Heyas. o/
I am still here, still playing, things have just been pretty quiet in Eve and going off the rails and exploding IRL, so my Eve time has been quite limited. (I am also going to be dropping one of my alt accounts - does anyone want to buy a tengu/onyx/falcon/cerb pilot? :D) I feel bad that I haven't been on as much lately, like I am letting down the guys by not being there, although I know sorting out RL problems comes before game playing... I still hate not feeling dependable, though. Character flaw I suppose.
Since I started playing Eve last fall, I'd heard people muttering about summer and the summer lull - I hadn't quite expected this, though. Many of my friends and acquaintances and even Generally Cool People That I Like But Wouldn't Call a Friend have dropped out of the game or are taking vacations from w-space. The first Eve Podcast I ran into, back in November 2013, was Down The Pipe and one of their frequent guests was Baby Dady, solo hunter. Hearing about what he did was an inspiration; my corp had moved into a WH and I was losing all kinds of stuff, but it was cool to know that not every hunter out there had a full fleet of T3s, Logi, and bombers backing them up, and that when I was ready I could go out there and stalk things myself. It was only a month or so later that I got my alt into a Buzzard and began hunting down the chains connected to our C2 to watch people in their POS, watch them moving haulers, watch people running sites, and try to gank them with my horribly skilled T1 battlecruisers I'd bring down the chain from home.
I haven't seen him online in a few months, though.
I suppose he comes to mind because I have just recently finished a long-term training goal of mine - Gallente Strategic Cruiser and the attendant subsystem skills all trained up, I just need to scrape up the isk to put a proteus in the void. <3 Since the SoE ships came out I have been using a cloaky Stratios for stalking, hunting, and scouting, and (at least on paper) my Stratios does more damage than a proteus - the proteus is going to have twice the EHP, though, be fairly close on damage, and it can fit combat probes when needed.
So. long rambling aside, I'm getting a new ship to play with and hopefully will have some stories to tell about it in the near future. I have a free night tonight and I think when I get home from work, I am going to set off in a random direction down the wormhole chains and fly until I find something to shoot.
o7
-K
Thursday, July 3, 2014
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
Where it All Began
IRL, I love traveling. Sadly, I can't afford to travel as much as I'd like, but every couple of years I go somewhere. I've been to Philadelphia and Seattle, Miami and Minneapolis, Galveston and Houston and Salt Lake City, even all the way down to the Florida Keys and, one glorious summer, a week in St. Lucia.
One of the things that really appeals to me about W-space is that every day I find connections to somewhere new. The first time I visited Solitude was via wormhole. The first time I visited The Cougar Store in Bosena, it was because it was the closest market to where a wormhole chain dumped me out. I get to travel all across Eve, and still have all of my combat ships handy in case they are needed.
Last week, we had a low sec connection to Canard, and one of the guys in corp commented that it was only a couple of jumps from there to the Eve Gate.
So, of course, I had to go see it - especially when he started asking if we wanted to get a small frigate gang together to go check it out.
We jumped through the gate into New Eden and as grid loaded, my overview filled. I twitched, ready to react to a gate camp... but, no, it was a field of cans. Lots and lots of floating cans in space, messages from other players. There was a variety - wishes to the departed, messages to other players, and a few scrawled 'I was here'. There was one other person in system with us - a condor, a hundred or so km off, planting another container.
I spent a few moments taking it in and panned my camera around (I had automatically centered my view on the shuttle as I eyed it up) looking for the Eve Gate itself.
Living in wormholes, you get used to celestial objects; it's frequent to pass through a system and see a pulsar, red giant, or cataclysmic variable star. The graphical depiction of the Eve Gate itself was a little underwhelming, and Kynric mentioned on coms that it used to be "more aggressive".
Still, in game time, it had been... millenia since the gate went haywire, and yet, there it is, bright enough from three lightyears away to make the sun seem small. Still open, still pouring out turbulence. This tiny system, with a white dwarf and a barren planet, was where the story of Eve Online and New Eden started.
We checked out the system a little more and made a live sacrifice (we caught a shuttle coming in) and then I kicked out a can as well. When people leave papers and wishes behind at a shrine, it is like making a small sacrifice of themselves - their time, effort, and desire, and I felt it was appropriate.
Then we packed up, and headed back home. And yes, that was a James Arget for CSM 8 can still floating there.
-K
One of the things that really appeals to me about W-space is that every day I find connections to somewhere new. The first time I visited Solitude was via wormhole. The first time I visited The Cougar Store in Bosena, it was because it was the closest market to where a wormhole chain dumped me out. I get to travel all across Eve, and still have all of my combat ships handy in case they are needed.
Last week, we had a low sec connection to Canard, and one of the guys in corp commented that it was only a couple of jumps from there to the Eve Gate.
So, of course, I had to go see it - especially when he started asking if we wanted to get a small frigate gang together to go check it out.
We jumped through the gate into New Eden and as grid loaded, my overview filled. I twitched, ready to react to a gate camp... but, no, it was a field of cans. Lots and lots of floating cans in space, messages from other players. There was a variety - wishes to the departed, messages to other players, and a few scrawled 'I was here'. There was one other person in system with us - a condor, a hundred or so km off, planting another container.
I spent a few moments taking it in and panned my camera around (I had automatically centered my view on the shuttle as I eyed it up) looking for the Eve Gate itself.
Living in wormholes, you get used to celestial objects; it's frequent to pass through a system and see a pulsar, red giant, or cataclysmic variable star. The graphical depiction of the Eve Gate itself was a little underwhelming, and Kynric mentioned on coms that it used to be "more aggressive".
Still, in game time, it had been... millenia since the gate went haywire, and yet, there it is, bright enough from three lightyears away to make the sun seem small. Still open, still pouring out turbulence. This tiny system, with a white dwarf and a barren planet, was where the story of Eve Online and New Eden started.
We checked out the system a little more and made a live sacrifice (we caught a shuttle coming in) and then I kicked out a can as well. When people leave papers and wishes behind at a shrine, it is like making a small sacrifice of themselves - their time, effort, and desire, and I felt it was appropriate.
Then we packed up, and headed back home. And yes, that was a James Arget for CSM 8 can still floating there.
-K
Monday, June 23, 2014
What the F...it?
We were shipping up in our home system, getting ready to pay a visit on some miners out a null connection we had to Wicked Creek. A few of our guys were ratting, and the miners had been next door - I'm not sure why they would stick around with hostiles active next door, but maybe our ratters would have lulled them into a sense of "Oh they're just here for PvE, we're safe." I was on my alt, in a Crow, and looking forward to some action - it had been a busy week IRL without a lot of play time.
We were taking our time getting organized, pulling out interceptors and assault frigates, and the ratters were coming back to reship as well when a gang swung through the null system. Since we had already been pulling our guys out, the rest of us moved up and sat on the hole to wait...
The null gang scanned down the wormhole, and one of their ihstars came through. We pounced on it. It bailed, but I followed after it and chased it down, keeping point even though it was moving pretty damned fast. The fleet caught it, and killed it, and we spent a while playing games on the hole with the rest of the null gang - we were pretty even on numbers, although I think they had a slight weight advantage. We were better coordinated, though, so they only poked a few times and didn't fully commit. With an EoL hole in the chain we didn't want to spend all night playing tag, so Kynric called for the inty (yay me!) to go +1 and hit the asteroid belt he saw activity at earlier.
Again, we had just had people ratting in this system. And our little murder gang had just whacked an ishtar and slicer next door. I thought that anyone mining the next system over had to be nuts to still be around, but hell, there might be someone there! I cheerfully warped to the outgate, jumped through, and called a grid clear as I hunted for the ore pocket anom. It took me longer than I was happy with to find it, because dear gods there were a crap ton of anoms in the system, but I found it and warped and landed on grid to find mining cans, but no miners.
