Why?

Y114.11.30

Seen lots of rage recently on the EVE-O forums about hi vs low vs null, buff vs nerf vs leave it. This has caused me to think about just what I want from the game I play, as sometimes I need reminding that it is just that – a game. A bloody good one which I probably play and think about far too much, but a game nonetheless.

Forget what I have done in the past, most of it is somewhere in this blog anyway. So what am I doing now [in order of time spent playing]?

Nullsec PVP
Love it, currently my raison d'être in EVE. Fleeting up with 20-30 like minded individuals under a bonkers Dutch FC, roaming round with a purpose / with no purpose, shooting shit, getting shot, running away, clicking on those links in fleet you know are going to hurt your eyes and sensibilities, reposting them the next day – all great fun. The start-up costs were high, the logistics can be a pain, it can be pricey losing too much stuff too regularly and my wallet has never been the same, but fuck it – it’s all good.

The biggest problem is squeezing it into RL and getting RL squared away for a couple of hours by fleet form-up o’clock. All other problems are insignificant compared to this one.

Hisec missioning
Great for zoning out with less risk / paranoia, making a bit of ISK, hanging with me corpies, buffing the corp wallet on Man-Love Sunday and you get to fly something nice. Also good for squeezing in to those times I either miss fleet departure or can’t devote a couple of hours to TS comms and ignore RL chatter. Can also reduce training times as I can fly a clone with learning implants.

Dull as dishwater solo though and salvaging / looting the missions while not in itself time consuming, leads to monthly trips to the trade hub to unload and flog it all and return trips to update market orders. This last point could be ameliorated by contracting it all to a trade alt and parking them in hub. This is what I will do, as I have no way of affording the Orca he’s nearly finished training :P EDIT – done.

Nullsec ratting / anomalies
Much better ISK generation than hisec, but the risk of / from ‘undesirables’ in system makes watching Local a must, increasing the paranoia factor and making it not so compatible with the RL factors keeping me out of null PVP in the first place. Other detractors include the risk of ship loss, meaning you won’t be using your shiny boat as it becomes an ISK piñata for those aforementioned undesirables. This makes room clearance times longer and of course, anoms are somewhat harder than hi sec missions. A good opportunity for chatting with corpies though.

PI
Is ok in hisec and I didn’t really see any massive benefit in lowsec, but once you have sampled the PI profits of null, you will never go back. Doesn’t take long, moving product can be a pain due to undesirables, but what I could do is put another blockade runner in my PI system to make things easier. Doesn’t take long to do if the way is clear, but I probably wouldn’t do it if I didn’t have to.

Ah…
You will notice that I have left out most of the EVE ‘professions’ – mining, manufacturing, hauling, piracy [boo hiss], hisec complexes, faction warfare, lowsec, et al, simply because I know absolutely nothing about them beyond making rigs from salvage and ammo from minerals for my own use. For a more comprehensive list, look here.

Anyway
So, back to the original point of hi vs low vs null, buff vs nerf vs leave it. It’s all about risk vs reward. I like nullsec PVP [high risk, no ISK reward], but without a decent income from high sec missions [low risk, fair ISK reward], I would be unable to enjoy it as frequently. Yes, I should maximise my PI skills to get more PI income [low risk, fair ISK reward], but I have other, more fun skills to train. Yes, I should do more null anomalies [fair risk, high reward] and be less risk averse about ISK generation. I should probably start hauling on my alt, manufacturing, trading and put up a POS too, but while I have limits to time spent playing, I just want to play.

Tl;dr
I like to blow shit up which involves getting blown up and replacing my losses. I want and need low[er] risk ISK generation abilities otherwise both my ability to play and the enjoyment of the time I do play, will slowly disappear. Yes, higher risk needs higher reward, but should lower risk income be nerfed? Not from my point of view.

Training
Large projectiles > large AC spec [and now trade skills on the alt[ar boy]].

Fly safe,

o7

All roads lead to ausfahrt

Y114.26.11

So low
Been hit by blog ennui recently, sorry. It’s over now.

Mr In-between
In between hi & null at the moment, hisec for grinding and hauling to the trade hubs to shift the loot and slowly build that PVP wallet up again. Also fitted a new null ratter BS and a cheap whore salvage boat and got them into null to start er, null ratting, something I have never experienced before. Also managed to move some JC’s into systems that I may actually use them. Still got one in the back of beyond in slave space for the anoms I have never bothered with, but I’ll leave him there. Again, the sheer logistics [and blind luck] involved in moving shit in null never ceases to amaze me.

I am obviously shiteing it about null ratting – blah blah hard spawns, blah blah reds in system, but just popping the weenies off the gates while roaming gives enough financial benefit to make it worthwhile. Probably.

The future is a past
I spoke about some offline corpies coming back online recently and another one has come out of the woodwork and already started to set up the corp indy arm again, which is great news – we lose shit – he builds shit – we buy said shit off him – we go on corp mining ops to give him shit to build shit with – business stays in corp – lovely. And more importantly, we have another great guy online and [at least] one more oldie on the way.

Faith
Intel – use it. If it is more than 1 minute old, it is worthless. [Protip, kids - enable timestamp on chat windows]. Was flying logi the other night on the other side of the universe and faced with 40-odd jumps home – I know what you’re thinking and no, I didn’t AFK autopilot. Kept with the [loose] fleet but detoured via the trade hub to update some sell orders and by the time I got to one jump from home, most others were docked up and AFK.

For some reason my voice comms rendered me inaudible to those still on TS, intel had reported some earlier reds had been cleared out and the last time stamped report, some 3 minutes ago reported inbound gate clear. I needed a bio and bed, so I cheerfully jumped in to find a bunch of reds on gate scramming something else. Shite. Spam warp to station and hope. I sure needed a bio after that.

Fortunately I had jumped in mostly aligned so got to warp and safe real quick, then a convo opens up from alliance mate who had jumped through successfully a minute before telling me the gate was red. He also told me that one red was in a Sabre and thank god they didn’t bubble. Word.

I’m dreaming and I can’t wake up
Back to PVP and a couple of great roams [including the one above I was returning from] through largely empty null at the other end of the universe and both ending up traversing low sec – DPS one night, then logi the next gave me some fun times, a couple of juicy KM’s and a cerebral workout. The first roam nearly ended in disaster [though it was paid for by then ;P] when the locals hot dropped us low sec, but just a fraction too late to catch us. Still, mad props to them for being prepared to take 30-odd sec status hits to have a go. The second ended up with us using someone else’s bubbles to camp their own hisec exit gate and kill them. Quite bizarre, really.

‘Til I die
Still not had the ‘Ceptor out in anger, but 9.5km/s overheated is not to be sniffed at. And sniff that lovely burning smell is all you do, as 2 or 3 cycles of overheat toasts everything in a frigate hull. Moar nanite paste pleez.

Logi Is the new DPS. On my 15” non-wide laptop, it is all windows and no space view, but hey, it is rather intense and makes me feel that the 2 months spent training Logi and its bitches was worth it. Gives you a real feel for who is doing what on the battlefield, too. Looking forward to the rebalances on Dec 4th and really looking forward to all the patches to fix the broken stuff CCP ‘haven’t touched’ on Dec 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th. Note to Santa – new i7 17” widescreen laptop please.

Training
Large projectiles V for all the PVE I’m doing lately, 5 days.

Fly safe

o7

To absent friends

Y114.11.11

Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bidd'st the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!

O Christ! Whose voice the waters heard
And hushed their raging at Thy word,
Who walked'st on the foaming deep,
And calm amidst its rage didst sleep;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!

Most Holy Spirit! Who didst brood
Upon the chaos dark and rude,
And bid its angry tumult cease,
And give, for wild confusion, peace;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!

O Trinity of love and power!
Our brethren shield in danger's hour;
From rock and tempest, fire and foe,
Protect them wheresoe'er they go;
Thus evermore shall rise to Thee
Glad hymns of praise from land and sea.

Fly safe, wherever you may be.

o7

Wheels of steel

Y114.11.07

Freeway mad
In opposition to a previous post about never grinding missions again, I have been grinding missions again, hence the lack of rubbish to write. Some fun times though – corp have restarted ’Man-love Sundays’ at a 100% tax rate to fleet up, mission and buff the corp wallet to pay for all the shite we lose as wannabe 133t PVPers. Made a nice contribution then a couple of us lost shinys to Worlds Collide – scram > web > full room aggro > pop > target CEO > repeat. Real men cover their own losses.

Suzie hold on
Really nice to see a corpie back who has been AWOL for far too long. Not only is it great to have her back, but she is a real life girl. Way. She is also a mission whore who can buff the wallet while we empty it :P With any luck she will drag another ex CEO and their mate back in and we’ll be laughing all the way to the Crystal Boulevard of Caille.

