When I previously wrote about testing out the new version of Marauders on SiSi I didn’t realise that CCP’s script to give the skills needed for Bastion also gave me all four racial Battleship skills. So I popped onto SiSi again and bought all 4 marauders to see what they looked like. Plus the Golem got another new look, so now that old video is outdated.

Paladin

Honestly, I don’t know what to say about this. Is it just me or does the Paladin look like a giant, red-helmeted, veined throbbing… thing. Before I tested this out, I was just thinking it would be perfect if Bastion made two big round spheres deploy at the base of the ship. Only to find out that Bastion really did make two things deploy at the base of the ship…

Those damn horny space priests… I tried out a Tachyon beam fit, but discovered that CPU is really tight with MWD. I can’t even fit 3 tractors on. Doesn’t seem to be much I can do to reduce CPU, even with deadspace mods. Has insane range with 2 TCs and Bastion (I think it was like a 70+km optimal with faction MF) but I don’t see myself sniping with it and probably will still go with pulses.

Golem

I still like the platypus/hammerhead much more than space tick look. Also like the new color scheme more, the gold was just kinda gaudy.

Kronos

I care so little about the Kronos that I couldn’t even be bothered to fit it, just slap a Bastion on it and off we go… Given that this was the first thing they showed off, I expected the best transformation but really it’s barely noticeable. CCP must have a very low “cool” threshold.

Vargur

And finally what seems to be shaping up to be the red-headed stepchild of Marauders. The Vargur gets a new all-black look, but I like the look on TQ now a lot better, the red highlights seem to give it a mean air that is lacking now. Also the Bastion transformation seems to be broken (or my eyes are). From forum posts it seems that an armor plate is supposed to rise up and cover the sails, but I don’t see anything happening.

Similar to the Paladin, I tried out a 1400mm arty fit and found that CPU was really tight. Especially with an XL shield booster, although I could probably save some CPU by using a deadspace one. I had never tried arty before but the other night when taking my Myrm out for a spin I actually used some 720mm arties and oh my god THAT RELOAD TIME. And the 1400mm arties are supposed to be a lot worse. So right now it’ll probably still be 800mm autocannons, meaning Bastion does nothing for the range. I’m finding it a bit hard to come up with any changes to the fit post-Rubicon. Not sure if 2 Tracking Enhancers, 2 unbonused webs and the hull tracking bonus would be enough for a Vargur to hit orbiting frigates while Bastioned.

I seem to be fortunate that my base system has a couple of dead-end systems within a couple of jumps. These dead-end systems don’t get as much traffic, other than the missioneers sent there by the nearby agents. So sometimes I can find a good number of signatures and anoms there.

I was actually just looking for a couple of data or relic sites since I didn’t have that much time to play. However, I just kept turning up combat signatures. The first was a drone signature called Desolate Site. My Tengu warped to the gate and started scanning for the rest of the signatures while Noork made his way over in the Rupture. However, while he was in transit I idly pressed warp on the Tengu and to my great surprise it actually went through the gate. At this point I’m thoroughly confused as to what is allowed through which kind of sites. EVElopedia says only cruisers and tech 2 versions allowed… but well I’m not complaining. After a bunch of missile spewing mayhem I killed the Sentient drone thingy and that finished the site. Drone sites seem to be not worth doing because there are no faction item drops, only T2 salvage (got about 500k ISK from the Sentient wreck).

Next site, however, was a 3/10 DED site called Blood Raider Intelligence Collection. By this time my Rupture had made it over so it proceeded in. And promptly proceeded to get WTF TRACKING DISRUPTED BY 15 FRIGATES. This proved to be the theme for all 4 rooms of the site, and my poor Rupture was reduced to a crippled Vexor and spent all its time managing the 6 Hobgoblin IIs and randomly webbing frigates that got within 10km. I’m beginning to get the hint that a Rupture isn’t really a good choice here, and I should really go and refit my Gila. Gallente Cruiser V finishes in 6 days and after that is HAC to level 4, so I was being kinda lazy and just waiting for my Ishtar. But man oh man was that annoying. The Dark Blood Agent at the end didn’t drop anything (as usual) other than the umpteenth set of Overseer toothbrushes and disposable underwear.

