Today an opportunity to colonize a Class 2 wormhole fell into our lap.
This isn't a light undertaking... Marko and I have fronted the 1 billion isk required to make this move possible. We've acquired the star base, and all modules for it, as well as fuel for 22 days.
It is a Wolf-Rayet system, that applies a shield resistance penalty to all ships, and grants an armor resistance bonus. There is also a significant bonus to small weapon turret damage. It has a permanent connection to low sec, and a permanent connection to another class 2 wormhole of a random type.
Local Chat is disabled, so there is no cheating the chat system for intel. If you want to stay safe you're going to need to rely on your corp mates for intel, and keep and eye on your scanner.
Income potential in here is huge. A single combat pilot can easily earn a level IV mission income and then some with far less effort. Industrial pilots will find the most valuable ore in the EVE universe available for the taking, as well as valuable gassed needed for booster, and T3 production.
The tower is fully armed, and equipped. She has 20 ECM batteries, 10 small beam turrets, 5 medium beam turrets, two warp disruption batteries, and two stasis webification batteries. Her shields are hardened with 2x EM, 2x Thermal, and 1x Kinetic shield hardeners. This grants her a near 50% resistance to all damage types.
PvP is a constant companion in worm holes, and our new home is built to withstand a siege from anything that could be brought into our space. She can easily shred a 30 man battleship fleet, which is roughly 5 times larger than anything we should ever see in here.
All pilots wishing to play in the wormhole need to meet the following requirements.
1.) Proficiency in battlecruiser class ship hulls for PvE duty. 2.) Proficiency in scanning, with an astrometrics frigate, or the covert operations frigate. 3.) The ability to operate local and remote armor, hull, and shield repair systems. 4.) The ability to pay corporate dues every 20 days in an amount to be determined by worm hole population. The tower requires 200million isk every 20 days in fuel to operate. Those using the tower need to support it. This isn't a half-hearted adventure... it's an opportunity, but it's also a commitment.
Optional Skills to help you earn more ISK!
1.) MINING! We have A.B.C ore in system. Arkanor, Bistot, and Crokite. These ores produce ALL raw materials and are very valuable. 2.) Gas Cloud Harvesting, the gas in here is used for all sorts of stuff, all of it expensive and very lucrative to supply. 3.) Salvaging! Sleeper Drones drop all sorts of goodies 4.) Hacking/Archeology, there are combat sites in here that need these, even more goodies to deal with T3 production. 5.) PRODUCTION! Our tower is a complete home away from home. She has facilities to produce ammunition of all types, as well as medium class ships. That's right, you know that battlecruiser I keep telling you all to get? Guess what... bring out a researched BPC and you can build one RIGHT HERE. It's very easy to smuggle in parts when you know the hull is waiting for you. We also have an Extra Large Ship Assembly Array, it will come online once we get a hauler large enough to launch it. This massive facility gives us the ability to manufacture CAPITAL CLASS VESSELS! If you wanted to know how long Marko and I plan on being here? Guess what, I'm BUILDING a carrier in here in a few months. We will need them to keep the towers repaired in the long run. 6.) Planetary Interaction - There are 7 planets of various types in system with us. They will be very open, and little competition, a good place to play with the PI system and not have the limitations of High Security space.
And that is just the start.
I remind you all that wormhole space is 0.0 space. There is no law in here but what we make. We defend this space as our own or someone may take it from us. All of this opportunity comes with responsibility.
Any questions about what you need should be asked before you get in here. If you get lost in space because you didn't bookmark a wormhole I'm not going to come looking for you. Everyone works, or they don't get to play. We can't be weak here, you can handle it. Ask your questions, and let's get to it!
LOL's As usual Sky-Knight is well ahead of me in reporting progress. I came in here to report on this, but the co-creator of the idea has far more information than I so here it is.
