Making Rigs

My primary production is still on hold, I have another 6ish weeks of stock to last me, but I needed to get a new Noctis and decided to manufacture the rigs for this as I had 90% of the components and I'd only need a small outlay of ISK to buy what I didn't have.

Sometimes its not worth doing this, unless you have the blueprint (original or copy) and materials yourself its often cheaper to buy from the market. In this case I nearly did, but at 30m each the rigs I decided to have a look for a blueprint and see if I had the salvage materials.

The rigs are for a specific use and aren't for resale so I'm not overly concerned with price, so long as they're cheaper than Jita I'll be happy.

Blueprint

I found the following blueprint in Jita:

3 runs for 27m ISK means 9m per run that I need to add to each rig price to correctly identify the overall cost. I don't need to purchase any skill books as my character has the necessary skills injected and trained.

Assembling the Components

As I have to travel to Jita to get the blueprint I also bought the other items I needed:

• Nanite Compound - 1,504,106.73 ISK
• R.A.M. - Armor/Hull Tech - 1,440 ISK

I also found, thanks to jEVEAssets, that I had the Interface Circuits and Intact Armor Plates already in my planned high sec production system. This surprised me as I didn't think I had so much salvage but it certainly saves me money as I don't have to buy these (and Intact Armor Plates are nearly 4m ISK each in Jita).

I collected the pieces from Jita and then put them in my Item Hanger ready for use.

Assembly

• I right clicked on the blueprint and selected Use Blueprint

• Change the Job Runs to 3
• I check the Cost and Duration (making sure I have enough ISK in my wallet)
• All yellow Start button means we're good to go, so I click Start

The total job cost comes up as 1,346,843 ISK and will take just under 15 hours to complete, which when you look at my cost per run:

• Blueprint: 9m ISK
• Materials: 501368.91 ISK
• Job Cost: 448947.66 ISK

Indicates my production will come in nealy 66% cheaper than the 30m per Rig price that is found in Jita for the rig. 

Awesome, now I just need to wait for them to finish building:

But Your Materials Aren't Free

True, there is my time and effort to find them but I cannot calculate this as I don't know how long I've had these. I have a feeling some of the salvage I've used I've had since 2011/2012 when I was actively salvaging every wreck after battles when I was in Providence.

If I was to assume I was buying the salvage off of the market it would only add around 14m to each rig being built, so the price will go up and still be just cheaper than Jita. 

Conclusion

The whole effort to build was simple and took less than six mouse clicks and 20 seconds, it was actually more effort travelling to Jita and buying what I didn't have off the market.

The new UI for industry takes some getting used to compared to the old method but it is far superior and very cleanly sets out the process and associated costs.

The rigs will be completed and installed on my new Noctis and then, hopefully, I can start farming new materials from sites I complete.

Wares to Market

I've had a good collection of wares to take to market this week, I've been usually frugal in my stockpiling of Metamaterials so I had a nice stack of around 170,000 units each of Photonic and Terrahertz along with the loot from my missioning/officer spawn.

All up my cargo bay said it was worth around 7 billion worth of materials I'd be shipping and this is good timing as I'm only a week or so from needing more input materials for my towers.

Jumping Out

Shipping the materials out of Curse was simple enough, I have two cyno chains I can use and I fired up one and had the materials in high sec within 5 minutes of filling the Jump Freighter. 

I have two cyno chains because sometimes a mid/end-point system may have too many pilots in it for me to want to jump. This is especially so when I'm carrying such an ISK amount.

Moving to Jita

Next I unloaded everything in my local high sec station and setup courier contracts to another alt to take the stuff to Jita for sale. I do this as a precaution against ganking, by splitting up the wares and using courier contracts I'm hoping that the casual ganker will ignore me and I'll be able to pass unhindered. 

Of course this means multiple trips but a alt with a full mid-grade Nomad set and extra warp speed implants doesn't add much time to the journey.

For Sale

Once in Jita its time to sell and this is where patience really counts. I want to make the most from what I'm selling but I also don't want to sell, at first, to buy orders so I look at the price of what I'm selling and then lower the price by a small amount so as to give myself some "daylight" between my items and the next cheapest.

For Metamaterials this means lowing the price further so I will only change by, no more, than 3 ISK but in fact I only dropped the price by 0.75 ISK. Other items were put on at just under current lowest with the hope they'll sell fast.

I setup my sell orders just before downtime and when I logged in this morning I'd sold roughly half of what I had available, which was good, and I spent a little time redoing orders and changing prices as needed.

