The Adventure Continues...

As promised, here's the remainder of the story.

Leilani was stuck in W-Space. Fortunately, we'd taken the precaution of fitting her ship, not one we usually used for wormhole popping, with a scan-probe launcher and a prototype cloaking device. Any time you're leaving your wormhole for anything but known space, a core-probe launcher is not a luxury item, but a necessity. The prototype cloaking device isn't technically a 'necessity' but if you don't fit one, then while you're scanning things down you have to also manage long warps between safe-points so that you never stop moving.

Having both those items, I warped off into space, created a safe-point, dropped probes at a planet, warped back to my safe-spot and hunkered down in cloak for some scanning.

I hate scanning down other people's wormholes that I'm not going to do anything with.

Seriously, it's kind of depressing to see dozens of signatures and know that all you want is a bloody exit to K-Space.

Some time later, I found the only exits in system were to other wormholes. Great. 1 Class 4+, 1 Class 3. Statistically, the lower the class of the wormhole, the greater its chance of a good exit. Class 3 it is.

I popped through, and held cloak as someone flew past me in a Viator.... Yeah, honest to gosh.

Then I got to start scanning again. Sigh.

The rest of the process was fairly uneventful, scan, scan, scan some more, find an exit to low-sec, pop through to see if it's worth it, do a happy-dance. Right next door to high-sec, no-one in system, and the high-sec system in question is my Empire home-base. You really can't get much better service than that. Especially not when Our Slice of Heaven has a destabilized wormhole not 8 jumps away, with hours left on it's timer.

Leilani's adventure was far less impressive and exciting than Minuit's, but it was more stressful, by and large because I almost never have both of my characters out of the hole at the same time and fate had forced it upon me. The other folk in our wormhole took care of matters beautifully, of course, led by Kattra in destabilizing the remaining holes, and soon enough everyone was back where they belonged.

That night, given my earlier 'success', I decided it was time to install Minuit's Jump-Clone out in ORDR's portion of 0.0. This blog-post needed something a bit more exciting than scanning, after all!

Picking up my interceptor, The Dirk, I shot off like a rocket into the black, 4700mps is a beautiful thing, and I enjoyed every minute of my 16 jumps through low and null sec space. I had been hearing the horror stories of my fellow pilots throughout the week previous about gate-camps and bubbles and the like, so I was fully intent upon my navigation, warping to celestials to avoid Stargate-to-Stargate drag bubbles, scanning in a tight radius or angle to check for people just off grid, or waiting at the end of a long warp.

Not a soul. That's right, I didn't see a single neutral or hostile target the entire way down. I'll admit I was a little disappointed, I docked up, set my medical clone for future use and went to check out our constellation and set up some safe-spots, insta-warps and off-grid locations for various tasks. I discovered that, yes, I can outrun the local rat population without too many worries, and that it was downright RELAXING out here in 0.0.

That's right, 0.0 is relaxing compared to WH space. Every time I clicked my D-Scan out in 0.0, I snickered to myself at the habit, because a glance at local showed everything was clear.

In case you didn't catch it previously, ORDR is settling Syndicate space for the moment. We're excited about the incoming goon targets just like the rest of Syndicate, but we're not actually planning on sticking around in NPC space forever. REAL 0.0 is just too tempting. IT itself (the corp, not BoB) has had a long history in 0.0 space, and the old-timers want to get back to their roots, while the young-bloods like myself just want to see what all the fuss is about. We're currently looking for some partners in this grand endeavor.

So, Syndicate space has its own unique challenges, like the ability for all and sundry to dock up at 'our' stations.

We discourage this practice wherever possible, and during my brief stay yesterday I managed to join in the hunt for an interceptor. Never an easy task. We had him on the run in our home-system, so I ducked next door to sit on gate, MWD burning, point, scram, ewar, all overheated and primed for a target.

Unfortunately, when the interceptor, predictably, jumped through to me, so did one of our other pilots, and my time in WH space showed. I was on the wrong overview tab.

That's right, I locked the heck out of my pal, and pinned him down like nobodies business, while the interceptor ran like he had 5 pilots on his tail.

Oh, that's right, he did.

Once he reached the edges of our borders, we let it go and drew back into our territory. I apologized profusely to my fellow pilot, and gang, and reset my overview settings, adjusting my PvP and a few other tabs settings while I was at it to clean the overview up a bit.

So, to summarize; 0.0 seems like a very relaxing place to be, with the edge of excitement looming on the horizon. I'm looking forward to getting more time out there.

Fly straight, and keep your E-War on the enemy!

An Unintentional Adventure

So this morning has been a little crazy in Our Slice of Heaven.

Katt and I logged in, frowning grimly when we realized someone had come into our wormhole. (For those of you who don't live in WH space, you may not know that WH systems do not 'load' onto the server unless someone is inside. Therefore, if you log in W-Space you'll get a 'this system is still loading, please try again soon' message if you're the first person after downtime to try and enter).

We immediately hopped into our battleships and scanners, calling on additional ships to ensure a nice smooth popping of the offending wormholes.

I found the problem. Our usual exit was still weak and in place, as expected, but we had another opening into 0.0 and someone had obviously poked their nose in.

So we started the not-so-exciting process of weakening the wormhole. Our calculations were running smooth, until I stepped through for the last jump.

The sucking sound that a wormhole makes when it collapses around you is usually a bit exhilerating. When it drops you in Q0OH-V, the butt end of no-where, 30-odd jumps from Empire, in a Typhoon sporting 7 reinforced steel 1600mm's, it's not really all that awesome.

Nope, really not.

So hey, what the heck, I buy these things knowing they're likely to end up on the wrong end of a blaster eventually, I set destination for Keberz and start warping.