Stand up and be counted
Well, I did last night and after a mad hi sec rush to get to the WH which turned out to be a mahousive trap [I never got there], we reshipped to Bombers, I got no kills and even better than that, got smartied [along with everyone else] by the resident alliance [and ex-corp] tranny. Hoho – more shopping to do in between grinding. Pod saved again though o/ Proper glad I buffed those trade skills for selling mission loot and I also need to cash in some more LP for faction crystals and flog them, though I’ll never get that Navy Apoc at this rate – see kids, PVP just takes over. Didn't I have some PI somewhere?

Training
Just unlocked Interceptors, so I shall be losing some small shite over the next few weeks when normal PVP service is resumed. I’ll buff ‘Ceptors & Small Rail Spec to IV, then it’s T2 large AC’s to get some me time in the queue.

Fly safe.

o7

Dead men tell no tales

Y114.11.06

All the aces
I foolishly offered to undertake some shite jobs that other corpies are too clever to accept. Following the success of Operation Sort the Corp BM’s [no bad feedback as yet - give it time], Operation Sort the Main Hangar is next and requires a couple of evenings in hi sec doing nothing but. Operation Collect the Sov Fees now has its own carefully crafted spreadsheet that both works and doesn’t give ######## anymore as the columns are wide enough for the figures. Only took an hour to work it out.

Talking head
Corp has been having another recruitment drive and we have a couple more new folk on board which is always good. Chatted to a recruit from the last batch and he’s getting on fine – just needs dragging kicking and screaming into PVP, as did I. Fuck it, it’s only toy money / real money / pixels / time / arguments with the missus / numbers on a screen – DO IT, son. Ooh, listen to me the PVP pro. Joke, kids – I am not in anyway pro at anything.

Lawman
For some reason known only to themselves, the main corp director & the CEO have promoted me to a director role in the corp, presumably due to all the perceived work I am putting in. I reckon it was just to pacify me after training exclusively for bloody Logistics for 2 months, but hey. Bloody hell, what a lot of buttons that opens up in the Corporation tab. Best not click any of them then and no more quickly doing anything in that window while doing anything else.

Sweet revenge
And on the subject of Logi, here is an interesting post from ol’ Jester regarding Logi V. Least it’s in the can now and can’t wait for decent T1 logi to lose.

Bomber
Went out in my first bomber fleet last night – wow, what a rush. Frig V, Covops I, Meta torp launchers and T1 bomb launcher – train it now. Don’t embarrass yourself beforehand by asking the wrong alliance FC for a fit for his fleet though. Still, he kindly gave me one [o/]. I failed my trial bombing run on the actual FC, but at least I had remembered to offline the launcher so I don’t owe him a ship. Off we went with plan in hand - skulking, sneaking, cloaking, warping @ 30 to set up for runs. I managed one successful run [out of 2] but I was little late launching so only got a pod – still one bomb one kill works for me. Fired the torps in anger for the first time and whored final blow too. Good result from the evening as the only other time I have taken the bomber out was to sit cloaked off a gate and watch the ATX final. Still, I had more luck than my corp compadre who passed his trial run but who’s bomb was involved in a blue on blue [or is that purple on purple?] with the FC’s pod :P And I’m still not sure what the plan was. Want more of it though.

Training
Er, dunno. Life is meaningless without Logistics to train. Little T2’s for some small shit probably.

Fly safe.

o7

In search of space

Y114.10.16

Warrior on the edge of time
In a departure from the Caisman norm of droning on about what I’ve done, I have thought of something else to drone on about. Preparing for DUST 90125, CCP have just announced these changes to the chat windows, which I am looking forward to seeing in the flesh when I log in tonight. Reading the accompanying thread, I see the usual requests for the removal / delay of the local channel member list in null as in W-space.

Choose your masques
My take on the EVE lore of it is this - in W-space, there are no gates or stations [POS excepted] and therefore no means of Concord monitoring who goes in or who comes out of a system, whereas in null there are both. This feeds the information to the local channel and explains why local is immediate in K-space [hi, lo & null sec] and not in W-space. Following that lore, stations could be said to have similar monitors feeding into local for those logging in or out.

When you jump through a WH [from K-space], you would remain in the local channel of the system you entered from as there would be no means to monitor your departure. You would remain in this channel until you either spoke in WH local and appeared there, re-entered K-space and either activated another gate / station, appeared on grid with another pilot or committed an act of aggression [which currently alerts Concord anyway – think of the 1 min aggression cool down timer.]. This would give those exiting WH’s a tremendous advantage of surprise to the natives as they wouldn’t know anyone was there until they appeared on grid. Remember that WH’s can link K-space with no W-space in between.

The flaw and exploitability of this of course, is that one could simply log out and then back in to disappear from local. So log on and off [in K-space] should also trigger appearance in local [think of Concord monitoring pilot numbers in space as it currently does].

Or just keep it the same. Discuss.

Fly safe.

o7

Dissident aggressor

Y114.10.09

Sad wings of destiny
Sad news this week as a great corp is leaving the Alliance, but this has been ameliorated some by the news that an ex-corpie is bringing his current corp in and our founding member has rejoined – happy days. IIRC, he was FC’ing for my first proper PVP loss when losing shit seemed to mean something – remember that, kids? Welcome back one and all.

Sinner
Crikey, just got final blow on someone in lowsec and I won’t be doing that again. What do you piwate guys do for the 15 minutes after you’ve done it, rat to get the sec back up? Protip, kids - Don’t forget to add the guy you gave kill rights to your watchlist – just in case. There’s a lot of debate on the EVE-O forums about how broken lowsec is, but I really can’t comment. There do appear to be some new changes to criminal flagging coming up soon, so let’s see if it makes a difference. Whatever, the charts are nice.

Victim of changes
A few other changes are also mooted by CCP - live events , and a bunch of ship rebalancing Not read much but they seem to involve some frigates. Like the idea of Logi frigs. Check the forums – cruisers get some love, there are new destroyers, a mining frigate and everyone’s favourite ships get a shafting that some may consider long overdue to either help the Goons or hinder the Goons depending on what episode of Firefly is currently on repeat.

Grinder
Not going to have much game opportunity for the next little while, so JC’d back to hisec to get the training times down as there is a bunch of stuff I’d quite like to train that doesn’t involve Logistics ships. Also need to toady up to the Minmatar Elders while keeping the Empress happy. New boy corpie got me started with a local Slave corp [o/] and so the standings juggle begins – 16 + faction for one, 16 + faction for the other... Fuck the overflowing PI silos, they’re not going anywhere and I’ve just sold the last lot and bought some hulls for the corp. #1 corp PVP chum is also away for a bit but we shot some shit last week so as long as no-one does anything too stupid, the oh-so-important KB stats should be ok. Let’s hope there isn’t a CTA :/

You don’t have to be old to be wise
But you need to be old to have trained what you want. Like Logistics.

Fly safe. For Trevor.

o7

Gambling ≠ billionaire

Y114.10.03

Born to lose
So, like so many others I checked out this Somer Blink microlottery this weekend. So far I have won a couple of things I’ve cashed in for ISK, an Ares and another ship which I will decide what to do with when I work out wtf they are. Still up on the initial investment though and they give you 150 mil credit if you buy a GTC through them. There will only be one winner in the long run.

Made my first bil
In losses :P
6 pods, 3 Drakes, 3 Thrashers, 3 ‘Canes, 2 Ruppies, 1 Naga, 1 Itty V, and not to forget old Momo the Myrm. His spirit still lives on in Son of Momo who is docked up somewhere in the depths of Metropolis helping me repair Minnie standings.

Fortunately this weeks, er, alignment issues [saved the pod twice \o/] have been offset by some top Corpie KB action, keeping the Corp stats respectable and the Blink wins took the sting out of it. I'll penalise my own stupidity [again] by buying some hulls for the Corp [again] as the last ones I put in the hangar seem to have gone [again]. I think I took a Thrasher once. Best get on the deep space comms to my trusty cruiser & dessie builder and fire up the Transit to go pick them up.

After losing 2 in 2 days, I was reluctant to take out the new shiny I bought a little while back and took the Fleet Stabber round the block to shoot a couple of bubbles.

Wannabe FC
Like all PVPers, I see myself as a backseat FC – align, warp to outbound, hold on gate, primary the Scimi’s, don’t bump the fucking Titan, who fucking lemminged? - well how hard can it be? Obviously I am lulled into a false sense of security on this one as I don’t think I’ve flown with a bad FC. Just a couple of things to learn – what ship does what [only 200 or so to remember], what tactics / ships / fits / ratios to ask for, where to go, what might we find when I get there, how to get home again – just a couple of things.

Intel
Military intelligence is a military discipline that exploits a number of information collection and analysis approaches to provide guidance and direction to commanders in support of their decisions.

