Thursday, July 18, 2013

Quick little intro to wormholing with Patriot

Yeah it's about that time. Time for me to promise a daring wormhole adventure and untold riches, and then to abscond with all your monies.
Well hopefully not.
More info will be to come, but I want to throw this post up so that people can get ready to participate if they want to, and most importantly to START LOOKING FOR A NICE EMPTY HOLE FOR US TO FILL.
So, the important part first: I'm offering a 200m reward for each of the following, EMPTY (Meaning no online POS anywhere in the hole):
  • C2 with a C3 static and a Hisec/Losec Static.
  • C2 with a C4 static and a Hisec/Losec Static.
So, goddamn, patriot, how do I find these holes and claim this glorious reward?
  1. Go scanning in hisec. About 75% of hisec systems will have a wormhole at any given time. You can do the data sites and the relic sites, and also probe down wormhole signatures when you find them.
  2. Right click on the hole and select info. Is the hole "reaching the end of its natural life?" No? Good. Yes? Good as well, but be prepared for the hole to spontaneously close, meaning you have to scan a new exit and possibly have an exciting journey wherever you pop out.
  3. Pop inside the hole. Is it blue? Yay! Open www.wormhol.es[1] (yes, I know there's others, but this one has a button.) in your eve browser (alt+b) and add it to your trusted sites.
  4. Press the refresh button next to the text box. Info about the wormhole will pop up. It will tell you what kind of a hole it is (C1-C6), what kind of effects it has (Wolf Rayet, Black Hole, etc.), and what statics it has (Null, Low, Hi, C1-C6).
  5. Do all of this within 30 seconds and you have no chance of dying. Take longer, and someone may explode you.
  6. Send me a private message on reddit as well as on EVE (so I can respond faster). If it's this weekend I might not respond (I have military shit to deal with. Like, real life military not space military.)
  7. Best thing to do is stay inside the wormhole, if you don't mind fondling yourself while you wait for me to respond. If you don't have a cloaking device on your ship, you may want to log off in a safe spot so that you don't explode. If you leave the hole, I may travel to the hisec system and find that it is gone, then I will be sad.
  8. I will fly to your hole and slip inside. If it's as empty and delicious as you have told me, I will transfer your dirty whore money immediately with a smile.
Also, I'll know how awesome you are and want you in all my wormhole fleets.
So, for those of you who are wondering, what the fuck is a wormhole and why do I care? Here's a few quick bullets (not a guide, I'll do one of those soon).
  • "W-Space" systems are systems that aren't on the map, which are accessed through portals called "Wormholes"
  • Different classes of wormholes are C1,C2,C3 etc. to C6.
  • Combat/other sites spawn in wormholes, and they have NPCs called "sleepers" which drop phat l00tz. (40-70m/site in C3, more in higher)
  • You can put up a POS (Player owned structure/starbase) inside a wormhole. This acts like a tent on a camping trip. It's not really as comfortable as a station/house, but you can have lots of fun/uninvited touching in it.
  • There's also lots of other profitable stuffs you can do inside wormholes, like PI, mining, industry, etc. I don't really care about that stuff, but if you do, you can come in my hole and go nuts.
WELL GEE WILLICKERS THAT SOUNDS FANTASTIC PATRIOT, BUT IT SOUNDS LIKE IT TAKES A LOT OF SKILL POINTS/FANCY SHIPS TO GET IN ON ONE OF THEM THERE WORMHOLES DON'T IT?
No. No it does not. The way BNI does wormholes, a bunch of month old characters can make 10-50m isk/hr through the power of TEAMWORK (and logi), and it's not hard.
BNI generally uses two kinds of wormhole fleets, Armor+Logi and Passive Shield. I said this wasn't a guide, but I can't help myself. Here's what you can aspire to in order to contribute.
An Armor+Logi fleet consists of:
  • 3 T1 Logi cruisers: Exeqorors and/or Augorors. If you can fly both, better (takes less than 5 days to be able to fly both quite adequately.)
  • 3-5 DPS armor cruisers/battlecruisers. The only requirement here is ~60% armor resists across the board with more than 3500k armor buffer tank. The more DPS you can field, the more FCs will like you in their fleets. Bittervets, I know that seems like a scary paper tank, but it's all that's really necessary. Trust me, I do it all the time. And I'm a doctor.
  • A salvaging destroyer/noctis with a cloaking device and salvaging skill of IV or V.
  • That's all.
The easiest (least SP needed) way to get into a wormhole fleet is by flying a logi. My 30 second logi guide[2]
Once you can fly a logi, start training for a T3 battlecruiser, like a Talos or Oracle. Those things put out massively disproportionate DPS to how easy it is to train for them (if there's interest, I can do a 30 second guide). Suffice it to say, a 1.5 month old character can do 600+ DPS in one of those suckers.
Also, if you train salvaging to IV, you will almost be guaranteed a spot.
Passive shield fleets consist of:
  • Fucking drakes that can't ever die because fucking drakes.
  • A salvager or something. Or if enough drakes have salvagers equipped, you don't even need this fucker. Meaning your fleet will consist of:
  • Fucking drakes.
So, to sum up, wormholes are a fun way to practice being in a faux-pvp fleet, with a dash of danger (you'll see) and make a lot of isk (like, a lot. stupid isk.)
SOUNDS AWESOME PATRIOT, HOW DO I GET IN ON THIS HOT HOLE PENETRATING ACTION?
Join the channel "dropbears anonymous" for more info. Once I have a nice hole, I'll be tossing up a POS, and fleet operations should begin as soon as next week! If you have any questions, ask here or PM me in game.
7o 7o fly hard
a DAMN PATRIOT
Head of PvE, BNI

