AN: I own nothing, I have nothing, I claim nothing!
Chapter 1 - Well… shit
It has been 14 long years since my life went nuts. At first, I was a bit freaked out. Then again, my last memory before waking up here was of being involved in a car crash while in my work vehicle. Some moron ran a red light and plowed into me doing around 50 mph. There I was, most of the way done with my mail route (yeah yeah... I worked for the post office) when I heard an air horn. I jerk my head to the right to see an armored car, the kind they move large amounts of money around in, knock 2 vehicles out of the way just before it smashes into me. I am pretty sure the dinky little mail truck I was in was crushed like a beer can against some college frat jock's forehead. Needless to say, I was quite amazed that I felt no pain during the entire incident. Even upon waking up I thought I should have been covered in a full body cast. Instead my waking brought something far different.
Let me make something clear before I continue. I am a nerd. NOT a supernerd. I like science fiction yet I won't be reciting part numbers or event dates fictional universes. I would probably recognize a few of the more popular names from my favorite genre, like Picard or Skywalker; however, I would run out of information to give out after maybe a minute or so of describing the person. I did once hear one guy from my D&D group (I did say I was a nerd) give a near 2 and a half hour lecture on the personal history of a character that I think had maybe 20 seconds of screen time in a Star Wars movie. Well before he reached the halfway mark most of the rest of us were ready to use his entrails as spell components. He probably would have lectured us on how to use them correctly as he was eviscerated, so we held off. I think we were all glad he quit showing up a few weeks later.
I say this so you understand where I ended up, and why I have some of the knowledge I do concerning where I ended up when consciousness returned. While I was a bit upset for a while to wake up in a clone body (I will admit it is a better weight loss program than Keto plus frequent gym attendance), I was also grateful I hadn't ended up in a far worse place. It did take me a bit to calm down and think rationally after waking, but I can't remember how long. Once I did, I began to use a bit of logic to figure out what was going on. To be fair, other people could probably have been better at it than I was, but then again, no one is perfect. I did think it was a dream, and that is likely how many would react in this situation. You probably would too. Dont lie. Tell me you haven't dreamed of waking up in some fictional or historical place where you could interact with the people or aliens or monsters you had read about or imagined. It was extremely good luck for me to have awakened in a place where I did not have immediate access to weapons of some sort. For instance, if you woke up as the main dude in Doom, tell me you wouldn't want to immediately fire off the BFG-9000. Be honest. No no no. I said be HONEST.
In my case, I was glad I wasn't in Doom, Hexen, Quake, Walking Dead, Hellraiser, or one of the other horror movies as I doubt I would last long in a heavy physically demanding survival situation (think Red Shirts in ST:TOS). Also glad I didn't end up in some acid dreamland like My Little Ponies... Nothing against people who like that kind of thing, but I would go insane there quite quickly and end up on a killing spree even if all I had as a weapon was a broken piece from a rainbow. My luck was different. I ended up in a place I was fairly comfortable with. Don't get me wrong, I don't know everything about this place, but I do remember some if not most of the major players and events to some degree.
Now here is where it gets a little strange. (I say that as if it isn't strange already.) If you have ever read fanfiction you would know that sometimes authors combine 2 or more universes to bring more options into the story or bring two characters from different worlds together. I have read good, bad, boring, funny, exciting, and some that leave me scrating my head wondering what the fuck I just read. Falling into that last category was one where Luna Lovegood from the Harry Potter books chanted some language and brought the Great Hall from Hogwarts into Cthulu's realm. All I could think after that was 'Iä! Iä! Luna Fhtagn'. Aaaaanyway... I awoke inside a capsule which was installed on a mining frigate docked inside a space station. And for the life of me I still haven't figured out after 14 years how I ended up here. It wasn't strange for me to hear a woman's voice in my head explaining what was going on though. Before the car accident, I was married. So having a woman's voice in my head was actually quite common, but mostly it said "You really don't want to do that" or a similar statement in my wife's voice. I think my wife was also my common sense detector. That would be quite logical. If you ever want proof that Women are the more sensible of the 2 sexes, I am pretty sure you can look up a wide range of Youtube videos that prove it.
Getting back on topic...the aforementioned woman's voice in my head was in actuality an AI named Aura. What I learned from her over the course of the next few minutes was interesting to say the least. Big thing being the space station (and that means my ship and I as well) were not in New Eden (Eve Online universe). Aura did not know where we were, however, she was able to determine that the laws of physics were very different. She also had no connection via any of the communications systems on the station to any other station, ship, or any of the other places she would normally be able to connect to. I did find out that I had spare clones available at this station as well as access to a new corporation's assets. Excitedly I opened the inventory log on my HUD to find it both more and less than I would have wanted. Currently, all that was inside were blueprints. No minerals, ships, modules, or anything else. On the plus side, every single blueprint was a BluePrint Original.