The last site before I had to go was another Desolate Site, so once again the Tengu was sent in to obliterate defenceless drones. This time however was a bit more interesting as the escalation “Mare Sargassum” popped. I’ve never encountered an escalation before, but I’m a bit wary that the last step is supposed to occur in low sec. Not sure if that’s worth doing, I guess I’ll wait and see which low sec system it pops in and if it’s fairly deserted it shouldn’t be an issue bringing a cheap cruiser in. Definitely not the Tengu though…

I read on Low Sec Lifestyle about Sugar Kyle’s experiences at EVE Vegas. Kudos to her for putting up with all the annoying parties and bar hopping. Reading about it just reminds me of how much I hate such social events, including the drinking and smoking, loud music, meeting random strangers whose names I forget in 10 seconds.

She picked up a lot of useful information though, and was kind enough to tell her readers about it. One of the things that got me a bit more excited are some details on the new deployable structures. I’ve been kind of reserved about these due to the lack of details on how they will work, mostly the volume occupied, cost and whether they are reusable. A lot of brainless chimps in the Marauder rebalance thread cheerfully declared that the tractor beam bonus was useless because the amazing tractor beam structure would solve all their problems, without knowing a single thing about it. I kinda chuckled when it was revealed that it would only be able to tractor stuff 1 at a time at normal speeds.

Well now we have some more details!

1) The tractor beam structure will tractor and loot legal wrecks one at a time. The good thing is it is reusable, and when scooped it drops a can with the stuff looted. Estimated cost is about 5 million ISK, with a volume of 50m3 which is pretty nice. Lifespan of about a day.

2) The depot structure will also be 50m3 and has a capacity about the same as a Giant Secure Container. Estimated cost is 500-600k ISK and it allows you to store stuff or refit your ship. Also reusable, meaning it drops a can with the contents when scooped (or shot). Has a lifespan of about a month.

3) Cyno jammer is estimated at 20 million ISK, one time use. Doesn’t stop covert cynos, and can’t be deployed within 200km of another jammer.

4) Siphon unit has it’s own dev blog already anyway so nothing new there.

Supposedly the deploying time is about 45 seconds, which is longer than I hoped for but still I’m getting pretty excited about these. Especially the depot in conjunction with the new Marauders…

As I see it, if you’re going to be immobile in Bastion anyway then it’s a perfect time to plonk down a depot + tractor structure right next to you. This solves quite a few problems that I see with Bastion. Namely, depending on the situation I can easily swap out MJD and other prop mods, or change from short range weapons to long range weapons. E.g. on Worlds Collide first room, I can start off with a MJD and jump right into range and immediately plonk down a depot. If targets get too close, refit to short range weapons (and even possibly triple webs for frigates). NPCs don’t shoot at deployable structures anyway, so they should be safe unless you decide to smartbomb or something. If incoming damage gets heavy, you can refit to a heavier tank. And if you don’t want to do triangulation jumps, when you’re almost done you can swap out the MJD to MWD before scooping the depot and just fly to the next gate.

If this really works out, I will be very interested to fly my Marauders with Bastion and MJD. It will really allow a lot of flexibility for different types of missions, while previously the limitations of Bastion were sort of pushing everyone into a sniping style.

Last night I found myself with a bit of time for EVE since I was busy running some R code and couldn’t do any more work while waiting. So I ran a few level 4s but didn’t really draw anything special. Finished the Recon series and did a storyline trade mission to get a 20M ISK implant.

But what was more interesting was that there were 4 signatures in my base system. So out came my Travesty Tengu for some scanning. I’m getting a lot better at scanning now so in short order I’m warping to the first site, which turned out to be a relic/data site (forget which…). There were only 2 hackable containers, but they both turned out to contain decryptors, which wonder of wonders actually sell for more than a million i.e. not complete crap. I still have no real idea what I should be clicking on, but I tried to go for data/parts/materials and I think I got all the decryptors anyway.

Next site turned out to be a combat signature, aha! Mul-Zatah Monastery, hmm looks interesting although I keep mentally calling it Zul-Matah for some reason. 4/10 DED site, but once again my Tengu is not allowed through. I notice that battlecruisers are allowed and having never done a 4/10 site before I’m a bit wary of using my little Rupture. So I undock Noork to go pick up a battlecruiser while I continue scanning, finding another relic/data site with more decryptors.

