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Ammatar/Sansha Space Combat Exploration Questions:
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Salvos Rhoska
#1 - 2014-02-09 11:59:16 UTC  |  Edited by: Salvos Rhoska
Hiya all!

Ive been happily puttering around several constellations in high sec Minmatar doing primarily Combat Anomalies and Signatures in a Thrasher and Fleet Hurricane, with a Probe for the occassional mils from Relic/Data. I'm quite happy with the ISK rate and I prefer the "randomness" of Anomalies/Sigs to mission grinding.

However, traffic is high in Minmatar, and though Ive made basecamp and run exploration in several circular/interconnected constellations (even the COSMOS system off near Hek) where I can quickly probe and reship accordingly as well as manually chart WHs and other Sigs I am not interested in (thereby making the next pass quicker, as I can skip probing those), traffic is "too damn high". Ive looked at nearby high sec islands as well, but I anticipate that though traffic is low in them, that that low traffic is infact comprised of are a few very dedicated individuals already farming them, many of which who probably also have alts for nearby pirate/low sec activity.

So, Ive been looking at neighbouring Ammatar space in great detail through the map filters.
I see a lot of excellently connected constellations, with a generally lower high sec profile (which I think, at least, increases chance of higher DED/Unknowns and bounty), and most importantly, low traffic!

Map is awesome. I spend like 80% of my time in f10/f11.

My questions are:
1) How dangerous is the Sansha trademark of TD?
How can I premptively skill/fit to deal with TD?
Angel sites have become extremely simple in my Arty fit, active shield/CCC Fleet Hurricane.

2) The Sansha damage profile, is EM. This gives me pause as:
a) Can I handle these with an EM/armor refit of my Thrasher and Fleet Hurricane?

b) Should I wait to skill to HAC or even to T3 Cruiser, as the EM resist is enormous on these?
(Added: Sleipnir ship bonuses look fantastic, but I dont want to invest in skilling for the support I dont have corpmates currently to utilise. I want to handle Cruisers well, first. Nor do I want to skip better Cruiser specs for BS training, since I am not interested in L4 missioning at this time, BS are too big for high sec DED/Unknowns, and I have no intention of flying BS till I have Corp support later in wh/low/null sec, at which point I will share the sites with corpmates.. And, centrally, I cant afford to lose one. W-space is in my future, but far, and I want to muddle through with HACs or AF before even attempting expensive and high skill T3s)

c) Ive read reports of pilots flying Sansha 4/10s in Wolf (unclear on Vigil, due to Stasis Towers). But, almost all of these reports have beenposted by the same guy lol, called mfxw or something similar (guy has posted same fit in 5-6 related threads). Is there any truth to this? I find it hard to believe a AF can handle these sites, both from a tank and a dps perspective, but AF specialisation would take half the time I need for HAC skilling, so I am intrigued.

Ammatar space seems for certain where I would like to move next, both due to less traffic and the excellent EM resists on the ships I will be skilling into. But Im worried about the TD and unsure of which ship path to focus on to be able to run them as close to optimally with Minmatar ships. Halp and advise from more experienced pilots please!

Thanks in advance for your time and consideration.

(Note to pirates trying to localise me for gank. I aint that expensively fitted and I Red Frog my stuff to Jita. I aint worth it, though I might potentially be interested in joining your Corp if you operate in these regions, if you will have me. I research a ton, am no stranger to teamplay, always voice, and am one dangerous SoB when set to a purpose).

PvE v PvP <> Old School Exploration <> CODE Licenses <> CODE Special Agent
DeMichael Crimson
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
#2 - 2014-02-09 22:12:00 UTC  |  Edited by: DeMichael Crimson
Lot's of questions, wish I had some answers for you.

It's been a while but I use to run Sansha Lookouts and DED 3/10's in Ammatar space with a Force Recon Cruiser - Rapier. Never had any problems with it.

Haven't done the Sansha Watch, Vigil or DED 4/10 sites so can't comment on those.

The good thing about Ammatar space is the low amount of active pilots so finding exploration sites should be easier due to less competition.



DMC

'The Plan' | California Eve Players | Proposal - The Endless Battle
Tauranon
Weeesearch
CAStabouts
#3 - 2014-02-09 22:32:01 UTC  |  Edited by: Tauranon
Salvos Rhoska wrote:


However, traffic is high in Minmatar, and though Ive made basecamp and run exploration in several circular/interconnected constellations (even the COSMOS system off near Hek) where I can quickly probe and reship accordingly as well as manually chart WHs and other Sigs I am not interested in (thereby making the next pass quicker, as I can skip probing those), traffic is "too damn high". Ive looked at nearby high sec islands as well, but I anticipate that though traffic is low in them, that that low traffic is infact comprised of are a few very dedicated individuals already farming them, many of which who probably also have alts for nearby pirate/low sec activity.