Little bit of background info about both Eve and how I am familiar with it. I play EVE... or is it played. Since I am not in my original world anymore it is probably played. Anyway, I had multiple accounts with 3 characters on each of the accounts. While not all of them were trained in a large amount of skills, I did have 2 characters that were industrialists with a decent amount of combat skills and ships. The other 7 characters were miners and haulers only. I barely trained the 7 in anything more than the skills to mine and use cargo ships. That being said, all 9 of my characters could use the largest cargo ships in the game, the Charon. The other part you need to know is about blueprints in EVE. BPCs being the most common in the game, but they are BluePrint Copies that have a limited number of manufacturing runs before they are used up and it can range from a single run BPC for most large items to over 1000 on items like ammo or small consumable items. BPOs on the other hand were the original that BPCs were made from. BluePrint Originals had unlimited runs available and never were useless. Another important fact about BPOs is that you could spend time researching them to improve the efficiency in both materials and time needed per run to make it cheaper to build things. The last part is that you can also research using that BPO as well as a few items to make something new and improved. BPOs were always of what we called T1 or Tier 1 items, the basic item. Tier 2 or T2 items were sometimes vastly improved over the T1 version, but were much more expensive to make. For example, the mining frigate I was in. It is called a Venture. There are 2 different T2 versions of this ship and both have improved cargo space, speed, armor, shields, hull, etc. They also have different bonuses on each version. One of them can even warp while using a cloaking device.
Enough on that though. The corporation warehouse I was looking into had at least 1 of every BPO that existed in the game as of a few years ago. There were some that I remember had been removed as no longer needed and others that were added, however, I wasn't going to bitch. The BPOs also had been altered to no longer use EVE minerals but instead use elements I am much more familiar with, as well as some I can't say I recognize. As for personal inventory, if you included the Venture I was in, I had not much at all. The Venture wasn't bare, but it wasn't decked out either. It did have 2 mining lasers, an afterburner, 2 Hobgoblin light combat drones, and a shield extender, but that was the extent of everything I had. I didn't even have any ISK (money). I was somewhat shocked when I saw the stats on my ship though. For one it was FAR faster than I anticipated, and even more speedy with the afterburner. That did jive with what Aura told me about the physics being different between here and the EVE universe. Space here was a vacuum, whereas in EVE it acted more like a fluid. It meant that ships here didn't have to overcome that fluid's friction/drag and could move and maneuver much faster than in New Eden. While Aura was talking to me in the background, I swear I was listening, I checked the station services. Nothing unusual there, but only the clone bay, refinery, manufacturing facility were operational. No Corporation offices, market, or resculpting bay were available. Considering I didn't know if anyone else from EVE was even here, I wasn't worried about missing services.
A sudden thought went through my head. Using my HUD, I opened the Comm window to view the different communications channels. I had not actually asked if I was alone, nor had I verified that the local system was empty of all but me. Right there listed in the local pilot listing for those pilots in the same solar system as I was in were 8 other names, and I recognized all of them. While I was, I guess, reincarnated as my main character who I am going to call Zero from now on, the other 8 pilots in the local list were my 8 other characters I had created. Focusing back on Aura's lecture, I interrupted her to find out what was going on. You ever been involved in a conversation that was boring and dry enough that you automatically tuned it out? You know that mental place where your body is paying attention and seems to give affirmation or other queues that make the others think you are somehow hanging on every word? And that moment when you actually have a thought related to the topic being discussed and you open your mouth to give voice to it, and upon completing your little contribution everyone stares at you. Then there is that feeling you get when someone says they had left that topic behind ten minutes ago after discussing that exact thing you just stated. Yeah, I had one of those moments. Never let it be said Aura was an emotionless digital entity. Her having to repeat an earlier part of her speech left me feeling like an 8 year old who did a dumb thing and was now receiving one of those 'I am disappointed in you' lectures that parents often give.
