2010 resolution.

There are two things you can always expect this time of the year: new year celebrations and new year resolutions. We are not doing anything exciting this year, so lets talk about my EVE resolutions.

I have three resolutions/goals for the upcoming 2010 year for each pilot. I sorted them into short/medium/long term goals.

Lets start with Dante. The last 7 month were very interesting. I pursued different objectives, but I'm still not sure where my pod will take me this coming year. Maybe PVP, or plexing/missions or W-space adventures. Regardless of my final destination the short and medium goals will come in handy. The long term goal is probably in everyone's TODO list at some point.

• Short : Small/Medium/Large Tech-2 blasters and railguns. I'm currently 1 day way from Large Hybrid V! According to EVEMon I'll be done with this goal by Feb. I look forward to have my BS and HAC with Tech-2 guns.
• Medium : Take Gallente BS, Heavy Drones, Sentry Drones and Drone Interfacing skills all to V. Each drone skill takes 23 days while the BS will take 32, so around 4 months to complete. Drones are awesome!
  
• Long : Capitals!!! I'm still not sure what will it be. Maybe a Moros or a Thanatos. I don't have enough money to pay for any of them at the moment, but hopefully this will change. To properly fly and fit either one will take 4-5 months. If the previous 2 goals are reached as scheduled, in theory ,I should have the proper skills for one of these ships by Dec 2010. This depends greatly on two things: a)my wallet and b)the company direction.

About Armand...

• Short : All ore refining/mining to IV in order to use Tech-2 crystals for them in my Hulk. This should be done by the end of the month. Only the ABC ores are not currently trained since they require Metallurgy IV (currently @ III). With the changes brought in via Dominion these skills will greatly benefit my wallet. :)
• Medium : Be able to fly an Obelisk maybe even an Anshar. I'm currently one skill away (Industrial Command Ship) from flying an Orca. I can't afford an Orca at the moment, so spending the money on that book seemed a waste. Still the Orca is not a big hauler. For me to further help the corp reach the next level I think this is a must. We can't rely only on a very few pilots with these skills.
• Long : T1/T2/T3 production. I'm still researching what particular T2 items/ships I want to work with (same with T3), but this was always the goal with Armand. I think production is really amazing (and complex). Look forward to be able to build my own ships!

The medium term goal is more a matter of money than time spent training. Because of this it is likely that a lot of support skills will be trained to fill the gaps. Specially probing skills and remote repping skills for future W-space and maybe L4/L5 missions.

It is a very ambitious agenda, but one has to dream big to do big things.

On RL note... I hope to improve this blog. Post more often and about subjects that make this a unique place. Ecliptic Rift gave some hints about this in a recent blog (which was also mentioned by EVE Druid).

In the news.

As many other pilots, I've taken a couple of days off to spend with the kids. Besides login for a few minutes here and there to check mail, say hi and update my training queue all my EVE info has come mainly from my corp forums and Massively.

Via Massively I read How Curzon Dax stole Christmas. It is a very interesting story and for good (or bad) keeps putting EVE on a class of its own. I wonder how much this betrayal will affect the Ships of EVE 4 contest. As it is tickets sales are sluggish. Dax's news can't help much.

The only time I participated on something similar was AU-Fs first Lottery (without much luck). I thought about the SoE or the Texas Hold Em, but these type of news always make me think twice about it. As my wallet fills up in the coming months I may venture in one of these events. We'll see.

On other news... I updated the list of blogs listed on the right of this page. I removed some that were not fun anymore to read and added some that have been really good lately. I also added some from my own corp. Please visit them.

Fly safe!

The best deal.

I've been looking at the market prices for an Ishtar. They have been very steady in the 130-135M range. I can buy it now, but getting it with all the modules will put a dent in my wallet. Today I decided to look at Contracts (I guess that only noobs like me don't start there) and found unbelievable deals. The problem is that they look too good. For example, there is an Ishtar with everything I can think of (even a big combination of races/shapes tech 2 drones) for almost the same price an Ishtar alone is going in the market.

I wonder if these incredible prices are just a way for pirate corps to lure pilots like me. We go looking for a great deal and as soon as we leave the station with our new ship we get a quick trip back to the clone bay.

I guess I'll find out soon enough since these prices are worth the risk.

Great w-space info.

Recently (I think it was a link from Kirith's blog) I found a great blog about w-space. The blogger, Star Defender, recently added a post of his daily ritual. I think this a must-read for any w-space explorer wannabe (like me!).

Since the trip with the corp to w-space I've been looking forward to go back. I always thought it would be impossible without a team, but reading this blogs gives me hopes. Lets see what happens next year.

The Dominion experience.

As I reported in a previous post I had very little knowledge of how the changes in Domion affected the ratting/plexing experience in 0.0. I didn't read the Dev blogs/posts, so with that I tried some belts in the usual 2V-pocket system without any noticeable change.

I knew that I was missing something, so I called for some clarifiation/explanation and two corp-mates came to rescue. Al Noldevin and Falgoria explained, the major difference is in the number of plexes available per system. Let me give a brief overview (for those lazy like me) of whats new.

If you click the "Sovereignty" link in the upper-left corner of the screen you'll see the Sovereignty window. In the System tab you'll see a last 24 hour summary of kills and cyno fields activity. You also find an Overview with stations, etc. At the end you'll see a "Development Indices" field. Each system has 3 different indices: Strategic, Military and Industry.

The strategic informs you if the system is owned by an alliance. Once the alliance has taken ownership of the system, then activity in the system affects the military index. The higher that is, the more plexes are available. The more plexes are cleared, the higher it goes. Once that is full, then the Industry index increases based on the industrial activity in the area. Is my understanding that this affect Ladar and Grav sites in the area.

Another intersting thing is that for these plexes no probe launcher + probes are needed. Using the ship scanning system you can get 100% hit on these. The other type of signatures (Radar, Mag, w-space, etc) are still there and still need probe to find, but with so many combat files readily available there is a bigger chance of finding those now. Plexers/ratter can make plenty of ISK without taking the time to scan all these signatures.

Talking ISK... I can't imagine how the market will be affected with the influx of money from all these new sites. I'll keep an eye on the blogs to see what trends (if any) come about.

On other things, I'm finally doing Z&S missions in Mamet. These are way better than the crap I was doing in Empire space. They are not L3 yet, but the L2-Quality7 agent keeps me busy. I'm seating at a 2.56 standing at the moment. I need 3.5 for the L3 agent in Ziriert talks to me. I look forward to that.

I'm currently running missions with the Vexor (Cruiser V baby!) using hobII and hammerII. Bad guys melt like butter. I imagine that I'll upgrade to the Myrmidon when L3s come around.

Doing missions in Mamet is definitely more interesting. The rats are still easy, but the constan move of reds thru the system keeps me awake. Talking about that... I learned something today. Drones and cloaks don't mix.

As I was finishing a mission and my drones were flying back a group of reds jumped in. Since I was out of combat I clicked on my cloak. Drones went puff. It seems that cloaking interrupts communication between ship and drones. Once the reds left system I flew to the drones to scope them in. I learn something new everyday.

About Dominion.

Lets talk Dominion.