Of course, I am but a DPS grunt and know nothing of such witchcraft, but if I ever want to step up to the plate and use Leadership for anything other than making me feel IMPORTANT, I need to get on and learn stuff. A few useful things I have seen and had recommended to me are Korgan Nailo’s quick reference sheet, Kiritsubo’s ship reference card and EVE Uni’s [again, sorry :P] alphabetical ship list. Thanks once again to the people who put real time [no doubt when they are supposed to be working] into these guides. I can’t vouch for the content, but I have the first 2 printed, laminated and next to me on the sofa with the jump bridge and local tactical maps. Never used any of them, but they are there. The thing I use most in a PVP fleet is the Dotlan site for checking systems and keeping some directional awareness going. Ombey does a great 2d map pdf which is always worth having, but I personally find Dotlan easier and quicker to navigate.

Training
It begins with L – guess.

Oh, they are small shit I can't fly so I'll cash 'em in.

Fly safe

o7

The lure of the carebear

Y114.09.27

Police state
Thinking about some time out of null to catch up on a few hisec things such as repairing Minmatar status, Incursions and the quicker training times of a better clone. Maybe wait until Logi V is complete, finish the Tengu plan and hook up with an old ex-corpie to shoot the shit, share some finest Gallentean herb and have some exploration fun and games. Might even get some bling out of it.

Incursions
Those in the know tell me that the best resources for anything Incursion are How to Run Incursions and the Nexsoft fitting guides and let’s face it, any one who uses the following statement has got to know what they are talking about –

Please take care while running incursions of any size immediately after Escalation is released. CCP have of course never failed to deliver high-quality bug-free content, but just in case they do keep half an eye on the screen which isn’t playing cartoons about ponies.

I will probably wait until T2 large projectiles and / or blasters have been queued & cooked before carrying on with incursions, but watch this space.

Chewing
A more pressing thing than keeping the slaves happy is picking the indy side of things up a bit. I have come to terms with the fact that I [and indeed one] cannot create the perfect PI set up that produces all resources equally, but I have a setup that makes me a worthwhile profit for minimal work and I have just realised that the storage area in the CO’s is plenty large enough to hold any overstocks of tier 1 or 2 resources that may be produced and at least the import/export taxes go straight to the Alliance and not Interbus. When they are getting full, I can clear out the overstocks and either haul direct to market or allow the factories to run down and use them up. More hauling vs. less profit – this will be highly dependant on the ‘be arsed’ factor at the time.

I should be able to get a barge and a basic PVP ship JF’d to the indy staging area for some boosted mining ops, so short term plan is to get them bought, fitted and into the pickup location. Then chew some rocks for a bit between reshipping to repel boarders. Must speak to those that know mining for barge types & fits first, as it is all new to me – biggest thing I have mined in is a Navitas. Which reminds me of this little gem – Mining with Planks.

Quote of the day
FC of the Alliance birthday roam declared local chat open for abuse, then promptly trumped all comers by immediately posting this reply to the first red who posted -
[ 2012.09.22 19:48:27 ] red > was that ur hero or what?
[ 2012.09.22 19:48:36 ] FC > stfu bitch
Maybe you had to be there.

And absolutely nothing to do with carebearing, but I want [and some might say, need] one of these

Training
Logi V, 3 weeks. The things I do for the Alliance.

Fly safe

o7

Pop, null & plants

Y114.09.19

Pop
Tooling about the other night, doing something we probably shouldn’t, somewhere we probably shouldn’t and taking far too long about it, resulted in us getting being well smartied, losing a couple of ships and camped in system while looking for a safe exit. Local spiked further and we stayed still a bit too long, allowing them to get a warp in on us. The anchor warped off to a safe and the command to warp to him was given. Most of the fleet made it out but I was left in the well deployed red bubble to be locked & pointed and have all the EWAR in the world put on me - I couldn’t even lock anything to shoot back. Man, a swarm of those pesky EC-300’s does the job - the only module I could burn out was the I-Field and I don’t think I did that properly either.

The reds graciously offered me a 20mil ransom and kept me everythinged for ever to think about it before getting bored and finishing me off, pod n’all. 51 on the KM, which is some kind of Corp record, I believe. I managed to get home with less hassle than the surviving fleet though. Sorry, rambling.

Protip, kids – STAY ALIGNED and warp early when trouble comes in. If you are not engaging the incoming OPFOR, of course. I know this and even worse than that, I do it all the time but obviously needed the reminder. Don’t wait blindly for fleet orders for the most basic stuff you should be doing anyway.

Some good came out of it though, the rest of the fleet got away, I refused to pay them pesky piwates any money just for them to blow me up anyway and I politely declined the kind offer the CEO made to reimburse the loss. I’ll keep it in the bank for later ;)

The emptiness of null
Fleet went out recently to pastures new [for me] looking for some bots to pop, but apart from a couple of pilots unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, it was empty, really empty. [Sorry about the trousers, Mr Tengu – not dry clean only I hope]. CTA then came via FC to return home to help with a problem there, but that had waned away too. At least it gave me some to get the replacement ship in and move some of that bastard PI about. I say bastard, but it paid for the ship I lost. Little bastard, then.

Useful implants
In EFT, fits are often worked out using ‘All skills level V’ making some of the fits quite tight if you don’t have all the required fitting skills to V. The most common problem I have found comes with the power grid and it is the most easily sorted with a cheap implant. The Inherent Implants ‘Squire’ Engineering EG-601 gives you 1% more PG to play with and means you don’t necessarily need to wait 3 weeks to train Advanced Weapons Upgrades from the IV you all have, to the V you wish you all had, to fit that 7th T2 heavy launcher on your Drake. Not that it will matter when they nerf missiles this winter. However, as someone who knows far more than me said - 'Battleships should be the king, not Battlecruisers'.

Another useful implant which I have just discovered is the Zainou ‘Gypsy’ Signature Analysis SA-701 which yep you guessed it, gives a 1% bonus to scan resolution, reducing lock times and enabling more KM whoring. Not that I advocate that.

While working out if it would fit in my head with the EG-601, I have realised that the implant codes have all been redone to make them understandable by the idiot, sorry, layman. Ignore the ‘Inherent Implants ‘Squire’’ malarkey and just look at the code EG-601 – EG = energy grid [what it affects], 6 = slot 6 [where it goes in yer loaf], 01 = the percentage increase it gives [1% in this case]. If I had paid attention to this,  I would have known already.

Of course, implants are destroyed when you are podded, but meh. Just cash some of the squintillion LP’s you earned when you were a carebear and get more.

Quote of the day
Alliance member getting his priorities right for a recent daytime CTA -
[21:41:59] Alliance member #1 > I'm off to bed. Gotta be up early to phone in sick :P
[21:43:01] Alliance member #2 > now that's dedication

Training
2 days to LRT V.

Fly safe

o7

The Drake is a lie

Y114.09.13

Blah
Apart from the odd ninja session, RL has conspired to reduce my EVE opportunities to a mere twice or thrice a week, so all that jump clone malarkey will probably come in handy for nipping between the appropriate regions to tool around with me muckers, which lets face it, is what it’s all about. That and the KB stats, of course.

Enjoying my last 40-odd days of KM whoring before Logi V completes and I feel duty bound to cleric allies rather than shoot enemies. Not that there have been any suitably sized gangs of enemies to engage recently – 2, maybe 3 roams and 1 Arazu to show for it. Different day / TZ corpies are also having this problem – the rucks are there, but never when I’m on! Least I’ve got a new ship fitted and started to repair the damage that too many Amarr missions have done for my Matar standings.

Quote of the week
A 2006 Corpie on the ignominy of being reduced to buying and flying a Drake for the first time after many years in game

[ 2012.08.24 18:35:23 ] Corpie > I bought a Drake for the 1st time
[ 2012.08.24 18:35:28 ] Corpie > feel dirty
[ 2012.08.24 18:36:12 ] Caisman > and rightly so
[ 2012.08.24 18:37:33 ] Caisman > i now have half my kills with drakes :(
[ 2012.08.24 18:37:43 ] Corpie > ewww
[ 2012.08.24 18:37:57 ] Caisman > never even chucked a missile before
[ 2012.08.24 18:38:13 ] Caisman > i now fly them in a hair shirt
[ 2012.08.24 18:39:39 ] Corpie > kind of hope i lose it on the way in

Training
LRT V.

Fly safe

o7

Vile Rat

Y114.09.12

RIP Sean Smith, aka Vile Rat off the Goons. Fly safe o7

Clones and tings

Y114.09.12

Preparation
Spent an entire night running around fitting a new BS for some full-on PVP action just to have the op moved forward a day rendering me unable to fleet up. Up yours, spais! The Hunger Games is a good movie, though.

Next thing to prepare is a ratting BS to leave in null and bin the PVP long enough to use it. Hmmm… Domi? ‘Pest? Citroën C4 Grand Picasso VTRi?

