It was a freezing cold day where I live and blazing hot in 4C-B7X, solar system in Outer Ring where Noctis BPOs sale have just started. There was another solar system with sale offers, NM-OEA but it had two major disadvantages that disqualified it as operation target:

1. It has only one stargate connection which makes it easy to lock out.
2. It lacks stations with medical services that are essential for using an expendable scout pilot.

Before even ORE released their new blueprint, 3 pilots were positioned within target system. Those pilots were:

• Dee – a fresh capsuleer with cloning service in 4C-B7X – initially floating in a safe spot.
• Rut – CovOps scout, also in safe spot.
• Archentar – operation leader in Legion, docked in VI 1 station.

Main burden of transporting was to be laid on Strategic Cruiser, due to its adaptability to harsh Null Sec conditions. Here is detailed specification:

[Legion, Null Sec Transport]
Legion Offensive - Covert Reconfiguration
Legion Defensive - Augmented Plating
Legion Electronics - Emergent Locus Analyzer
Legion Engineering - Capacitor Regeneration Matrix
Legion Propulsion - Interdiction Nullifier

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Sisters Core Probe Launcher (Sisters Core Scanner Probe)
4x Medium Energy Neutralizer II

Y-T8 Overcharged Hydrocarbon I Microwarpdrive
3x Large Shield Extender II
Inertia Stabilizers II
3x 'Halcyon' Core Equalizer I
Damage Control II

2x Medium Low Friction Nozzle Joints I
Medium Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I

As you can see, it is covert, has pretty strong warp drive, decent tank (45k EHP), scanning capabilities (if only feasible route leads through wormholes) and if all fails, 4 medium energy neutralizers that give a chance of shutting down one or two tacklers.

Due to external reasons, operation started three hours after the release. Rut performed initial recon, and discovered a significant station camp at VI 1. There were more than 20 combat ships and several warp disruption bubbles around it. On the other hand, surroundings of the second station with blueprints were peaceful (at least peaceful for a system that suffered over 1000 ship loses in 24 hours). VI 1 station was selected as primary because when Rut got to 4C-B7X month ago this station was least populated. Even though Archentar had Interdiction Nullifier and safe undock bookmark I have decided to wait till the station clears before undocking.

In the mean time I have checked Jita prices for the merchandise and found out that it is still profitable. It was 600 MISK at that time, so the operation was still in “go”. Dee took the duty of patrolling vicinity of the VI 1. Since she was in Reaper, she was jumping between bookmarks at 100-300 km from the camp. It wasn’t long before hostile fleet moved to the second station leaving one Drake and two bubbles behind. This was a sign for Archentar, who quickly made his way to a safe spot with batch of precious BPOs.

First part of the plan was complete. The easy part. Hard one was to actually get the stuff to Jita. The shortest route from Outer Ring to High Sec leads through Syndicate. Various killboard entries from that day show that it leads through various cloning facilities as well. Given that, I picked following route: http://evemaps.dotlan.net/route/4C-B7X: … ma:-3KNK-A

The idea was to have Dee leading the way with Archentar one system behind. Well, all went pretty smooth, systems on the route were pretty empty, at least to the point then Dee crashed into gatecamp in DY-F70. Thanks to tactical bookmarks, Archentar managed to go further, to FD53-H, but intel suggested that O-ZXUV may contain another gate camp. Jumping further without scout was assessed as too risky, so Dee was ordered to get back. She resurrected in 4C-B7X, but it occurred that she will be able to reach Archentar faster if she starts from one of High Sec stations. But the only way to get there was to die again.

Dee undocked from her cloning facility in 4C-B7X in fully armed Reaper with truly suicidal intentions. There were several combat ships around, so she targeted nearest Hurricane, set orbit at 1 km and opened fire with Civilian Autocannon. Overview reported several ongoing target locks on her rookie ship and first energy bursts impacted her shields. Then, out of the blue, whole hostile fleet disengaged and warped away. I guess the sheer determination of young pilot scarred them off. She had to warp to VI 1 station to finally get podded.

Once back in High Sec and in fresh Reaper, she scouted the rest of the way to FD53-H and to my surprise there was no camp at all. Without any further adventures, Archentar made it to Jita.

