Intelligence Gathering 102: Defensive Scouting

Welcome to part two of my EVE intelligence gathering operation. In this segment I will talk about how intelligence plays a role in not just scanning but when a corp runs an Operation as well.

Mastering the techniques I've talked about in 101 will help here in 102. You should know right now that defensive scouting is INCREDIBLY boring. However, it is an absolute necessity for the security of your fleet when running various ops whether they are combat or mining oriented.

Be sure your corporation pays for this job. Some give an equal cut, others do not. If you don't have anything to do it is easy money. However they will be happy they gave you a cut the minute you give early warning and the fleets gets away safely.

In my opinion, an Op that is not scouted is destined to fail. Maybe not now, or tomorrow, but eventually it will end in tears. You should never assume you are safe. In fact, assume the opposite. Even when you are running sites and have 6 or 7 ships, never assume you are safe in the anom shooting sleepers.

What you learned in IG101 holds true for IG102. Rule 1 - You are never safe; this will hold true even when you have a fleet. If you haven't read IG101, go back and do that now.

Intelligence Gathering 101: Effective Scouting

The most important aspect of wormhole life is intelligence. New awesome ships are cool and all, running ops and making isk is sweet... but all of it flares up into a momentary lapse of death and nothingness without good, proper intelligence.

Intelligence is not just the backbone of a well run op. It is everything in wormhole space where the lack of local means extra steps must be taken to insure the safety of the fleet. There are some corporations who do just enough, and then there is the truly successful ones that excel at it.

Like money, you have to have it to make it. And there are effective ways to scout and plan while being the eyes and ears of your corporation in a local-less place.

It all starts with scouting and effective information gathering techniques. This will be a two part series. In this first part I will talk about gathering information as a scout. In the second, I will go into scouting and running operations.

The Point of EVE

So yesterday I was talking to a co-worker where I work. He noticed my EVE Online background I had put up instead of the standard boring blue backdrop that comes with Windows. Turns out the guy was a gamer, much to my surprise. Now, he plays mostly console games, so like all console gamers he has never heard of EVE Online.

The next few minutes were filled with us talking about games. He started to ask me questions about EVE. What was the ship on the backdrop; is that planet Saturn; what happens when you blow up; what kinds of ships; what kind of things do you do; etc etc. All questions that showed he was getting interested; questions that had definite answers any of us who have played this game for longer then five minutes can and would answer.

Eventually he got to the question I'm sure all of us who have talked to anyone about this game to people who have never played it get:

So what's the point of the game?

Solving the Rubix Cube of UI

One of my biggest complaints with the game of Eve online is the user interface. It a word, it's terrible. Actually it's beyond terrible, but to accurately describe it requires more then one word. Or paragraph. Or book.

In the latest episode of Lost In Eve (season 3, episode 10), Jade and Jayne introduce two new co-hosts that I'm still adjusting to. Without spoiling it, lets just say the ego on that show has multiplied by a factor of 500. I'm still not sure if that was a good move or not. Regardless of how I feel about it, the four hosts took shots at our new elected leader of the CSM, the one, the only, the arrogant, The Mittani. I use “took shots at” reluctantly. The tone of the interview was very standoffish at the beginning, but near the end it almost sounded like they wanted to kiss him. And while The Mittani sounded like he had crash landed on Earth from the plant Arrogance, I found myself developing a healthy dose of respect for the man. For now I think he's perfect, but I reserve the right to change my mind later. The Mittani really comes off as a man who has no middle ground. Either you like him or you hate him; only time will be able to tell if this was a good move that will continue to move the CSM in a positive direction or one that will backfire and blow up in all of our collective faces.

Loki, Trickster God of Mischief

Being April Fool's Day, I enjoy a good laugh as the internet tries to fool me every year. However, I decided against doing the same... coming up with lame stories or untrue facts just to poke fun at my readers. Some people just can't take a joke, and if in my fabrication I get someone blown up because I told them you can solo sleepers in a particular ship or with some expensive mod, SOMEONE is bound to try it. Then they will come crying to me.

By the by, one of my favorites in Wormhole space was one I believe the goons perpetuated. The way it went was if you had a Nemesis bomber loaded with therm bombs, you could launch them at the hole, MWD there and jump through. If you did it correctly, it would instantly close the hole. The trick was it only worked on the side you wanted to close, so you had to jump through fast. The goons referred to it as “Scorching the Hole”. Anyone who tried it found out exactly who got scorched, and it wasn't the hole.

So instead of any of that nonsense, I'm going to focus my trickster sense of being toward a true trickster in wormhole space, the Loki.

Loki was the trickster god of Norse mythology. It was said Loki could change shape at will to anything he wished, and he used this ability to cause chaos for others. While we here in Eve don't get to change our Loki's at will until CCP does something about that subsystem thing, the Loki is the closest thing we have to a true shape changer.