4 jumps away I reach my main depot and sifting through my battlecruisers, my choices are Drake, Hurricane and Myrmidon. Haven’t flown the Drake since the nerfhammer hit it and the DPS looks abysmal, so scratch that. Hurricane also looks very lackluster now (sigh, obviously I had them since they were the most popular before and now they’re pretty weak comparatively). So out came my Myrmidon, albeit after some fit jiggling since I seem to have lost a high slot in exchange for another mid. Ended up packing 4 720mm arties, 2 omnidirectional tracking links, 2 drone damage amps, a medium armor repairer, damage control, and 2 EANMs. Main firepower provided by 4 Garde IIs.

Upon warping in to the site, my first thought was “wow that’s a lot of red stuff”. 21 cruisers and god knows how many missile batteries, including a few stasis towers. Good thing I decided to reship as I think my Rupture would have definitely been ruptured instantly if I tried to close to autocannon range. However, my Myrm just sat there and dropped 4 Gardes which then happily started popping everything at 45+km away. The last cruisers managed to get within 9km before dying and I had to pull in 1 Garde a couple of times, but nothing exciting happened. Nothing exciting happened either when I popped the Inner Sanctum structure, only getting some Overseer junk again. However when I pulled in close to loot the webs plus remaining sentry and missile batteries ripped through my tank pretty alarmingly, until I dropped Gardes again to have a sentry-vs-sentry battle. So it looks like I definitely need a bit more of a tank for 4/10 sites and up.

The last signature was another combat site, Asteroid Infestation again. So out came the Rupture which blew through the industrious drones the same as the last 2 times. And again nothing dropped, which given my history with loot drops is nothing out of the ordinary.

Given the success of the Myrm, I’m considering bringing my Gila to do combat sites. Has a stronger tank and higher damage, while being able to access both 3/10 and 4/10 sites. When I finish my Ishtar training I’ll probably switch to the Ishtar since the missiles on the Gila are pretty much worthless.

And here we go, round 3 of the most controversial change coming in Rubicon, to the most unloved (apparently) ship class in the universe!

This has been going spinning in circles for a while now, but CCP seems pretty deadset on the whole MJD/Bastion thing, the only things left are the actual stats on the hulls of which I don’t think there are going to be significant changes from this 3rd iteration. In all honesty it seems pretty acceptable now (although I stand by my previous stance that there was no need to nerf the hulls in the first place). The marauders generally lost a bit of speed and agility, and got their drone bandwidth gutted, in exchange for lower mass, better fitting, much lower signature, increased EHP, slightly increased targeting range and much better scan resolution. The ridiculously low sensor strength still stands, which makes no sense whatsoever since they were originally designed that way to prevent Marauders from PVPing (and this whole update is about making Marauders able to PVP…).

In case you can’t be bothered to read all 300+ pages of rage, gloating and sometimes utter stupidity, here are some interesting notes (since I did read all 300+ pages):

– Bastion range bonus is stacking penalized, by design. What this means is that the range bonus is relatively weak and isn’t going to make autocannons hit out to 100 km.

– Bastion makes you immune to e-war… but not immune to cap drain. So neuts are still highly dangerous, in fact even more so since every bit of cap drained is a huge amount of potential shield/armor lost. In addition the 2 shield marauders, Golem and Vargur, got a slight cap regen nerf. In Bastion you can’t receive remote assistance, so no cap transfers, but interestingly nosferatus still work so if you have 2 Marauders you can Bastion up and suck cap from each other.

– Bastion makes you unable to e-warp in case of DC. This could be potentially very lethal to pilots with spotty internet connections. If you DC in the middle of a Bastion cycle, the ship will try to e-warp but can’t because of Bastion’s immobility. When Bastion ends, the ship does not reattempt to e-warp, so your ship will be stuck there immobile with no reppers running.

– Your ship is unable to align while in Bastion. Guess immobile really means immobile.

