Ironfleet Towing And Salvage

Jim Bridger, reporting in.

The Bantam, as most Caldari know, is a perfectly fine little frigate, good for zipping out to the belts in starter systems and bringing home … well, as much ore as you can reasonably mine in a frigate. Against high sec belt rats, it’s got enough combat power to get the job done, if you work at it. Barely.

In all my time in EVE, I can’t remember hearing anybody seriously talk about fitting it for combat, or using it in combat. Which means that anybody who sees one in space reflexively thinks “newbie!”

Making it [he said with an evil laugh] perfect for my purposes.

I’m a small ships guy. My whole career in EVE, I’ve spent training combat skills for fighting in small ships, destroyer and below. Not that I’ve done much combat … but that’s where my skills are.

So I decided to see what kind of teeth I could put into a Bantam.

There I was, flying through the asteroid belts in my artillery-fitted Bantam. And here’s a dude in an Exequror cruiser, with mining laser beams out and shining. I admire the Exequror hull, I truly do; it’s a large and handsome cruiser with some excellent support capabilities. This guy (one Hesselich, in the Academy of Decadence [ACADE], of the Hereticus Aegis Communis [HAC] alliance) was mining into a Giant Secure Container, but he did have some rat wrecks littered about. He also was flying three mining drones.

My tactic was as simple and ancient as they come. I relieved both of his wrecks of their goods, so that I was flashy red to him. I instructed my ship to orbit him at my optimal. I targeted him.

He targeted me and commenced firing, with what turned out to be a single laser. Presumably, he was thinking the German language equivalent of “Newb in Bantam stealing my schnitzels! Hopeless fool, I’ll teach him a lesson he won’t soon forget! Shnell!”

I hit my afterburners. I turned on my warp scrambler. I commenced launching artillery shells at him.

From there on in, it was a nailbiter, especially at first. Our shields went down at about the same pace. I was hitting him solidly, he was mostly missing, but the hits he landed were hurting.

Once we got through our respective shields, my damage improved against his armor. And I think perhaps he had a run of bad luck, as his hits became fewer.

Once he got into hull, it was over quickly:

008.12.04 18:14:00

Victim: Hesselich
Corp: Academy of Decadence
Alliance: Hereticus Aegis Communis
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Exequror
System: [redacted]
Security: 0.7
Damage Taken: 3368

Involved parties:

Name: Jim Bridger (laid the final blow)
Security: 0.2
Corp: Ironfleet Towing And Salvage
Alliance: Tear Extraction And Reclamation Service
Faction: NONE
Ship: Bantam
Weapon: 250mm Light Artillery Cannon II
Damage Done: 3368

Destroyed items:

Expanded Cargohold II
Small Hull Repairer I
Radio S
Miner II, Qty: 2

Dropped items:

Residual Survey Scanner I
Expanded Cargohold II, Qty: 2
Miner II
Concentrated Veldspar, Qty: 5530 (Cargo)
Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters
Dual Anode Light Particle Stream I

The salvage was perfectly respectable — several TII modules — but the part that’s got me wondering is in the destroyed items. Was he really running a Small Hull Repairer?

A couple hours after the Hulk escaped me, I came upon an Osprey cruiser, mining in a Kaimon belt. Pilot was Dysje, member of Otakus Society [OTK], in the Revolution Alliance [REV]. He had multiple lasers lit and a jet can out, but no visible drones.

When my Crane came rumbling out of warp, his miners were off. His can had just a smidge of ore inside it (less than a Crane load) and I began to fear a trap. But I took it.

Negative response, Captain. He’s not targetting.

Sometimes stronger measures are required. I approached a rat wreck that he owned.

He begins targeting me. I begin targeting him back.

He shoots me with a Flameburst light missile, and the game is ON!

And on, and on, and on. I’m hitting him for triple digits with every heavy missile, but it’s making just tiny little dents in his shield. They aren’t regenerating visibly, though, so maybe he has a big passive tank? On a mining cruiser? It’s possible, but I’ve never seen it.

After most of a launcher full of my default ammo, his shield is maybe one-third gone. And by this stage in the proceedings, I’m starting to worry, as I always do with these corped-up guys, about the retribution fleet that might be inbound.

It’s time to reload with better ammo. Which, I pause and do.

Right about now a Gurista rat appears and begins shooting him. Hey, I’ll take all the help I can get.