20 or so rather boring jumps go by, and I'm starting to wonder if I have a chance of ACTUALLY making it out alive... Nawww....

So I arrive at the gate into GE-8JV to see a Crusader and another sitting on gate. My odds of survival plumet, but I warp through immediately on landing, hoping that the Crusader pilot is a little slow. When my systems come back online in GE, I see a Stiletto. "Ok, I'm toast."

I'm locked up faster than a dog with rabies. I let loose the local message I had prepared 8 or 9 systems earlier, explaining that I was just trying to make it back to Empire, and 'gank if you must, but I'd LOVE a free pass *hopeful smile*'.

I was informed that I could get back to Empire really fast if I warped to the local station.

I played around with my drones a bit while they chewed on my shield-tank. Drove off the nemesis that was torping me and bombing my poor drones. I DID forget to use the 3 guns on my ship, cos I was pretty certain of my demise and having a nice chat with the boys who were doing the demising.

They got through shields and I thanked em for a good fight and asked their corps, offering a mention on my Blog for their hard work... The 7 x 1600mm plates held out longer than I thought they would, under the circumstances. I warped my pod out before the two interceptors could catch it, told em all to 'Fly Straight' and continued on my merry way.

I don't think they tried to follow, though I kept my warping as fast as I could to avoid any hassles. I ducked to a planet to avoid the drag bubbles on the Keberz gate and slipped back into High-Sec, kissing space-dust and thinking about what a journey it had been.

Little did I know that adventure number 2 was about to start...

Another wormhole popped up, and in the process of damaging it, our alt, Leilani, got stuck in a Class 4 Wormhole... *sigh*

But you can read about that tomorrow...

Fly Straight!

EVE Blog Banter: Special Edition - Why We Love EVE

Why They Hate EVE Online

Welcome to this special installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by myself, CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to me. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!


The Contest

Write an article letting us know why you love this game so much and get a chance to win one of these 10 amazing prizes courtesy of CCP Games!


•1st Place: $100 in EVE Store merchandise
•2nd Place: $50 in EVE Store merchandise
•3rd and 4th Place: $25 in EVE Store merchandise each
•5th through 10th Place: a 14-day EVE time pass each




The Prizes
$200 in EVE Online Store merchandise and six 2-week EVE time codes




The Rules
I'll be judging your articles based on their quality, structure, approach, originality. Other criteria are as follows:
•Contest is open from now until Sunday January 31st 11:59 PM EDT, 2010
•Submit your article (title and URL) in the comments below, before the contest expires. I will be using the date and time of your comment as the time stamp for the contest.
•No offensive or racist language will be allowed.
•You will need to link back to this post in your article introduction, as in typical EVE Blog Banter fashion.
•The winners will be announced on February 5th, 2010.

1. It takes so much time to get anything done right.
2. The game is so complicated.
3. There's no 'best ship' to learn to fly.
4. People can kill them wherever they go and if they do they lose all their stuff.
5. They can't possibly ever learn all the skills
6. It costs heaps of ISK to play the game for free.
7. There's nothing telling them what to do next.
8. The Universe is too big, they can't find anyone they know.

Why We Love EVE Online

1. This is not your casual throw-away-a-few-minutes MMO. This is an MMO you can breath, eat and sleep, and wake up in the morning without regrets. (Except for that one time with the Rapier....)

You can spend hours planning out your next steps, whether it be researching your manufacturing to make sure you make the most money or playing the EFT Warrior to ensure your next fight has the best chance of victory. This is an MMO you can IMMERSE yourself into, as opposed to a video game that sucks up a few minutes here and there and eventually leaves you bored.

2. As I may have mentioned before, studying the component charts and pricing out T3 production is a great example of how EVE is complicated. That very complexity means that I'm constantly learning something new in this game. Every day I log in, it seems, I find something I didn't know the day before. I have yet to encounter a pilot of any worth who has said they 'know it all' in EVE, and, in fact, have taught 'new' things to some 6-year Veterans. The day I know everything about EVE is the day I stop paying my accounts.

3. EVERY ship is a 'best ship' for something! From the humble Rifter, King of T1 Frigate Tackles, to the mightiest of Titans, every ship has it's strengths and its weaknesses. On top of that, the options that EVE allows you mean that YOUR Rifter doesn't have to be like everyone else's Rifter. The diversity of ships and roles and options means that every ship is a surprise and a delight.
I will never see a 'Best in Slot' list for an EVE Ship that doesn't have comments on it saying 'That's not BiS, this is!

4. Anywhere I go, I have to watch my back.

There is no 'non-agression city' where we all mingle with no consequences for our actions or words. There is no 'safe zone' where we can make our money without the constant possibility, however remote, of someone making us pay for our smacktalk the other night. CCP covers the griefers so that we don't have to deal with anything out of line, but they leave free reign for us to suffer our consequences, whether it's a consequence of our own actions, or a consequence of not being vigilant enough against others' choices. No holds barred in this game.

When I lose my ship, I LOSE my ship, and so does the other guy. PvP is not some mindless activity to kill time, it's something that gets your blood rushing and your hands shaking as you pit yourself against the other guy, who might be a friend tomorrow, or a deadly enemy 6 years from now.

5. I'll never have EVERY skill, and neither will anyone else. That seems like the most persistant of the 'oh but this sucks' of the EVE complaints above, but you know what, it's one of the BEST things about the game.

Do I want to 'hit level cap' and have nothing left to strive for? Heck no. On EVE I will always have another ship, another project, another support skill that I want to train up, and I'll never have enough time to do it, but each one will eventually fall before my implants and learning skills and I will exult and do my little dance, and start on the next one!