I used to use the very isolated 3 system pocket in solitude, and found many days where I intended farming the dens, but had 3 or 4 deds to do first - dens also pile up in pockets, and I knew the local traffic pretty well after a while which made completing the ded 5 escalations easy, and one of the captive lowsecs behind the pockets were quite good for completing signature versions of the same content. IMO a highsec pocket is a good base to learn the next phase of your craft (surviving in lowsec). Often the other side of the pocket is not camped, and its a lot safer to go in/out of low from there.

Quote:



So, Ive been looking at neighbouring Ammatar space in great detail through the map filters.
I see a lot of excellently connected constellations, with a generally lower high sec profile (which I think, at least, increases chance of higher DED/Unknowns and bounty), and most importantly, low traffic!

Map is awesome. I spend like 80% of my time in f10/f11.

My questions are:
1) How dangerous is the Sansha trademark of TD?
How can I premptively skill/fit to deal with TD?
Angel sites have become extremely simple in my Arty fit, active shield/CCC Fleet Hurricane.

2) The Sansha damage profile, is EM. This gives me pause as:
a) Can I handle these with an EM/armor refit of my Thrasher and Fleet Hurricane?



You probably can by running an em hardener on shields. If you go too far and wind up in blood space (aridia has lots of pockets in very deep low), the blood ded 4 is a simple case of staying back out of most of the danger, and the blood ded 3 is trivial.

Quote:


b) Should I wait to skill to HAC or even to T3 Cruiser, as the EM resist is enormous on these?
(Added: Sleipnir ship bonuses look fantastic, but I dont want to invest in skilling for the support I dont have corpmates currently to utilise. I want to handle Cruisers well, first. Nor do I want to skip better Cruiser specs for BS training, since I am not interested in L4 missioning at this time, BS are too big for high sec DED/Unknowns, and I have no intention of flying BS till I have Corp support later in wh/low/null sec, at which point I will share the sites with corpmates.. And, centrally, I cant afford to lose one. W-space is in my future, but far, and I want to muddle through with HACs or AF before even attempting expensive and high skill T3s)



The sleipner is a bit of a dead end, it isn't as mobile as a strategic cruiser for the end game (nullsec), and it can't get into ded 3s in highsec. Hac/Strategic both need the racial cruiser V skill and I wouldn't delay training it.

Quote:


c) Ive read reports of pilots flying Sansha 4/10s in Wolf (unclear on Vigil, due to Stasis Towers). But, almost all of these reports have beenposted by the same guy lol, called mfxw or something similar (guy has posted same fit in 5-6 related threads). Is there any truth to this? I find it hard to believe a AF can handle these sites, both from a tank and a dps perspective, but AF specialisation would take half the time I need for HAC skilling, so I am intrigued.



A frigate that is freely moving can tank anything level 4 scale (which includes ded 4s), due to speed and signature.

A similar thing occurs with strategic cruisers and hac's, which can often tank very solidly even if stuck (ie its very hard to do the maze with a battleship, but not so bad in a strategic). For most exploration content a hac or strategic is a lot faster at clearing stuff to unlock the gates and they are usually quicker at breaking the overseers tank, so they usually preferred.
Tauranon
Weeesearch
CAStabouts
#4 - 2014-02-09 22:41:55 UTC
Salvos Rhoska wrote:


Ive looked at nearby high sec islands as well, but I anticipate that though traffic is low in them, that that low traffic is infact comprised of are a few very dedicated individuals already farming them, many of which who probably also have alts for nearby pirate/low sec activity.



On this last topic, flying a covops is a necessary skill. What I used to do is drop a ship in an island with a viator, and leave it there - then I used to just fly a covops to it with extra ammo when I wanted to run the island a bit.

I have 4 ships on the placid island, 2 on each solitude island, 3 or 4 in deep aridia pockets, 2 on the big north east caldari island etc.

other methods of getting ships to islands included flying them there just after downtime, or even flying in a bpc, buying the materials locally and making it, or shipping rails to the location to melt and build it with, or flying a covops to the island, just doing miniprofs and checking the wormholes until you get a wormhole or wormhole chain back to highsec (which is the way all the denizens in the solitude pocket seemed to move orcas, battleships and other large things).

IMO they are fun places to play as an explorer/pober, and fun challenges to solve if you don't intend on losing ships.

