Ships & Modules

I'd focus on not getting caught in the first place. You can see scan probes on your directional scanner. Spam it if there are non-friendly locals around, and GTFO if you see probes pop up.

I'd also forget the neuts, fit more guns, and try to complete the sites faster. More isk, less time to probe.

If your fit is now a GTFO fit, why is there still a disruptor there?

Keep ECM drones in your bay. They might be able to land a jam. Maybe. If you're lucky. More likely than your hammers are to kill the thing.


Aside from GTFOing...
Why do you have both cap rechargers and a booster? You don't need both. And don't you have the fitting for Energized Adaptive Nano Membranes, if you really have to omni-tank?

Langour is actually a web not a point.

always be aligned to a warp out, learn to use d-scan, or dock up if anyone non-blue enters your local.

A battlecruiser is overkill for a lowsec mag/radar site. You should be able to handily complete these sites in a cruiser; the extra agility will go a long way towards allowing you to GTFO, as will using your d-scan properly.

The neut idea is a decent one. I would recommend at least one small neut, however. Warp scrams don't eat a lot of cap. The passive cap regen of most ships is more than enough to run the scram, which means you need to time your neut cycles such that you eat their last bit of cap right before their scram/disruptor is about to cycle and thus shut it off due to lack of cap. Medium neuts have a 12s cycle time and smalls have a 6s time...Granted, the medium neuts are better at getting your opponent to low cap in the first place, so it depends on the target.

Since you are not afraid, let me tell you what I do.

Forget lowsec.

If you can find a spot for a probe launcher, use wormholes and go straight to deep nullsec where you can go for weeks without anybody else showing up.

It takes patience. Sometimes I find a class 3 from high sec and in that class 3 I'll find another WH to null. Sometimes you have to stay in the WH for a while (use intel of whoever is in there to make sure it's not some 80 man corp that will collapse holes and try to catch you 23/7) until you get one.

Once you get a hole to null, you are there. Remember though, if it's a K162, no matter what direction you are going, then someone's already found it, so think carefully.

Also, if you fit a cloak (if you like to relax but not needed if you don't mind staying on the move while doing your scanning work in the WH) you can warp to 100 KM on the hole to make sure it's not being camped, then slowboat it to 150, warp in, and make a jump if nobody else is around, but be advised that when you "see" this hole the K162 is popping up on the other side.

But, as I have found, when the other side is deep nullsec, nobody is there.

Using my protocol for hole jumping and bridging, I kept my WH-Null exploration ship alive from 2009 to 2012 until it was finally lost in a high sec exploration escalation. It was a BC with a large rig to prove it's age. But I mention this to show how careful travel to null using WHs can keep a ship in one piece for a long time.


The ship I used was a buffer tanked exploration ship that had the analyzer and hacking module. There are limitations to how much you can take in nullsec with such a fit, but my old ship was a T1 BC, a Cyclone stretched to the max and having a BS-sized AB to run off with when things got nasty - it did have a nuet in a high slot to take down any scramblers, and this also helped with the occasional sleepers.



[Cyclone, Exploration Fit]

3x Heavy Missile Launcher II
Medium Energy Neutralizer II
Drone Link Augmentor II
Sisters Core Probe Launcher
Salvager II
Improved Cloaking Device II

Target Painter II
Large Shield Extender II
100MN Afterburner II Yes you are reading that right
Analyzer II
Codebreaker II


Medium Armor Repairer II
Ballistic Control System II
Capacitor Power Relay II
Signal Amplifier II


Rigs:
2 gravity cap rigs, forgot what the third one was, if there was one.

As gimped as this fit it - certainly it should have had a more decent and focused tank - I was still able to solo nullsec rats and "some" radar and magneto sites. It took some serious Captain Kirkery to keep this one together. Often times if there were more than 4 BS-sized NPC in a site, it lacked the DPS to handle it.

Drones were a mix of Hobgoblin IIs and a repair drone.

Ultimately my point is, that ship was able to go into nullsec, using wormholes, and come back repeatedly with a cargo hold full of loot, from null rats, radar and magneto sites, and along the way some sleeper goo, as it could handle class 1 and 2 sites solo.

But the general idea is that we need not concern ourselves with gankers and gate campers when we can use WH's to go so deep past the renter-manned gank pipelines and "intel channels" that weeks, and I once went more than a month, goes by before you see anybody else in local. The most I have seen out there were some roving mercs and the obligatory solo carrier ratting (certainly not a bot, no way. Nobody uses bots in null, so they say).