Later that day, once enough ISK returned from market, Rut tried his luck with BPO run. Dee went back as forward scout. This time VIII 1 station provided the plans, as no pirates cared to guard it. In order to avoid dangerous DY-F70 neighborhood, Rut went bit longer route: http://evemaps.dotlan.net/route/4C-B7X: … YQ:-X-M2LR This time, no-one even attempted to disrupt the operation.

In the end, whole operation, including both runs and waiting for window of opportunity, took about 4 hours and provided a lot of fun and profit in “dare to be bold” spirit. Of course there were many hours of planning and preparation before that but it was well worth it. After all such opportunity is not a common thing in New Eden.

Fly like you’ve never flown before,
Archentar Symonia

Granted, the first post had some bad information and calculations – but the theory is there, the practice shows us that this is the way to go vs Sleepers, so I had to dig deeper and actually learned quite a few on how Resistances / Tanking works

So sometimes you post, or sometimes you post, you get feedback, you edit, you get more feedback, admit you are a total newb, cry for hours and then repost…

Major thanks goes out to gsputi from battleclinic.com forums and our very own Vessper (/bow) and Luminus for their feedback and comments.

Battleclinic.com threads:

Proteus Class 5-6 Utility Ship

Armor Tanked RR Wormhole Fleet Raven

If you are looking into ways to maximize your fleet effectives vs Sleepers, I hope you find this post useful. If you do, please do post a comment

QP

——- Updated Post follows:

The question we need to answer is:

Effective HPs by adding Buffer tank? – or by increasing your Resistances?
Which is best for Sleeper PVE engagements?

Q: Which is better? A ship with 70% omni-tank and 15.000 Armor HPs, or a ship with 95% omni-tank but only 2.500 Armor HPs?

Let’s see what we have here:

Armor HPs: Base Armor HPs, including plates or not (a single 1600mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plate adds 4200 HPs)

Armor Resistances (omni): The % Resistances you have on your setup. Obviously, you don’t have the same resists on each type of damage, but we are trying to prove a point here, so we assume all are the same % and we don’t split between different types of damage.

Sleeper DPS: I assume that in a Class 5, Sleepers can do about 10.000 DPS on a 0% resistances target. I’ve seen 4 Sleeper BSs bashing a 85% omni-tanked Dominix with 75K EHP in just 15sec from full shield to structure… so yeah that sounds about right…

Reaction Time: This is how long you can hold before you pop – unless you get the below number of needed Remote Repairers to compensate. Your fleet members holding the RR have this time to start healing or you die.

Single RR HP/Sec: With related skills at V and using LRAR II that is about 85,4 HP/Sec

Single RR Tankability DPS: The amount of Tank (in DPS) each LRAR II’s will add to your ship, taken into account the resistances of your setup.

# RRs to Compensate: The number of Remote Repairers needed to out-heal the Sleeper DPS, given the tankability from above.

Notes:

For ease of calculations, and not trying to be realistic, I assume that Sleepers in Class 5 encounters can do 10.000 DPS on a 0% resistances target. This is not very far off the real DPS 4 Advanced Sleeper Battleships can dish out in a Class 5 btw This guide post has that in mind, but it might be different tactics needed in Class 6 wormholes and if you can shed some light in this please do!

I tried to keep up the same reaction time for reference. 5 sec is not too much but not too little either for your PVE Fleet. If you feel you need more reaction time, then see the below mention, but given that the cycle for LRAR II’s is 4.5 sec I think that 5 sec should be enough reaction time.

Verdict:

The more Resistances, the fewer RRs you will need to get in order to survive. If you can withstand the Alpha strike (not taken into account here) you should be fine as long as your teammates are not slacking.

Other Things to consider / Ways to improve your setup:

If you could add plates, or any other way of increasing your Armor HPs, but without lowering your Resistances – what would you accomplish? Well it wouldn’t change the DPS you receive, nor the Tankability of the RRs, not even the # of RRs you need to balance the incoming fire. The only thing it will improve is the reaction time for your fleet members. So if you have lots of lag when you fleet up, or your teammates are known to go AFK without warning you should consider adding a Plate. But if you are low in resistances, try to buff up your resistances first and work on your reaction times!

For doubling the reaction time to 10 sec you would need to double the amount of Armor HPs without sacrificing any resistances!