So as I see it, there are 3 possible ways to fly a Marauder in missions in Rubicon. One is to A) continue flying it the pre-Rubicon fashion. Another option is to B) follow CCP’s grand vision and become a MJD sniper. The third option C) is to retool your fit around Bastion + prop mod (likely to be MWD) and short/mid range weapons.

Wave your hands in the air like you just don’t care

This is my initial reaction, given that I’m actually really happy with my Marauders now. The main selling point of Marauders to me is the ability to salvage. CCP has stated that the new tractor beam structure will only be able to tractor 1 thing at a time at normal speeds, although it has further range than Marauder tractors. They also haven’t said whether it can be picked up after being deployed(note the new siphon unit can’t, so I’m a bit worried on this). MJD and Bastion both work against this principle, MJD because it jumps too far and Bastion because you turn into a space lump. So since the hull nerfs aren’t THAT bad now, you could simply use your old fit (AB/MWD) and fit Bastion mostly as a oh-shit button. You primarily move and shoot and salvage, but if pinned down by webbers in a bad place with a damage spike or NPCs are hitting you with annoying e-war, you press Bastion and go “RAAAWR BREAK YOURSELF ON MY ADAMANTITE BODY”

The benefits you get are that you are much less vulnerable to Bastion death-by-DC, it’s not as gimmicky a playstyle and you can easily salvage on the move, while getting the get-out-of-ewar-free card and a completely massive tank in case you somehow really mess up.

I have seen the light

Since CCP is absolutely not budging on this concept, you could also go with the flow and do what they want you to do, meaning fit MJD, Bastion up and snipe. If you salvage with a Noctis anyway, this would probably work out decently well. The problem then is why you would fly a Marauder in the first place. If the bandwidth and drone bay had been buffed to allow 5 sentries, then I would be totally excited to do this. MJD just works so well with sentries, and the plethora of high slots in Marauders is perfect for Drone Link Augmentors. But… alas it is not to be. Which leaves us in a position where a plain old Dominix, or a Fleet Typhoon, or Navy Apoc, will do very comparable (actually more) DPS for a fraction of the training time and price. The MJD bonus is going to be very underutilized because the vast majority of time you won’t be jumping every 1 minute anyway, 3 minutes is perfectly acceptable.

Bastion’s tank bonus is also relatively underutilized in this role. You only need 2 slots to tank, but to really snipe you still need to mount some kind of targeting range module and also a few Tracking Computers/Tracking Enhancers. Bastion’s range bonus isn’t very helpful because to snipe you still have to fit long range weapons, which could already hit at those ranges anyway. However, in terms of safety this role is unbeatable. You already take little damage at range, so a short disconnect isn’t really a problem, in fact you don’t even really need to Bastion (most e-war doesn’t even reach 100km, except maybe jamming). MJD gets you out of NPC warp disruption, so you should never ever die to tackling frigates. You just need to practise doing triangulation to get to acceleration gates, and you could probably even mount an additional prop mod to travel short distances easier.

Activate turtle mode

The third option, which I’m actually pretty interested to try out, is to plan around being in Bastion ALL THE TIME. Since Bastion’s range bonus is stacking penalized, it makes some sense to maximise it by not mounting as many range modules (or change to tracking scripts). If possible, I’d also like to try adding a couple of webs (even if unbonused). The idea is to fly to medium range, activate Bastion and kill absolutely everything, even close range frigates. You’d need to mount a strongish tank (maybe 3 slots) but not as strong as the first option since you’ll always be in Bastion, but you gain being able to put out much better damage and not having to waste time MJDing. You can still salvage since you’re mostly fighting short-medium range, and you can mount a MWD to quickly burn to the next gate after you’re done. The downside is that the ship will be borderline unusable when not in Bastion, since you’ll have abysmal range (well, the 3 turret ships, not the cruise Golem)

Wait, what about MJD brawling? CHAAAARGE!

The obvious 4th option, a MJD brawler, doesn’t sound viable to me. The current MJD implementation simply heavily favors sniping and poses several problems to brawling. For example, lets say you warp in to a mission and the next gate plus NPCs are 50km out. What can you do? If you jump out in preparation for the next jump landing you on the gate, now for 1 minute you’re stuck at 100 km where your brawling fit can’t reach. If you jump somewhat close to them so you can start shooting, now you can’t make your next jump close to the gate and you’ll need to fit additional prop mod. If you just start shooting NPCs from the warp in, if any frigates somehow get close to you and you have to MJD jump away now they are 100km away from you again.

