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The wormhole nomad: living in w-space without a POS

Author
Daniel Plain
Doomheim
#41 - 2012-04-30 12:50:49 UTC
FloppieTheBanjoClown wrote:
It's got one large ancillary, and two agility rigs.

I do have to put the MWD offline to use the remote reps. It's easy enough to do: just offline the MWD, online the rep I need, and cloak while the cap recharges.

why do you use remote reps on the orca? wouldn't it be easier to equip one on your combat ship?

I should buy an Ishtar.

FloppieTheBanjoClown
Arcana Imperii Ltd.
#42 - 2012-05-02 13:38:02 UTC
Daniel Plain wrote:
why do you use remote reps on the orca? wouldn't it be easier to equip one on your combat ship?

My PvE ship was active armor tanked, but the Noctis and my PVP ships that I brought along weren't. It made more sense to have the one ship that was *always* on the field fitted with remote reps. It's all about being prepared for anything.

Founding member of the Belligerent Undesirables movement.

Daphny Naarma
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#43 - 2012-05-05 11:09:06 UTC  |  Edited by: Daphny Naarma
Nendail Smith wrote:
... then a non-cloaking tengu with the right setup (again not willing to share just yet) work excelent for running sites.
...

If you refuse to prove the above, how is the EVE community expected to just swallow the wild, bordering unfathomable idea of Tengus... running sites?!? Shocked This progressive hippie madness needs to stop!!

OP: Great read! Sounds like one of the more entertaining and varying ways to appreciate EVE!
Keith Planck
Hi-Sec Huggers
#44 - 2012-05-05 11:14:21 UTC  |  Edited by: Keith Planck
FloppieTheBanjoClown wrote:
Prior to becoming a part of The Skunkworks I spent most of my time as a solo explorer, daytripping into wormholes. It was profitable, educational, fun, and you meet a surprising number of friendly people if you know how to not be an idiot. I've made a lot of references to my days of doing this, but have never really written any sort of guide. This shiny new forum has inspired me. Disclaimer: this is a bit disorganized and probably incomplete, but I'm writing on a whim to start discussion.

I got my start just daytripping lower-class wormholes that I found in highsec. I made good isk, learned some lessons, and became quite adept at it. Then I decided I'd try living in one. Here's the problem: I didn't want to bother with a POS. For a solo player, that's just a magnet for your stuff getting blown up and/or stolen. My solution? Be a nomad. Roam from wormhole to wormhole, scouting and properly reseaching new holes before entering them.

What I'm not going to talk about: survival in w-space and fittings. If you don't know to hammer d-scan or you can't fit a Tengu for C3 solo work, you probably need to learn that first. This is about mobility and exploration. And I'll only say this part once: use safe spots, don't log off at celestials. Don't blame me if you lose expensive stuff because you couldn't bother to spend two minutes setting up a proper, hard-to-find safe.

To start with, you need the right tools. Obviously you'll need a PvE ship for shooting sleepers. T3s are hands-down the best ship for this job. I use a Legion because f*** missiles, but the Tengu is the best choice from a min/max perspective. You'll also need to salvage and loot everything. Sleeper sites can be rather expansive, and a Noctis is the obvious choice here. That covers your PVE activity. Put a probe launcher on both so that losing one means you can still get out of the hole with the other.

Now, you can get by with these two ships being flown by two different characters on the same account. Shoot sleepers with one, bookmark the wrecks, and then come back with the other and loot/salvage. This makes you more vulnerable, though, as you'll be logging in and out in ships not suited for the PVP that could fall in your lap at any moment. So I'd suggest multiboxing and having at least a second account with an orca pilot.

