Surviving transitions.

I thought that in my first year in EVE I've seen enough to survive anything thrown at me. I lived in high sec, low sec and 0.0. I fought in Providence during the invasion and in Scalding Pass during Goon's attack. I moved from Providence to Scaling Pass to Pure Blind (those who have many assets know how difficult is relocating many times in a short span of time). Yet none of this prepared me for the transition period that we are living in... and it is killing me!!

Lets go back a couple of months. -FA- had just moved to Scalding Pass and rented 4 different systems (which were 2x too many). We were getting settle down when leadership decided to pack and move North. This conceded with the announced Goon+Coven invasion of the area, but supposedly it was a coincidence more than a result. While in SP there was some friction between AU-F leadership and other corps. The move, combined with the restructuring of the alliance (many corps merged together while others were kicked out) created a very volatile environment. By the time the move was over, the communications completely broke down. The writing was on the wall. It was just a matter of when.

Around 2 weeks ago AU-F leadership did the sensible thing and left -FA- (I wish them well). This is the first time since I'm in AU-F that we are on our own. A couple of ideas were thrown around, but eventually we decided on an explorer life. AU-F has some WH goals. We'll see in the next weeks if we are able to pull it out.

In the mean time we are in a transition period. We are not roaming low-sec or 0.0 as a group. Basically the majority is PVEing to make some extra ISK for our next project. I tried for 2x weeks to do L4s, but I can't anymore. The level of boredom for the crap of pay is impossible to bear. I really don't understand how people can do L4s all day.

Without any industry or PVP options available I'm tied to L4s for survival. It is not easy.

I'm currently working on Salvage V, but once done I'll get Dante Styx on a tech2 gallente frigate to help explore and find a suitable WH space.

Not sure what the future holds for AU-F, but hopefully we can survive this transition period and reach our new goal.

Providence and CVA.

Rixx Javix (EVEOGANDA) published a very interesting editorial about CVA. Rixx was part of LFA's alliance when the Catch's invasion started. As I said before, I hold not grudge against CVA. I was not part of CVA or any of the holders. My interaction with them was also very limited in the 8 or so months I lived in Providence. If they were arrogant or inept at defending their space I can't say.

There is one thing that Rixx mentioned that was exactly my thoughts in those first days:

Why? Because there wasn't anything behind the curtain. CVA spent more effort on building stations in systems they couldn't defend than they did on building their fleet to defend it. They lined their pockets instead of lining the perimeter. They fiddled while Rome burned.

Where were they Titans? Where were the super-carriers? With 50+ stations between CVA and holders and no Sov wars in a long time, I was certain that they will show up in the field with an infinite number of super-capital and capitals. Not only that, but the fleet would be completely coordinated. These were pilots that knew each other for so many years and had complete control of these constellations! Then D-G happened.

Anyway, that is all in the past. If you still care about one more opinion about old-Providence head over to EVEOGANDA.

While in the subject... via Kugu I read a post about life in new-Providence. Stupid pilot says:

Fighting U'K in the daytime before we fleet up with them at night to come sort out SW Providence, we have plenty of fun, even-ish number fights, so that's some consolation.

That is the most retarded thing I've ever read. And to think that these people said the old-Providence was bad. For more of this fail click here.

Late Spring Cleaning.

I know we are officially in Summer, but I never heard of a "Summer Cleaning".

As some of you may have noticed -FA- is on the move again. All the systems we owned in Scalding Pass were released and Primary owns them now. The time in SP was good for many of us. I, for one, had a great time PVPing and PVEing. Unfortunately it wasn't meant to last. It was hard being so deep in 0.0 space (Empire space was many jumps out thru hostile space), but I really liked it. It really felt like null-sec when compared to the Providence days.

The reasons for the move I wont comment on. I'm a soldier. I just do as I'm told. AU-F leadership believes and agrees with the alliance leadership that a new home was needed and I trust them. So I packed all my ships and moved them out. For the last 10 days I've been either gone (finished Magician) or doing L4s in Gallente space.

This last change/move generated a lot of internal discussion in the alliance. A lot of old friends have left and new ones have joined. I will miss many, but the actions taken were needed. There was a lot of leeway in our move to SP. Many corps never moved there, so we were a split alliance (some in Empire some in SP). I hope the alliance learns from this and we move as an entire unit to our new home.

With all the changes around us, the AU-F leadership decided to take a long look in the mirror. After close examination multiple problems were found, but thanks to a positive interaction of its members a roadmap is in the works that should define AU-F and put us in the path to greater things.

The changes coming made me reconsider some of the training. Specially Armand's. Both Dante Styx and Dante Darkko will pursuit their training plans with little change, but Armand will finish the current exploration training to focus on market PVP, followed by T1 production. After finishing all the mining training, Armand has been without a clear goal. Maybe logistic, maybe freighter, etc. That is all gone. The original idea for Armand was to be an industrialist and that is the goal again.

I look forward to the future. I think that the next 6 months will define our corporation and our alliance. Let the pew-pew begin!

I'm not going to dumb it down and paint it pink.