The new missiles are doing thirty percent more damage, and his shield drops below his peak recharge and starts falling fast. He decides (far too late!) to pull out a pair of T1 combat drones. They buzz around with paint guns or BB guns or something, but they aren’t doing appreciable damage to my shields.

And then, finally, it’s over. Kaboom!

Is it just me, or did CCP tweak the explosion graphic for more oomph while I was away?

And, can this really be my first kill mail in 100 days? I have been SLACKING!

2008.12.02 22:41:00

Victim: dysje
Corp: Otakus Society
Alliance: Revolution Alliance
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Osprey
System: Kaimon
Security: 0.7
Damage Taken: 12260

Involved parties:

Name: Marlenus (laid the final blow)
Security: 1.2
Corp: Ironfleet Towing And Salvage
Alliance: Tear Extraction And Reclamation Service
Faction: NONE
Ship: Crane
Weapon: Caldari Navy Thunderbolt Heavy Missile
Damage Done: 11537

Name: Guristas Invader / Guristas
Damage Done: 723

Destroyed items:

Miner II
Large Subordinate Screen Stabilizer I
Standard Missile Launcher I
Large Shield Extender I

Dropped items:

Flameburst Light Missile, Qty: 229 (Cargo)
Flameburst Light Missile, Qty: 24
Miner II, Qty: 2
Quantum Co-Processor I, Qty: 2
Expanded Cargohold I
Solid Pyroxeres, Qty: 1888 (Cargo)
Large Shield Extender I

The killmail explains the crunch — our boy had three large shield extenders fitted. No wonder it took so long!

The pair of Miner IIs isn’t the multi-million ISK bonus it used to be, but it’s still good loot and worth the ammo expenditure. Not a bad afternoon’s salvage work if I say so myself.

It’s been awhile since I got a good chance to shoot at a Hulk in my beloved blockade runners, but today I found one in Kaimon mining into three neatly stacked and nicely labeled jet cans. (The one on my bookmark list was called “Sieriel PX-Kaimon II B2-01” — how precise is that?)

So I come rumbling up on the can and flip it, putting a tiny fraction in my tiny Blockade Runner cargo hold. The pilot was flying five T1 combat drones, and they immediately began trying to eat me.

They failed — insufficient DPS to break my shield regeneration curve.

Meanwhile, I’ve put the Hulk in a headlock and am pummeling him with heavy missiles.

It’s very slow going. I’m gaining, but my DPS seems to be reduced since the ships and missiles were rebalanced (this is the first time I’ve had a chance to shoot at a barge since then.) Or, possibly, he had some tank fitted — unlikely, but certainly possible.

So, while I’m chewing through his shields, I’m looking him up to see who he is. Pilot name is Sieriel, member of Cohortes Stellaris (Ticker COH, 55 members, German speaking, looks like they are selling capital ships). These guys could be trouble; will this Hulk pilot be getting reinforcements before I break his tank? Worse yet, COH is a member of ParadoXon Alliance [PX], which has ten other members. No telling how many friends will be dropping out of warp!

And then (it being the time of year when I live at a place with crappy internets) I lost connection. I’d say I had him to about 55% shields, so still some uncertainty about whether I could break him below peak regen, when I lost the connection.

Logged back in quickly, warped back. He’s still there! But, I guess, scooping drones to leave, because he was gone before I got him locked.

So I flipped another can, it having been more than 2.5 minutes. And then I went to get a stealth bomber. By now I’m sure he must have corp assistance on the way, and I’m expecting to see an escorted hauler return for the ores.

It never happens. Dude never came back. Belt sat empty until aggro timers expired.

Meanwhile I’m looking for my nearest Bustard. Sadly, they are all too far away, but I have an expanded Badger II in system. Which, eventually, I use to haul both of the Ironfleet cans of Veldspar, and then (having seen no sign of enemy action in nearly 30 minutes) the last remaining COH can.

I’m still marveling at the fact that in an organization of such size, there was nobody interested in helping the hulk pilot haul his ore from a hot zone.

I’ve always considered myself a bit of a “carebear with teeth”, so the “carebear tears” allusion in the title of my new alliance is a slightly uncomfortable fit. But I have long enjoyed collecting good smacktalk from people who have strange ideas about the way peace and harmony ought to rule in EVE — even though it manifestly doesn’t.