6. I CAN PLAY THIS GAME FOR FREE. Holy crap, how many quality MMO's out there can you imagine would offer you the chance to play the game for in-game currency? You think Blizzard is ever going to adopt that feature? HAH! So quit whining that it's expensive and you can't do it until you've got some experience under your belt and make it happen.

7. There's no-one telling me what to do. I can become a horrible Pirate, a frontier-settler, an explorer, a mercenary, a trader, a scammer, or anything else. The sandbox is open kids, and we can go play wherever we want in it, and build whatever kind of castle we feel like

8. There's only 1 'Universe'. Try finding your friends in WoW if they're on a different server, which is likely, given how many of them there are. The stories of what happens in one area of the game are things that can affect the markets where I am at, and ALL the stories pertain to the universe that I'm playing in. I read the Blogs of my fellow pilots and know that I could easily run into them one day or another, because they're all on 'my server'.

We love EVE Online, for all the reasons that people who don't get it, hate it. That's what makes EVE one of the few MMO's that continues to grow in popularity after its release, because it isn't like its competitors. The many things that attract us to EVE are things that we literally CANNOT get elsewhere.

Fly Straight, pilots, there's more to see and do.

Some other posts on this banter:
Manasi ~ http://manasi.eveplayer.net/?p=1226
Astral Dominix ~ http://eve-trial-by-fire.blogspot.com/
Mail Lite ~ http://thebeginningsofpiracy.blogspot.com/2010/01/eve-blog-banter-special-edition-why-we.html
Jager Da ~ http://www.jagerda.com/why-i-love-eve/
Logan Fyreite ~ http://eveopportunist.blogspot.com/2010/01/oh-opportunity-is-there-anything-so.html
Sered Woollahra ~ http://sered-sl.blogspot.com/2010/01/eve-online-whats-appeal.html
Mithrandir Stormcrow ~ http://thelathspell.wordpress.com/2010/01/25/eve-blog-banter-special-edition-why-we-love-eve-online/

Testing... Testing...

My first attempt at blogging from my phone. A bit slow for my tastes. I'm a lot better typist than I am texter!
Today was a frustrating EFT-Warrior day.

I like to research for things I want to do in EVE, and new ship loadouts are no exception, which is why EFT is such a great tool.

However, sometimes I can't help but try and fit a square peg in a round hole. Or, like today, I just don't have enough flight time in the ship in question to really know the boundaries I'm pushing.

On top of that, Katt was helping out and taking an interest in the fits today, which isn't always the case. She's smarter than I am (freely admitted!) and looks at things from a completely different perspective.

Where I look at a 1400mm howitzer and see a big alpha strike, she see's 20 odd seconds of wait time between action. She's right that faster firing guns aren't vastly weaker than the Howwies, but I see the little dps increase and say "why would I fit something weaker if this fits?"

We butted heads a little throughout the day, but I have come to see her point. Her odd way of looking at the fittings stumbled us across an out of the box fit I'd have ignored right off the bat.

Between us, we compromise our way into being a pretty effective team.

Homehole Advantage

We had several uninvited visitors in 'Our Slice of Heaven' today, and it was nice to be able to settle back into our 'Homehole Advantage'. For instance, our ships, pvp and otherwise, are set up for the anomaly within our wormhole.

Our enemies aren't.

We have already scanned down every signature and can warp, cloaked or otherwise, to wherever our enemies are without deploying scan probes and warning our prey.

Our enemies can't.

We know where our various sites are in relation to each other and know when things will appear on D-Scan and when they won't.

Our enemies don't.
Our POS provides not only a safe haven when not enough corp-mates are online to handle an incoming threat (rare) but also gives us a quick pit-stop in the event a battle doesn't go our way. If our enemies don't catch our pods, they can be sure we'll be back with another ship before they can say 'but-my-armor-repairer-isn't-done-yet-you-tool'.

Homehole Advantage is a wonderful thing to have.

Fly Straight, but not into MY home.

Wormhole Mass Allowances

So we've been having some issues with the mass allowance on our static exit lately.

For those of you who aren't in the know, Wormholes have a specific mass-allowance that can travel through them (total, direction doesn't matter) before they collapse. Supposedly, at 45% remaining mass and 5% remaining mass they go into different stages and return a different result on show info to let you know how close to collapse they are.

I say supposedly because while that seemed to work for us for weeks, these last few days it's gone odd.

My previous calculations, which are based upon the individual mass of the ships we use to critically destabilize our entrances (or pop them if they're non-static) have been wrong several times this last few days.

Since I'm using the same ships, with the same math every time, I have come to conclude that there must be some level of variance in our static exits mass allowance. Obviously, this makes OUR lives a little more interesting and irritating, as we overshoot the mark and collapse holes, forcing us to start over from scratch, or undershoot and have to run the risk of collapsing the hole on our way out of W-Space.

I have noted, however, that our non-static wormholes have yet to show any significant signs of variance. The set number of jumps we use to collapse them, unless they have been tampered with by another, seems to ALWAYS work. Maybe this is just luck?

If anyone happens to read this and has encountered the same issues, speak up!

Making the Game: Mobile Small/Medium/Large _________

Currently, when you see the above, you'd think I'm writing a quiz and asking for the words Warp Disruptor, but I'm actually proposing something completely different.

One of the things I like about EVE is how small things make big changes. This is often the case in the market, but just as often appears on the battlefield. How often has a new ship warping into a relatively decent sized fight made all the difference between 'we got this' and 'uh oh'? I'm willing to be often is the answer most of you come up with.

What I'd like to see are environmental effects that do the same sort of thing. Because I couldn't come up with a way to add in environmental effects just out of the black, aside from my 0.0 Spacial Anomaly Generator, (if anyone can, please, speak up!) I have instead come up with the following suggestion.