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Logi Guide (Also, Hi)

This is the place where I put all my newbie guides for newbies. The first one is this logi guide which I originally posted on the reddits.

I've been seeing a couple of posts asking about logi recently, and I was concerned to see the responses over complicating it. Also, since we're flying talwarfleet and fightcagefleet, there's been no opportunity to teach logi recently.
So, here's a quick guide on how to fit a brand fucking new character into an Exequoror, what the different ships do, why they are good, why they are bad, and how to fly logi like a boss as a total [brave] nub.
If you want to fly a ship other than the Exe, I'll mix up a quick batch of skills you need, but they're all very similar.
Skills
I'll do the skills with a basic level first, and a preferred level with a *, so like this:
  • Hull Upgrades III, V*
Hull Upgrades III will let you equip basic armor tanking mods. IV will get you Damage Control II, and it's good enough. You should get V at some point anyway, but the point of this guide is to show you how QUICK and EASY it is to get into a GOOD logi ship, so the * level is mostly to ward off the haters. It's NOT necessary right away. So:
  1. Signature Analysis II, IV* - 45m train decreases your lock time. Important because you have to target to heal.
  2. Long Range Targeting II, IV* - 1.5hr train to make sure you're in locking range of your buddies.
  3. Targeting III, V* - 4.5hrs gets you 4 lockable targets, good enough.
  4. Energy Management III, V* - Because Exeqs rely on themselves for cap, you need half decent cap skills.
  5. Energy Grid Upgrades III, V* - This will let you fit several cap charging slots to get cap stable. You WILL be cap stable (with propulsion mod off)
  6. Mechanics III - Reqqed for other skills.
  7. Armor Honeycombing II, IV* - 2.5hrs increases your agility a bit, worth it.
  8. Jury Rigging III, IV* - Reqqed for armor rigging.
  9. Armor Rigging II, IV* - Lets you equip armor rigs, you're gonna want them, although they aren't necessary if you're putting together disposable ships.
  10. Hull Upgrades III, V* - Lets you equip armor tanking slots.
  11. Remote Armor Repair Systems III, V* - Lets you equip med remote armor repairers. IV lets you equip tech II!
Total training time: 2d 16hr.
Yep, 2.5 days and you can fly a totally useful, acceptable, BRAVE logi. It's so fucking easy everyone should do it. Cross training to all the other logi will add another 2.5 days at most. So, less than a week and you can fly all racial logi, decently.
Fit
I don't like post fits for newbies, because it doesn't teach you how to fit. So this is how you fit your Exe:
  • High slots: All remote armor repairers. Meta 3 is usually the most cost effective.
  • Mid slots: I like to stick on an MWD, because I'm impatient. Others like AB, because it doesn't hurt your cap total (MWD reduces your total cap pool, even if its off), and it doesn't increase your sig. AB probably better. Fill the remainder with cap rechargers (probably eutetic, meta 3s). You may take these out later, but start with all cap chargers.
  • Low slots: Keep sticking on cap mods (Power Relay is what you're looking for, it reduces shield recharge and increases cap recharge) until your cap is green. Remember to have your prop mod (propulsion mod- your AB or MWD) off when you're trying to make yourself cap stable. Also remember that if you offline your MWD your cap pool increases, so you might not really be stable. Play with it.
