Tackling Tempests and Trailing Tengus

Close only counts...

A few days into faction warfare, and I'm fleeting up and roaming around.  Today I'll give a three informal after action reports of situations that didn't work.

Tricky Tengus

On a roam starting in Nenn, intel told us a pair of Tengus were running mission sites a few systems over.  We take a look at our fleet, mostly frigs and destroyers, and decide that between an Arazu and some tacklers, we had a chance to sneak a point in and hold at least one Tengu long enough to get the rest of us in.

Operations commence with the fleet holding on gate outside the Tama system, home to our pair of would-be kills.  They don't appear to notice anything aside from one fleet member warping through system.  We get cloaked eyes into the mission room.  Then it comes to light that the Tengus have a Buzzard hanging out off-gate watching traffic.  This doesn't seem to be a problem, as we just need to sidle our tackle in and then once point is accomplished, the Buzzard is irrelevant.

Then a fleet mate jumps the gate.  The Tengus spook and dock up.  Good game.  The moral of this story the importance of fleet discipline.  We were just about ready to get our tackle in on the targets, from another gate that the Buzzard couldn't see.  One nervous jump ruined the planning, and the glorious killmail we might have scored.  My killboard efficiency would have skyrocketed!

2 v 1... then 2... then 3... then None.

5 or 6 of us are holding at a small outpost, after clearing out the pesky squids that had been hanging out there.  A second outpost had a few hostiles.  In a sane world, the gang would align as a unit and warp in, grabbing points and taking targets out while FC calls them.  Eve is not a sane world.  I was unsure what was going on.  A hesitant newb, I was holding on the plex while one, then two, then three members warped off in staccato fashion.  I was waiting for the FC to give the go ahead.  He realized what was happening, and simply said "Ok, how many people still have ships in local?"  Turns out we were down three ships, with nothing to show.

We had more force, more ships, but not better timing.  Again, discipline was the key missing factor between feeding a choppy line of kills to the foe and clearing the field.  I blame the ease with which we had mopped the previous complex.  That nice high of dropping your gang on a target and managing the field carried over into overconfidence and sloppy execution.

Twin Tempests

The frigate roam continues!  We spot two Tempests chilling at the gate to a complex.  We manage to hold discipline, warp in, land tackles, and most of us orbit under the Tempest guns.  I'm in a long-point Atron, so my job is mostly holding one of the Tempests.  Things are going fine until they go pear shaped.  Drones come out and start taking a toll.  A few frigs are orbiting too far out, and are taking fire from the 800mm shells the Tempests are raining upon us.  Eventually I realize I have a stack of drones chipping away at my armor at alarming speed.  I burn out, as things are falling apart.  I manage to make it out of scram range in deep structure and warp out.  The Tempests hold the field, with one nearly out of hull.

A few things went wrong.  A few frigs managed to orbit into those 800mm shells.  I failed to focus on the drones soon enough to mitigate the incoming damage.  This fight was far from a given on either side.  Had we downed one of the battleships while losing our hulls, it would have been a victory, but we came up just short.  Perhaps I should have kept my blasters on the Tempest, and perhaps I should have targeted drones sooner.  Both would have eliminated half of the incoming damage or more.  This was a better managed fight, but still eluded us.

***

I had some victories today as well, a few kills that padded my efficiency.  I got part of a kill in my first pirate act in Eve.  A fellow militia mate and I fell to an obvious mismatch out of stubborn anger and honor.  It was a good day overall.  I look forward to the next.

PI Day 11

Here's the update:

Trending a little bit better.  I got the Precious Metals output a bit higher, and now Chiral Structures are the rate limiting factor.  This means I'm pulling in an extra 1.4m or so per day on Enriched Uranium sales.  The POCO taxes have taken about 16m in profits at the 10% high sec rate.  That's not 10%.  That's an effective tax rate of about 18%.

They get you coming and going!  Interstingly, the tax rates are pegged to old values, with P1s going for 50isk/unit and P2s going for 900isk/unit, and P3s for 7000isk/unit.  This results in interesting tax rate anomolies as shown above.  There are a few errors, as I lumped a few things together in the beginning and I can't sort the out now.  Stupid March 11.  But the overall tax rate of 18% is correct.  If I had no taxes, I'd be at about 51m in profit 11 days in.

