Ninja Salvaging Series - Ransom with discount

When doing routine salvage operations it's always nice to shoot something, namely - mobile tractor units. I always found shooting mtu's sends stronger message than just salvaging and looting. Sometimes carebears try to protect it by shooting me. Others scoop it and just ignore. There are also people who will call you out in local.

I try not to engage in local conversations. Becoming a rockstar is not good for business. After all, I have to keep an image of a helpless and poor salvager .

Checking in on miners

When I start my ninja salvaging activities I often start with miners. One might think what do miners have to do with ninja salvaging? Well, I scan them out and take a quick look if they are mining to the can. Usually they mine their cargohold full and warp to station to dump the ore, however there are times when they mine to a jettisoned can. Should I spot such miner, I always bring my Miasmos to collect excessive ore.

Once loot is collected I stick around. I try to see if miners will get upset about their ore taken and will take action. I also do some bumping. MWD Miasmos turns out to be quite a bumper. So far I was not able to get any aggro. Sometimes I do get my hopes up:

An honest carebear

Continuing my salvage operations I encounter Arioch Blackwing in his Megathron Navy Issue. Arioch did not like me salvaging and looting his wrecks so he opened fire.

Glorious fight ensured which was not going in favor to Megathron. Once shields were down I get a convo request. That's quite unusual. Normally, I am the one who is the initiator.

Arioch Blackwing > hi let me please
Zosius > so
Zosius > you shot me and now want me to let you go
Arioch Blackwing > i give you 40 millions

Arioch Blackwing didn't waste any time. He asked to let him go. Generous as ever he also offered a 40mil ransom. For Megathron Navy Issue, that has market value above 470mil. It's like getting stopped for speeding and to avoid ticket you offer police less than 10% value of the fine's worth bribe. I believe police would feel insulted and disrespected as was I. Though I give a benefit of a doubt. Perhaps he mistyped and missed one zero at the end. I try to clear it up.

Zosius > 400mil
Arioch Blackwing > no

I guess he didn't mistype the price after all. I have hard time understanding reasons for such low ransom offer. Perhaps if I provided some information on why my price should look more than fair, he will change his mind.

Zosius > your ship is worth 470mil on the market
Zosius > 400mil
Zosius > so how about it
Zosius > you got half armor to think about it
Arioch Blackwing > 400 mil ok
Zosius > splendid

Reason prevails. After providing nothing but facts, Arioch Blackwing agrees to pay asking, lower than market, price. Unfortunately after waiting for half a minute, I do not see my wallet flash.

Zosius > i don't see my isk
Arioch Blackwing > let me warp and i swear i give you the money

If he 'swears' then I guess I can trust him. It's like any other normal situation right? Pirate holds someone hostage and asks for a ransom. Hostage tells him, that he will give up the money once he is free and safe with the police inside station. I guess pirate would let him go and get rewarded. Right? Not very likely. What would happen is that hostage would get shot and pirate would take what he could. Last time I checked, one with a gun is who is in charge.

Zosius > i am dictating the terms
Arioch Blackwing > i ll give you and you ll continue to shoot me
Zosius > no, i will let you go
Zosius > or you will die if i don't get my 400mil
Zosius > think fast

As seeing we can't come to an agreement I offer a discount. 50% now and 50% later.

Zosius > ok send me 200mil
Zosius > now
Zosius > and 200mil later
Zosius > i stopped shooting
Zosius > you got 10 seconds
Arioch Blackwing > nono destroy me u win ur day
Zosius > do not rep
Zosius > just send me 200mil
Zosius > and you are free

Even offering better discount rates than you get on Christmas sales, Arioch Blackwing was still not interested in paying up. He asked to destroy his ship instead. He left no choice for me but to comply. As soon as I enter structure strange thing happens. Carebear ejects from the ship and warps out.

I will take free ship any time. There is only one problem though. I can't board while ship is being targeted. That would not be a big deal, except there are still 4 NPC present. 2 of them are battleships 60km out. With only 5 minute window, of which I used 2 minutes already thinking, I have to kill all NPC and board the ship since empty ship does not extend engagement timer. Should I fail, the guy could just come back and board his ship even when it is targeted and I could not do anything about it. As sad as it was I decided to finish it off.

Ninja salvaging series - Size does not matter

I start my salvage operations. System feels fresh. There are quite few carebears running their missions and all are neuts, which means most of them will probably meet me for the first time. First impression is always important, so I need to look my best.

