Today's post was supposed to be a happy report on Project Vulcan's Archon building efforts about how I have made 9 Archons, sold 8, and pulled in a profit around 1.7 billion ISK since I started (excluding start costs for BPOs of course). Then I was going to talk about my future plans on how to expand the enterprise after I saw how things shake out when Crius hits on July 22nd.
Then last night I got my freighter suicide ganked in high sec while autopiloting to Amarr, losing not only the ship by the load of low end minerals I was hauling for a future Archon.
Sigh.
It was always a risk, especially using autopilot, but I don't have that much time to sit at my desk any given night to nurse a freighter through 10-20 jumps in high sec. And even then you are not safe from a gank, so I accept this as a cost of the business. I'll try to mitigate it by doing my runs at less busy times and I'll avoid going to the hubs for my high end minerals with the slow freighter. That's the way the cookie crumbles.
Bummer!
ReplyDeleteOf course, in hindsight, traveling through Uedama on autopilot is always a bit dodgy. I tend to autopilot to a station a jump before and then go through ATK. And bulkheads instead of expanded cargo modules would add additional security (but at an obvious huge loss of capacity).
But in the end, that freighter probably was doomed with those opponents in that system at that particular time regardless of any additional measures you might have taken...
You and your bot-aspirant behavior.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, though: auto-piloting anything through the Jita-Amarr pipe these days is not smart. CODE is ganking empty freighters, shuttles, anything at all that's being auto-piloted. It's a miracle you weren't podded.
Uedama is not in the Jita-Amarr pipe, it's in the Jita-Dodixie/Rens pipe.
ReplyDeleteWhy do you haul in highsec in the first place. Use courier contracts to get your low-end minerals to the last station. Or buy compressed ores and jump them out from the Jita undock.
Good point, but same answer. Auto-piloting anything in today's EVE just isn't smart and doing it when loyalanon is logged on is just flat suicidal.
Deletehttp://i.imgur.com/MXS4yhX.jpg
ReplyDeleteI second Gevlon's comment about using courier contracts, and I'd love to see a post on how you made the judgement to move the minerals yourself.
ReplyDeleteContracts or try having a corpie "tug-boat" you around with a max-skilled double-web fitted Hyena. You can use tech1, but EAF gets an impressive range bonus to webs. With a tech1, you may need to MWD into range. And no, this is not on auto-pilot.
ReplyDelete-click friendly freighter form overview when he drops cloak at align start
-order an orbit (pre-set tight range)
-hit the MWD
-lock target on freighter
-then double web for insta-warp.
The massive range usually means that the hyena only needs to align, lock and web - which saves precious seconds. Because any bump will foul the process.
If there is not corpie available, you could take a risk with someone you absolutely trust. Engage them in a duel. This will allow them use webs on you without being in the same corporation and not getting cordokkened. The problem comes that the Hyena (or tech1) pilot will not be able to use the gate for 60 seconds (even when duelling), regardless of being in corp or not. But the time for a freighter to warp between gates is commonly as long, as well as the 30sec of cloak if the freighter jumps before the tugboat.
Yeah, loyalanon used to gank barges all day every day (he still does here and then), but he found it more "fun" to gank freighters now. It doesn't matter if you got cargo or not, he'll still go for the kill if he's/they are bored. It happened to me twice, that's why I don't ship anymore. The profit vs risk is not worth it anymore as a standalone toon. If you do their math...its 2.5mil per catalyst that they lose (deduct mods dropped and insurance etc). If they get a ship carrying 1 bil, when then that's 1 bil devided by 15-20 catalyst pilots. Damn good profit for them I'd say. "Now don't you dare say; well why are you carrying 1bil of cargo? If you're a freighter pilot and want to make 50-100mil profit in 2 hours...well that's what you have to ship. Take for example raw ore that you can't refine because its in a pickup location that you have bad refining standings. There are many more examples as to why you would ship a bil around, i.e. capital ship builder". P.S. bulkheads don't do squat on a ship like that. You'll just get bumped by 2 macherials to prevent you from warping until their reinforcement comes.
ReplyDeleteFeel your pain. Did something stupid myself in the Dixie/Rens pipe recently (wasn't auto-piloting); but suffered the consequences never-the-less. If you had looked up recent kills in the pipe do you think it would have changed the decision to make that particular trip? I know my loss was caused by complacency on my part; as such it was a welcome, and yet very painful, slap in the face (but I did get to keep my face, and so got to learn).
ReplyDelete