My Loot, Your Tears

Around about 2 months ago, I jumped from Suddenly Ninjas and into a new corp I created for wormhole operations. Several good blogs – my favorite is Eve Wormholes – got me excited about the prospects of profit and pew-pew potential.

Here’s the short version: Setting yourself up in W-space is a lot of work. Level 4 missions are a lot easier for the money. On the other hand, the experience is much more interesting. I am now experienced in how POSes are setup, fueled, and defended; how to turn w-space gas into polymers and polymers+salvage into components (full T3 subsystems “soon”); running my own research labs; and building ships from blueprints.

Your experience living in w-space is dictated to a large part by what type of ‘static’ exit WH you have. Most low-class WHs (mainly C1/C2) will always have a direct exit to low-sec or hi-sec space. We lived in a C2 that had exits to low-sec Amarr space most of the time. A hi-sec exit means you can easily procure more supplies. It also means significant traffic in your system from people looking for PvP action or to run your sites. A low-sec exit means less traffic, and some ability to get supplies and transport goods out, at increased risk. Scouting worked well for us.

The C3 we have moved into only has one static exit – to 0.0. This makes life very interesting for us. We receive very little traffic, but getting to empire space is risky; unless we happen to open into CVA space. I had to make a 30+ trip through 0.0 a few nights ago, and it took me over two hours. Logistics become critical. We stockpile months of fuel for our towers. Multiple ships for PvE (sleepers) and PvP. BPOs/BPCs for things we need often (ammo, drones) and arrays to build them. Tons of extra fittings, and as many modules as you can cram in, to have a library to work from. One bonus of opening to 0.0 space is that we can go ratting for a few extra ISK.

Our usual way to get out to empire is through a connecting wormhole to ours, which then has a low or hi-sec exit. This happens perhaps once a week to once every two weeks, depending on luck. Once found, there is a mad scramble to haul goods in and out before the wormhole closes.

The PvP experience out here is unpredictable and usually with a lot of skirmishes instead of pitched battles. With delayed local, no one ever uses it, and so dscan and probes are your only way to notice other players. Early into our w-space stay we found a Harbinger and Hurricane running a sleeper site. We probed them down and dropped in with our PvP ships; the Harbinger got away but the Hurricane was popped. No tears – never really see any tears.

In another event, I was attempting to ‘choke’ a wormhole to 0.0 – bring it down to critical mass to dissuade people from coming through – and was spotted by the locals. They brought over 15 ships in, and I was getting prepared for a POS defense. Apparently they tried to run a site and failed, or someone ganked another one, because a wreck and a pod showed up on dscan, followed by them all leaving. =) We’ve also attempted to set up gate camps in our 0.0 systems, without much success. The people traveling through these areas are usually in greater numbers and force then the 2-3 of us.

I’d recommend the WH experience if you are good at long-term planning, will not go crazy without local, and are willing to sink a lot of time into the game. The profit has been good – we’ve collected several billion. If you’re like me, you’ll plow most of it back into your POS and ships. This is not for everyone, but it can be quite enjoyable.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 at 3:39 pm and is filed under Wormholes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.