In life support...

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

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

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

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

In the meantime... Fly Safe!

A tale of two battleships.

The Dominix. A tale of mistakes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Megathron. A tale of TCUs.

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

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

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

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

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

Lesson learned... Battleship snipping fleets are awesome!

The Harvester.

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

Relevant skills at level V:

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

Relevant skills at level IV:

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

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

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

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

PLEX aid for Haiti.

Dear friends and readers,

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

Please read CCP's dev blog for more info.

A tough day for CVA.

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

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

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

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

A new beginning.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Know your 0.0

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

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

Almost got Hulkageddoned

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

So much hate.

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

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

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

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

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