This time I was listening very attentively as Aura explained that the other 8 pilots were little more than AI's under my command, which Aura wasn't under my command. The 8 AIs had the same skills I did on this character, as well as being able to do anything I was able to do. The best part was that they would take my commands mentally through a subspace communications channel that replaced the corporate communications channel. As she explained the pros and cons of them being AI instead of human, it did open up quite a few options. They were also provided with the same ship and equipment I currently had. The Venture wasn't a bad ship for someone starting out, however, I was used to far larger and more productive mining ships. The upside was that with 9 of us mining at once, if I were able to find a safe(ish) place to do so, it would mean I could build much better mining ships a lot sooner. I had a funny feeling I was going to miss my Orca and dual Hulk mining setup. Hopefully it wouldn't take too long for me to get the ships built this time. The down side was that since there isn't a market or any other EVE infrastructure or pilots that I was aware of, I would have to make ALL the components myself instead of buying some of the more difficult items. I never realized till that point how much I took for granted in the ability to buy what I didn't feel like spending the time making myself.
It was about then I realized Aura had finished speaking to me, so I thanked her for her help. She assured me she would be available any time I was in station or I could contact her directly through subspace communications. Now unless I planned on spending my entire existence here in the station, which would be boring and likely drive me insane, I figured I would have to undock from the station some time to see what all was outside. Checking the clone bay in the station to make sure I had a spare one installed, I undocked Zero and left One through Eight (I know... really creative naming system) in order to take a look outside the station and see what I could see. As it is, I am limited to what I can see with the gear and ship I have, which means no scan probes. Undocking took a little longer than I remember, but still not more than 15 seconds. Immediately I saw and felt some of the changes between New Eden and this new universe. First off the ship had much better acceleration, as I saw from the HUD display. I had quite quickly passed the old max speed so I set my throttle to idle, which meant I was not gaining more speed nor was I slowing. In New Eden I would begin to decelerate immediately upon reducing the throttle. The view front sensors of my ship were breathtaking, pictures and computer games do NOT do it justice.
Time to figure out what all was nearby, so I pulled my eyes from the forward display and focused on the HUD. Unfortunately my personal HUD settings from the game did not transfer over, so I am back to the default tabs on the overview. Cycling through the 3 tabs of the overview, I was able to see the major features of the system I was in. between the 8 planets, 5 asteroid belts, 1 ice belt, and a crapton of moons I figure this should at least be a decent system for me to work out of. The only real problem I could see with the system was also a big security boost. No jump gates. It meant I would not be able to leave for a while, but also that no one else would just pop in (I hoped). Next I pulled up the D-scan (also known as the Directional Scanner). It was much more detailed in what existed in scanning range while not always able to pinpoint it enough to warp to something. However, it could detect items like ships, shipwrecks, hidden stations, and miscellaneous places of interest. Normally the max range was 14au, and I realized I should have paid better attention to Aura and her lecture since the new max range was 140 au. I guess not having to scan through fluid space really cut down on signal loss. A couple anomalies did show though. Unfortunately, none of it was able to be pinpointed enough without scan probes. It is going to be a while before I can get to that. Since no immediate dangers presented, and the station did show up on the overview as having a nav beacon, it was time to do a little more looking around.
I didn't realize flying a spaceship through fluid really slowed a ship down that much. Warping across the system to one of the outer planets, a gas giant, took far less time than I would have estimated. Opening up the info file on my current ship, I realized it was something I should have done earlier. Some of the stats had changed. Max speed was now measured as fractions of C, which is the speed of light. There was also an acceleration rate next to it. Stuff like targeting range and a few other things had also changed due to fluid to vacuum space differences. I think I will start using FtV in the future as it is shorter and easier to say. Some stuff didn't change, like shield strength, but others like the recharge rate did. I guess FtV relieved some stress on the shield systems. Makes me wonder how well a ship's armor would rate against stuff not built to fly through fluid. I think I may have to relearn how to fly and also how to fight in space due to these changes. As I was far enough away from the gas giant, I worked my way through a few combat maneuvers I remembered, some worked well enough while others failed miserably. Orbiting a fixed point was actually easier, kinda like drifting in a sports car. and it kept your nose pointed more toward the targeted spot too.
Making another warp, this time to one of the asteroid belts, my jaw nearly hit the floor of my pod. I had been stuck in the memory of what New Eden asteroid belts had been when it came to size. I was way off. This belt, once I picked my jaw back up, did not really have an end. Instead of 100-400 rocks ranging from 50m to some over 1km, I saw a belt with rocks up to dozens of km in size in a dense belt that had no end. Remembering my elementary school science classes, I now realized the belt likely either was at one time or could have been a planet at some point; yet, was instead a band of rock forming a ring all the way around the solar system in a set orbit. Looking at the overview at the mining tab I saw that none of the New Eden ores were listed. There were plenty I recognized from my life on Earth though, and there were some that definitely were from fiction. Lets just say that if I were to mine and refine the stuff within 100km of my current position, I think I could probably buy any subcapital ship I wanted. Now I was thinking about the ice field...
