The timing couldn't have been more perfect. After getting my Amarr T3D to IV and laser specialization to IV, I was just waiting for a C13 to pop up in our WHC chain. Earlier that day I had tried to FC a fleet to take down a group who initially were reported to be 15. The pings went out and it didn't seem like we were going to get the numbers, but then their numbers dropped and ours start to increase. Now they were trying to roll. One of our new members came on and was asking me a bunch of questions while I trying to get intel from the scout. I asked the new member to type their questions in fleet so comms are kept clear, but the new member didn't stop. My audio processing disorder was overloading my brain. I couldn't think straight. By the time we undocked it was too late. I was so frustrated that when the new member asked a harmless question about rolling, I snapped at them and told them to read the wiki. I was having a bad day, sure, but how many people have had less than stellar days and still managed to help me out? I don't think there's a person in HSC, LSC, and WHC who hasn't at one time or another answered a question, taught me something I didn't know, or gave me advice that helped me become a better pilot and a better FC. That's what EUni is about and sadly, I wasn't really doing my part to create that kind of learning atmosphere. This isn't the first time either. I have a bit of a mean-streak combined some pessimism. It's something I'm working on, but it didn't feel good to have it come out at a new member and over comms.
Returning to the camping trip, the C13 showed up in the mapper and I was elated. Like a real-life camping trip or trip to one's cabin in the woods (fishing at the pond in Col. O'Neill's cabin in Northern Minnesota, anyone?), this was a chance to take a break from everything else and really do things for myself. No one can bail me out if I mess up, but if I succeed then I have something to be proud of myself for. Either way, it's an opportunity to see if I've been paying attention to everything people have been showing me.
For those who don't know, a C13 is class of wormhole among the Shattered Wormhole Systems that provides benefits specifically for small armor ships. While all Wolf-Rayet systems give bonuses to armor hitpoints and small weapons damage, the C13 gives you the maximum possible (that of a C6 Wolf-Rayet). The fact that it is shattered means you can get anomalies of any class wormhole from C1-C6 (for the absolutely unfamiliar with wormhole mechanics, C1s generate the easiest content while C6s can generate content that can be lethal even for experienced wormholers; just as the difficulty increases, so too do the rewards).
As for my fit, I will share what I took out and then I want to talk about some things I theorycrafted during time in Olympus. More on that in a bit.
Day 1 - "Mama says, 'stupid is as stupid does.'"
I made safes, stowed my things, and scanned down all the signatures in what I have named Olympus (J000965). I was quite pleased with myself. Warped to the epicenter and blew up some rats. It was pretty neat. I logged off to go take care of some real life stuff and came back on. All the sigs were now red which meant I had to rescan them. I had it in my head for some reason that because I had scanned them all down once I wouldn't need to do that again. Nope. That is why, my dear reader, you bookmark everything of interest to you and/or your corpmates. I had rescan every single signature.
I jumped through all the wormhole connections to Olympus and found nothing remarkable. Either it wasn't the right time or everybody decided to take a bio break at the same time because despite having all but one of the connections a populated hole, no one was around to say hello. That's why I use Wingspan, they deliver missiles straight to your hull. Don't need missiles? That's ok! They've got a great selection of hybrid, crystal, and projectile ammo that can be applied directly to the hull of your ship. Wingspan prides itself on quality customer service and will deliver your ammunition personally. Once the delivery pilot is on grid with you, delivery usually only takes a second or two depending on the server tick. Oh wait, this isn't a paid promotion and I'm not sponsored by Wingspan (call me, guys, we can work something out).
Spoiler
Once I had finished darn near giving myself a heart attack, I consoled myself by running a null relic site and a data site. It was my first time soloing a data site that actually had rats. I did ok, although my fit didn't really have anything to counter being neuted out which meant that once that happened I couldn't rep anymore. The rats were not particularly tanky, but once you stop repping and then stop shooting; you die.
One last thing... When the connection between Olympus and WHC went down, there was definitely a moment of fear. I think without realizing it I was comforted by the fact that if something went bad I could always go home. Now there was no safety net. No one could come to my rescue. This was it. Am I going to thrive and have an amazing story to tell or am I going to get myself blown up and be embarrassed by what's happened.
Total made on Day 1: 82m ISK
Day 2 - Friendship is Magic (Magically boring more like)
Did you know that if you don't do the cans in a data site, the site just respawns the rats? Neither did I, but that's apparently what happened since the data site I did yesterday ended up being there. I thought I'd just go hack the cans and let it despawn, but to my surprise there were rats there. I refit my ship for PVE and finished the site, cans and all. Unfortunately, I was beginning to see that this C13 was predominantly providing C2 spawns for sites. The money is not great. The only upshot is that because this is a C13, I can do them in my Confessor rather than a blingy Gila.