That is a quote from an interview posted by Worlds in Motion with CCP senior producer Torfi Olafsson. It is a very short interview, but still worth the read. I do feel that CCP has proven again and again that they are not the typical MMO company that will change anything for more market share. Yes, the game was changed since it came out in 2003. I know that some bitter veterans will say that it is "so easy" now, but I would argue that it has evolved.

This game is a business and without new blood it would die. There have been changes specially in the intro section, but I still feel that it is hardcore in its core. No matter where you are you are not safe. It is likely that no one will shoot your rookie ship, but not impossible. Some ass that juts like griefing can seat on a destroyer and blow you up before he does. Sov wars are no kids game and entire alliances can be destroyed overnight (right Goons?).

Follow the link for the full interview.

HTFU

Today there was a link from mmorpg site to an article in the Gamasutra by The Mittani. The artcile entitled The Icelandic Model of MMO Development it is interesting because of the information provided about CCP history, but nothing new to anyone that has been following MMOs for the last 5+ years.

Reading thru the comments in the Gamasutra website, one of them mentioned a music video made by CCP. Thinking that it was going to be some funny reference to CCP I followed the link to youtube which took me to a video called Permaband - HTFU.

I laughed all thru (specially the Techno Viking part). CCP is not perfect, but are things like this that makes me feel closer to a company and make me want to play their games more. Thanks for sharing CCP!

Pop the cherry.

Tuesday night I logged hoping to get into a fight. We knew that Coons were already jumping thru our systems constantly. All I needed was a good group.

I logged in and found that there were no big fleets active at the time, but then I noticed that a small group of -FA- players were running a fleet in EIN-. I asked in alliance channel and immediately got an OK to join them.

We moved to S-E gate in EIN- waiting for a Hurricane that was spotted in S-E. He changed his route and was no go. Instead we got a Cynabal that jumped into system. After playing around we were able to tackle him at the GN- gate at EIN-. After a short battle the Cynabal was gone.

Did you see that? Yep, that was me getting the final blow. That was my first ever kill mail!

I don't have a very extensive PVP carrier. Since the first entry on 05-27-2009 I have a 19-6 record. Not bad, but not very extensive. I really hope that changes this year. We have a couple of good FCs in -FA- that I feel very comfortable flying with. Hopefully we can utilize this invasion as an opportunity to improve our skills and become a stronger PVP force in the future.

One idea I have to improve my skills is using Darkko with smaller ships that I can dispose of without a hit to my wallet. Very similar to the practice that TooNu described in his blog. I won't be a Wensley or a PK or a Easley Thames but will try my best.

First engagements.

Yesterday saw the first engagements between the Scalding Pass Defenders (trademark pending) and the Coons (Curse + Goons name suggested in Kugu). The big fight of the day occurred in the Q-GQHN system. Looking at the killboards we see that the fight didn't go really good for the SPD on this first engagement.

• Curse KB
• Atlas KB
• Gentlemen's Club KB
• Cult of War KB

It is interesting to see the setup that Curse ran used for its Dominix fleet. I've heard a lot before the wicked RR gangs they run, but have never seen the fittings myself. Looking at some of the Domis that were killed shows a really heavy plated battleship with armor repairers and neut in high and depending only on drones for dps. I have been in RR fleets before, but nothing like this. I have to imagine that it has to be tough to take one down, but on the reverse side the dps is so low that I don't know if the time to stay alive compensate for it.

In this engagement they ended up with the upper hand. This mess was explained by user Baumi in the Kugu forums.

A smaller engagement took place between SPD and the Goons in XV-MWG later (Wed EVE time). In this engagement the good guys came out with the upper hand:

• Primary KB
• Gentlemen's Club KB
• Cult of War KB

I haven't seen any battle reports for this engagement.

The North.

I try to keep up with the IT + Friends offensive in the North. I don't have any vested interested in either side, but I do care about it. Any big conflicts between power house alliances is bound to eventually affect all 0.0 dwellers. I follow the conflict thru Perseus Kallistratos' and Easley Thames's blogs. I don't participate in large (100+) fleet battles, so these blogs allow me to do it vicariously.

The last couple of posts painted a very bad picture for the IT side, so I decided to look at their killboard. In the front page they have a link to the 5 most expensive kill or loss in the last 5 days:

• Avatar
• Revelation
• Revelation
• Thanatos
• Thanatos

Yep. Every single one of them is a loss for -IT-. The campaign has taken a turn to the worst since the H-W attack. I guess it was no surprise to see these emails from Bobby all fired up and sending Atlas back home.

The next couple of weeks will be very interesting in our neck of the woods. Atlas is mad and looking for a butt to kick while from the other side of the stages the Goons appear. Is like a match made in heaven.

The Goons.

I always knew there will come a day where we would be directly faced with a Goon invasion. The Goons are probably on of the most recognized alliances in the game. Usually more because of their antics than their flying. In the last year they went from taking Delve , to loose it completely when Kartoon disbanded the entire alliance and now trying to come back has been all well documented on multiple forums and blogs.