This is my orca's fit: a large hull repairer, a large armor repairer, a T1 cloak, a 100mn MWD for fast warps, and warp core stabilizers. I use the SMA to store a mix of ships not in use. Here's what I would suggest you enter the hole with:

  • A recon ship of some kind (I use a pilgrim). A recon showing up on d-scan in a wormhole has the nice effect of making people safe up rather than go hunting. Solo recon ships are rare in w-space and they'll assume it's part of a gang, either scouting or late on the cloak button. This is the ship I would log out in, so that I could cloak immediately upon logging in.
  • A covert ops ship. This should be something any of your pilots can fly, including the orca pilot. It would be risky, but if the worst happened and your orca were stranded in a hole with all your other alts podded out, you could wait for a quiet time and eject the frigate and scan down an exit. Alternatively, a covops alt.
  • The noctis and PvE ship, of course.

  • I multibox three accounts. One would be the orca pilot, the second would be the noctis/covert ops pilot, and the last would be my main combat pilot. I would log in the covops first, scout the hole and look for sites and wormholes. If I found that the hole was safe and profitable, I'd log in my main (flying the Pilgrim) and the orca pilot, reship from the orca and cloak it up. My noctis has a cloak as well so that I could keep it safe from scanners until needed. I would work sites and salvage them as quickly as I could, knowing I could return to the orca and reship quickly if things went bad.

    Hint on salvaging: If you're running anomalies and have a cloak on your noctis, you can verify an anomaly has collapsed before warping by attempt to warp while cloaked. If the anomaly is still there, you'll get the information window on it as well as the notice that you can't warp while cloaked. Allowing the anomaly to despawn before warping to it makes your noctis harder to find and allows you to verify that there aren't any cloaky ships hiding and waiting for your salvager. I lost my first Noctis to a bomber hanging out in a site I'd run.

    Orcas can fit through C2 holes and larger. C1s are only suitable for daytripping if you bring an orca. Scout out new wormholes, check them on wormnav for suitability, and migrate frequently. Creating a pattern of behavior in one system is a good way to attract unwanted attention. It's possible to use an Orca to close a C2 hole to get a new one, but it will take time and multiple round trips. If you're determined to do so, I'd suggest setting up a safe spot near the hole and warping the orca to it to cloak up while you wait for polarization to clear.

    I made billions of isk doing this casually. If you've been daytripping wormholes for a while and are tired of prowling for hours in k-space looking for a decent hole, try going nomad. It's fun, it's dangerous, and it's something not many other people do. There are no logistics (other than resupplying with ammo and selling off your loot), no politics, no having to share. It's just you and whatever you can find to shoot.


    Sounds like fun, may have to give this a try soon...
    I supposed with only 2 accounts you would want to keep your PvE ship/Noctis on the same account and always keep your orca cloaked.

    Also, i have to ask, is this some elaborate scheme to get wormhole orca kills >.>
    Omir Kajil
    The Scope
    Gallente Federation
    #45 - 2012-05-05 19:31:48 UTC
    Keith Planck makes... A startlingly good point. If it were any other MMO I wouldn't think but...
    I'm now scared to try this 2 accnt orca thing. o_o
    Amitious Turkey
    10kSubnautic
    Warriors of the Blood God
    #46 - 2012-05-05 21:23:55 UTC
    I did this very briefly, but in a battleship, just roaming. But i was a noob, so I got blown up by sleepers, heh.

    I want to do it on one character. :/

    I like to lick things.

    Haunting the forums since 03.

    Solc
    Hedion University
    Amarr Empire
    #47 - 2012-06-05 11:29:33 UTC  |  Edited by: Solc
    Amitious Turkey wrote:
    I did this very briefly, but in a battleship, just roaming. But i was a noob, so I got blown up by sleepers, heh.

    I want to do it on one character. :/

    Aye, me too.
    Doing stuff solo in 0.0 since 07, without alts or anything. Bringing a whole fleet and an orca is not exactly solo-nomadish ...

    I guess it could be done with a nullified, inertia-stabilized drone t3 and nomad(!) imps. You'd need the high slots for cloak, salvager and probe launcher - and possibly a tractor beam to be able to stay aligned when shooting/looting stuff. But C2 would be moreless max.