Jump Clones
Managed to get a jump clone out to slave space to do some anoms the Corpies seem to be doing well out of, then came the call for BS [above] and a need for a fresh clone, so move to a suitable station and install another JC. Eh? [Quick, petition CCP and ask for them to remove it and take all my ISK for cheating]. I only have Infomorph Psychology III but I created another clone. How does that work? Ah, because the sleeve I’m in [1 unit of spirits to the first to identify the reference], doesn’t count. Obvious really, otherwise you would need Infomorph I just to exist and you don’t. Think I understand now. No matter how many you have they are always in the wrong place or you are waiting out the bloody cooldown and I have now come to terms with the fact that if I want to PVP I will be training slower. Sod hisec PVE, it’s dull and for girls – I’d rather sell my children’s toys for PLEX and donate some to corp. Slightly sun-bleached red Little Tikes car anyone?

Quote of the week
An Alliance mate on the difficulties of distributing rewards for allied mining ops - 'It's not all smokin' bowls n' reggae!'

Training
Minmatar Cruiser V. Haha, tricked you - it’s finished, praise be to Jamyl. Now 10 days to Long Range Targeting V.

In my bid to become accepted by the true Amarr, I really must stop training for slave ships and train for a true ship other than our Shuttle. I renounce Jacus Roden and plead piety at the feet of our glorious leader and know she will inspire me – AMARR VICTOR!!!!

Endnote
Forget it, I’m keeping it.

Fly safe

o7

Propaganda

Y114.09.08

Crikey
I have just managed not to log into EVE for several days and no, the PC isn’t broken. The first was the hardest, seeing it SITTING THERE, WINKING, TEMPTING ME. But I persevered and made it through my self imposed EVE ban and have managed to clear the growing list of stuff to do that doesn’t involve spaceships. Of course, blogs, EVEgate, Alliance forums and checking how many days left ‘til Minnie bloody Cruiser V completes via Aura don’t count as not playing EVE. Back in the saddle tonight though :D

Ah yes, Aura is a great little Android application for offline API monitoring of yer EVE characters - it does other stuff as well – database, fitting tool etc but not really explored these yet. Legend has it that there’s something similar for i-Things too.

Learn
Before I started EVE, I did a fair bit of ‘research’ on the ol’ interweb to check what I was getting into. So many things caught my interest, but none more than the following two and I apologize for not linking them sooner. If you haven’t already, check them out – utter genius and I will say no more about them other than watch and read the Clear Skies machinima series and INNOMINATE NIGHTMARE’s EVE Online 0.0 Experiment
Fly safe INNO, wherever you may be o7

Training
Take a wild guess, go on.

Endnote
No-one want that mil, then?

Fly safe

o7

The long haul

Y114.08.30

Materiél
I’m getting the hang of this now. Having everything in hangar and not in poxy containers makes quick work of moving stuff into ships when time is tight – win. Also, get a nice Alliance / Corp member to scout inbound gates / station docks for you, give them a token reward for their help and set them blue to you. You remember how long it took you to grind the ISK, go to the trade hub, buy the crap, work out how to fit it in the hauler in as few trips a possible and get it close to where you need it, right? You want to do it all again? Correctomundo, Holmes.

NEW – Quote of the week
From our holiday bound CEO – ‘Have fun, don’t do anything not fun and don’t buy anything or give money away ‘til I get back please’. Priceless [sic] and incisive.

Training
Minnie Cruiser V, 11d. T2 hull me up. I am not logging into EVE until I have under 10 days remaining on this skill. See you Monday.

Endnote
The 1,000,000 ISK to the first subscriber to this blog is still up for grabs. EVEmail me ingame. No ringers though. That means you, Corpies. Not that you read it anymore.

Fly safe

o7

Stuff and barges

Y114.08.24

Right, enough of that fluffy stuff in the last post and I trust that fact that I have got that boring stuff out of my system will provide you with some relief.

3 in, 3 out
Managed to get 3 Corp in fleet last night, the usual EU TZ suspects of course, and we all managed to get home again. In pods, but home nonetheless. So the last two fleets I have been in have been, er, costly, in numbers of ships, but at least we won the ISK war this time. Good fight though, don’t mind the loss so much when it’s a proper pagga and it will always be tough against a well thought out fleet. Shall I go get some more Ruppies then?

New flesh
Interest from recruiting is not too bad, got a few names in the hat to bring in when the time is right.

Mining
CCP have just removed tiers from the T1 mining barges, meaning I can now fly them all [trained in a previous life] and given them each a more individual role. It’s all here   I may invest in one of each and chuck ‘em in the indy base, just in case I fancy some rocklicking™ one day. My basic understanding of the rebalancing is this -

Procurer – best tank, for less safe systems
Retriever – biggest hold, for safer systems
Coveter – best yield, for fleet boosted mining with Orca / hauler

Training
Well, I’ve got some of the annoying ‘want to get to IV/V’ shite out of the way, so time to FOCUS. Just over a day to Leadership V, then it’s Large Projectile Spec or Minnie Cruiser V. Undecided yet, large projectiles is more PVE than PVP but an essential component of a PVP niche, Minnie Cruiser to open up Recon / Logi. Probably Minnie Cruiser as I use it more right now.

Endnote
1,000,000 ISK to the first subscriber to this blog. EVEmail me ingame. And another mil to the first person who tells me what 'Kill Rq.' on Eve-Kill means.

Fly safe

o7

Break Break

Y114.08.22

Det är inte bra
Not going to be on much for the next week or two, which is sad as things are really hotting up in one way or another and I want to make a determined effort to get some money back into the Corp wallet. I have had a sudden attack of guilt over spending Corp money on ships for the Corp PVP wing, see. Might try some ratting / exploration in 0.0 as it’s not something I’ve really undertaken yet, but keeps me where the action is, we can do it as a Corp and still be ready to fleet up in Alliance if needed. At least one other Corpie has similar feelings [but a lot of T2 missiles, eh olsa?] so we’ll see. All PVP and no ISK.

Deep
This has given me time to revist the EVE-O forums and a couple of threads have stood out among the flotsam and jetsam [read – shite] that populates a lot of it. These have caused some introspection on my EVE experience so far which may be helpful to those newer than me.

Doldrums
The first six months went well – missioning, skilling up, moving house, learning the basics, collecting a hangar full of stuff, getting a level 4 agent. Then it all became a bit dull and time consuming and I was logging on to chat and queue skills, more than anything else.

The revelation came when I started fleeting up with Corpies to salvage missions, sort and sell the loot and divvy up the ISK. Suddenly standings and wallet went up far quicker, opened up more agents and gave me the ability to save for the ship I really wanted. When a cheap hull came up locally, I was able to snap it up and make a quick covert trip to Jita to get some Gucci bits for it. I can now make ISK faster when I do mission, meaning I don’t need to mission as much to support my PVP activity. And of course tax fills the Corp wallet. If only I’d pestered me Corpies to let me x up for missions from the outset.

Doldrums #2
Was offset by the DED Plexing , but the lack of escalations was annoying and then came the losec POS  which was fun and a great introduction to situational awareness, which goes a long way in null.

Dur, just get on with it
So, the gist of this meandering ramble is… EVE is an MMO and the second M is the most important – multiplayer. Maybe the reason I enjoy x’ing up for fleets is like the idea of being told what to do after making my own way for a year or so. Or maybe it’s the camaraderie, the sense of achieving something, the genuine disappointment and empathy when my own, my Corpies or our Corp get popped or the wallet goes down too much. Or maybe I just need to get out more. Actually, I did that once and met real life EVE players. They were real nice too.

Protip, kids – PVP early, x up with missioning Corpies early, ask for help early, ask them for training tips early and hell, even ask for money or stuff too. I didn’t really do any of these, but that didn’t stop them offering and giving me stuff.

Training
3 ½ days to Leadership V.

Fly safe

o7

Aw, thanks guys.

Y114.08.17

So, my first MOTD in Corp chat had the wrong date but I awoke to a humbling EVEmail to tell me I am the first to be awarded the Corp’s new Ton-up medal in recognition of reaching Corp 100 kills for the Alliance. I would have found out last night, but I’d turned mail & notification blink off because I read somewhere random that it reduces lag when you end up in a pod and helps stop you taking the pod express home. In reality, it hasn’t made a blind bit of difference and funnily enough, the opfor dropping a drag bubble and a bunch of shiny ships with a little green triangle on the top left corner seems to have somewhat more bearing on survival than whether some poxy icon is blinking or not. It’s turned back on now, but the pop-up remains disabled. Can I use that word in Y114? Ok, unenabled then.