Three days ago the following post showed up in Kugu:

Goons, a lot has transpired the past few months. Some of it was good. Some of it was bad. All of it done with the overarching goal of trying to re-establish some of our swagger. We embarked on a series of offensive maneuvers which comprised of us taking a spiritual journey through the regions which served as a foundation for our past successes. The general idea was that we would perform a vision quest of sorts to help us remember who we were as Goons without all of the fluffery that being a major 0.0 power was comprised of. Before we were to embark on that path again we had to relearn a lot of what we'd forgotten not just insofar as running an alliance or being a member of one, but about who we are and why we're here. When broken down into the sum total of our parts we are not and never were the behemoth who owned Delve... we were the pile of raucous faggots who conquered it in the first place, the foundations of which were all seated in a land called Syndicate.

Having taken Cloud Ring we then proceeded on the second leg of our journey. Here we lived under the auspices of our brosefs farting around essentially headless, integrating into their fleets and remember what we dislike about the status quo as well as a bit of what we like about the game. This certainly does not apply to everyone, but there was a period of relative serenity where we no longer had to be concerned with daily survival, a thing which is both a blessing and a curse as we grow fat and lazy from our sloth and underuse. Sure it's cool to help fight someone else's war. Sure it's nice to be helping brosefs but where does that road lead us? Where are we headed as an alliance? Where lies the fun? Where is the destruction of other people's shit and the tears?

The answer to those questions lies now in the next leg of our journey to another ancestral homeland. The motherland of Scalding pass where Goons finally established our swagger lies covered in terrible renter alliances. Atlas has literally become a less competent LV, and provides us with the perfect opportunity to establish new bonds of friendship and usher in a second age of Goon power in space. We will root out these pets where they live and we will mouthfuck them unmercifully. This also aids the NC as with their homelands considered safe these shitheels can send fleets at their leisure to bolster "The SC's" horribly managed monsterfleets.

Beginning Monday we will move combat operations to xx9 in Curse. From there we will work with our brosefs Cursed, OEG and Dreddit to remind Atlas's pets why they are paying rent. We will cleanse the south of the stain that desecrates this Goon mecca and we will once again remember what it is to work together, hand in hand with brosefs and newbies, in order to establish a New Goon Order in the south. Dread reimbursement in full is back in place for this operation. I cannot stress enough that while EVERY SHIP COUNTS, it will be the number of Battleships and Logistics ships that will serve to cement our dominance so I will do my best to incentivize their frequent use via reimbursements and market seeds.

Details insofar as logistical routes will be posted between now and deployment day. Spend the weekend MAKING MONEY so that you can afford what you need. We will run caravans but the bulk of what you need should be purchased nearer to the theater. We ARE NOT abandoning DKUK. This is your jew vacation home for now away from the front. We will conquer space only as necessary to remove the insurgent faggots who live there or as will demands. There will be logistics chains set up for capitals and I HIGHLY encourage squads and small groups to work together to help people transport combat ships as there is spare space.

I am truly looking forward to this endeavour and there is solid support and excitement within the leadership for the first time in a while to see it happen. Mister Vee is your skymarshal for this engagement and I will do my best to be around regularly as I have a hankering to kill some atlas faggots myself. I hope you are all as excited as we are. I will see you Monday.

This was followed by a lot of cyno jumps during the weekend as they moved assets to the Curse region.

I really don't know much about Curse capabilities or Goons-post-Kartoon capabilities. I feel that COW/GC/Primary are able to repeal Curse, but not sure if they can compete with a Curse+Goon coalition. I do believe that many of the renters are ready to provide numbers to boost COW/GC/Primary fleets or help with logistic. Hopefully we can make a difference in this conflict.

On the down side, Dante S just finished heavy drones V. I was looking forward to go thru those Havens in record time with Noldevin and/or Falgoria. I think I have a good amount of ISK in the wallet to get BCs and BSs replacements for a bit. If that runs dry early I may be forced to get a couple of GTCs to pay for my PVP ships. One thing is for sure, I want to be involved so whatever it takes for me to have a ship I will do.

Super-carrier info series.

Kirith Kodachi did a great 5 part series covering this amazing ship. For the benefit of friends that don't follow Kirith I'm linking here the 5 parts.

• Part 1 : Drones
• Part 2 : Tanking
• Part 3 : High Slots
• Part 4 : Cargo
• Part 5 : Veteran Advice

As a request he also did a one-time post about carriers that is linked here.

Thanks to Kirith Kodachi for all the information!

Talking about deep wallets...

Since I'm in the topic of making ISK to provide ships for the PVP thirst... I read the other night a post by PK (Aggressive Tendencies blog) about the Titan lost by Atlas. My jaw hit the floor when I read the killmail. I haven't been in any alliance that has super-capitals, so I'm not 100% sure how the "purchasing" of it is decided. I'm guessing that the alliance/corp absorbs the ship cost and the player takes care of the fittings, but I could be wrong.

Nevertheless, we are talking about a 49.1B ship loss plus a... wait for it... 36.8B fit loss. That is 85.9B that went poof. I can't even imagine that much money (probably the USA can't either with our economy). How can you make so much money?

Anyway, the reason for the loss can be greatly attributed to CCP fail-mechanics that are now so common in big battles.

