The Raven: the next evolution of the Caldari carebear ships

“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door
Only this, and nothing more."
-Edger Allen Poe: The raven

I was going to substitute some EVE like meaning to the first paragraph of this classic poem, but as I did so it just felt wrong. So I decided to go with the original text. AS really this post is about my new Battleship hull for ZombiNutz and the fit I’ll be putting to the test in Caldari navy level 4 and 5 missions here shortly.

Yes before all you die hard PvP people start into me about training my fits Battle ship hull on my PvP pilot as the classic Carebear battleship stepping block. There is an ulterior motive here in longer terms a sniper Rokh is all ready sitting in my hanger. While sniper BS fleets are all but a thing of the past, I still think it’s good to be able to field one someday. However for now we are here to talk Raven and more specifically PvE mission boat Raven.

Question one: Passive or Active shield tank?

OK so I’ve flown a drake for most of my mission running career with the Caldari navy. That Drake has ALWAYS been a passive shield tank. As such and due to the somewhat limited variety and script like nature of missions. I have a very good understanding of when the Drake will hold and when I need to pop the scramming rats and bail. Yet I see and read a lot of thought about the Raven being better as an Active shield tank. Active shield tanks typically have more challenges in cap stability and hence become reliant on cap boosters. Honestly the less I need to remember to have in my cargo hold when I undock them better. So I’ll be heading out in a passive shield tank raven for now. I might die a flaming death sitting in my pod with a huge “WTF!?!” surrounded by mocking scram frigate rats and battleships. Yet this is my choice of preference and I need to go with it. (Yes more like a PvP extender fit :) )

Question Two: Torps or Cruise pointy bits?

Easy enough to answer for me, Cruise all the way. More range is NEVER a bad thing in PvE. I’ve all ready bought and researched the 4 Cruise BPOs. Making one’s own ammo is a good thing, but it’s very cost effective with Cruise missiles. I also have decent drone skills, so range is good and the drones pick off the stuff that gets too close.

Question three: target painters, salvages, drone link augmenters?

All right, you might be guessing I’ll be flying a hacked up twisted buffer PvP ish fit for my PvE raven. Right or wrong that’s what I plan to do for at least the first one. Screw salvagers as any chump worth his ISK has a dedicated salvage boat/alt to do that kind of work. Target painters = bigger sig radius = the whole fleet hits more (simple, not factoring in every last chunk of math). Drone link augmenters = drones can fly out where the missiles are hitting. I said it before; Range is NEVER a bad thing in PvE.

OK So the fit:

Honestly at this point I have ideas, and well I don’t like to post “dream” fits until I’ve actually fit them and flown them and can comment on how they do. Sure I could pull an EFT fit out with my skills and post it here, but there are enough EFT gurus out there that do this. I’ll stick to posting what I fly after I bolt it all together over the weekend and get some dents on the paint. Chances are come next week I’ll be fitting an active tank, with Cruise missiles, and salvages. ;)

What do you think?

So this is my take on fitting a raven based on flying a drake in Level 4’s and flying smaller stuff about. I like the ease of use of Passive tanks, I like more range when fighting rats, and I prefer fits for the job at hand and hence bring a second boat along for the cleanup.

However I am speaking as a pure pedant at the moment and well tend to try my ideas either way. Yet only a fool does not listen to the man who has lived the adventure and survived because of a fit. So chances are what I end up flying will will change a few times. Must like when I clued in that an Inv II was a good thing to have on a passive drake over a single resistance mod.

Cheers

EVE SOB

P.S. If you have a PvE OR PvP fit you like for the Raven. Feel free to drop it in the comments.

Carebear Ranch goes Planet Side v2.0

A while back I posted about my 5 original planetary colonies here. At that time I was trying to get a little of each of the 15 basic P1 products from those 5 planets. The goal was to putz around to see what I could build and learn a few things about this new feature. Flash forward ~ 4 months and my goals for P.I. have changed a might bit. Today I make ~ 320M ISK a month of P.I. maintaining 15 HighSec planets across 2 accounts and 3 characters. I shoot for 30 minutes a day where I ritualistically click my extractors back into life and collect all my P1 goods. I drop the P1 stuff onto a manufacturing plant to make P2-3 items. The colonies have changed MANY times but the following is how they look today.