I love exceptions

Majority of mission runners use Battleship as a ship of choice. I guess that makes sense. Of course in Gallente space I meet Gallente ships, namely Dominixes and Megathrons. Drone boats are quite annoying to fight. Their guns can't track me, but they do have a lot of drones in the bay that you need to tank until they are gone. It usually is not a problem, though there are times when you go multiple acceleration gates deep in the mission with majority npcs still intact. As a rule of thumb you will pickup aggro from the rats, and when you get an aggro from a player it can be quite a challenge. Sometimes I encounter advanced level ships such as faction battleships, t3s or Marauders. Statistically, the more fancy the ship, the less chance carebear will want to risk it and shoot, but there are always exceptions!

After visiting few bears and without any success to have try defend their loot and salvage, I scan out Kronos. I think I can count on one hand fingers how many Marauders have aggressed me. Nevertheless, I always give a chance so here I warp in and start cleaning out his wrecks. Few minutes later I get a weird greeting in local:

I'm not sure what he means by that. Is he warping out and leaving me be? Is he going to shoot? I doubt about the latter as he hasn't even locked me. Since my presence was acknowledged, I decide to stick around and salvage some more. I fully expect carebear to just warp off and already am looking for new potential missions to visit with my scout alt. It looks like Kronos pilot has other ideas. I get yellowboxed and aggroed.

I can't believe a Marauder just shot me. And from close range! I quickly get into low orbit and start to make short work of his drones. Logi alt is in warp and I start thinking about my strategy on what should I do while slowly chipping through his shields. I do not expect to break his tank with just Enyo. Not the Marauder. I bring in my logi ship with hope he aggroes it out of desperation so I could have 2 tackle ships. It would be easy from there on. I would keep him tackled with my logi ship and Orca swap my Enyo to something with more power.

As soon as my logi lands on grid I bring on reps. Kronos pilot seeing he can't kill my Enyo switches guns to my logi. What a relief. I love when that happens. Usually it makes things so much easier. I get my Orca and warp to the site. While my Orca takes it's time to align and warp I see something strange. Kronos is at half armor and steadily dropping. I do not know what is going on. Doesn't he have reps? I decide to convo the pilot and see if I can get ransom. As soon as I state my terms he abruptly closes the convo. Are there no more manners? At this point I doubt that I will even get a good fight.

In the end I didn't even need an Orca. Enyo alone was able to break the will and the tank of the carebear's Kronos. Ship exploded.

After seeing a killmail I am again reminded in what poor condition highsec is. I'm no mission expert, but I believe what he wanted was Vindicator not a Kronos. Bastion module and rigs I guess are overrated. The longer I look at the picture, the more I can see sad face on poor Kronos, that just begs to be put out of his misery.

Hijacking a plex

Kronos is a great trophy for a ninja salvager to have. My sixth sense said I should stick around a bit more. I launched probes and started scanning. Unusual ship appeared on scan - an Ashimnu. I think it's first time I encounter it in my ninja operations.

I initiate warp and it turns out to be a 3/10 DED site. That suddenly makes a lot more sense. I hope I am not too late. First room cleared. Second room cleared. Damn. I feel worried, but get relieved when I meet ashimnu in the third room shooting npcs. While he shoots, I will loot and salvage. This division of work seems more than fair to me. But I guess an ashimnu pilot was not too happy about another visitor in "his" plex. It took but a minute before his patience ran out and he opened fire. For someone who fights battleships with frigate a fight was rather underwhelming. Ashimnu melted and exploded without much resistance. I wonder why.

Nope. No idea. Since I'm almost at the last room, I might as well do some carebearing myself and finish the plex. I quickly dispatch remaining npcs and warp to the last room. I ignore all dps and go straight for the station. Looks like I'm lucky. I think. I score a Dramiel BPC which sells around 60mil. Not enough for me to retire, but for sure it will buy a lot of new ammo.

Ninja Salvaging Series - Bastard returns

It's time for another episode of Ninja salvaging series. I decided to pay a visit to my favorite high-sec system - Agrallarier. While other people won't see anything special about it and might even grumble, this system holds special place in my heart. It's where I started my eve career as a ninja salvager and got one of the first kills. There are many more potential systems for ninja salvaging, but I am a sentimental guy.

First day

I spot a highsec exit few jumps out of our home wormhole. 14 jumps out of Dodixie and with connection being critical, I decide not to wait and take my moment. I pack my bags, collect some loot for sale and race to the highsec. After roughly of 15 minute journey my destination is reached and I take a look at what I've got. Good old enyo, scan ship, logi, orca and few extra ships for various situations. Being professional ninja requires you to be prepared for maximum profit. My main has around 10 ships in the hangar and each alt around 5. There's certainly more room for more as there are many situations that are quite tricky and I am not prepared, but I am also lazy. I will take as I go, like that one time, spending 1 hour tackling while shopping for Orca with dps ship.