The first thing I liked about this expansion was the name. I can actually pronounce it as oppose to Apo-cryptic. The game looks great. The planets give a really nice touch to the game and even the splash screen looks amazing.

I read a lot about the in-game browser, so immediately brought it up. I have to say that they finally have a good browser. I can now check dotlan.com, eve-agents, corp & allinace forums/kb and Scrapheap Challenge from the game. I didn't try to post to this blog, but I imagine it will work just fine. Hopefully that means more updates.

The Fleet utility worked as I expected. It was easy to find corp/alliance fleets. I can't believe it took so long to add this. I don't even want to look back at how it was before.

The mail application is better, but nothing super special. I thought they were going to steal a page from thunderbird with virtual folders and filters. But still good. :)

I don't have a comment about all the lowering of the skills. I think is a good thing, but none of them affect me.

About the 0.0 changes. To be honest I have done a very poor job going thru all the release notes and developer blogs. I read some of the summaries in the blogs I follow. Thats it. My little experience the other night... nothing really changed. CVA and allies were holding Providence and the few systems in Catch. There was a lot of red activity, but nothing out of the ordinary. I took my Dominix to the 2V pocket and found it as busy as ever. After jumping around a couple of belts in 7Y I end up blowing up a couple of Sansha BS (650k a piece). I didn't notice anything difference (there were a bunch of empty belts and spawn didn't look any different). I have to do some reading and check with the corp-mates to see what I'm missing.

Back with Dominion.

After an unscheduled leave from EVE I came back this week with the new expansion. The last 1.5 month was really crazy. Work load was at an all time high. A "normal" Mon-Fri week resulted in 60 hours of work. In top of that there was a huge list of games that came out which got my attention on my time off (Aion, Rock Band Lego, CoD MW2, Borderlands and Left4Dead 2).

I didn't completely forget about EVE. I kept my training queue busy and completed some missions here and there.

So where Dante and Armand are after this break? Glad you ask. :)

Dante is now capable of flying an Ishtar! He is also did some Sentry training (up to iii) and improved multiple gunnery skills to iv. I'm currently working with Zoar & Sons and KK level 2 missions. Today I finish connections iv and tomorrow I'll be done with social iv which should help me get to level 3 of both very soon. Then is off to hybrid turrets to v all around for T2 guns.

About the missions... Just before my leave I was having problems with income in Dante. I had relied entirely in ratting and plexing, but with the huge amount of competition during my playtime hour in Providence the amount of ISK gain was very little. I didn't have access to any L4s to compensate, so made that a goal before the new year.

Armand was also buys. I got ice harvesting and mining drones to v. Improved on multiple navigation and electronic skills. But the biggest accomplishment is that in 5 more days mining foreman v completes. This allows me to fly an Orca by end of next week.

I don't have the money right now to buy the Ishtar or the Orca, but thats just small details. :)

One last thing... It was great to be in channel with the corp/alliance again. I didn't realize how much I missed it. Its good to be back.

An RTS would have been a better option.

I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the DUST 514 announcement. I know that is too early for me to judge their direction and the impact it will have in EVE, but nevertheless I feel that there is something wrong.

I don't directly participate in the 0.0 sov game, but any changes to it will directly affect me since I'm a Providence resident (region controlled by CVA). I also understand that a change or probably a complete overhaul of the sov mechanics was due. I've read multiple blogs and forum posts criticizing the current way sovs are defended.

I understand CCP decision for a console game. Consoles are very popular and will likely increase their income. But an FPS? Really?!? I haven't done a study neither I'm quoting one, but FPS is probably the most crowded category of console games. It seems that every month a new FPS hits the market. Never mind the long list of existent and very popular FPS franchise like Halo series, CoD series, Quake/Doom series, BF series and R6 series just to name a few.

Even if they achieve huge numbers at launch I can't see them being able to keep them with this type of competition. I'm not saying CCP can't compete at this level. They will probably put a very decent product, but we are talking playing in the major leagues on their first time at bat. It will be rough.

What about an RTS? I think this would have been a better option. Not only there is more room in the RTS market, but I believe that this type of gameplay would be a better fit for the EVE world. There are so many possibilities that an RTS/MMO combination could give to players. Imagine using your Rhea or you Ark to bring provisions or more weapons or a battalion from one planet to another to reinforce your RTS forces? Also the scale would be significantly bigger. Even if you have 256 players in a single battle (feat which only MAG supposedly does) that number seems ridiculously small to determine the fate of a planet. With an RTS you can have 50 players in one planet going at each other with armies representing thousands of troops. This epic fight between armies makes more sense than 100 or so players shooting at each other.

I also question the capability of the current holder alliances to gather dominant FPS forces to control the planets they currently posses. Even though many of these alliances bolster a big roster, I don't think that they can field an army for protection. They will rely exclusively on contracts made with the FPS players for this. We know how ruthless players are in EVE. Can you imagine how much more the FPS crowd will be once they understand how much power they have? They will likely have no ties to the alliance in EVE except for their pay. Basically, if someone pays them more they are likely to flip. All those sacrifices and hard work to obtain and keep your sov can go out of the window regardless of what you do.

If you look around there is only one alliance that has the numbers to take advantage of this addition... Goons. The Something Awful community is one of the largest internet communities. There are hundreds of members just looking for the next FPS in the market. The Goons should have no problem getting members from their ranks to play the FPS side. This can give them an overwhelming advantage. Hmm... the Delve holder getting improper assistance from CCP. What does that reminds me of?

Anyway, only time will tell. Maybe I'm right, maybe I'm not. In any case, if you were eagerly waiting on the addition of planets to the game since this clip, you got PUNKED!

Training update.

As with any MMO, progress is one of the more important aspects of the game. If your avatar progress stalls, your gaming experience takes a big hit. With all its complexity and depth, EVE has been a very understanding game. It doesn't penalize me for only playing 2-3 hours a night. Not having to shoot 100 times my guns or mine 50 asteroids to level a skill is a great feeling. Nothing makes me happier than waking up my laptop and have the EVE Skill Monitor greet me with a "Skill training complete" message. So where am I?

In the last month Dante has made a lot of progress in multiple areas. He is now able to fit Tech 2 armor hardeners, has almost all light/medium drone relates skills to IV (Gallente spec is next) and has improved a bunch of core skills involving shields, MWD and ABs. The biggest decision made was a decision involving his dps potential. I'm very clear as to which ship I want him flying by the end of the year (GO GO Ishtar!!), but I wasn't sure what I wanted to fit for dps. One thing was certain, it had to be Tech2. Anything less, to me, would be an epic fail.

I pulled up EVEMon and look at the time it would take for him to get Tech 2 blasters... approximately 21 days. Not bad, I thought. I can be going around on my Isthar with some nice Tech 2 blaster for on-your-face pew-pew. Unfortunately there was something wrong. As I was thinking on that fitting, nightmares of my experience with blasters on the Thorax and Brutix came to me. Blasters? Am I really going to put blasters on this ship. I hate blasters!! True, they are awesome at close range and with the right ship/fits/skills probably unstoppable, but Dante doesn't have those skills.

I looked again at the Ishtar info and then at his skills. Back and forward... Wait! What was I thinking? Am I blind? 10% bonus to drone hp and dmg, +5km bonus to range, +50m3 bay. Then I look at his stats... Interfacing IV, Combat Op IV, Sharpshooting IV, Gallente Spec III, Durability IV, Navigation IV, Scout Op V. The answer is DRONES stupid!!!

