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.