There is a huge sansha island that I once got a WH from my rental system to and did a ded 3 on, which was actually the first time I'd ever done sansha exploration content (though TD was of course meaningless to an Ishtar).
Katran Luftschreck
Royal Ammatar Engineering Corps
#5 - 2014-02-10 00:22:23 UTC
I fly drone ships. What is this "tracking disruption" you speak of? Cool

http://youtu.be/t0q2F8NsYQ0
Salvos Rhoska
#6 - 2014-02-10 10:44:23 UTC
Thanks for replies.

Ive done more reading/research and the concensus seems to be that Sansha is very difficult with turrets, and that the TD is crippling up to 88km out.

Disheartening...

Gives me the impression that even if I was to try 3-4/10s with a long range arty Muninn, it would he a long and drawn out kite, during which Im even further likely to lose the drops to plex thieves.

Alternatively I could try an AC Vagabond, but tbh, based on my experience with Angels (albeit without T2 resists on the hull), that sounds very difficult as wel, and that even that close in, the TD conrinues to be crippling in addition to the already extant tracking modifiers on a fast but close orbit.

Preliminary: Im bottlenecked to stay vs Angels till much further skilling.

Seems Ill have to try a daytrip to Ammatar with a few modules to try some fits on my Fleet Hurricane, to see for myself how bad the TD really is vs Turrets.

PvE v PvP <> Old School Exploration <> CODE Licenses <> CODE Special Agent
Batelle
Federal Navy Academy
#7 - 2014-02-10 19:19:50 UTC
while tracking disruption can be significant, there's no reason to restrict yourself to angel stuff. Hisec combat plexes are not difficult. Its not until you get into harder content that you really get pidgeonholed into one ship or another because of ewar/resists/etc

"**CCP is changing policy, and has asked that we discontinue the bonus credit program after November 7th. So until then, enjoy a super-bonus of 1B Blink Credit for each 60-day GTC you buy!"**

Never forget.
Tauranon
Weeesearch
CAStabouts
#8 - 2014-02-10 22:30:13 UTC
Salvos Rhoska wrote:
Thanks for replies.

Ive done more reading/research and the concensus seems to be that Sansha is very difficult with turrets, and that the TD is crippling up to 88km out.

Disheartening...

Gives me the impression that even if I was to try 3-4/10s with a long range arty Muninn, it would he a long and drawn out kite, during which Im even further likely to lose the drops to plex thieves.

Alternatively I could try an AC Vagabond, but tbh, based on my experience with Angels (albeit without T2 resists on the hull), that sounds very difficult as wel, and that even that close in, the TD conrinues to be crippling in addition to the already extant tracking modifiers on a fast but close orbit.

Preliminary: Im bottlenecked to stay vs Angels till much further skilling.

Seems Ill have to try a daytrip to Ammatar with a few modules to try some fits on my Fleet Hurricane, to see for myself how bad the TD really is vs Turrets.


The blood ded 4 overseer is a structure, and the ships are all cruisers. The serpentis ded 4 overseer is a battleship, and the clear to it is trivial. The gurista ded 4 overseer is a structure. All 3 of them can be done with sniper type fits, and all of them can be done by just sniping the overseer, bookmarking the wreck / can and coming back in about 3 minutes to the bookmark if you can't tank the pocket to actually fly to the wreck or can.

amarr space has 2 rat types, ie just keep flying and fight bloods if you find sansha too hard.
Salvos Rhoska
#9 - 2014-02-11 11:12:58 UTC
Tauranon wrote:
Salvos Rhoska wrote:
Thanks for replies.

Ive done more reading/research and the concensus seems to be that Sansha is very difficult with turrets, and that the TD is crippling up to 88km out.

Disheartening...

Gives me the impression that even if I was to try 3-4/10s with a long range arty Muninn, it would he a long and drawn out kite, during which Im even further likely to lose the drops to plex thieves.

Alternatively I could try an AC Vagabond, but tbh, based on my experience with Angels (albeit without T2 resists on the hull), that sounds very difficult as wel, and that even that close in, the TD conrinues to be crippling in addition to the already extant tracking modifiers on a fast but close orbit.

Preliminary: Im bottlenecked to stay vs Angels till much further skilling.

Seems Ill have to try a daytrip to Ammatar with a few modules to try some fits on my Fleet Hurricane, to see for myself how bad the TD really is vs Turrets.


The blood ded 4 overseer is a structure, and the ships are all cruisers. The serpentis ded 4 overseer is a battleship, and the clear to it is trivial. The gurista ded 4 overseer is a structure. All 3 of them can be done with sniper type fits, and all of them can be done by just sniping the overseer, bookmarking the wreck / can and coming back in about 3 minutes to the bookmark if you can't tank the pocket to actually fly to the wreck or can.

amarr space has 2 rat types, ie just keep flying and fight bloods if you find sansha too hard.