Mobile Target Painter
Mobile Sensor Dampener
Mobile Tracking Disruptor

Why is it that Warp Disruption is the only effect we can deploy in a bubble-like fashion on the battlefield of New Eden? Doesn't it stand to reason that wily technologists would work on creating differing effects that could otherwise reshape the face of a battle?

Perhaps this could require Anchoring 4, the currently unused rank of the Anchoring skill, because really, we all LOVE training something for an extra few days without any benefit.... Yeah, sure we do... ;)

Fly Straight, but not into a bubble!

Multi-Corp POSing...

Sucks.

During a minor hiccup this afternoon, I was disconnected from EVE. I hurried back online, inputting my Starbase password immediately to avoid being demolished by the POS's guns. Little known fact (cos no-one normally needs to know) you can't input a defence field password while warping. Nor can you enter one while within a forcefield. So when I dropped out of warp inside the field, and then immediately got ejected at a rate FAR beyond what my poor Retriever "Labrador" could handle, I hustled to get back into warp and off to safety.

Got away, set my password, growling all the while, and warped back to the POS. My OTHER ship, left on hand for hauling, was also ejected, 150km from the bubble. *Sigh*

So I ejected from my ship, and crawled out there. Just a few kilometers before reaching my goal, I was disconnected again.

You betcha, when I came back online, my retriever was ALSO 150km from the bubble.

Suffice to say, all was eventually recovered, but MAN running a character at a POS not belonging to your corporation is annoying.

Fly straight, for 145km in a 187mps pod.... Twice.

Eve: The Spreadsheet

Spent a good part of today playing the above game. A time consuming game also known as 'calculating profitability of Tech 3 production of specific Subsystems from scratch'.

Suffice to say, a good part of today was lost to the mighty Excel, but in the end, the program opened it's mighty calculator and delivered unto me a mythical number known as '50% profit margin'.

Reactors are prepped and loaded and I suspect within the week I'll be hauling my first subsystems to market.

All hail the mighty Excel!

Best Gate Camp Ever (But me on the wrong end of it...)

So yesterday was a pretty poor day for me.

I came out of the wormhole (appropriately destabilized) in Gesh, to help a corpmate move some ships. Flying along through low-sec in a Cheetah with cov-ops cloak is rarely stressful, so I wasn't paying as much attention as I should.

Turns out I paid WAY less attention than I should, and got popped on a gate that I was just sitting at like a moron while reading my blogs. *blush*

Suffice to say, I'm annoyed with myself, not with the pirates. I know better.

So I travel on, pick up a shuttle and keep moving. I help my friend (albeit after like 40 jumps because the target wormhole closed and he had to reroute me...) and head back to base in my handy-dandy shuttle. Not as awesome as a Cheetah, but seriously, it's a pretty safe way to fly.

I drop into Udianoor in my shuttle and see a rather healthy gate camp, complete with a half-dozen wrecks. "Woah... that's not so good.." I think to myself as I take a breath and hit the warp button. My ship hurtles forward, cutting a tight corner to align and zips into warp. I let the breath out, knowing that there's almost no chance of being locked, destroyed, locked again, and podded, before I could get through the stargate and be on my way.

I drop out of warp, and there goes my shields, and armor, and structure. I'm in my pod.. Holy cow, spam the jump button! There goes my shields, armor, structure. I'm waking up in a new clone.

I'm up on my feet, staring at the screen, opening up my combat log to try and work out what the heck just happened.

Smartbomb gate-camp.

The lack of locking suddenly makes sense, my poor shuttle and implant-laden (just +3's, nothing to cry about) pod fell victim to a well laid trap involving several smartbombing ships arrayed around both entrance and exit of the system.

My hat, were I wearing one, would be off to MasterMental over at Cosmic Encounter, a well laid trap indeed. Interestingly, Dotlan shows just how successful they were, as Udianoor peaked at over 120 kills within a 6 hour span.

Suffice to say a bad day. Fortunately, I wasn't making my "Loot Run", which I performed today without incident. I can safely say I'm ok with losing some +3's, a Cheetah and Minmatar Shuttle, when comparing it to the over 1Billion ISK in assets I moved and sold today.

Fly straight, unless there's a smartbomb!

Big changes..

Our cosy little world got turned upside down.

IT (Yes, darnit, I'm going to KEEP calling the original, 6-year holder of the [IT] ticker by it's acustomed name, and anyone who reads this can get used to me referring to BoB as BoB. *Grin*) has joined an Alliance.

Sodalitas XX is a small Alliance based in a stub constellation in NPC controlled 0.0. Syndicate space, if you want to get technical about it. Their primary corporation, 20th Legion, is ran by an old compatriot of some of the more venerable IT members. We're acknowledged as being at a low-point in IT's numbers and we're jumping in with both feet to bring that enthusiasm and drive back to our incoming new membership.

Avernus, founder of IT, has this to say on the subject.

That said, it catalysed a decision that had been some time in the making for my motley crew. Katt and Leilani have sheared off from Imperium Technologies and the upcoming drive towards PvP, so that Katt can explore CEO life at the head of Per Ardua ad Sol (Through Struggles, to the Sun) our family operation to hold Wormhole space and profit from so doing. We've recruited a business partner in Racquel Zuunii and several others and we'll be keeping the fires burning. Minuit Soleil will be helping whenever possible and I'm sure if someone decides Per Ardua is 'friendless and alone' in Wormhole space, they'll get a surprise.

So, setting up a POS is a PAIN IN THE REAR! and fiddling with corporation standings isn't much better. However the new POS is online and in position and our modules are coming online as I type. We had a few close calls, as the wormhole gods decided to make yesterday and today very wormhole-heavy in our little piece of W-Space.

