Blockade Runners

Blockade Runners are Tech 2 industrial ships, specialized for travel through dangerous areas of space. Though they can carry only relatively small amounts of cargo (compared to other industrial ships), they are some of the fastest and most agile ships in EVE, and can fit covert ops cloaking devices, making them very hard to catch by enemy pilots.

Cargo

Most blockade runners can carry around 4000-6500 m3 of cargo (depending on fit), which is slightly less than the fast Tech 1 industrial ships. Additionally, every blockade runner can be fit for maximum cargo space, allowing them to carry just over 10,000 m3 (so that they can carry a packaged cruiser), but at the cost of reduced agility and/or speed.

Blockade runners are immune to cargo scanners (so others players cannot tell what you are transporting), but can still be scanned for contraband by NPC customs ships.

Speed and agility

Blockade runners are the fastest industrial ships by quite a margin, both at sub-light speeds and in warp. In sub-light, they can do at least 200 m/s, and can top 300 m/s when fit for speed (which is comparable to a fast cruiser). In warp, blockade runners are some of the fastest ships in EVE: when fit for speed, they can reach over 9 AU/s, meaning they can easily outrun any ship save for speed-fit interceptors and the Leopard.

In addition to their speed, blockade runners are also very agile. Even when fit to maximize cargo space, they can align and warp in 5 seconds (assuming the propulsion module is not active); speed-fit blockade runners can align in 4 seconds (or even 3 seconds for some extreme fits, which is as agile as a frigate). Reducing align time is, however, heavily dependent on having good navigation skills or fitting implants.

Tank

Given that blockade runners are designed to fly quickly and stealthily, it's not surprising that their tanks are relatively weak. They have around 8-15k effective hit points (EHP), which is roughly comparable to the Tech 1 bulk transports. On the upside, their signature radius is around 110m, half of the Tech 1 industrials', which makes them harder to lock on to or hit with weapons. Nonetheless, blockade runners are fragile for their size; most cruisers with a similar signature radius have 4-10x as much EHP. Go to this website for a horror story of what can go wrong.

Cloak

Blockade runners can fit covert ops (CovOps) cloaking devices, which means they can warp while cloaked. They can also use covert jump bridges (created by Black Ops battleships).

Tauza's fit

[Viator, Viator]
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II

Medium F-S9 Regolith Compact Shield Extender
10MN Y-S8 Compact Afterburner
Medium F-S9 Regolith Compact Shield Extender

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Salvager II

Medium Cargohold Optimization I
Medium Cargohold Optimization II

This fit allows me to carry 12,871 m3

Which allows one packaged cruiser and one packaged frigate with all of their fittings. You can of course change this around as you see fit.

You can swap the Expanded Cargohold II's for Inertial Stabilizers II's and that will increase your agility and let you get to warp faster, as the expense of less cargo capacity.

The salvager is for wrecks of opportunity. Almost every trip I see wrecks on gates. You can safely salvage them without going criminal and they can give you very good salvage.

Locator Agents

Hello everyone, Tauza here with another quick update. Today we talk about Locator Agents.

During our last war we used the Locator agents quite often to find War Targets that were moving all the time. They are a good game mechanic to have but they do require some work to use.

What are Locator Agents

Locator agents are regular NPC agents that offer the special service of locating other player characters. You can find them via this website, by setting the 'Locator' picklist to 'yes' and setting other filters you may want applied.

To use a locator agent, you need certain standings with the agent, without which you cannot use the locator service. Locator agents can only find targets within a certain area, depending on the level of missions they provide. Level 4 agents can locate anyone in any location outside of wormhole space. The cost of the service depends upon the location of the target in relation to the agent, increasing on a scale of same system-same constellation-same region-different region.

The target will receive no notification that he has been located, making the service ideal for tracking down war targets or players upon whom you have kill rights. Also keep this in mind when dealing with war targets or when another has kill rights upon you, as you will have no idea of whether they have used a locator agent to find you.

After using the service, you cannot use the same agent again for a period of time, depending on the level of the agent.

How do you use Locator Agents

When you talk to the locator agent, you will have a button to locate a character besides the request mission button. You have to type in the name of the character and the locator agent will give you a quote how much it will cost (Note that the lower the price the closer the target player is to your location, so you can determine without paying money whether the target is in another region, just another constellation or in your system).

The locator agent will then run its location service which will take a couple of minutes, depending on the agents level. The higher the level, the faster he runs.

Once done the locator agent will send you a Notification with the location of the target when you started the search which will include the system, constellation and region as well as the station the player might be docked at. If the target is in space, no station will be listed. E.g. "The sleazebag is currently in the Bukah system, Nohshayess constellation of the Khanid region."

Wormholes 101

Hello everyone! Tauza here again with another quick topic for those that have interest in it.

Wormholes

If you have spent any amount of time in Eve Online you may have heard about Wormholes without knowing anything about there. If your interested there are of course lots of blogs and videos out there that can help explain about them. Eve University for example :-) BUT I wanted to give you a few videos that will help you maybe decide if you want to research it more.

First, here is is the first of a four part series from CCP that in my humble opinion is a must watch series. I will just link the first one, follow the rest if you wish.

The second video I would recommend is one that helps you identify them. If you find this is something that you want to do, then at this point you should watch the next one. If you started to watch the first videos I listed and your not interested then just stop reading this now and save yourself some time :-)

Interested in more posts like this one then let me know in the comments below.