That's my days market work done, now its time to earn some more ISK via missions and ratting.

Nomads - Level 4 Storyline Wrap Up

Last night I wasn't able to finish the final mission of the Nomads story line mission I got from my Mining Agent,  downtime just came too quickly and there was no way I was going to be able to complete four rooms in nine minutes.

More so as the incoming dps was enough to make me warp my Gila out after landing in the first room, reading up on the mission was of little use as the reference to the mission was from 2008 and didn't go into much detail.

I petitioned to get the final mission reset before I logged off last night and spent a little bit before I went to sleep trying to work out how to do this mission.

When I logged in this evening I asked my CEO to assist and he offered an off grid booster and possible a suicide logistics ship but as luck would have it a PvP target rich environment happened tonight so he was distracted by that but he did run his booster for me with Siege (shield resistance) and Skirmish (signature radius) links.

If At First

I undocked the mission owner in his pod and warped to the deadspace area, this is a useful trick as NPC's will NOT attack a pod and I was able to move slowly 50km above initial spawn point. Whilst he was moving I warped my combat pilot in at 50km and arrived 30km underneath the spawn point and away from the serious dps that bothered me last night.

I then targeted the webbing ships and used my missiles and drones to kill them whilst staying around 50km from the battleships.

A few minutes later and the room was clear and I looted the Alpha Gate card from the last battleship I killed.

Alpha Room

I warped in and had a fright as my overview was NOT setup to show faction warfare NPC's so I didn't see the dozen webbing frigates that surrounded me when I landed. A quick change to the overview and I engage the afterburner and align to my repair station (just in case).

I primary the webbing frigates and receive a tip from alliance that I should run the Federation Navy Omnidirectional Tracking Link without any scripts to get both a bonus to tracking speed/optimal range. As soon as I did this my Valkyries started to kill frigates in one shot rather than the two or three when I had the tracking speed script installed.

#Winning

The room was cleared and I checked the last NPC killed for the Beta Room key, which I prompted used to use the Beta gate.

Beta Room

With my overview now correctly showing all NPC's I warped into the Beta room and was able to see that I had three groups of targets. 

• Group 1 were 3 battleships at 35km 
• Group 2 were a mix of frigates, cruisers and a couple of Battleships at 75km
• Group 3 were a mix of frigates, cruisers, three Battleships and a named cruiser at 90km

I noticed no aggro on landing and it was only when I attacked that any aggro came from the group I was engaging. As a result I maintained range with my afterburner on, so my drones could engage. Targeting the webbing frigates first, then cruisers and finally the battleships I was able to kill them all taking minimal damage.

The named cruiser was putting out significantly more damage than the battleships, when they did hit, so once the cruisers were finished I killed the named cruiser and finished off the battleships. I had a nice surprise when I looted the named cruiser and found two +3% and one 5% implants.

The final battleship I killed held the Gamma Room key and nothing else, so I grabbed the key and off I warped.

Gamma Room

The final room, again warp in was clear and this time I had two large groups of NPC's to deal with.

• Group 1 were a mix of frigates, cruisers and battleships at 70km 
• Group 2 were a mix of frigates, cruisers, 4 battleships and a named battleship at 90km 

I approached this room the same as the Beta Room. Maintaining distance with my afterburner whilst using my drones to kill the NPC's in order from smallest to largest, with a particular emphasis on the webbing frigates.

Group 1 didn't last more than 10 minutes and I moved on to Group 2, again webbing frigates were killed quickly and then cruisers. The battleships were around 40km from me now and, with the exception of the named battleship, not hitting me.

I was still very much tanking these, my shields hadn't dropped below 90% as of yet, so I moved in and engaged the named rat with HAMs and drones whilst orbiting at 15km. He took three minutes to explode at which point I checked his wreck and was very happy to see a pair of Republic Fleet modules which I grabbed and then finished off the rest of the ships.

Loot

I warped a Noctis in after I'd finished the mission and looted/salvaged every wreck in each room and as a result I managed to get quite a selection of T1 salvage and modules that I can reprocess as well as the implants/faction modules that I grabbed.

Excluding the T1 modules this is what I got out of the entire 5 mission arc that I received.

All up a little over 550m ISK worth of loot that I can use or sell on the market. A very profitable mission  arc even if it took a lot of effort and never ending clicking of d-scan.

Unexpected Surprise

I have previously blogged, a fair while ago, about getting a Dread Guristas Cloaking Device in a Level 4 mission in high sec but I've beaten that in a drop I got from a Level 4 storyline mission in null sec.