And so it was. Since he already had access to light and medium Tech 2 drones I just added the Heavy Drone skill all the way to V in the planner. After 28 days he gets Ogre II. Dante is currently 3 days away from Heavy IV. After that I'm queueing some other skills to improve other aspects of his game to then continue to Ogre II.

Armand's training schedule was much easier to plan. I knew for a long time what I wanted from him. In these past couple of weeks he learned to fly an Iteron V (that is a lot of cargo for a Tech 1) and a Viator. The Viator has been specially handy since it allows me to carry anything Dante needs and brings back all the loot from the ratting/plexing. Besides a lot of hauler skills he improved Mining Barge to IV and added mining drones. Right now he has a couple of days of drones skills to improve those mining drones benefits and then is straight to a Hulk. That wont happen until October thanks to Astrogeology V (12 days) and Mining Barge V (20 days), but I look forward to him destroying belts with the gang. After that is some logistic training so he can support Dante in w-space before heading to production.

Harder than it looks.

Wow! Its been almost a month since my last update. Is crazy how time just seems to pass you buy when you are busy.

Sorry for the lack of updates. Life has kicked me hard this past month. I have only a few hours at the end of the day for me and I have to decide between writing about the game I play or playing the game. I choose for the later always. :)

Besides finding the time, it is also challenging to find topics to discuss. I refuse to just post crap for the sake of an update. Playing for few hours every day with a limit set of skills makes it hard to be as prolific as others bloggers. I do think that there are still subjects that I can tackle (and will tackle) in the future.

About the other bloggers... Even though I've been away from my own blog I keep a good eye on the blogs recommend in this site. Thanks to the NetNewsWire app on my iPhone I keep up with all the good stuff from Manasi, Letrange, Kirith Kodachi, Mendolus and Wilhem among others.

Even though all of there are great, there is a particular blog that has been great to follow for the last month, EVE Newb. I know, I know... Am I really suggesting that Spectre has something worth reading? Well... after loosing CK's EVE Blog Banter #9, our loved pirate was a bit upset and decided to *show them* by making a name for himself. The series, which is already on its 4th installment, took a disastrous turn when Hallan Turrek threw down the gauntlet and challenged Spectre. Definitely a good read.

In a more serious note, Manasi recently posted a very interesting and useful guide on tactical bookmarks. I had a couple of BMs in my systems, but nothing as detail and complete as this. Is going to take me a while to set all those BMs in the systems I usually roam and live in, but with all the red traffic in the Providence and surrounding areas it is must-have.

Keeping the corp afloat.

Our corporation is currently experiencing some economic difficulties . As I understand it this is caused by a combination of things rather than a single event. But the important thing is that something needs to be done before we can't even fuel our POS.

The response from the corp has been very positive. In the last couple of days I've seen more people ratting in Providence and last night our mining wing went all out in our Monday's mining op. With the help of an Orca (thanks Meatay) and an Iteron V (thanks Gert) our Hulks and Retrievers mined non-stop.

The best part of it all?? Beside reaching our goal of ore for the night we were able to pull a bit more for personal profit.

I think Meatay is doing a great job leading the mining wing. Hopefully we can get a momentum going and maybe add a second day a week of these ops.

Now some pics:

Printed media.

Its been a while since I bought or subscribed to a magazine. With all the information we have at our fingertips via blogs, wiki, forums, fan pages, etc it seem to me that spending money on a magazine is a waste of hard earn cash. The magazine may be printed and delivered in no time, but the articles in it had to be written, reviewed, edited and whatever else that was needed weeks before the magazine was shipped. It means that even the day the magazine arrives it has information that is probably weeks old.

Because of this and many other factors, I have to say that I was surprised when I first learned about E:ON magazine. A printed magazine of an ever changing MMO. Not only ever changing, but one that had already great coverage in the web via multitude of sites. I basically said "bah!" and ignore it... until a post in Manasi blog.

The list of content included almost every blogger I followed. Hmm... Could this be worth reading? We'll find out soon. I decided to give it a try. Hopefully is as good as it sounds. We'll see.

Exploration re-visited.

Two weeks ago I hit a wall with the PVP in Providence (more about that in another post). I decided to park the Thorax and Brutix and went back to ratting and missions.

I did a few missions in the low-sec areas of Domain when I came to Providence, but going back to Mamet or Misaba was out of the question. I decided to try something in the Domain empire space. After looking at the list of agents in the area I decided to help the Carthum Conglomerate. There were three reasons for this. They were in Domain, had a big amount of L4 agents and multiple research agents. Unfortunately the L1 missions are BORING! After doing this for 2 days I JCed back to Providence for a change of pace.

Ratting in Providence is great. The bounty is good (around 950k per Sansha battleship), the salvage is better than anything I've seen before and if you get lucky a True Sansha can appear and drop some crazy good loot. This also goes great with my ad-hoc schedule. I can join at any time and get going immediately. It is really a great place for ratting, but that is also the big problem. A lot of people come to this area to do the same.

About a week ago I couldn't find a system that wasn't packed. I still was not ready for more PVP, but I didn't have many options... or so I thought. After debating between continue my search for a ratting spot or going back to those L1 suddenly it came to me. Exploration!!!

I immediately jumped in my Imnicus and started to explore. I forgot how much I liked exploration. It is like nothing else in EVE. Its own mini-game. After deploying the probes and running some scan I hit a Sansha Provincial Hub. I thought I could hit it alone, but it wasn't the case. After an SOS in Corp chat Gat and Zee came to the rescue.

If I recall we had 4 or maybe 5 waves. The fights were fun and the loot amazing. We had a True Sansha battleship that dropped great loot. This was besides all the great bounty, salvage and regular loot. The plex was a success and I was hooked again.

Every night after that I've done some exploring. Some times I get lucky sometimes I don't. I've found a big number of different plexes in the area. I tried to find information about them, but so far nothing really good. I'll start writing down the name of the plex and put together a description of it. Maybe I can add that to Evelopedia or EVE-wiki to help future explorers. It will be a while before I can hit all the different types, but I look forward to them. Specially the really tough ones like the Sansha Provincial HQ and something called the Sansha Minefield.

Additions to the fleet.

Those following this blog know that I got me a Myrmidon last month. This has become my 0.0 ratting boat and so far has been a great success. Unfortunately I didn't feel it was the right boat for a PVP roam. I'm not saying that it can't be and I know some corpmates use it successfully. Its just not what I was looking for. After saving some ISK I got me a Brutix. I fit it really close to what I had in my Thorax. Based on the bonus for the ship I went with a 2x MAR II in the lows to help me stay alive long enough since I can't fit Tech 2 guns at this time.

It still hasn't seen any action, but I hope that changes soon. For now here are some pics of these 2 beauties.

I really like Gallente engineering.

The more the merrier.

We are multiplying! Corpmate Ajax joined the blog-sphere today with his first post. This makes the third AU-F member with a blog.

Hopefully he can keep up with Mend because I can't. :)

Someone Loses an Eye

Welcome!

Greed.