I setup my links, get my logi redy and start scanning. There are quite few battleships today. As always at the start, I feel all pumped up and ready for action. I scan first battleship, buzz around, steal some loot, salvage some wrecks. No reaction. I do my background checks on the pilot, the corp. Make some notes and move on. Having dedicated scanner gives me the luxury of switching targets quite fast. I try to be annoying as much as possible, but sometimes some people are not in the mood to pop you.  They might flame, but they won't pull the trigger.

A Navy Scorpion with itchy fingers

I land on my second target. Nothing. I go for the third and then the fourth. Still nothing. I don't mind much. Sometimes there are days when nothing happens, sometimes you have action for a full week. Since its first day I started my ninja activities I won't be getting bored that fast. As long as there are targets, I will keep looking.

I scan out a scorpion navy issue. Sometimes people with faction or other shiny ships are reluctant to shoot, but sometimes it's just the opposite. I land and get to work. After salvaging and looting for several minutes I finally get him yellowbox me. I quickly change my sitting posture and start paying attention. Will I get some action? Sure enough, scorpion fires his deadly missiles into my small and harmless frigate. Well, I do not know about deadly, as it turns out, heavy missiles are not that effective vs small, afterburner fit, frigate. Who knew?

I quickly tackle and start working on his t1 heavy drones which doesn't take long to get rid of. I start working on his shields and bring my logi in. Sometimes it is not really needed, but I take it with hope to get aggro for extra dps or so that both ships can tackle while one swaps for more dps if needed. Mission is gallente type, so scorpion is passive shield tanked vs my type of dps. Thankfully he aggress my logi. Now the game is on. I undock my orca to swap for some extra power.

Engaging in pvp by going afk

While Orca of doom was in warp I try to initiate convo to see if I could get a ransom. 

Well, that's a bummer. You would think one would try to have a honorable fight to the end, especially when other side can't break the tank. Unfortunately milgazia decided to have an easy way out and logged off. Wouldn't he have aggroed my logi it would have been a real pain to bump him while I waited for my aggro timer to run out so I could swap ships. Especially as all gellente exclusive I lack a proper bumping ship.

Finally Orca of doom arrives and I swap for brutix while keeping Scorpion tackled with my logi. I brutix dishes out a lot of pain. You can see the progress right away as I go past 50% shields in no time. A minute later he pops.

I think it needed an extra shield power relay. No wonder why my enyo was not able to break him. With all that kinetic/therm resists, I'm surprised my brutix was able to do the job so fast. His pod does emergency warp out. Since he is offline I scan him out and finish the job.

The end.

Opportunity plexing

"What will today bring?" I always ask myself when I launch my probes and start scanning. Today it seems we have quite few connections. My eye is caught by two nullsec exits directly from our home wormhole. I jump to one of them and start checking it out.

Clearing sites in hostile area

I see Feythabolis region on my left top corner. I do not follow nullesec politics and have no idea what kind of region it is, but I do know it is Nulli Secundia owned. I start scanning and quickly resolve couple of sigs of one which turns out to be 10/10 Angel plex. That is interesting. I haven't done any combat sites in a while and speaking from logistics and risk point of view, direct connection from my home is the best location I could ask for. There are 4 people constantly in local. One gate out of dscan range and a station present in the system. Some minor activity of neuts coming in and out. System seems to be in the way to Esoteria region. Looks like I need to take my PvE battleships for a spin.

I go back and swap for a Megathron Navy issue and 3 Dominix battleships. I've found this setup to be quite handy. I setup remote reps and set sentry assist to my mega pilot and sites are cleared out really fast. I've never done Angel 10/10. I've read horror stories of people doing 10/10 plexes, high damage torpedoes, huge dps and so on. After checking guides and consulting my corp mates it looks like it's one of the easier sites and should not be a problem for my 4 BS team that is buffer tanked. I swap ships and warp back to null.

I am not sure if I will be able to do site before locals try to gank me. Good thing about deadspace is that I can't get dropped and anyone who wanted to kill me would have to work for their prey. Not to mention having 4 battleships with remote reps is not an easy target to gank. While I fit for pure pve with cloaking device, I do have pvp fits in my cargohold together with mobile depot. Should I see small fleet coming for me, I might actually give a fight. The most dangerous is the first room anyway. It's the highest risk to get tackled and have backup warp in on me before I could escape. The more deep I am in the site, the safer I am. I jump to the system and initiate warp to "my" plex.

Don't mind me, just shooting red crosses

Here I am, in the first room. Dscan so far looks clear. 9 people in local of which 4 is me. I quickly setup reps and drone assist and start shooting. 

Local activity continues with people jumping in and out, but it doesn't seem I caught anyone's attention. It's a bit hectic to manage drone aggro and keep checking dscan while clearing the site. It doesn't take long and first room is done. I quickly burn to the next one with little relief. Now I can relax. At this point I am more concerned on finishing the site on time before being forced out by locals and leaving loot behind.