Edit:  My original effective tax chart was poorly formatted.  I updated it.

Another Day, Another Incursus

I like the Incursus.  It's a nice little ship that looks pretty and seems to hold up well in small matches.  And I got another kill in one today.  Nothing fancy about it.  In fact, he got the drop on me because I was sitting in a plex, looking at three different chats and comms trying to figure out where the damn fights were.  And then the fight was targeting me.  We danced for a while, and as often happens, some other militia came in while we were jockeying for position.  Much like last time, I had him in a bit of armor, he had chipped away at my shields.  I find it terribly difficult to manage my screen,  but I'm trying to get the spiral approach down and it seems to be working a little.  At least based on relative shields and armor in the brief 1v1 situations I've been in.  So that was fun.  I'm starting to realize how janky the drone control system is though.  Ugh.  I have to stop forgetting to launch drones.

After that, I tried to fleet up for a while which was a mixed bag.  No offense to non-American english speakers, but system names and abbreviations are giving me a headache, at least for now.  I'm over in Nennamaila most of the time, looking for fights, and the weird adjacent systems seems to be french in origin, and whatever the heck Caldari names are based on.  And I now know what OMS means.

But about fleets.  I joined the rolling Gallente Militia fleet a few times today, with very little to show for it except an unfortunate Tusker who warped into a plex not realizing we had about 13 cruisers and frigs waiting.  That stabber didn't take long to go down, and we obliged his goal of finding a way to rid himself of a hull.  I almost didn't make it on the kill it happened so fast.  Aside from that, I missed the few larger fights, and am starting to see the odd dance in FW fleet combat.  No one wants to get rolled, so any time a larger fleet rounds itself up and goes out for a stroll, it seems like the skies are empty.  Makes sense.

I also missed out on a few fights due to poor positioning and timing.  Such as a group of Ruptures landing on Nenn station.  I docked up, in my solo Incursus, only to undock in time to see one of our pilots in an Archon, mopping up 30km off station and plenty of friendlies plinking away.  I just couldn't burn out fast enough to engage.

A Swarm Interlude

How can you not love a face like that?

I just finished Heart of the Swarm's campaign.  You know, that expansion to some game called Starcraft 2?

The Good:

It's fun.  The campaign on normal is a little bit on the easy side, but it's a fun romp through a middling revenge tale.  The units all seem to have a point and purpose.  Expanding a Zerg base is fun, and expanding the creep is wicked fun.  I have mild OCD about spreading the creep across the entire map, every time.  The cutscenes are pretty, if sometimes silly.  Kerrigan, your main heroine, gains abilities and gets to customize her swarmlings as the campaign progresses, which provides satisfying variations.  Those are all variations on swarm the enemy with lots of bugs, but it's a fun theme to play variations on.  The various mission types are a nice variation on build-swarm-repeat, with timed missions, control point and DOTA inspired elements showing up in various places.

The Bad:

Streaming cutscenes are annoying as crap.  I never got a high quality cutscene in my entire playthrough.  If you leave the game, the downloader apparently stops downloading.  Some of the load times are interminable, with no indication of how long remains.  Some of the pacing for side missions is questionable, and being a completionist results in weird breaks of the narrative progress.  Some load screens seem randomly placed, especially when you are chilling on the Leviathan between missions, click on the spawning pit, and a load screen pops up.

The Ugly:

The first cutscenes with Raynor and Kerrigan.  Ugh.  I have a hard time seeing the Queen of Blades going all googly-eyed for anyone.  If you play through the campaign, you'll pretty much know what the final expansion is about, which ruins a little bit of suspense.  And since we probably have 2+ years until that campaign, a little suspense would have been nice.  Overall, the plot was cool if uninspired.  Also, there is a whole mission that is pretty much a race to see which hero can charge to OVER 9000, DBZ style.

