Twin Drakes, plan B

The flaw in my plan becomes obvious as soon as I return to w-space, and when everyone kindly tells me the plan is flawed. Having two Drakes many systems apart, fitted and ready to scramble, only helps return trips to w-space when the static wormhole¹ opens to a system close to where you enter. If the wormhole throws you out thirty jumps from where you entered you still have a long journey to reset your position, the two ships not offering any benefits. However, it is a good plan, only the implementation that is flawed.

Instead of having two ships in relatively distant systems, and travel in my fast transport ship to the one closest to the wormhole entrance, I need to keep one Drake in the w-space system at the corporation's tower and the other at my mission base, although I will still be using my Crane to travel between the two. Keeping a Drake permanently in w-space means an extra journey is needed initially. I first take Non-sentient Ship from my mission base to the POS, jettisoning my pod to return to A Matter of Brevity in k-space, piloting that up to my Lai Dai mission base and reuniting with Tigress II, my Crane.

It takes some time to move the ships around but with everything in place my transfers between w- and k-space will be much smoother and quicker. I don't need to rely on a cumbersome Drake to get me out of w-space, or ferry me many systems back home. The Crane is much faster, more agile, and is fitted with a cloaking device. Being a blockade runner, it is suited to running through low-sec systems more safely, making the appearance of the static wormhole in a high-sec island² less of a hindrance. The reasonably sized cargo hold of the Crane also allows bringing supplies and ammunition in to w-space, as well as moving Sleeper loot out.

There are no short-cuts in EVE Online. Despite my first impressions, getting in and out of w-space conveniently was never going to be as simple as keeping a spare Drake in a different region. On the other hand, once the initial effort is made the logistics simplify considerably. It takes a while to build a second Drake, fit it, and move one of the battlecruisers to w-space by itself, but now that it's all done I can enter and leave w-space quickly and with greater safety, enjoying every jump of the journey in the Crane. My opportunities have expanded considerably.

1. A w-space system with a 'static' wormhole means that the system always has at least one wormhole leading to a recurring security level—in our case, high-sec—although the location of the wormhole and the system it leads to is random.
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2. A high-sec 'island' is a small cluster of high-sec systems that requires travel through at least one low-sec system in order to return to the bulk of connected high-sec space.
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Posted in Gaming |
Tags: crane, drake, eve online, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, scanning, w-space