Learn by Doing

So, as I understand it, there’s a little event going on at the moment to reward Freighter and Orca ganks in Caldari/Gallente space or something. I don’t pay a great deal of attention to forums, let alone Crime and Punishment, and nobody really tells me anything because I don’t often ask.

Suffice to say, that losing a fully laden Fenrir stings a bit. Not because of the value of the cargo – though 10bil is not a small loss by anyone’s standards – but rather the timing of the damned thing.

As some know, I build stuff. Lots of stuff. Part of building lots of stuff means I need a lot of minerals and moon goo in order to get the production lines rolling. This means a rather large convoy from Jita all the way home. This works out as something like 50 jumps for a round trip. Warping to zero the whole way you’re pressed to do it in 2.5 hours, and it usually takes me closer to 3.

And that’s what annoyed me more than anything. Losing those three hours, on a Sunday, when I want to be chilling out, not doing another freight run.

Not that I begrudge them their fun. Its something I have been half-expecting for a while. Indeed, every time I do this I am amazed that nobody tried to whack me by the time I reach home. In fact, this post isn’t to moan/whine/rage or anything of the sort. Its more of a wake up call to myself to work harder at protecting the assets of the corporation.

So what’s been learned?

First and foremost; poor Ary, she is so slow :(. Miss Slowpoke will be learning Advanced Spaceship Command 5 at long last. Despite my insistence that keeping her marginally slower made for better timings when switching between client windows (it really does, honest!), her ultimate survival – and that of her cargo – is much more important than losing a few seconds on each gate due to ‘alt-tabbing’.

Travelling without a scout when you are carrying valuable cargo is stupid. Usually, I’m the only one in my corp online. In fact, almost all of what I do relies on a single person; myself. Its not so much a trust issue as it is a “x needs to be done by y date, and nobody else is about, so I should get on with it” issue. I’ve now had some offers of scouting from some long-time allies of myself, my corporation and the services I provide them; its always nice to have favours to call in.

Web stuff. I have no idea if this is as effective now as it was a couple of years ago, but historically at least, webbing something would get the ship aligned super-fast compared the normal uphill battle you face with giant floating space piñatas. I’m going to give this some tests during the week and if it works, get a corpie to train up for some uber-webiness. It makes perfect sense since I produce Minmatar recons as a matter of course.

Keeping an ear to the ground. I should have asked around about this. Since I have told my in-game friends about the ganking, two of them have told me about the Freighter-ganking event that’s going on right now, which means there was fairly useful intel I just didn’t bother to find out. I don’t have the time to go trawling through forums to find out if something like this is on, but if somebody else already has, its utterly redonkulous to at least ask around.

So there we have it. Lesson learned and all that. Now to go replace the stuff I lost.

Comments for this Post

9 thoughts on “Learn by Doing”

  1. John
    31st Oct '11 at 6:36 am

    Yes, the web thing still works great, and for freighters that is pretty much your only option.

    I don’t have to move such huge volumes, so I use an Orca. Mine sacrifices a little cargo space to fit a MWD, which will get me into warp in 10 seconds, which is a big improvement and well worth the small loss of cargo.

    • 31st Oct '11 at 7:12 am

      Excellent! Thanks for letting me know. 🙂

  2. Markius Theshed
    31st Oct '11 at 8:38 am

    We use a Rapier to web our Freighter into warp, Fit 2 or even 3 webs to it and the web range bonus means you can get the Freighter webbed when it losses it’s gate cloak and not have to burn across the gate to get in range.
    But only those in the same corp can do this and avoid Concord in high sec, Other wise I would volunteer to help you escort your stuff.

    • 31st Oct '11 at 10:46 pm

      Yeah I think that’s the eventual goal for me. Thanks for the offer, too. 🙂

  3. Eladaris
    31st Oct '11 at 8:39 pm

    If you have a spare alt pilot with a few hours of skills you can fly one of these.

    [Vigil, Alt Freighter Tackle]Overdrive Injector System IOverdrive Injector System IOverdrive Injector System I
    Fleeting Propulsion Inhibitor IFleeting Propulsion Inhibitor ICold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters
    [empty high slot][empty high slot][empty high slot]
    [empty rig slot][empty rig slot][empty rig slot]

    Only real problem you’ll run into is in smaller systems where your alt is hung up on the gates due to aggro and can’t jump through, or on regional gates where you’ll have to sit on your prop mod to get in web range.

    But it really does shorten travel times, and easier than training into a Recon.

    • 31st Oct '11 at 10:45 pm

      Nice one. Makes life a bit easier, for sure. The main issue is needing to web three different ships that may (or may not) be quite far apart, so I still think the recon route is best in the long-run.

  4. JQ
    31st Oct '11 at 10:27 pm

    Poor JQ he’s so old and slow (to comment), we used the web trick very successfully, I recommend some practice though as there is a sweet spot as to when the webs should be applied (not too early / not too late). You already know the fenrir is a hell of a lot faster at align than the others but you might look at Nomad implants .. best check they work on freighters first.

    • 31st Oct '11 at 10:44 pm

      Good idea with the implants. Certainly worth a look!

  5. 02nd Nov '11 at 11:31 pm

    Sorry for your loss. Webbing still works and is extremely effective. You might be able to get it down to 1 hour 45 mins – 2 hours. Make a date with a corp mate, as 2 human pilots are better than 1.

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