Getting back has the same issues: Find a WH to a WH system, get in using the usual safety protocols, find WH to high sec, or maybe a low pop null going to high sec.

Sometimes, there are WHs going straight from high to null and back - these are rare, but lucky.


I think your Myrm fit would to better if you can afford dropping a high on a probe launcher. Without a cloak, be ready to stay alert and mobile on those crossings though.

Yes, your fit might be able to shed off early tackle like a suicide covops with scram, but anything with long point or some kind of cap counter will hold you and rest of them will finish you.

When fitting for PVP and PVE on the same ship, we're talking about offensive potential, not defensive. I keep a point on some of my PVE ships in case I meet something I can kill, I hate to lose opportunities. These ships (blinged out, max-skill Ishtar and Proteus) are capable and I even have a half idea how to fly them in PVP, but I don't expect to be able to fight a gank squad and live. Give them a good fight at best, but you should always try to get out and not fight.

Basically you can't fit any ship in game with the idea that you'll be able to fight and survive attackers. You can fit some ships to fight multiple enemies, but then you will be choosing the fights, When you aim to do PVE mainly, they are the ones who choose to fight you or not. Always assume that any attackers will bring a gang comp that can handle your ship without issues.




That sounds like fun! I live in w-space and have used the wormhole backdoor to null many times, and I can confirm that it is a good way to find a totally empty are to plunder.

Lowsec also has empty areas, mostly in Amarr space, but you find peaceful 4-6 system clusters almost all over the map. Use Dotlan to scout for low traffic spots. Running exploration sites in busy lowsec can be fun, but I'd leave that for later.

Just keep in mind that while jumping from hisec to any wormhole is about 99.9% safe since you can just jump back, same is not true when jumping from lowsec, null or wormhole. If you find someone on the other side, you can jump back and he follows, then your only chance is to warp out since you can't jump back in anymore. And warping out won't happen if you fly a BC.

Wormhole protocol.

Highsec: find a WH. Simple enough, but there are some systems that tend to be rich with them and others never seem to get one. Some systems even have a better chance at a straight jump to 0.0. I have seen this happen more often in Amarr systems at .5 security.

When you find a WH, if it's a K162, someone else already knows about it, but be advised that once you see it, someone else on the other side is going to find the K162.
Enter the WH and the first thing you do while still cloaked is run the D-scanner wide. You want to see if there is a POS there. Well, most of the time there is one, but it's not whether or not there is one, but who owns it. There are corps that may have a few score people who, if they discover you, have nothing better to do than hunt you down, but most of the time, they are either not around or not paying attention.

Rapidly run your scan and see if anybody forgot to rename a ship - this gives you a clue on who is in there. Or run the system Locus against Dotlan , EK or BC for a general overview of kills, who killed or got killed, etc. It might seem dumb to check on this, but your success in crossing depends on trespassing those holes occupied by people who are asleep (out of time zone) or complacent. There's no local, and I have been through scores of WH systems without detection at all.

The criteria is that a large corp with multi-time zone players is generally bad news because they will actively collapse any WH that pops up. A lot of them are small and merely consist of a few people farming a system and otherwise crouching in their "carebear death star". Stay out of D-scan range of the POS shields and they will never see you (mind your probes too).


During the time of this research, you might have opted to jump back to known space, or stay cloaked - your choice. Keep scanning for probes if you stay in the WH.

Make sure you bookmark that hole once you go in to stick around for a while.


Once you want to stay in the WH, get a few safe spots made up, and then go to one of them, launch probes, and cloak, if applicable. Here you will find out one thing: how "farmed" and therefore active a WH is. If you pull up a lot of sites and complexes, it means that whoever is in there is not very active. The upside to this is that you get some privacy, but the downside is that you have to scan a lot of "stuff" before finding another hole.


I mean it when I said that sometimes I have found a second hole to nullsec in 10 minutes, and sometimes it take over a week. It depends on the activity in there. You could be stuck for weeks if you stay in a hole system that has a "hole collapser" who appears to be of the sort that does not have to work for a living, hence the importance of initial intel.