Thanks again!

Could I trouble you please for some specific advise on handling Sansha Unknown/DEDs in Minmatar Projectile ships?

PvE v PvP <> Old School Exploration <> CODE Licenses <> CODE Special Agent
Tauranon
Weeesearch
CAStabouts
#10 - 2014-02-11 12:01:54 UTC  |  Edited by: Tauranon
Salvos Rhoska wrote:


Thanks again!

Could I trouble you please for some specific advise on handling Sansha Unknown/DEDs in Minmatar Projectile ships?


There is a large initial spawn of frigates that do TD in the sansha ded 4 in both pockets. The difficulty you are going to find in your fit, is that you need to have a prop mod to approach them, you need to have a web or some other source of ewar to force the npcs to ignore your drones (webs do this brilliantly), and your drones will have to burn them down. hobgoblin IIs will do the burning down fine, but if you don't web the frigates, they may well turn on your drones. You will struggle if your drone skills are poor.

I would personally try a fleet stabber, autocannons, and tank it with a perma running AB along with a perma running med armor repairer, since that will do 800+ for me or so and avoid a lot of damage via speed and moderate sig. I'd fly around with a mobile depot, probe launcher and some scan range finding arrays, and switch the gun and mids back in when I found something.

Let us know if you want a fit to try, but be aware that I don't actually ever fly minmatar ships (though I can), so my strategy of being fairly close, orbiting at 800ms, letting drones kill the frigates and then steadily working through the rest till I can slow down and apply better damage, may be fairly optimistic. It will do near enough to 500 dps though, and that's ample for breaking overseers in highsec.

Its certainly a lot more work than Ishtar, deploy drones, blap the entire pocket in 3 minutes and go blap the overseer.
Tauranon
Weeesearch
CAStabouts
#11 - 2014-02-12 16:12:25 UTC
Just for fun I clone jumped, bought this and found myself a sansha mining colony, and it can perma run ab and rep and speed tank the last pocket and easily break the overseer. I killed a couple of easier npc's first to manage the dps and reduce the frequency of disruption, and orbited the overseer at 7500. No need to clear the last pocket. though don't stop long to loot.

I did need to web stuff to keep the drones safe in the first pocket (without the web they got agro after 1 npc). You can just orbit a cruiser and kill everything else first.

Stabber Fleet Issue
5x 425mm autocannon II (RF EMP M)

1x 10mn ab II
1x stasis webifier II
2x cap recharger II

1x medium armor repairer II
1x armor em hardener II
1x armor thermic hardener II
3x gyrostabilzer II

2x medium capacitor control circuit
1x medium projectile ambit extension

3x hammerhead II
2x hobgoblin II
Salvos Rhoska
#12 - 2014-02-12 16:42:25 UTC
Tauranon wrote:
Just for fun I clone jumped, bought this and found myself a sansha mining colony, and it can perma run ab and rep and speed tank the last pocket and easily break the overseer. I killed a couple of easier npc's first to manage the dps and reduce the frequency of disruption, and orbited the overseer at 7500. No need to clear the last pocket. though don't stop long to loot.

I did need to web stuff to keep the drones safe in the first pocket (without the web they got agro after 1 npc). You can just orbit a cruiser and kill everything else first.

Stabber Fleet Issue
5x 425mm autocannon II (RF EMP M)

1x 10mn ab II
1x stasis webifier II
2x cap recharger II

1x medium armor repairer II
1x armor em hardener II
1x armor thermic hardener II
3x gyrostabilzer II

2x medium capacitor control circuit
1x medium projectile ambit extension

3x hammerhead II
2x hobgoblin II



Thank you very much, yet again, for even going the extra mile to test Projectiles vs Sansha.

My own day trip to Ammatar was delayed because I made the crucial error of trying to align/warp too close to an asteroid after Blitzing a Commander... Expensive mistake, but an invaluable lesson lol.

Your use of ACs was the conclusion I was coming to as well from reading about the range of Sansha TD as compared to the projection of Cruisers/BC I would be flying there.

Ill probably have significantly more trouble, as my drone skills are poor, Im a less experienced pilot in practice terms and Ill have to make note/research exactly which NPCs TD (current wikis on the sites dont includenthese unfortunately) but your report is certainly encouraging and extra challenge is welcome at this point as Im just powering through Angels easily currently.

Sansha will get even easier with T2 Cruiser resists as well, once I finally skill into those.

(And I literally drool when looking at the low traffic and excellent circular constellatioms in Ammatar space, compared to Heimatar/Metropolis!)

PvE v PvP <> Old School Exploration <> CODE Licenses <> CODE Special Agent