TiDi
Had my first real experience of time dilation last night and the length of time we were stuck in system may well have had a part in the shinys getting the drop. No, that’s not fair – they are one of, if not THE best PVP Alliance in EVE and funnily enough the Corp flew with them in a previous Alliance. NO, WE MUST HAZ SPAI. Anyway, TiDi for those that don’t know is CCP’s answer to lag – it’s explained here.I think we must have been on the same node that was hosting the 400b ISK, 2000-odd man supercap scrap that made EVENews 24 - TiDi was at 10%, meaning everything was occurring [for us] at 10% of the speed it should, so a cross system warp took about 10-15 minutes. Then we warped to a planet and back to the gate again, hehe.

Contracting
Also managed to get my head around courier contracting last night – well worth a few 1,000 ISK of anyone’s money to get things unscannable in a freighter. Put stuff in GSC > contract GSC to someone to haul, job done. The irritating part is that when I chose to go shopping for the corp, we could have had 3 in fleet and it was a very productive fleet ;)

Training
3 days to Sig. Analysis V

Fly safe

o7

Skills & tweaks

Y114.08.15

Just been looking at some stuff I have missed and thought I’d put it out there.

EFT
v2.16 [Inferno 1.2] is out by the way and many thanks to Gripen for the years of graft on this invaluable fitting tool. You can update the damage profiles to see what your resists are vs each Faction / Race / ammo type, I think EVE HQ has this functionality, but never used it myself. Just copy/paste them from here into the config.ini file in EFT, under the Autosave [last] line - you’ll see where they go. They can be reordered as you see fit… Thanks again to the original provider[s]. I have no idea how accurate they are, but hey, everyone else is using them :P

DamageProfile=[NPC] Angel Cartel,480,0,719,3058
DamageProfile=[NPC] Blood Raiders,613,570,60,0
DamageProfile=[NPC] EoM,0,618,1718,0
DamageProfile=[NPC] Guristas Pirates,0,570,3504,0
DamageProfile=[NPC] Mercenaries,90,634,424,108
DamageProfile=[NPC] Mordu's Legion,0,30,70,0
DamageProfile=[NPC] Rogue Drones,86,91,281,964
DamageProfile=[NPC] Sansha's Nation,1945,1598,0,0
DamageProfile=[NPC] Serpentis,0,1627,1320,0
DamageProfile=[Faction] Amarr,1204,1349,0,0
DamageProfile=[Faction] Caldari,0,795,944,0
DamageProfile=[Faction] Gallente,25,781,1127,0
DamageProfile=[Faction] Minmatar,615,310,815,1633
DamageProfile=[ammo] Antimatter,0,5,7,0
DamageProfile=[ammo] Null,0,6,5,0
DamageProfile=[ammo] Spike,0,4,4,0
DamageProfile=[ammo] Multifrequency,7,5,0,0
DamageProfile=[ammo] Scorch,9,2,0,0
DamageProfile=[ammo] Aurora,5,3,0,0
DamageProfile=[ammo] EMP,9,0,1,2
DamageProfile=[ammo] Phased Plasma,0,10,2,0
DamageProfile=[ammo] Fusion,0,0,2,10
DamageProfile=[ammo] Barrage,0,0,5,6
DamageProfile=[ammo] Tremor,0,0,3,5
DamageProfile=EM,1,0,0,0
DamageProfile=Thermic,0,1,0,0
DamageProfile=Kinetic,0,0,1,0
DamageProfile=Explosive,0,0,0,1

BC V
Anyone else panic and get racial Cruisers to III, Dessies and BC to V? Good, not just me then. Though it was a fair chunk of time, BC V is a great thing for me as I spend most of my PVP time in BC’s. Little did I know that when I trained it.

Core support skills
An old Alliance mail threw up this nugget about core skills and I can see the logic. Remember kids, if it’s under a week, it’s a short skill!

Engineering 5 - maximize the power grid.
Electronics 5 - maximize the CPU.
Energy Management 5 - maximize the capacitor capacity.
Energy Systems Operation 5 - maximize capacitor recharge rate.
Mechanic 5 - maximize hull strength.
Shield Management 5 - maximize shield capacity.
Shield Operation 5 - maximize shield recharge rate.
Hull Upgrades 5 - maximize armor strength.
Repair Systems 5 - maximize the amount repaired each cycle [but ^ cap use].

KB / Overview
Not had much chance to play with the Altruist KB / overview settings I mentioned in the last post yet, but have moved all windows slightly away from the edge of the screen as suggested and it does make it easier [read feasible!] to see where brackets are when you need to GTFO, which I needed to do last night fo sho. Didn't make it though. I've also moved the locked targets to just above the modules, but didn't get much chance to lock anything and play :/

Currently training
Signature Analysis V. Lock me baby one more time. Or 5% quicker anyway.

Fly safe

o7

Ton up

Y114.08.14

Pain in
Stripped out all that PI last night, stopped the extractors, sacrificed all the wasted materiel to Jamyl and put all the raw / processed mats where they need to be for the factories to refine & process as they see fit. And still made fleet :P Cathartic stuff. Will wait ‘til all processes are complete, rinse and repeat until the factories are empty [or at least balanced] and haul all the excess to the indy station to act as a buffer in times of future PI incompetence. Passive income my arse and up yours Mr. Spreadsheet.

Come in
The true and righteous, cheese eating surrender monkeys, Calamari, hell – even them hippie slaves - are all welcome here. With one caveat.

Apparently I have been made one of the corp recruiters. Crikey Matron, I guess that means I am no longer a grunt. Or maybe just a grunt who recruits. Or maybe I’m just on at the right time. Must request Communication Officer & Personnel Manager roles off the boss so I can spam Corp chat with inane MOTD’s and accept all those applications that will come flooding in when people see the ad. I need to ask for all their stuff but they can keep half their wallet, right? Just need to find out who created the Corp open channel now, but that might be hard work.

Get in
Just found this blog http://www.evealtruist.com/ and I hope you don’t mind me linking it, Azual. Not read a lot so far, but these posts about screen layouts & key binding are excellent. Will try it out soon and report back.

Training
Both Nanites now at 4, 1 day ‘til Thermodynamics gets there. Gentlemen, overheat your weapons.

Oh, up to 102 kills now, 99 of them real. Love it.

Fly safe.

o7

Heat the PI

Y114.08.13

Well, all that selling worked a treat – the wallet is now looking a little more respectable and ready to fritter away on some new ships to get me back to that magic number of 2 of each. I’ve also been carebearing a bit in hisec and got lucky with those lovely missions full of BS for bounty & salvage. I am also at the stage where I can decline 2 crap missions in a row without the standing hit affecting agent or faction access. I could always jump a few jumps rather than do this, but meh. For those that don’t know, Eve Survival is the place to be to check out your missions for completion tips and tricks and time vs reward info.

Fucking PI though – just can’t get it all flowing properly for any length of time but it gets a fair return when I do. It’s a licence to print money, so I have to sort it but RL stuff means I am always short of time to get into fleet for roams and end up rushing the PI tweaking without paying enough attention to it, either before the roam or after. Solution – stop KM / mission whoring and devote a night to getting it sorted. Maybe put it on longer cycles and see what happens, too. Right, I’m emptying all the product out of every planet tonight and starting from scratch with the installations already I have in place. And I’m going to start using the spreadsheet I carefully constructed then ignored for 2 months :/

Training
Overheating mods rocks. So much so, that I have started doing it more often and only toasted a MWD so far – with a bit of luck training them there Nanite skills and Thermodynamics to 4 should help reduce any further losses. I am sure you are as bored as I am about the what to train next dilemma, so I’ll leave it out. Whaddya mean I need to look at Amarr BS & lazors? FFS.

Let me leave you with a nice pic of the new[ish] missile launchers

Fly safe

o7

Boxes & ISK

Y114.08.02

Funds are getting low for no other reason than I keep spending it – hulls, mods, skillbooks, ammo, Quafe – you name, I ‘need’ it. One reason I spend more than I should is that I cheerfully followed some internets advice about organising everything in my hangars into separate containers and while this worked very successfully before my PVP conversion, it is proper wrong now.

Boxes
Containers are great when you have pretty much everything in one station, you can spilt it up into containers named such innovative and original names as keep, sell, ammo, tags, implants, salvage and know where everything is. Whenever you finish cleaning up with the whore ship, you can dump it into whatever container you want and know it is NEAT, TIDY and CORRECTLY ORDERED and this is, or rather was, quite important.

I had already found a couple of problems with this system before my switch to multi station occupancy – you need to pull any blueprints and the stuff required to make other stuff from them into the main hangar and you cant search in the assets or new inventory system for the contents of containers. I could cope with that though, never needed to do it that often.

Now I have stuff in hangars at the carebear station, the carebear station I will soon be using jEveAssets [when I can get it working :P] to tell me what to sell & what to melt, the hisec staging point, the 0.0 PVP base & the 0.0 indy base. AND I NEED TO SEE IT ALL. NOW. Well, I do really as I like to keep the PVP base stocked with any ships I might need and with the current rate of attrition, I end up buying hulls, modules & rigs without bothering to see if I already have any and where it may be, using funds unnecessarily. Of course, I don’t have anything I need as my main hangar is full of the shite I have collected and kept in case it comes in handy one day.

