Mini-Milestone

A little over Five Years I've managed to last.

In that time I've NEVER flown a missile ship larger than a Battle Cruiser (a Drake, pre-nerf) but tonight I shall be getting into a Raven fitted with Cruise Missiles in order to pummel a POS. I'm looking forward to it and the group I'll be flying with will no doubt make the time pass with jokes, humour and wit.

Of course if Bex is there none of that will happen :)

I shall post a write up of the POS Bash over the weekend with the usual details of why but hopefully it shall pass without incident and I shall put my new Battleship to good use.

OPEN FIRE, ALL WEAPONS!

The Week That Was

Full Power means Full Speed Ahead

Power was restored a week ago, we've had no problems since then although we've had more rain and wind that did give cause for concern. It certainly was interesting being without power and being early to bed each night was nice... for the first day or two but after two days I started to hate nights. There just wasn't enough light that we had to read so that limited what I could do. 

It's over now and I'm already looking at investing in a small generator or perhaps the new Tesla backup system in case this ever happens again.

Reaction Tower Frustration

I was fortunate not to have anything serious going on in EVE during my unexpected downtime and I returned to full towers and a need to refuel my towers rather urgently. My towers coped without me, I didn't doubt that at all, and the only thing that annoys me about my reaction towers is the need to empty them constantly between 48 and 72 hours of operation. 

The frequency of maintenance is dependant on what they're making but its frustrating for me because it means I need to do things, at a minimum, every two days to ensure that output is dealt with yet inputs I can leave for at least a week (168 hours). 

I could add more silos and chain the outputs to give myself more space but for some stupid reason asilo requires 500 cpu to online. Why the silo, something that should just be inert storage, requires so much CPU I don't know but needing 500 means that in any complex reaction setup you'll only be able to have enough for two inputs and one for output. 

Until the POS receives a massive overhaul there isn't much I can do and so I'm developing OCD with respect to POSes and managing when silos will be full/empty/nearly full.

Returning to High Sec DED Sites

I posted quite sometime ago about the profitability of running sites in high sec and then getting escalations which could result in very profitable loot drops. I know Bex continues to do this and has gathered a good collection of Deadspace and Faction loot but I stopped because I really hate probing.

I mean I really hate probing, I'd rather 0.01 ISK in Jita than probe but I'm working on the skills and I've decided to give it a go. So far, with a little help from Bex on where to look for sites, I've had a much better time than I did before.

I spent about 4 hours in total on the weekend probing and running combat sites and managed to get seven escalations (all Guristas Scout Outposts) from which I managed to get three C-Type Kinetic shield amplifiers, a C-Type Medium Shield Booster and two C-Type Adaptive Invulnerability Fields (the latter working out at just under 300m each).

Very profitable for the time and with the practice in scanning I'm getting I'm sure it'll be more profitable for a small time sink.

3D Map Out and Explorers Hate It

That sounded like click-bait for a second. Sorry about that, but no link to follow :)

A while back CCP allowed players to start using a new in-game Map that had plenty of improvements and was all shiny and new. It is good, although I do miss some of the ease-of-use features (such as Jump Range bubble when in a jump capable ship) and finding out what systems were populated or had no pilots with just a single click.

However this same map is now used for the scanning/probing mechanic in-game and it is quite horrendous and frustrating to use. The view resets when you move focus, it certainly uses more processor when running that the previous map and can be very sluggish as a result. Filters are different and whilst there exists all the previous filters they are harder (I find) to apply and then clearly see what the results are.

I do like the new map but I don't have enough experience as an Explorer yet to comment on its usefulness in scanning.

Beauty is not just SKIN deep

Well CCP done fucked up but in a very enjoyable and happy way. Then they said they'd be fixing it and people didn't like that so there was lots of fun had applying skins to ships that should not have had the ability to have skins.

What do I mean, well players found a bug (definitely not a feature) that allowed any ship skin to be applied to any ship rather than what it was designed to do (which was specific skins for specific ships).

Lots of fun was had and there were some very good looking ships appearing on various Reddit threads and on Imgur. However it was a bug and CCP Falcon pointed out (quite correctly IMO) that having a Sarum Family logo on a non-Amarr ship did not "fit" with the Lore and so could not be allowed. He did say that he was discussing this with the development/art teams because a lot of feedback was generated and some was very useful and may influence how skins are developed.

EVE Prosper Market Show

If you're into Market activities in EVE Online then you can do with all the help you can and I cannot recommend that you have a look into the EVE Prosper Market Show. Now up to it's 25th Episode this is an excellent discussion/review programme for not just the EVE Online Market but also features excellent coverage of in-game events and news stories of note.