So, tonight I was on a routine sweep of my belts when I encountered something I haven’t seen in a long time — a new character mining in a Navitas mining frigate. Normally I’d leave such minnows alone, but this one (Deter Javan) had an annoying corp name (Shoal of the Intrepid Righteousness) and — oddly for a two-week-old character — an alliance tag for an outfit called Integrity Respect Selflessness. Worse yet, he had named his ore jet can something like “Property of the Shoal Of The Intrepid”.

My Suddenly Ninja allies would die of shame if I left this cub unmolested. Besides, he’s well connected, he might have valuable stuff on board and he might decide to “teach the helpless hauler a lesson”. (He is, after all, flying one combat drone.)

So, in I swept in my slightly crunchy blockade runner transport. Click-foom, his can is gone and I’m about 20k units of Scordite the wealthier. All in a day’s work.

What’s this? He wants to talk?

Sure enough, the first miner smacktalk I’ve enjoyed in months:

Deter Javan > was that honestly necessary
Marlenus > Necessary?
Deter Javan > yes
Deter Javan > was it
Marlenus > I dunno, it’s what I do. Is the game necessary?
Deter Javan > no, but you know I pay for it and I’d like to not have my stuff stolen if you don’t mind
Marlenus > Stolen? I’m just salvaging jettisoned ore. I pay too you know.
Deter Javan > it was mine and you know it
Marlenus > It’s mine now, thank you.
Deter Javan > I tagged it and everything
Deter Javan > you’re a fucking dick dude
Marlenus > And I put it in my cargo hold.
Marlenus > No, I’m a *salvager*
Marlenus > And I pick up stuff that others throw overboard
Marlenus > It’s what I do
Marlenus > There are a lot of us, we have an alliance and everything

Unfortunately I lost connection at that point, I’m sure there would have been more.

If there were a “Smacktalk Bingo” drinking game, this player would have scored at least three chugs.

First: “I pay for this game” as a reason why the player should be immune from the activities of other players. Who among us does not pay?

Second: “I tagged it and everything” — the precious idea that putting his name on the can should have caused other players to leave it alone. Is he aware what kind of game EVE is?

Third: Rank profanity. Enough said about that. He who swears first, loses.

No guilt about taking candy from babies this time — because babies don’t have potty mouths.

I haven’t been online much this week — real world calling — but I logged in an hour ago (after midnight local) to shuffle some ships and organize some gear for an hour. But of course, first I had to check my local belts for Dread Guristas, loose ore, and similar hazards to navigation.

Found a guy mining in a Vexor.

Just there, mining, miles from any containers, all by himself, no jetcans out, mining lasers shining cheerily.

I said to myself, “Self”, I said, “this cannot last. I shall come back later and see what is to be found then.”

So, I finished sweeping the belts, I ran an errand in the next system, and I returned.

I found my industrious Vexor pilot mining about twenty klicks from a jumbled pair of Giant Secure Containers, shuttling back and forth to them to dump his cargo hold. The GSCs were adrift where he’d (presumably) jettisoned them from a Badger, nav lights flashing green and brightly.

Flashing green. Yum.

Off I went to get my Bustard. Overkill, but it was handy.

Warp in on the cans. Scoop. Leave. Takes awhile — the Bustard is no twinkletoes — but there’s no reaction from the Vexor, who keeps mining about 20km away.

I wish I could have been there when his mining lasers turned off and he went to approach his … cans? “Hey, where are my cans? WTF? What happened to my cans? I tell you, they were just there, they were RIGHT THERE!”

One can was full, one was about 10% full.

Twenty minutes later, I’ve been watching local for puzzled or outraged inquiries, but nothing.

There’s a corporation in one of my systems called “Rampaging Alpacas”, which I think is one of the great corp names. Sadly, although they used to be numerous, they’ve suffered some sort of recent explosion, and yesterday when I looked they only had two members. I mention this because all of the players in today’s salvage operation were former members of Rampaging Alpacas but for one, who is still an alpaca. I don’t know why they are mostly now in NPC corporations, but today’s salvage operation would have been impossible otherwise, so I won’t complain.

Anyway, I warped to the belt in my salvage Crane, to find a former Alpacan mining into three numbered jetcans, in a hulk, mining drones out. Cool.