Quickly I jumped to the ice field and had nearly orgasmic thoughts at what I was seeing. Either a planet at least 30 times the size of Earth broke apart into a ring of ice orbiting at the edge of the system just outside the orbit of the 8th planet, or a bunch of comets had come to rest here. Best part is the ice in this holy ring was exactly like what I was used to in New Eden. Once I get some better mining ships, I will definitely be making a go at mining everything I can. Unfortunately, at this time, Ice mining doesn't help me at all. In order for it to have any use, I would need something that actually needs the stuff I can make from it. So for now it will have to sit and wait for me.
Sending orders out to One through Eight, they all undocked and warped to the closest part of the first asteroid belt and I warped to join them. I would need to gather ores to refine before I could really do anything else. Just to be on the safe side, all 9 of us deployed our drones as a security measure. Just because I didn't see anything dangerous it doesn't mean there isn't something out there. Perfect paranoia is perfect awareness. Nothing makes you paranoid like flying through nullsec in New Eden in a cloaked cargo ship carrying 4 billion ISK in goods to sell. If I was lucky I would never see another gate camp ever again. Now came the boring parts. Filling the mining hold of a Venture took about 15-20 minutes. I could set One through Eight automatically to return to the station to unload and then come back in a repeating cycle, however, Zero I couldn't do that with.
After a dozen rounds of fill and empty the ship, I left the others at the asteroid belt to keep mining while I returned to the station to take a closer look at the blueprints in the corporate asset hanger. I guess it really comes down to priorities. I have a decent idea as to what is out there based on where I think I am, however, I have no clue where in the universe I am in relation to all the drama. For all I know, I could be 1 or 2 systems away from Earth, or I could be 3 galactic clusters away and not have to worry about known events at all.
That still leaves me with a quandry: Defense or Harvesting. Option one is that I quickly begin building a defense force, which could be hit or miss as I have no idea how effective EVE weapons and ammo will be compared to what I remember this universe has. Do Amarr lasers work well or are they useless? Are missiles worth making or will they be shot down too rapidly? Can the magnetic bottle on hybrid ammo last long enough to get decent range or will I have to get too close? Will 125mm gatling guns loaded with carbonized lead be effective or will I need 1400mm slinging Phased Plasma? Then there is mining, I can gather the ores, ice, gasses, and other stuff as much and fast as I can while gathering info as it becomes available. While choosing one path does not preclude the other, it does delay it by a decent margin. There is also the option to combine a mix of both and split production between mining and defense. That would also have to include the modules themselves otherwise I would be flying unarmed and nearly unarmored ships, which would be sitting ducks if someone jumped into the system. Then there is also the issue of the BPOs I have access to being completely fresh as in not yet researched to improve material or time efficiency.
Since I had instructed the clones to deposit their ore into the corporate asset hanger, and mining operations had been going for almost 4 hours now, there was already a decent supply of ore to refine. Opening the refinery window, I transferred all the ore there and looked to see the estimated mineral totals I would get back. I am already dreading to see how badly I am going to lose out on minerals. Usually when refining in a non-player owned station, the best base rate for refining was around 50%. Best case was around 55% with a really nice implant in your clone. Unfortunately, I was in that type of station as just under 50% of the minerals were 'lost'. Then again, since I have no ISK, it is better than not being able to refine anything at all. I would be pretty much bored then. But what I do get is a pretty decent amount of minerals. It is a matter of scale really. Think about it for a moment. How large is 1 cubic meter. For those of us from non-metric countries, a meter is a little over 3 feet. Now think really hard... How heavy do you think 1 cubic meter (m3) of rock is? Think you could lift it? If I remember right, it would weigh around 2 tons. Each of the 9 Ventures has 2x Mining Laser I modules. These are the basic cheap mining lasers available in EVE and each one mines 40 cubic meters of rock per 1 minute. Keep thinking... now 80 tons per minute per laser. And the mining hold on a Venture is 5000 cubic meters in size. So that comes out to 10,000 tons of rock PER full hold and all 9 of us did a dozen before I came back to the station. So you don't have to whip out your calculator, it comes out to 1,080,000 tons of rock in a little over 3 hours of mining.