Talking about fail-mechanics... PK is running a poll asking for readers how important this issue should be for CCP. If you have the time visit his site and vote.

Trying to make a living.

Its been a very profitable couple of days. With our system of EIN- at military index 4 constantly we can do Havens all night for a very decent profit. Pairs or even three pilots can make a decent amount of ISK in 2-3 hours.

The other night Noldevin, Falgoria and I were hitting Havens on drone ships. It was funny to see the swarm of drones go after the different rats.

After doing them solo, pairs and threes I have to say that even with the amount split between three, at the end of the night you end up with a bigger wallet size. The anomaly clears extremely fast. Another thing that we noticed is that it *seems* that there are bigger waves the faster you cleared them. It could just be random, but there were some waves that all of us agreed looked bigger than when soloing.

Unfortunately we don't have enough pilots ratting to hit index 5 to get sanctums. These are even more profitable and easily doable in threes. I hope we get there eventually because even with the 30-40 M isk a night it is not enough for my future plans.

I heard that there is extremely good amount of money in plexes 7/10 and higher. Once Armand is done with all the pre-skills for the Guardian I will take a break before the 20+ days of Cruiser V to get all the probing skills to iv-v in order to fly a Helios around looking for them.

I also plan to get trade a try in Armand after the Guardian. The other day by accident I bought 110 heavy drones instead of 10 (stupid 1 was already there!). I decided to take a chance and move all of them in my Iteron away from the hub system and put them for sell for a small profit. Surprisingly enough they sold in less than a week! I wouldn't mind spending 1-2 hours purchasing/hauling drones and other small pieces for an extra profit.

Things are good, but I hope to find some way to make more. I really want to pick up the PVP, but the ships are not cheap. I would really like to have a mini-fleet of Megas, Brutix, Deimos and Ishtar. Right now the amount of OPs for these are small, but I see this changing in the near future. It would be nice to have enough in my wallet and enough ships in the hangar to be able to contribute.

In the mean time I'll keep practicing the PVP with Darkko in the good old Thrasher. Hopefully soon I'll add a Sabre to the list of his ships.

Tyrannis and CSM.

Two quick announcements.

Tyrannis : CCP unveiled their full length HD trailer for Tyrannis. It is available in the Tyrannis web portal. All I can say is AWESOME! Even if the game doesn't run/look like this I just can wish for a time in the future for it to be just like it.

CSM : Voting started today. Do yourself a favor and vote. If you are still not decided, the guys at Vote Match have a cool app to help you match your vision of EVE with those from the different candidates. It is not only a good way to match your goals with them, but it also gives you some perspective as to what is really important for you as a capsuleer. I have to admit that I was surprise with some of my own decisions on topic that I don't ponder often.

One last thing... All your worlds belong to us!

Small ship PVP gangs.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I started a new pilot for small ship (frigate and destroyer size) gangs. I waited for Darkko to have the skills necessary to fit properly and fly properly a Thrasher destroyer (T2 fits with destroyer iv). With these basic goals achieved I joined a roaming gang last Friday.

I want to say that I'm more than satisfy with the capabilities of this ship even though I'm still far away from having all the necessary skills in IV or V.

The night started with our gang taking on a Vagabond. The damage contributed by Darkko was enough to place him second in the list.

Then after some jumping around we ended up going head to head against a Waterboard gang. I have to say that I was really happy with our fleet and specially with our FC for not baling out against much tougher odds. Our gang got annihilated by Waterboard, but at the end we won the ISK game. Their three T2 losses (Hound and 2x Falcon) was more than our Frigate/Destroyer gang. I was able to get in two KMs (Falcon-1 and Falcon-2) before my shipped got destroyed by their fleet. At the end it was a great night. The Thrasher performed better that I ever expected.

In the next couple of weeks I will improve on some gunnery skills before training for an Ares. Once I can fit T2 guns on that boat I'll move back to finish my Minmitar training for a Sabre.

Not as planned.

Last night our corp had a PVE Op to raise ISK for our corporation wallet. A group of us were hitting Haven and Sanctum anomalies in south Scalding Pass without problems. Close to the end of the Op a Dramiel red pilot showed up in system. I was in an Ishtar. With so many blues in system and with only one more battleship to kill before killing the wave I decided to stay and finish the wave before warping to POS. That was a mistake.

Before I could kill the Angel rat the Dramiel jumped around 15 km of me. I immediately tried to warp to POS, but it was too late. I was tackled and unable to warp. The Dramiel started to hit me, but his DPS was not enough to hurt me. I immediately pointed my ship away of the Angel battleship to avoid his guns while fighting the red pilot while I sent my warrior II to the Dramiel.

At this time a second Dramiel pilot shows up in system and warp to us. At this time their DPS slowly, but surely begins to eat my armor tank. While all this is happening I'm passing intel to my alliance via our intel channel and vent.

This is when things didn't go as planned for our red pilot friends. As they are killing my third warrior drone friendly pilots jump in, including an interdictor with a bubble.

After a short battle, Black Mouse and Lemelette were sent straight to their clones.

