Fly along with me

Surviving transitions.

2010-06-22T20:51:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-06-01T21:42:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-06-01T21:03:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-06-01T20:55:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-22T19:37:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-05-22T19:33:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-05-19T05:20:00.000-07:00

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.

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:

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

The North.

2010-05-18T17:16:00.000-07:00

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:

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.

2010-05-18T06:08:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-05-18T06:06:00.000-07:00

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.

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...

2010-05-13T06:35:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-05-13T06:07:00.001-07:00

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.

2010-05-05T20:44:00.002-07:00

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.

2010-05-05T20:07:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-05-05T19:53:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-05-01T16:53:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-05-01T16:34:00.001-07:00

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...

2010-04-26T18:22:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-02-15T19:31:00.000-08:00

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.

2010-02-15T19:19:00.000-08:00

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.

2010-01-29T19:58:00.001-08:00

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.

2010-01-29T19:44:00.000-08:00

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.

2010-01-29T19:17:00.000-08:00

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!!

2010-01-25T18:38:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-24T18:51:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-24T11:11:00.000-08:00

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.

2010-01-24T06:42:00.000-08:00

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.

2010-01-11T17:42:00.000-08:00

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?

2010-01-08T09:49:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-08T08:52:00.000-08:00

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!

2010-01-02T05:56:00.000-08:00

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.

2010 resolution.

2009-12-30T07:15:00.000-08:00

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.

2009-12-30T06:52:00.000-08:00

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.

2009-12-17T06:05:00.000-08:00

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.

2009-12-06T18:59:00.000-08:00

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.

2009-12-06T18:24:00.000-08:00

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.

2009-12-04T06:08:00.000-08:00

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.

2009-12-04T05:42:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An RTS would have been a better option.

2009-08-22T10:47:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Training update.

2009-08-21T20:58:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

Harder than it looks.

2009-08-21T20:17:00.001-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

Keeping the corp afloat.

2009-07-28T17:54:00.001-07:00

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

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

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

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

Now some pics:

Printed media.

2009-07-23T19:15:00.001-07:00

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

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

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

Exploration re-visited.

2009-07-23T18:09:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Additions to the fleet.

2009-07-09T14:42:00.000-07:00

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

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

I really like Gallente engineering.

The more the merrier.

2009-07-09T14:35:00.001-07:00

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

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

Someone Loses an Eye

Welcome!

Greed.

2009-07-09T13:53:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Mysterious Enigma.

2009-07-09T13:39:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

A thief among us.

2009-07-09T06:59:00.001-07:00

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

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

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

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

W-space break.

2009-07-09T06:04:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week AU-F's presence in w-space ended. All the goods were taken out and the POS dismantled. Last week I logged and had an evemail saying to move all my stuff out since the POS was going offline. This took me by surprise. After asking the leaders of the expedition it was part of the plan. Let me explain...

Phryxia (the name given to this class 3 w-space) was a private project. Two members of our corp, Ajax and Rayth Phaenor came with the idea and funding for the project. I'm not certain of the goals, but Tech 3 and ISK income is definitely in the equation. They were kind enough to open this up to the corp. Me and others (Sarah Turtle and Nlor among a few others) were happy to join. Many combat/hacking/archaeology sites were cleared and parts were salvaged/looted. Asteroid and gas sites were sucked dry. Money was made and Tech 3 components were produced.

It was all good (except one small bump at the end i'll talk about in a future post), but as with anything in life it wasn't perfect. The class-3 didn't produce enough links to similar class w-space. There was also a shortage of grav and ladar sites; our mining/gas harvesting group stood there for days without anything to do. There was also limitation in the POS. The storage wasn't big enough for the amount of minerals that were being extracted from the sites and the refinery (which came at the end) was not able to keep up with the ores coming in.