Like I said, it is a matter of scale. Mining operations on Earth would have a collective apoplexy if someone came along and with a 9 man team was able to mine that much in 3 hours. You also have to realize, just because it was mined and refined, it doesn't mean I can use everything that came of it. As I remember my school days, one science teacher told us 'Every element on the periodic table has a use. Even if it isn't you who can use it, there is a purpose for everything.' So with that in mind, I can tell you that while I did get more than enough to build a scout ship (according to the BPOs I have), I will also need to build all the modules to go with it. Before I get to that though, I want to get the BPOs researched a bit so it will take 10% less minerals to make each item as well as 20% less time. It doesn't seem like a lot, but when you are talking about needing 30 million units of 'mineral A' and so on, every little bit counts. I also have to consider all the different modules I will need and I think the first ship I will make will be a Probe. It is a scout ship designed to use a probe launcher to do detailed scans of systems to track down anomalies or even enemy ships or hidden bases. It also has the role of data mining and hacking, which I have no idea how that will play out in this universe. The downside to using this particular ship is that it is really not much more than a tin foil skin over a toothpick frame and is not built for combat.
Sorting through the Industrial menu for the station, I find the Probe BPO and set it to run 1 off. Then I go looking for the module BPOs I am going to need. A Data analyzer, Relic analyzer, afterburner, shield extender, and since it has room, I add in a few runs of Hobgoblin combat drones. For an EVE ship, it is pretty small, only 67 meters long. Still that is over 200 feet, which is over 2/3 the size of an American football field. I also have to add a probe launcher module as well as some core scanner probes and combat scanner probes. While Core probes are designed to pinpoint natural features like hidden asteroid belts, gas clouds, and spatial anomalies... Combat probes are designed to locate things that want to stay hidden like enemy ships, hidden bases, and so on. In the past I have wished for one probe to do it all, but I have yet to find a genie that will grant it. In total, it takes a decent amount of the needed minerals to build the ship and all of the modules I will need. It will also take over an hour for all of it to be done. This does give me the time to go through more of the BPOs and get the ones I will need next researched a bit before I use them.
In a way it does help me immensely that my 8 other clones can also use my skills, so I set each of my clones to begin materials research on 11 BPOs as they do their unloading of ore into the station before they depart again. Since researching is not something I have to keep on top of, I just set the BPO up and the research is done automatically over time. The module BPOs are going to take 30 days to reach max materials efficiency, but even the smallest ships will need more than 60 days to do the same. The larger the ship, or more complex, the longer it is going to take. Since I haven't decided what combat ships I will be using, I am skipping research on them for the moment. However, utility items such as shield, propulsion, etc are being researched. I also started the mining modules I will need, like mining lasers, strip miners, mining upgrade modules and also the largest mining barge BPO to research. Of the 3 mining barge BPOs I have, I decided on using the Retriever, which is a 400m ship with a large mining hold. It also has a decent amount of defense. Considering its mining hold is over 27,500m3 in size, and the strip miners it uses instead of lasers are much faster, this will really speed up my ore mining. The mining laser I am currently using mines 40m3 per minute whereas the strip miners do 600m3 per 3 minutes. so instead of mining 80 tons of rock a minute per laser, it would be 400 tons per minute. Now that I think about it, once I get the mining upgrade modules done and factor in the bonuses of my skills and the ship specialization bonuses, I may get over 1000m3 per cycle of the strip miners.
The last BPOs I set to research are some items I know are going to take a couple months to finish the material efficiency side of things. In this case, the BPOs are for capital ship construction. We are talking about the BPOs for Drone Bays, Capital ship engines, armor plates, and so on. While I cant use them for a while, it would be nice to get them researched now instead of having to wait on them later when I need them. I also put 3 capital ship BPOs into research. The first being for a 1400m long mining ship called the Orca. It isn't quite a capital ship when I think about it. It is more like a command point for small to medium scale mining operations. What it does have that I really want is the ability to boost the mining speed and rate of any mining ships in the area. The Orca is designed to be like a foreman on a construction job. In addition to boosting the mining speed to nearly double what it would be without an Orca, it also has the ability to compress mined ores. Never really figured out HOW it does it, something about reducing the empty space inside the atoms themselves, but it can reduce 100m3 of ore to about 1m3 in size. Great part about this is I can refine the compressed ore directly and the resulting minerals are normal size. Considering the Orca also has a 180km3 mining hold, 36k cargo hold, and a 40k fleet hanger I can mine for DAYS and not fill up. And the hold volume only goes up when my skills are added in. The Orca also has plenty of room for defenses in the form of combat drones, usually of the kind designed to attack cruiser sized ships. Even at the rate I am mining, I have other ships that need to be built before I even start on the Orca.