Random Thoughts:

It seems that all three races have people that understand there is a big picture, but then everyone ignores that big picture in the name of Kerrigan's revenge.  I'm sure every Terran who lived on the planets Kerrigan wipes out understands that millions of dead is totally worth killing Mengsk.  Does any bit player in the world know or care that he's a lying bastard?  And at this point I think Kerrigan has killed more people than Mengsk anyway, so the whole thing gets rather Korean-gun-fu-revenge-story where everyone loses.

Why are the ancient primal Zerg so damn stupid, after millenia of implied development?  Why do all Terrans of any importance wear shoulder pauldrons large enough to serve a turkey on?  Why is that one primal zerg dude killing humans and talking about collecting their essence, when he states he cannot collect human essence?  Why do Mutalisks flap their wings in space?  Why does no one ever listen to Zeratul, ever?  Has the dude ever lied or led someone down the wrong path?  Why does every character have to hit, shoot, torture or otherwise display force to process any information?

But seriously, it's fun.  I laughed out loud more than a few times playing through the missions.  More fun that I remember Wings Of Liberty being.  If you already have SC2, just grab HotS and waste a weekend.  Zerglings will make you happy inside.

Warring with the Factions

A few nights ago I had my first foray into faction warfare.  I spent a few days moving ships and assets out of Caldari space to new high sec mothball hangar in Gallente space, bought and contracted a bunch of ships to my new low sec home, and while waiting for the bulk of my supplies to arrive, I hopped into a few ships and took the not-so friendly stars of Black Rise.

The first thing that happened was this.  I warped around Nennamaila for a while and ended up in a small complex, I think that's what it was, and starting orbiting the structure with a timer.  That seemed like the logical thing to do, right?  Shortly thereafter, my new friend warped in.  He had an Atron, I had a Incursus, I figured why not?  Cut to a rather long chase, with me cycling between webs and reps, struggling to keep the Atron in range after my poor drone had turned to space dust.  I'd gotten him to structure, and had a solid scram on him, but this was taking forever!  My Gallente militia mate happend into the room at that point, and a few more shots from his Condor tipped the tide.  Queue me saying "First PVP kill EVAR!" in local, gfs all around, and a sense of accomplishment.

"I found a target!  Oh, never mind,
I'll be back once I find a new ship..."

Then we come to this.  A pile of hostiles pop into local, but not militia war targets.  Ok, I'll keep orbiting my button.  Probably some people passing through, as had been going on all night.  I see a warning in local from a militia mate, then TEST said hello.  I get a little overwhelmed, and fail to warp out fast enough because I'm a nub with poor combat navigation skills, lose the poor Incursus (She was so damn happy after that last fight!), then lose my pod.  Good news:  I just created a new clone, and put in much cheaper implants.  Bad news: I need to redefine cheap, and I learned my medical clone's home was in Caldari space.  Good call, me.  A ship worth 10m isk, implants worth about 46m, and my clone itself, which is now worth about 43m.  Yeouch.  I need to learn not to lose my pod!

And last, I can't post, because the KM was never put up on the boards, but I lost an Algos to two Harpies because of stupid.  I thought the Condor with me was warping in, saw the "Don't" in local, realized I had no point to keep the Harpies off me and let those sexy drones do damage, and poof.  Got my pod out this time though!  Most of this I realized in hindsight.  The lesson is always make sure your fellow pilots are planning on engaging.  After that I was out of ships and adrenaline for the night, although it seems my hero antics proceeded to escalate a small brawl that had the good fights going all around local a few minutes later.  So I'll take that as a victory, and stop flying destroyers for a while.

All in all, a very fun night.  I just waiting on the rest of my ships to get in, and then MOAR FIGHTINGS!

PS - Shoutout to Alamar Caledane, for being all friendly my first night out.  And the title of the blog, he helpfully told me, will get me killed.  Yep.  That's the joke, if you didn't get it.

Ugh - PI Challenge - Day 8

Just a quick update on the PI challenge.  I've made lots of tweaks to max out extraction.  Last update, I was at about -9.3m isk on the whole affair.  Today's total running numbers:

I broke into the black!  And so far, over 8 days, I've averaged a little over 2 million per day in profit.  In revenue, I've averaged about 8 million.  8m x 30 days is 240m isk.  For the 500m isk goal, this thing is probably going to be a complete failure.  Assuming no more costs, I'll be surprised if I get much past the 200m mark.