I have my own list of "lessons learned"

You can assemble ships in the POS, but you can't repackage them. This is a big logistic issue for someone like me with limited hauling capability. With Armand flying an Iteron IV I was able to bring multiple packaged ships at once, but they all had to be flown back to Empire.
There seems to be no way to divide goods in a hangar. Everyone can see/take anything. This can cause issues.
You definitely need a battleship with appropriate skills to be of help. It is also a good idea to have a logistic pilot helping out too.
All pilots need to have good exploration skillz
All pilots need to have anchoring skillz
Not seeing anyone in Local until they speak definitely makes thing more interesting and complicated.
The refinery penalties are huge compared to Empire. Having Refinery V, Refinery Efficiency V and the specific ore specialization to IV is very important. A hardwiring implant will be cool too.

I'm really happy with the experience and can't thank enough Ajax and Rayth for the opportunity. I also want to mentioned ST and Nlor for all their help and guidance while I was there. For a new pilot like me to be able to experience something like this is priceless. I look forward to future w-space projects. As Dante's and Armand's skillz set grow I feel I can help make the next one even a bigger success.

The Great War and new patch.

2009-06-27T06:43:00.001-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

For those interested in this story :

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

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

Ratting the easy way.

2009-06-27T06:18:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

Second loss.

2009-06-27T04:43:00.001-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Battlecruiser... I haz it!

2009-06-22T09:06:00.001-07:00

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

Null sec state of mind.

2009-06-22T06:04:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

Looking forward to new challenges and more adventures!

L4 missions.

2009-06-22T05:42:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

Shortcuts.

2009-06-21T16:08:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

Via Massively.

2009-06-10T21:13:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

NER. E3 comments.

2009-06-10T20:06:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You are doing it wrong! Part 3

2009-06-10T19:20:00.000-07:00

Part 3. The Miner.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You are doing it wrong! Part 2

2009-06-10T18:29:00.000-07:00

Part 2. PVE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You are doing it wrong! Part 1

2009-06-10T07:32:00.000-07:00

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

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

Part 1. PVP

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

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

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

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

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

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

PVE update.

2009-06-02T12:09:00.001-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

First Kill Mail!!

2009-06-02T11:52:00.000-07:00

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

2009.05.31 02:28:00

Victim: Dante Styx

Corp: Aurelius Federation

Alliance: Apotheosis of Virtue

Faction: NONE

Destroyed: Vexor

System: Kheram

Security: 0.4

Damage Taken: 11781

Involved parties:

Name: Joseph Dreadloch (laid the final blow)

Security: -8.9

Corp: Dark Dominion

Alliance: NONE

Faction: NONE

Ship: Crow

Weapon: Caldari Navy Thorn Rocketa

Damage Done: 11316

Name: Sansha's Cannibal / True Power

Damage Done: 465

Destroyed items:

Armor EM Hardener I

Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane I

Cap Recharger I

Thorium Charge M, Qty: 64

Small Tractor Beam I

Dual 150mm 'Scout' I Accelerator Cannon

10MN Afterburner I

Analyzer I

Thorium Charge M, Qty: 2899 (Cargo)

Dropped items:

800mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I

Medium Armor Repairer I

Thorium Charge M, Qty: 64

Salvager I, Qty: 2

Dual 150mm 'Scout' I Accelerator Cannon

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

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

The places I've been.

2009-06-02T11:45:00.000-07:00

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

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

Cat and mouse.

2009-05-28T14:14:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

Thorax

2009-05-28T11:36:00.000-07:00

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

Gank Thorax

Lows:

- 2x Magnetic Field Stabilizers I

- 800 mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten

- Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane I

- Damage Control II

Meds:

- Statis Webifier I

- Warp Scrambler I

- 10MN MicroWarpDrive I

Highs:

- 5 x Heavy Electron Blaster I (Thorium M)

Drones:

- 5x Hammerhead I

EHP: 17,593 (with DC on)

Firepower: 178 (including drones)

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

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

Comments:

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

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

The true EVE experience

2009-05-27T12:32:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lessons learned...

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

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

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

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

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

Can't wait to do it again!

Miner Anonymous

2009-05-26T17:20:00.000-07:00

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

Everyone : "Hi Dante"

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

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

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

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

18 jumps

2009-05-26T16:32:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

Unexpected.