Minuit will be sticking around 'semi-permanently' in the wormhole for the near future while business is settled and Katt is set up to run without Min's assistance. Then, we're off to secure our constellation of 0.0, build friendships, gain experience, and blow some crap up.

Fly straight! They'll never expect it.

IC: Pondering the Sleepers

Communication-Drone ID#0114-2

"Another probe loaded down with my not-so-deep thoughts. Hooray for you.

Sleepers. It's a pretty utilitarian term out here in Wormhole Space. My nav-com can't work out how many jumps away from the Empire we are, but wherever it is, there was obviously a sprawling civilization if their dregs are anything to go by.

The A.I. on the drones they leave behind is a lot better than the not-so-artificial 'intelligence' of a number of Amarrian slavers I've fought in the past, for one thing. For another, they seem to be as thick as flies.

We get a lot of reports, during our brief fuel-runs into K-Space, that others, like us, are discovering cells of these sleepers in broken down Talocan ruins and outposts. It seems to me like these Talocans had their own Empire, and maybe the Sleepers overran them. Can you imagine, being able to create an endless supply of drones, all capable of piloting themselves without relying upon a commanding ship or capsuleer? That's what these Sleepers are.

For now, they don't seem to be able to utilize the wormholes that have brought OUR Empire space to their doorstep. But they're obviously programmed to destroy anything they come in contact with. All it would take is one idiot warping out with a sleeper too close on his signature trail and...

Maybe the end of OUR Empire.

Heavy thought. All I know is that I don't leave any of them still functioning when I'm done.

You shouldn't either.

Fly straight, pilots, they'll never expect it."

End Transmission.

What are some people thinking...

I like PvP. But...

I'll admit there's a part of me that is a bit carebear, and wants PvP to be on my terms. It's silly, and I recognize it as such. I do my best to suppress this silly side of myself by telling myself how brutal and dark New Eden is. I play with a phenomenal level of paranoia, and acknowledge that 90% of that paranoia is COMPLETELY necessary.

So, I always get a little surprised by people who do things that I wouldn't dream of doing.

For instance, this morning, as I'm running a ship back and forth to collapse last night's wormhole, a Drake rocks up. Naturally, as I'm in a non-defensible hauler for this particular task, I slide back into my W-Space, get some distance and cloak.

He doesn't follow. I decide to just wait the extra time out and let it die a natural death. The wormhole flashes... A merlin? Huhn... Cos, obviously, a hauler going INTO W-Space doesn't suggest colonization...

He warps off into space.

The wormhole runs out of time. (Did I mention it was on the verge of collapse, both in time and stability?)

He spouts some Russian. I don't understand, and don't reply.

My d-scanner detects his frozen corpse.

So I'm thinking, 'there's my dose of wierd for the day.' But I was mistaken, later on, as I'm running 3 battleships (Leilani, myself and Katt) through the fresh wormhole, another Drake shows up.

Sigh.

I continue working the wormhole, cloaking in between jumps on the W-Space side, to make certain I choose the time of engagement with our Drakey friend.

Then his pod comes through....

Sigh.

Fortunately for him, we were just looking to destabilize the hole, and he makes it back out, attempting to come back with friends in a pair of Battleships and pair of Battlecruisers, but by then the wormhole is critically destabilized and unable to support more than 1 of them, and they decide to find something else to do.

A word to the wise, if you see a wormhole that's near the end of its life, turn on your paranoia and assume it's about to expire, DO NOT ENTER without a probe launcher. If you see a hole critically destabilized, and/or see the big ole ships destabilizing it, DO NOT ENTER without the understanding that there could be a fleet of us on the other side, and you have no guarantee that your friends will make it through before your only escape collapses behind you.

Fly straight, they'll never expect it.

EVE Blog Banter #14

Welcome to the fourteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

The first banter of 2010 comes to us from the EVE Blog Father, CrazyKinux himself, who asks the following: As we begin another year in New Eden, ask yourselves "What Now?" What will I attempt next? What haven't I done so far in EVE? Was it out fear, funds, or knowledge? Have I always wanted to start my own corporation, but have never dared doing so? Is there a fledgling mercenary waiting to come out of its shell? Or maybe an Industrialist? What steps and objectives will I set myself to accomplish in order to reach my ultimate goal for this year? EVE is what you make of it. So, what is it going to be for you?

Speaking as I often do for both myself, my alt, and my wife, here are our various goals (or inklings of goals, since we're somewhat undecided in some cases..) for 2010.

Minuit Soleil:
As my primary combat pilot, and all around 'main', I've got significant goals in terms of experiences.

Yesterday kicked that party off with my first FCing gig and I've got another scheduled soon. I want to get more experience as both a PvP pilot and FC, so that's definitely a major goal.

I want to see my wallet grow. The past few months have been very profitable, and despite a renewed interest in PvP, I want to continue to grow my wallet. By the end of 2010, I'd like to have 10 billion or more in our combined wallet.

Skill wise, I want to finish off the semi-long-term skills that have been plaguing the edges. Support skills that take several weeks each just to get that last bit of an edge. I also want to increase my training in Battleship sized weaponry and ships, so that hopefully I can give thought to Capital ships in 2011.

Leilani Belle:
As a newer character, Leilani's got a lot more skills to catch up on than Minuit. I'd like to see all the guns she can fire in their Tech II variant, as well as her drone skills optimized to their full potential. That will be her focus for most of the year, though sneaking her into a few specialized ships is definitely something I'm looking at.

KattraStarr:
Katt's not certain on her goals. This is nothing new, we often come up with what we're going to do next for her on the fly. Her primary goal, however, is to stay in Wormhole space and be as self-sufficient as possible! She's got a very close eye on our combined wallet, and has begun our foray into T3 production to help us reach our ISK goals.

