Science & Industry

Last weekend, while doing my regular scanning for exploration sites in hisec, I ran across a c2 wh. Being somewhat bored, I decided to take a peek, and to my surprise it turned out to be a completely empty c2, quite nicely populated with signatures. Now I've been reading about life in wh for some time and it did sound interesting. I've done some solo ratting in c1 and c2's with my main char, but I haven't really planned for going in full time as usually those holes would have towers inside and my experiences with hosts have not been so nice.

However, I'm really tempted to give settling in wh a try and am willing to invest a plex for that purpose as I haven't really planned or prepped for it (getting pos, modules, fuel and what not). However, my question is - can a small/medium pos in c2 be made profitable by a solo - two char player?. Does it have to be medium or can a small one survive?
One of my chars is a very good scanner and medicore miner (can fly retriever with t2 strippers) and the other one is specialising in gallente combat ships (all t1 are up to lvl 4, got t2 small and med guns, t2 drones, no t2/3 cruisers yet tho). I'd take both these chars in (actually scanner is inside atm) and would put up a pos to have a place for all the stuff I need. I know how to manage a pos, can do decent pi too. System has a mix of gas and barren planets.
Feedback would be much appreciated

How long do you want to stay in the C2? What are its statics

If it's just for a bit--like a week--until you drain it of all the radars, mags and most of the anoms for the time being, then I'd just put down a small Caldari tower and a ship maintenance array. Put a week and a half or so of fuel in the tower, stront it fully, anchor the SMA and drop some GSCs under the force field. Store all your loot in the GSCs, and don't bother mining or sucking gas, just kill Sleepers. It is infinitely easier to set this up if you have an Orca. Don't anchor anything else (you probably know this already, but just in case: if your tower is reinforced because someone wants to see what you have in your hangars or just for fun, you'll be locked out of the CHA, and you can't unanchor anything while the shields are below 50% which means that you'll be leaving everything behind, not just the stick and the single SMA). Also, if you anchor anything that goes outside the shields (guns, ewar, etc), then if someone decides to have fun and incapacitate some of these modules without even bothering to reinforce your POS, you can't unanchor the tower without first repping the module (can't do it while there are anchored modules nearby, can't unanchor incapped stuff...). SMAs don't use CPU so you can access them even when your POS is reinforced to save your **** and wave goodbye to the attackers. This is a cheap and effective way of raiding a system for a short period of time and then moving on. You can make some pretty good ISK this way, but it's definitely not a long term solution

Personally, I'd either just live out of an Orca or go the barebones small tower for a week or two route.

A longer term solution means no small tower, no matter how many defenses it has anchored. A small tower is pretty easy to pop even for a group of smaller ships like Tengus, BCs, HACs and whatnot, and many wormhole roamers will do it just because. You really can't defend a small tower well anyhow. A medium is as small as you want to go, and I'd personally just recommend a large tower as the number of people who'll want to break it for the hell of it in a C2 is reduced dramatically when a large POS is involved. If somebody really wants you out, though, you won't be able to do much about it since you're lacking the numbers. I'd be leaning toward a dickstar over a deathstar when it comes to defenses. Don't anchor delicious pinatas like labs, don't bother with a refinery especially if you have a high sec or a low sec static. Keep your system scanned out at all times, don't activate the statics if you don't have to, make sure you know of all the other K162s and random wormholes that are in your home at any given time you're online. Keep additional scanner alts in the system for when you might be podded back to k-space. Don't keep all the small expensive loot in the CHA, use GSCs (in case the tower is reinforced while you're happily sleeping and you know you have no chance of repping it back up to >50% because you're so few).

Consider that if you aren't able to farm your w-space static because it's too high of a class, you will run out of stuff to farm in your home system pretty quickly (especially if you have visitors that farm in your system). Since a large POS eats about 400mil in fuel monthly, running out of stuff to kill and mine quickly can be somewhat of a problem.

