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.