Efficiency is always Katt's biggest motivator, so she's looking for newer and faster ways to clear sites with the skill set available to us (curse us all for not going Caldari!) to keep the ISK flowing.

And that's a wrap!

Fly straight, they'll never expect it.


Other Participants in Blog Banter #14:
A Merry Life and a Short One
A Mule in Eve
Life in Low Sec
My God, it's Full of Stars
Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah
Roc's Ramblings
Flashfresh The Pirate
Adventures in Mission Running
A Pirate's Life for Me!
Rettic's Log
CrazyKinux's Musings
Yarrbear Tales
The Wandering Druid of Tranquility
Kane Rizzel - a Pirates Perspective
K162 Space
Deafplasma's Eve Musings

Trial By Fire...

As I overloaded my afterburner and shrieked back towards the gate I had just come through, I couldn't help but think. "Well, now you've done it, you've gone and got them all screwed."

We had led some few members of Agony Unleashed on a bit of a merry chase through our usual stomping grounds, and in an effort to find a more plausible target for our small, six man fleet of frigates, we dropped into a dead-end system and swarmed upon the asteroid belts.

Our prey proved elusive, however, undoubtedly mooring up at one of the POS in system. Disappointed, but with no signs of the Agony crew, who we had run end-routes around several times, we headed back to the gate.

I jumped through first to get the lay of the land, and that's when the above thought landed in my head. A Drake, a Tengu and a Phobos, bubble deployed. Well, that doesn't sound too healthy.

My afterburner kicked in mightily to slap me back into a tight orbit on the gate as the jump system went to work, and I got back into our possible grave without a scratch. There was no answering flare from the gate to show pursuit, but we gave a bit of distance anyway.

After stewing and formulating our plan for a bit, we repeated the process, keeping everyone close to the gate while I went through to attempt to draw either their Phobos (unlikely, but we can dream) or their dps (more likely) into jumping through...

Turns out luck was very much on our side, the Phobos had warped away (briefly, he joined the following crew) and so the rest of the crew followed through and we zipped out of our dead-end spoke and back into open territory.

Our merry chase continued from there and we eventually lost our hangers-on, moving out of their hunting grounds and heading what I had arbitrarily declared 'north'. Skimming past another gate-camp, we eluded another set of pursuers with a bit too much firepower for our limited gang to handle and ended up sitting in wait on a relatively well travelled piece of the pipe.

Enter our new friend the Taranis. And his buddy, Taranis. And his buddy, Hurricane.

We dodged them at a gate, then held position while the two Taranis cruised in, and smiled when the first one jumped ahead of us. Rounding on the remaining Taranis, while aiming ECM at the Hurricane as it dropped out of warp, we demolished him swiftly. The second Taranis returned at this point, and it was then my inexperience showed. Knowing the difficulty we would have in disengaging, I called the Hurricane as primary, in hopes of getting our frigate sized hulls inside his guns, using tracking disruptors and high angular velocity to keep him at bay. This plan was proven ineffective as the Taranis, by far the easier target with our squad makeup, tore into our like-sized ships.

Our pods streamed for the far corners of the system before beating a hasty retreat. Pilot chatter was up-beat, as despite our ship-losses, we warped away having dropped a T2 interceptor with a gang of cheap frigates.

Three of us managed to stay on for another try. A much shorter roam with two frigates and my Hurricane battlecruiser, it ended in fire, our foolish plan to attack a lone bait-drake on a gate netting us a less than pleasant 'conversation' with a total of three drakes and two scimitar logistics. Yes, I hear you all saying 'OUCH' from back in your pods.

We called it a day on that note, and all in all, fun was had. I have another op scheduled soon. Cruiser's and below this time... Should be fun!

Fly straight, they'll never expect it!

Night before nerves..

In EVE, it's officially clocked over to 01/11/10. I'm an ITer of 2 years. In 14 hours, I'll be forming up a squad of ITer's and our allies and taking them out into the depths of space.

I've read a lot of guides, listened attentively to those with more experience than I, and prepared myself as much as possible. When the time comes, I realize I'm not allowed to express my doubts, or pander to my inexperience. Tonight is my night to express my nerves and to fret about what tomorrow will bring.

My monitor is piling up with sticky notes of important items. My overview has been adjusted countless times and I've familiarized myself with the numerous options available to a fleet-commander in the fleet interface.

So, this is me, signing off on my nerves, frets and worries. Tomorrow, I'm going to wake up and take charge of however small or large a fleet is available to me. Wish me luck tonight, because tomorrow, I won't need it.

Making the Game: Spacial Anomaly Generator

I've decided to get on the bandwagon of many other bloggers and occasionally put out a post on what I think would be a great addition or change to EVE.

Today, I'm talking about the Spacial Anomaly Generator. No, EVE-fans, this device doesn't exist, yet. But here's my thoughts...

Many wormhole's have spacial anomalies present that drastically alter the way ships within are fit and go about their fighting. What if, as a new upgrade module for 0.0 space, alliances could generate Spacial Anomalies of that nature for their space?

Obviously, how any given anomaly would be determined would be something CCP would need to look into, but, assuming the anomaly would be either permanent or relatively long-living, it would alter the face of almost all warfare in the system.

Residents, well aware of the properties of their anomaly, would have their 'local defense' and even ratting ships fit to take into account the bonus, offering them home-field advantage against intruders. Said intruders would infiltrate the system in small ships prior to the main event to scout out possible anomalies, and would attempt to take that into account when forming their fleet.

Battles would be different.