Seriously, go watch. Lockefox knows his stuff and presents an excellent show for people with any interest in the EVE Online economy.

Mine! Mine! Mine!

I was talking to a non-EVE playing friend in comms when I was poked. The Lord Arbitrator Chief Smurf was calling for pilots to get into "armour cruiser / AHAC / T3" for a probable fight just after downtime.

A quick change of channel, sorry Samantha but my bro's called, and I'm in a Loki heading towards the target system. People smarter than me have already setup bookmarks and all I have to do is enter the target, warp to a deep safe and logoff.

Done and I return to Samantha to suffer her continued commentary on Diablo 3 as she leaves a swath of destruction (she's much more entertaining than I make out and an awesome lady in general) in-game.

Shaking Hands Saying, How Do You Do

We're given more information on the target and our comms start to fill up with pilots from fellow WH organisation Haywire who have come to join us for this.

This was very good news as it meant that an old friend, Gizmo Tinker, who had recently moved to Haywire (form CFC/Goonswarm) would join us and here was a chance to catch up and have some fun together. Fun is a loose word considering the evil bastard was flying an ECMgu (ECM equipped Tengu) and I seriously had to stop myself shooting him every time I saw that ship...

Waiting

Downtime comes and goes, only cloaky ships login and start to monitor the target system and, sods law, nothing much happened. I was at the login system ready to login and there was nothing to login to.

The enemy target, a True Sansha Control Tower, came out of reinforcement around 15 minutes after downtime and so we had to be patient as a few enemy pilots logged in but really nothing happened. I was tempted to quit because it was getting late and I had work the next day but something must have made me stay.

So it was decided to provide bait and thus four T3's and two Guardians were asked to login and proceed to the tower and start to attack it. This was the spur that was needed and suddenly there was a raft of logins from the enemy forces and they assembled a fleet around three or four Dominx's with other decent dps cruisers and smaller vessels.

They warped to tactical off the tower and then into our bait fleet.

The Trap Is Sprung

They attacked our force and the order to to login, join fleet and warp to our "hero tackle" was given. Of course I was a little slow to cotton on to this and it was only as I heard tackle being made that I logged in, as always late to the party am I.

I entered warp and landed roughly in the middle of the furball, a "rage cage" of Medium and Large Warp Disruptor bubbles had been setup by the enemy to ensure the POS was suppressed but we didn't care. We had targets and they were in our sights.

Ships were pointed and the FC's issued orders, the Dominix's were easy to hold on to but we needed to get as much as possible in terms of other ship types. Those stuck in bubbles were easy but a couple were smart enough to burn clear and escape our clutches.

You didn't want that ship did you?

I pointed and webbed what I could and managed to get on a couple of kills and even, rather embarrassingly, managed to get the final blow on a ship after doing two cycles of damage. Hey a kill is a kill but I felt bad because two other pilots did nearly 95% of the damage and I sneaked in the final blow.

The Trap Has A Surprise

Whilst this was ongoing one of the fleet, who was still cloaked and near the enemy POS that had been erected, setup a Medium Warp Disruptor 300km from their tower to catch ships that were trying to escape the fight.

A Republic Fleet Firetail and the only Dominix to escape the main battle fell for this but fortune favoured a couple of other pilots who used different celestials as warp outs and they escaped to the safety of their POS.

The Firetail was able to escape initial capture and managed to warp into the POS but the Dominix did not and was roasted rather quickly.

Finishing Up

The battle was over in a couple of minutes and without a single loss and a nice 1.5b bill in lost ships to the enemy. The BR is very one sided but it was a very slick and professional engagement from my view and credit to our FC's, as well as Louis and Trinkets Friend for putting it together.

We took the opportunity to loot the field but also the decision was made to attack the POS ourselves. It looked inviting with research modules, lots of Enormous Containers and a Ship Maintenance Array ready for plunder.

A few people left system and reshipped whilst I took position on the high sec entry in case we had visitors as the fleet opened up on the POS.

Settling In For The Long Run

Our fleet was not setup for POS bashing and it took nearly 50 minutes to go from 25% shield to 0% and it was frustrating but extra ammo was bought in for those in need. Except me of course, I was told that I could not have ammo because it was 4 jumps in the other direction... 

Scouts were posted and we monitored d-scan (as you should in a WH) almost religiously but we were left alone to finish the tower. 

