and energy transfer modules and in fact are some of the best ships to receive remote repping due to their typically high resistances and massive buffers. They lost the ability to use Triage modules but they are still excellent logistics ships in the right situations. Plus they can through 20 logi-drones into the operation in a POS module repair op for example.

The Project Electronic Countermeasures bonus refers to one thing: Remote ECM Burst I. Conversely the module can only be fitted on supercarriers. With an optimal range of 150 kilometers, a strength of 25 on all sensor types, and an area of effect of 20 kilometers, and a 20 second cycle time, it seems like a godly weapon. Except it has a 225 second reactivation delay, that's 3 minutes and 45 seconds between attempts to jam a group of hostiles. Good for a one shot surprise maybe but not great as a dependable weapon.

The bonuses for warfare links seem attractive and one might consider fitting a full 6 warfare link modules on their ship as the ultimate command ship of DOOM (Trademark pending). However its worth noting that those warfare link modules are unbonused unlike on a command ship that gives a 15% bonus to effectiveness per level for the racial type (or even a Strategic Cruiser and its potential 25% bonus). In reality, supercarriers are rarely in positions of command to give out bonuses from warfare links and if they are, its only to a couple other cap ships probably anyways. Better to leave the bonuses to another ship better suited like a command ship.

So looking outside the bonuses of the ship, what high slots modules would be advisable? Some point defense is always a good idea on a carrier or supercarrier, and smart bombs and energy neutralizers are popular choices, especially faction and deadspace/officer versions. For smartbombs, the high end modules have greater range to hit annoying frigates and drones. And for heavy neuts, sucking cap from a heavy interdictor could be the difference between escape and certain doom.

Finally, consider a cloaking device. Yes, supercarriers have no bonus to these devices and that means penalties to scan resolution and targeting delays, but the upside is that you can warp to a safe spot and cloak to avoid being easily probed out. Since you can't dock and there is always the risk of being bumped out of a POS force field, cloaking in a safe spot is often the only way to be safe in a system with a supercarrier.

So what am I planning on doing?

Well, my standard fitting will be a shield transporter, cap energy transfer, smart bomb, heavy neut (oops, I see in the image I have a heavy nos... that is an error) and a remote ECM burst along with a cloak. I plan to have modules to refit to POS repping such as additional capital repair modules and cap energy transfer, and perhaps a couple extra smartbombs and neuts for certain scenarios. I don't know if I will bother with the 5 extra drone control units, we'll see how things shake out.

Supercarrier Disucssions - Part 2 - Tanking

Previously:
Part 1 - Drones

In a normal Caldari carrier, there is virtually no question that you will fit an active tank with a Capital Shield Booster accompanied by boosters, hardeners, and cap recharge modules to keep that repper running as long as possible.

But in a supercarrier the same equation becomes less clear. After all, there is no Super Capital Shield Booster and the base hit points of the supercarriers makes the repair rate of the module less impressive and a passive tank with extra high resistances very attractive. With 2 million shield points and a 90% resistance across the board, an enemy fleet has to deal 20 million points of damage to get through the shields alone.

So let's look at numbers. An unfitted Wyvern with my skills (& Caldari Carrier V) looks like this:



With a base of 1.3 million hitpoints and minimal resists its not that impressive but I wanted to show the starting point.

The current fitting uses a typical carrier resistance boost, hitpoint boost, and local repair:

The problem is that is with all the high slot modules deactivated and 13 minutes is not a very long capital engagement, especially if you include the jump in hit to capacitor. Still you can see the impact of the higher resistances as the effective hit points jumps from 4 million to almost 19 million. (Note: this setup and the following include some implants as well for boosting shield hitpoints.)

If we forgo the Capital Shield Booster and the CCC rigs, we can add some more Explosion resistance and a million shield hitpoints boosting the effective hit points by 12 million. That means an enemy fleet has a lot of points to chew through and its not as vulnerable to capacitor running dry. In a typical fleet situation, even a small amount of remote repping will make the supercarrier nearly impossible to take down without a significant enemy capital fleet.


I realize that "dream" setups and EFT-warrioring is no substitute for critical thinking and experience. I'm leaning towards the massive 31.8 million EHP buffer tank but I'm hoping commenters will chime in and give their opinions based on their experiences.


(P.S. Jason, I KEEL YOU!)

Supercarrier Disucssions - Part 1 - Drones

There is not a lot of conventional wisdom to be found on the intertubez about fitting and using supercarriers. This
is most likely due to the fact that out of Eve's hundreds of thousands of pilots, the number of them owning a supercarrier is a small percentage of those.

Side note: I've gotten to like calling them supercarriers over motherships or moms.

So this post is part or a short series with me pontificating about a part of the ship class and you commenters then telling me why I'm full of shit. Onwards!

* * * * *
Part 1 - The Drone Bay (No, not the periodic podcast)

Relevant Ship Bonuses:
- Can field 3 additional Fighters or Fighter-Bombers per Caldari Carrier level
- 200% bonus to Fighter or Fighter-Bomber control range

Relevant Stats:
- Wyvern has 200,000 m3 drone bay
- Fighters and Fighter Bombers are 5000 m3 each
- Wyvern has 12500 mb bandwidth
- Fighter bandwidth is 125, Fighter-Bomber bandwidth is 500.

