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.