So lets empty all the containers, leaving 2 named Sell & Keep, everything goes in the main hangar, the search functionality works and I can filter using the lovely inbuilt tools such as name, type & meta level that CCP have already provided - game on. Wow, that much shite? Worth how much? Crikey. that’s all going in the indy and getting sold, need to buff Trade & Retail a bit to get enough sell orders and I’ll keep the ammo.

Sell
As I can’t be arsed with this trading game at the moment, I have been following a simple plan of what to do -

Haul stuff to trade hub & place in hangar there > check price of item, if less than 100,000 ISK = move back into indy for melting at repro plant I have good standings with. More than 100,000 ISK = check price, maybe sell to buy order if it is more than I would list it at, if not create sell order. No interest in trading means I do not make all I could from it, but WTF – it’s even more dull than missions and it’s all mission loot anyway.  But people will [as do I] pay over the odds for rubbish to save a couple of jumps.  Not sure I would pay it for Titanium or Carbonide plates, but thank you.

LP’s
I have accumulated a bunch of loyalty points and never used them, but mission loot has given me pre-requisite items needed to trade for LP store rewards & maybe I can make some money off Faction ammo.

1. Pay ISK
2. Give up cheap ammo
3. Give up LP’s
4. Get shiny ammo
5. Sell shiny ammo
6. There is no 6
7. Profit [on some, others not selling - check your Bullworth Burgers, boys]

It can’t be that easy? It is.

Training. Again.
So much still to do, but those friendly chaps in alliance have given me some pointers, so this I’ll finish off some things for myself [xx Shield Comps & Tengu as I’m almost there], then Leadership V, T2 large AC & arty & Minnie cruiser V which will open up Recon & Logi. Unless I put AF / ‘Ceptor in first :P

A Tengu for you.

Fly safe

o7

Next

Y114.07.26

An uneventful roam the other night in which I failed to whore onto any of the 3 kills but did help knock almost 3% off an I-Hub’s shield [with faction ammo, no less :/ ]. It was highlighted however, that KM whoring is not the be all and end all. Eh? - rubbish. More Logi & Recon was needed to support the DPS, so departure was delayed until those who could, reshipped.

So, with T2 Heavy Missiles complete, maybe I should diversify into these shiptypes? 10 minutes of EVEMon and 20 minutes of flying & buying later, a 73 day plan is created and the skillbooks bought with PI to take me into Recon and onto Logi. Then some poor bastard has to rely on me during my first Cleric, sorry, Logi flight - apologies in advance. Might do 10 days of Interceptors and a further 5 days of T2 weapons for it first, though. And look at a remap. Or should I finish all those things that need buffing, such as Thermodynamics, Nanite use and EWAR? This is why I like being the DPS in fleets – very little thinking required until you are in a pod.

Missed last nights roam due to RL issues and was a bit gutted as I could have been #3 from the corp in fleet – normally only 2 of us make it. Great to see one of the corp vets back PVPing though [o/ Mocks] - maybe tonight we’ll do it. Corp KB is looking healthier by the day – top bombing, guys.

Machariel - tidy.

Currently training – see wall of text, above.

Fly safe

o7

Nothing is meant to be convenient. Nothing

Y114.07.23

Right place, right time, some more top drawer bloc FC’ing, not being primaried often & great logi support when I was, helped us sort the corp stats out a bit last week. Only lemminged once and I don’t think anyone noticed – didn’t get a bollocking for it either way :D

Click approach gate > fuck, that was jump > burn back to gate > jump back > surreptitiously burn back to outbound gate > get halfway through typing apology in fleet chat > ah fuck it, maybe no-one noticed > bump corpie to take the heat off

Just found a great fleet kill with a corpie [o/ raah] & I on as final blow & top damage respectively – great to see the corp logo proudly displayed twice. Would just like to say thanks to the corpies who don’t / can’t PVP for whatever reasons and keep the corp wallet ticking over – you know who you are. Also a big hello to those who I haven’t seen for a while - you know who you are, too – I hope New Eden is treating you well. I shall mostly be whoring this week, to fund the battles we undertake in the glorious name of our beloved corp.

o/ Faz, please see the title of this post [and thanks to the bloke I stole it off]. And here are some swords for you. A sword. Another sword. They are the only ones you will need from now on. Keep up the good work lad & come over and see us ASAP.

Just been playing with EFT / EveMon to see what skills a new pilot needs to get into the basic DPS ships for our fleets and realised just how important those support skills that reduce PG & cap of modules are. Protip, kids - support skills - train them as well as everything else. Hell, just train everything - no such thing as a wasted skill, just those you haven't used yet. Except for Tactical Shield Manipulation V, that is - the only thing that matters is the order. Ol' Louis has some great tips for the basics and some great tips for your overview, too. Thanks for all the work, Louis. Just found this great newbie thread too, enjoy.

Well, with T1 Torps in the bag, it’s time to fly the Stealth Bomber. Except the BLOPS fleets aren’t running anymore, so I took it out for a run and cloaked at a gate snipe for a while to watch the AT X final – mad props to Verge Of Collapse, by the way.

What a dull post, so here's some eye candy for you -

Currently training – 3½ days to Heavy Missiles V, then get HM Spec to IV and put T2’s on the Duck – that gives me 2 races of T2 BC weapons. Like the new missile & launcher graphics by the way, CCP. No idea where to go next though – Assault Frigs / T2 large projectiles / T2 hybrids / Calamari Strategic Cruiser / Amarr HAC? Probably need to stop diversifying & finish all the things I’ve stopped training to do the essential stuff. Let’s go with that.

Fly safe

o7

Thin times

Y114.07.15

Less smiley happy fun time recently, but such is the ebb & flow of EVE. Less time on means more things to do in a limited time frame – earning money is quite important, but is taking second place to spending at the moment and this can’t continue!

I have only managed to join a couple of fleets recently and not got, er, the most enjoyment from them, but at least I have now lost [at least] one of most things I’ve flown recently - Thrasher, Rupture, ‘Cane, Drake, pod. Ah, the ‘Cane – in my haste to replace it, I cheerfully [no, stupidly - I've been here before...], set out to the local trade hub in my hauler, thinking the old align / cloak / MWD trick would get me out of trouble of any war targets – it didn’t. Must convo the guy to see how he did it.

Saved the pod twice in one night [see above], and got the opportunity to see and use a Titan bridge for the first time earlier in the week, so it was not all bad news.

Was a costly week for the corp, too – some unlucky strikes from WT’s resulted in us undoing a bunch of the hard yakka we had put in to cancel out the CEO’s recent exhumer losses :P

I eventually managed to get the 0.0 PI up and running though – man, what a difference to hisec – so much product comes out of the planets with so little effort, so should start seeing the financial rewards from this soon. Need Command Centre Upgrades V ASAP.

Currently training – Torpedoes for BLOPs fun & games.

Fly safe,

o7

Back on the horse

Y114.07.01

Right, a last bit of PVP tomfoolery before a week in the sun and then a bunch of links I have [and you may] find useful for skills, ideas and the srs bzns of Eve. And I promise to stop banging on about blowing shit up. For a bit.

Fleeted up fully expecting to get popped again, but had a nice result with a 4 minute, 16:2 ratio, 1.4B ISK whupping of the neighbours, with some truly legendary FC’ing. Remember kids – a blob is only a blob if you lose.

Ok, some links to stuff you might find handy. All opinions are mine and based on my experiences – feel free to disagree, criticise or suggest better stuff. Props & credits to all those who have put in all the hard work so we don’t have to.

Fitting
Get an out of game fitting tool before you buy any ships or mods, as you can bet your last saucy postcard from Gallente Prime there will be some issues in optimising the fit. I use EFT, but other exist such as PYFA & I think EVE HQ has one too. YMMV.

Skills
They make the world go round, but skill planning can be the equivalent of a ride from Carlisle to Ulan Bator on a buggered Royal Enfield. I use EveMon to plan it all out, but some favour EVE HQ. YMMV again.

Certificates are a good way to go in getting an idea of what skills you may need, but are not the final solution - Core Competency to Elite would do you pretty well though. Implants will reduce your learning time, but the flip side is they make you reluctant to shoot other people and get shot at.

Jump clones can help with this problem – get a cheap or implant free beta clone to do the dangerous stuff with & have an alpha clone with all the Gucci implants for when you are doing less risky stuff in less risky areas or you are not going to be on for a few days. Remember undocking anywhere could mean a cap in the ass though.

Eve University have a bunch of really useful guides to help you on the way to your plan, as may your corp / alliance. I hope they don’t mind me linking to them. Anything you can’t find – google it with the words ‘eve online’ in front of it. That’s what I did, well still do.