In the fourth part of the Nomads Level 4 storyline mission, there was a named battleship and he was quite a pain to take out as he was doing four or five times more damage than the normal battleships he had escorting him. I had to warp the Gila out three times before I reduced enough of the dps from the spawn to be able to tank it.

Once the named rat was dead I mosied over to his wreck and found this along with some basic modules:

Not an implant I've ever seen before and the description said this:

This is an implant worth keeping or should I sell it fetch a nice price. 

But as luck would have it this is a nice implant but Jita has quite a few for sale and they're only worth ~280m ISK. Still I have no intention of selling as this will make a very good Slot 7 implant for my Dreadnaught jump clone. 

Ratting with Angels

After I moved to Curse I followed the lead of my CEO and started ratting in a shield Tornado fitted with 800mm Repeating Cannon II's using Fusion L. It worked well and handled everything that the rats in Curse could throw at it.

I can remember only two occasions I had to warp out due to getting precariously low into shield, both times were because I was webbed and my speed was insufficent to deflect any of the incoming dps. T5, as it was named, was a solid ratting ship for my local rats and I'd still be using it today if I hadn't seen an alliance mate using a Gila and witnessed the utter devastation the two medium drones that ship can field did.

Sleek and sexy, the reborn Gila.

Ship Fit

The Gila is a great Caldari/Gallente crossed cruiser with a specific role bonus to medium combat drones (500% bonus to damage and hitpoints) so whilst you'll have some form of missile weapon these will be your secondary attack method with medium drones being primary.

[Angel Gila]

Heavy Assault Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Assault Missile

Heavy Assault Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Assault Missile

Heavy Assault Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Assault Missile

Heavy Assault Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Assault Missile

Salvager II [OFFLINE]

10mn Afterburner II

Large Shield Extender II

Large Shield Extender II

Adaptive Invulnerability Field II

Federation Navy Omnidirectional Tracking Link

Pithum C-Type EM Ward Amplifier

Drone Damage Amplifier II

Drone Damage Amplifier II

Drone Damage Amplifier II

Drone Damage Amplifier II

Medium Core Defense Field Extender II

Medium Anti-Kinetic Screen Reinforcer II

Medium Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer II

6 x Valkyrie II

2 x Hammerhead II

2 x Infiltrator II

When I bought this it would have cost me a little over 500m ISK for the ship and all the modules/rigs in Jita but as I horde most of the modules I had already and I only had to buy the rigs and Deadspace/Faction modules and a new supply of missiles.

Defensive

Damage is reasonable and the tank is designed to be around the same level with resists (rounded up) of 74/69/77/72 and total EHP of 54,300. This is good and subsequent flight tests have shown this to be more than enough to deal with the Angel rats of Curse and the one rat who nearly killed my ship is not something you see everyday and would face with assistance anyway.

Offensive

The HAM's provide only 215 dps out to a range of 20.2km with Caldari Navy Scourge, this goes up to 253 dps at 16.8km if I use T2 Scourge Rage but the majority of my damage comes from the two medium drones I can deploy.

I use Valkyries as these are perfect to hit the resistance hole (explosive) that Angel rats have and the two (thanks to the Gila Role Bonus) put out a magnificent 549 dps. Other drones do more or less the same damage but not being explosive these aren't as good against the rats.

Upgrades?

Improvements could always be made, I could use more Faction or Deadspace modules but I don't see the point. I have a half billion ISK ship that does a single job and does it very well, incoming dps is killed off quickly and the HAM's mean any frigates that do get close can be removed without shifting the fire of the drones from the larger targets.

Any improvements from 'bling' would be negligible and just add to the risk should the ship be lost.

Usage

Using this ship is simple, warp to belt/anom and deploy drones. Lock up largest targets and then let the drones loose on them. Any frigates or cruisers that come within missile range but haven't been engaged by the drones are attacked with HAMs.

Rise, repeat until all targets are dead, move to next belt.

Most of the time I move off the warp in point under normal speed but should I get a convoy or larger than normal battleship group (4+) I will orbit an asteroid or ship at range with my afterburner active. This helps lower the incoming dps so I can avoid having to warp out.

Conclusion

The Gila is a beast of a ratting ship, a little expensive but worth the extra ISK for the hull. The drones really eat Angel ships and each belt can be cleared in a a minute or two. A couple of anoms I've tried were much simpler than using my old Tornado and I'll seriously consider doing anything up to 7/10 in the Gila without support (obviously managing the spawns).