There was, however, a vindicator.
A vindicator. :D :D
It was 40km off, so I quickly started closing distance (at an angle, of course) and called point. Kynric reminded me to mind the webs, which was something already at the front of my thoughts - with two 90% webs, I wouldn't be moving at all and the vindi would have large blasters that tracked like small blasters, so I carefully kept myself at the edge of my point range. The damned thing moved fast, breaking point a couple of times, but I kept getting it repointed before the pilot could hit warp. It was also shooting at me with 425mm rails. And Warrior IIs. I nearly died, but our logi caught me in time, and shortly after that we got a couple of webs (we had a Vigilant <3) on it and tore the battleship to pieces.
The gang we had been fighting with followed us, and started poking again; I dived onto their ishtar (the same pilot we already took down once) and pointed him, but he was burning at 2,500 m/s and pulled me out of range of the fleet; his drones popped my Crow and we scooped our loot and called it a night.
It was only after we were back in w-space that I pulled up the vindicator kill. I had heard mention of deadspace mods on coms, and sure enough, the Vindicator had a deadspace tank. It also had 425mm tech 1 railguns - not even meta.
And it had no webs. Now, I have certainly seen worse. It was probably the guy's belt ratter/anom sniper, operating out of web range, even though a Megathron or Megathron Navy would do the job just as well at less than half the cost. Still, if someone I knew was flying a vindicator without even one token web on it and meta 1 rails, I would cry.
This brings me to the current Blog Banter topic: fitting. I normally do not discuss fits, because so many people are so easily offended by a 'bad' or 'suboptimal' fit, and because there will almost always be someone there to tell you that You Are Wrong.
The banter asks, "How do we educate players on fitting? Do veteran players have a responsibility to teach new players on fitting? If they do, is there also a responsibility to teach other important Eve skills?"
In the newbie career missions, players are given a few random modules to fit to their ship. It doesn't really set a great precedent. Basic ship fitting is, in theory, very easy - utilize all of your slots, build to your hull's strengths, fit the right sized modules. Practical ship fitting is certainly a little more complicated, though, since you get into active tank v buffer, optimal ranges, capacitor limitations, how to counter common threats... concepts that are a little harder to convey in a text-based lecture format but are critical to competitive flying. They are also things that might not be immediately obvious to a newbro.
My first reaction is that of course players have no responsibility to reach out. If a new player asks for help they will find all kinds of veterans willing to help - the newbie just needs to realize they need a little advice and to ask for it. I still stand by that, but I do think newbros could use a little nudge in the right direction. In this case, it is in the best interest of their corp and the people they fly with to make sure they can contribute to the fleet - this is where fleet doctrines come in, and corp mates helping eachother out. In my experience the best doctrines are the ones that encourage players to understand the why behind a fit - even if the fleet is "Fly exactly this and only this", new players can still learn important lessons about why certain modules were selected, as long as they take the initiative to ask.
o7
-K
We were taking our time getting organized, pulling out interceptors and assault frigates, and the ratters were coming back to reship as well when a gang swung through the null system. Since we had already been pulling our guys out, the rest of us moved up and sat on the hole to wait...
The null gang scanned down the wormhole, and one of their ihstars came through. We pounced on it. It bailed, but I followed after it and chased it down, keeping point even though it was moving pretty damned fast. The fleet caught it, and killed it, and we spent a while playing games on the hole with the rest of the null gang - we were pretty even on numbers, although I think they had a slight weight advantage. We were better coordinated, though, so they only poked a few times and didn't fully commit. With an EoL hole in the chain we didn't want to spend all night playing tag, so Kynric called for the inty (yay me!) to go +1 and hit the asteroid belt he saw activity at earlier.
Again, we had just had people ratting in this system. And our little murder gang had just whacked an ishtar and slicer next door. I thought that anyone mining the next system over had to be nuts to still be around, but hell, there might be someone there! I cheerfully warped to the outgate, jumped through, and called a grid clear as I hunted for the ore pocket anom. It took me longer than I was happy with to find it, because dear gods there were a crap ton of anoms in the system, but I found it and warped and landed on grid to find mining cans, but no miners.
There was, however, a vindicator.
A vindicator. :D :D
It was 40km off, so I quickly started closing distance (at an angle, of course) and called point. Kynric reminded me to mind the webs, which was something already at the front of my thoughts - with two 90% webs, I wouldn't be moving at all and the vindi would have large blasters that tracked like small blasters, so I carefully kept myself at the edge of my point range. The damned thing moved fast, breaking point a couple of times, but I kept getting it repointed before the pilot could hit warp. It was also shooting at me with 425mm rails. And Warrior IIs. I nearly died, but our logi caught me in time, and shortly after that we got a couple of webs (we had a Vigilant <3) on it and tore the battleship to pieces.
The gang we had been fighting with followed us, and started poking again; I dived onto their ishtar (the same pilot we already took down once) and pointed him, but he was burning at 2,500 m/s and pulled me out of range of the fleet; his drones popped my Crow and we scooped our loot and called it a night.
It was only after we were back in w-space that I pulled up the vindicator kill. I had heard mention of deadspace mods on coms, and sure enough, the Vindicator had a deadspace tank. It also had 425mm tech 1 railguns - not even meta.
And it had no webs. Now, I have certainly seen worse. It was probably the guy's belt ratter/anom sniper, operating out of web range, even though a Megathron or Megathron Navy would do the job just as well at less than half the cost. Still, if someone I knew was flying a vindicator without even one token web on it and meta 1 rails, I would cry.
This brings me to the current Blog Banter topic: fitting. I normally do not discuss fits, because so many people are so easily offended by a 'bad' or 'suboptimal' fit, and because there will almost always be someone there to tell you that You Are Wrong.
The banter asks, "How do we educate players on fitting? Do veteran players have a responsibility to teach new players on fitting? If they do, is there also a responsibility to teach other important Eve skills?"
In the newbie career missions, players are given a few random modules to fit to their ship. It doesn't really set a great precedent. Basic ship fitting is, in theory, very easy - utilize all of your slots, build to your hull's strengths, fit the right sized modules. Practical ship fitting is certainly a little more complicated, though, since you get into active tank v buffer, optimal ranges, capacitor limitations, how to counter common threats... concepts that are a little harder to convey in a text-based lecture format but are critical to competitive flying. They are also things that might not be immediately obvious to a newbro.
My first reaction is that of course players have no responsibility to reach out. If a new player asks for help they will find all kinds of veterans willing to help - the newbie just needs to realize they need a little advice and to ask for it. I still stand by that, but I do think newbros could use a little nudge in the right direction. In this case, it is in the best interest of their corp and the people they fly with to make sure they can contribute to the fleet - this is where fleet doctrines come in, and corp mates helping eachother out. In my experience the best doctrines are the ones that encourage players to understand the why behind a fit - even if the fleet is "Fly exactly this and only this", new players can still learn important lessons about why certain modules were selected, as long as they take the initiative to ask.
o7
-K
Monday, June 16, 2014
How I Run My PI
There is a piece of me that is madly in love with Planetary Management. I like engineering my supply chains. I like optimizing for efficiency. I like planning out my production ratios across my team of alts in order to ensure I get what I need.
That being said, actually installing extractors and factories and launch pads for thirty planets is a pain in the ass and I have been putting it off for about a month.
