Size matters: Go small!

A couple of weeks ago, I set about to reap reward from other players' pew-pew and hard work. During another salvaging jaunt yesterday, I ran into a bottleneck: the Imicus frigate can't target more than four wrecks at a time and it can deploy only four salvage drones at once. Eemiv is trained up to deploy five drones and handle six target: my small ship is quick as a bunny but, in a different regard, was slowing me down by 20 percent.

This morning, therefore, I tried a salvage & looting fit on larger cruiser hull, which supports more targets and drones. It was an interesting experiment, and if I use a cruiser for this role again, I'll need to make major changes to my approach. Here's why.

Definitely hit (the first) I5
From The Mittani

Not wanting to spend much on a new hull or gear, I decided to start with a cruiser I already own. My first thought was my Thorax, which after all was the type of ship used to ninja loot me. However, I went with my Stratios instead. For one thing, it already had an cryptically named gravity capacitor rig installed to boost sensor probe strength, and rigs cannot be transferred between ships. (Sensor probes are required for scanning down ships at long range, i.e. finding likely ships from which to steal.) Furthermore, the Stratios itself gives a boost to probe strength. This ship also sports a generous cargo bay (600m³ compared to 465m³ for the Thorax and 400m³ for the Imicus). It also has a huge drone bay. This last I thought could be particularly useful: the idea would be I would set five salvage drones off to work, and then I could use ship-mounted salvagers, too. If I stumbled into an active combat area, rather than rely on ship-mounted guns, I could save waves of various combat drones to deal with enemies. It would also save me from having to carry ammo in the cargo bay. For those paying close attention, though, that last is a flag: the Stratios has bonuses for laser weapons, which don't require ammo; if I'd equipped guns, then they would have been the unbonused hybrid turrets Eemiv is better trained for, i.e. the first "I5" in Awful Loss of the Day "bingo." This was not a costly choice per se -- I didn't get blown up -- but it was one of several fitting and mindset errors I made.

The beautiful Stratios cruiser

From CCP Hyperion Toolkit

Here's another one: I equipped a cloaking device. My thought was that I could sit invisible in an active combat area, waiting out the combatants and perhaps even staying in the shadows until a mission-runner jetted off to go get his own Noctis or other salvage ship. The Stratios, too, is one of few ships that can equip a covert ops cloak: this special cloak allows a ship to travel at top speed and jump to warp while cloaked. Alas, because of the ship's limited CPU output, I couldn't equip the covert ops cloak, an appropriate probe launcher, and various other basic gear. So, I went with a lame, lesser cloak that cut my top speed by 75% when activated and doesn't allow for warping while cloaked. Ugh.

Anyhow, I strapped on my weak cloak and salvagers, shoved  bunch of drones in the corners, and set out. I scanned down a battleship easily enough and warped to it. The first area had just four wrecks, and I targeted the first one.

Or, rather, I tried to. Here's where things get even more embarrassing in hindsight. You see, the Stratios is an expensive hull; buying it was an early splurge. If I actually planned to fill its big cargo bay, that meant having to loot. (Looted gear takes up much more space than salvage.) And that meant a higher risk of being attacked and, in the process, tackled. Tackling refers to retarding a ship's speed or preventing it from warping away. Being protective of this expensive hull ("Don't fly what you can't afford to lose," I remind myself), I equipped it with a warp core stabilizer to ward off another player's warp core scrambler. In the unlikely event a solo mission-runner devotes a precious mid-level equipment slot to a warp scrambler, they're probably carrying just one and my one warp core stabilizer will be sufficient to counter it. And, after all, most high-security mission-runners go solo; I probably wouldn't have to contend with a scrambler at all; two or more is super unlikely. For an academic treatise on this back-and-forth theory, see this seminal scene (warning: profane) in The Big Hit.

Ah, but ya know what? Warp core stabilizers also cut a ship's scanning range in half. So there I was in that first area, sluggishly ambling silly close to these wrecks. It took way too long, but I went through the acceleration gate hoping things would be better on the other side.

My cloak and these leaves offer about the same concealment.
Photo by Douglas Muth

Remember my earlier assertion about mission-runners being solo-types? Well, it was a pair of folks running this mission. And I discerned that because they were right there on the other side of the gate, less than five kilometers away. I activated my dinky cloak and started slinking away. You remember that cloak, right? The one I couldn't have activated before I arrived, and that cut my speed by 75%? Yes, that one. I don't know whether the other players did this deliberately, but one of their ships wandered close enough to fizzle out that cloak. They didn't try to target me, but I still put tale between my legs and warped out. So embarrassing.

It gets better, though: I hopped one system over just to try again. Despite superior probing stats, it took much longer to track down big ships. But, after a few stabs, I suddenly pinged on two battleships and a marauder: things were looking up! I picked one arbitrarily and warped to it.

Upon docking up
From Futurama, "A Big Piece of Garbage"

Alas, I hadn't noticed that this cluster of ships had at its heart ahem a big green space station. A remarkably familiar space station. Eerily similar -- nay, identical -- to the one where Eemiv resides. Sure enough, I'd scanned down just the usual coming-and-going traffic in front of my driveway.

I definitely made some fitting errors today, making compromises that let me do some things mediocrely and nothing well. I also missed the frigate's greater agility, a better defensive asset than a poor cloak. And I imagine I could address some of my initial bottleneck concerns with other techniques: for example, after setting a salvage drone to work at a wreck, untargeting it and using ship-mounted salvagers to work on something else. It's a few more keystrokes, but at least it keeps me busy.

Probably doing my next salvage & loot run back in an Imicus
From CCP Hyperion Toolkit

What next, then? I'm inclined to return to the frigate approach. It might be nice to take a spin out in a destroyer, what with its higher target capacity (even with smaller cargo hold), but I'll need to cobble a fit to get a bump in CPU output: out of the box, it's a tight fit for destroyers to handle the necessary probe launcher and ancillary gear. Maybe I'll set out again with a cruiser, but I seriously need to take a look at fittings and goals. And if I'm feeling sensitive about losing the ship in the first place, then I just need not to fly it in this capacity.