All my connections from the previous day were gone as per usual in wormhole space so I scanned down my new "hiking trails" as I called them in my bookmarks. Three nullsec, three wormholes. The nullsec connections looked boring, so I went to have a look at the wormholes: C3, C4, C5. I figured I'd check out the C3 first since I know something about those. Turns out that everything in that hole is blue to EUni. I don't know why we would blue a wormhole corp. We can be good friends with wormhole corps without being blued up. Being blue to wormhole corps means limiting content. I understand why EUni has an open NAP offer, but it really sucks when you think you've found content and then it turns out to be blue to you. Oh, funny thing was that the folks in the hole were thinking the same thing. They had a bait industrial out there for me to shoot and everything. They invited me to their standing fleet for the duration of my visit in their hole and we chatted for a little while. They had a really lovely lowsec connection 5 jumps from Jita and I thought about refitting some things on my ship, but I figured that with the hisec fake-pirates (aka P I R A T) camping the gates that I didn't want to risk feeding a Confessor and ruining my camping trip.
After diving into nullsec hoping for some pew with no luck, I got desperate and decided to activate all the ore sites in order to get the rats to spawn. It worked, but the rats were small and their loot wasn't great.
Total made on day Day 2: 54.8m ISK
Day 3 - I'm Going to Count to Tengu
Bob took pity on me or decided to honor my real life birthday and when I logged in I saw that I had a combat anomaly. The loot was significantly better as there were not one, but two battleships and only couple frigates that could neut me out which were not on grid at the same time as the battleships. Now some people would say it's a bad idea to run combat sites when you don't know what you're connected to and in general I would agree, but I've been kinda desperate to earn enough to pay off this Confessor (107m) and start actually making money. The nice thing about combat anoms like this one is that it gives me an opportunity to practice manual piloting. I was using Aurora crystals because I was outside their optimal range and could outpace them.
Spoiler
Several more relic sites spawned, but what I really wanted was some pew. I made a couple hundred ISK running those sites, but nothing is quite as sweet as a kill. I was frustrated by how little action I've been getting and regretting not bringing a corpse with me to offer as a sacrifice to Bob in hopes of some good content. Seeing that my friends in WHC were getting some good pew didn't help and by this point I was feeling really homesick.
The one really good thing that came out of that day was a connection to hisec, specifically Korama. I took the loot out of my safe and dropped it off in a station. When all was said and done I had dropped off 400m ISK worth of loot. That meant that no matter what happened, I would recover the cost of my ship and camping supplies while still making some money in process. That was took a lot of stress off my mind. From here on out, I could afford to take bigger risks. As I warped to my connection back home, I noticed a cruiser size ship jump in. It happened so fast I didn't catch a pilot name or what kind of cruiser it was, but I was excited. I dove in and held my cloak. I waited until I had run out of cloak and realized the ship was gone. I had missed my chance. I warped to their structure and noticed they had one in the Raitaru. I left and came back. Structure now said zero, but there were combats out. I decloaked and started moving in a straight line with my prop mod on.
This person sucked at combat scanning. I turned off my prop mod. Still nothing. I started asking in local if they wanted to fight (but wormholers tend to not pay attention to local, it's irrelevant for us). I decided to warp back to the structure at 100km. There was a Tengu sitting there on the undock, just chilling there until it docked up when it saw me. I decided to invite the pilot to come fight me in my camp grounds since I don't really want to take on a cloaky T3C. After inviting the pilot to come fight in my hole I waited in my C13 for them to fight me. Sadly, they did not come for me.
Spoiler
Total made on day 3: 265m ISK
Day 4: EMTEEYU
I stopped caring about whether I got blown up or not given yesterday's ISK-earning successes. I dove into my new null connection and immediately saw an MTU named "EMTEEYU" with a bunch of wrecks on dscan. After warping to a few different combat anomalies at 100, I found the right one but there was nobody there. I decided I would blow up the MTU to see if I could draw attention to myself. What I didn't take into consideration was just how tanky MTUs can be. The battleships on grid didn't really bother me, but I didn't want be caught with my proverbial pants down. I started overheating my guns and it was taking the MTU out faster. Here is where I did something stupid: I forgot I was using heat. By the time I remembered my entire top rack was at about 73% heat damage. That meant that if I were to get into a fight, chances were good that I'd be unable to take them unless they were a newbie exploring with minimal defenses. Now I had to search to search for a connection to k-space to dock up and hope I can repair. This is one of those moments where I wish I had had more nanite paste, but I could have avoided it entirely had I been paying closer attention.