Looking back I have to say that there are multiple lessons to learn here:

• No matter how many blues there are in system, reds will always risk their ships to try to kill you.
• It pays to be calmed when asking for help.
• It is great to be on an alliance where your friends have your back.
• Always jump to safety if you are ratting. Rat dps, plus red dps is hard to tank.

Thanks to my corp and alliance mates for coming to my rescue and making it clear to these pilots that they are not welcomed in our space.

A year in review.

I missed the celebration of my first year in EVE, but didn't want to miss the celebration of this blog's first year.

Yesterday was 1 year since my first post. Looking back I see how much my goals have changed in this past year. When I started all I could think of were wormholes. I imagine that makes sense since I joined EVE with the Apocrypha expansion. I looked around for a corp/alliance that operated from one, but life in such a inhospitable place requires a skill level I was really far from.

That took me to consider EVE University. Fortunately (it seemed unfortunately at the moment) they were under a wardec which stopped their recruiting. Thats when an old friend from WoW mentioned AU-F and its been home since.

EVE is the third MMO that manages to keep me around for a year (WoW and FFXI were the others), but is the only one where I have more than one account. This is in big part because of the "leveling" process. EVE doesn't allow people to catch up by playing more. The real-time training makes certain that new players are always behind. In order for me to enjoy different aspects of EVE I decided to have different pilots specializing in different roles.

So where are my pilots after this first year and where are they going?

Dante Styx is currently a bit over 18M skill points. All in Gallente ships and related fits. Short term goals is to finish heavy drones V and start Gallente battleship V. The end of year goals are to have the skills to properly fly and fit a Moros. Those BC, BS, HAC and capital gangs I flew with during the Providence war were amazing and all the training I have schedule is to make me an asset in future gangs in Scalding Pass.

Armand M is almost at 16M skill points. He is completely capable of gathering any asteroids ore, ice or gas clouds with all related skills at IV or V. Unfortunately all the changes put a dent on the industrial section of the corporation. Instead of continuing the industrial path he is now in track to fly a properly fit Oneiros. I felt that this was not only a good help to PVP fleets, but could also prove useful if our POS get attacked.

Dante Darkko (yep a third pilot) is at 4M skill points. Since Styx went the big ship route, I started Darkko for the opposite. He is currently flying a full T2 fit Thrasher. The short goal is to fly a Sabre and an Ares. Long terms is to include Nemesis and Assault Ships for both Gallente and Minmatar.

It was a very fun year and I'm sure this will be even better. Hopefully I'll have more time to post here.

From Providence to Scalding Pass.

I haven't posted for a long while now, but that doesn't mean that I've been inactive. The opposite. The little amount of time that I have for EVE is dedicated to pilot my ships in New Eden.

The last 3 months have been really hectic. With the war in Providence we saw a lot of action, but eventually it became obvious that this was going to end bad. Our alliance (-FA-) decided to move to Scalding Pass. The change was hard, but worth it. You all know how the Providence ordeal ended. Except for Paxton, CVA and the holders are no more.

In Scalding Pass we had our first opportunity to put our name in the map. Not only does -FA- has its name in Scalding Pass, but AU-F is one of the system owners!! Having our systems has opened a lot of new possibilities and challenges. Don't get me wrong, I know we are just renters and we are far from a "threat" to anyone, but everyone starts somewhere. Lets see where this route takes us. Our new allies (Primary, GC, COW, Atlas among others) open the possibility to engage in all sort of OPs. We are also likely to engage in bigger fights if Curse or others decide to make a move while Atlas is in the North.

One more thing... A lot of things were said about CVA and their decisions. I have nothing negative to say. I thank them for the Providence experience. Their RP decisions made Providence a great place for someone to experience 0.0. If those same RP decisions destroyed Providence, then so be it. I wish them the best and hope they are able to get back to 0.0 in the future.

In life support...

Its been so long since the last post... too long. EVE is still the only thing I'm currently playing, but RL crits me now and then which allows me for just enough time to play, but not to comment here.

A lot of things have changed. We are not in Providence anymore, I have a third pilot in the fleet, and we are in a new alliance. All these I will cover in upcoming (hopefully soon) posts.

In the meant time I updated my blog list. I removed some old links that I wasn't reading anymore and added some new ones that I found after CK's new blog pack came out. I will definitely encourage all to take a look.

On a final note... This last month I celebrated my first year in EVE. It is just crazy how quick that was. In so many things I still feel like if I just bought the game, but that is part of EVE. I look forward to the new expansion, Tyrannis. That will make it the third expansion since I joined this amazing game. The first two were amazing (even if Dominion's lag caused an incredible amount of problems) and I can't wait to see how this one plays out. I definitely see all the pieces coming together for the release of Dust 514.

In the meantime... Fly Safe!

A tale of two battleships.

The Dominix. A tale of mistakes.

The Dominix was my first battleship. This was never used in combat as it was meant as a tool to generate ISK in the 2V pocket. It was fit (to the best of my abilities) as an asteroid-rats/plex machine. In the 3 or so months with me it did its work well. I was very happy with the results and life was good.