There are so many aspects of EVE that mimic real life, but I think nothing reflects true life better than Industry roles. As in real life it is all about GREED.

Yes, you can do a lot of other things to increase your ISK consumption like ratting or exploring or missions or roaming for unexpected pilots (if you are a pirate). The difference is that those will provide you with entertainment while you increase your wallet. That is not the case with Industry.

Putting invention jobs on the station to see if 1 of the 20 invention jobs will produce something or pointing your mining strips to an asteroid are far from being fun or entertaining. There is only one reason we do it.... ISK!

I found the Industry role interesting from reading other bloggers entries. I always done some sort of crafting in previous MMOs, but it usually was just a side thing with little to no importance. That is not the case here. In EVE crafting is a very important part of the game. The ships, the fits, the booster are almost all player created. Yes, you get some stuff from LPs and the occasional loot, but the majority of people buy their stuff from markets or thru contracts.

The original idea was to do some light mining at the beginning while I figured out the direction I wanted to take with the production, but then the ISK started to come in. I thought "If I can do this much with this crappy setup, then how much more I can do with a better setup?!" That lead to a retriever which lead to mining upgrades which lead to refinery V. Then Refinery efficiency and veldspar processing. I kept looking at one thing... the ISK filling up my wallet.

I still want to do inventions and produce Tech 1 and Tech 2 gear for me and to put in the market to have income when not online, but that has been pushed back again and again.

In 4-5 days Armand will start the slow process of learning Gallante Industrial V. An Iteron V with rigs and expanded cargohold II can carry an insane amount of cargo for a Tech 1 ship. This will also open the door for a Viator. This will allow me to participate in the hauler division of our corp. The question is what to do after that.

The original plan was to stop the mining related skills and concentrate on production. The problem is that with a Hulk so close at hand and the invention and production of tech 2 items like shield extenders/hardeners, armor hardeners and med size drones still so far that decision seems wrong.

Hulk... I can already see my wallet icon blinking.... :)

The Mysterious Enigma.

A while back while I was in Mista someone linked an Enigma in local chat. I was blown away by the ship. It was like nothing I've seen before. I tried the usual places for information, but the only place I read something about it was the eve-wikia that the previous link takes you to.

I don't know how the player got that to link in channel. I couldn't link it myself back to corp or alliance channel. I don't know where that ship was seen. And more importantly... How do you get one?!?

Is this a GM ship? Or is it a future ship which information was data mined? Any information is appreciated.

For now I'll leave you with some screen shots:

A thief among us.

The stories of undercover agents and thieves in EVE became real to me this past week. I'll give very little credit to the thief. He wants to think that his operation was a successful corporate hit, but it was far from it. After months of "working" he was never able to steal from the corporation or hinder the corporation and/or alliance in any way. Instead he stole from a group of members who shared their resources willingly with other corp members.

The loot was good. A total of 3 ravens, one scorpion and one navy raven. Still a far cry from a well planned and executed corp hit.

Compared with the loot that he may have been able to get (since this was the w-space project which is producing Tech 3 gear) if he had waited patiently and worked better the social angle it is really not a successful hit.

Mend and Ajax have posted about this also. Please read their comments here and here for more info.

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.

The Great War and new patch.

This morning as I was looking at my normal source of MMO news I read two interesting articles that I want to share here.

The Mittani (spy extraordinaire) has posted a 2-part article where he tries to summarize the events of the Second Great War. The story starts with a recollection of events long past that setup the stage for the craziness that took place between February and June of this year in the Delve region. It goes without saying that there is a bias in this article, but for those of us that can't follow daily the CAOD forums this is the only summary I have been able to find.

I find the story very interesting. Many wonder if the once dominating force know formerly as BoB will be able to rise again from this defeat. I believe that it wont. I don't want to discard them completely, but I see them at the same level that many other alliances currently in the game. The rumor is that they have an extensive collection of BOPs which gives them good money, but you need more than that to come back.

I'm more curious about the Goons future. What they do now that there is no more war? Will they be happy in Delve? Will they prefer peace instead of war? If they choose the later, who the next target will be?

Long ago BoB attacked Providence/CVA from Delve and failed. Will the Goons try it to see if they can succeed where BoB failed?

I hope to experience that part of EVE, but not yet. Alliance wars require people that know the game, fly good ships and have money to spend. I have neither, so for the time being I'm happy with my little gank fleets.

For those interested in this story :

A History of the Second Great War : Part 1 and Part 2.

I also learned thru Massively that a new EVE patch is coming this Monday (yep, Monday). The changes are not many as we read thru the patch notes, but some of them could really affect us in a positive way. Specifically the changes in T3 production and W-space sites which is the entire point of the W-space project. I'm not very versed in the POS related things, but I think those changes are also positive.

Ratting the easy way.

As I posted previously I got me a Myrmidon. This was destined to be my PVE boat.

Ratting in null is not easy. The good old Vexor was unable to take on those waves of rats. I only attacked those spawns with frigates or no more than 2 cruisers. Anything more was too much. Exploration sites were completely out. I tried it once and immediately became evident that it was a loosing battle. So I was very exciting when I was told that the BC skills were completed. Not only that, but just a few days before was finally able to use Hammerhead II.

I asked in corp forums for help fitting it and Noldevin came to the rescue. After following his suggestions I ratted with Gert. ZOMG!! What a joke! My shields usually don't last long since I have little spent on that training and I have zero fittings to help them, but once the damage goes to armor the numbers are laughable. Cruiser hits you for 10 or Battleship hits you for 40, etc.

I'm still far from the uberness I've seen from battleships in L4 missions or w-space sites, but I'm starting to feel the power. :)

Second loss.

Not a very good start to my PVP life, but an expected one. On Thursday night I suffered my second PVP lost. This time to a Navy Megathron in Misaba. Click for the KB.

As I logged in and planned for a night of exploration a fleet request came in thru the alliance channel looking for pilots to take on 2 reds in the Misaba system. They were both camping outside of the Misaba station. One was the mentioned Navy Megathron and the other some sort of logistic ship. As I understood it from the comment in channel it would have been impossible to take down the Meg without perma-jamming the other ship first.

As the FC plotted some way to lure the ships out of station range, we sat there just looking at each other.

I really like the Megatron. It is a gorgeous ship that packs a punch. I've heard a lot about how the nurf-bat took a swing at it a while back, but I still think is worth its money and training. I will definitely get one in the near future and if lucky maybe a Navy Issued or a Marauder version later on.

Back to my story... After some deliberation and planning the FC gave orders to warp to a position. This is where I made my mistake... I'm still getting used to the way that different FC give orders in the channel. I was already pointed out once for warping too early. Since then I usually wait to see if we are warping as a group (fleet warp) or individually. This time I paid dearly for this.

As it happens I was opposite to the destination given. As I waited a few seconds to see if we were warping as a group or not I noticed people warping out. I started the alignment process when I got tackled. I knew that warping out was out of the question. Since I was under 1k away from the station, I immediately ask the station for docking orders. As my shields melted away and my armor started to give up I requested again and again, but all I got was a message telling me that they were granting me permission soon. At this time I was already in hull. As I waited for the explosion I had my finger over the button to ask access to the station in my pod. Then it happened....