What this all means is that a supercarrier can potentially launch a flight of 25 Fighters/Fighter-Bombers if they have Caldari Carrier V and 5 Drone Control Units installed in the high slots. Of course, the first lesson you learn in Carrier School is that, generally speaking, Drone Control Units are not worth giving up your utility high slots for on a carrier, and triply so on a supercarrier. We'll go on about high slots another time, for now assume we are not going to bother with any drone control units as 20 drones is sufficient for my purposes.

You could take a flight of 20 Fighters and another of 20 Fighter-Bombers and call it a day. That would fill up your entire drone bay and leave you with no point defence against non-capital targets. On the other hand, one might think why bother with Fighters at all? Well, Fighter-Bombers are not assignable to fleet mates but Fighters are, so we want some of them for tactical flexibility. Here is what I propose as a first pass.

As you can see, simply removing one Fighter or Fighter-Bomber gives enough space for a flight of:
- heavies
- 2 x mediums
- 2 x lights
- medium ECM
- sentry
- medium armour reppers
- heavy armour reppers
- medium shield reppers
- heavy shield reppers

... and still have 1800 m3 for more drones left over. Yes, I know I should get tech II sentries, its on the list.

Should I get more E-War drones? Another flight of heavies? Sentries? And should I have spare Fighter-Bombers and cut back the number of Fighters to merely 10 or 15? What's the loss rate of drones for supercarriers? What mix of the different types of Fighter-Bombers is the best?

These are the questions that keep me up at night.

Supercarrier Enabled!

Late last week my Director Max came to me and said he found someone in the alliance who was looking to offload their Wyvern and preferred to keep it in the alliance. "Hey!" I said, "I'm in the alliance!"

So I contacted the fellow and we negotiated and agreed to a price that I felt was a steal considering it came fitted with faction and deadspace modules.


My payment for E-ON #19's Testflight article came in and I had the required ISK. I logged in last night to fire some evemails off to arrange things and he was online. "Want to do the exchange now?"

"Sure," I answered, "Why not?"

Even though we had no reason to not trust each other, we agreed to ask a member of Paxton Federation's High Council to act as a third party to hold the ISK in escrow during the exchange. Its best to be prudent in Eve. We searched around for a member of the High Council that was online and not on a roam, and realized Max was the only one. I thought it was weird to suggest my own director but the Wyvern owner was fine with that, rationalizing that getting scammed by two people in a respected corp like M3 was unlikely.

As we prepared for the exchange, a report of a fleet of 20 hostiles roaming went out and we stood down, not interested in having a mishap in the exchange (and my counterpart perhaps wondering if I was a plant). The reds moved on, local was alliance only, and we met at a friendly POS.


As I approached the ship, I was in awe at how big it was and how easily seen from a distance.


He exited the supercarrier, I boarded it, and Max transferred the ISK. Deal done. Here is the camera looking at the front of the ship, examining the flight decks.


Side note: if you board a ship fitted with modules you do not have the skills to use, they simply go offline. I wasn't sure before last night.


Surprisingly agile for a big ship. Compared to a freighter it feels nimble.


In warp to a deep safe spot. Never log off at a POS! You don't know if it will be bubbled to hell and besieged  when you come back.


Standing watch over the system.


This is not the end of Project Wyvern of course. I need to do a lot of skilling up for Fighter Bombers, the Remote ECM Burst, and Caldari Carrier V for 20 drones/fighters of doom. I need to rebuild the wallet so I can afford some fighter-bombers and some more drones, and some fancy implants.

NOTE: For anyone ready to say "you shouldn't get the ship until everything is ready for you to fly it" I can only respond with: this is how I like to play my game, start with something tangible and improve it over time. Besides, the purchase was a steal at current supercarrier prices.

For the curious, here is the current setup. This is not taking into account any implant effects.

Question for the masses: I've heard that rigs you do not have the skills for still work if someone else installed them. Is this true? I'm going to train Jury Rigging IV anyways but would like to know if the CCC II rigs are doing any good already.

13 Billion and Counting

The Wyvern Project goes well. Most of my assets have been liquidated, with only a handful of PvP ships and a number of items in my industry alt's care still owned. All told the tally is at 13 billion ISK, all of which is in the hands of my trade alt and running market orders when I have some time.

I figure I need at least 15 billion before I have a chance at a purchase, and probably closer to 20 billion for a complete package. Lots of work to do yet.

I estimate my trading alt is making between 20 and 50 million per day right now. If I had more time, I could make more but my time is what it is and I have to focus on items with less competition and yet still decent volume. I have to get back in the Eve Tribune saddle and start writing for them again to add to the ISK flow. This Wyvern is not going to equip itself!

I would kill for the ability to build this ship myself, but our space is Providence is under dire threat and I'd hate to lose the whole shebang on a sovereignty loss. Ah, to anchor X-Large Ship Assembly Bays anywhere!

If anyone hears of a great Wyvern deal on the intertubez, let me know.