Closed slowly on the first can. It was full. That’s great — I flipped it — but it left me in a bind, because I’ve got a 2.5 minute wait before I can create another jet can. Sigh, can’t haul it all. Filled my Crane from the second can and warped home.

I decided to go back in the Iron Crowbar (as I call my favorite salvage Ferox) to guard my can and (if I’m lucky) secure some more ore.

Warped in at 20 clicks. There’s now a hauler present and only one “enemy” jetcan. I lock my own can and tractor it away from that immediate vicinity. Then I hit the afterburner and head in to see about flipping that other can.

By the time I get there, it’s only got about 10k cubic meters of ore left in it, but what the hey. I flip it, put it on tow, and go powering out of the belt.

When I get 20km past the first (full) Ironfleet jetcan, I drop the partial and pick up the full one, and then keep running for deep space. The idea here is to make it harder for them to flip it back, and to keep the can moving so that nobody can warp to zero on it. Then, once all agro is clear, I can come back in the Bustard and move it in one shot.

Normally that works. Today, an Iskur and a Scorpion showed up, and then the hauler pilot in a Caracal. The Hulk pilot (the only guy who can shoot at me) continues mining.

The Iskur immediately closes with me and launches five Tech II combat drones. I expect him to flip some or all of the ore and then dare me to shoot at him, which would be foolish insomuch as my Ferox is not optimized for catching small fast frigates with good skills.

Only, he doesn’t. He just chases me.

And chases me.

And chases me.

Much more slowly, the Scorpion and the Caracal also follow me. None of these characters has agro rights, so I’m not sure what the plan is. But they are all former corpmates, and I assume they have one.

Eventually I figure they must plan to flip the ore once I leave, and then haul it before I can come back for it. But, they don’t have a hauler present. Maybe they plan to flip it and then pwn my hauler when I come to take it back?

Dunno. But I’m now 200+ km from the belt, all agro timers have run out, so it’s time to move. Drop the can, bookmark it, and warp home for my Bustard.

Warp back (and this is key) 10km from the can. There I find the Caracal pilot, the Scorp pilot, and the Iskur pilot, sitting around drinking Quafe and admiring the jet can one of them has apparently just shat out. But my own can still exists, and nobody is flashing red. Lock the can, hit the tractor. ZOOMcan!

The Caracal pilot begins flashing red as my jetcan flies out of his range. He obviously managed to grab a cruiserload of ore, at least.

Then the can reaches me. It’s still virtually full — he must not have managed to flip any. Dump it all in my hold, warp home laughing.

There’s still another can back at the belt, 1/3 full, so I go back for that. Warp to it. It’s still there. Flashy red Caracal, and the Scorp, and the Iskur, all still there, out at 200 kilometers. Take ore, go home.

Now for some fun. Back in the Ferox. Warp to where the flashy red Caracal used to be.

Sadly, he’s not there no more; he’s 50 klicks away. What the heck, I approach him to see if he runs, and lock him. He locks me back. Iskur and Scorp are standing by, interested neutrals who cannot play. I hold my fire, turn on my afterburner, creep closer. He is running away as if to kite me, but I am catching him slowly, and he’s allowing it.

When I’m at point blank range, I turn on my warp scrambler, hit “keep at 500m”, overheat my afterburner, and start launching missiles. Then I launch drones. If he’s really the world’s slowest Caracal, he’ll be dead soon.

And he is. He starts shooting at me and trying to outrun my scramble range, but he can’t do it. He’s gonna die, while his friends watch helplessly.

This is where the alert readers will be smiling and saying “Marlenus, you don’t know dick about PvP.” Which is true. Because right then the Iskur starts bumping the crap out of me. It slows me down, the Caracal quickly gets out of scramble range, and warps away with dented armor.

So I begin to align for warp home. It’s going slowly, the Iskur is still bumping me and it looks like the Scorp is still trying to lumber into range to do the same. Interesting! Can they really keep me here long enough for the Caracal pilot to come back in something dangerous?

Answer: No. Once I remembered that my afterburner was still on, and turned it off, I was able to get aligned between bumps (nav skills for the win!) and warp out. But it was an amusing and very instructive encounter.

Not to mention: profitable.

First of all, I’d like to apologize for the long silence. As mentioned, I’ve been having a lot of fun in the Caldari factional warfare fleets, and the skills I’m learning will serve me well when I decide to return full-time to my salvage activities. But, sadly, most of the FW fleet actions don’t generate much worth blogging about. It’s like that weary general said during World War One: They came at us in the same old way, and we killed them in the same old way.

