Friday, May 7, 2010

Lost in a floyd hole

Although I typically prefer to stay in class 1-3 holes I typically “dead-end” holes. Dead-ending a hole means I probe out every system I come across until I have completely mapped that little wormspace pocket. The process is surprisingly quick, often an hour of probing will set me up with 2-5 systems that I can roam around and terrorize. Class 1-3 systems are typically occupied making the exit holes very easy to find because the occupants usually keep the sites cleared out. The high occupancy rate makes each system a possible source of kills. Class 4-6 however have a drastically reduced occupancy rate making them not only harder to navigate but less likely of coming across active players. The flip side of this argument though is that generally small corps occupy class 1-3 which are often inactive most of the day and never really have much that is worth any large amount of money. I kill more in them, but typically make only a few million each kill. Class 4-6 on the other hand is sparsely populated, but when you do find an occupied system it is often very active with a lot of players all going about their business. They also don’t see a lot of travelers that deep in wormhole space and are generally less cautious. In fact once a wormhole hits a certain occupancy rate it becomes very hard to tell if you have an intruder around. Scans become an infinite wall of hits, and trying to pick out who doesn’t belong can be very hard. Most importantly for me class 4-6 systems are where the real money is. The corps are nice enough to have 5-20 people on clearing sites for me and then packaging it all up in a destroyer.

I happened across a class 6 (I think it was a 6) that had at least 20 pilots on running sites in their command ships and tech IIIs. I noticed a few salvage destroyers out looting the sites the groups were finishing. I managed to combat probe one and sneak in undetected. I quickly killed and looted him and slipped off before the hive got too stirred up. He had a decent haul which will pay for the next bomber I afk through low sec. Miraculously enough not a single pilot broke radio silence and I slipped out relatively easily.

On a side note CCP has reported that planetary interaction will be possible in wormholes. I’m excited about anything that brings more players into wormholes. Especially things that cannot be done under the shields of a POS. That being said I do have a concern for the buildup of “tower trash” and the inability to destroy a tower in the low class wormholes. I know it is feasible, but the practicality of even trying to sustain a wormhole fight over a day or two are horrifically lopsided to the defender. I’m glad they are giving holies more things to do in holes, but I’m concerned about the safety cushion having a tower in a system allows. I guess since there is relatively small amounts of isk to be made via class 1-3 its not really all that important.

It may never come to reality, but RS may be bringing the fight to a class 1-3 tower, we need to decide if the logistics of it will fit with our RL timetables.

4 comments:

  1. Agreed regarding the "tower trash" life is too safe for residents of C 1-3 holes. CCP should release Tech2 versions of the Tier 3 Battleships as sort of sub-capital Dreadnoughts. This would make it more feasible to siege WH POSes and make WH living a little more exciting.

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  2. Hmm, its not particularly difficult to siege C2/3 POSes, do you probably mean its just a bit too much effort for your corp or you can't get enough pilots interested? We've killed off defended large towers with less than 10 pilots, some of which were logis, so its perfetcly feasible.

    At the end of the day its not difficult to get 10-20 BSes into a C2/3, you just need to be cute about it and be prepared to scan down multiple entrances/camp them while the rest of your fleet moves to it.

    And if thats not your style then just do what CCRES does and use T3s, no mass issues at all there.

    Add to this the fact that most WH dwellers have no clue about POS defence and actually its pretty simple. All you need is time, some wit and a decent number of players.

    The only towers you can't really kill are large ones in C1s, but thats hardly a significant proportion of WH towers, and you just have to accept that there is some stuff you won't be able to kill.

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  3. Now this I would worry about, should RS take up POS popping I may have to buck up some Iskies ;)

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