    Going to try that ;)
    Marsan
    #48 - 2012-06-05 15:30:19 UTC
    FloppieTheBanjoClown wrote:
    Daniel Plain wrote:
    why do you use remote reps on the orca? wouldn't it be easier to equip one on your combat ship?

    My PvE ship was active armor tanked, but the Noctis and my PVP ships that I brought along weren't. It made more sense to have the one ship that was *always* on the field fitted with remote reps. It's all about being prepared for anything.


    The problem with armor/hull reps on the Orca as you have to leave the orca uncloaked for a bit. It might make more sense to bring hull and armor rep and refit the damaged ship.

    Former forum cheerleader CCP, now just a grumpy small portion of the community.

    FloppieTheBanjoClown
    Arcana Imperii Ltd.
    #49 - 2012-06-05 15:39:55 UTC
    Marsan wrote:
    The problem with armor/hull reps on the Orca as you have to leave the orca uncloaked for a bit. It might make more sense to bring hull and armor rep and refit the damaged ship.

    You just work in a safe spot and watch d-scan religiously. It only takes a minute or two to rep up (or deplete the orca's cap). Plus, I'm lazy and this was easier than refitting.

    Founding member of the Belligerent Undesirables movement.

    Meytal
    Doomheim
    #50 - 2012-06-05 18:48:15 UTC  |  Edited by: Meytal
    By the time you see probes, if you see them at all, the skilled hunter will already have a warp-in and your uncloaked Orca is dead. The skilled, cloaked hunter will be narrowing down your position with dscan from as close a point as possible, and position the probes for a 100% result on first scan. With a butt as big as an Orca's, you don't need a super accurate position either. You might have about 7 seconds to see the probes.

    In a situation like this (living the life of a nomad), the Orca is more important than just about any other ship you have, since at any given time it may actually be carrying most of your other ships as well as replacement equipment and sleeper loot. You absolutely must minimize the window of its exposure in every way possible.

    Fit the repair modules to the damaged ship and warp between a set of throw-away safe spots while you repair damage, then refit combat modules. If you visit any of the safe spots more than a few times, throw them away and make new ones. A skilled hunter doesn't need very long to grab your position and have probes ready for a return trip to scan you to 100%.

    You really do have to be vigilant all of the time, otherwise you increase your chances of failure. If you've been doing it for a while and can afford to lose (BIG), and don't really care, then you can afford to be slack. Probably most people aren't willing to intentionally risk quite that much, if they know better.

    Unless this really is a guide to "helping" others get into a wormhole to make big fat targets. Then, I guess, carry on :)

    Edit:

    At any rate, if you do want to live the life of a nomad, practice your maneuvers in Hisec first. W-space isn't the place to find out how long it takes for you to work this new inventory abomination and swap ships, dump loot, etc. if you've never done any of this before. W-space is not really the place to find out for the first time how to do anything with your setup that doesn't involve peculiarities of w-space itself.
    FloppieTheBanjoClown
    Arcana Imperii Ltd.
    #51 - 2012-06-05 22:00:37 UTC
    Meytal wrote:
    By the time you see probes, if you see them at all, the skilled hunter will already have a warp-in and your uncloaked Orca is dead. The skilled, cloaked hunter will be narrowing down your position with dscan from as close a point as possible, and position the probes for a 100% result on first scan. With a butt as big as an Orca's, you don't need a super accurate position either. You might have about 7 seconds to see the probes.


    With an aligned Orca (seriously, always align) seven seconds is a lot of time. Even the few seconds afforded between decloak and targetting is enough to get it away. I'll put it this way: I've lost one orca in a wormhole, and that was because I got lazy closing a hole while living in a C5.

    Meytal wrote:
    Unless this really is a guide to "helping" others get into a wormhole to make big fat targets.


    Seriously, w-space is big. HUGE. The odds of me finding someone I inspired to get into w-space are quite slim.