With all the changes going on in Providence and the amount of pirate/mercenary activity in the area I decided to move. For whatever reason, that I can't understand now, I decided to take my slow moving ship thru the longest possible route which led me to S9X. Because of all the Noir presence in the area I was forced for more than one occasion to cloak and seat it out. I did this twice. The third time I was tired and became impatient. This was my first mistake. As I was cloaked near the S9X gate in TU a call came thru the Alliance channel about some activity going on. I wanted to join bad, but had no eyes in the other side of the gate. I took a deep breath and decided to jump.

It looks like I appeared lost and with no direction, because as soon as I jumped some pilots from Noir decided to help me by jumping to my side. Not very thrill about someone touching my railgun I committed my second mistake. I panic. I still was cloaked from the jump and had a Prototype Cloaking Device, so I had plenty of time to decide on my options. I *should* have look for some celestial to align/warp to, but so mad I was of being so hasty and the possibiliy of giving a ship to these mercs that I didn't what was probably expected of a noob. I turned my slow ass boat around and burned to the gate.

As you can expect I didn't make it. At least I was lucky enough to warp with my pod even though I stood there for one second just looking at my first battleship in pieces.

As we know all know Noir had a great campaign in Providence, so with the huge amount of jumps I do thru the region it was bound to happen eventually. Still this was preventable and that makes me mad. Hopefully I will learn from this mistake and never do it again.

Lesson learned... don't jump in haste.

The Megathron. A tale of TCUs.

While I was still licking my wounds of my first battleship lost I was able to get a great deal in a Megathron. Unfortunately it was all the way in Amarr and we were at war. After a quick shout in corp channel, our CEO offer to use his neutral pilot to haul my new ship to Esa. I was really happy with the look and fit of my new ship. This was not going to be a PVE ship, but my first combat battleship. After fitting it as a sniper I went to bed that night really happy.

Just 2 days later I was able to experience my first battleship fleet. As I was login, intel came thru the channels about an operation in J6QB-P. It seems that there was a problem with some payments and sov dropped for this system. The lads in UK thought this was a very noble action by their enemies and seeing that poor system alone decided to take it for them. We were quickly heading to J6QB-P to take that TCU down.

The flight there was uneventful (even though there was a good number of reds in CBL-XP). As I got there found a good size fleet, including some Dreads, pounding on the POS tower next to the TCU timer was going. I really don't understand the mechanics, but it appears to me that you can't just shoot at the TCU anytime you want. I'm not sure if it was in some previous reinforcement state or if we were waiting for a BSU to come online, but we waited.

Suddenly the order was given and we started shooting. My contribution was very small since I lost time trying to catch another ship that got bumped very close to the POS shield, but still I managed to get on the kb for this TCU. Our victory didn't last long as the UK folks put another one online the next morning, but the experience was amazing.

This was the first time on a real snipping fleet with Dreads in hand to play. I had a lot of fun and can't wait to X for more fleets once my T2 railguns are done.

Lesson learned... Battleship snipping fleets are awesome!

The Harvester.

Late last week I completed the first goal for 2010 with Armand. After some long training Armand has become the ultimate harvester. There is no asteroid or ice belt or gas clouds that he can't collect.

Relevant skills at level V:

• Mining
• Ice Harvesting
• Gas Cloud Harvesting
• Refinery / Refinery Efficiency
• Mining Drone Operations

Relevant skills at level IV:

• Mineral processing from Arkonor to Veldspar
• Deep Core Mining
• Mining Upgrades
• Exhumers

This means that I can use any tech 2 harvester and all tech 2 crystals.

Along the way I got the necessary skills to fly an Orca, but don't have the money to buy one right now. Nevertheless having Mining Foreman V comes in handy in small groups without an Orca to boost the fleet.

Next up is Dante with hybrid weapons. Small and Medium Blasters/Railguns are done. I have one more day to go on Sharpshooter V before I can do Large Railgun Spec. Then is another 8 days for Motion Prediction V before tackling Large Blaster Spec.

PLEX aid for Haiti.

Dear friends and readers,

I'm sure that all of you are aware of the devastating earthquake that hit Haiti on the 12th of this month. Like many other organizations, CCP is trying to help. They are launching a campaign starting tonight thru February 15th where PLEX donations from players are converted into a cash donation for the Red Cross efforts in Haiti. 100% of the proceeds will go to the charity helping Haiti.

Please read CCP's dev blog for more info.

A tough day for CVA.

There are plenty of reports and blogs about the disastrous night that CVA and friends had on Thursday. Looking at the -A- kill boards we see a total of 479 kills for only 14 losses. The worst part is that a lot of losses from the CVA side were capitals (dreads and carriers) while none were lost by -A-.

From different reports I see that the pilots from the CVA side were not experienced enough for these type of engagements. A lot of blame has been place in some forums on the FC, but there is so much that he can do. If people don't listen, not even the greatest FC can save you.

We also have to look at the -A- fleet. That thing was huge. Even if CVA pilots were all seasoned pilots, I would imagine things would have finished almost identical. -A- not only had a number majority, but the amount of Titans, Motherships and support fleet they brought was impressive.

It was a historic night even if didn't end like I wanted to.

A new beginning.

There has been a lot of changes this week. I wish I would have wrote about it earlier, but so many things happened so fast that I barely kept up.

