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Suitcase Challenge Day 4: Settling In

stargrace May 10, 2024 1Comment

It took just over an hour of jumps (before and after downtime) but I finally made it, my Orca made it to the wormhole. Probably one of the more terrifying things I’ve done, to be honest. I had my scout on the inside watching for the hour to make sure no one entered (and checking d-scan, there’s a C4 connection right now, so someone could come in from there) and I warped to the wormhole and then cloaked with the Orca to approach it and keep an eye from outside to see if anyone was scanning the system or if anyone was on grid. When I hit 2,000km away my cloak dropped and I jumped into the WH. I immediately warped (well, ‘immediately’ is not a thing with the Orca, it takes me 38 seconds to initiate warp) to the safe I have set up, and cloaked. Shew. Safe (as safe as one ever is). I logged the Orca out, for now. I don’t plan on ever logging her in unless I’ve confirmed the WH is ’empty’ (as much as I can), and I’ll log in a scout character first to take care of that. Immediately after logging in, I’ll cloak. Since the Orca isn’t going anywhere for 90 days (or more) I think this should be OK. I don’t ‘need’ the Orca unless I want to swap out ships or drop something off. I do plan on day tripping to HS to drop off goods / sales.

Next up? I’m going to wait for the current HS entrance to expire, and then figure out where it opens to next. If it’s quiet enough, I’ll bring in my ‘main’ character who will be doing all of the things. I’d like to get PI set up as my first real adventure. I just need to place the command centers, the rest can be done remotely from within the system (I’ll warp off to a safe and cloak once I place the command center). I haven’t decided what I’m crafting yet, I did bring the command centers for the planets available, and I’ll have to work within that. There are already POCO set up here with 2% tax, and I’m comfortable with that.

For now, it just feels good to be getting set up.

Fly your way! o7

Day 3: Move in Day

stargrace May 8, 2024 0Comment

I’ve been waiting for the ‘perfect’ move in day (ie: path from my staging to the WH) – one that is .6 or higher, and not too busy. A few days were absolutely no-go, with gank fests happening along the route. The Orca has almost 600,000 EHP but I’m still not absolutely comfortable flying it great distances. I *think* I’ll be OK, no one knows the route I’m taking (not even me before this point, hah) and I’ve scouted ahead, and I’m pretty prepared. That being said, it’s EVE, and you’re never 100% safe, unless you’re docked at an NPC station.

Today is the day – I’m making 44 jumps to get to the entrance of my WH, home for the next 90 days. It takes me approximately 20 minutes for 10 jumps. The Orca is a massive slow beast, and I’ll need a stretch of time and some patience. I’m making the trip in the early morning around downtime, which I hope will work to my benefit. I created a shard folder so that all of my characters have access to the same locations, and I’ve included the the HS location of the WH. The goal is to log in my scout (who is in the WH), confirm that it’s clear / safe for me to enter, bring the orca to the WH outside, cloak, wait a while, confirm that it’s quiet / no one around in the HS side, and then pop through. Once through, I will immediately warp to one of my safe bookmarks, off grid from anything, and this safe is JUST for the Orca (and for when I want to do ship transfers), it would be really bad to decloak my own ship by flying someone into them.

At the time of this post, I’ve got 20 jumps left.

Day 2 Suitcase Challenge: More prep

stargrace May 7, 2024 0Comment

With the site picked, it was time to get everything else together. First, train up an alt in Orca skills. This was pretty simple, I contemplated using MCT but ultimately decided it would be better to just use skill injectors. The Orca is sporting the fit above, but unfortunately right now the WH is 40+ jumps from where I have staging, and even in high sec I don’t really want to jump that far. Orca are slow. I did some scouting and there’s some gank fests going on, too in between where I’m at and where I want to go. I opted to be patient, I’ll wait until the WH is closer before I decide to move in.

What am I bringing?

• Prospect – fit with a mobile depot so I can swap between mining / gas
• Tengu – my T3C of choice, a bit expensive for this sort of thing, but that’s what I’m comfortable flying, so that’s what I’m bringing. I don’t know if I’ll actually use it much, maybe just to get rid of rats.
• Helios – Just a spare probing ship in case I need one
• Epithal – Yep, I’m dragging along a PI hauling ship. I am hoping with vigilant scouting I’ll be able to sneak items out of this WH to whatever HS system I’m connected to and get some sales going. We’ll see!
• Some shuttles/T1 frigates

I’m also bringing along the command centers for PI, and a few spare cloaks. I’m not sure if there’s anything else that I want to bring, I might just pick things up here and there as I need it or as I figure it out. The Orca will stay in the WH for at least 90 days (longer if I’m enjoying it) but my alts are free to come and go. I’m hoping to get some marketing done but it will depend on where the WH has settled for the day. As I’ve already said a few times I’m just not a fan of Jita, so it would have to be one of the outlier hubs. Hopefully the next post will be about my big move!

Fly your way. o7