Wormholes

If you never saw him coming he was likely cloak fit. You won't have seen probes either as he just has to warp to ore anoms instead of scanning them down.

My advice to you, stay aligned out. There's a delay from the time he uncloaks to when he can lock your ship, you may have been able to get out.

If you are solo, maybe invest in alts and sit them on wormholes so you can listen for activation then gtfo.

ermagerd! Decent advice from Caius.

Although he did stop short of advising the procurement of a Venture if you must mine in hostile J-Space -and by hostile I mean a system that isn't yours. Cheaper than retrievers and harder to tie down.

Ok, so there are a couple of things. First and most important is that d-scan does save lives but not always and only in the 14.5AU range, that is the furthest range of your d-scan. If you are going to mine in a system that is larger than 14.5 AU do yourself a favor and scan for all wormholes, make sure that they are in dscan range of your ore site. Otherwise, someone can pop into the system, take their sweet time to cloak and then warp about the system looking for prey. I do that all the time, its my favorite thing in eve.

The other thing you should be aware of is that you are not a robot, no matter how often you will press the scan button on your dscan you can still miss a cloaky ship. Chances are low but it is still possible.

So what can you do? There is no way to be 100% safe, that is the beauty of w-space. However you can reduce the chance of becoming a prey by doing the following things:

-Scan all sigs in system before mining, find wormholes and insure that they are within your dscan range, keep looking for new sigs as well as dscan during mining.
-Play around with a Venture, see if it suits your needs, +2 warp strength is a nice thing to have
-Try to look for a w-space corp and join them, there is strength in numbers and knowledge sharing

Finally I am giving this advice because I want more people in w-space regardless of what they do. however I prefer fighters over industrialists. Remember that while w-space does offer quite a lot of reward in a way of ISK for your pve activities, the most rewarding part of w-space is the pvp. Its not just the ISK, its the thrill of it, the scouting and manuevers that happen in w-space. W-space takes this good game to a brand new level of enjoyment. Look into it, train for it, and find yourself a nice group of like minded folks who are just as obsessed about melting faces off strangers as you are.

Also, find yourself a corp that are into the things you enjoy. There's plenty of corps in J space that are into the industrial side of things.

Safety in numbers my friend.

A crafty hunter will recognize that his target needs to turn back around to continue mining and would wait for you to not be aligned before engaging. Alas, you never know what kind of enemy you face until it's often too late.

Also, if someone drops a dictor or hictor, all the warp core stabs in the world won't help you.

I do second the notion of using a venture however if you want to keep your costs low.

Smart cloakies use the uncloak ramming method so by the time you see them, he's bumping your ship out of alignment.

+1 for the Venture.

That ship is made for exactly what you want to do.

The Venture is the way to go if you are solo. It's super cheap, so your risk to return is super high.

One thing I'll add is never underestimate the unlimited patience most wormhole hunters possess. A few months back, we had someone camp a Legion on us in our system for the better part of a week looking for the right opportunity to show itself. He'd log in and see what was happening, then log back out. It was a cat and mouse game for days until we were able to flush him out with the right bait and get him.

I too want to see more people come into wormhole space. Find a good organization to join and embrace the full experience. I know many people who were straight industrial types who now have a taste for PVP out here.

Reformed industrialists in w-space are some of the most bloodthirsty pilots I've seen.

I agree though, find a group of like-minded w-space people to join up with. If you're *really* intent on living the solo life, you just have to be prepared for death, solo life comes with its consequences, especially when its an industrial life. That risk can be mitigated with alts as has been mentioned, but you can only do so much with one brain and two hands.

The Mobile Depot has radically changed the relevance of this advice. Preparation is key. Store a Mobile Depot and the probe launcher + probes in your cargo hold.

Best advice: suck gas, not rocks. It's typically far more profitable in W-space. The Venture is exceptionally good at it (better than any other ship in the game). Additionally, because the radius of gas is HUGE, you can set an "orbit" distance of 500-1000m, and in a fit like below anything cloaky is going to have a really, really difficult time getting in scram range and holding. We refer to Ventures fit this way as "slippery as hell"; you can only catch them with a dual scram (even if they use a 3-point faction scram!), and it takes some careful preparation and good pilot skill to do so.

Of course, a HIC or Dictor plus an interceptor is the right response to this fit. But an overheated MWD on this Venture will burn out of a bubble at 4,000m/sec; if you don't catch them within 10 seconds of landing, you ain't catching them. The moment you see anything decloak or on D-scan, warp out to the safe spot you set up when you came in-system, cloak, and go AFK for 15-30 minutes (you made a safe spot before coming in, right?). You'll almost certainly be in warp before they can land tackle after your decloak delay (sub-4s alignment times rock). If they bring a HIC, overheat the prop mod and try to GTFO. If they bring an interceptor, he will need dual scrams to tackle you. If they get you after all, give them a "GF" in local before your pod explodes.

Catching Ventures that prepare properly is really, really hard.

Cargo hold: mobile depot, core probe launcher + probes, spare drones. Note you won't be able to fit the mobile depot plus anything useful without rigging or a cargo expander in the lows; the fit below gives you JUST enough room for that mobile depot, launcher, and probes. The cloak is just way too useful to do without! I much prefer scanning in a "real" scanning boat (T1 frigate with a cloak), not trying to scan in my Venture (no bonuses), but if you need to scan your way out after the PvPers roll the hole to trap you, it's useful.

Beside your computer: a timer set to 17 minutes (so you can ninja gas and give yourself a little spare room to get out before the site spawns).

I got my start in Ventures in wormholes. You can make a surprising amount of cash as a newbie, particularly if you're willing to "venture" into C4-C6 space and go for that sweet, sweet 3-digit gas. A million ISK a minute, easily.

Fit:

[Venture, Wormhole]

Warp Core Stabilizer I

Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I
Residual Survey Scanner I
Medium Shield Extender II

Gas Cloud Harvester II
Gas Cloud Harvester II
Prototype Cloaking Device I

Small Polycarbon Engine Housing I
Small Cargohold Optimization I
Small Low Friction Nozzle Joints I


Hornet EC-300 x2