As my ship blew up my screen refreshed and I was in a station, but not the Misaba station. I just woke up in Mista. Yep, I got podded. I have to admit that it was confusing at first. There wasn't time for the Meg to target me and shoot between the time my Thorax blew and the time I woke up at the station. Maybe it was lag... Maybe his drones locked me immediately. I have no kill mail of this, so I guess I'll never know. At least a fleet member was able to scoop all my loot.

I was not upset about the incident and I take full responsibility for it. It was another lesson and a good job by the Meg pilot. I really don't know why I couldn't get in the station. I was already there. Is not like I was far away. That part of the game annoys me. Sometimes I can get into a station immediately, but sometimes it takes 20+ seconds. I don't even know if I can get in while being attack (I think you can).

The worst part of it all was getting a ship back together. One thing I learned immediately is that I need to have a second ship fitted in that area to get back into action quickly. The corp provides us with incredible low prices on T1 ships. So not having another ship ready was a silly mistake.

Battlecruiser... I haz it!

Just a quick update. Dante is the proud owner of a Myrmidon!!! I'm not changing my Thorax for a Brutix just yet, but as soon as I have better skills I will do that move for PVP fleets. For now I'm extremely happy of this milestone which allows me to better rat in Providence.

Null sec state of mind.

After typing that title I had no choice, but to open a new tab to listen to Billy Joel's song that inspired it. :)

For the last 2 weeks life in the Misaba/Mamet low-sec area of Domain has been more difficult than normal. It is low sec, so we expect pirates to be lurking in every corner. But this is different. First we had the visit of a merc corp that moved in to mess with CVA and their friendly alliance in the area. They were roaming in a 10-15 ship fleet. Lots of battleships, HAC and other Tech 2 boats. Our regular fleets were no match to this fleet make-up, so a lot of staying safe (running to Mista, or deep in Providence or inside the station) took place. One night multiple senior pilots put together a stealth bomber fleet (I don't have the skills for that) and took many of the battleships with some great tactics, but with their deep pockets they came back with a new fleet. After that contract expired another set of reds moved to Yong to cause trouble.

These groups stay in the low-sec area and venture little into Providence. They know that the few corporation/alliances that call that area home don't have the fire power to repel them and that CVA don't venture that far out. Is for this that our leadership presented us with a new plan... move fully to Providence.

I am extremely happy about this decision. All my experience so far has been better in null sec than low sec. In null sec things are more in our terms than red terms. This weekend I started all the logistics for me to move without leaving anything useful behind. If everything goes well I'll be living in one of the CVA outpost in a day or two. I have my jc in Thebeka which gives me access to missioning when I need a change of pace, plus is my gate to W-space when I'm ready for it.

Looking forward to new challenges and more adventures!

L4 missions.

This past week I also had the opportunity to experience a bit of the PVE-endgame. I know there are L5 missions in the game, but this is as close to PVE-endgame content as a new player can wish for.

The senior pilots in the group (Psycro, Mendolus, Noldevin) were more than capable to do any of these by themselves, but they were graceful to let us tag along so we could experience the L4 missions while making some nice ISK.

This has been the closest experience to a regular MMO (WoW, WAR) that I had in EVE so far. All the normal stuff was explained : aggro, killing order, which NPCs to immediately kill if they show up, which one to not even look at and who to assist.

I thought that the little 0.0 ratting I've done in Providence was enough to take on these. I was dead wrong. The amount of NPCs per wave in some of these encounters is incredible. Four BS, 4+ cruisers and a laundry list of frigates. It was a really crazy night. Of course the waves were no match to the Battleships that our senior pilots were flying. They were never in any real trouble. Felt like some level-80/25Nax-geared player was helping me clearing out a level-70 dungeon.

I look forward to try these on my own. I ran multiple missions for the Sarum Family during the weekend to start my path to L4. Hopefully by the time I reach that level of standing with them I'll have the necessary skills to take on those.

Shortcuts.

Its always a big gamble to start as a new player in an old MMO. In many MMOs it usually means you'll have very little to zero interaction with other players in your first months while you level up thru empty "newbie" zones/areas. It also means that you are unlikely to see any of the new content since it may require level, gear and/or reputation/faction standing that you lack in your 1-2 month old toon.

That is something that EVE doesn't suffer from. It is probably the most complicated MMO available and requires a lot reading, studying and planning to be successful, but EVE allows you to jump into the action really early in your capsuleer life. With limited SP (still under 4M) I've been able to assist in PVP fleet fights in low sec, ratting in null sec, exploration in a variety of systems and L4 missions (more about that in another post).

It goes without saying that all these activities were possible thanks to a very active and helpful corporation/alliance. I don't consider that cheating. It is an MMO, so playing in a group is part of the experience (no offense to those of you who want to play this as a 1-player game). I see it more as a shortcut to overcome years of SP I lack.

This past week another amazing opportunity was offered. Two corpmates, Rayth and Ajax, with the assistance of our CEO, Mendolus, brought online a POS in w-space!!! Following all the stories I see about w-space, besides the money to be made there, I've been playing with EVEMon to see the shortest route for me to venture there. The best plan had me there around Christmas 2009. Well... not anymore. Armand is permanently in w-space mining and on Friday got all the skills he needed to do gas harvesting in a battlecruiser. Dante visited, but is still lacking the skills to be helpful. There are plenty of explorers and others with the hacking and archaeology skills that Dante has.

The good news is that after talking to Rayth on Saturday I put together an EVEMon plan to fill the gap needed in the w-space group. Only 20 more days to go for Dante to be w-space ready!! Looking forward to be a productive part of the w-space project.

Via Massively.

Going thru the Massively RSS feed I found two very interesting articles about EVE.

First there was this article about a bank (didn't know such thing existed) in EVE that is in the middle of an embezzlement scandal when the CEO stole ~200 billion ISK from the bank.

The second was this picture which depicts a huge fleet ready for battle. The article claims that this is a picture of a fleet from the Northern Coalition as they were getting ready to engage Triumvirate/White Noise on E-7U8U (Venal Region). There were over 750 in local which prohibited this pilot from participating since the grid would not load.

I can't even imagine the logistics involved in an operation that big.

NER. E3 comments.

NER=Non EVE Related. Yes, I came up with a new acronym. I haven't seen it before, so I'm saying "copyright"! :)

As a video game fan I always keep an eye on whats coming soon. I was really happy with the games showcased in this year E3.

The top two games of the show (at least for me) were:

• Star Wars : The Old Republic
• Final Fantasy XIV Online

Not that they needed more hype, but Bioware commissioned Blur Studios to make this amazing cinematic trailer. I haven't played any Star Wars game in any console or PC, but this may change in the future.

The FFXIV took me completely by surprise. I know that a project named Rapture was in the works and knew about this concept video, but I was definitely not expecting this trailer from SquareEnix. FFXI was great, but it had tons of limitations and problems. If SE delivers properly this could be a game that can pull me back to the world of fantasy. We'll see.

I'm also a Rock Band fan, so I was happy to see Rock Band Beatles trailer. Now if Jimmy Page would change his mind and negotiate with Harmonix. :)

A future EVE competitor was there, but I really don't care for Jumpgate at all. Click if you care to see the E3 trailer.

There were tons of other games, but I really don't play anything else that isn't an MMO these days (Rock Band being the exception). I was a bit disappointed that there were no updates for Lego Universe.