The enemy we had attacked returned in cloaky ships but only to watch, we had quite a nice conversation in Local with them and found they'd been preparing and working on this POS attack for THREE MONTHS and we come in and steal it from them.

It was all very cordial in the end and I hope our new Finnish friends learnt a couple of lessons from it.

They Think Its All Over

I can't remember exactly how long it took to finish off the tower but it was enough that I watched at least three videos on YouTube from The Might Jingles and his are normally 20 minutes long at minimum.

I have to mention a very unlucky enemy Nemesis whose pilot suffered a disconnection whilst watching us loot the destroyed tower from distance. We saw him appear and he was 75km from me so I MWD'd to him to get in point range, fortunately my drones were able to get there first and a friendly Oracle finished him off. The pod sat there as I pointed and webbed him and we sent him to high sec to the anguished cry of his corp mate in Local.

The end did come and whilst BUGGERY did not get the tower kill mail we did have fun killing everything else, resulting in some nice drops totally between 4b and 4.5b ISK.

Looting the remains actually seemed to take a lot longer than the fighting that happened, we made use of dropped haulers to move stuff out but a lot of trips had to be made as well as making sure that we left adequate escort in case an opportunity to pick off one of our ships was to happen.

Loot-wise there is nearly 2b ISk to be shared amongst those there for the kills and this isn't too bad at all. Ammo can be replaced and still leave a little ISK for investment or to buy something new to fly.

Energy Levels Replenished

Two good fights in one weekend, I'm quite exhausted and also I've found that my Bitter-Vet levels have dropped to very low levels thanks to this. 

You'll have to excuse me now, I have more blog posts to write as I'm on a mission from Bob...

Adventures whilst Fondling a Cumquat

Last week an Alliance mail was sent out announcing an operation for Friday night (AU TZ) as a C5 WH had been found that contained an alt corporation of a group that had recently attempted to "siege" our home system. I use "siege" with quotation marks because their attempt was so inept that I don't remember even one attack that cost us a ship.

The briefing mail was full of quotable gems like this:

They have a shittily defended POS. Like, if you lose a ship to it, you passed out from alcohol. Since we shall all be steadily drinking, there are some risks. Clearly.

duunnn dunnn... duuuunnnn duun... duuunnnnnnnn dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dunnnnnnnnnnn dunnnn

Fleet doctrine was detailed along with details for (possible) reinforcements, target priority and finished with the (I thought) quite optimistic:

There WILL be fucking content.

We'll see about that Doctor Prince Field Marshall Trinkets Friend, we'll see.

Order of Battle

The fleet doctrine was simple, built around sentry drone equipped Ishtar's and/or Vexor Navy Issue's with supporting Drakes and logi in the form of Basilisks. 

The VNI fit used makes it a very good utility vessel with some serious punch. My thanks to Bex for fitting me up a ship during the working day and contracting that over to me in our entry system. It was only much later that I realised I could actually fly and could have used the Ishtar but I quite enjoy flying the "Son of Potato" so I may give the Ishtar a pass, at least for the time being.

Son of Potato

On paper our fleet was quite good but it lacked serious fire power for a large tower bash, enter our Doctor Prince Field Marshall who arranged for a Naglfer to be bought into the C5 via a very fortuitous connected wormhole.

The dreadnought would provide not just seriously needed fire power but would almost guarantee "fucking content" as everyone wants to kill capitals.

The Alliance is Assembled

We had a good turn out, about fifteen to twenty pilots from the alliance (time zone was perfect for AU but not EU/US) were assembled by the time I got on comms. Morale was high and it really helped that the group were affiliated with the "inept" idiots who tried to attack us a couple of weeks ago.

We had a good mix of Ishtar/VNI and a lone Drake (flown by long-time blog friend Bex) plus a few logistics and other ships. It's only two days ago but my memory of the fleet composition is actually rather hazy, I put it down to lack of sleep caused by a second POS bash last night (more to come on that).

Most people got into the C5 quite quickly thanks to Siggy showing entrances and exits we could use, we did, alas, lose one VNI who passed through a WH but got caught and podded. Still they joined us later in a different ship so all was good.

Fondling the Cumquat

At the appointed time the fleet warped to the POS and started incapacitating the defenses, this didn't take too long as there weren't many but still took the best part of an hour at which point we started on the tower.

We didn't cluster into one area but, intelligently, we spread around the POS to offer as less an inviting target as possible for bombers and amusingly the dreadnought was located on the far side of the POS to the rest of the fleet. It wasn't obvious to me but in hindsight this was a particularly good bait offer and one that was eventually taken.