Only, sometimes, it’s vice versa.

My other problem has been technical; EVE has been marginally unstable for at least a month, crashing me out at the most inopportune times. I upgraded my video, no help; reinstalled my OS, no help; and then (far too late) discovered I had some bad memory. It seems to be stable again, after many frustrating nights of troubleshooting and tinkering; I’m keeping my fingers crossed and holding my breath.

Moving rapidly along, you want to hear about the blockade runner versus the battle cruiser, dontcha?

First, some background. After I got a hulk kill in my trusty blockade runner transport back in early June, I’ve been wondering what’s the next big thing to hunt, for another notch in the ship’s bell.

Tonight, I found a Ferox mining in a belt, with at least three mining lasers active. “Aha!” I said. A battlecruiser will do. It will do nicely.

Now, let’s be realistic about this ambition. A Crane has exactly one weapon slot. Is it even possible for a Crane to break the tank on a Ferox? I can’t say, but I’m certain it would have to be a very lame Ferox.

And, to be blunt, that’s what I had. I looked up the pilot, one InfameWolf of White Star Corporation [W.SC], member of Talon Alliance. Date of birth: twelve days ago. I am not making this up.

A Ferox is a forgiving ship, but after you’ve mounted three mining lasers as a 12 day old character, what could you possibly have left in the way of weapons and tank? There’s never going to be a better target than this one. It’s late at night and he’s been in his new corp for one day, so the odds seem decent that he won’t even get reinforced.

So, selecting my very best and most deadly combat Crane from the array of fitted Cranes in my hangar, I warped to zero on his cargo can.

I opened his can.

It had about 12k cubic meters of fancy Plagioclase ores in it. And some heavy assault missiles. Which vanished as I was transferring the ore to an Ironfleet jet can. Hmm, better not stick close to this guy.

He’s targeting, he’s launching drones, a motley assortment of three Tech One combat drones. His drones begin pecking at me.

I warp scramble him and attempt to orbit him at good scramble range, and begin pecking at him with Caldari Navy heavy missiles. He manages to find at least one gun, (type unknown) and two heavy missile launchers, and begins shooting at me with those.

His damage is … sustainable. It’s close; he took me fairly fast down to the best place on the recharge curve for my shields, and I’m having to use some shield boost to stay there. But it’s shield boost at a level I can (I think) sustain forever. The gun stopped scratching me when I got out to max disruptor range and began orbiting, and no HAMs are hitting me out there either.

Meanwhile, my own heavy missile system is — well — gaining. That’s the best I can say; it’s eating his shield faster than his recharge rate, but it’s going to take half an hour to get him there, and I’ll probably need to overheat the launcher if I’m going to have a prayer of getting through his peak recharge.

I decide I might as well take out his drones, just to make my life easier. I pop one of them, and just then … WTF?

He warped away.

Was he warp stabbed? Did I flail at my navigation and let him get outside of warp disruptor range? I can’t say. Why did he run? I assumed this would all end badly after he summoned a friend — did he not have any friends online? I just don’t know.

All I know is, a Ferox (possibly the lamest Ferox in the known universe, but a fugly battlecruiser nonetheless) attacked me, and I shot at it in my transport ship, and it ran away, leaving ore behind to be salvaged. This makes me very happy.

Since there was too much ore to haul home in a Crane, I went and got my own Ferox, the one with a tractor beam for moving ore cans out of hostile warp-in zones. And then I cheerfully towed the can away from the belt and waited for my new best friend InfameWolf to come back.

Which he did, about sixty clicks away from me. I targeted him, but he prudently chose to flee some more.

Eventually, I docked the Ferox, grabbed a handy Badger II, and hauled all the tasty plagioclase home. It felt good to be hauling ore again, I need to do this more often.

All the Factional Warfare excitement has really put a crimp in my old-time aggressive salvaging fun. I’ve been too busy fitting, fighting, and losing ships to bother much with any but the most opportunistic of salvage opportunities.

Like the one I encountered today. I was putting a different fit on my Scorpion, and on a whim, I warped to the belt to jam the crud out of a Gurista Arrogator. Instead, I found a dude in an Osprey snuggling up to a Giant Secure Can. It was NOT anchored.

