Last night reminded me of my greatest fear for Odyssey: that the expansion will drive me out of low sec. I scanned down an Average Dark Ochre and Gneiss located 0.3 AU from two stargates in a 0.1 security system and started munching on some asteroids. I was able do that because I could just sit in the site hitting the directional scanner every few seconds whenever someone new showed up in local. If I saw probes in space, warp off. With a Procurer that can do 0 to warp in 7 seconds with the fleet bonuses I normally enjoy, I'm pretty safe as long as I pay attention and don't get cocky about my combat abilities (which are pretty poor). With no threats to make me dock up, I managed to mine 120,000 m3 before logging off. That is over 20% of my mining activity for the month of May.
The change to grav sites will make that performance impossible. And please don't tell me I just have to stay aligned. What's to keep a nice cloaky stealth bomber from sneaking into the new ore sites and tackling me when I have to change objects I'm aligning to? Nothing. I can chase off one ship, but if the cloaker has friends in an adjacent system? Pop goes the Procurer.
My current project is comparing my life in low sec before and after Odyssey hits Tranquility and I plan on publishing some of the data on Monday. For eveyone hoping I'll leave low, you'll have to wait another month because that's how long the project will run collecting data on life after Odyssey. The funny thing is that I pushed myself out of my comfort zone and went to low and now CCP is making changes that seemingly will make low sec less comfortable for me. Then again, the possibility exists that I'm just a carebear and carebears are always afraid of change. That's why I will HTFU, not give into my fears and give low sec a real chance for a month.
If I find low sec is even less profitable in Odyssey than today, I will not flee to high sec. But I don't want to live in null sec either. Can you image the drama in any null sec corp I joined if someone started awoxing bots? First, could I resist? Second, would anyone believe I could resist? So living in null sec is probably out of the picture.
So if the low sec period ends, I'll become a cafeteria capsuleer. I'll pick a couple of features from high sec, a couple of features from low, throw in a dash of null sec and w-space and come up with my own play style. While not as cool as being a low sec carebear, that could provide a challenge. But right now I don't really want a challenge. I would just like to get more comfortable in low sec and really explore the possibilities, which I was just beginning to dig into with my operation selling ammunition in a low sec station in Molden Heath. I guess I'll just have to see what Odyssey brings.
