Zero Kelvin

Me and my corp joined an alliance that are based in the Drone regions and sometimes it feels like Siberia. It’s in the middle of nowhere, its poor, barren and we rub elbows with the Russians.

The ratting is interesting, never thought I’d get to use my Carrier as a big BS with fighters out. I dont even have a ratting BS for my main anymore.

I warp in the carrier and try to aggro as much as possible. There’s one version of the hardest Cosmic Anomaly, a Horde, that has bunkers as triggers which means I can blow them up using smartbombs and get all the spawns at the same time.

My alt usually sits next to the carrier nuking frigs and cruisers while the Archon’s Fighters chews through the BS rats. Looting and salvageing is also a challenge. The hardest anomalies drops about 4 500 m3, which fills the carrier in two goes.

Each anomaly takes somewhere between 30-60 mins to run and the wrecks are usually spread in a 40km radius around the carrier which means that an orca, marauder och strategic cruiser is super nice to use for looting. Always nice to find new ways to use your new toys…

For those with less SP or a smaller budget, its a little harder. Then it seems to be easier just to try to hit the belts collecting hiend alloys from tripple spawns.

Found my alt tackled in a belt yesterday, I tabbed out to put my main in warp and tabbed back to see a Cynabal try to down my alt in her Nighthawk.

The Cynabal had deployed EC-300 drones and started bumping her orbiting on 700m.

I loaded Scourge and started pounding the Cynabal as long as I had lock on him, deployed drones to chew my way through the EWAR.

Lost lock one time and got a re-lock and continued to pound the Cynabal. Thanks to my lazy ass afk tank on the Nighthawk I got the Cynabal into armor and almost into STRUCTURA before he jumped. Too bad I hadnt a point fitted. I had about 15% shields and a DC left.

I rat in a PVP-ish fit to be able to easily refit for pvp, extenders, resists, bcus and extender rigs for buffer.

Today I was just wrapping up ratting and there she was, lovely as ever, the fierce Brokara Ruyver.

Estimated value of module drop is about 1,2 B ISK. Yay!

Brutix ratting fitting

When I started out ratting in 0.0 I tried lots of ships and lots of fittings. Around that time I finished Medium Hybrids Tech 2 and gave it a go.

The Brutix delivers insane DPS but is really lacking in the range department. You live on your DPS and Micro Warp Drive since you will haveto close on the rats ASAP and settle in a tight orbit.

Drones will whipe out the small stuff and lets you concentrate on the bigger fish.

Everything can be exchanged to Tech 1 modules where needed.

My current Sansha ratting fit

I see that people search for ratting fittings and I thought that I’d post the one I’m currently using abusing Sansha rats.

First, all high slots are utility slots on my Ishtar, basically all DPS comes from drones. I have a small beam laser in the first high slot for managing aggro. Then I have the duo tractor beam and salvager, a small remote armor repairer for the drones if I get unlucky with aggro and a cloak for pissing off roamers.

In the midslots I have a couple of named modules to be able to fit the tracking links which are CPU hogs.

In the lowslots I have a repairer, some faction hardeners again because of tight CPU, something for aligning and speed and of course the suit case. You can probably fit N-types but then you will have to ditch one tracking link.

I use T2 Ogres for the DPS, T1 Curators because of lacking Sentry Drone V and T2 Hobgoblins for the small stuff.

No rigs on this one.

I got a little tired of the mindless roaming of my pirate’s corp so I figured I needed a break. Put the pirate on a longish skill (Recon IV) and used my carebear for a little ratting in Providence.

In Providence they recommend chaining rats and I understand why, they are convinced there is more money in chaining than in faction drops.

Well, I tend to disagree. Especially since this past weekend. WOW!

I got five True Sansha spawns and they dropped loot in the vicinity of 300 M ISK. On top of that, I could average maybe 10 M ISK an hour ratting and probably double that in salvage. I raised about 250 M ISK in just the weekend. Keeping this up, I can finance my upcoming capital skills, I already have one financed.

The spawns also dropped three implants, Low Grade Slaves, and I’m saving them for now, maybe one clone with LG Slaves for when I’m sitting in that carrier?

Yesterday I was ratting and I wound up loosing a drake and later a buzzard when trying to save part of my loot… Triple 1,8 M rat spawn oneshotting a frig anyone?

So i was sitting there, one ratting drake short and a wad of insurance cash in my pocket. Buying a cheap drake from the corp was the first remedy and then I used my other char to do some shopping in hisec. One of our corp carriers was going up to hisec for a little provisions run and I managed to squeeze a medium secure can in with fittings for the return trip.