In my search for a connection to k-space that would allow me to find a place to dock and repair, I had jumped my connections except for the C5. I really didn't want to jump the C5 and search because it was inhabited, at least 7 citadels there. I felt I was out of options and began scanning it down for a wormhole. I found a connection that would be a C1-C3 but I couldn't be sure what it was. As soon as I jumped the hole a bubble went up. I burned back to the hole and jumped back. A Sabre was quick and followed me in and had the bubble up before I could warp off. I didn't see a way to fight back and I could hear reinforcements jumping in to join the fray. Within a split second I was neuted, webbed, and scrammed. It was over. The ship was gone and so was the pod.
Total made day 4: 0 ISK
The ship:
Spoiler
[Confessor, My Little Camper]
Small Armor Repairer II
Adaptive Nano Plating II
Heat Sink II
Heat Sink II
Small Armor Repairer II
Cap Recharger II
1MN Afterburner II
Initiated Compact Warp Scrambler
Dual Light Beam Laser II
Prototype Cloaking Device I
Dual Light Beam Laser II
Sisters Expanded Probe Launcher
Dual Light Beam Laser II
Dual Light Beam Laser II
Small Nanobot Accelerator I
Small Capacitor Control Circuit II
Small Nanobot Accelerator I
Imperial Navy Standard S x16
Gleam S x16
Aurora S x16
Sisters Combat Scanner Probe x8
Sisters Core Scanner Probe x8
Nanite Repair Paste x47
Imperial Navy Multifrequency S x16
Relic Analyzer I x1
Salvager I x3
Stasis Webifier II x1
Cap Recharger II x1
Core Probe Launcher I x1
Medium Inefficient Hull Repair Unit x1
Data Analyzer I x1
Scan Rangefinding Array I x1
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II x1
Small Armor Repairer II
Adaptive Nano Plating II
Heat Sink II
Heat Sink II
Small Armor Repairer II
Cap Recharger II
1MN Afterburner II
Initiated Compact Warp Scrambler
Dual Light Beam Laser II
Prototype Cloaking Device I
Dual Light Beam Laser II
Sisters Expanded Probe Launcher
Dual Light Beam Laser II
Dual Light Beam Laser II
Small Nanobot Accelerator I
Small Capacitor Control Circuit II
Small Nanobot Accelerator I
Imperial Navy Standard S x16
Gleam S x16
Aurora S x16
Sisters Combat Scanner Probe x8
Sisters Core Scanner Probe x8
Nanite Repair Paste x47
Imperial Navy Multifrequency S x16
Relic Analyzer I x1
Salvager I x3
Stasis Webifier II x1
Cap Recharger II x1
Core Probe Launcher I x1
Medium Inefficient Hull Repair Unit x1
Data Analyzer I x1
Scan Rangefinding Array I x1
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II x1
Extra stuff you can't import to a fitting window
Mobile Depot x1
Giant Secure Storage Contain x1
Analysis of the fit:
This is a powerful little ship, but it is still a destroyer. As with all destroyers, they have a very thin tank. The Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane helps with this, however even with my CPU skills and Weapons Upgrades to V I found that I couldn't fit anything other than the guns in my top rack. This meant that I could really only use it in engagements in Olympus where I didn't have to worry about getting rolled out or lost. It also meant I couldn't the fit cloak. That made me even less inclined to use this alternate fit for anything except running sites.
I also wouldn't bother with faction ammo. If you're worried about running out of ammo, just buy more T2. I found myself constantly double-checking to make sure I hadn't put the faction ammo in my hold instead of the T2. I'd say 16-20 crystals of each type is probably enough. That's 4-5 reloads respectively.
And ditch the Scan Rangefinding Array. It doesn't help as much as you'd think. Unless your scanning skills are absolutely bare minimum (in which case I would not recommend this type of trip), the benefit isn't worth the extra effort to refit.
Regrets:
I wish I would have been more adventurous on the first and second day. I might have found some good pew and I had plenty of connections to find it. Unfortunately I got distracted by the sites and decided to do those instead without realizing how lucky my wormhole spawns were. At the time I was underwhelmed by them (or perhaps overwhelmed by what lay ahead of me), but in hindsight I missed opportunities for PVP by not exploring those connections more. The way I died speaks to the desperation for content. Had I never overheated my guns on that MTU and moverover never lost track of heat I would have never been so desperate to find a good k-space connection.
Aspirations:
I will definitely do this again, but I will need to scout out the C13 I find to make sure it has a little bit more flavor to its profile than what I got from Olympus. The next time I do this my skills will be better, I'll be even better at fitting, and perhaps I'll be able to tweak the fit to do more of what I wanted with it.
It might also be fun to figure out a way to do this with a couple other people, especially if it means we can recreate the one scene from Star Trek V: The Final Frontier that's worth watching.