It took nearly 50% of the shields down before the enemy logged in to see what was happening, they swapped ships warped back/forth from the pos to safe spots and pretty much watched us watching them watching us.

The "absolutely nothing happened-off" continued til around 30% shields when we started to bombers and a few assorted ships enter and start to land on grid or within the POS.

At this point I would like to recommend visiting Localectomy for details on notable kills and the better written and funnier, view of the battle so head over and read this.

The first I knew that we were going to be receiving visitors was when a Sabre exited the POS near to the Naglfer and dropped a bubble. My initial reaction was to GTFO as we didn't know what we'd be up against but I'm proud to say I didn't leave, I trusted my fleet mates and I wasn't going to let them die in a fire. Yet.

The Sabre did high speed runs in/out of the POS shield dropping bubbles on the dreadnought as bombers and a couple of battleships appeared on grid. Targets were called and we managed to kill both the Sabre and a Heretic that were dropping bubbles all over the grid.

Being WH space I knew of the inconvenience that being podded, especially as we controlled the incoming WH's, and it was in our best interests to pod every pilot whose ship we killed. So it was with great glee that I locked and killed every pod that I could, one less pilot who could quickly reship in the WH meant less for us to face.

Concentrate all fire power on that...

Ships were being killed faster than I could lock, I remember seeing a Curse (major threat to the Naglfer), a Rapier (that the Naglfer blapped) and I heard about a Macherial and many other bombers.

I was only able to fire at one bomber and he was less than 10km from me and such was the power of his torpoedos that I went from full health to 45% armour in just three salvos. Forutnately in that time I locked and was able to kill him and of course, calling for reps showed how bad my battlefield positioning was as I was well out of logi range.

The battle lasted only a minute/minute and a half but we killed plenty and lost only a couple of ships.

Moonwalking Out of Dodge

With all the ships fighting the one thing that was surprising was how the Nagfler wasn't attacked in any seriousness: in hindsight this makes sense, take out the support first, pin the prize target in place.

After the battle ended we were able to (after some unneeded hilarity with webbing) extract the Nagfler from grid and left our beloved leader to extract from the WH and get safe somewhere.

The surviving sub-capital fleet moved to the exit WH and we held that whilst we awaited for all to arrive at which point a cat/mouse game was played with the, now superior in numbers, enemy fleet who chased us all the way back to high sec before and just after DT.

Fun Times

Well, fucking content was provided and it was very enjoyable. We may not have RF'd or killed the tower but we got a very enjoyable fight and lost little (aside from Bex's first ever Drake from circa 2010/2011).

The force multiplier that is good logistics pilots was shown and I tip my hat to my logi pilots. I may not have needed you as much as others but when I did you were there even if I did try my hardest to kill myself by flying away from them.

I was pleased with my contribution, sure its nice to get kill mails (not to mention get on them) but an otherwise boring Friday night entertaining and well worth ignoring the family for.

War Footing

My tower came out of reinforcement around 1am AU last night. I logged in just after down time and tried to online some extra modules and empty other POS modules so the loss wouldn't be too much.

I'd spoken to a couple of people during the day from other alliances/corporations in the region and said that there might be capital ships in my system around the time that the tower came out of reinforcement. I said I wasn't asking for help, I'd resigned myself to losing the tower, but capital kills are capital kills.

I don't know if anyone did send a scout through but I provided the information in good faith because it was very probable that capital ships would turn up to finish the tower off.

The Morning After

I went to bed in the belief the tower was lost and we'd have new occupants in our system. I'd decided I would be as annoying as possible by attacking any towers periodically and, if I could, reinforce any tower when I could.

So I woke up, checked EVE mon and was a little confused to see no notifications or mail overnight about the situation. I fired up my industry tool and checked my towers.

There it was, no longer indicating it was reinforced and the stront had been replenishe (probably by my CEO).

What Next

I've started production again, losing near 2 days has sent a few of my other towers off whack and its a little annoying but I think I'll stop production for two days in those to allow this one to catch up. I have plenty of materials on hand for sale and it really doesn't impact my industry.

I'm still not sure WHY my tower was reinforced but I'll be bringing in new POS defences and ammunition next JF run. If I can anchor dozens of guns in preparation for a repeat I may be able to piss them off enough that they'll reconsider any attack. A small chance but it worked for a recent POS assault I was going to be involved in.

