Wormholes

wazzap, i've recently heard of a gameplay concept known as solo "daytripping"; scanning down a hole, BM the hole, blitzing some sites or anoms then salvaging/looting in all one ship, then heading back to sell. I have recently trained for strategic cruisers, and i plan to get into command ships and eventually marauders for solo wh pvepve. what is the best ships(s) for this specific kind of play? i assume a T3 with probes and cloak, maybe nullifier. i have even heard of people daytripping mega-pimped marauders from hisec and soloing c4 sites for billions of isk in 3 days, while fitting a tractor beam, salvager and of course a probe launcher in the highs. that may be borderline insane, but can i have realistic advice on ships, fittings and tactics?

thanks. i always knew there was a constant risk of getting ganked. i'm aiming for relatively cheap ships at first, and i just wouldn't want to be ganked in this http://forum.battleclinic.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=155638.0;attach=23600;image

yes one of the sacrifices you make for versatility on one ship is specialization, but i can deal with it. also i generally don't like drones in holes because sleepers eat them like skittles

Well. Solo daytripping for wormholes is usually a little more than just picking up a ship,scanning a wormhole and going after them juicy sleepers. Like most people said, it's incredibly dangerous and you will end up chewing yourself over some stupid ISK-loss.

Ship-wise, if you don't mind the risk and you'r willing to pit something useful to do it go for a T3 (obviously the tengu is favored as you'r planning on shooting NPCs but most of them will do). But one fit won't cut it. Not unless you wanna play smart and I'd personally suggest a "carrier/scanning" role fitted T3 that will carry the mods it needs to dock up somewhere safe and re-fit and stock the loot.

However the biggest part of a successful day-trip is actually finding just the right hole. It's a little like high-sec exploring with miss and hits. You pick a route and you start exploring,noting the wormholes. You'll certainly find plenty of wormholes (and usually not all of them k162s) but you should take your time to find out as much as you can about them. Also take the time to check the residents,their history wars bla bla blabla. You never know when you might need the intel but more importantly it tells you when the residents are playing and if it's a dead corp or not. Note it down and move to the next wormhole. After you've decided which wormhole provides you with the lowest risk (IF there is one for the day) you just dock up,re-fit to an according sleeper-fighting costume and of course drop off anything that's not necessary for your npc run inside said station. I'm sure there are plenty of fits for T3s that cover what you need to take down the sleepers but you should also try to fit something to help you GTFO because those moments will come up a lot in wormholes.You can even get out,re-fit as a T3 nullified/stabbed salvager and clean it up. (I go as far as to suggest salvagers II if you'r not planning on dying of boredom salvaging sleeper wrecks).

Some general Tips:
- Your "moving and scanning" fit should be heavy on EHP otherwise you'r essentially a free-loot piniata when you'r undocking.
- When you start raiding a wormhole start with the signatures and not the anomalies. It will weed out impatient and lazy stalkers when they take out the probes to find you or the signature. (obviously spamming d-scan is a must :P )
-Low-Sec entry points are generally safer cause you'r avoiding other day-trippers but you trade that with an unsafe docking station. Choose accordingly.

I have to say though..that if you want to keep your sanity (and isk) it's much better to just call in some friends or corpies when you've found a wormhole that you want to raid. No need to get greedy and not many pilots say no to an "empty" or "almost empty" wormhole. As an added bonus since wormholes are there for a day you can find it and wait for a more active time to get people participating.And since 3 people are usually more than enough you can just grab those corpies idling and whining and maybe get some PVP out of it as well hmm?

My advice is that if you don't already have a second account and you're serious about wormholes, start training a probing/noctis alt.

The best solo ship hands down in C1s-C3s is the Drake at this time. Despite lower DPS than other ships, it has an unparalleled tank for the cost of the ship. It's cheap, it's effective, and if you lose it you cover the cost in a single op. It can solo any C1-C2 site (including radars) and most C3 sites with good skills (will have trouble in radars/mags solo).

As you train your second account, consider the following routes: Cloaky prober (cheetah, buzzard, etc.), Noctis (Ore industrial 4 is all that you will need), and possibly, Orca alt. This helps you move your ships/ammo around if you're scanning for wormholes in high-sec with your main.

As you become more comfortable with methods of protecting yourself, you can upgrade to a Tengu or Legion (my favorites for C3s). Marauders are great but are a little sluggish in my opinion. Also, giant "kill me" targets.

The best methods of day-tripping involve gathering intel about the residents of the wormhole you're in; are they good at pvp, what time zones do they play in?

Doing that and a few other choice numbers that I absolutely refuse to repeat on the forums because it hurts MY kills, you can usually PVE in safety.


Svodola Darkfury.

.........mammoth.

really.

Iteron V. Depending on how you have it decked out, it can carry anywhere from 24-40k m3. That should be enough storage for a small/med tower, SMA, and a bit of fuel

(pro tip: 4k fuel is roughly 20k m3 IIRC 4k fuel=4 days for Large, 8 days for Med, 16 days for Small. ROUGHLY) 4k is also about 50M.

Small Tower is what, 50M at least? SMA about 25. So at minimum if you're going the tower route you're talking 75M, plus however much fuel you need/want. If everyone can fly the Iteron, it can even function as a poor man's Corp Hangar, albeit a crappy one.



That said, GET A DAMN NOCTIS. Or a salvage Cat. or, hell, if you're feeling REALLY cheap, do like the Ninjas did (do?)

Ninja Vigil. IIRC One of the fastest T1 frigs.

If you don't have more than one account, leave it just outside the hole (docked up, of course), and grab it once you've run your site(s). You WILL be saving yourself so much heartache. Salvaging as you go in a Drake is a good way to drive yourself to clawing your own eyes out.

Drake with a scanning alt works best if you wanna get up and running ASAP. Keep it simple for a while if you can and get earning. Stick to C1's and C2's only (C1's are best, cause they're faster, and faster to salvage actually. C2 sites spawn kinda far apart and the one battleship or two you have slows things down more than the blu drops), do combat sites and make sure theirs no one on thats a resident if possible. Ribbons are your business model, don't worry about hacking and archeology much at all.

Your goal is to try and earn enough to sustain your loses. You will lose Drakes but you can still score a profit.

Fly cheap while you are learning the ins and outs, that will make your lessons learned cheap as a result. You'll be able to scale up as you get better, and have the pocketbook to substantiate it! No better feeling than buying your first Tech3 with profits earning via wormholing.

Wormhole running is risky, and scarey, but it does reward the go-getter so go for it and don't get lost in a situation where you are trying to wait out on a philosophy that over optimizes.