The second capital ship I set to research is called the Charon. A bit larger than the Orca at 2,461m long, it was designed to haul large quantities of items from system to system. with the right modules and skills the maximum cargo hold size ends up being 1,247,762 m3. I figure if I am stuck here long enough for that BPO to be researched, then I probably should figure out a way to move large quantities of stuff. If I can figure out how to get to another star system I would have a ready made source of stuff to sell with the leftovers from mining and building the ships I am going to need. It also would be good for moving my own stuff around if I ever set up a moon mining station. Basically it is slow, fat, and can carry a crapton.
The final capital ship BPO being researched at the moment is for a ship I wish I had when I was playing EVE. The Rorqual is the ultimate in single ship mining opportunities. It also is a giant target to anyone else in EVE who wants to score a big kill. While the Orca could use drones to mine, it isn't that good at it. The Rorqual though is the king of drone mining. In addition to being able to boost the mining speed and ore yield of other miners in the area, it can also mine massive amounts with its own mining drones. The standard mining drones are only about 5m3 in size, which seems like a lot, till you see the Rorqual's special mining drones which are 1100m3 in size. Each of these special drones, called 'Excavator' mining drones, can mine almost as fast as a devoted mining ship like a Retriever. It also has almost double the cargo and mining hold space as an Orca. It is a ship designed for the purpose of large scale mining operations be it solo mining very large asteroids or ice flows, all the way up to handling 10-20 smaller mining ships by directing where to mine and holding/compressing the already mined ore to keep miners on task without having to warp off to unload. If the Orca can do it, the Rorqual can do it better. Now you may be asking why I would build an Orca if I was going to build the Rorqual as well. Cost is the big factor, not in money, but in time and minerals. To build and fully outfit an Rorqual, I could probably build 8 or more Orcas.
Since even with what research I had started there was still room for a few more industrial jobs on my clones I decided to build a couple defense ships. My combat and piloting skills leaned mostly toward Gallente and Minmatar ships. In this case it helps in that it gives me the most flexibility in damage output. Amarr ships were almost exclusively equipped with lasers for weapons, there were a few exceptions but lasers were their focus. The problem with that is the damage output was pretty heavily focused on thermal and electromagnetic damage. They were also not equipped with great shields for defense and relied mostly on armor plating. I have never been comfortable with letting armor take the hits when I could focus on shields that could regenerate on their own. Caldari ships were heavy on shield defenses, and had a mix of missiles and hybrid style weapons for offense. Missiles had the issue of being kinda slow as well as having the possibility of being shot down here. Hybrid weapons were half energy weapon and half projectile weapon, by using specially made ammo contained in a magnetic containment bottle, they could fire out things from lead to antimatter. The downside to hybrid weapons is they were limited to thermal and kinetic damage which is basically either hitting it with a hot rock. Gallente ships though had an option most other races did not when it came to offense: Drones. Combat drones were used by a wide variety of ships, but none of them could hold a candle to how effective they were when used by the Gallente. There were drones for each of the 4 damage types, so Gallente ships were most likely to do damage no matter what your defenses were. However, while they mostly relied on drones, they were also equipped with Hybrid weapons. The down side was that most of the Gallente ships were designed to use armor for defense and not shields, yet there were a few exceptions to that where a ship could be set up for shields or armor and be effective either way. Last but not least, the Minmatar ships. Comments in the past have been made that their ships are built from rust and duct tape, however, that isn't quite accurate. True they don't care about rust, but they are pretty durable ships as well as flexible. While a few of the Minmatar ships use missiles as their main offensive weapons, most of them use plain old guns. If plain old guns means a gatling gun firing off larger shells than the current earth armed forces 105mm howitzer. Having multiple 125mm gatling guns on a SMALL Frigate class ship should tell you how well off they are. Without going into the details of capital ships like dreadnaughts and such, the battleship sized guns did include 1400mm howitzer style weapons and an 800mm gatling gun. I did say earlier it was a matter of scale. 1400mm is 1.4 meters, or in American that would be 55.1 inches or 4 feet 7 inches. Can you imagine a bullet that big and how much damage it could do, especially considering the bullet types include depleted uranium and nuclear tipped?
Back on topic... I set to build 5 of the Minmatar destroyer class ships called Thrashers, which are small gunboats. I also started production runs for a few thousand of each type of the right sized ammo. Had to add in the works to make 40 of the weapons modules since 8 of them were needed per Thrasher. I also started production on 4 of the Algos class destroyers from the Gallente line of ships plus the right sized weapons and ammo for it. I also added in the other types of light drones so I would have some to work with since each Algos could carry plenty of drones to change out damage types if needed. Having 9 destroyers between the 250m Algos and 320m Thrashers would be a decent deterrent for any small scouting or raiding parties. I couldn't tell you my chances of fighting off even one ship though as I was completely ignorant of how the different races' ships would affect each other. For all I know, we could be completely at a stalemate unable to do any damage.
