My alt moved to Stain, obstensibly to just do some planetary interaction. After being down here for a little over a week, I've decided that the alt will base itself down in Stain for a long while. The alt will now be doing much more than a little planetary interaction. The alt will run the gamut of developing himself down in Stain.
So rather than name this series of posts
Planetary Interaction, as was the
original intention, I'll name them
Life in Stain, instead, and detail his adventures in NPC nullsec. I wanted to give this series a more pithy title, something along the lines of
Stain Resistant and
Stain Removal, but nothing really made that much sense in the context of the series, nor were they that funny. (If any of you are better with puns and wordplay, I'll be happy to listen, possibly change the series title if I like the suggestion.)
The only skills the alt currently has are hauling and trade skills, as well as planetary management. Four million skill points worth. The alt is, effectively, a newbie. He'll be starting with level one missions and building from there.
Already being able to fly blockade runners will be a big help. To earn money, I'll still need to ship most of my stuff out of nullsec for sale. Training wise, I don't have to worry about hauling.
I've already set up some planetary interaction on a couple planets. Just rush jobs. Get some commodities rolling into the cargo bay. I'll determine what to do with them shortly. Just stockpiling some tier one level commodities at the moment, chiral structures, oxygen and oxidizing compounds. I set up week long programs, so I'll figure out what to do with them shortly, see what else I need to progress to tier two or tier three commodities. I haven't put a lot of thought into the production just yet, did some really basic research. I'm leaning towards Data Chips and High-Tech Transmitters, at the moment. But that may change. I just wanted to get some production going while I busy myself with other activities in Stain.
Training-wise, I'm finishing off Planetology V. After that will concentrate on getting into assault frigates as soon as possible. For missioning.
The alt can't fly frigates well, yet, not well enough to eat through level one missions, so have been doing level one distribution missions in the Viator. Money and standings are crap, but as soon as I step into an Ishkur and I can start doing security missions and stuff should move a lot more quickly on this front. I'll soon learn what it means to gain Sansha rep.
(Which leads to some questions. If I gain a bunch of Sansha rep in Stain, do I lose Sansha rep by doing incursions later on? Can Sansha incursions happen in Stain? Are the incursion Sansha a different faction than the Stain Sansha? I could see CCP doing making Stain Sansha and incursion Sansha distinct, for simplicity's sake, even though it strikes me as stupid, immersion-wise.)
I'm also looking into earning some ISK through non-traditional methods. Selling region-wide bookmark sets. I was doing all the bookmarking on the alt in a Viator, but that was damned slow. So, brought down the main in an Ares to speed up the process. Interceptor makes the process go much faster.
[Ares, Bookmarker]
Overdrive Injector System II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
1MN MicroWarpdrive II
Small Shield Extender II
Small Shield Extender II
125mm Railgun II, Antimatter Charge S
[empty high slot]
Improved Cloaking Device II
Small Polycarbon Engine Housing I
Small Polycarbon Engine Housing I
It's probably a ridiculous looking fit, but I'm using it solely for fast, quick bookmarking. It's actually proved half decent, got out of three bubble camps so far, avoiding all but a sliver of shield damage. Learning how to use the Ares' speed effectively to avoid damage from much larger, more dangerous ships. After having an Ares and Dramiel blown up getting to Stain, now that I'm in Stain, those losses have proved useful to the learning experience. Figure out why I got blown up, then try something different. The something different is working out. The different has been taking a deep breath when jumping into a gate camp. Calmly determine the direction that will get me out of the bubbles the quickest. Align in that direction and fire the MWD. (This usually means I am flying directly away from them, which is bad, but only for a single cycle.) The enemies will start yellow-boxing me. I should be out of the bubble by the time they start red-boxng me. At this point, I have to stop flying directly away from them, increase my tranversal relative to them. So I change direction by 90 degrees. So, far doing this, I've either taken zero damage, or a sliver of shield damage, and this has been from cruisers on up. I was surprised when I took no damage at all from a Tornado.
(Aside: I find it annoying that I can fit out a Dramiel to be faster than my Ares. I know the Dramiel is a faction ship, but it takes less skillpoints to get into a Dramiel than an Ares. Plus, an Ares is an interceptor. Call me crazy, but Interceptors should be the fastest ships in the game. It's their ship class.)
(Another aside: module stacking penalties. I know the nanofibers have stacking penalties. Does the overdrive injector and the polycarbon engine housings also get further stacking penalties, because they have similar bonuses to the nanofiber structures? Are stacking penalties based on module type only, or bonus type? The description would suggest the bonus type, which means that I may be wasting my time on the fit above, slotting in overdrives and engine housings. Suggestions to make the Ares faster -- currently at 4750m/s?)
So, for the main, the
100 Tristans project is on a short hiatus while I bookmark Stain. 240 bookmarks and half completed the region. Only 65 systems left. (Although the area I'm in now might take awhile. Turns out the pocket nearest the entrance to Catch is littered with Against ALL Authorities folks. And they have a habit of bubble camping every gate deep in the pocket, rather than the systems leading into the pocket (which strikes me as odd, since there's no one that deep into the pocket but -AAA-. The system map never shows any recent ship kills. Maybe sitting on bubble gates is how Russians relax while chatting amongst themselves.) So far have avoided them blowing me the hell up. Not sure if I've just been lucky getting away from their bubble camps, or if they are just terribly bad. Maybe a mix of both.