2009-05-26T16:21:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

CSM

2009-05-23T11:34:00.001-07:00

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

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

Wardecs all around me.

2009-05-22T11:28:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

The industrialist life.

2009-05-22T08:32:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

Joining a corp.

2009-05-19T11:48:00.001-07:00

Last Friday I applied to EVE Univ. I had no luck scheduling an interview with an RO until Monday. The RO was Larry. If he is a good representation of the Uni members I can clearly see why so many people recommend this corp for those like me that are new in this universe.

They are currently at war with The Gummy Bear corp (or something like that). Since joining will tag me as red to anyone in that alliance/corp he suggested for me to move my asset to their system before joining the corp. He also explained to me all the Do/Don't of a war. Since a lot of seat/wait occurs during this time it gave me even more reason to start my alt-project.

Last night I sold must of the stuff I had scattered around 10 different stations, grabbed the stuff I deemed useful and started my trek to their system. All 20 jumps of it. After moving the Vexor I jumped out into my capsule and picked the Thorax. Tonight I'll move the Imicus and request their invite.

No.2

2009-05-19T10:43:00.000-07:00

I'm about to do what I haven't done before in any previous MMO. Open a second account.

When I shared this with some of my RL friends they laughed. "Why?" they asked. After playing other MMOs I never felt the urge to do it, but now only after 2 months of EVE I have to do it.

Looking back only EVE has the depth that requires multiple accounts. FFXI allowed me to play any of the "jobs" available and since a secondary job is required for any character having a second account made you "weaker". The bigger the variety of jobs on your toon the better. In WoW a lot of people dual-box to help leveling, but I never had a problem with that. For the must part the game is solo-able. WoW also has a HUGE emphasis in reputation. Playing with another toon meant not gaining the so needed reputation.

EVE, as in FFXI, allows you to be anything you want to be. The limit is the time it takes to achieve that. From early on I knew what I wanted to do with Dante Styx. After reading different stories from Marlenus and Kirith I envision him on a HAC, part of a small fleet (2 or 3 other players) going to w-space and exploring all those hacking, archaeology and combat sites. I want him to be able to pilot an Eos for level-4 and 5 missions in regular space and a Kronos for fleet vs fleet battle. Yah, I know that I can probably do all this in one ship, but what fun is that? :)

Then I found Letrange's blog and got interested in Industry. Specifically the T2 production. The entire thing of reverse engineering, invention and production made me very curious of it. Since Dante's plan currently takes 200+ days to complete I was faced with two options. Either change the plan and introduce other skills to do some industry or have an alt.

I opted for the second. I installed the game last night on a second machine at home. I'll be buying the game from my local gamestop tonight.

For starters I'll be doing a miner skill plan. A RL friend started a month after me and has been doing only the mining side (just recently started the epic arc missions). My wallet has not seen more than 20M at one time, while he has seen 100M+. My idea is to have him do mining only while he trains for all the industry stuff that I plan to do after. I haven't done any EVEMon for him yet, but I think that after 2 weeks I should be in a Retriever.

A corporation.

2009-05-15T16:22:00.000-07:00

Playing an online game without joining a clan, a guild or in this case a corporation would be consider "silly" by the twins. And I have to agree.

A big part of an online game, in particular an MMO, is interacting with the variety of people that makes up the community. This is why from the beginning I've been looking around for one. I didn't want to jump on one right away because I wanted to explore on my own for a while and I wasn't even sure if I was going to go "steady" with EVE. After the first month I knew I was here to stay so I seriously started to look around.

Many corporations/alliances caught my interest, but there is not much a player with 1.5-2M sp can offer. So I shifted my search for alliance that were looking for new players. It wasn't long before I found Eve University. The reference were many and the size big enough to probably guarantee people to roll with every night. Unfortunately they were at war, so I waited. Recently the war ended and I immediately applied. I'm looking forward to join some time this weekend.