The Manufacturing Planet:

Let's start at the top. with the manufacturing planet. It has 18 Advanced processors, 3 Storage nodes, and 2 Launch Pads. It produces 7 P2/3 products of which on the Jita market on buy orders alone make me 8.2M ISK a day or ~246.5M ISK a month. The biggest drag is getting all the P1 products from 3 different pilots to the appropriate launch pad to start the production run. Here is what it looks like:

The Extractor Planets:

So for my 7 P2/3 products I need 14 of the 15 base items. In some cases I need just 1 extractors worth, or 920 units of P1 X. In others I need 3 extractors or 2760 units of P1 Y. It's all tracked in a handy dandy spreadsheet that tells me what I need to extract and where I need to dump it to make ISK! The extra ~70M ISK comes from surplus P1 products that I truck over to market one day a month. P1 products like Water and Toxic metals are very easy to maintain 4 extractors for a 23H cycle with HighSec Planets. Here are some of my extractor planets. I'd post them all but there are a few like the lava and gas planets that are identical:

Conclusions:

It's possible to almost pay for a 30 day PLEX with HighSec P.I. if you run 3 pilots with 5 colonies each manufacturing P2/3 products. It takes me about 30 Minutes a day to log in and keep it all running, and another 30 minutes a week to get it all to market for payday. The training required for each pilot is ~10 days and includes remote sensing III, Interplanetary Consolidation IV, and Command Center Upgrades IV. Oh and what you choose to do with the rest of your time is up to you, but you CAN make ISK at P.I. even in Highsec.

My next steps are to compare all this to LowSec planets. I'll be sure to post about with the risks and what I do to get around them. With the Winter Expansion claiming "a more dynamic and simplified system for Planetary Interaction." perhaps it will be 5 minutes a day for 600M ISK a Month. We shall see.

Cheers

EVE SOB

10M Skill points for SonOfBraben.

Some balloons went up on the carebear ranch this weekend and some very dusty blasters let loose some shots of celebration. See the star of the ranch and the original EVE SOB toon ticked over 10M skill points over the weekend.

It was a quiet moment on the ranch when it happened. I had just pulled some 1MN MWD II BPC out of the oven and was pottering about in P.I. between RL duties. I happened to be checking my standings and all that when I noticed 10,000,123 SP on the dial for SonOfBraben. Wahoo!!! This toon might actually be worth a damn in the industry space and I might actually get to stop calling myself a noob. Sure it’s a small promotion to looser from noob, but still 10M SP is a milestone.

Taking a peek at EVE MON and the handy dandy “skills pie chart…” tool. It’s pretty clear that I am a carebear by looking at the generous slices devoted to science, industry, and now Planet management. It’s odd that spaceship command is the largest pie slice considering that this guy is not cross trained in any way past Gallente. Sure there is a hulk license in there but well it’s an odd stat to be so high considering all the T2 science skills this fool has.

The rest of the pie is filled out with some T2 armor and shield tanking basics with a splash of drones and blasters thrown in to make the Incursus and Brutix more efficient. SonOfBraben can fully fit a Myrmidon in T2 everything down to the rigs as well. So it’s not all manufacturing, invention, and P.I. colonies for this guy. Still he is soft and cuddly and not much of a fighter.

ZombiNutz is at 8,612,570 SP meaning we should have another party on the PVP side sometime next month. However for now let’s not steal the thunder from the ranch. Lord knows we don’t often have reason to praise it.

Cheers

EVE SOB

Carebear ranch goes Planet Side! Yeah P.I. BABY!

So it seems everyone is talking about PI. You're not cool unless you blog about the awesome new industrial past time that Tyrannis delivered. So not to be left out of the cool kid club here comes my bit on PI.

***PvP People skip this and go shoot each other***

Let's start with saying I started to skill day 1 towards PI. I am currently into the long haul for Interplanetary Consolidation 5 so I can get me my 6th Command Center. As of right now I've got 5 colonies cranking away on highsec planets producing P1 and some P2 commodities.
Let's take a look at the planet types I have going and what they are currently churning out.

Planet 1 is a nice Lava planet

It produces Transmitters and Construction blocks as well as some left over plasmoids , Toxic Metals, and silicone. I was recently able to add 2 extra extractors and basic processor by nesting my links better. Here is a before and after shot to show you how you can squeeze more out of your CC's CPU and PWG.

Planet 2 is a Ocean planet

It produces all the P1 products I can wring out of it. I actually built this colony last and nested the living daylights out of the links to get 14 extractors, 5 basic processors and a launch pad running off one Adv CC. I'd love to be able to get one more extractor, but sadly at 99.37% CPU this goose is cooked. Perhaps in 52 days I'll get me an Elite CC and make it work but for now this works.

Planet 3 is a Storm Planet

Ok so this was my second attempt at a PI colony and boy does it suck. The first problem is the resources are scattered to the seven winds. The long links kill any chance I have of getting any meaningful levels of output from this planet. It does produce all 5 of the planets P1 items but with only one extractor per processor and set at 96hour extract cycles. It truly does suck. Once the current extracts are done. I'll rip the links a new arse and try and squeeze at least 5 more extractors out of this ADV CC, wish me luck. This is NOT a good colony layout.

Planet 4 is a barren

It was my FIRST ever colony and to be honest it shows. The links are inefficient and the CC placement could have been better to avoid the links to both hemispheres. It's not all bad as It does produce all 5 of the planets P1's and two P2 products mechanical parts and nanites. At some point I'll come back here and nest all the bad links and squeeze out some more extractors. I look at it now compared to my last planet and boy have I got a better understanding of link nesting and CC placement. Here is the one that got me hooked.