By the time I had all the BPOs sorted, the Probe I had set to build was done as well as its equipment. It didn't take long to assemble the ship and fit all the modules and probes to it. Once I moved my capsule over to it, I undocked to see what I could scan down with the probes I now had. Just in case I had loaded 2 sets of both combat and core probes in case something happened to the first set. Flying a little way off the station, I loaded and launched the first set of combat probes. Better to verify there were no hidden ships or bases in the system before I relax too much. Opening the probe scanning window on my HUD, I put the probes in a spread formation to do a quick scan for any signals. With the FtV change, the probes had a much larger scan area available. Triggering a scan once the probes reached their designated points, I found a couple unidentified signals. It took a few minutes to pinpoint what they were, but it was not anything dangerous. It was a couple wrecks from who knows how long ago, but considering how spread out the debris fields were, it wasn't anything recent. I did however bookmark the locations for a later look with a salvage ship when I got the chance. Recalling the probes, I then loaded the core probes. I did remember that I had seen some anomalies on the D-scan but was not able to do anything about it earlier. So I launched the core probes and did another system wide scan. There were only 3 anomalies and scanning them down showed two to be gas clouds of some kind I hadn't seen before. The last one was a small asteroid belt with unidentified minerals in it. I saved the locations of all 3 for later.
The next few months were mostly quiet. I did get around to harvesting the gas clouds and small asteroid belt. I also salvaged what I could of the two debris fields I have located, but neither gave me anything except scrap to recycle. Research was going smoothly, with most of the commonly used T1 BPOs already completed. Having the 9 destroyers completed early on gave me plenty of time to practice both solo flying as well as small fleet tactics with my clones. I had built a few extra ships plus their gear during this time, including a Noctis for salvaging, and I think I had a decent setup. It took some adjusting when I realized I no longer needed to sleep. Other than the occasional break though, Zero and the clones spent most of the time mining. 'Zero and the Clones' kinda sounds like a bad band name. But back to the mining side of things. It took a while to get enough of the rarer minerals together to build the mining barges I wanted. The first one came off the line after a little more than 2 months, but the others soon followed. By the end of month 3, I had 9 of them built and was raking in the ore. I also had to build a few warehouse containers to hold all of the ore we had picked up. I didn't even bother refining it if I didn't have to. With all 9 of us mining we pulled in about 180km3 per hour in the Ventures we started with. After 2 months of virtual non-stop mining the totals were much more unreal. With about 125 million m3 of ore, you can see what I mean. Upgrading to the Retriever mining barges gave a massive boost. After the upgrade we were mining just under 1 million m3 per HOUR, thus the need for multiple warehouse containers. Storage containers come in various sizes, and most of the smaller ones were useless to me as they started at 10m3 in volume; however, the ones designed as station warehouses could hold 100 million m3 each, so I built a bunch of them and had them each holding only one type of ore. Yeah I ended up with a lot of containers. I am wishing I had ore compression available, but that is still a ways off as I need to get an Orca built first.
Speaking of the Orca, I did get started on it. However it is built like a capital ship. Small ships I can build in one shot. Capital ships aren't built that way. I have to build the smaller pieces first. Cargo bays, drone bays, armor plates, and so on are needed to make an Orca or any capital ship. I had built them in Eve before, but it usually took me a while as I wasn't focusing on it too heavily. This time I was building one as fast as I could once the necessary BPOs were researched. Building the ship was only one part of it though, I needed the modules to go with it. I needed drones, shield modules, power modules, tractor beams, command burst modules, as well as consumables. Since I had 99 industrial production slots available between myself and the clones, about 20 of them were taken up by the needs of the Orca. I figure with the amount of stuff I am accumulating, I would likely need to start working on building a few Charons as well just to haul stuff if I ever had to move it all out of the station for some reason. That will probably be next on my list then since there has been no new information on what I may be facing here. The most likely option for me is to stick around this system until I build up enough to be able to handle anything out there. Which means I will need 8 Charons plus a nice scout ship. I am also going to need to build a station of some kind to work as a base of operations wherever I end up going. It seems I have plenty of time on my hands.
