Can Flipping

Can flipping is a technique in Eve used to try and get some high sec fighting.

Basically, all ships have cargo holds and when you mine, the ore goes directly into it. The problem for hard core miners is that their cargo holds fill us fast leaving you with two options: put the ore into anchored Giant Secure Containers (GSCs) and pick them up later, or jettison the ore into a temporary container ("jet can") that lasts an hour in space and pick up the ore from it later. The GSCs are secure as they can be password protected and anchored so other players can't take off with them, but they only hold a bit more than a good mining ship and take more work. Most players make use of jet cans that hold a lot of ore but can be taken from by anyone.

If you take stuff from someone's can, they can shoot at you without CONCORD getting testy. But if they shoot at you, then you are free to shoot back. So the tactic is to take the ore from their jet can, put it into one of yours, and hope he either engages you for stealing or takes the stuff back which looks like stealing so you can shoot upon him. That is can flipping.

Last night I bought and fit up a second Onyx to try gate camping but my scout Derranna was moving stuff in the freighter far away and I didn't want to disrupt her efforts to log in another scout, and as time was short anyways I cruised around the systems looking for cans to flip. I've never done it before and was looking forward to trying it out. I was flying a Tech 1 Rifter frigate for fun, hoping some miner would decide to give me a run for my money.

I found a retriever mining into a can and flipped his can, but he had no reaction and simply started a second can. I warped out, got into the gank Falcon, and warped back under cloak to see if he would take my can with me apparently not there, but still he didn't bite. I had to log then or I would have tried to grab the ore I stole in a badger. Note to self: buy disposable Badger hauler.

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In other news, on the ride home from work I was thinking about Eve (as I often do) and thinking about alts. I got Barak last year because I needed a freighter for hauling massive amounts of materials Razor Tech's manufacturing activities. Derranna was training up for one but Barak had one already and was available for the right price. The carrier skills was merely a bonus

But now Derranna has her own freighter and the only use I have for Barak is his jumping ability in the carrier when I was in 0.0 space with m3 corp and Sylph alliance and future adventures. I don't use the carrier for combat and I don't train his skills any more so no fighters, increased drone ability, or capital remote repairers. The current plan is to get a carrier for Kirith who will train up all the bells and whistles and so in the fall I can sell Barak.

So the thought occurred to me that if I only use his carrier for hauling, a jump freighter would be far superior at it AND Derranna's training for a jump freighter would not take all that long if I recalled correctly. And once she has the skills for it, selling Barak would provide a good part of the ISK required to buy the sucker since its the third most expensive ship in the game after the Titan and the Mothership classes.

I opened up EVEMon and selected the Nomad, the Minmatar Jump Freighter, and hit the Add Skills to Plan button. Turns out Derranna can have the skills to fly a Jump Freighter by mid April which is a hell of a lot sooner than Kirith can fly his carrier. So the process started this morning with Navigation V in the queue.

Time to start saving my pennies for the 6-8 billion required to get that sucker.