W-space break.

Earlier this week AU-F's presence in w-space ended. All the goods were taken out and the POS dismantled. Last week I logged and had an evemail saying to move all my stuff out since the POS was going offline. This took me by surprise. After asking the leaders of the expedition it was part of the plan. Let me explain...

Phryxia (the name given to this class 3 w-space) was a private project. Two members of our corp, Ajax and Rayth Phaenor came with the idea and funding for the project. I'm not certain of the goals, but Tech 3 and ISK income is definitely in the equation. They were kind enough to open this up to the corp. Me and others (Sarah Turtle and Nlor among a few others) were happy to join. Many combat/hacking/archaeology sites were cleared and parts were salvaged/looted. Asteroid and gas sites were sucked dry. Money was made and Tech 3 components were produced.

It was all good (except one small bump at the end i'll talk about in a future post), but as with anything in life it wasn't perfect. The class-3 didn't produce enough links to similar class w-space. There was also a shortage of grav and ladar sites; our mining/gas harvesting group stood there for days without anything to do. There was also limitation in the POS. The storage wasn't big enough for the amount of minerals that were being extracted from the sites and the refinery (which came at the end) was not able to keep up with the ores coming in.

I have my own list of "lessons learned"

• You can assemble ships in the POS, but you can't repackage them. This is a big logistic issue for someone like me with limited hauling capability. With Armand flying an Iteron IV I was able to bring multiple packaged ships at once, but they all had to be flown back to Empire.
• There seems to be no way to divide goods in a hangar. Everyone can see/take anything. This can cause issues.
• You definitely need a battleship with appropriate skills to be of help. It is also a good idea to have a logistic pilot helping out too.
• All pilots need to have good exploration skillz
• All pilots need to have anchoring skillz
• Not seeing anyone in Local until they speak definitely makes thing more interesting and complicated.
• The refinery penalties are huge compared to Empire. Having Refinery V, Refinery Efficiency V and the specific ore specialization to IV is very important. A hardwiring implant will be cool too.

I'm really happy with the experience and can't thank enough Ajax and Rayth for the opportunity. I also want to mentioned ST and Nlor for all their help and guidance while I was there. For a new pilot like me to be able to experience something like this is priceless. I look forward to future w-space projects. As Dante's and Armand's skillz set grow I feel I can help make the next one even a bigger success.