For Sale: Sold

Vanaheim is under new management.

We completed the exchange on Sunday, although I took advantage of some very good C2>HS connections to move most of my assets out on Saturday. System J114905 is now in the hands of another player looking to support their pvp through PI. I wish them well.

I've managed to move most of my important assets back to Chaos. Inevitably, there are a few more ships I want to pick up, but the core stuff is there. I also have my alts in place, and I'll set up a low key PI operation next weekend (command centres are one of the things I still need to ship in). It won't be a huge ISK faucet, but it should keep me PLEX'd.

I celebrated my return by helping to take down an Orca. Correctly guessing that it had a cyno, we held it in structure for a while to see if support would arrive, but apparently none of his friends were available.

This kill is a good example of why I'm currently training Torpedos V. Against some gang targets, Rage Torpedos would offer a genuine (and significant) damage boost. That, and Launcher Rigging V are going to take up most of the next month.

Things are actually a little quieter in Chaos right now, as the AT practices have started. I have neither the time nor the skill to devote to the AT practice, but many of our more active pilots do. With them busy, the gangs we put together are a little smaller.

Perhaps to counterbalance this, a regular Tuesday night roam has been suggested. I think that sounds like a great idea, especially as I'm in a position to actually participate again.

Does anybody want a wormhole?

I've just come back from a couple of weeks of holiday. Without my gaming mouse or a reliable internet connection, my pvp was restricted to whatever happened to wander into Vanaheim. One fight was notable - and I'll post on that - but otherwise, I've been running sites and managing my PI.

I have more ISK than ever before, despite blowing a few billion on skill injectors. Having built up a large reserve, I'm heading back to Chaos. While Vanaheim has been very, very good to me, it's a lot of work managing a w-system solo, and I've missed flying the occasional fleets with the Tuskers.

Of course, I don't want to be space poor again, so I still need to think about my income going forward. However, I've invested in income generating skills over the past few months, so now that I have a bit of a buffer I think I should be able to maintain myself. Chaos is a poor PI system, but it should allow me to buy a monthly PLEX, and other income (such running sites) then gets plowed back into pvp.

So what to do with Vanaheim? An unoccupied wormhole does not stay unoccupied long, and I've spent some time wondering what to do with my assets here. I've put out an offer in-corp to anyone who might want to park some PI alts here, but nobody has been particularly interested... we all have our own established income streams.

I could sell it, of course, but the main asset is actually the Astrahus, which was given to me. I'd like to pass that generosity along. So before going to market, I thought I'd check to see if any of the readers of this blog wanted to try establishing themselves in w-space.

As a C1 with a low sec static, Vanaheim is a solid base for PI/industry/exploration. Older, more experienced characters would do better in a C3, where the sites are more profitable, and larger corps will want a C2 for the w-space static. While running Vanaheim was a lot of work for me solo, more than two or three active players will quickly run out of things to do.

If you are interested, send me an Evemail telling me a little more about yourself, your goals, and why you want to move into Vanaheim. If you are one of the players who has started your account via the buddy invite link in my sidebar, you go to the head of the queue.

Nóatún

In Norse mythology, Nóatún (Old Norse "ship-enclosure") is the abode of the god Njörðr, described in the Prose Edda book Gylfaginning as located "in heaven".

So, I have a citadel.

It didn't actually go down the way I expected it to. What I expected was to finish training into Blockade Runners, to buy an Astrahus, nervously haul it to Vanaheim early some weekday morning, and then nervously anchor it at what I hoped would be a quiet time with no dangerous connections.

What actually happened was that I got an Evemail from my w-space neighbor offering me his Astrahus. It turns out, he's not been logging in much recently, and an abandoned Astrahus is an Astrahus waiting to get blown up. So as long as I give him docking rights - not a problem, obviously - he was happy to transfer ownership.

So, I have a citadel.

Because I've been busy, I'd been putting off looking at the details of fitting and fighting an Astrahus, but now I need to get on that ASAP.

Still, it's the good kind of problem to have.

Moving on in

So I've moved. Mostly.

It took me far, far longer than I expected (my hauling skills are weak), but over the weekend I set up my POS in J114905. My main is still based in Chaos - I have decent PI set up there that I want to keep ticking over while the new setup gets established - but my alts are all settled in.

While a lot of work, I'm actually very pleased with my POS. It's not quite finished, as I need Anchoring III to set up the ECM modules, but that will finish training tomorrow morning. This is a link to the fantastic POS planning website that I used to develop my fit.

As a low activity wormhole, the system was full of data and relic sites that I was looking forward to plundering. Unfortunately, the same high sec connection that let me move in also let dozens of other people into the system as well, and the place was picked clean.

Part of me wonders if I shouldn't leave the sites alone just so that I can camp them whenever we have a HS connection. On the other hand, those sites also convinced me that the wormhole was low activity, and encouraged me to move in. I don't want any more neighbors than I already have.

I've sunk over a billion ISK into this project, although half of that was for a skill injector for one of my alts. Still, fuel costs are a real thing, and I am anxiously awaiting evidence that this project will actually turn a profit. It's one thing to work it out on paper, but another to see the ISK in your wallet.

Choosing a wormhole

Before I can go anywhere, I need to know where I'm going. So I've spent the last six weeks or so on the lookout for potential settlements. I made up a handful of alpha clones with basic scanning skills, and threw them into likely wormholes.