Any way you slice it there’s a very real possibility that you’re going to end up in a dead zone for your guns, just because MJD can only jump 100km. If it could jump 50km then the problem would probably be non-existent. It’s probably workable, but it just seems like you’ll be always trying to tack on bandaids to fix problems caused by MJD in the first place.

Summary

So overall I’m cautiously optimistic about the Marauder rebalance, mostly because I can see 3 fairly interesting options, of which one is the status quo (which I’m happy with). The hulls received some welcome buffs that will really help out, like lower signature and better scan resolution, whereas the nerfs are survivable (drone bandwidth hurts but from a selfish standpoint I already use salvage drones all the time anyway).

As to whether these ships will be used for PVP? I doubt it, no matter what all the ridiculous PVPers say in the feedback thread. The simple fact is that the ships still cost a billion just for the hulls. How many Machariels and Nightmares do you see being used in PVP now? In general PVP testing feedback has been positive, but that’s because they are getting something where before they had nothing. Even if the ship was horribly broken and useless no PVPer would care since they’re not flying it now anyway. Plus the “PVP” on SiSi just consists of people kamikazeing into Bastion marauders without a care in the world. One Goon even posted something about how a Golem fitted with rapid light missile launchers could tear apart a 30-man frigate gang by itself. Because a Bastioned Golem could catch all 30 frigates if they just… you know… flew away when they realised it was mounting anti-frigate weapons? Damn some people are just so full of stupid, words fail me.

I’ve been a bit busy trying to finish up a draft paper recently, so not that much time for EVE until a couple of days ago. And then I was too busy playing to actually write anything.

When I finally got some time to play, I tried out the Tengu Travesty fit that I first saw on evehermit. It still seems like such a godawful waste of a Tengu, but well since the nerf to heavy missiles my Tengu has just been sitting around whimpering softly in a lonely corner of my station anyway. Of course it probably objected even more to being dusted off and fitted with 4 rapid light missile launchers (meta 4, no skills for T2), a relic analyzer 1, data analyzer 1, cargo scanner and sent off to do puny hi-sec anoms and DED sites… Kinda like those horrifically dressed up poodles at dog shows.

I didn’t quite follow evehermit’s fit exactly. I swapped in the scanning electronic subsystem, but someone was trying to control the market for the Defensive – Adaptive Shielding subsystem in Amarr by buying them all out and relisting them for 20 million higher. I wasn’t willing to pay 80M ISK for that, so I just made do with my current shield boosting subsystem. This meant that I had 1 less high slot and 1 extra mid slot, so I went with 4 launchers and 1 salvager (no tractor) and an extra invul field in the mid (not that I needed it, but I really had nothing else to put there).

Originally I was going to wait a bit until I got Yannie’s scanning skills up a bit, but an Incursion popped up in my base constellation over the week. And the annoying Sansha brought along their mega-nerfs to defense and damage, as well as somehow cutting CONCORD bounties by 50%. So even if I weren’t busy, that would have put a serious crimp in any missioning plans anyway so that’s why I decided it would be a good time to give the exploration thing a try. Of course as luck would have it by the time I finished my work and could finally log on to play the incursion had ended… But I decided to go ahead with my plan anyway.

Overall I didn’t find anything worth much, but it was pretty fun. The first site embarassingly took me something like 15 minutes to scan down. Part of it was Yannie’s scanning skills all being around level 3, but admittedly 90% of it was just me having forgotten everything about how to adjust probe ranges and move them around etc. Being able to launch 8 probes at once is really nice, as is the instant recall of probes. It’s also nice being able to see all the signatures right away so you know if there’s anything worth scanning (at least I think it’s showing me everything…)

Besides the combat anoms, I also found a couple of relic sites and did the hacking minigame thing. I’m so bad at picking up the stuff that drops out, at first I thought I might be able to add the containers to my overview but no dice, seems like I have to manually pick and click on them one by one. Most of it was worse than crap, but I did get a XL-ASB BPC and a couple of skillbooks worth a few hundred K ISK.