You are doing it wrong! Part 3

Part 3. The Miner.

After what seemed was an eternity, Armand finally stepped out of the Bantam and is enjoying the high-life in a Retriever. He is currently based in Mista and with a group of 3 drones (soon to be 4) defending him from the pesky rats life is good. Or so I thought...

Armand for the must part is a loner. He undocks, flies to a belt and does his thing quietly. Its been like this for a long time since the Bantam was no good for any corp ops. With the very limited amount of skills he was forced to dock after filling up his cargo hold since there was no bigger ship to fly all that ore back to the station. Everyone that has been in a retriever knows how painful that is. The thing takes FOREVER to align and warp.

Things got better when Gallante Industrial III completed and a Mark III was added to the hangar. After warping to a full belt on a quiet system I could mine with multiple jet cans and then go back for the Mark to quickly pick up all the ore. This combined with an improvement in my refining skills gave me unprecedented amount of income. I started to *see* what mining was all about... TONS of ISK! But is there more to this...

That answer to that question came to me in two separate nights. On Monday, as I was doing missions with Dante (I just now realized I forgot about that in my PVE update), I entered a system with multiple blues including corpmates. They had a mining op in low sec for profit. I was in system anyway, so accepted their fleet invitation. I would kill the spawns in their belt and then go around clearing other belts until the spawns came back to them. At the end of the night besides a very generous tip for my assistance I had gained 2 more valuable things. First was a new group of friends and second a group to mine with. I'm in the process of getting a second retriever to have it available to me in low/null sec so I can join them. Mining solo got to be the worst profession in EVE.

Then on Tuesday I had my first ice mining op with the corp. After fitting my ice harvesters and making my way to the system I joined them in an ice belt. It was the first time I was working with an Orca. WOW! That thing is big. I wasn't there as long as I wished I had (next time I have to logout the night before in the op's system to save the flight time), so I don't know how profitable it will be for me. Nevertheless it was very rewarding. I felt that I was helping my corp/alliance in a positive way.

With the incredible income potential and the type of people I've met during these operations I'm considering re-arranging my skill schedule to drop or post-pone some skills in favor of those needed for a Hulk and a Mackinaw. This doesn't mean that I wont be doing production/invention. That is still the end goal, but it may be longer than originally planned. The good thing is that I don't see a need to go beyond those 2 ORE ships. Once there I can go full force to my production goals (t2 ships, t2 drones, t2 repairs and t2 ammo and guns).

I'm also keeping an eye on the T3 stuff. It is likely for this to take me at least another year. Who know how many other changes there will be to this by that time?

Here I'm including two pics from the ice ops. The mining op (including Orca) and my new retriever.

You are doing it wrong! Part 2

Part 2. PVE

Shortly after my move to Domain I selected Misaba as my base of operations for everything PVP related. Unfortunately I was still not certain (read that as afraid) to me living full time in low-null sec, so I left the majority of my stuff in Mista. I'm glad to report that this has changed and I'm currently completely setup in Misaba.

Having all the exploration/ratting/mission in Misaba was a big step for me and I'm proud of it.

The first thing I did after finishing the move was to jump into my Imicus and put to use all those skills I had learned to iii just before my move. My first trip out rewarded me with 3 sites. Two of those were combat and one hacking (still training electronic upgrades to V, so no luck there). The first combat site I visited was empty. Someone already cleared it, but left all the wrecks there. I waited 10 mins and decided to salvage all the stuff there. I was tempted to loot the ships also (after 20 mins I thought noone would come back), but since they belonged to a friendly alliance I decided against it and went back to station to unload all the yummy salvage loot.

The second combat site (which was called a dirt site, don't recall seeing that before) was full of NPCs. There were two groups. One had 4 cruiser and the other one had 2 cruisers and 4 frigates. I hit the group with frigates first and tried to pull the little guys first, but the cruisers soon joined and I was forced to fly away (after killing the frigates that were scrambling me). I tried it later with a corpmate, but no luck either. Our cruisers were no match to these rats and we were only in the first room!

It was clear to me immediately that I was doing it wrong. I didn't have the skill or the ship for this type of encounters. I decided to forget about those exploration sites and instead went ratting on the asteroid belts. Those with multiple BS or 4+ cruisers are still out of my reach, but a spawn of all frigate or some combination of cruiser/frigate or even 1 BS and few frigates proved profitable (from a new guy point of view).

My CEO, Mendolus, has a great post in our private forums with a thorough explanation of how to make money by "chain ratting" in 0.0 belts. After being his salvager one night I can't wait to have the skill/ship/fitting to do this. There is really some income to have. Plus the presence of reds in/out of system always make things more interesting.

At the end of the month I hope to be flying a Myrmidon as my ratting/mission ship. For now I'll continue on my good old friend the Vexor. Armed with 5x hammerhead, 1x 200mm carbide railgun (which recently got changed to a blaster), 2x salvagers and 2x tractor beams it has proven a good ship . The lows provide me with good tank. I have 1x MAR, 1x EANM, 1x Armor EM Harderner and 1x 800mm Rolled Tungsten Plate. I'm thinking of replacing the plate for a thermal hardener because of the damage the Sansha do.

Here are two pictures of me and Gertimus fighting a Sansha's Slave Lord :

You are doing it wrong! Part 1

Wow! 10 days since my last post. I need to make time for these updates in my game-time schedule. RL allows me only 3-4 hours per night for anything EVE related. I've been spending those either playing the game, tweaking my ships with EFT or planning my future with EVEMon.

I'm breaking this update in 3 parts to cover all the things I've done properly, so I don't fall into that category of blogs. :)

Part 1. PVP

The amount of red activity in the Providence and Domain regions have increased considerably in the last week. We have seen a new group (at least new to me) called Balls Deep Inc. roaming a lot in the area. That with the regular -A- fleet always looking for trouble has made the PVP interesting. I really like this extra activity in our area. Every night that I felt like PVPing there was always a fleet to get into. The extra activity also makes me pay more attention when not in fleet and makes the game feel more *alive*.

I'm still flying the Thorax. I followed some of the advice given by Kirith Kodachi in a previous post and ended up with a better tank (1400+ more EHP) and better dps (+15) than before. Basically I changed one of the MFS I for a MFS II and the second MFS for a second EANM I. By next Wednesday I'll be done with Gallente drone skills which will finally unlock Hammerhead II which will increase my dps. In some near future I'll add Hull Upgrades V to open up the EANM II option.

I still think I'm doing something wrong. I originally thought it was just *luck*, but I now think there is more to it. Let me explain...

After our scouts spot some reds and their direction we would either wait for them at the other side of a gate or set up a trap with some tasty bait on their side of the gate. Once the bad guys are locked the fights usually go down really quick. Unfortunately I feel that I'm a universe away to be part of the fight. With my new ammo selection (antimatter) my optimal is almost 1k. Even with the mwd engaged it takes me an eternity to get to a distance where my blasters can do any damage. Usually my drones are the only contribution to the fleet.