First things first... we left AoV. There are a lot of great pilots and their CEO, Logic, is one of the finest FCs I had the pleasure to fly with. Unfortunately our corps goals and the alliance goals were not the same anymore. A lot of pilots in AU-F were growing from BCs to BS or from BS to Caps. This grow was happening at a fast pace. The politics in the region and within the alliance pushed us to try a relocation to the North. Just as we were moving the Atlas vs WI war heated up. This first looked like a very bad thing for us, but turned out to be a blessing. Two week later Geminate fell. All the outpost WI had were gone. I don't follow the politics in the region, but it seemed that the alliances that make up the NC turned their backs to WI. Either way we were back at square 1.

So we were still deciding what to do when communications between our leadership and the alliance break. I login to an error saying that some channels are unavailable. One of them was the alliance channel. I asked in corp channel and was told that it just happened. We were out.

This looked again like a very bad thing for us, but again turned into a blessing. Our fearless diplomat, Mend, was already in communication with the leadership of another alliance. After hours of talking to them and negotiations he formally request for AU-F to join -FA-.

On Wednesday around 9:30PM EST AU-F officially became part of -FA-.

At first I didn't know how this was going to affect me, but the senior pilots were so happy that I knew it would be good. As I logged in on Armand (industrialist) to move all my mining stuff to the new system I joined a fleet for the long trek thu low-sec Domain and south Providence. I was expecting a lot flight, but when I get to Providence, FC says "warp to me". I did as told and suddenly I'm in some POS. "So whats next?" I thought. Then William Amatto explains to me how to use this thing called a "jump bridge". I'm like uh?

I do as I'm told and I jump. Suddenly I'm at the complete opposite side of Providence. A smile was on my face the entire night after that. I was then given all the info as to where these JBs were located and to which systems it jumped me to. I was without words. Suddenly Providence didn't look that big after all.

In top of that the alliance CEO suddenly makes an announcement in Alliance channel. "If you can fly a captial ship, please X up". I'm like... wtf?! Two nights before a call for "frigates fleet" came in the previous alliance channel and now they are asking for capitals?! Another big smile on my face.

It is hard to describe how flying thru the same space now became an entire different feeling. For any WoW (or ex-WoW like me) player I can only explain it like this. I was running an instance as a non-heroic/10-man raid, then suddenly I was invited to a heroic/25-man run. The dungeon and bosses look the same, but it is a completely different experience.

I look forward to my time in -FA-. Still.. for those back in AoV... Fly safe!

Best answer for a T1/T2 fleet? Super-carriers!!

It may sound a bit too much, but that is the way that we were greeted in Catch last night. Our alliance put together a fleet mainly of T1/T2 frigates (we picked one bc along the way plus the onyx) to roam Providence and Catch looking for trouble. After an uneventful run thru Providence we ventured into Catch. First we picked a malediction in SV5. With a clean kill under our belts we pushed towards 9KOE. Even though we were outnumbered in the system (30+ reds in local) we were able to destroy a crusader, a crow and pilgrim. As -A- and friends tried to pin us down we were able to slip thru their fingers and make it to Stain.

In Stain we played a lot of cat-n-mouse games with ratters, but nothing juicy. There was at one point a Nightmare in scan, but the system was huge and we couldn't catch up with him.

As we went back home we started messing with some -A- folks and that is when the event happened. As we were camping their outpost and taking shots on a couple of ships a group of 4 -A- pilots decided to bring out the big guns. A total of 3x Nyx and 1x Thantos came to play with us. I've never seen any of those before. So me looking at 4x cap ships at the same time completely blew me away while putting a big smile on my face. It goes without saying that we got the hell out of there, but it was a fun experience.

Unfortunately not all was fun. In another station one fleet member engaged a Legion. We didn't have the pew-pew to put a dent on his armor. In the process we lost a ship. It was a shame since it was completely uncalled for. The pilot was never told to engage that ship.

Our FC did a hell of a job. We went from low-sec Domain, thru Providence and Catch to our destination in Stain and back. Each jump brought more and more reds, but the little fleet that could kept going. It was a lot of fun. Looking forward to the next roam!

Know your 0.0

Even though I've been living in Providence since June of last year I really know little of the politics of the area or, for that matter, the entire universe. There is so much history and so much changes (specially in the last year with the fall of BoB) that I have a hard time understanding who lives where, who are allies/enemies, etc. This is why I really welcomed Wesle'ys Quick Introduction To Nullsec.

It is an unbias rundown of the areas. Definitely a good summary for those like me that are new to 0.0 politics. Look forward to more posts like these from him.

Almost got Hulkageddoned

The other night I was with my Hulk in a belt in one of The Forge system hitting some roids on my own. Suddenly a cruiser warps in to some 30k from my location. I studied it for a bit checking corp and alliance standings. He was completely neutral to me. Sec standings were not really bad. Just in case I recalled my mining drones and loaded all the ore back to the ship (I had just started) while aligning to station. As it was aligning I decided to pull up the Hulkageddon kb to see if he was listed there in any of the kills. As it was coming up a second cruiser showed up. I immediately hit warp and as I was leaving a third one arrived. Three cruisers in a belt of a 0.5 system. Hmm.. something tells me that they weren't doing any ratting. :)

So much hate.