Still, it is what I have been doing lately. I am now set up to produce enough POS fuel for 8 - 9 control towers at home, as long as I ship in enough isotopes, and have a few extra bits and pieces I'll be producing on the side to pad my wallet. POS fuel has practically no margin, ~0.4% to 5% income per batch on the build (not counting the fuel you use running the assembly array since the tower is there anyway). On the other hand, it is a convenient way to convert my alt's PI to Isk without hauling it all the way out. :D
After a lot of spreadsheeting and some experimentation (and several months of practical application and refinement, of course) I have settled on two basic ways to get the most out of my PI. Option A, maximizing gross income, requires daily attention from each PI alt, maybe 10 - 15 min per alt. Option B, income/effort, will pull 3/4ths to 2/3rd of the income of Option A but only requires you to log the PI alt in every other day, and you only have to shuffle products every four days.
They both start the same: four 'harvest' planets producing a single P1 (out of the first stage of factories, so water, precious metals, silicon, etc) product each, and a factory planet assembling the four different P1 items into either a pair of P2 (Coolant, microfiber shielding, construction blocks) products or a single P3 (Robotics, data chips, and so on). The difference is that Option A runs four P3 factories, while Option B only keeps three going.
A basic harvesting planet, and where the bottleneck comes from for the above end goals. A character with Command Center Upgrades 4 can run the above (launch pad, eight basic factories, and an extractor unit) with just enough power grid left over to squeeze out the raw material production to keep all eight basic factories cranking, but the link between the ECU and the launchpad has to be shorter if you need a lot of extractors. The launchpad can fit about two and a half days worth of products in it, but you can also launch goods up to the POCO if you want to let them sit for a day or two before moving them to your factory planet.
For Option A, have eight basic factories and make sure your ECU is producing 48,000 units/hour (or slightly more). You'll need to run your ECU for at most 24 - 26 hours, which means logging in daily to reset it.
For Option B, you can run the less efficient 48 - 49 hour extraction cycles, for 36,000 units of raw goods per hour and six basic industry factories, and use the freed up power grid to plant a storage facility between the ECU and the launchpad, to hold P0 raw goods and feed them to the factories. You can collect four days of production in the launchpad before it is full and you need to launch it/move it.
With this stage, the important thing to remember is that your factories need 6,000 units/hour to maintain production, and that you can't process more than 6,000 units/hour/factory. Extracting a little extra is fine since it gives you leeway for a suboptimal scan or if you are not exactly there when the cycle ends, but pulling too much extra clogs up your storage.
That is my Option B factory world; the factories on the left are producing mechanical parts, the ones on the right are all doing coolant. Although I technically only have the P1 factory throughput to keep six P2 factories working constantly, I put a seventh factory of each in there to handle any overages I get from the P1 planets/backlog if I end up not moving product over immediately. I pull four days worth of water down to the launchpad on the right, use an expedited transfer to kick it into the storage unit, and then pull the electrolytes down to the launchpad after it is empty. That fills both of them, and I can let it sit for four days, with the finished product deposited in the launch pad at the top.
The Option A factory world is similar, except it doesn't have the power grid for three launchpads and two storage units (because you are running eight factories of each P2, or eight P2 + four more advanced factories putting out P3 attached to the top launchpad); you might be able to do two launch pads and two storage units, routing goods from the 'out' pad into factories to make room for incoming finished product, but running P3 (and hence, 20 total factories) leaves you with just enough power grid for an 'in' launchpad, a storage unit, and the 'out' launch pad. Bring a half launchpad full of P1 down from the POCO to each launchpad and Expedited Transfer them into the storage unit (to build one half of the P2 factories) then fill the 'in' pad with the components for the other half. You'll get a bit more than a day's worth of factory production that way, the other reason that Option A requires daily maintenance.
So yea~. That was my weekend in Eve.
o7
-K
That being said, actually installing extractors and factories and launch pads for thirty planets is a pain in the ass and I have been putting it off for about a month.
Still, it is what I have been doing lately. I am now set up to produce enough POS fuel for 8 - 9 control towers at home, as long as I ship in enough isotopes, and have a few extra bits and pieces I'll be producing on the side to pad my wallet. POS fuel has practically no margin, ~0.4% to 5% income per batch on the build (not counting the fuel you use running the assembly array since the tower is there anyway). On the other hand, it is a convenient way to convert my alt's PI to Isk without hauling it all the way out. :D
After a lot of spreadsheeting and some experimentation (and several months of practical application and refinement, of course) I have settled on two basic ways to get the most out of my PI. Option A, maximizing gross income, requires daily attention from each PI alt, maybe 10 - 15 min per alt. Option B, income/effort, will pull 3/4ths to 2/3rd of the income of Option A but only requires you to log the PI alt in every other day, and you only have to shuffle products every four days.
They both start the same: four 'harvest' planets producing a single P1 (out of the first stage of factories, so water, precious metals, silicon, etc) product each, and a factory planet assembling the four different P1 items into either a pair of P2 (Coolant, microfiber shielding, construction blocks) products or a single P3 (Robotics, data chips, and so on). The difference is that Option A runs four P3 factories, while Option B only keeps three going.
A basic harvesting planet, and where the bottleneck comes from for the above end goals. A character with Command Center Upgrades 4 can run the above (launch pad, eight basic factories, and an extractor unit) with just enough power grid left over to squeeze out the raw material production to keep all eight basic factories cranking, but the link between the ECU and the launchpad has to be shorter if you need a lot of extractors. The launchpad can fit about two and a half days worth of products in it, but you can also launch goods up to the POCO if you want to let them sit for a day or two before moving them to your factory planet.
For Option A, have eight basic factories and make sure your ECU is producing 48,000 units/hour (or slightly more). You'll need to run your ECU for at most 24 - 26 hours, which means logging in daily to reset it.
For Option B, you can run the less efficient 48 - 49 hour extraction cycles, for 36,000 units of raw goods per hour and six basic industry factories, and use the freed up power grid to plant a storage facility between the ECU and the launchpad, to hold P0 raw goods and feed them to the factories. You can collect four days of production in the launchpad before it is full and you need to launch it/move it.
With this stage, the important thing to remember is that your factories need 6,000 units/hour to maintain production, and that you can't process more than 6,000 units/hour/factory. Extracting a little extra is fine since it gives you leeway for a suboptimal scan or if you are not exactly there when the cycle ends, but pulling too much extra clogs up your storage.
That is my Option B factory world; the factories on the left are producing mechanical parts, the ones on the right are all doing coolant. Although I technically only have the P1 factory throughput to keep six P2 factories working constantly, I put a seventh factory of each in there to handle any overages I get from the P1 planets/backlog if I end up not moving product over immediately. I pull four days worth of water down to the launchpad on the right, use an expedited transfer to kick it into the storage unit, and then pull the electrolytes down to the launchpad after it is empty. That fills both of them, and I can let it sit for four days, with the finished product deposited in the launch pad at the top.
The Option A factory world is similar, except it doesn't have the power grid for three launchpads and two storage units (because you are running eight factories of each P2, or eight P2 + four more advanced factories putting out P3 attached to the top launchpad); you might be able to do two launch pads and two storage units, routing goods from the 'out' pad into factories to make room for incoming finished product, but running P3 (and hence, 20 total factories) leaves you with just enough power grid for an 'in' launchpad, a storage unit, and the 'out' launch pad. Bring a half launchpad full of P1 down from the POCO to each launchpad and Expedited Transfer them into the storage unit (to build one half of the P2 factories) then fill the 'in' pad with the components for the other half. You'll get a bit more than a day's worth of factory production that way, the other reason that Option A requires daily maintenance.