Back I went for my Crane.

By the time I returned in the “helpless hauler”, the Osprey dude had managed to anchor the GSC. Drat.

But hey. Has he had the time, or the knowledge, to set the password?

In a word, no.

So I removed the ore from the can, fully expecting to get a criminal flag the way I do when I remove ore from a jet can. Only, no flag!

Cool! I’ve never found an unpassworded can with stuff in it before, so I’d never realized there is no agro when you take from an unpassworded can. I looked around, saw two more anchored cans with the same owner, and went scooting around emptying them, too. Tasty, tasty pyroxeres!

By now the erstwhile ore owner is convo-ing me in impotent fury. He keeps opening new convos and typing “WTF” into the windows, then apparently losing the windows, before starting over. I think he sent me about five “WTF!” convos.

I had to jet some of the ore — there was too much for one trip in my Crane — so he had a chance to take some back if he was so inclined. Sensibly, he wasn’t.

Eventually he manages to keep his eyes on a chat window long enough to ask why I was stealing his ore. That question always bemuses me, I’m never sure what to say that isn’t hopelessly sarcastic. Usually I fall back on my “I prefer to consider it aggressive salvaging” and leave the “why” unaddressed — if the tastiness of ISK isn’t universal, I don’t know how to communicate it.

But then he asked a very good question: “How are you doing that without flashing red?” I didn’t want to educate him about password protection, so I simply said “you have failed to secure your ore” and closed the chat. But I got to thinking about the question.

Is taking ore from an anchored can with no password most analogous to scooping a can with no anchor (in which case the lack of red-flashy is to be expected)? Or is it more like taking ore from a jet can? If the latter, there should be red-flashy, and there wasn’t.

Given the two years of ugliness with VampireZIM that’s at least partly founded on his opinion that my operations against his POS were exploitative, I’d much prefer to know what the game mechanic is supposed to be. And I wasn’t quite sure, in tonight’s case, whether my salvage victim should have gotten the right to shoot at me.

So what did I do?

I petitioned myself.

Well, not literally. I filed an exploit petition, but they are described as being for the purpose of “asking whether something is an exploit” as well as reporting exploits, so I wrote a nice note explaining what happened and asking whether the lack of a crim flag when I took from the unpassworded can was “working as intended” or a bug.

Within minutes, I had my answer from GM Surmoi. Criminal flagging, it turns out, is only supposed to happen with respect to wrecks or jet cans, but never in connection with secure containers. Cool!

Moral: Anchor those bad boys, and then don’t forget to set the password!

I was out close to down time, trying to find and close some defensive FW complexes. Got booted out of one by a trio of Gallente plexers, but not before bookmarking their wrecks. So, after they left the system, I went back to clean up.

So far, in my experience, plex loot consists of Navy tags plus a very light sprinkling of T1 modules, usually fairly low meta-level stuff. Very light loot over all.

Then I found, in a medium wreck, several T1 modules, plus a tag, plus a short brick (100) Caldari Navy Havoc Heavy Missiles. You could have knocked me over with a feather.

Faction ammo? In plex loot? Cool.

That makes me wonder whether other faction items might ever spawn as uber-rare items in the loot tables. Readers, have any of you found anything interesting on the faction warfare NPCs?

So I was about three jumps out in low sec, in a Griffin, looking for factional warfare trouble, or whatever else I might find. Warped to a gate and there, about 12 km away, was a giant secure container, a huge secure container, and a corpse. That, to a salvager’s eye, is a promising debris field.

So I scooted over and checked the containers, they were full of an unfamiliar (to me) substance called Vanadium Hafnite. Moon minerals I assume, or reaction products therefrom. I checked the market, and discovered I was looking at 12 million ISK worth of goodies, plus of course the value of the containers. Hmm, this sounds like a job for a Badger!

So, back I went to high sec, grabbed an old Badger I, fitted it for maximum agility and slipperyness, slapped on an extra coat of dark grey lubricated paint and a pair of medium shield extenders, and blasted out through the Tama gate into hauler hell.

Amusingly, I never saw a war target the whole way. It was smoother than a trip to Jita, just zipped out there, scooped the cans, and zipped home.

Well, to the extent that a Badger ever zips. But you know what I mean.

The empty containers alone were worth the price of the ship and fittings. The Vanadium Hafnite? A nifty bonus!