    Hey, if you did get out there because you read this thread, and I do manage to find you and blow up your ship, post here, k? Big smile

    Meytal wrote:
    At any rate, if you do want to live the life of a nomad, practice your maneuvers in Hisec first. W-space isn't the place to find out how long it takes for you to work this new inventory abomination and swap ships, dump loot, etc. if you've never done any of this before. W-space is not really the place to find out for the first time how to do anything with your setup that doesn't involve peculiarities of w-space itself.


    Also, learn to fly an orca if you're going to use one. Know your align times. Know how to use the MWD for faster warps. No matter how you fit and use it, know its capabilities just like you do any other ship. Some people treat them like cargo containers instead of ships. You need to know what to do to try to save it if things take a bad turn.

    Founding member of the Belligerent Undesirables movement.

    Trinkets friend
    Sudden Buggery
    Sending Thots And Players
    #52 - 2012-06-06 04:20:22 UTC
    With the general lack of actual people active in wormholes at any given time, you will be able to do this nomad lifestyle fairly safely, and make enough ISK to replace ships wthout a problem. You will lose ships eventually - but considering I have lost one PVE drake in 2.5 years of wormholing, it should give you an idea of the real risk if you don't get lazy and cut corners.
    Elisa Fir
    Luminoctis
    #53 - 2012-06-06 10:29:49 UTC
    Thanks to the recent boost to the maximum base sensor strength for probes, (by the addition of new modules, as well as including all probes in the scan result calculations) big ships can nowadays be pinpointed with combat scanner probes, without the probes ever showing up on the directional scanner.

    With 8 probes and maxed skills, ship- and equipment bonusses, the hunter can get a 100% scan result on the position of target ships with a signature strength equal to or greater than ~14.0%, (signature strength for ships is determenided by it signature radius devided by its sensor strength) without the scan probes ever showing up on d-scan.
    Anything with a signature strength weaker than 14% requires combat probes to be placed within the 14 AU (=max dscan range) radius.

    So when scanning for an Orca, a skilled hunter will only uncloak when he/she is already within scram range.
    Lustralis
    Center for Advanced Studies
    Gallente Federation
    #54 - 2012-06-06 11:52:56 UTC
    FloppieTheBanjoClown wrote:
    Mila Ito wrote:
    Can I ask how the Orca was fitted (besides the high slots and the prop mod)?

    warp core stabs in case it got caught (never needed them), and cap rechargers to squeeze out a few extra cycles from the reps.


    The WCS are useless on this ship imho. If he's alone and doesn't manage to point you he can still bump you out of align (most reasonably competent pilots do this). If he's not alone you're dead before you can warp because they're bringing more points than you can counter. Escaping due to WCS are edge cases it's probably not worth fitting for. I would fit buffer to make it take longer for him to kill you. If he's solo you might be able to drone him to death before he does you (again, unlikely as you can't carry all that much in Orca drone bay). Drones I'd go e-war, of course.

    Again, if he's solo you could always fit a point or two in your mids, just to hold him for a cycle while your tengu returns :). I'm not sure how well this would go though. You might end up losing both Orca and Tengu.

    Anyway, I'm not sure how the OP is managing things. He can't fit noctis, anathema and pilgrim all into the orca ship maintenance bay. Assuming pilot 1 is in the orca, pilot 2 in the tengu for running the anoms, that means pilot 3 always has to be in the noctis. Switching out noctis or anathema for scanning is very tight indeed. For the tengu pilot who might run with the Pilgrim, the same is true. It'll either fit or not depending on what the other characters are in.

    Sounds like Rubic's Orca to me!