So yea~. That was my weekend in Eve.
o7
-K
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Seizing the Moment
Someone swore on coms. I silently agreed. The fleet had just made what is colloquially known as a 'whoopsie' - our five pilot frigate roam fleet had just (blind) jumped into a gatecamp of a dozen or more Space Monkies. "Hold cloak, hold cloak," the FC called out, in case anyone was about to panic. "Crap. OK. Burn back to the gate."
I was only 5k from the stargate; as other people began decloaking and moving, I set my ship to jump back through and pulsed my MWD, activating the gate just before a Crow could finish locking my Worm. "Well..." someone asked. "Now what?" "We'll forget the last desto. Let's head back home."
Since moving in to the C2 with Sky Fighters I've gone a lot of roams in null sec; our home has C5 and null static connections, and we've found a lot of fun action out roaming null in assault frigates, interceptors, and destroyers. Last night I had just gotten home late from a busy evening running errands and was logging in to run my PI and catch up on any important notices, when I heard a fleet organizing on coms. I finished logging in, pulled my Worm out of the hangar, and joined up.
We were running with an inexperienced scout, but people need to start somewhere; we were in Space Monkey Alliance territory and there were a lot of active ratting systems nearby, but we went a dozen or so jumps without being able to catch the ratters. Kynric started having connection trouble, and had to bail; one of the other fleet members stepped up and took over as FC, but fleet discipline suffered a little and coms grew cluttered.
That is probably why our scout accidentally ended up +2 from the fleet instead of +1, and how we blind jumped into the same gate camp fleet again on the way back - the scout wasn't in system to see local spike when they jump portaled ahead of us. Luckily they were slow on the lock; we made it back a system and tried to figure out what to do. Our wormhole chain exit was one system beyond them and we had to go through the system they were camping; we had two possible entrances to that one, though, so as our scout got in position we moved to the other connecting system. Their camp moved, anticipating us. They also had plenty of friendly pilots docked up in the system we were in, keeping tabs on our movements; we went back and forth, playing gate chicken for a while, until our scout announced they had pulled off from the gates and gone to an offgrid safe. We decided to chance it, jumping out of one system to send them to the other gate, then immediately turning around and jumping back in and warping to the camped gate. We went through. They were landing on grid, and I got bubbled; a couple of our pilots made it past, but I and one other had to try burning back to gate. I got scrammed, then webbed while I was 8k away; more and more of the fleet redboxed my Worm and my shields were bleeding.
I made it to the gate, though, at 4% shields remaining; my Worm has a beast of a tank, almost 13k EHP. <3 At that point, I was very, very glad I had spent the extra isk on tech 2 shield rigs and I was also very, very frustrated that I was still camped in out in null. We started discussion options like temp logging or just coming back tomorrow on coms, and I quietly fumed.
Then I realized how bad my mood was getting, and I decided to change it.
Define the moment, or else the moment will define you is a slogan I have tacked to my wall at work. Marketing people will tell you that perception is reality. In Eve, we use propaganda to rally ourselves and our friends and to demoralize enemies. No amount of propaganda will change the objective facts, but it can shape the way people feel about things - the way it is interpreted and experienced, which is arguably even more important. My spiritual advisor put it in a more tongue in cheek way: Pull the wool over your own eyes. Pick and choose what lies you'll believe, and if you don't find any you like, tell your own.
As cynical as that sounds, it's one of those things that works. I'll also note that Eve is quasi-famous for its bittervets. Every game has the bitter veteran players, and they absolutely have every reason to be bitter over things... but being bitter is a choice. I know veteran players who are still happily playing the game, because they don't let themselves get caught up in the crap. Some day I'll be angry and bitter, but until then I am going to keep deciding to be optimistic and enthusiastic.
The Space Monkies jumped a prober into the system we were in and started scanning, so I began bouncing safes and I re-evaluated my night. Yes, the roam had gone toes up. No, we had no kills, and I didn't even get to shoot anyone. Yea, we were being chased by far too many people for us to fight... but in the tactical game of maneuvering, we were holding our own. Not only had we escaped their gate camp three times now, but half the fleet got home already. Sure, we were now the hunted instead of the hunters, but I sure as hell wasn't anyone's easy prey... if they wanted my wreck, I would make them work for it.
My mood picked up. Things were going better, even if nothing had changed in game; I kept bouncing safes, and we talked options on coms. We had the guys that had slipped past, and another pilot or two from the home system were available now; we still didn't have the numbers to take their fleet head on, but we had ~options~. We knew what they had and where they had it.
A couple of the guys at home reshipped into rapid light missile caracals, figuring they could clear the interceptors and dictors pinning us down; if nothing else, it'd be a fun way to YOLO some cheap cruisers. We coordinated the elements of our fleet, and then made a charge towards the gate SMA was camping.
We cross jumped.
I don't know if it was the new pilots showing up in local or what, but the scout reported them jumping out as I and the other stranded pilot jumped in. o.o Not the conclusion we had planned on, but people were tired so we all went home and called it a night. The roam had been unsuccessful, but it was a fun night by the end of it and I went to bed happy.
o7
-K
I was only 5k from the stargate; as other people began decloaking and moving, I set my ship to jump back through and pulsed my MWD, activating the gate just before a Crow could finish locking my Worm. "Well..." someone asked. "Now what?" "We'll forget the last desto. Let's head back home."
Since moving in to the C2 with Sky Fighters I've gone a lot of roams in null sec; our home has C5 and null static connections, and we've found a lot of fun action out roaming null in assault frigates, interceptors, and destroyers. Last night I had just gotten home late from a busy evening running errands and was logging in to run my PI and catch up on any important notices, when I heard a fleet organizing on coms. I finished logging in, pulled my Worm out of the hangar, and joined up.
We were running with an inexperienced scout, but people need to start somewhere; we were in Space Monkey Alliance territory and there were a lot of active ratting systems nearby, but we went a dozen or so jumps without being able to catch the ratters. Kynric started having connection trouble, and had to bail; one of the other fleet members stepped up and took over as FC, but fleet discipline suffered a little and coms grew cluttered.
That is probably why our scout accidentally ended up +2 from the fleet instead of +1, and how we blind jumped into the same gate camp fleet again on the way back - the scout wasn't in system to see local spike when they jump portaled ahead of us. Luckily they were slow on the lock; we made it back a system and tried to figure out what to do. Our wormhole chain exit was one system beyond them and we had to go through the system they were camping; we had two possible entrances to that one, though, so as our scout got in position we moved to the other connecting system. Their camp moved, anticipating us. They also had plenty of friendly pilots docked up in the system we were in, keeping tabs on our movements; we went back and forth, playing gate chicken for a while, until our scout announced they had pulled off from the gates and gone to an offgrid safe. We decided to chance it, jumping out of one system to send them to the other gate, then immediately turning around and jumping back in and warping to the camped gate. We went through. They were landing on grid, and I got bubbled; a couple of our pilots made it past, but I and one other had to try burning back to gate. I got scrammed, then webbed while I was 8k away; more and more of the fleet redboxed my Worm and my shields were bleeding.
I made it to the gate, though, at 4% shields remaining; my Worm has a beast of a tank, almost 13k EHP. <3 At that point, I was very, very glad I had spent the extra isk on tech 2 shield rigs and I was also very, very frustrated that I was still camped in out in null. We started discussion options like temp logging or just coming back tomorrow on coms, and I quietly fumed.
Then I realized how bad my mood was getting, and I decided to change it.
Define the moment, or else the moment will define you is a slogan I have tacked to my wall at work. Marketing people will tell you that perception is reality. In Eve, we use propaganda to rally ourselves and our friends and to demoralize enemies. No amount of propaganda will change the objective facts, but it can shape the way people feel about things - the way it is interpreted and experienced, which is arguably even more important. My spiritual advisor put it in a more tongue in cheek way: Pull the wool over your own eyes. Pick and choose what lies you'll believe, and if you don't find any you like, tell your own.