I felt that luck had to do a lot with this because I would be at ~10k from the gate waiting for the incoming target, but it will pop at 10k from the gate at the COMPLETE OPPOSITE position from mine. In other words I have been always 15-20K away from my target. By the time I get there I'm lucky if I shoot once. Then I read this really good post by Xiphos83 and I think that my problem is not having the Thermodynamic skills for overheating my mwd (and maybe web and scramble as needed). If I understand the post and skills correctly, this should give me enough push for me to get in order quicker and use my tackle earlier. I'm adding these to my July training schedule. I thought about adding it earlier, but I'm in track for flying a Brutix by the end of the month!!

I'm really excited about the Brutix. I'm a sucker for Gallente spaceships. It is a really easy ship for me to slip into since it uses a lot of the skills I currently use for the Thorax. If all goes as planed I will have BC skills up to iv with a bunch of related skills to iv also. I saw one of those in action in one of the fleets I joined and I was really impressed.

PVE update.

Since joining AU-F I've been spending a good amount of time in PVP gangs learning how to work in a fleet and experimenting with my Thorax setup. This has been really fun, but really not profitable. During the weekend I went back to some ratting to get a much needed boost on my wallet.

The rats in the low sec areas are definitely harder than those that I've found in the empire space, but still no match to my cruiser + drones. I made a good amount of ISK between bounties and loot.

On Sunday I joined a group of corp mates on a ratting op deep in null sec. Only one thing comes to mind... WOW!! I wasn't involved on the killing itself, just the looting and salvaging. In less than 2 hours of help I was up around 16M in my wallet. I know that is not a lot for many experience pilots, but for me was an enormous figure. I've never made that much money in one night.

I still haven't started to run any missions in the new region. I did some research and I think I have narrow the list down to 3 different corporations. I'll see about starting soon on them. I think it will be a good isk generator in the future (level 4 and 5 missions).

I haven't done any exploration since the move. I hope to do that this week. Tomorrow I start Electronic Upgrades V which should be finish by some time next week allowing to get Hacking!

First Kill Mail!!

With my excitement you'll think I recently melted away some big ship's hull while flying a much smaller ship. Unfortunately that wasn't the case. As I was ratting in one of the Kheram's asteroid belts a neutral ship caught me off guard and scrambled me. My Vexor ratting setup was no match for this pirate's Crow. Since I couldn't go anywhere I sent my drones and shot him with my railguns, but I couldn't get pass his shields. After what seemed an eternity my Vexor was no more and I was warping to the Mamet gate.

2009.05.31 02:28:00

Victim: Dante Styx

Corp: Aurelius Federation

Alliance: Apotheosis of Virtue

Faction: NONE

Destroyed: Vexor

System: Kheram

Security: 0.4

Damage Taken: 11781

Involved parties:

Name: Joseph Dreadloch (laid the final blow)

Security: -8.9

Corp: Dark Dominion

Alliance: NONE

Faction: NONE

Ship: Crow

Weapon: Caldari Navy Thorn Rocketa

Damage Done: 11316

Name: Sansha's Cannibal / True Power

Damage Done: 465

Destroyed items:

Armor EM Hardener I

Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane I

Cap Recharger I

Thorium Charge M, Qty: 64

Small Tractor Beam I

Dual 150mm 'Scout' I Accelerator Cannon

10MN Afterburner I

Analyzer I

Thorium Charge M, Qty: 2899 (Cargo)

Dropped items:

800mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I

Medium Armor Repairer I

Thorium Charge M, Qty: 64

Salvager I, Qty: 2

Dual 150mm 'Scout' I Accelerator Cannon

After exchanging "gj" in local, Joseph pointed out that he spent an incredible amount of rockets on me. I was actually really impress on how good my armor tank was. I can't wait to fit tech 2 in those low slots. But I think Joseph was more surprise when he saw the crap that dropped. :)

It was definitely a good experience. I learned to pay more attention to people flying around the system. I also changed a bit the fit on my ship and the ammo I use to be a better match to pirates I encounter.

The places I've been.

A bit late, but here is my contribution to the meme that Kirith Kodachi started last week.

Not bad I think. The beginning of my pod life was in the Gallente empire, but recently I've covered a lot of Domain and Providence with my new corp/alliance. It will be fun to compare this picture with one 6 and 12 months from now.

Cat and mouse.

"Hostile in Kheram". That was the first thing I saw in corp channel when I logged. That was only one jump away, so I asked for a fleet invite as I was undocking with the Thorax. Immediately got in fleet and warped to gate. In less than 5 minutes we had a small fleet (4 or 5 pilots). We waited for a couple of minutes in Mista's gate to Kheram while our scout narrow down his location.

"Target located". We all warped in and the hunt began. For the next two hours we bounced all over the place. More hostile came and went. Still no engagement. At one point our FC with his Armageddon met the hostile in a gate and shot at him. Sentry guns hit the battleship, but our target was smarter than that. He didn't engage.

All night our target proved elusive. At some times he was so close (200k away), but yet not enough for any of us to engage. At no time I felt that our FC or any member in the fleet made a bad call or a mistake. Our target had a good set of bookmarks and really good instincts.

Nevertheless it was a lot of fun. Among other things I learned that this is definitely harder than it looks.

Thorax

As suggested by Kirith Kodachi I'm including here my Thorax setup for input. I'm also including Dante's profile as reference. I changed a bit my setup based on the experience, but I'm sure that things can be improved.

Gank Thorax

Lows:

- 2x Magnetic Field Stabilizers I

- 800 mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten

- Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane I

- Damage Control II

Meds:

- Statis Webifier I

- Warp Scrambler I

- 10MN MicroWarpDrive I

Highs:

- 5 x Heavy Electron Blaster I (Thorium M)

Drones:

- 5x Hammerhead I

EHP: 17,593 (with DC on)

Firepower: 178 (including drones)

Speed: 204 m/s (1201 m/s with mwd)

Capacitor at 52% with all (except the mwd) on

Comments:

- Ammo... I know that Antimatter M provides the highest damage (219 in this setup), but the -50% range modifier is a big price for me to pay. With the current Thorium ammo I have an optimal of 2k with a fallout of 3k. The antimatter cuts that to 1k optimal with the fallout still at 3k. As I understand it I have to be at 1k for my dps to be the best, but that has proven difficult so far.

- I can fit mag stab II, but didn't do because of budget issues. I hope this changes once my alt is in a retriever and Dante is done with hacking.

The true EVE experience

I've been flying around New Eden for almost 3 months now. During that time I did missions, vaporized some roids and explored some sites (including worm holes). This has been fun, specially the exploration, but last night for the first time I feel I experienced what EVE is all about... PVP!

As I joined the corp channel last night I found out that a fleet was forming in the Misaba system. I immediately asked if there was room for one more. Only requirement was to bring a cruiser. I immediately jumped into the Thorax and went on my way. Another corpmate who was in Mista with me offered to scout for me (thanks!). We both made it safe to Mamet where we joined other corpmates. From there we made it to Mista to join the rest of the fleet.

The group was a good size. After some people changed ship to provide a better variety our FC got us going. This wasn't going to be a gate camping group (which I hear can be extremely boring) we were roaming. We set course for R3-K7K, then to X-R3NM. After that I honestly have no idea where were we or which direction we were going.