    FloppieTheBanjoClown
    Arcana Imperii Ltd.
    #55 - 2012-06-06 14:10:37 UTC
    Lustralis wrote:
    The WCS are useless on this ship imho. If he's alone and doesn't manage to point you he can still bump you out of align (most reasonably competent pilots do this). If he's not alone you're dead before you can warp because they're bringing more points than you can counter. Escaping due to WCS are edge cases it's probably not worth fitting for. I would fit buffer to make it take longer for him to kill you. If he's solo you might be able to drone him to death before he does you (again, unlikely as you can't carry all that much in Orca drone bay). Drones I'd go e-war, of course.

    Like I said before, I keep my orca aligned when it's decloaked. With the MWD it takes about 10 seconds to reach minimum speed for warp, so as soon as I decloak I can cycle the MWD once and be ready to warp at a moment's notice. That *plus* a stack of WCS II means the orca is VERY hard to put enough points on before it warps away, and will be in warp before you can get the speed necessary to bump it after landing. This isn't a stationary target that is trying to do a 30 second align when you arrive on grid.

    YMMV, but this fit worked very well for me and that Orca did escape attempted ganks more than once.

    Lustralis wrote:
    Anyway, I'm not sure how the OP is managing things. He can't fit noctis, anathema and pilgrim all into the orca ship maintenance bay


    Nope, sure can't. The salvager "lives" in the Anathema and reships to the Noctis when there's work to be done. My main would always log out in the Pilgrim and reship to the Tengu for shooting sleepers.

    It goes like this: Log in the salvager, do some scanning. If there are potential targets, log in the main and maybe gank something. If there's work to be done, log in both the main and the orca. I'd reship the salvager into the Noctis first, then my main into the Tengu (my only ship with no cloak). Tengu + Noctis + one frig = 390,100 m3. Pilgrim + both frigs = 176,200 m3. It fits and is a lot less complicated than you envision :)

    Founding member of the Belligerent Undesirables movement.

    Rashpla Bastanold
    In Boobiez We Trust
    #56 - 2012-06-28 09:25:30 UTC
    Heh, exactly thread I was looking for so sorry for necro but I have to ask a few things and I hope it won't be too stupid to get some answer.

    Floppie obviously has experience, skills and financial means to set his own multiboxing nomadic expedition into wormholes but is it also possible to do it with only one ship, a cane for example? Fit for pvp but with probe launcher and cloak, get into wh and be there until ship explodes or ammo runs out and then either pod myself back into hisec or probe myself out of wh depending on which thing happens first? Obviously I wouldn't be able to warp and hunt cloaked but assuming I rather will be looking for pvp then running away, could it work?

    What I'm looking for is a break from hisec monotony, not really for making isk just some excitement, scan things in wh, warp around, avoid inhabitants while gathering intel and getting familiar with celestials and my own BMs. Can't afford additional accounts for dedicated probing alts or orca fleet like Floppie but I would like to experience wormholes.

    Sorry if that seems like pipe dreams and malignant rumblings of a noob but I would appreciate some feedback on this subject.
    Efraya
    V0LTA
    OnlyFleets.
    #57 - 2012-06-28 09:41:30 UTC
    FloppieTheBanjoClown wrote:
    Lustralis wrote:
    The WCS are useless on this ship imho. If he's alone and doesn't manage to point you he can still bump you out of align (most reasonably competent pilots do this). If he's not alone you're dead before you can warp because they're bringing more points than you can counter. Escaping due to WCS are edge cases it's probably not worth fitting for. I would fit buffer to make it take longer for him to kill you. If he's solo you might be able to drone him to death before he does you (again, unlikely as you can't carry all that much in Orca drone bay). Drones I'd go e-war, of course.

    Like I said before, I keep my orca aligned when it's decloaked. With the MWD it takes about 10 seconds to reach minimum speed for warp, so as soon as I decloak I can cycle the MWD once and be ready to warp at a moment's notice. That *plus* a stack of WCS II means the orca is VERY hard to put enough points on before it warps away, and will be in warp before you can get the speed necessary to bump it after landing. This isn't a stationary target that is trying to do a 30 second align when you arrive on grid.