Space Indiana Jones

2009-05-15T13:58:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week I completed the archaeology training and was able to fit an analyzer on my Vexor. I immediately joined my partner in crime (and RL friend) Gert who had been using his exploration skills to Bookmark some sites.

After hitting a group of combat sites he was able to lock on a arch site. I have to say that I was surprise with the loot that came out of there. I'm not sure what I was suppose to get but I didn't think it would be a bunch of salvage loot. Besides the usual boards and the like there was also one rig skill book (which I didn't have) and a bpc for some gun i never seen. The bpc was only for 3 runs, so it wasn't very useful. I check the local market and there were no buy orders. I will check on a couple of surrounding regions to see how much I can get for it. From the description it appears to be some weapon for a POS.

Overall I was really happy with the loot. Approximately 2m isk on that site alone. Now that I have better exploration skills I plan to jump every night in my Imicus to scan down 2 or 3 systems and then go at it on the Vexor. It may not have been a huge income, but definitely a great start.

Skills, Exploration and Missions.

2009-05-11T16:35:00.000-07:00

I finally broke the 2M SP mark. With Survey V just a bit over 1 day to go I'll be done with Hacking II by Wednesday night. I'll be increasing the Astrometric Acquisition, Pinpointing and Rangefinding to III to help me zero-in on those tough explorations sites. I've been frustrated a couple of times with spots that I can't get to 100%. After that I have a couple of drones skills to queue before the 11 days that it takes for Electronic Upgrades V needed for Hacking.

I've been reading about exploration lately. I was happy to find out that the spots randomly spawn across the EVE universe and is not the same spot every time. If the spots were the same on some predictable time table, I would probably would never see any since they would be likely taken by the time I log. Knowing that this is completely random made me really happy. So far I've been able to scan 2 w-holes and 3 rat areas. I've been frustrated by a couple of spots that I couldn't get to 100%. I think is a good start. My first w-space experience was nothing to write about since I was without a probe inside and didn't know how to use the D-Scanner at that time. The second experience was much *better*. I was able to find a very busy sleeper are, but unfortunately they weren't too happy to see me. I got destroyed in no time. The way that they react and attack is very different from the normal rats/drones I've found in my missions. I look forward to more w-space adventures in the future.

The missions have me a bit frustrated. I've found tons of good websites with info, but I still have plenty of questions about them. I keep doing some now and then since they are a steady income for a new player with almost no risk.

Catching up with RSS.

2009-05-11T16:20:00.001-07:00

RL has hit me hard in the last 2 weeks. I've been busy at work as well as around the house, so the little time I have I spend playing EVE or researching about it. Today I caught up with the different blogs I follow. Let me point some of the interesting things (at least for me) that were posted in the last couple of weeks.

- EVE 6th year celebration. WOW! Six years. That is very impressive. You can't think of a lot of games that have been around this long that look as good and are as fun as this game. Yes you have EQ still around after 10 years, but it looks 10 years old. CCP has done an incredible job on keeping this game looking great after all this time. I hope that the time they are spending on the ambulation feature doesn't take from them putting out new ships and better gfx.

- 300K+ subscribers. Not only this game looks amazing after all these years, but it is still pulling new subscribers (like me!). CCP recently reported breaking the 300k mark making them the biggest MMO in America (just behind WoW). For it to be bigger than new titles (like WAR or AoC) is an accomplishment on its own. When you add to that the fact that this is a sci-fi title and not another fantasy MMO is even more impressive. Grats EVE!

- Kirith (from Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah) finally has his Nightmare class battleship. I've been following Kirith's blog for months now and I'm really happy for him. Its an amazing ship. Grats!

- The latest Blog Banter had CrazyKinux asking people what 3 things they haven't done in EVE which they would like to do in the future. The responses to the Banter along with Xiphos post title Will i ever be done training? made me think about my future in EVE. So many options!! I had a group of short-medium goals, but nothing on the long run. I played in EVEMon for a while and even after putting what I though was a LOT of stuff I ended up only with 10 Million or so skill points! LOL. The sky definitely sounds like the limit here.