I'll stress that one, big fleet battles would HAVE to take the anomaly into account or risk destruction, and the fleet that did not would be at a significant disadvantage. This would give even more options, more changes, more interest, to these large battles, which could easily be won or lost in the planning stages.

I think the Spacial Anomaly Generator should be introduced to the game, what about you?

Ecliptic Rift's Flash Fiction Friday

In response to Ecliptic Rift's Flash Fiction Friday,

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"Mining sure is boring." Minuit complained, not for the first time.

"Take up crochet." Was Katt's somewhat stock reply.

"Shouldn't have bought the barge book, Min." Came Leilani's snarky reply from back at the POS, where she was able to relax with a cold quafe and occasionally direct the deployed core probe to run it's cycle.

"Yeah yeah.. I just want you to track down some more of those sleeper drones, instead of drinking up our stores. If this goes on..."

"Got something!" Leilani exclaimed, suddenly all seriousness as, within moments, Katt's exhumer and Minuit's mining barge started ramping up to speed, drones shrieking back into their bay, ore streaming out into space in their wake with the haste of their recall.

"Identify."

"Unknown, down to 4AU scans. Reconfiguring for 2AU. Wormhole. Second sig on 32AU scan, get the battleships." Leilani reported and commanded, even as the mining crews sought to ready their ship for insertion into the ship's hangar array and KattraStarr and Minuit ejected their pods for transfer to their twin Typhoons.

Sporting no less than seven units of unwieldy steel reinforcement, the behemoths were a beast to align for their eventual crawl into warp, but their exaggerated mass ripped through the stability of wormholes far more effectively than a standard combat fit. "Jumping into unknown space, destroying wormholes to mark our territory, if this goes on much longer I'll never get that sweater done.." Katt complained, to Minuit's laughter.

Preparation...

A quote about being prepared, 'It wasn't raining when Noah built the ark.' by Howard Ruff.

Ejected into my 'work capsule' today, by which I mean the 9x9 box that I work from every week on Thursday and Friday, I have decided (at the wife's brilliant suggestion, no less) to work on being as prepared as I can be for my first FCing gig this upcoming Monday.

Interestingly enough, 01/11/10 will also mark my 2 year anniversary as a member of Imperium Technologies. I'm proud to fly with the [IT] ticker, and wish I could still say I'm from IT without BoB's fame causing people to throw ??'s in my chat.

That said, figuring one weakness I could address while stuck in my Pod and unable to access a REAL computer was ship-recognition, I attacked Google with some glee. What should turn up but this post by a fellow blogger over at k162 Space. He offered the delightful links to a random ship-quiz and a set of helpful flash-cards that I am going to pour some time into today.

Looking for some FCing guides, I found a few nuggets of assistance in the guides section of 00sage00's blog, Yarrbear Tales. Also, the FCing Guide (For pirates) over at EVE Newb was very helpful, though I'll not be applying that information in low-sec as IT does not begin aggressions in Empire space, low-sec or otherwise.

Preparations continue...

Internet Spaceships are Serious Business...

Two thoughts on the above subject.

1) Katt successfully produced her first T3 subsystem blueprint! Congratulations! Woohoo! Etc! However... We, having not given EVE her due, did not research the next step of this process sufficiently to realize how far away from production we still are. Each T3 subsystem appears to require as materials 5 different T3 Components, all of which require 5 different items (a mix of salvage and gas reactions) to produce. In other words, we used 4 items to create 1 blueprint, and will now need 5 sets of 5 items to create the end result. Throw in the gas reactions (another 3 items) and you're looking at a whole lot of calculations to determine the overall value of the parts that go into each produced subsystem.

Give those boys at CCP credit, they make a complex game.

2) The current blog-world drama over at The Captain's Log shows just how seriously major alliances take their Internet spaceships. His war-dec, apparently ill advised, could have just been 'kinda funny' if it wasn't for how serious EVE is to it's player base. His actions, on an alternate character, reflected back on his alliance and they're cutting ties to protect themselves.

Give the EVE players credit, they play a harsh game IN a harsh game.

Timers are insidious

Katt just input her very first Reverse Engineering jobs into our sparkling, shiny, brand-spanking new Experimental Laboratory. Glancing at her screen, constantly, I can see that I have to wait another 40 minutes and 39... 38... 37... You get the picture.

Suffice to say, we're excited about the possibilities of this first batch of our hard-won goods. Could it provide the vaunted Immobility Driver subsystem? Perhaps it could. The possibilities, while not endless, are all incredibly tantalizing and at this point I'm finding it very hard to fly away to mine or otherwise make use of my day, because I want to see what happens in 38 minutes 8... 7.... 6...

In other news, the Corp Op continues to grow momentum, our allies have been informed of the time and place and there appears to be at least SOME interest. I'm searching around the Internet for a printable list of ship-types, alphabetised by name of ship. Identifying what we find rapidly is going to be important, so that I can call to engage or retreat, and I'm worried that my knowledge isn't going to be up to snuff.

Biting the Bullet

Today I sent off a Corporation wide mail informing people that I would be FCing an op in the near future.

This was preceded by a relatively lengthy conversation with one of our directors, as well as a conversation with Katt as to what time was both suitable to the corp, agreeable to her, and in any way practical.

Given that my experience as an FC has heretofore consisted of going out in a pair of Rifters with Katt and failing to find a fight, I'm a bit nervous.

Actually, I'm a lot nervous. I suspect that between today and the op I will worriedly be pouring over different notes and charts and the like and will end up needing whatever I did NOT prepare.

I will have my first opportunity to utilize the Eve Maps that Katt bought me for Christmas, and I've already got a few routes in mind. We'll be flying nice inexpensive ships, as a nod to my inexperience, but I'd still like for everyone to be able to have a good time and maybe, just maybe, score a kill or two.