Once you find other holes, follow these steps:

Warp to within 100 KM of the hole, get the info on it (where it goes) and cloak and while cloaked, slowboat away from the hole and keep an eye on it. I have seen holes that looked safe for a minute only to discover that my cloaking maneuver was creating some painful suspense for a cloaked scout and his gank squad and the just said the heck with it and all jumped in to do a sweep (basically this is where you send repair drones across a wide field to break cloaked ships) but for the most part, already starting at a 100 km radius, this is like looking for a needle in a haystack. I recommend that the direction you fly in before you cloak not be aligned to anything and once you cloak, align to a safespot.

Once you reach 150 KM, if nothing has happened, warp to the hole and jump. Naturally you should know where this goes, so take heed: a low class WH system can have a WH to nullsec, but more often a high class system has such a nullsec hole, so taking a WH to "deeper" class space is not a big deal. Same methods apply though. I have seen nullsec holes in low class systems be far less common. For example in a class 5 or 6 you can get a nullsec hole every day.

Now this is important: not every nullsec system you want, hence the need to "go deep" if you don't get lucky in the low class system. I once got an Amarr highsec to deep null in Esoteria so there are indeed wildcards in all this, but this is still rare.

So each time you pop into a null system:

Check local. If anybody is there, they will be checking you.
Check both your pilot map and Dotlan. The star map will tell you how "active" a system is (kills, jumps, pod kills, and pirate/faction ship kills) and Dotlan can be a good help too.

If the system is such that these figures are low, very good. Some will practically be like ghost towns.

The most ideal null systems are those that are branching off gank pipelines and are dead ends: one gate in, one gate out. Hardly anybody goes in those. Some systems on routes to nowhere are also good.

You should avoid the pipeline or highway systems because every knucklehead passing through is going to see if you are an easy kill. Also avoid systems where the traffic is high and the owner is a large alliance, because lacking activity today, they could decide to hunt you tomorrow.

NPC nullsec, aka "drone regions" or what I like to call Russkie Heaven, tends not to be much good. You want the "back yard" that is being forgotten.

Going home: the same way you got there.

Ah quitting while your ahead or taking further risks - that's a hard one to deal with. You can bet on the hand and lose it all, or make a heinous jackpot.

Your call.


It might seem like a harmless dilemma, but this is the sort of issue that even makes bears in nullsec hug the POSes as much as a bear would hug highsec.

You are alone and unsupported out there and have more to lose the longer you stay, and a lot of people, even the ones who call themselves leet, can't handle that.


What I do is fill my hold and then carefully get home the way I come in, using the same protocol.

I should mention one more thing, though it might seem ridiculous. One rule I follow out there is to never use gates and stations. The idea is, you should never NEED gates and stations. The one time I wanted to use gates, I sent in a scrub alt with a frig to scout the route using every known platitude that every "why don't you cowardly bears leave high sec" player screams on the forums whenever they are getting bored in their gate camp. These methods work most of the time, but even when the maps will show that there is no indication of the activities of a gate camp on the other side, there are still those players who can sit there all day for one kill.

Now, when they pop Joe Nullseccer who was merely scouting for his corp or playing around he loses a ship and get's podded back to his corp vat maybe in the next constellation or a dozen jumps out in roaming distance if he was the adventurous sort or looking for a fight.

When they pop you, they'll probably write an article about it on Reddit.

So as a rule, I only use gates when there are 0 players in the target system (and take into account that the maps are not updated as fast as we could expect).

Like I have said, wormholes are your gates now.

For stations, same thing. Don't use them. Every time I was in NPC space and someone else showed up, the FIRST thing they did was head for the station and try to camp me into it. Of course I was not in it. Never needed it.

Perchance you find some opportunity in NPC space like a trade hub in NRDS regions or somewhere you have enough faction to set up a jump clone, you can consider some exceptions to the rule.

But this simple rule of gates and stations - they don't exist to me in nullsec - is how my exploration ship survived countless nullsec trips from the beginning of wormholes until nearly the end of 2012 (and then lost to an exploration escalation in highsec - go figure).

Maybe not the right place to post this question, but since this topic was more about finding wealth in 0.0 using WH's to get therem than it was about a GTFO Myrmidon, I'll give it a try :).

What kind of numbers are needed to "roam" this way, in the meaning of tank (omni I presume since you don't know where you will end, and DPS wise (also Omni? Could use AC's for that but would end up carrying a shitton of 4x ammo).

Is there a raw guideline of what you *can* complete, like mags/radars and what not?

I would usualy say trial and error, but this would be a very time/isk consuming way to find out whats possible!