I'm sure there are more things I can do and I'll be speaking to other experts, people with experience in POS Sieging and Defence, and my Alliance CEO to see what we can do to protect ourselves in future (as I pay taxes to the alliance for running the towers).

Pre-Phoebe Junk

Today has been my first day back at work after nearly 3 weeks of holiday time. It's been a great holiday and as with any holiday there is never enough time to do what you want or what you'd like to do. 

Towards the end of last week I had to deal with temperatures in the mid to high 30's (that's over 100F for those in countries who don't do Celsius as of yet) so the return to air conditioned offices is something of a blessing even if it does mean I now have to return to my day job.

Defensive Posturing

I had a serious think yesterday about my towers in null sec and come to the realisation that the defences they have are inadequate. A couple of small or medium guns with some hardeners and EWAR modules isn't enough to provide a deterrent.

So I'm in Jita buying up modules and ammunition for all my towers, I've gotten some good advice from my CEO about what to focus on getting and lessons I've gotten from posts by Trinket's Friend should mean I have a solid defensive setup before Phoebe goes live tomorrow.

If an attacker comes in anything smaller than a capital ship then we should be able to give them a bloody nose, at the very least. If they bring capitals then they'll have a support fleet or numbers that no POS could survive but the smaller entity we should be able to defend against.

I'm going be hard pressed to get it all into null sec and setup by tonight but hopefully I'll be able to set them in time for Phoebe.

Codename "Tug"

Revealed by CCP Fozzie in the EVE Vegas 2014 keynote was a new ship that is currently codenamed "Tug". A freighter sized vessel designed to "ship that is specifically designed to move around other ships" it comes fitted with a very large Ship Maintenance Hanger that will allow it to carry "multiple fitted battleships".

The obvious name for this vessel would be Orca but as that's taken we'll have to see what unpronounceable name it gets but something whale like is where I'd be putting my betting ISK.

Thar She Blows!

Considering fitted Battleships are 450,000m3 in size this means a SMA at least equivalent to a Super carrier (2,000,000m3).

Details are sparse to non-existent but the ship is certainly going to be very useful in high sec for moving ships around. I see dozens of these moving form Incursion to Incursion and they are going to be a massive target for gankers.

Regardless I'll certainly be investing in one.

Sabre Rattling

It's been interesting reading about the all the alliances moving to new homes, returning to old homes or just moving about in order to be in a better position come Phoebe. Of interest to me today was that PL have moved to Curse and are well positioned to attack either the reemergent Russians or HERO with the possibility of ProviBlock as well.

I welcome our new neighbours but they are a major power bloc in themselves so I'm a little concerned by move and how it could impact my home and what I do. Certianly I'll be paying more attention in the Intel channels but also to external news sites for a few weeks to monitor the situation.

With luck they'll ignore us little guys and rattle their sabres towards the Russians and/or HERO.

Undocumented Feature

More Waaaagh!

I received another invite to join the POS Bash Crew from last time, they'd found a new C1 with a Dark Blood Tower that was full of modules and very little defensive modules.

There was a little change to the plan, a mid-week assault would hopefully result in the tower coming out of reinforcement on Saturday rather than Sunday. So we assembled again and Oracles, Ishtars and Navy Vexors started to dismantle the defences and then, in just under three hours, reinforce the tower.

Which had just over 14 hours of Stront in it. Oh we weren't expecting that and its during the day Australian time so I won't be able to be there but there were other, more committed, people who would.

Bugged

This morning I login to EVE and Bex sends me a message, turns out that overnight the POS owners have been able to deploy and online around 40 new guns. As Trinkets Friend puts it on his blog:

Suddenly a cakewalk turned into a fucking joke

I was in another POS bash some time ago where something similar happened but I can't remember what happened but I think we did have enough pilots to ignore the small number of new guns and obliterated the tower regardless.

But seriously, is this a bug or a feature because this royally pissed off not just me but every member that had wasted an evening reinforcing the tower. It's in a C1 so we cannot get battleships or cpaitals in there to assist,m any sub-capitals will be seriously under fire and we'll need far more logi than we have pilots to ensure we survive.

Read Trinkets blog post on it and I can't agree more with what he says. It's a fucking joke, CCP can add new features but will not fix obvious bugs within their own the code that are causing game-breaking issues. Hell I'd go so far as to say the POS owners are cheating by using a broken mechanic to defend a POS they should have properly setup in the first place (with more than 8 guns, 1 web and 1 warp disruptor).

Unfortunately due to this the POS bash is off and the defenders have been rewarded for their defensive stupidity thanks to bugs in code.

Open Fire! All Weapons!