(((( TIME SKIP ))))
Aura said today marks the end of the 5th year since I arrived here, and I am all packed up ready to go. While I am leaving a pretty good chunk of items behind, I figure if something happens, I will have a refuge to fall back on just in case. I am also leaving some ships behind. I did manage to get a Rorqual built, but it is staying here with 8 exhumer class Mackinaws. Also being left behind are about a dozen combat based ships I ended up building. If I have to fall back I really don't want to start from scratch. What is going with me though is a bit different. I have hundreds of BPCs I made in case I need to build more ships, I doubt I will be able to escape unscathed should I end up in combat of some kind. Split among my cargo ships I have a mix of different combat ships ranging from the small frigates up to a few battleships. The reason was that about 2 years ago I had an encounter with a rather hostile ship that attacked my mining fleet and took out one of my ships before I could escape back to the station. I don't think the enemy recognized the capsule that warped off as an actual ship until it had already warped off. I really shouldn't have gotten so complacent with my safety. I returned with my version of combat ships, which isn't as wonderful as it sounds. I had cruisers as my largest ships at this point. Ended up that I lost 4 ships and 3 pods before we were able to take out the bastard. Before I could salvage the wrecks, Aura had told me to hold off salvaging the enemy ship until she could examine it. Turns out she discovered quite a bit. I guess being disconnected from the main network in EVE was good for her, in that she has developed a desire to learn and tinker with blueprints since then.
Some of the discoveries ended up making upgrades to the current stock of BPOs, which is something I didn't know Aura could do. The biggest change was the better FTL technology. In EVE, ships handled in-system travel with a limited form of warp; unfortunately, it was power intensive and very short range. Intra-system travel was done by Jump Gates, which were massive machines designed to propel a ship to a matching Jump Gate in the next system. It only took a few seconds, compared to using a ship's warp FTL that would likely take MONTHS to do the same. Even though travel speed greatly increased with the FtV changes, travel to even the closest star outside my current system would take several days. Speed is a game changer. It can win or lose a war depending on which side has the advantage. My favorite part is that Aura discovered that EVE ships generated much more power than the ships here, it was only our FTL tech that was inefficient. With the power available, my ships were now faster than the ship that had attacked me.
The other changes were minor, such as a slight improvement in sensor strength and range. What this meant though was that I no longer needed Jump Gates to travel outside the system. While not near instantaneous travel between systems, it does mean it won't take days to reach the nearest star, but rather a couple of hours. This also means I got really lucky in that no one else showed up in the system I was in for 5 years. I was a lot more vigilant in checking my scanners while mining after that however.
Enough with the rambling. I was also able to build a pair of stations to take with me, one as a fortified base and another to use as a refining/mining station. I made sure to include nearly a year's worth of fuel blocks for the two stations since I may not be able to make more right away. The rest of the space in the cargo ships was filled with modules and ammo for the ships I currently had packed; and then the remaining was filled with compressed ore in case I had forgotten something. No one is perfect, and I know I would be forgetting something. One would think with over 10 million m3 of cargo space that I would have room to spare on the 8 Charons; however, I am leaving far more behind, mostly in the form of compressed ore and minerals. I guessed it would take another 5 or 6 round trips with all 8 cargo ships to get the ore alone moved, and that isn't counting the ships and other stuff also being left behind. If I needed more, and wasn't under threat, I could always come back and get some; but my goal was to find a place where I could get the materials I needed in whatever place I settled down in.
With the improved FTL capabilities, I would be traveling for a week before coming out of warp. My target system was a quarter of the way across the galaxy. From what I remember it should be uninhabited, yet close enough to civilization that I could make a decent profit just from mining alone. The only reason I knew about this system was Aura. She was able to walk me through using one of the data mining modules to download everything from the main computer of the enemy ship. Using that information, I was able to determine what types of ships and weapons would be needed, as well as how best to defend against them. The ship that attacked me was larger than a Drake battlecruiser, but still smaller than any of the battleships I have available. That being said, they seemed a little underpowered if you think about size versus damage output. It should have taken a lot more for me to use 9 destroyer class vessels to take out a battleship sized vessel. True, I did lose 4 ships attacking it; however, that was mostly my fault since I wasn't thinking of fleet tactics when I attacked when I retaliated for the destruction of my mining barge. Their weapons seemed to be a type of hybrid weapon, as the damage I recieved was limited to kinetic and thermal damage types. Makes me wonder how effective my ships will be if I have to fight them off again.
Now I am just procrastinating. That stops now. Using the updated navigation system and stellar maps, I initiated a fleet warp to a point 1000 AU from my target star. This should get me a decent hiding place for the little time it takes to scan the destination system with my scout ship. Here goes nothing! As my ships all turn to align in formation, I hear the lovely Aura's voice… "Warp drive active"