Epic arc and its impact on missions.

2009-05-07T05:11:00.000-07:00

Its been a while now since I finish the epic arc. I see the idea of an epic arc both as blessing and curse. The good part is pretty obvious, specially as a new player. You have an extremely long chain of missions (50 or so) that forces new players to fly across multiple systems while fighting those pesky pirates. At the same time getting a bunch of items and much needed isk. The bad is probably not obvious to the experienced capsuleer. I expected the missions offered by the other agents to be as entertaining and rewarding, but they aren't. I understand that the epic arc is call 'epic' for a reason, but didn't expect the Level 1 missions to offer so small amount of isk and be so repetitive.

Nevertheless, I've been doing missions now and then. It is too easy of an income to pass on it. From what I read the level 3 and level 4 missions are also profitable, so regardless of what I do in the future it seems a good idea to knock these low level missions now.

At first I didn't pay attention and missed the fact that by randomly picking up agents I was gaining standing with multiple NPC corporations instead of focusing on one. Recently I found the eve-agent website which I'll use to determine which corp to concentrate my efforts on. We'll see how that goes.

The experience so far.

2009-04-30T14:43:00.000-07:00

I can't believe that I've been in space for over a month already. I still remember trying to wasd my way around when I first logged. :)

I'm still a bit overwhelmed about the amount of choices, but I opted for exploration / hacking / archeology profession at the moment while improving my Gallente cruisers skills. Still in the "safety" of the empire space since I can't really afford to loose to many ships in low-sec. Money is tight for someone learning the game with only 3 hours or so of playtime.

Missions reward and the salvage from those wrecks are the mainly income right now. I alternate the mission running with exploration using my funny looking Imicus. Exploration is doing fine. I've found 2 w-holes and a couple of dead space areas. The w-hole experience didn't go too well the first time as I failed miserably using my d-scan. The second time around I took my Imicus in to probe the place before jumping on my ship. The sleepers that time proved to be tougher than expected and I went back licking my wounds on my capsule. But... It was a lot of fun. Can't wait to try it again.

Dante is currently training Science V with 1.8M skill points under his belt. Once I hit 2M I will really consider joining a corp. But right now I'm not good enough to be of any use, so I'll keep learning on my own.

Dante Styx

The start

2009-04-30T08:30:00.000-07:00

After procrastinating for weeks, this blog is online. I wish I had started it earlier, but to be honest I wasn't sure if I was ready for EVE. It is not my first MMO, but my first sandbox MMO.

I still remember the first time I heard about EVE. A friend sent me this magazine article with an incredible story of how a spy from the GHSC corporation infiltrated some other corporation and stole not only tons of things but also killed the CEO. I've never heard of anything like that in any other game. It blew me away. I immediately researched this game, but the jargon, complexity, strange UI and free-for-all pvp (oh noes! my purplez) kept me from trying it. Later on I heard about it again when a post about the gfx changes made it to a FFXI community I was part on. Again caught my attention (this game is still growing and looking better than ever), but I was too busy at that time to get into a third MMO. So time went by.

Feb 09... I was burned from the theme-park MMOs, but kept visiting MMO related sites to see if there was anything in the horizon that was worth my time. During a visit to Massively.com I read an article that claimed that BoB was no more. I followed that for a few days and again was blown away by the openness of the game. I also found out about the New Players Experience being introduced by CCP in Apocrypha and decided that this was the time.

I've been living in space for over a month now and its been amazing. It is definitely not for everyone. Even with the tutorials, rookie channel and official wiki a player has to do a lot of research to get going.... but I like it. Not only the game is great, but the community is incredible. Yes, there are trolls (is still the internet), but the amount of players that share their knowledge and experience can be seen thru the incredible number of Blogs, unofficial forums, unofficial wiki, and plenty of videos in youtube and evetube.

A final note... I'll be using this blog to share my experiences in this incredible universe. I don't think it will be as entertaining or informational as many of those listed in the blog list (side bar), but hopefully some can find something good here.

Fly safe and see you in space!

Dante Styx