Missions & Complexes

To put it plainly, abandoning an Orca in space is stupid. If they're going to take an Orca along, get a char to fly it (usually an alt). As for accessing an Orca's bays when it's unpiloted, I don't know, I haven't been crazy enough to get out of my Orca in space to test it, lol.

It might be a good idea for them to join a WH corp to get a better understanding on how the whole WH mechanics work. If they want to be stuborn and do it by themselves, then they can scan for WH from Highsec, go and do a couple of sites and get back to Highsec.

Living out of a Orca in WH space doesn't sound like a good idea. Way to many predators lurking around. :)

An Orca really wouldn't be worth the risk in a WH, like the above posters have said. Just don't do it.

What are they currently both flying? A pair of drakes can be fitted so that all options are covered, with preferably both having a probe launcher, and then sharing salvager/codebreaker/analyzer between the two of them. So one ship having probe launcher, full set of HMLs, analyzer and normal for the rest of the slots, the other ship has probe launcher, salvager, rest of the highs as launchers, 1 mid for codebreaker and the rest normal. They'll probably need sisters launcher/probes for the bonus, and should probably also consider cheap 'prospector' implants to assist the scanning if they want to do anything other than anomalies.

I would advise in that situation to suck up the inefficiency until they have made enough ISK for a PLEX, then start a trial account, PLEX it, and train up an alt for a destroyer initially with probe launcher/salvagers/analyzer/codebreaker/cloak. The alt just stays cloaked at a safe spot while the drakes clear a site. Once the alt is active, the two drakes can go back to real fits. When you are happy with the skills on the alt, you can consider a noctis for the alt, or even swap to a covops for better scanning ability while still having slots for the rest.

EDIT: If they stick to nomadically raiding C1 and C2 holes until they get the alt account, then the refitted drakes should be able to handle a C3 once they are back to proper fits.

taking an orca into a wormhole is f'ing crazy, for the cost of the orca you can plex an alt account for 81 days and pay for the equipment your gona need to fly it.

as the poster said previously to me, you can use the alt in cov ops(once trained) to scan down all sites and then share the bookmarks with your friend and yourself. once he's done his scanning cloak him up run the sites, switch back to him when you done everything and then collect the loot/salvage. find your next wh and move on.


the problem after 81 days is that you'll have to work out the cost of a plex for your alt account between you and your friend which is gona be on the high end 200mil each a month. if your actively running wh's weekly you'll pay for this no problem and still make more isk then high sec running.

beauty of it is that since your both paying/sharing cost of alt account you can take turns flying the alt account so neither 1 is bored salvaging/scanning. obviously against EULA so dont brag about it.


if your determined to fly an orca in your wh, leave it at the entrance/exit to high sec, watch d scan and if anyone pops up fly back to your orca board up and jump through wh into high sec where you will be safe. orca has quite high EHP but usually while your flying it, without being boarded i still think it has enough EHP to withstand enough DPS for you board and jump. like i said in my first sentence though you'd be crazy as hell to go this route.

something better to use would be a blockade runner something that can use a covert ops cloak. because wormholes have certain sizes to their mass that keeps them open for so long and a ship like an orca is gonna be makeing that mass smaller.

Blockades dont have the cargo capacity of an orca but you can leave them somewhere ona char and cloak up and warp around cloaked also very handy if an enemy gang warps in to play pew pew. an Orca on the other hand are slow as dirt., and would get popped alot easier.

Yeah, an alt in a BR will easily hold all the salvage and loot you'll get from combat sites, the only thing you would need the Orca's huge size for is if you're mining or gassing. Also, the Prowler has a free util high for a probe launcher or salvager (or a agil-fit Mammy with a regular cloak could probably fill about the same role, and that only takes an alt a week or two to train for, you could even have another char on your account do that and switch between chars).

Mr Kidd beat me to it, but I agree with his final point. I also agree with allt he previous posters advice not to leave an unpiloted orca sitting in space ... any space!

Orca's are very good for many aspects of w-space ops, they carry a heap of stuff (including ships) and provide in-space logistics support. Their downside is that they are expensive to lose, they are big (not many orca jumps before you kill your wormhole), and they have the align-warp characteristics of a Galapagos Giant Tortoise.

Before I became a w-space resident I would search out w-systems and squat for a short time to clear sites ... which sounds like what the OP is discussing. I wasn't able to fly the orca but would setup an undefended small or medium POS as my home base, viewing it as expendable, and would work from there. I did this using mammoths, and could setup a reasonable temporary homebase with just a few mammoth loads ... much less than an orca can carry.

If you wanted to run from an orca you could easily do the same. Carry a very basic complement of POS gear and fuel in the orca. Setup a rudimentary POS and place orca inside POS forcefield. Work from POS / orca. If your POS gets attacked you will get mailed warnings (I am assuming this still happens) and you can head back to reboard, and save, your valuable orca ... taking care with your approach in case attackers have also bubbled the POS. It doesn't take much to kill a small POS, but unless you're brain-dead you should have enough time to respond to the attack and hopefully reclaim / save the orca.

When you're done for the day, just board your orca and head to a safepot to logoff. Don't leave it inside a small POS when you logoff ... you could find your POS missing, and the location nastily camped and bubbled, when you next logon. You could even remove the fuel from the tower before headingoff to bed. Unless you've got other modules onlined it's not highly likely anyone will shootup an offline anchored tower whiel you sleep.