Some mid-challenge analysis.  In 2.5 hours, while working on other stuff, I went mining today.  The sales from that were 29.3m isk.  On another front, I ran a max run of Phased Plasma L ammo.  That sold for 18m isk.  So in less than the time it took me to do a week's PI, I netted 47m isk into my pocket, for less actual effort than the PI.  I have no idea what that ammo cost me to make, because the materials were lying around, but there you have it.

This brings up a bigger question:  What is the most enjoyable way to secure income in only high sec space?  So far PI is ranking very low.  It's active playing when I'm doing it, unlike mining.  It lacks the explosions of mission running.  It's more intensive than manufacturing.  There is training time to consider, but based on where I stand in the game so far the PI challenge has been more frustration than fun, and the perceived effort of this PI setup is tedious at best.

Tomorrow: My first foray into Faction Warfare!  Teaser:  I'm terribad!

The Downward Spiral of Depletion

Warning, this post contains many charts.

Edit: Thanks for the link Mabrick!

First:  Mabrick stated this in my last comments section:

You have extra R) and P1? The way I deal with extra R0 and P1 is to not have any. That may seem a bit arrogant, but hear me out. Robotics is a 2 extractor, 4xP1 and 2xP2 production chain - per planet. When you get to Elite command centers it will be easier to do, but you should aim for 2 extractors each pulling 288,000 m3 of R0 with 2xP1 facilities per R0 type and 2xP2 facilities to take their product. You then have to move one of the P2 products to another planet to make the Robotics. I move Mechanical Parts to my Lava worlds where I have on additional P3 facility in my setup. Precious Metals is typically the weakest producer across all the planets I've run and that's why I produce Robotics on the Lava worlds. All three Lava planets process 1/3 of my Robotics each. I use no silos and I try and keep a day's worth of R0 in each Landing Pad as a buffer. To keep this working as stated, I actively adjust my extractors to make sure I don't over produce, even if that means I remove heads and have grid left over. It's just easier that way to me. 

To answer, in short, I don't have Elite Command Centers.  The long version is my planets, even after removing the storage facilities I didn't need, cannot support the mixed production chain he is describing.  In part due to CPU/PG, in part due to low resource distribution.  I am curious to know what planets exist in HS that could support his approach based on resource density.  I'm sure they do, but trying to find the 5-6 planets needed (3 barren, 3 lava), in one system, and also near whatever else you happen to be doing in Eve, seems like chasing after Enigmas.  Below is an example of the resources on one of my planets.  You can argue about ECU placement, but even if I consolidate to one ECU with 10 heads, I end up at about the same production, and then can't afford the chain Mabrick is describing.

Second:  Extra P1s are looking to be saving grace of my setup.  I can sell those excess materials.  In my mind leaving them on the table is lost isk.  I'll have numbers to show this later.

Third:  I lied.  I used Mabrick's advice in a different way.  Precious Metals are killing me.  So I played around and realized I have PMs on my factory planet.  Down goes an ECU head, fed into my production line to bolster production a little bit.  Not glamorous, but it should add a little margin.  Unfortunately, I've hit a wall in that I can't keep even one Robotics line going at this point.  See the image below to see the link going off to the ECU, and the current supplies inside the launchpad on my factory planet that supplies the whole P2>P3 chain.

It's lonely in here...

You need 288,000 * 2 units on each R0 to keep one robotics line going.  At capped out Command Centers on my Planets, here is what I am getting, with ECUs set to provide coverage of the best hotspots on the planets:

I'm making up the difference on P2s and P1s that are overproducing the rate limiting R0 (Noble Metals > Precious Metals):

So here is where we stand today:

For the complainers, I know sales tax probably shouldn't be included in costs, but I haven't bothered fixing everything yet.  This is feeding into a nice overall graph that will come later, and I haven't fixed that part yet.  But regardless of the -336,198.31 isk in sales tax, we're still in the red.  Production is slowing down considerably. I went from over 100 units of robotics a day down to 54.

I'll try to come up with a way to increase R0s, but it may take a few days.  The next two days are busy real-life wise.