As cynical as that sounds, it's one of those things that works. I'll also note that Eve is quasi-famous for its bittervets. Every game has the bitter veteran players, and they absolutely have every reason to be bitter over things... but being bitter is a choice. I know veteran players who are still happily playing the game, because they don't let themselves get caught up in the crap. Some day I'll be angry and bitter, but until then I am going to keep deciding to be optimistic and enthusiastic.
The Space Monkies jumped a prober into the system we were in and started scanning, so I began bouncing safes and I re-evaluated my night. Yes, the roam had gone toes up. No, we had no kills, and I didn't even get to shoot anyone. Yea, we were being chased by far too many people for us to fight... but in the tactical game of maneuvering, we were holding our own. Not only had we escaped their gate camp three times now, but half the fleet got home already. Sure, we were now the hunted instead of the hunters, but I sure as hell wasn't anyone's easy prey... if they wanted my wreck, I would make them work for it.
My mood picked up. Things were going better, even if nothing had changed in game; I kept bouncing safes, and we talked options on coms. We had the guys that had slipped past, and another pilot or two from the home system were available now; we still didn't have the numbers to take their fleet head on, but we had ~options~. We knew what they had and where they had it.
A couple of the guys at home reshipped into rapid light missile caracals, figuring they could clear the interceptors and dictors pinning us down; if nothing else, it'd be a fun way to YOLO some cheap cruisers. We coordinated the elements of our fleet, and then made a charge towards the gate SMA was camping.
We cross jumped.
I don't know if it was the new pilots showing up in local or what, but the scout reported them jumping out as I and the other stranded pilot jumped in. o.o Not the conclusion we had planned on, but people were tired so we all went home and called it a night. The roam had been unsuccessful, but it was a fun night by the end of it and I went to bed happy.
o7
-K
Thursday, June 5, 2014
Gila~
The new patch landed. When I logged in on patch day I had to reorganize my Rattlesnake's drone bay, then I went out to high sec and fitted out the Gila hull I had been sitting on. It took me a while, but eventually I found something I was happy enough with and drug it back home to play with later.
'Later' came yesterday. We were scouting down our chains, and the Bossman, Kynric, was working on a chain off of a nearby null sec system. The null connected to a C5-2 with a second C2 attached, and one of those C2's was a HS/C4. I duly noted the HS access in case I felt like bringing anything else in, and then Kynric announced the Domi on coms.
"Domi? Can you tackle it?" "Negative. It's in their POS... oh, it just warped. To the high sec hole. Maybe they're closing off the system, I'll sit on the hole and tackle it if it comes back polarized."
We began pulling the fleet together to come assist Kynric if he got the tackle, but five minutes ticked by without event. Then another few minutes. Then a Domi, flown by a second and previously unseen pilot, entered the C2.
They were active. We decided we'd hang out, just in case.
Kynric camped in the C2 for a while, observing their movements, then poked into the C2's C4 static. They were running sites. A Maelstrom and three RR tengus were working over the NPC Sleepers, while there were only five of us (including Kynric's scout Astero). "Can we take them?" one of my fellow Sky Fighters asked. "Not all at once, no," was the answer. "But the battleship will be slower, we might be able to snag it apart from the T3's. They might also split up if we jump them and people panic. Go ahead and ship up, I'll call out point as soon as I get it."
After a short inventory of what other pilots had in the hole (I have all my doctrine ships plus a few spares >.>) we settled on three Ishtars and my Gila; we wanted a Falcon to counter the RR tengus, but the only one online with a falcon in their hangar was the initial tackle. We started heading that way anyway, and were urged to move quicker when Kynric announced the fleet looked like it was aligning back to their home connection.
We hesitated for a little on the C5 to C2 connection, not wanting to tip off the pilots in the POS in the C2 that we were there; Kynric called for the fleet to move up, though, so we jumped into the C2 and were going to hold on the C4 hole when he reported they had landed on grid and he had tackle. We jumped through and the fight was on.
Grid loaded in the C4 - a Pulsar, I saw. We had the Maelstrom pointed and were quickly applying scrams, and the tengus had bugged out - all I could see with me were the Sky Fighter ishtars and Kynric's Astero. Kynric had to break off and bounce to drop aggro, and the Maelstrom had one hell of a tank. With all four of us going after it, though, the tank was breaking - until three of the tengus landed on the hole. Two began repping the Maelstrom, the third passed through. We were still taking the battleship down, but much slower now, and were facing a lot of pressure ourselves. Then the Maelstrom pilot broke engagement, jumping through the wormhole - freeing the Ishtars to turn their fire on the tengus, while I chased the Maelstrom through back into the C2 to point it and keep it in place. Kyra had a stealth bomber he had brought as well to keep eyes on that side, and we locked the Maelstrom down and I began attacking it again with my hammerheads. Unable to slip past to the POS, the Maelstrom jumped back into the C4; the rest of the fleet had been trying to catch the tengus, so the Maelstrom warped off to a safe and the two Tengus pulled out of scram range, following it.
I was polarized, so I sat in the C2 and waited, watching their POS, and counting down my timer. It had just finished when I saw the tengu pilot from earlier ship into an Armageddon, and another pilot came out in a Myrmidon. They landed on the hole, the Geddon locked me and my capacitor instantly vanished, while I heard that the battle had been joined again on the other side of the hole - they were trying to break through. My shields hit 10%, and then the Geddon jumped into the C4; I cursed a moment but followed it, getting away from the Myrmadon's drones and getting back with the rest of the fleet - the Maelstrom was holding tank against the Ishtars, and I wanted to add my DPS to what we had.
Things get a little hazy in my memory at that point. I remember we chased the Maelstrom and Tengus off of the hole in the C4 again - I think the Maelstrom was still polarized from it's first jump into the C2. The geddon neuted all of our points off, but when the Myrmidon followed me into the C4 pulsar it's active armor tank melted like butter. (https://zkillboard.com/kill/39313139/) A Navy Omen and another cruiser joined in from their side while we were brawling the battleships/tengus in the C4, and the whole group of them warped off to start bouncing safes in the C4. In the lull, Kynric ran home to swap his Astero for a Scimitar, another pilot went to swap their Ishtar for a Helios with combat probes, and another two Sky Fighters logged in and came to join us in a bomber and a Falcon.
Round Two, we chased them down at a couple of safes and then they made another dive for the hole (and their POS). The Maelstrom dived through the C2 and was caught again, so it dived back, so we took out the neuting Geddon (https://zkillboard.com/kill/39313431/) and were working on the tengus when two RR domi's landed on grid. DPS switched to the Domi's and they started breaking, then fell through into the C4 - which, if you have been counting the number of battleships that went through and back, and now had three more battleships in it, was within 'easily collapsible' range. The tengus went back with the Maelstrom again, while the other Trauma Ward cruisers took off - one of them came back in a Cheetah and slipped into the C4, probably in case they closed the hole extracting their battleships, while the other landed on grid at a perch in a falcon, then cloaked. We had two ishtars, my gila, a scimitar, a falcon and a couple of bombers, and their fleet had a super tanked Maelstrom, two RR Domi, two RR Tengu, and a falcon.
We held position, with one of the bombers scouting for their fleet in the C4.
The Maelstrom logged. It was joined by the other ships when their timers came up.
We grumbled, then decided to make a show of leaving; one of the bombers held back on the hole as hero tackle, though, and they bought it. We had just jumped out into the C5 and had just aligned away (in case they had eyes on the C5) when they started logging back in; we turned around to head back to the hole, but they got their fleet through and tore up the bomber, escaping just before we landed on grid. They left a scattering of Warrior II's in their haste to clear grid.