What was more fun was that I did a 3/10 DED site for the first time. I scanned down a site called Asteroid Infestation and found that my Tengu wasn’t allowed to go in. However, as it was pretty close by my home base I decided to take out Noork and see what cruisers I had that could fit in the gate (like a Tengu is really fat…) My choices were Gila, Phantasm and a rusty old Rupture that I had from my RvB days, still fitted for PVP. So of course I chose the rusty glue-gun/hair-dryer.

This thing hadn’t even been undocked since it’s fitting layout was changed, so I had to swap out quite a few bits of stuff and make a bit of a detour to pick up ammo. It ended up taking a bit longer than expected but soon my Rupture was at the site with my Tengu.

The site was absolutely no challenge at all and my Rupture just flew everywhere blapping the innocent little drones. It was only in the 3rd room that I remembered that I was carrying 6 Hobgoblin IIs, after which it became like Pokemon drone wars except much more one-sided. No deadspace or faction loot dropped though, but it was still pretty fun since I had never done the site before and I always liked doing rogue drone missions since their ships and hives have really nice designs. Too bad they have shitty loot after the removal of drone poo and bounties for drone missions always suck since they have very few battleships and lots of swarms of little pesky… well.. drones.

Since that first day, I’ve done a few more anoms and did Asteroid Infestation again. Still no loot to speak of, but my scanning skills have improved markedly. I got pretty excited once after I jumped into Zimse and the scanner lit up like Christmas with signatures… then after scanning a few of them down I realised that Zimse was a COSMOS mission system and those were all lousy COSMOS containers with NPC battleships protecting them. I tried shooting them with the Tengu but with rapid light missile launchers fitted it wasn’t happening.

Just wanted to list out my short term goals in EVE, since I’m getting old and my memory seems to be fading.

I’ve just finished training up Minmatar Battleship V on Noork, and T2 Projectile Rigs will finish training tonight. So now that my Vargur plan is basically complete, I have some options.

I’ve been reading evehermit’s blog and his tales about exploration have (again) inspired me to try this out. This time however, I will not limit myself to hi-sec! At least, that’s the plan. Till now I’ve practically never been out of hi-sec, except for a couple of wormhole ops and the odd popping in and out of a deserted low-sec system for researching blueprints. I’ve always had this impression of low-sec being choc-full of crazed pirates that will come barreling out of every station the moment I show up in local, with 24/7 gate camps and cloaked hostiles waiting at every DED site. However, I think I’m starting to realise that most of low-sec is just really empty. I’ve been flying around a bit in low-sec (with a stealth bomber, but hey that’s an improvement) and actually find that I’m not so terrified about it anymore, especially now that I’m well practised using cloak-MWD. Although I’m not sure why certain guides say you must use an Improved Cloaking Device… it looks like it’s working with a Prototype cloak, is there something I’m not getting?

The other reason was because I could never justify the benefit vs risk. It was always going to be more profitable for me to spend my time in hi-sec. However, with my recent installation of EVEHQ I now have a better understanding of the worth of my assets and my daily income. And I realised that I have A LOT OF ISK. So much that honestly the income doesn’t really matter at all. Shortly after I first started playing again, I lost my Mackinaw to 3 ganking Catalysts (wasn’t AFK, but wasn’t tanked either although I don’t think I could tank 3 Catalysts anyway). And I didn’t feel a single thing. 200M ISK gone? Ok. And shortly after that, I lost my Noctis to sheer stupidity in a mission (lets start salvaging, I’m sure these remaining rats won’t mi… oops). Again, no feeling. So it seems that I’ve finally begun to accept the fact that ships get blown up.

So, I’m training up Gallente Cruiser 5 now, to be followed by Heavy Assault Ships. The main plan is to be able to fly the Ishtar and explore around doing sites. I’m not all that interested in the rewards (although faction drops are always nice!) but more of learning how to do these sites and stuff. Evehermit uses a weird modified Tengu to do his exploration in, and I wanted something in the same vein. I have a Tengu as well with which I might follow in his footsteps if the Ishtar doesn’t work out. And of course, Gallente Cruiser V would come in handy for the new Stratios as well, which would be more suited for low-sec work with that Cov Ops cloak.