Thx for replies, I have to yet determine which statics this hole has. There was a connection to another C2 y'day but whether that is static...

Unfortunately orca at the moment is not really an option for me as I cant fly it on either char, and training up for it would take way too long (it is on my to-do list though). I'm guessing I'll give small pos + giant containers a chance and keep my fingers crossed hoping that no particularly nasty buggers come my way for a week or two I plan to stay in it.

Yep, as said above, http://wormnav.com
Great site, I vastly prefer it over staticmapper (more reliable as far as information, better user interface, more features).

If an Orca isn't an option, any hauler would do. It would be best to use something with more than one high slot so you can fit a probe launcher and a cloak on said hauler. The downside of no Orca is that it's more work bringing in extra ships. You'll want a BC and a scanning ship so it's not that many, not a huge deal. If you find this wormhole raiding experience fun enough to repeat, I highly recommend training up for an Orca, just the very basics to get into it. It's one of the most useful ships in the game, period. Now, the upside of using a hauler over an Orca is that it allows you to enter C1's as well (can't fit an Orca in those).

Chances are you'll be fine, just be very vigilant and POS up when something doesn't feel right (that blink of a CovOps on d-scan may result in badness). Remember, if you run anoms people can scan you out without probes. And just as an anecdote, last time I set up a temporary squatting operation in a lower class WH, it was a nice and quiet system, nothing in d-scan, lots of sites. Literally 30 minutes after I onlined the POS, 3 K162's popped up in rapid succession, two of which had lots of folks from some of the well known w-space alliances pouring out, and then another K162 spawned from high sec which pretty much ensured that the formerly quiet system became a trade route and a battle zone. Heh. But that's the fun part of w-space, you never know what might happen.

Thank you so much for this site .
It seems that I've found a hole with c5 and null statics (which is in line with what my scanning revealed y'day).
That will make setting up a bit harder I guess but also opens some other interesting options (null ratting/mining on a daily basis ?). Interestingly enough, last nite I also noticed that my scanning alt is just 1 day training away from flying a drake, and is capable of full t2 shield stuff so I actually have 2 chars capable of fielding BS's for that hole. Finally, something really interesting to do in this game :)
Now I'll just hold my fingers crossed for that K162 thing not to happen , and if someone actually comes from a big wh alliance, I guess I can always beg for mercy

I have a noob question about your last statement regarding opening or not opening static wormholes. If my WH has two static, one to a c2, and one to lowsec, and I let the current ones expire and then not warp to the new ones that pop up in my scanner, does that mean they're invisible on the other side of them? IE nobody can probe them out? And inversely when I get a k162 into my system, does that mean it was a static from another wormhole?

As far as my knowledge goes. you can warp to it as you like. but as soon as you jump through it the K162 opens up on the other side.

Considering there are quite a few wormholes that can lead to C2's that open up from high sec to wormholes. sooner or later a K162 high sec will pop up. If you use that to set up your tower, keep in mind you are not the first one using that opening and a potential hostile cloaky could sit in your wormhole.

the potential of C2 with null static is geat imo. :D

Well, that's definitely not true and I know this because there have been times when I warped to the brand new static and just hung out there cloaked while distracted by something else, without going through, and people from the other side went through into the system I was in. This couldn't have happened had there not been a K162 on the other side, of course. WELL.... technically it could have (I once had a wormhole going from system A to system B, and system B had a different wormhole going to system A, so you could just run around in a loop if you wanted to), but the odds of that are pretty low.

OP, in case you don't know, btw, the activation mechanic works the same way for all sigs. If you warp to them, or just initiate warp, they are "activated" and will naturally despawn in a couple days even if not completed. Incidentally, you can use the despawn mechanic to your advantage when salvaging anoms. Complete the anom, bookmark the wrecks, wait a few minutes so it despawns, go salvage. If there's someone in the system who comes in and seems a salvager on d-scan, they'll now need probes to get your location rather than just using their onboard scanner + dscan.