All in all, though, two kills to one bomber loss, and a LOT of fun brawling. I am also very much in love with this Gila fit.
o7
-K
(PS: Naglfar kill from the other day: https://zkillboard.com/kill/39232619/)
'Later' came yesterday. We were scouting down our chains, and the Bossman, Kynric, was working on a chain off of a nearby null sec system. The null connected to a C5-2 with a second C2 attached, and one of those C2's was a HS/C4. I duly noted the HS access in case I felt like bringing anything else in, and then Kynric announced the Domi on coms.
"Domi? Can you tackle it?" "Negative. It's in their POS... oh, it just warped. To the high sec hole. Maybe they're closing off the system, I'll sit on the hole and tackle it if it comes back polarized."
We began pulling the fleet together to come assist Kynric if he got the tackle, but five minutes ticked by without event. Then another few minutes. Then a Domi, flown by a second and previously unseen pilot, entered the C2.
They were active. We decided we'd hang out, just in case.
Kynric camped in the C2 for a while, observing their movements, then poked into the C2's C4 static. They were running sites. A Maelstrom and three RR tengus were working over the NPC Sleepers, while there were only five of us (including Kynric's scout Astero). "Can we take them?" one of my fellow Sky Fighters asked. "Not all at once, no," was the answer. "But the battleship will be slower, we might be able to snag it apart from the T3's. They might also split up if we jump them and people panic. Go ahead and ship up, I'll call out point as soon as I get it."
After a short inventory of what other pilots had in the hole (I have all my doctrine ships plus a few spares >.>) we settled on three Ishtars and my Gila; we wanted a Falcon to counter the RR tengus, but the only one online with a falcon in their hangar was the initial tackle. We started heading that way anyway, and were urged to move quicker when Kynric announced the fleet looked like it was aligning back to their home connection.
We hesitated for a little on the C5 to C2 connection, not wanting to tip off the pilots in the POS in the C2 that we were there; Kynric called for the fleet to move up, though, so we jumped into the C2 and were going to hold on the C4 hole when he reported they had landed on grid and he had tackle. We jumped through and the fight was on.
Grid loaded in the C4 - a Pulsar, I saw. We had the Maelstrom pointed and were quickly applying scrams, and the tengus had bugged out - all I could see with me were the Sky Fighter ishtars and Kynric's Astero. Kynric had to break off and bounce to drop aggro, and the Maelstrom had one hell of a tank. With all four of us going after it, though, the tank was breaking - until three of the tengus landed on the hole. Two began repping the Maelstrom, the third passed through. We were still taking the battleship down, but much slower now, and were facing a lot of pressure ourselves. Then the Maelstrom pilot broke engagement, jumping through the wormhole - freeing the Ishtars to turn their fire on the tengus, while I chased the Maelstrom through back into the C2 to point it and keep it in place. Kyra had a stealth bomber he had brought as well to keep eyes on that side, and we locked the Maelstrom down and I began attacking it again with my hammerheads. Unable to slip past to the POS, the Maelstrom jumped back into the C4; the rest of the fleet had been trying to catch the tengus, so the Maelstrom warped off to a safe and the two Tengus pulled out of scram range, following it.
I was polarized, so I sat in the C2 and waited, watching their POS, and counting down my timer. It had just finished when I saw the tengu pilot from earlier ship into an Armageddon, and another pilot came out in a Myrmidon. They landed on the hole, the Geddon locked me and my capacitor instantly vanished, while I heard that the battle had been joined again on the other side of the hole - they were trying to break through. My shields hit 10%, and then the Geddon jumped into the C4; I cursed a moment but followed it, getting away from the Myrmadon's drones and getting back with the rest of the fleet - the Maelstrom was holding tank against the Ishtars, and I wanted to add my DPS to what we had.
Things get a little hazy in my memory at that point. I remember we chased the Maelstrom and Tengus off of the hole in the C4 again - I think the Maelstrom was still polarized from it's first jump into the C2. The geddon neuted all of our points off, but when the Myrmidon followed me into the C4 pulsar it's active armor tank melted like butter. (https://zkillboard.com/kill/39313139/) A Navy Omen and another cruiser joined in from their side while we were brawling the battleships/tengus in the C4, and the whole group of them warped off to start bouncing safes in the C4. In the lull, Kynric ran home to swap his Astero for a Scimitar, another pilot went to swap their Ishtar for a Helios with combat probes, and another two Sky Fighters logged in and came to join us in a bomber and a Falcon.
Round Two, we chased them down at a couple of safes and then they made another dive for the hole (and their POS). The Maelstrom dived through the C2 and was caught again, so it dived back, so we took out the neuting Geddon (https://zkillboard.com/kill/39313431/) and were working on the tengus when two RR domi's landed on grid. DPS switched to the Domi's and they started breaking, then fell through into the C4 - which, if you have been counting the number of battleships that went through and back, and now had three more battleships in it, was within 'easily collapsible' range. The tengus went back with the Maelstrom again, while the other Trauma Ward cruisers took off - one of them came back in a Cheetah and slipped into the C4, probably in case they closed the hole extracting their battleships, while the other landed on grid at a perch in a falcon, then cloaked. We had two ishtars, my gila, a scimitar, a falcon and a couple of bombers, and their fleet had a super tanked Maelstrom, two RR Domi, two RR Tengu, and a falcon.
We held position, with one of the bombers scouting for their fleet in the C4.
The Maelstrom logged. It was joined by the other ships when their timers came up.
We grumbled, then decided to make a show of leaving; one of the bombers held back on the hole as hero tackle, though, and they bought it. We had just jumped out into the C5 and had just aligned away (in case they had eyes on the C5) when they started logging back in; we turned around to head back to the hole, but they got their fleet through and tore up the bomber, escaping just before we landed on grid. They left a scattering of Warrior II's in their haste to clear grid.
All in all, though, two kills to one bomber loss, and a LOT of fun brawling. I am also very much in love with this Gila fit.
o7
-K
(PS: Naglfar kill from the other day: https://zkillboard.com/kill/39232619/)
Sunday, June 1, 2014
Hooligans, Part 2
Yup, they came back!
This time, there was an explosion.
Short recap: a couple of weeks ago one of my friends in Eve scouted out a C3 wormhole and set up a POS for herself. She ran into some trouble with a group trying to extort isk from her, but who ran away when it looked like a fight might actually happen.
I moved my industrial alt corp into the C3 to keep an eye on things, setting up my own POS, and Saturday morning as I was updating sigs and checking the system I found a new medium control tower, fueled. It was the same corp from before.
I thought for a moment, considering what to do. It was shaping up to be a pretty busy day full of pew with the Sky Fighters, so I didn't want to pull Karen and a combat alt to camp a hole all day. The Devils hadn't shown any ships yet, so I didn't know if they'd even respond to a potential fight. Seiging a tower, even a medium one, is a pain in the butt so I wasn't about to drag in the heavy ships for that unless I felt I had to. I decided, at least for Saturday, to sit and watch and see what came up.
At one point I saw a Mammoth of theirs warp in to their POS and I put a bomber on the hole in case it left, but it sat there the rest of the night. It got late, and eventually, I decided it was time for bed. If they wanted to take a shot at the tower without any of my alts on, it was time for them to do it. If they reinforced anything, I'd at least have a time I could plan around.
This (Sunday) morning I got up, went through my normal routines, and eventually got around to logging into Eve to see what the damage was. As expected, there was a "Your tower is under attack!" notification waiting for me. A Naglfar had come after my tower. I checked my POS... and it was at 98% shields. I pulled up the list of modules. One of the two energy neutralizing batteries had been incapacitated. That seemed... very tame compared to what I had been expecting.