Planet 5 is a Gas planet

It was one of the last ones I did and I am not happy with it. I am getting 4/5 of the systems P1 items out of it (5 is one I can get elsewhere). I have the most efficient links I can and I can only squeeze 12 extractors and 4 basic processors out of the deal. It's not a bad planet but I would like all 5 P1 items

Planet 6 will be a temperate

It will extract only 1 P1 item from the planet itself but what it will have is all the advanced and high tech processors I need to make P3 and P4 products. It will not exist for another 26 days so I cannot show you a pretty picture of it or comment on its efficiency. That is another post all together next month.

So what tips can I offer to folks?

1: Scan down all your P0 items and place your CC in the best spot to get them all with at least 3 extractors.

2: Nest your links up to 5 hops (I think you can do 6) and upgrade if you really need to.

3: Set your extractions for 23 hours. With tree extractors you will keep a basic processor happy and busy

4: Use a launch pad - It's just plain simpler and a little less risky. Also it lets you go both ways... ;)

5: A good plan will go a long way. Try to build backwards from the launch pad. Get the first processors and extractors built and then add more extractors until you max out on power grid on your CC.

Handy dandy links:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/lv?key=t3wAXA82wbqy1eLqD4lwqAw&f=true&gid=0

http://www.eve-ivy.com/wiki/index.php?title=Planetary_Interaction#Skills

So if you're still awake after my riveting mandatory post on P.I. feel free to flame my colonies, throw beer cans, try to figure out where to gank me, and have some bloody fun with PI. Even a diehard combat pilot can build himself his Nanite repair paste with a few planets and a daily click or two. NOW if ONLY CCP would do some think like this for manual mining.... OK no rants today!

Cheers

EVE SOB

How mining could be better…A rant on manual mining, the last non-automated industry of EVE.

All right so the more carebear side of me HATES mining. I mean I bloody hate it with a deep seething passion. I’ve almost coma quit EVE over mining. There is nothing exciting about sitting in an asteroid belt in a 200M ISK ship watching ore filter into your cargo hold every cycle. I mean the people I see out there day in day out in the same belt in a fleet of bloody hulks in highsec mining veldspar HAVE to be on some major lithium or put them self to sleep after a 750ml of scotch while rocking them self off to sleep with a cocked revolver to their temple. Yeah, I kind of do hate mining don’t I?!?

To make matter worse we harvest moon goo from orbital stations that extract the crap from the moon. With PI we have command centers and stuff we drop on the planet to suck the crap out. Christ we can even anchor a giant bloody can to store our mined asteroid crap IN while we mine. So why dear god can we not anchor a mining device in a belt with range X that can be set to mine away at the belt? Why in the love of all things holy must we park a ship there?

I mean it’s not like we are considering the little guy here. If you have ever seen a gang of 5+ hulks and an orca roll through a belt you quickly realize the little guy in the noob ship is screwed. It’s not like it’s really a skill sitting out there in belt clicking every 6 minutes either. Add macro miners to the mix and well we practically HAVE automated mining (those jerks, how do they get off having a life when so many waste DAYS for rocks). So why is mining asteroids/ice/gas the only industrial past time that actually requires you to interactively do something? Are the devs at CCP really that sadistic? I bet they have videos of mining fleets to watch when they are feeling like it’s a bad day to cheer them up. Honestly who ever came up with asteroid/ice/gas mining game mechanics is one SICK person.

I mean just imagine a world where you can fly out in your industrial ship, anchor a small POS type object, set the type of ore you want it to mine. Then off you can go to run your mission, or talk smack in Jita or whatever else you find interesting. Take it a bit further where there is a limit to the number of them you can have in a system. Add to that the ability for them to be attacked and shoot back. Ya know like a POS that mines moons, and perhaps SHOOTS back if you are not blue to it. Might take some of the fun out of Hulkageddon but I am sure the fun loving rum drinking pirate types will live.

I bet there would be less macro miners exploiting the EULA and crushing the market for veldspar if we could automate mining. If any Tom, dick, or harry could skill up anchored mining stations (AMS for short), meet some faction requirement for highsec perhaps, and anchor it in a belt to mine away at the asteroids. How many more kittens would be alive today? How many more pirates would be happier ganking the living crap out of some one more fun in lowsec? How many more pilots would be actually fighting for Null space and not mining only to have to SCURRY when a Stealth Bomber enters local.

Anyhow, all other industrial tasks are automated so why not bring mining out of the bloody dark ages with AMS. Free the carebear to build ships and kill rats freely. Make the suicide miner gankers a distant memory, hence making 12yo’s have to partake in REAL PvP. Add some more war targets to the game that can shoot back, but also provide steady income without the man hours. Free the Null alliances from the tyranny of carebear rot by allowing more pilots to make cash AND shoot people in the face for the good of the pocket.

Screw Incarna until you fix lag and abolish manual mining CCP!

Cheers

EVE SOB