For my alt, I’m less clear about what to train her in. She has basically maxed missile and shield tanking skills, as well as Caldari Battleship V. I’m trying hard not to make her into a clone of Noork, but right now I’m leaning towards learning T2 sentries on her as well and maybe doing Ishtar training too. Unlike Noork she already has HAC 4 (not sure why…) but only with Caldari Cruiser V so she can only fly the Cerberus, which isn’t too exciting. Come to think of it, it could be a good idea to make her the exploration character. Fits in better with her “only PVE” role and she’s a better Tengu/missile pilot already anyway. Hmm. Maybe I’ll train up her scanning skills first, and use her with the Tengu as a trial run…

The other option would be to train Noork in more PVP skills and actually get out and PVP. I keep waffling about this though because my time in RvB basically showed me that I don’t get any enjoyment out of PVP at all. Looking back, I think this is my only solo kill but honestly I don’t even remember anything about it. It was a prearranged 1v1 and I think I just clicked orbit at 1000m, overheat guns DAKKADAKKADAKKA and it was over. Kinda a letdown. So not too sure about the PVP part, would probably just be a waste of time.

Anyway, Noork always has tons of stuff to train. He’s halfway through Salvaging V, Advanced Spaceship Command V, Surgical Strike V… yeah I’m indecisive 😦 Oh yeah and with the recent skill changes I actually need to train for T2 drone link augmentors and Omnidirectional Tracking Links, so those should go on the short term plan too.

So I think everyone has heard about the new Sisters of EVE faction ships coming in Rubicon. I love the concept myself, I’ve been trying to put together a cloaked Ishtar or Gila fit for trying out stuff in low sec and these new ships are pretty much what I was trying to achieve, with Amarr armor bonuses and Gallente drone bonuses. Not too hot on the Asteros frigate, but that Stratios… mmmmm.

So obviously I should hop over to Osmon and start grinding LP to get my hands on these goodies in Rubicon right?

It’s unbelievable how many people love farming for stuff. I mean, this is EVE, the game with the most complex and interconnected economy where everything can be bought for ISK. And yet the first reaction of soooo many people is “GOTTA GET THOSE LPS!!!”

So what’s wrong with LPs? They let you get the ship for free right? You just gotta put in the work! Well Mr. Opportunity Cost begs to differ. Because this is EVE, it’s pretty obvious that right away these ships are also going to be available on the market pretty much instantly. Sure, the prices will be sky-high in the few hours after the patch is first deployed and there will inevitably be a few complete idiots who buy at those prices. But if you can’t wait a couple of days, I’m not sure what you’re doing in a game like EVE where it’s commonplace to be planning in terms of months. I can’t see these ships going for much more than the current market price for T2 cruisers or faction cruisers, which is around 150-250M ISK. If you’re trying to grind LPs hoping to sell these when the patch hits… let’s just say I predict a SHIT TON of these ships are going to hit the market. It’s such an obvious speculation that I’m really leery of how much ISK you could make out of this (but I could be wrong…)

If you want these ships for your own use, your choice is to farm LP or farm ISK. I’m going to assume that the LP cost of the Stratios is similar to that of the Gila, which is 240,000 LP plus 15M ISK. What’s the ISK price of 240,000 LP? Normally a good LP conversion would be around 1000 ISK/LP, so that works out to a cost of 240M+15M = 255M for the hull… This is what paying for a Gila using LP currently costs. The ISK cost? 165M ISK… Unless the Stratios is going to consistently sell for more than 375M (giving a 1500 ISK/LP conversion), you’re better off just buying it with ISK and using LPs for something else. I find this LP calculator really useful in determining what you should spend your LPs on (obviously not a Gila).

Additionally, unless you’re intentionally only doing blitzing missions, LP is normally obtained at a much slower rate than ISK. Each level 4 mission normally gives between 8-9k LP. I’m going to assume 9k, which means that to get 240,000 LP requires 26.67 level 4s. Even if I got only 10M in bounties per mission, I would already be earning 266M ISK which is more than the ISK-value of the LPs. And that’s a pretty low assumption for the bounties which doesn’t include salvage etc. For my case, I do maybe 2 missions a night if I get time to play. So that would take me about 2 weeks. Whereas I get about 150M ISK a day just from updating trade orders for 15 minutes. Hmm.