T5 has been retired but will not be ignored. I've already moved 1400mm Howitzers to replace the 800mm's so I can use it as a long range PvP ship.

Luck Be The Lady Tonight

When not updating my PI, Market Orders or running missions I've spent today ratting and collecting as much salvage as possible. Its been quite profitable in salvage and bounties but earlier today the alliance "Officer Expert" got himself quite a lucrative drop from our friend Tobias Kruzhor.

However I got a shock when I warped back to start another run through of the belts. Unfortunately I didn't grab a screenshot but I had six battleships appear in my overview. At first I thought it was a convoy that had spawned but closer inspection of the names of the battleships showed that I was quite wrong.

Gotan Kreiss

Sly and tricky, Kreiss is the head of Internal Security and is feared almost as much within the Dominations as without. Almost. Threat level: Deadly

This was my first solo officer spawn, I'd been part of group who had killed two previously (one even I wrote about not a couple of weeks ago) but this was my first where I found him. A quick message and a drag/drop of the asteroid belt where he was into our local channel summoned reinforcements but I was on my own for at least a minute or two.

I immediately deployed drones and started to approach Gotan, making sure it was at an angle and not directly, but suddenly his distance to me dropped and then kept dropping. He was coming straight at me.

My drones started to eat into his shields and as soon as he came within range I opened up with my Heavy Assault Launchers too. So far I'd taken a little damage, foruntaltey his "escort" were still over 40km away and weren't hitting me but Gotan got a couple of hits on me and I was at 76% shields.

To Worse

All of a sudden I noticed I was nearly stationary, was he webbing me? No he wasn't but my Afterburner was turned off and so was my Adaptive Invulnerability Field. This was quite an issue as maintaining a good speed AND the resist buff the Invulnerability Field provided were vital to my surviving. Why were they off?

I looked and saw my capacitor was empty and the neut icon was appearing above it. Gotan was sucking my capacitor dry and as such I was in a very precarious position. As if to punctuate the point I took a couple of hits at that time and went down to 45% shields.

I sent my alt off to station to reship to a scimitar, at least that may be able to keep me alive until help arrived.

Fighting Back

I was less than 10km from Gotan and he was well into armour now but I wasn't able to take him into structure. My shields had now dropped to less than 15% but help was at hand as I saw a couple of ships exiting warp besides me.

My shields dropped to 3% and I decided it was time to leave.

As I was aligning I noticed that Acki Juc had opened fire on Gotan and this was enough to tip him into very low armour and this was punctuated again when Raven Renelard opened fire too. I saw my shields restore to above 10%. and realised my CEO, Disposable Ensign, locked me up in a "four rep-afterburner scimi" and was sending repairs my way.

Yay! Logi was here.

I cancelled warp and overheated my HAM's. Gotan was going down.

Looting The Wreck

Gotan exploded and I moved into the wreck, this was what I saw upon opening it:

A nice collection of Green and Purple there with a yellow just to be different. All up that's about 1.8 billion ISK worth of loot. The Officer BCU is not as expensive as you might think at around 500m, the implant is actually the best of the lot with that selling for nearly 900m in Jita.

If I'd killed him solo the lot would have been mine but as it was a team effort (myself + 3 others) a cut of 300m per pilot was decided on with the remainder being mine. 

Purple Moros Down

[So they wanted to kill a purple carrier, but then they turned on you.]
I knew they would.
             - Apex Bex.

What follows is the After Action Report by Apex Bex, longtime friend and EVE compatriot, who has returned to living in a WH and also working with some people of "dubious honour". I post it here as its a great story about how people create content and how friends can turn on friends for fun.

Now, it’s important to identify what a ‘MATE’ roam is. Basically, its a group of Aussie corps/pilots who get together now and again for PvP roams and other shenanigans. There are affiliations within the group, but largely it’s a not purple, shoot it kind of arrangement and little love lost between many of the participants. 

The Story

It was getting late on Friday night and having made some ISK in my C2 Wormhole, I was jumping through high sec to Jita to unload some products. It’s at about this point that my CEO mentions one of the guys on his ‘MATE’ roam is busting out a Chimera, to what end I had no idea. 

Caldari carrier, makes a nice big explosion when killed

So Trinket gets it in his head that it’d be pretty funny to drop a Moros on the Chimera. There was apparently someone else of similar thinking bringing another Moros and he would be the secondary target. Since going back to W-Space I’ve barely even looked sideways at my cap fleet and the Blap Moros was definitely my favourite of the bunch. 