Support skills are really handy to be able to fit stuff using your new fitting tool and as you may have heard, ‘cap is life’. Your choice of career path may also dictate which way you go.

Fly safe

[EDIT 114.07.15: Fly safer than me - see next post]

o7

Well, it had to happen eventually

Y114.06.14

After an age logging in and out to get the new cans [USB, eurgh] to work, setting volume levels and resetting comms / in-game audio levels [o/ raah], I managed to get the Ruppie to the fleet form up point early. This should have got the Spidey-sense tingling on its own, but more of that later.

With destination set, we went through some jump bridges which was a great test of the cans. MAAAAAAN, what a great noise, must sample it - couldn’t hear a word of comms but there you go. There is an option to mute IG sounds when comms are active but that removes the fog of war and that seems to take something away.

Deep into enemy space and things were looking good – an Omen, Talos & Eris all got the good news and the FC couldn’t resist the bait Mach on the gate and my squad were tasked with having a pop, but we only got it to 1/3 shield before its chums arrived, so we safed up.

The scout next door reported ≈ 180 reds next door looking to party, so we… well, did something that involved splitting the fleet with a few of us getting stuck in system by the red fleet jumping in. I must have misheard comms / misread fleet chatter as I then warped to the camped gate, lost the Ruppie, then the pod even though I was spamming warp still in armour. Quick trip home though and as I said in my last post, “they’re only +3’s after all”. Nice to finally lose something though as I can now tick that box and not worry so much about it.

Protip, kids – if you are unsure of what you heard / read – ask someone. Also, if [no, when] you are stuck in a hostile system, bounce round celestials making safes mid-warps, check system exits, use your on-board scanner to check outbound gates before warping and above all -

ASK SOMEONE WHO KNOWS WHAT THEY ARE DOING TO HELP!

It will save you some ISK. The corp stats are [still] looking good though, I have a couple of final kills & top damage dealers [WTF?]and have been on both the top killers & top points scorers lists. Briefly & at the begining of the month, but hey.

Currently training – bloody missiles. Still.

o7

Calamari fail

Y114.06.12

Well, not fail really. I learnt about anchoring onto a fleet member and that I’m not the slowest in fleet, so you’re primary – ner ner ner. And I fired my first missiles. At the FC. No, really – he wanted to see how fast the logis could rep him. Fast enough to give 20-odd Drakes the brush off, that’s for sure – that’s why they need primaried. The ensuing roam I broke my arse to get back from the [virtual] shops for, was target free but filled in some missing bits on the star map and I fired some missiles. Did I mention that?

The fleet reshipped to Thrashers to go a little more far afield through another WH. A couple of ‘Phoons, Drake, Kestrel & Oracle bit the dust, but we lost a few Thrashers and when local spiked off the chart with reds, we legged it. They chased us a good few jumps and they let my corpie off a podding though, so fair play. Still, +ve on efficiency and I got my first top damage dealer KM. And no bollocking for doing anything stupid. Briefly felt guilt for helping pop a guy in an alliance the corp used to be in [before my time], but he had a monocle so he deserved it.

Also managed to move some more ships around. Again. Now I only need to go to the shops and back once more then do some 6 jump round trips to tidy it up. Moving stuff around does yer swede right in mush.

Protip, kids – don’t fit your ships ‘til you’ve hauled them where you are going. In my haste to get them fitted & rigged for action, I always forget this and have to jump them about to avoid destroying the rigs and end up with bloody shuttles everywhere except where I need them. I could use rookie ships I guess, but the align time worries me – maybe I just need to man up, they’re only +3’s after all.

o7

Bye bye hi-sec, hello null

Y114.06.11

So, alliance fleet it was and 2 more since [possibly, please see Två , below]. Undocked the Fleet Stabber, made it to the jump bridge – wow – turn that ripping of the space-time continuum up loud and enjoy :D

Ett
I was late of course, but still caught up with the 10-strong fleet without dieing or pissing the FC off too much. Jumped around a lot, got lost & failed to target the pimp Mach in time and missed the KM. Grrr. Well that will be that then, let’s all head home. After we’ve waited at the gate for the Drake & his mate in the ‘Nado which seem to be following us, of course.

PANIC, PRES BUTANS, TRY TO MAKE SENSE OF COMMS

TRY NOT TO INFARCT MY RIGHT VENTRICLE

Woo, reds popped, I’m still alive and not in a clone vat. HIGH FIVE and onto 2 KM’s, the first 2 KM’s for the new alliance and the first real ones for me. Now for a quick run home and bed. Only 6 jumps left, then ‘Hold on outbound gate’. Ah, that will be a supermassive red camp stopping us getting home then. Oh well, just a quick dozen jumps to low-sec then 33 hi-sec jumps home, not to worry. Don’t think I made any heinous errors either, other than typing a couple of consequentially insignificant things in Local rather than Fleet.

Två
I’ll be brutally honest - I can remember nothing about this roam, or even who the FC was. I don’t even remember what ship I was in. I had probably been drinking, but there were no ships missing from my hangar and no KB reports of kills or losses involving me. I could even be making it all up, I really don’t know.

1/10, must try harder. Sorry.

Intermission
Buying and fitting all the stuff I need to play with the big boys has left me rather skint, so a quick check of my assets tab showed all the shite I had left in cheese eating surrender monkey space, which is also a cheap place to pick up a Viator - I trained for this months ago, just in case. And that case is now, as I am in and out of null, with potential hostiles lurking everywhere. OH NOES!1!

Plan - jump over there in the empty, speed fit industrial, buy Viator, sell all the shite I can’t be bothered with, repackage the rest – sod the rigs, I’ll just buy a BPC and build new ones, chuck it all in the Indy, jump back, PROFIT. And I did, too. [o/ HB].

Protip, kids - if you mission & salvage, don’t sell it – sit on it and buy BPC’s to build your own of the more expensive rigs when you need them. I bought just the Ward Consoles to build 4 rigs last night and effectively got 4 rigs for the price of 1 including the BPC. [o/ HB again].

Tre
This was only a couple of days ago and I think I can remember it all. Just tooling around shopping & refitting a BS for system defence [in my new Viator, <3], when a message pops up in alliance chat to ask if anyone fancies a short Thrasher roam in a little while. Ok I thought, need my bed, but the corp needs faces in alliance roams – it’s a dirty job, etc. And the CEO was on :P Shipped up with 20 others in the Thrasher & x’ed up to find the destination was 50-odd jumps away. Short, eh? Ah, through a wormhole to the other side of the universe into drone space. Game on. Then made my first proper mistake by clicking jump, rather then warp, got appropriate bollocking, felt bad and PAID ATTENTION for the rest of the roam.  Had my first DC and left behind while the boys gave the good news to an Enyo, but got back on for the Hulk, which then made me feel bad. Briefly.

There really wasn’t much in drone space, but I guess the Russians were all in bed. Until we ran into some guys by their station and my first real fleet battle. Great job of FC’ing calling the shots resulted in 2 Drakes, a ‘Cane & a Discogeddon on our KB. I mashed buttons like a boss, just trying to make sense of what was going on. I remembered to align when the Archon yellow-boxed me and didn’t even see what got me to 10% armour before I warped out to the sun. We started to lose a few ships, so the FC called it & we started our retreat. The CEO unsuccessfully tried to hero a red Thrasher that followed us, but another ‘Geddon showed up & proved to much for him, while we all ran like girls. One of the fleet was a girl in RL, though. Way.

Faced with a 50-odd jump ride home, some bright spark remembered the WH we had come in through and I felt all warm and fluffy inside, as I’d bookmarked it as a matter of routine [o/ Nic].  We made best speed for destination and those still in some kind of space faring vehicle got home to a nice cup of tea made by those waking up in the vats. Or something.

Imagine my surprise to look hopefully in my combat log to see a nice picture of a Drake next to sum wordz..

Blah, blah - FINAL BLOW Caisman - w00t w00t

The KB screen dump is now my wallpaper. And my ‘Systems I’ve Visited’ map on the map is looking much better now.

Currently [still] training – missile support skills to play with the Drake boys. I told you I had none.

o7

It’s Friday, it’s [CENSORED FOR OPSEC],

Y114.05.23

It’s x-up time!

Well, it’s not but soon will be so let’s get the idea out there.

Questions, questions
Which fleet to join, which ship to take? Which mid-slot mod & can I even find it in the new inventory system? Which of my kids will spew up in bed before the fleet disperses and get me popped light years from home? The only certainties are that it will cost me time & money, either in ammo, ships or cleaning product.

Decisions, decisions
Go with the alliance fleet? Probably won’t fly with me corp muckers, but maybe more chance of getting on a kill report [that’s killmail to you old folk] and [marginally] less chance of getting handed my arse on a plate, all good things for the corp killboard stats which need some input right now.