But wait, why not do BOTH? You get both ISK and LP payouts from the Sisters, noob! Yes, but the biggest reason not to bother is this:

107 ships destroyed in the last 24 hours. 18 pod kills. And that’s after the announcement of 2 additional Sisters security agents being added in Apanake and Lanngisi. Yeah, no thanks I’m not interested in feeding gankers just so I can be like these guys:

Farming for LPs is basically farming for a currency that can only be converted 1 way and is intrinsically less valuable than ISK. Not only that, you normally earn it slower than ISK since ISK can be gotten through doing anything in game. In this case, you’re also doing it in a hazardous environment with poor working conditions. I’d be much better off using that same time to just make ISK in whatever way I usually do. Of course, if no one farmed for LPs then the prices for these ships would skyrocket. But take advantage of the fact that there are always people who have too much time and not enough brains to know how to utilise that time. Instead of being a sweatshop worker, I’m going to be the customer who benefits from cheap goods.

So this morning I finished Minmatar Battleship 5. Noork had already made his way over to Jita 4-4 last night, eager to undock in his new toy…

I’m pretty paranoid about ganks on the Jita-Amarr route now, there seems to be more and more gankers coming up with creative ways to grief targets in high-sec. So I brought over a buffer tanked travel fit with a cloak and MWD to fly my Vargur back to Amarr space, taking the opportunity to also practise the cloak-MWD trick. I’ve gotten the hang of it pretty well I think, although I have no idea how effective it really is. On my screen I decloak for a fraction of a second before I warp but not sure if I’m actually decloaked earlier from the point of view of other players. I was probably being a bit over-cautious but I was travelling with a Dread Guristas Invulnerability Field and a couple of deadspace shield hardeners, only about 500M so shouldn’t really be worth ganking but better safe than sorry. In any case I made it back to my base with no issues. Wonder if I caused some gankers to sit up and take notice of this Vargur trying to sneak around?

As luck would have it, I had the Angel Extravaganza mission being offered by my level 4 agent, so I could immediately bring my Vargur out for a test drive. I’m still training Projectile Rigging 4, so couldn’t pop in my T2 Projectile Burst Aerator yet, which hurts the DPS quite a bit. Fit shown below:

I’ve done AE twice recently with my Machariel and Golem, so this would allow a nice comparison between the performance of the Vargur and the Machariel. Swapped over most of the modules from the Machariel and off I went…

The results?

Angel Extravaganza : Vargur and Golem
Bounties : 30M
Salvage: 53M
Payout : 3M
LP : Don’t really care
Time taken : 1 hour = 86M ISK/hour

Took 15 mins less than my time with the Machariel and Golem, even without the T2 rig. Of course this was with salvaging everything. Having 3 more tractors helped with salvaging time immensely, despite the general disdain the EVE mission-running population has about the Marauder tractor bonus. Pretty sure this is faster than bookmarking 5 rooms and jumping 4 extra times to bring my Noctis.

But the real time-saver was actually the Vargur’s stupendous tracking. I specifically chose this fit with 1 TE and 2 TCs for the 70km range and 0.12 tracking, rather than going with another gyro which adds about 40 dps. I wasn’t really expecting to be able to nail frigates orbiting at 10km though… Kinda funny one-shotting them with a glancing blow. The real test came in the 4th room with the 2 spider drones. They close really fast and web the hell out of you, but it’s not actually dangerous since there’s only one puny battleship shooting at you. Fortunately they both went after the Golem, which meant the Vargur could pull away a bit and at 20km both spider drones got eviscerated by 800mm shells, with a little help from the Golem’s target painter.

The bonus room got a little hairy when I realised that I forgot to actually start my Vargur moving after it warped in… it sat there and took everything and was down to 40% shields before I noticed. Had to overheat the booster and almost ran out of cap but got through it (who needs Bastion anyway…)

Overall I’m really happy with my Vargur, even though on SiSi now the Vargur performs the worst (4 km falloff from Bastion… whoopdeedoo). Now I can trot out the Paladin against Sansha/Blood Raiders and the Vargur against everything else.