Out of curiosity, I pulled up my alt corp's kill reports - and there, like an early birthday present, was a killmail for the Devil's Naglfar! It had killed itself on my tower, somehow. If only I had been online at the time, I could have shot it with a civilian weapon on one of my alt's rookie ships... still, that really made my morning. The Naglfar had Large rigs on it instead of Capital so it had lived in the hole for a while, despite there being no live towers before my friend moved in. The Nag had a tech 2 shield tank (two adaptives, one thermic, and one EM ward) and lows full of gyrostabilizers, plus a tech 2 siege module, for about 2.6 billion isk including the hull. Those neuts must have just been too much. <3
I wrote an Eve-mail to the Devil's CEO to see if they were interested in arranging a peaceful solution to our disagreement over the ownership of the C3, and he replied saying that they had no interest in hanging around and would be extracting the rest of their assets shortly.
Of course, I don't believe that's the end of it... but for now, their POS is offline and I haven't seen any other ships. I brought a spare neut online to replace the incapped one, and realized I need to train one of my alts into a decent sized remote repper. >.> We'll see if anything else attacks tonight while I'm asleep.
o7
-K
This time, there was an explosion.
Short recap: a couple of weeks ago one of my friends in Eve scouted out a C3 wormhole and set up a POS for herself. She ran into some trouble with a group trying to extort isk from her, but who ran away when it looked like a fight might actually happen.
I moved my industrial alt corp into the C3 to keep an eye on things, setting up my own POS, and Saturday morning as I was updating sigs and checking the system I found a new medium control tower, fueled. It was the same corp from before.
I thought for a moment, considering what to do. It was shaping up to be a pretty busy day full of pew with the Sky Fighters, so I didn't want to pull Karen and a combat alt to camp a hole all day. The Devils hadn't shown any ships yet, so I didn't know if they'd even respond to a potential fight. Seiging a tower, even a medium one, is a pain in the butt so I wasn't about to drag in the heavy ships for that unless I felt I had to. I decided, at least for Saturday, to sit and watch and see what came up.
At one point I saw a Mammoth of theirs warp in to their POS and I put a bomber on the hole in case it left, but it sat there the rest of the night. It got late, and eventually, I decided it was time for bed. If they wanted to take a shot at the tower without any of my alts on, it was time for them to do it. If they reinforced anything, I'd at least have a time I could plan around.
This (Sunday) morning I got up, went through my normal routines, and eventually got around to logging into Eve to see what the damage was. As expected, there was a "Your tower is under attack!" notification waiting for me. A Naglfar had come after my tower. I checked my POS... and it was at 98% shields. I pulled up the list of modules. One of the two energy neutralizing batteries had been incapacitated. That seemed... very tame compared to what I had been expecting.
Out of curiosity, I pulled up my alt corp's kill reports - and there, like an early birthday present, was a killmail for the Devil's Naglfar! It had killed itself on my tower, somehow. If only I had been online at the time, I could have shot it with a civilian weapon on one of my alt's rookie ships... still, that really made my morning. The Naglfar had Large rigs on it instead of Capital so it had lived in the hole for a while, despite there being no live towers before my friend moved in. The Nag had a tech 2 shield tank (two adaptives, one thermic, and one EM ward) and lows full of gyrostabilizers, plus a tech 2 siege module, for about 2.6 billion isk including the hull. Those neuts must have just been too much. <3
I wrote an Eve-mail to the Devil's CEO to see if they were interested in arranging a peaceful solution to our disagreement over the ownership of the C3, and he replied saying that they had no interest in hanging around and would be extracting the rest of their assets shortly.
Of course, I don't believe that's the end of it... but for now, their POS is offline and I haven't seen any other ships. I brought a spare neut online to replace the incapped one, and realized I need to train one of my alts into a decent sized remote repper. >.> We'll see if anything else attacks tonight while I'm asleep.
o7
-K
Thursday, May 29, 2014
Bait Pros
It was early yesterday evening and I was double checking my Thorax fit for a roam Kynric, the Sky Fighters CEO, had said he wanted to do that night. I was checking my fit because my alternative 'fill in the time' project was "finish setting up your damned PI already, Karen, you need the income!" but the initial PI set up is a pain in the ass and I was putting it off. Again. >.>
Now, Kynric himself has labeled Sky Fighters as a small, scrubby C2 corporation. It is largely true, especially compared to where they were a couple months ago - a much smaller base of active pilots, flying cheaper ships (I saw some of the pre-split Sky Fighters corp fittings, and OMG. Just... OMG), but having a lot of fun doing it. One thing that hasn't changed, though, is the corp's cultural emphasis on scouting, on having the intel advantage, on being the eyes in the darkness of w-space. We map huge chains of wormholes on Siggy, crossing k-space systems and finding ways to get everywhere. And we all have cloaky alts, and like leaving them around to watch things - so we can see things, like a Proteus approaching a high sec hole and jumping into a system down our chain, then moving into its POS.
The roam plan went on hold, and we quickly hashed out a plan to bait it out over coms. The pilot was still online, and had hopped ships a couple of times, indicating an active player that should (according to the player's kill board) be paying attention to d-scan and be willing to take the right bait. The first thought was to bring in a drake, like some high-sec diver, but the lack of combat sites in system quickly led to that one being rejected. Next up: go mine in their ore site. "Anyone have a retriever?" "..." Nope. A few of us had ventures in the home system, but those can be hard to catch, making it less appealing as bait; I was about to volunteer to try with my venture anyway when Kynric decided he may as well send his alt over in a Skiff.
I like the Skiff. And the Procurer. It has been ages since I've used one, but in my first month, when I was mining in high sec to buy my first Drake, I used a Procurer. I like the tank, and because it's always bait few people would mess with them. >.> And so here we were, with the Bait Skiff, mining someone's ore site.
The rest of the fleet assembled, and we waited to hear how it was going. The Proteus was still online, still active. Someone else logged in at the POS, and we saw an Anathema, a Helios, even a Redeemer. THAT had us drooling a bit... if the Redeemer came out to play along with the Proteus, it would be fun. Sadly, it looked like nothing would bite. Kynric had filled a jetcan with ore, and although we were giving him crap over it, I drug out a Misasmos and went to pick it up. Maybe that would make it seem more legitimate and they'd pounce. Even as I started heading towards the chain, scouts reported that the target pilot had gotten a Procurer of their own and sent it to the site. Counter bait! Of course, we didn't take it; we wanted them to think we were just one guy mining from high sec.
Sure enough, as my Miasmos entered warp towards the site, the Proteus pilot warped off, reshipped into a Flycatcher, and warped back towards the site. Huzzah! We both landed on grid. It bubbled us. Kynric's Skiff kicked out drones and 'defended' itself, and the rest of the crew got ready to swoop in as soon as the rest of the targets in the hole responded.
Except, they didn't. Kynric's drones chewed through the Flycatcher, putting it into armor, and it tried to break off; we ended up uncloaking a Rapier to snag it and keep it from getting away. The Flycatcher exploded. My Miasmos exited system. The Rapier recloaked.
The pod went back to its tower, hopped back into the Proteus, warped off and cloaked. "Great. The guy just got owned by a Skiff, hopefully he's pissed enough to come back. A Proteus can totally take a Rapier."
We waited. And waited. And nothing. I brought my Miasmos back, scooped the second jetcan, salvaged the Flycatcher's wreck, and still got no response. We called the op to get on with the roam. Guess he wasn't taking any more bait after that.