Having finished all this, I saw an Atlas-member trying to sell a rigged Raven in local. After a short convo, I was the happy owner and could get it in a neighbouring system. One thing about this game that shows I’m still is a beginner is the darker side of the game. After accepting the contract I couldn’t find the raven and my corpmates obviously screamed scam and laughed. Luckily enough, the raven was a few jumps out and I could get it without any trouble.

A few moments of comedy though. First, not renaming the raven and undocking caused quite a stir among our blues since they saw it on scanner and thought it was a neut undocking. A few explanations later in intelchannels and I was off.

The other comedy moment was when the seller of the Raven congratulated us on the ganking of a fellow called Booster Rooster. He was apparently not that liked and he was just hanging back farming spawns rather than joining the others on PVP-ops.

After trying the raven a little, I was not that impressed with the DPS but the tank seems to more than enough to take on tripple BS-spawns.

I have been fiddling with a gank setup for mission running. It’s blasters, afterburners and drones on the menu.

There are two fittings which I’ve been thinking of and there are two setups I’ve been thinking of:

[Megathron, missionrunner AB n Blaster]
True Sansha Large Armor Repairer
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Damage Control II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Armor EM Hardener II
Armor Thermic Hardener II
Capacitor Power Relay II

LiF Fueled I Booster Rockets
Cap Recharger II
Cap Recharger II
Cap Recharger II

Modal Mega Neutron Particle Accelerator I, Antimatter Charge L
Modal Mega Neutron Particle Accelerator I, Antimatter Charge L
Modal Mega Neutron Particle Accelerator I, Antimatter Charge L
Modal Mega Neutron Particle Accelerator I, Antimatter Charge L
Modal Mega Neutron Particle Accelerator I, Antimatter Charge L
Modal Mega Neutron Particle Accelerator I, Antimatter Charge L
Modal Mega Neutron Particle Accelerator I, Antimatter Charge L
[empty high slot]

Capacitor Control Circuit I
Capacitor Control Circuit I
Capacitor Control Circuit I

Ogre II x5

[Hyperion, AB Blaster]
True Sansha Large Armor Repairer
Armor EM Hardener II
Armor Thermic Hardener II
Damage Control II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II

Cap Recharger II
Cap Recharger II
Cap Recharger II
Cap Recharger II
LiF Fueled I Booster Rockets

Modal Mega Neutron Particle Accelerator I, Antimatter Charge L
Modal Mega Neutron Particle Accelerator I, Antimatter Charge L
Modal Mega Neutron Particle Accelerator I, Antimatter Charge L
Modal Mega Neutron Particle Accelerator I, Antimatter Charge L
Modal Mega Neutron Particle Accelerator I, Antimatter Charge L
Modal Mega Neutron Particle Accelerator I, Antimatter Charge L
Modal Mega Neutron Particle Accelerator I, Antimatter Charge L
Modal Mega Neutron Particle Accelerator I, Antimatter Charge L

Capacitor Control Circuit I
Capacitor Control Circuit I
Capacitor Control Circuit I

Hammerhead II x3
Ogre II x2
Hammerhead II x2

I’ll see what I do, I have a couple of megas lying around.

Last night when I returned from ratting some in 0.0, I was about to jump into the station system. At the last gate, the client locked and since this was 0.0, I got a little worried…

I tried to log in with an alt across empire, which went without a problem. Tried to log in again with my main, but with no luck.

It was time for bed but I disliked having my mega hanging around a gate in 0.0! Logged in with an alt to make sure the main was booted from EVE and sighed.

Starting EVEMon at work around noon showed no insurance money for the mega, so I guess it’s OK.

I’m usually ratting against Sansha and I usually use a Brutix. The fit I use is active tanked and uses blasters to melt the rats quickly.

After a little reading, I fitted a Hurricane with tech 2 Large Shield Extender, a web, and some overdrive injectors for quick rat ganking. That didn’t end well, so now I’m trying a more brute force approach.

A megathron undocked later with an injector instead of cap rechargers made short order of the baddies. Five Garde sentry drones gave the setup a bit more punch.

Some small reflections after running the mega through it’s paces:

• One sentry drone will haveto stay home for a flight of hobgoblins since I can’t hit a barn wall up close
• Trusting on the rats dumping cap booster charges is a gamble
• I really need a tractorbeam since paddling 38 km to a wreck is kind of bullshit
• The tank is sort of on the weak side so I might fit more hardeners instead of three Magnetic Field Stabilizers.