[Blap Moros]

3x Limited Mega Ion Siege Blaster I

1x Siege Module II

2x Heavy Capacitor Booster II

1x Sensor Booster II

2x Tracking Computer II

1x Damage Control II

1x Capital Inefficient Armor Repair Unit

3x Magnetic Field Stabilizer II

2x Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II

2x Capital Trimark Armor Pump I

1x Capital Hybrid Collision Accelerator II

I almost never use it, so I volunteered to be 'the guy', I could insta jump to my clone in Aurohunen anyway and did.

I should’ve checked the clone before I jumped to it, as I found out later it had a full LG crystal set in it. Less than ideal for an armour Moros, but what the hell. This was in LowSec anyway, only galactic stupidity would see me lose my clone too. 

As the moment to jump drew nearer the destination system was linked in private chat from Trinkets. Tama. Fucking Tama. OK, this was almost certain death then. I thought ‘fuck it – it’s just pixels’, spent half a billion on insurance and undocked the Moros in Aurohunen, waiting for the cyno to go up.

Jump, Jump, Jump

Moments later the cyno is lit and I clasp my balls firmly in my left hand and jumped into Tama, appearing at the sun no less. Sure enough, there was a swarm of purple that comprised the ‘MATE’ fleet and the Chimera was among them. I immediately sieged and let fly with Guristas Anti-Matter from about 15km’s. 

The poor Chimmy never had a chance. TeamSpeak was alive with hoots & wtf's as purple opened up on purple and the carrier exploded less than a minute into my siege cycle.

Kill: Bam Stroker (Chimera)

Suddenly, Oh Bugger, Surprise!

It was at this point that I learned just how loyal the ‘MATE’ fleet was =]. I was kicked from fleet and the 30 odd sub caps opened up on me. It was about now I was really pleased with myself for taking the insurance. My 3 Billion ISK Dread was fully covered now and I was just going to try to take as many with me as I could. 

I started locking up everything big enough to hit and not moving enough. Primary was of course going to be the Armageddon that was neuting my capacitor hard. It went down rapidly and I moved onto the Megathron. It too succumbed at point blank range in just two volleys. 

Kill: Ceadeus (Armageddon)

Kill: Kech Eistiras (Megathron)

Even a Drake that was silly enough to sit still for a minute went down. 

Kill: Kato's Pete (Drake)

I’m still behind on the ISK war but was having too much fun to give too much of a fuck at this point, so now with only cruisers on the field and no tackle to hold them still enough I dropped a depot and quickly refit for cap regen as I was almost out of boosters. 

Need to refit in space? The mobile depot is the "must have" deployable

Amazingly they let my depot deploy and I dropped the tracking computers for cap rechargers but that was as far as I got when the depot started taking fire. I scooped it up but the opportunity wouldn't present itself again to drop it on the field.

I still had at least 6 siege cycles worth of stront left so no trouble tanking this sub cap fleet now, but I was also made aware that there was a Snuff Box fleet en route. They wouldn't be 'kitchen sinking it' and their arrival would be the end of me, unless I could get the cap to jump out.

The Final Countdown

Under the sustained DPS and cap warfare I could never quite get enough cap to jump, the closest I got I was still about 5% short and moments later the Snuff Box fleet landed, comprised mostly of Command Ships with a Heavy Interdictor and a Neut Armageddon. 

The Armageddon maintained just enough transversal to be unhittable to my guns, especially without my tracking computers fitted, and he would soon have me neuted out and unable to operate either defensive or offensive modules let alone jump out.

If I was going to die I would do so trying to take as many of them as possible with me and I did notice that one of their Command Ships was sitting dead still about 3,000m off my starboard side, so I took the shot Hilariously, he popped on the second volley and now the ISK war had a half a billion ISK Command Ship on my side.

Kill: Tau AD (Absolution)

Then, eight minutes later, I finally succumbed to the incoming fire and exploded:

Kill: Apex Bex (Moros)

and notice the lack of pod killmail, yup he was a jammy bastard and managed to save his LG Crystal Clone equipped pod in the melee that developed.

R.I.P. Wrong Again, Bob

Second View

Trinkets Friend has posted a shorter write up of the "MATE" roam on his blog. Go have a read of it (and favourite it as he's got one of the better written blogs in EVE) and then laugh at Apex Bex just as I have been as I've been writing this.

Does this look like a trustworthy character?

Oh and save your ISK, I know full well Apex Bex is a Space Rich bastard and does not need any ISK donations.