Our scouts reported red activity in the following system and my heart started pumping. As we warped my CEO helped me setup my Overview properly for PVP. As we got there the group had warped. After a couple of more jumps and some more scouting our FC was under the impression that they were trying to flank us, so we kept moving until a particular gate where we laid our trap.

I have never seen the "bubble" that I read so much about in other blogs. It was impressive when we jump thru the gate to meet some friendly forces and they had a bubble up. A couple of minutes passed and our enemy jumped.

Targets were called and the shooting began. With my short range and slow AB I was never close enough to get in the action, but still manage to show up in the KB for the night. At the end four of their ships were bye-bye while we only lost one. We roam for a bit more, but no targets were found. It was late at that time, so the roaming got called and we all returned to our bases.

Overall was a very short engagement, but I can't even start to describe how much fun it was. The last time I enjoyed an MMO this much was during those initial Onyxia and MC raids when half the raid was still in blues. Except this was better. Here anything could happen. There was no scripted "second stage". These were all players. Completely unpredictable.

Lessons learned...

- I need to get something better than an AB. The problem is that MWD requires skills I don't have. Need to work on that.

- I need to remember to get my stupid drones OUT!!! ZOMG! I'm a gallente with 4 Hammerheads in the drone bay and not even one saw action. With all the excitement I just forgot. I know, I know... LAME!

- The Overview is very powerful and it has multiple tabs!! LOL. For the longest time I was using only one tab and just changing the view in it. You can actually enabled up to 5 tabs.

- Scouts are very important. Our guys did an amazing job.

- The thorax is a really good ship, but I wonder if I should replace the cap recharger from the mid slot for some warp tackle. I currently only use web for tackle.

Can't wait to do it again!

Miner Anonymous

Dante: "Hi, My name is Dante and I enjoy mining. "

Everyone : "Hi Dante"

I doubt there is a Miners Anonymous support group, but if there was one I imagine the introduction would be something like that.

After gathering so many things in previous MMOs and knowing that this was not a requirement in EVE (I think the only requirement so far is to fly what you can afford) I was certain that I would never mine. I actually tried it for one of the introductory missions part of the NPE. It was awful. I almost felt like taking the power cord and strangle myself, but after talking to Ranzat (RL friend and also fellow capsuleer) I decided to give it another try with Armand. He was going to be my industrialist anyway, so it kind of made sense for him to mine while learning the skills to make him a T1/T2 production expert.

Once I got some of the basic skills out of the way (mining iv), got miners ii in the bantam and found a quiet belt without can flippers I actually found it relaxing. With the bantam there isn't much money to make, but while I was moving my stuff with Dante to the new system Armand managed to make a very nice 3M isk from his mining! Not bad for a night solely dedicated to hauler stuff from one system to another.

Now the next step is the retriever and ice harvesting. AF runs mining ops that I look forward to take part of plus during my solo times it is likely to produce some good steady income.

18 jumps

It definitely didn't look as much when I entered my destination in the map computer. Its only 18 jumps I thought to myself. I'm sure it can be worst.

Well... it can definitely be worst, but it wasn't an easy thing. After I sold all my stuff in Oursulaert I calculated a total of 7 total trips. First was the Iteron Mark II with all the non-ship stuff and the Incursus. I came back on my shuttle. The next step was to bring the Vexor. The way back to O I did in a pod. I thought of stopping in one of the stations and grab a shuttle, but I decided (without any data to back it up) that the time to warp to station / get in / purchase shuttle / make it active / dock out / warp to gate was greater than just going as a pod all the way back to O. The next one was the Thorax. All that was left was the Imicus and the shuttle. They both fit in the Iteron, so I flew that back.

That was a total of 126 jumps in one night. I'm sure that is no record (or even close to one), but for me felt like a lot. As it happens I decided to do this the night before the fix for the jumpgate/cloaking issue. I guess I was lucky to only hit it 6 times during all my trips. Definitely not bad.

I just hope I don't have to do that again any time soon. :)

Unexpected.

It is interesting how things work out on their own some times. Since I joined EVE I tried hard to find an active corp that welcomed new players. This is an MMO, so playing on my own was not an option. Out of nowhere my RL friend Gert pings me in IM to tell me that an old friend/raider from my WoW years was actually also a EVE player. That night (last Friday) I caught up with him and I joined the public channel of his corp.

I was happy to find a group to talk to during my EVE time. I was definitely not expecting to find a place to call home. After talking to the CEO, Mendolus, for multiple hours and interacting with the other members during the weekend I decided to pickup my stuff and relocate.

Last night I applied in the Aurelius Federation corp. I was happy to receive an invitation that night. Dante and Armand (no point hiding his name now) are in a corp! I look forward for pilots to become active and useful pilots in AF. The sky is the limit now! :)

CSM

If you haven't... what are you waiting for?!?! Head over to EVE Online and vote.

If you want to know more about the candidates head over to the A merry life and a short one blog. Hallan Turrek sent questions to all candidates and a good amount of them answered. See what they have to say about important subjects and why they feel they are the appropriate person for the job.

Wardecs all around me.

Getting in a corp has proven to be more difficult that I originally anticipated. I thought that the limiting factor was going to be my skill points, but instead has been wardecs. I really don't have a problem with the war or pvp itself. Even with my limited amount of ISK, I can afford to loose multiple Incursus (once No.2 provides a steady stream of cash I can upgrade to a Thorax for this!!). The idea of loosing ships is not the problem. The suck part is that all activities are outlaw. No missioning, no ratting, no exploring, etc. Get on and wait while dock. Looking at the EVE kilboards it is clear that this latest one hasn't been to exiting. Asking a new pilot to sit in and don't experience space is too much. Maybe ok for people that have been flying for years and can use the break, but not me.

Since they've been in wardecs back-to-back I decided to go and look for another place to call home. After an hour or so of reading thru corps descriptions I hit the jackpot. Rule of 5 which is part of the JUNTA alliance was hiring!! The description appealed to me for multiple reasons. A group of adults, RL > Internet spaceship and their divisions cover the stuff I'm looking for. I immediately join the JUNTA public channel and there it was "WE ARE AT WAR. Recruitment closed". NOOO!!!

Well... Training continues and I'm getting better at my exploration skills. :)

The industrialist life.

Two days ago a new pilot with big ambitions joined us in space. I will call this new pilot No.2. No, I'm not hiding his name because of some big plot to take over the world or to use it in some espionage master plan (I don't have the time or inclination for that even though I enjoy reading about it). The reason is very simple. A RL friend invited me to his corp. This is a very small corp (10-15 pilots) that only do mining ops. I don't want for any actions taken Dante to affect this small corp.

After a small donation of 1M from Dante he went on a small shopping spree. After buying a bantam and fitting them with 2x miner, 1x ab, 2x cargo expansions and a bunch of books I navigate to the corps home system and started mining in the belts. I have to say that I don't understand how people can do this every day. The only thing that keeps me going is the thought that I'll be making money to fund Dante pvp experiments as well as working on Armand's production future.

The plan right now is to train enough to jump into a retriever with cargo rigs. At that point I'll do some extra training on drones to protect me from rats and then I'll be fully committed to a production training.

I'm currently reading thru the Production and Invention guides in EVE-Guides. The more I read the happier I am to have a second pilot doing this. The training is intense and it would have taken me REALLY long if I had queue those skills in Dante.