More on my preparations as I do them...

Mechanics Musings...

Wormhole musings, specifically.

Due to an unfortunate experience involving a few days away from running Sleeper Sites, I observed a somewhat incredible increase in the spawn rate of our wormhole's combat sites. Similarly, a dearth of EVE time led to a bit of a plethora of Ladar and Grav sites, that seemed to 'grow' more.

So my musing is regarding 'Sleeper Seeders', leaving several of any one type of spawn completely untouched (scanned down, but never visited, which seems to begin the despawn cycle) in order to provide the wormhole with more current spawns.

It's something we're exploring at the moment, but if it's true, it may actually be more profitable to leave some sites completely alone in favor of more profitable sites that spawn on the same cycle. For instance... Average Perimeter Deposit is a lame spawn, Unusual Core Deposit, not so much. So if I scan an average perimeter, and it's my only Grav, maybe it would be more profitable to ignore it, let it sit there and increase my chances of a Frontier, or even Core, site.

In theory, this could be applied to all types of sites. They seem to be linked, so you'd need to leave one or two of each category in your system in order to 'seed' it, and then keep 'visitors' from messing with your starter crop. A tall order in WH space, to say the least!

That said, we're exploring the possibilities, and I'll try to comment on this post if/when we have some results.

Introduction

G'Day to anyone who somehow stumbles upon this.

I play Minuit Soleil in EVE, and I'm an avid EVE-Blog Reader. I decided perhaps it was time I gave it a whirl myself, as a bit of an outlet for my occasional creative thoughts, and as somewhere to throw down my thoughts on the game in general and keep track of where I'm going in the massive game that CCP has dropped in our laps.

To summarise what I said in the IC post, my character, Minuit Soleil is Minmatar. She flies almost solely Minmatar ships. I've thought about branching out, but can't seem to do it, even though I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with my poor Minnie ships. So much room for potential, so many SP that I just don't have...

My wife plays KattraStarr, also Minmatar, also Minnie-only ships. Mostly because she's just not terribly worried about it, and will fly almost whatever I tell her will do well at whatever we're doing. She's also our science and industry chick. She likes Mining (no, seriously...) and wants to produce stuff, but wants it to be WORTH something, which is the real rub.

Between us, we share a Gallente noob, Leilani Belle. Her skills are slowly rounding her out into an enjoyable addition to our combat base, and hey, with a decent computer and dual screens, a pair of accounts really can make EVE a better place to game.

Still summarising, we live in wormhole space in our C3. The wormhole keeps us engaged in EVE. Time was, it was difficult to drum up the urge to drop into game. Nowadays, we have timers set for when our wormhole is going to disappear, so we can be certain to be the first in place to limit access to 'our' system. We try to keep the sites relatively well farmed, though we're discovering (an ongoing experiment) that leaving some 'seeder sleepers' in the system can really help with spawn rates.

We're a part of Imperium Technologies, ticker of [IT], (of no relation to the recent alliance going by a similar moniker, and yes, we're irritated by that...).

I read a lot of Blogs on my iPhone, through Capsuleer and unfortunately can't make comments that way, so that was part of my thought process behind making this account, perhaps now I can actually comment and participate in some discussion of the blogs that make my morning stroll on the elliptical so enjoyable.

To get things started, here's a few of my favored Blogs:
A Mule In Eve
A Merry Life and a Short One
The Captain's Log
Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah
Punishment
Rifter Drifter

There's lots more, but I don't wanna just link half the bloomin' blog-pack!

Anyhow, I've got some site-changes to make. I'm no artist or web designer, so don't expect it to be terribly flashy, but there's things I want people to be able to click on!

Fly straight, they'll never expect it!

Minuit

Static Crackling... [IC]

The popping and hissing noise from the open comms channel has been my constant companion for the last few months. Katt doesn't talk much, and Leilani even less, which makes our little slice of 'sky' a quiet place.

I've turned off the comms a few times, just to get rid of the noise, but, as you'd expect, that usually is followed by scrambling to run away from an unexpected visitor. No-one said living in a wormhole was going to be easy. 'No-one' was right to not say it.

Now I've taken to talking to myself, well, ostensibly to you, but likely there's no 'you' that's actually going to bother listening to my ramblings.

In case firing these canisters of recording out through our regular as clockwork exit (for a random anomaly, it's a bit worrisome that I set my neocom alarm to wake me in time to watch the old hole collapse and the new one appear on scanners... Don't you think?) actually inflicts my ramblings upon the general public, or even just one poor soul, I'll throw some background and introductions into this first recording.

I'm Minuit, Minuit Soleil. My folks told me, before I was 'reassigned' that it means Midnight Sun. Born during an eclipse in an Amarrian slave-camp back in the Domain region. They apparently thought it made sense.

My partners are Leilani Belle, a Gallente pilot, young, but handy to have around, and KattraStarr, another Minmatar lass, who I have a certain weakness for.

The three of us, and occasionally other corpies, occupy a little piece of space accessible to K-Space residents through various wormholes. 'Old Faithful', also known as the U210, runs us to Low-Sec on a daily basis, and is a steady source of amusement, consternation, combat and trade. Not necessarily in that order.

Inside our little slice of lawless space, we search out hidden sleeper outposts, recover lost technology, and harvest various K-Space necessities to turn a kredit. We also do our best to mark and defend our territory from the incursions of other pilots. Usually that's just isolated skirmishes, though we've had to defend our POS once, and in the process assault the POS of our attackers.

Well, the cargo-hold is full. Gas Harvesting is mind-numbing business, but amazingly, this helped. I suppose I'll drop this through the hole just as it's about to collapse. You can call it Paranoia, if you like. I call it survival.