I've been playing games for a long time. If there is something that comes with any gaming community (or internet community) are trolls. There are people that enjoy putting down any/all games mechanics, features or direction. I guess that making people upset about what they care/play gives them infinite lolz. So when I joined EVE at first I discarded all these comments as just trolls, but the more I read them I realized that these were not the same I saw in my previous MMO experiences.

In all those previous MMOs the trolls criticized the game or the company behind it. But if you look at the posts for EVE they rarely have to do with the game or CCP. The main target of the attacks are the community itself. The entire community is seen as a bunch of unscrupulous individuals who just live to prey on the weak with CCP promoting this behavior in and supposedly out of the game.

I shouldn't be surprised since the first time I ever heard about EVE was because of the GHSC heist. Other similar stories usually make the headlines in popular MMO websites. The interesting thing is that for me this is what made EVE interesting and worth trying and is what now keeps me here. The so called "sandbox" environment. There are basic rules, but the player can definitely do almost anything.

If we look back at a thread in Scrapheap Challenge covering metagaming we see that the majority of the people have very similar "rules" as to what is ok and not. Of course there are a some that don't see hacking into a forum, website or ventrilo server as wrong since "its just a game", but is good to point out that this is a minority. Any place where you group such a big mix of people from around the world we are bound to find all sort of folks. But again, this is not the majority.

EVE is not easy and its definitely not for everybody, but its very rewarding. Everything takes planning and thought. Even the scams are complicated. For one to really work there is a lot of planning and studying before getting it going (even thought some take the really lazy way). Unfortunately some outsiders don't understand this and any thought of loosing their "purplez" is enough to label EVE as a dying MMO.

Action in Providence.

As it has been documented on multiple blogs already (Wensley, Manasi and Kirith) the fight between CVA and -A- is on full force. A lot of fights are taking place around the SV5 system in Catch. Unfortunately the lag monster that has hit fights in Fountain and Geminate has also affected Catch.

It is interesting that now that our corp decided to try a new direction things really come to life in the Providence region. I don't know how much our alliance/corp could assist in such big conflicts, but it definitely sucks that we are not in on this action. :(

I may need to move a Brutix and a Megathron to the PXF systems just in case. Even if at the end it turns into a lag-fest I would be really happy to join a big operation like this. Can't wait for this month to end so I can have tech-2 guns on all my boats.

Ore market changes?

As I was looking today at the Hulkageddon kill boards I was surprised as to how many Hulks/Macks went down in such a small period of time. There are plenty of posts in the forums by the miners and enough blog entries from the pirate that cover all the tears and LOLz from both sides. Instead I will take you another route...

How do you think this will affect the markets? These news are sure to affect the decision of all those small hi-sec miner corps. They may decided to park their miners until this is done. With a lot of miners loosing ship or not going out there can be a sudden lack of minerals in the markets.

There are multiple campaigns going on where big amount of ships are being lost every day (IT/Fountain campaign and Atlas/CoW/others invasion to Germinate comes to mind). This means a steady influx of materials is needed.

If any luck, prices will go up allowing me to get that Orca sooner. :)

Relocation and PVP

In the last week of the year our Corp went thru a huge relocation. I don't know how much is for public consumption, so I will just say that we are trying something different/new in the hopes of eventually growing the Corp and taking it to the next level.

Since I was out of town during those days I was unable to plan accordingly with those corp-mates that have freighters, orcas and the like. Instead I ended up moving my belongings for both pilots using the biggest ship that I currently own... Iteron V.

I have to say that I hope this is the last time I do something like this. Even thought the Iteron is a big ship with the amount of crap that I own I ended up jumping thru a lot of systems to move the necessary gear to the new location. Definitely hope to have the ISK to get me an Orca next time.

I left a Dominix (ratting/plexing) and a Thorax (PVP) in the 2V pocket. The rest is currently in its destination or in transit. If all goes well I'll have the BCs ready for some PVP in the new region this weekend.

Talking about PVP... Its been shitty in the "south" of Providence lately. For whatever reason it is impossible to assemble a competent fleet in the Misaba/R3 area. Two nights ago a decent size red fleet made its way thru low-sec all the way to R3. There were at least 20 blues in the R3 and N8 systems. A fleet immediately got together. I was really exited as I warped from N8 to R3 in my Thorax. I rendezvous with an alliance pilot in the Outpost at R3. You wont believe it, but instead of getting together and plan an offensive against the red the rest of the fleet decided to go one-by-one to face the reds.

I don't understand this Lone Ranger attitude. What good is a fleet if there is no teamwork? I really look forward to the change of venue. The corp leaders have a lot of projects going. Being part of a fleet where everyone listens and is eager to work together will be a very welcomed change.

Happy 10M!

Some time before the end of 2009 Armand broke the 10,000,000 skill point mark!! Dante is now at 11,747,400 skill point. I'm really happy to have decided on two accounts early on. I feel that now (above 10M SPs) is when the pilots are really useful and fun.