    YMMV, but this fit worked very well for me and that Orca did escape attempted ganks more than once.

    Lustralis wrote:
    Anyway, I'm not sure how the OP is managing things. He can't fit noctis, anathema and pilgrim all into the orca ship maintenance bay


    Nope, sure can't. The salvager "lives" in the Anathema and reships to the Noctis when there's work to be done. My main would always log out in the Pilgrim and reship to the Tengu for shooting sleepers.

    It goes like this: Log in the salvager, do some scanning. If there are potential targets, log in the main and maybe gank something. If there's work to be done, log in both the main and the orca. I'd reship the salvager into the Noctis first, then my main into the Tengu (my only ship with no cloak). Tengu + Noctis + one frig = 390,100 m3. Pilgrim + both frigs = 176,200 m3. It fits and is a lot less complicated than you envision :)


    WCS on orca don't help for ****. My loki has points enough to hold you down.

    [b][center]WSpace; Dead space.[/center] [center]Lady Spank for forum mod[/center][/b]

    FloppieTheBanjoClown
    Arcana Imperii Ltd.
    #58 - 2012-06-29 16:07:48 UTC
    Efraya wrote:
    WCS on orca don't help for ****. My loki has points enough to hold you down.


    Congrats, you fly a ship that is obviously fit to be a tackle scout for a T3 gang. A HIC would have the same effect. We can rock-paper-scissors all day about what you can bring that will trump whatever I say I like to use. The vast majority of attempted ganks on an orca in a safe spot will be by a cloaky scout getting a single point on it while the rest of the fleet is on standby in another wh or 15+ AU away.

    The primary defense on that ship is the cloak. Fitting WCS, using the MWD to accelerate to jump speed, and aligning on decloak are all secondary safety measures to make it harder to catch when it's actually being used.

    Founding member of the Belligerent Undesirables movement.

    FloppieTheBanjoClown
    Arcana Imperii Ltd.
    #59 - 2012-06-29 16:14:15 UTC
    Rashpla Bastanold wrote:
    Heh, exactly thread I was looking for so sorry for necro but I have to ask a few things and I hope it won't be too stupid to get some answer.

    Floppie obviously has experience, skills and financial means to set his own multiboxing nomadic expedition into wormholes but is it also possible to do it with only one ship, a cane for example? Fit for pvp but with probe launcher and cloak, get into wh and be there until ship explodes or ammo runs out and then either pod myself back into hisec or probe myself out of wh depending on which thing happens first? Obviously I wouldn't be able to warp and hunt cloaked but assuming I rather will be looking for pvp then running away, could it work?

    What I'm looking for is a break from hisec monotony, not really for making isk just some excitement, scan things in wh, warp around, avoid inhabitants while gathering intel and getting familiar with celestials and my own BMs. Can't afford additional accounts for dedicated probing alts or orca fleet like Floppie but I would like to experience wormholes.

    Sorry if that seems like pipe dreams and malignant rumblings of a noob but I would appreciate some feedback on this subject.


    Flying a cane will keep you from being able to combat probe, but you'll still be able to probe and get kills.

    Don't fit a T1 cloak on a PVP ship if you can avoid it. It will cut your scan res in half and keep you from being able to catch the PVE ships that will account for most of your kills.

    If I were going to do PVP off a single account, I'd take a month to train a decent scanning alt in a T1 frigate in the same corp. Scout a route with your scanner, make corp bookmarks along the way, and then relog with your main and follow. It's a bit more tedious, but I think you'll get better results and more kills.

    Founding member of the Belligerent Undesirables movement.

    Kelhund
    Scope Mining Empire
    Outer Planets Association
    #60 - 2012-06-29 16:17:58 UTC
    so if I'm understanding this right, you're essentially doing stealth ops. All ships remain cloaked unless otherwise being used, and at that point you're keeping them uncloaked only as long as it takes to do your ops and GTFO...

    How often do you switch systems? whenver the one you're in gets too hot?