If you've ever had experience with POS guns you'll know how powerful and effective they can be under player control. We have a skill available, Starbase Defense Management, that allows players to control one gun per level trained.

It's a great skill and one I made sure I had at least two characters who live in POS'es have trained to Level 3. However it is a skill intensive skill, in order to control the maximum of five guns requires at least 52 days of training and 17 days of this is to get Anchoring to Level V, which is the pre-requisite for the skill.

With the coming of Kronos we've received the wonderful news that the pre-requisite skill is changing from Anchoring Level 5 to Anchoring Level 4! 

Defending via AI controlled POS weapons no more

We'll still need Anchoring 5 for Mobile Large Warp Distruptor II's (WH/Null Only) and Outpost Construction (Null Only) but Anchoring 4 will be the new requirement to get Starbase Defense Management. 

POS Defenders certainly have reason to be joyful now, this is a great change and a small one that goes a long way.

It's the small things

Kronos is coming and with it lots of changes, major and minor and overnight there has been a very welcome notice of a change to the pre-requisite requirements for the Starbase Defense Management skill.

This skill allows a pilot to control up-to five POS defense modules whilst within the POS shield. Previously in order to unlock this skill you needed to train Anchoring V but with the release of Kronos Anchoring IV will be the new requirement.

I already have two characters with this skill and this change means I no longer have to wait two weeks to finish Anchoring V in order to get a couple of extra guns under my control. Now I'll have all my characters trained to IV and at least SDM III.

This is a very welcome change and one that I see a lot more people will be training as covered by Foo.

Cargo Moved

I need POS fuel, 150,000 blocks of the stuff in less than 14 days. So I buy what I need in Jita and look to move it to my high sec staging system.

 

I could not fit all the materials into my one available (the other one was on a 48 jump round trip elsewhere in New Eden) so I decided to split what I had into 1 billion ISK packages for Red Frog Freight to take.

 

As I've said before I split up any runs into 1 billion ISK (according to the inventory window) packages and then create contracts for Red Frog Freight. In this case I needed three contracts and after these were setup I went to bed.

 

I checked this morning, using EVEMon, and all three had been completed with all the materials now in my high sec staging system ready for a freighter run into my destination system to turn into fuel.

 

 

Thanks Red Frog!

 

 

My cost, 9.5m per contract or 28m total to have over 1 million m3 of materials moved in less than 24 hours. My freighter alt, who would have taken the cargo in two runs, made that in bounties assisting my L4 mission runner as a salvage 'bee' during the day.

 

 

 

Actually he made a little more than that and the salvage I got from the missions actually exceeds that amount so I actually made a good profit.

Tower Notifications

Over the past two weeks my Inbox has been filled with notifications of towers running low on fuel. It has been frustrating not just for me but others who run towers to that some people do not seem to run a 'tight ship' and make sure that they are prepared for these situations.

 

It has gotten so much that there is now a 1 million ISK fine per message penalty should you not manage your towers, this isn't enough to cause pain but enough that its an inconvenience fee for those who have to put up with the messages.

 

It hasn't helped that there is no in-game way of tracking the towers and who owns them, at least if we knew who's they were we could point fingers or help out (if we knew they were away unexpectedly). Only we don't.

 

I've been working on a tracking program for my own use but of course this is one piece of information you cannot get from the game. All the towers are deployed for the corporation not per player so as to get the 25% fuel reduction bonus for having sovereignty. So I'm having to ask players about what towers they have and are running so I can add this metadata to my tower management interface.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Towers make tempting targets

I run nearly a dozen towers spread over a few locations, they produce materials I sell in Jita and for internal consumption in projects. Nothing major and the income is nice if sometimes isn't as much as my projections suggest.

A set of the towers lives in a null sec location that whilst reasonably busy in PvP is quiet for most things and thanks to a friend the region is a lot more secure and 'safe' than it used to be.



However there are new neighbours and they have been investigating the regions moons and decided they wanted one I was using. Unfortunately I had setup no defences on the tower as I did not anticipate any issues because of the security now in the region.

What an idiot I was...

A corp mate and another friend were able to inflict significant loses to the attackers, a couple of T1 ships lost for half a dozen or so Stealth Bombers. A nice trade, especially so as the attackers then shipped up and continued to lose ships and then finally gave up.

Amazing what rebalanced T1 ships can do :)

I logged in the next morning and on receiving an update paid an immediate visit to Jita where I loaded up on POS defence modules.

So far so good, no further repeat attacks although we are waiting.