It takes average of 7 minutes per room. As someone who have been on both sides - as a prey and as a hunter, I can tell that time perception is different. To do high level plex and to be able to finish it in 30-40 minutes is quite fast in my book. Unless enemy is situated in nearby system it usually takes awhile to get the fleet going, burn to the system and then burn through the gates to catch the prey. Though from prey's perspective it is always going too slow. It doesn't take long and I'm in the last room. Instead of shooting all npc and collecting the loot, I quickly snipe the boss ship, bookmark his wreck and warp out back to wormhole. I never understood the logic of this mechanic from CCP. It takes away all the challenges of the final stage. In a couple of minutes I swap to cloaky proteus and go back to collect the loot. 

I am a bit disappointed. Just over half a billion loot for, supposedly, most hardest difficulty DED site. This is why I never was into exploration behind enemy lines. That sounds way too inefficient.  Risking your shiny ships, spending quite a lot of time exploring and doing the site and in the end getting pocket change. I guess some people do it for the thrill. I think will stick with my "opportunity plexing". There are more ways in getting the thrill. In the end, 500+mil for 40 minutes work is quite good.

Trading update

So I have logged in my trading alts. I stopped active trading since more than a year ago. I used to check orders daily, spending average 2 hours in updating orders once per day which netted a stable 1-2bil a day. I think 1bil an hour was a standard income. I had driven a lot of competition away with aggressive pricing and had my foot set in strongly in 3 major hubs. Times were good. However I couldn't keep this up for long. Having full time job, other hobbies and being more pvp oriented I really found it difficult to keep dedicating even few hours a day. In the end, trading became 2nd job and I've quit it.

Passive trading

I own 7 accounts, of which 4 are pvp and 3 are for trading. I pay year subs for my pvp characters so I don't have to stress and earn isk to keep them going. 3 trading accounts are, however, supported by themselves. In the end, if I can't keep my trading chars sub themselves, what is the point of keeping them? So occasionally I check in, mostly once a month and spend few hours updating orders. I became of what is called a passive trader. I setup 300 billion worth of orders and left it be. While it did generate some income, unfortunately I did encounter quite big losses in some areas.

Here are main downsides of passive trading:

• You unavoidably give up your market share and competition takes over which reacts very aggressively to your "comeback" orders;
• You lose awareness of the market and can't react quickly to changes which results in massive losses;
• Some markets crash and/or go down and don't recover or takes very long time to recover which causes your capital tied up in items or selling them at a big loss.

These are only few major downsides off the top of my head. I especially got big losses in faction and deadspace mod markets where I used to buy in bulks and price kept steady. Of course I was not tracking game changes in details and it caused me dearly. A lot of item prices went steadily down and every time I logged in I found bunch of overpriced stock while my sell orders were at the bottom. Take example of picture below.

A popular shield booster, which back in the day had steady price 150mil+ and in just a half of a year it dropped 30% to 100mil. I believe 2014 was one of worst years for deadspace and faction mods as I could see similar trend for most items. Not to mention decryptor market crashing 2 times. First with exploration expansion which made market crash in just 2 days that caused me lose 20bil of stock  due to some items losing 90% of their value. Second crash happened recently and is still going down when decryptors were "generalized". I used to earn good isk by transporting them from different regions to Jita and selling at a handsome profit.

So passive trading does not excuse for not following up events in EvE and taking a moment to think about certain changes and how they will impact you and your business. That is bad trading 101, so do not take example from me. On the bright side, some items went up and evened out the losses, so in the end I could support my 3 accounts with just 2 hours of trading per month. I say it's not too bad.

Living with no income

What was my income during 2014 in EvE not counting trading? A big flat 0. Even though I live in c5 wormhole, with plenty ISK making opportunities I never join farming activities because I am not fond of any kind of PVE. I understood missions were not for me when I got to lvl2. For 2 years I couldn't use locator, because I couldn't make myself to get standing to lvl4 agent. Ha. I had my corpmates share standing with me out of pity.

So besides some random pvp gank loot and running few sites I got no income, but it turns out life is not all that hard. You just have not to lose any ships. It fits my play style perfectly. Ganking helpless victims, gathering intel before pvp fight and welping some random t1 battlecruiser time to time makes my balance look healthy. Nevertheless, I like to have isk at my disposal and I like playing the market, just not the tedious order updating activity. So blew the dust off my trading alts and did market updating few days ago. I will try to attend my trading activities more frequently, but not so much that it would feel as a second job again. Was a bit rocky start, but quite happy where this is going. Just 2 hours spent and I already paid for my plex. Trading is amazing.