Once you're cap stable, fit your basic armor tank in this order: Damage Control, Biggest Armor Plate You Can Fit, Energized Adaptive Nano-membrane, another EANM/explosive hardener, a magnetometric sensor array.
The reason you do it in that order, is - DC - gives you great resists. Resists are overpowered for mathematical reasons. Armor Plate - you need buffer, which is health available to go away while your friendly logibros lock and heal you. EANM x2 - because resists are overpowered. Put on an explosive hardener instead of the second EANM if you don't want to rig. Mag sensor array - to resist jamming.
If you're still cap stable, go to your mid slots and put in a sensor booster with a scan resolution script, this will decrease your lock time and make you land reps on target faster.
  • Rig Slots: At a minimum, put an armor anti-explosive pump if you don't have an explo hardener. Otherwise, rigging your ship will double the cost, which is fine, and I rig my ships, but you can also consider the effectiveness of having a 3/4 effective ship at 1/2 the cost - sometimes worth it.
If you're rigging, put on the anti-explosive pump and 2 trimark armor pumps. I believe this setup (explo resist rig instead of hardener low slot) gives the most effective hitpoints.
  • Drone bay: put at least 1 attack drone in here bro, you GOT to whore on those fucking kill mails. The rest can be logi drones, if you want, but I like to put attack drones in. Just make sure you dont attack friendlies or rep enemies =) If it's too complicated at first, dont' worry about it. Doesn't really matter.
How to Fly
Ok, so you've got your basic skills and ship, now for now to fly it in a PVP fleet. It's fucking easy.
  1. Open your fleet window, click the history tab. (I'm not looking at EVE right now so if I name things wrong, correct me in the comments and I'll edit it, tx newbies =). Set the box in the top left to "broadcast history." Whenever newbies need repairs, they will "broadcast" and you will lock them from this window.
  2. Create your watchlist. Right click on your FC's name and go to fleet>>add to watchlist. Do this for your secondary and tertiary FC as well. Then do it for your logi anchor (your logi FC, usually). Then do it for all your logi bros. If you still have room (max 15), pick your favorite buddies and add them too. On the watchlist, you can see names, broadcasts, and shield/armor/structure damage, in that order. If people are dying but not broadcasting, be a bro and rep 'em anyway.
  3. Anchor on your logi anchor - right click his name on the watchlist and orbit at 2500m.
  4. Don't warp with the main fleet - if the FC is combat warping to the enemy, he will usually tell logi to cancel warp and warp in at 30km or so off the main fight. If he does, spam ctrl+space to cancel, and then when FC calls land, warp to him at 30. Your logi squad leader may do this for you.
  5. Profit.
Seriously, that's it. That's all it takes guys. That's the whole guide. That's all you need to know to be a fucking game changer. If you got questions, post em up here. If I fucked up at any point or made a bunch of typos, I know you twats will point it out in the comments <3
7o fly brave, fly hard.