For my part, I will be moving assets out in the next day or two. Including my Salvage alt who will be training up mining starting today. IF she goes inactive as Ive discussed, my primary character will have access to her ships. However while she's active she will be mindlessly mining anytime Im online once Im in position to do so. Chance favors the prepared mind. -Louis Pasteur-
Thanks for the post Sky and Rebel ~s~ This sounds like a great opportunity For all our EVE peeps, get out there and make this worm hole the best in space. I know Ravin will be in, hopefully he wont be gone on his trip tooooo long. But enjoy it and be safe pal. Look forward to seeing ya. And Fenris, Well, listen well and grow with your brothers here. And make sure you bring me some of that space gas back....LOL. The rest of ya's just kick some butt and get this opportunity off the ground. I'll be watching your progress. Good luck to all. W/R ~S~ CinC Bustinya
[ Edited Wed Jul 14 2010, 01:59AM ]
An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.
The tower is finally online, takes almost 6 hours real time to set all that equipment up. Most of the crew has found their way in, and so far no casualties.
Ironically enough, I was almost the first combat loss. After scouting an exit path and taking my escape pod back to empire space to pickup a new covert ops frigate I happened on a gate in low security space with a smart bomb pulsing Maelstrom. Had that battleship been just 2km closer I would have been so many colors of goo... to fight and die is one thing, to come >< close to death and make it out to tell the tale... that is the stuff of which EVE is made!
Today I have some bad news to report...
The tower in the wormhole is being funded largely by Marko and myself, thanks to revenue usually afforded by our manufacturing operation we have on the side. Rebel was part of this, but decided to bow out due to time constraints.
Well, with Rebel's leaving, Marko's character swapping and a few other things we did to rejigger things into a semblance of sanity... we've lost worlds of isk this month simply due to planning oversights. When things take days to fix, sales cycles are missed, profits fall. I have no idea what we're going to get out of it this month, but I doubt it will be enough to sustain the accounts involved much less pay for the POS fuel. Just to add insult to injury, the alliance our industrial corporation is in got war dec'd today. So now we can't make any deliveries!
It's always a fight to keep things online! We'll be leaning on the guys hard in the coming weeks to work those ore fields and everything else the wormhole has to offer as much as possible. But at the end of the day, we've got to find a way to pay for that tower. Or over 1 billion isk in assets may potentially go up in smoke.
For anyone in the wormhole, there is an exit that is very close to Dodixie. If you can survive Gallente space, you've got quick access to that market hub. Well assuming you didn't pull a Fenris and shoot up the frenchies so much they shoot you back.
I pray for the day when I can simply afford to pay for both of my accounts... bleeding 600+mil isk every month to keep the accounts online really keeps me from doing the fun stuff. I'm TWO MONTHS from a CARRIER! But I'll be darned if I'm going to be able to come up with the 1bil isk I need for the skill books, and ANOTHER 1bil for the ship.
OUCH!! Well I think its time to make some concerted effort to pay back the indy corp for its funding. I know corp taxes cant be done out here but I still recommend all who work in the wormhole give the corp no less than 25% of the earnings voluntarily until further notice. We need to pay Marko and Sky back for their effort!
The experience didn't faze him much other than inspire him to run more missions so he has a proper isk buffer. This change, is EXCELLENT as it will eventually turn him into an excellent addition to our PvP wing.
Unfortunately, the experience has disheartened many of the younger pilots and scared them out of the wormhole. Newt specifically has stated he won't be coming back. This isn't good, but it's best to know where our risk adverse assets are before a time of war.
As a side note, Marko and I's industrial corp took a massive blow in the last week. We had to pay a 2 billion isk ransom on one of our large towers to prevent it from being destroyed. This loss hurts our profits massively for this month as the corp didn't have reserves built up to withstand that kind of loss. We have reworked the towers to prevent another assault. However, this means we cannot afford to purchase the orca and the orca pilot character as planned.
We recently had a high sec entrance to the wormhole open 6 jumps from our home base in Shuria. Several pilots used this opportunity to fill the tower with increased PvP assets. We also found in the same night 11 radar sites in the neighboring hole. Each one landed the corp 30mil isk or more in assets, and in one evening we managed to pay for a month of fuel.
I expect the younger pilots to feel more attracted to the wormhole as we learn to better exploit the resources available in it.