Go with me corpies? The lack of discipline, knob gags & sheer number of uncoordinated smoke / drink / food breaks will probably ruin it, but hey it’ll be funny as. And imagine the alliance kudos if we bag something as a corp.

Or just whore it up in high-sec – nah, I can always sell some of the kids toys and trade a PLEX.

o7

0.0 Local

Y114.05.22

I SAW A GOON, I SAW A GOON!

Now that's really up to date.

o7

Scary monster

Y114.05.21

It seems most of the corp felt the same way about the pirate lifestyle, so we had a vote [well the grown-ups had a vote, I just spammed corp chat], the outcome of which was for the corp to join some [very] old friends in a null-sec alliance.

ZOMFGWTFYOUREPLAYINGWITHTHEBIGBOYSNOWNOOB

While it is safe to say that I am quite excited by the prospect of fighting people for a reason - man, logistics are a pain in the arse and it’s not really that far either.  Jamyl only knows how it’s done properly.

A week, and most of my ISK later, I have a few ships properly fitted and ready to get popped, er I mean rock in the staging area; updated and moved my clone; moved a bunch of T2 & Meta 4 mission loot that ’might come in handy one day’ closer to the staging area; trained medium T2 autos [w00t] and now I won’t be proper on 'til the weekend.  Well, that gives me some more time to mission whore in the posh clone before I jump into the cheapie, eh?

There is one downside to the move, but no biggie really - it has interrupted the Tengu skill plan I had just remapped for.  Fortunately it’s a Per/Will remap, so T2 autos are good, as are the missile skills I have never bothered with before.

Currently training - not the Tengu but all those little bits you need in PVP to level 3 until this remap has served its purpose - that Nanite stuff, some EWAR skills, being man enough to undock when there's a red in system, you know.

It's too late for you now but it's update day, so queue up a long one - I've thrown Caldari Cruiser V in there just in case.

I will be off to the local hostelry for a few pints of Slavers favourite Amarr Victor later if anyone fancies it.

EDIT: I think that's up to date now.

o7

Yarrr

Y114.05.20

To recap from the last post -

1 – No bloody escalations so not flown the Ruppie yet
2 – Didn’t happen [see below]
3 – Lol
4 – Yay, BC V win!  Bring on the changes CCP
5 – Almost…

The corp joined a low-sec pirate alliance a while back – the same bunch who we toyed with a few times, had a couple of goodfights™ and popped my beloved Momo.  I think I probably dropped the same faction ammo I got off them in a previous encounter - a Myrm for a Myrm and all that.  Nice bunch though – I even did a short haul for one of them.  For free.  I thought he might have given me a few ISK, though.  Fucking pirates.

It was all good - taught me about regular d-scanning, passing / collecting intel and a few of us did some low sec rat anomalies which was different from the yawn of high-sec.  Well, they were harder - I was omni tanked in case of trouble, rather than having a rat specific tank.  And I was mashing d-scan all the time and shitting it when a neutral or red [oh noes!!!1!!!!] popped up in local.  In between repping my inappropriate tank at the station, of course.  Ah needs me a Tengu, boi.

We put up a POS, which was more good experience for a POS virgin, though I didn’t [and still don’t] actually know anything about research, you can’t moon mine in 0.4 and I only got to shoot my own cans with my newly trained Starbase Defence skill.  The corp did well out of it though and that’s what counts.  No, really – we did and it is.

Which is all great, but I don’t actually want to be a pirate and shoot people for no reason other that they took a shortcut through a single low-sec system.  I need a reason and the corp got me one.  Tidy darts.

Currently training - Tengu [see above]

o7

An update

Y114.05.05 

So, carebear for a year - great corp, 3 local L4 agents on the go, some exploration & complexes, an incursion, a few corp roams in low-sec.  All good stuff, but there is plenty more out there I want to try.

1 - Needed a non-rail cruiser for 3/10 DED complexes found through exploration, so I mined the minerals & built a Rupture.
2 - PVP it up - moar low-sec roams and stuff with the corp.  So I've got a jump clone with free mission reward implants and built some Rifters to lose.
3 - Save some ISK, rather than fritter it away on shite.  A bit like RL, this one.
4 - Get Battlecruisers V out of the way to future-proof myself against the rumoured introduction of racial BC skills and set some proper skill training goals.
5 - *Cough*  Get this blog going properly.  *Cough*

o7

Exploration

Y114.05.04

I’ve only really been interested in Radar or Unknowns when I explore.  [The scanner can now be filtered to get rid of other clutter].  I probably read somewhere that they were the best.  I use a Helios fit with a Cov Ops cloak, Sisters launcher, Codebreaker & Analyser modules & a Hobgoblin II.  It has a Gravity Capacitor Upgrade for a 10% boost to scan probe strength & a Memetic Algorithm Bank for a 20% boost to the hacking bonus.  I’ve not yet found anything I can’t find [sic] or hack.

Radar’s –

The drone will take care of most rats which turn up while I’m hacking the cans.  Sometimes I get lucky and get some nice loot worth maybe 10-20 mil, more often than not, bugger all.  CCP have apparently fixed the overview so you can see which cans you have already hacked o/ CCP!

Wormholes [Unknowns] –

I will sometimes just have a peek through a wormhole to see where it goes – don’t forget to bookmark the hole on the other side, folks! – I’m sure I will go through one soon enough straight into a camp, but hey – shit happens.

Complexes [Unknowns] –

Great little sites if you get an escalation which could lead you a faction spawn, if you are lucky.  Need to get another cruiser to run these properly as rail = fail against Blood Raiders.

DED complexes –

Not really found through exploration, but by looking at the star map for local reports of naughty rat behaviour.  Only 1/10’s available locally, which only allow a frigate through but they are good fun if they haven’t already been farmed by someone else.  There is faction loot to be had at these sites, not great stuff but good for your own fits.

So, must do more in WH’s this year & try some Mag sites.

o7

Happy Birthday

Y114.05.03

Having been high-sec carebear for the past year & never having been into 0.0, I though I'd treat myself to a null solo roam 'cos everyone knows that is where the real action is.

Jump clone - check

No implants - check

Rookie ship - check

Balls of steel - check

Can of lager - check

Jump headlong into 0.0, align to planet, check local, check d-scan, check overview, do it all again.  What's all the fuss about, there's no-one here. WTF?  Who's locked me?  Why can't I move?  What was that bang? OMGWTFBBQPWND. Spam warp, save pod, jump back into civilized society, dock up, breathe.

So, checking the loss mail, I got whacked by a Sansha BS - I was thinking so much about getting podded off a real PvP'er, I didn't even register the incursion.  Twat.  Why not on overview then?  Because for some reason, although show pirate & NPC's are ticked, they keep randomly not showing.  Good job I am not worthy of Incursion fleets then.

Right lets deselect then reselect show pirate & NPC's, get another rookie ship and jump into an Incursion to check the settings.  They work.  At least I knew I was going to get popped this time.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

o7

The Beginning

Y114.05.02

After learning the ropes through the tutorial missions, I went out and did some missions to get some ISK together and progress through the ship sizes –

frigate > destroyer > cruiser > battle-cruiser > battleship

Once I got into a destroyer, I started the Blood Stained Stars Sisters of Eve Epic Arc and promptly lost a few of them to NPC rats in Mission 27, Burning Down the Hive.  Arnon is called the lost ships capital of EVE due to this mission as it can be the first time you get proper caught by a bunch of web / scram drones.  I was into a cruiser by the time I finished the arc. Er, probably.

At some point during this, I joined a friend’s corp with an eye on training up to play with their alliance in Syndicate, but kept putting it off and the corp left the alliance.  Lesson learned - just get stuck into PVP on day 1.  This did however provide me with my first proper death at the hands of a real person.

Twat

For some strange reason, I thought it would be safe to go mining under a wardec.  I cheerfully loaded up an Iteron with a couple of giant secure containers and after checking local for reds, warped to a gate to grab a belt 1 jump away.  As I returned with cold lager in hand, I heard the telltale scream of my shields being hit and found myself in a pod.

Ah.

Presumably because we were in high-sec, he didn’t pod me and I limped off home thoroughly chastised.  Lessons learned –

1.  Don’t go AFK during wardecs.  Not even for lager.

2.  Think carefully about mining during wardecs.  Well, mining in general really.  Unless you need the minerals to build something or you're watching porn.

3.  Don’t piss off your alliance [& possibly corp] by being a twat.

On the Move

With the Sisters arc complete, it was time to relocate to the corp HQ some 20-odd jumps away.  A nice corpie kindly agreed to freight all my stuff over there for me, taking most of the pain out of it.  He also advised me to leave some kit back there for missioning, but I’ve not returned to it since I left.  A year ago.

I pre-emptively got my own back by not offering to web his freighter on every jump so it could enter warp quicker.

o7