Other than a low sec static, and good PI, I was fairly open-minded. All of the low class wormholes have their advantages and disadvantages. At first I thought I would like a C2 - an LS/C2 static sounded absolutely perfect.

But as I scouted these systems, both in person and via their killboards, I noticed how busy they were. I never actually found an unoccupied C2 with a low sec static, and even if I had, they would be constantly connected to what is probably the busiest class of wormhole in the game. Not only did this increase my eviction risks, but it also meant that I could have real difficulties making the wormhole profitable without interference.

In short, C2s seemed better suited to mid sized corporations rather than solo players.

So it came down to finding a good C1 or C3. This proved to be more difficult than I thought. While C2s are constantly connected to other wormholes via their statics, C1 and C3 wormholes are only connected to the network via wandering wormholes or incoming static connections.

I never did find an empty C3 that I thought was suitable, although I did find one very 'low activity' system that I kept in my back pocket. The more research I did, though, the more it seemed that I would need fairly specialized (and expensive) pve fits to efficiently run the sites in a C3. Since the goal is to spend less time on pve rather than more, C1s seemed that little bit more attractive. PI is the main income generator, and pve is just something to do when I have a little bit of free time between roams.

Then, before the holidays, I found a C1 with a low sec connection, no occupants beyond three dead sticks, and a decent selection of PI planets. Fantastic! While I kept my eye out for alternatives, I felt that I had the matter sorted, and continued with my other prep work.

Nothing stands still in w-space, though. Yesterday I logged my alpha clone back in to check for high sec connections, and I immediately noticed the brand new Astrahaus. Someone had moved in over the holidays!

At first I assumed that this meant I would need to start looking for a new wormhole, but a little investigating convinced me that this could be an opportunity, rather than a problem. The Astrahaus is owned by a one man corporation. Not the worst neighbor. And he did not seem to be very active; the system was absolutely full of data sites and relic sites.

Perhaps at some point he'll want to leave, and I'll be able to buy a citadel rather than go through the fuss of putting one up myself...

In any event, I'll be putting up a POS, and while putting it up and taking it down is likely to be a pain, it is far from the most permanent settlement. If I find that a C1 just doesn't suit me, or even that this C1 doesn't suit me, I can always move. By scanning from the low sec side (as I will have easy access to low sec after the move), finding wormholes with low sec statics will presumably be much easier.

The Vanaheim Project

In Norse mythology the gods are divided into two families, the Aesir and the Vanir.

Today, the Aesir are easily the most well known of the Norse gods, primarily because they were more likely to engage in the sort of adventures that make interesting stories. Moreover, the gods invoked during times of violence, such as Odin and Thor (both Aesir), were more likely to make an impression on the Roman and Christian historians who made the records we rely upon today.

Conversely, the Vanir were relatively peaceful gods (by Norse standards) of prosperity, fertility, wisdom and the natural world. The archaeological evidence suggests that their worship was widespread and very much a part of day to day Norse life, but not the stuff of great stories.

The Vanir lived in Vanaheim (literally, 'home of the Vanir'), and I thought that was a fitting name for a (relatively) peaceful project that I am hoping will bring me a bit of prosperity. My intention is to move into a wormhole, and to use that wormhole both as a means of generating an income, and as a staging area for low sec pvp.

***

I've known since early December that I would be leaving Chaos sometime after the holidays. I've had fun, but there are some issues. On their own, none of them are major, but taken together, I think I can do a little better.

In no particular order:

1) I prefer low sec to null sec for pvp. I could probably write a whole post on why that is, but in the end it doesn't matter; it's a question of personal taste and there is no 'right' or 'wrong' about it. But the main selling point of Chaos - constant access to null sec - just doesn't interest me.

2) Null sec is expensive. When I do engage in null sec pvp I need to fly expensive ships in order to be useful, and we have no ship replacement program. I also don't get any loot from these fights as it all goes into corp funds. Granted, I, along with everyone else, benefit from those funds, but it does mean that I have to spend a disproportionate amount of time grinding ISK.

3) Chaos is not a great wormhole for making ISK. Of our six planets, two are good, two are marginal, and two are very poor. There are too many of us running the sites in Chaos, and our w-space static is a C5 - too much for solo work.

I'm not complaining, though; many pilots prefer the much shinier kills of null sec, and have enough ISK (or generate enough ISK outside Chaos) that the cost does not bother them. For these pilots, Chaos is pretty much perfect. Indeed, I've enjoyed my time in Chaos so much, I'm now looking to move into my own wormhole. The lifestyle is fantastic. I just think I can improve on it in a few ways.

I won't be pulling out of Chaos completely - I will be leaving a selection of fleet ships in our Fortizar. When I have a large block of playing time (so, some weekends), I can simply fly back to Chaos in an interceptor and join in whatever fleets are running.

A couple of other Tuskers have moved into solo wormholes on a similar basis, and this seems to be working for them. And of course, we have some pilots still living in low sec full time, who make day trips to Chaos. The advantage of high numbers of active members is that we can maintain a presence in a number of places simultaneously.

I'm now just about ready to go. I'm not going to rush things, but enough of my prep work is coming together that I want to be ready to move when the connections I need appear.

I'm primarily looking for a good high sec connection from Chaos (so I can move out PI product and ships, etc) at the same time as I have a good connection to my chosen wormhole (so I can move in the POS, ships, etc). If things go on too long, I can move back to high sec and wait for a good connection to the new wormhole, but every day that I'm not based in w-space costs me about 50 mil in lost PI income, so I'd like to keep the transition as seamless as possible.