Now, Kynric himself has labeled Sky Fighters as a small, scrubby C2 corporation. It is largely true, especially compared to where they were a couple months ago - a much smaller base of active pilots, flying cheaper ships (I saw some of the pre-split Sky Fighters corp fittings, and OMG. Just... OMG), but having a lot of fun doing it. One thing that hasn't changed, though, is the corp's cultural emphasis on scouting, on having the intel advantage, on being the eyes in the darkness of w-space. We map huge chains of wormholes on Siggy, crossing k-space systems and finding ways to get everywhere. And we all have cloaky alts, and like leaving them around to watch things - so we can see things, like a Proteus approaching a high sec hole and jumping into a system down our chain, then moving into its POS.
The roam plan went on hold, and we quickly hashed out a plan to bait it out over coms. The pilot was still online, and had hopped ships a couple of times, indicating an active player that should (according to the player's kill board) be paying attention to d-scan and be willing to take the right bait. The first thought was to bring in a drake, like some high-sec diver, but the lack of combat sites in system quickly led to that one being rejected. Next up: go mine in their ore site. "Anyone have a retriever?" "..." Nope. A few of us had ventures in the home system, but those can be hard to catch, making it less appealing as bait; I was about to volunteer to try with my venture anyway when Kynric decided he may as well send his alt over in a Skiff.
I like the Skiff. And the Procurer. It has been ages since I've used one, but in my first month, when I was mining in high sec to buy my first Drake, I used a Procurer. I like the tank, and because it's always bait few people would mess with them. >.> And so here we were, with the Bait Skiff, mining someone's ore site.
The rest of the fleet assembled, and we waited to hear how it was going. The Proteus was still online, still active. Someone else logged in at the POS, and we saw an Anathema, a Helios, even a Redeemer. THAT had us drooling a bit... if the Redeemer came out to play along with the Proteus, it would be fun. Sadly, it looked like nothing would bite. Kynric had filled a jetcan with ore, and although we were giving him crap over it, I drug out a Misasmos and went to pick it up. Maybe that would make it seem more legitimate and they'd pounce. Even as I started heading towards the chain, scouts reported that the target pilot had gotten a Procurer of their own and sent it to the site. Counter bait! Of course, we didn't take it; we wanted them to think we were just one guy mining from high sec.
Sure enough, as my Miasmos entered warp towards the site, the Proteus pilot warped off, reshipped into a Flycatcher, and warped back towards the site. Huzzah! We both landed on grid. It bubbled us. Kynric's Skiff kicked out drones and 'defended' itself, and the rest of the crew got ready to swoop in as soon as the rest of the targets in the hole responded.
Except, they didn't. Kynric's drones chewed through the Flycatcher, putting it into armor, and it tried to break off; we ended up uncloaking a Rapier to snag it and keep it from getting away. The Flycatcher exploded. My Miasmos exited system. The Rapier recloaked.
The pod went back to its tower, hopped back into the Proteus, warped off and cloaked. "Great. The guy just got owned by a Skiff, hopefully he's pissed enough to come back. A Proteus can totally take a Rapier."
We waited. And waited. And nothing. I brought my Miasmos back, scooped the second jetcan, salvaged the Flycatcher's wreck, and still got no response. We called the op to get on with the roam. Guess he wasn't taking any more bait after that.
Friday, May 23, 2014
Warbears!
It has been a bit of a rough week IRL and I haven't been as active on Eve outside of the usual scanning/logistics/a little attention paid to my wallet (I am most of the way to replacing my Stratios. <3 ). Yesterday, though, I started logging in to Eve when I got home from work, and as I was getting online I heard happy news - someone was moving multiple iterons through a couple of systems down the chain. A pilot was linked. They were from Dropbears Anonymous, a corporation in Brave Newbies and in general some cool people I've flown with before.
I tagged my Manticore bomber and took up position on one of the in-use wormholes; the scout went back to reship into something combat worthy, and we waited for the haulers to come through again.
I heard a call of "Iteron on d-scan" over coms, and sure enough it showed up on my own d-scan shortly after; I got ready to hit my cloak and start pointing... and then the hole fired. (For people who are not wormholers: much like a stargate has a distinctive visual effect when it is used by a ship and it 'fires', a wormhole makes a very distinctive noise when it is used.) "What the hell?" I asked myself, since I knew the iteron hadn't landed yet... how could it have slipped past me? No, no, someone new must have jumped through from the other side.
Oh well! I announced the new unknown on coms, and then the iteron landed on grid. I decloaked and pointed it, and fired a salvo of torpedoes, and then the new ship dropped jump cloak - a second iteron! Their haulers had crossjumped. The first iteron jumped through the hole, and I started locking the second; it jumped back through to the other side as well. I called it out, and followed through - the one that had just jumped would be polarized now and unable to get away.
I came out of the hole and loaded grid, and didn't see anything. I knew an iteron couldn't warp away that fast, so both haulers were holding cloak - sure enough, shortly after my jump, one of them dropped cloak and started aligning. I dropped my jump cloak as well and pointed it, then hit my torpedo button... only to loose point. Whoops. I had hit the wrong one, and recloaked instead of hit 'make target explode'. I dropped cloak again, and started locking; the iteron jumpd back through the hole to the other side.
Now, at this point, hindsight tells me that I should have stayed on the far side of the hole to catch the iteron that had polarized itself, and let the fleet try and catch the one that had ran back through. However I was running on instinct, not logic, and instinct said "CHASE! CATCH! KILL!!!"
So I jumped after the fleeing iteron (and saw the second iteron dropping cloak to warp off as the hole fired and pulled me back through), locked it, and pointed it as the other two guys in fleet landed on the hole. The hauler exploded. \o/ It had been carrying POS fuel. The capsule got away, and warped back to the hole a couple of times before the pilot's polarization timer ran out; I kept trying to lock it each time (just on general principle) but we didn't bring a bubble to catch it.
Since they were running haulers, there had to be an exit down the chain; we already had a decent enough low sec connection, but the guys found the high sec C1 the Bears had been using two holes down. (Our static was connected to a C6, which connected to a C5, that connected to another C5 where we had caught the haulers, with that one connected to another C5 leading one way towards the Dropbears' home system and a C4 leading the other way to a C1 that connected to high sec. Chains are fun. :D)
With my bomber on station to guard the chain, I ran my pod out to low sec to pick up an epithal I had ditched in Minmatar space. I came out a couple of jumps from Bosena, and began motoring towards the market-pirate haven known as Hek. It is my least favorite 'hub', but at least the stuff I had was already there.
A couple of jumps into high sec, I passed a gate that had about a dozen red flashy ships on overview. I went 'huh' - there was no CONCORD force in the process of blapping them, no wrecks, so it didn't look like an in process gate camp. Then I remembered that we were at war! LOL! I switched one of my chat windows over to [Local] and sure enough there were a dozen war targets in system, with a few of them swearing at me, someone asking me to bring a big ship and not my (expensive~) pod, and one guy saying I was rude for not even waving. So I waved. "Sorry guys, I wasn't even looking at local! Good hunting and what."
Still... I didn't want to be rude. As I approached Hek, I dropped into their public channel to shoot the breeze. "Didn't mean to be rude. How are you gentlemen doing today?" This was greeted with some derision and some more swearing (I had to laugh at that, poor mercs) but one of them was civil enough to engage in discourse. :D I pulled my hauler out of my hangar, filled the cargo with more missiles and rail/blaster ammo, and set a course for the high sec connection the scouts had just found while we chatted.
Their client was happy with the kills they were getting - one of the EoL guys lost a Caldari Navy Raven in the first week of the war, although now that we were in week three and had finished moving into the new system
war kills were down to a few cheap frigates and one Sky pilot that has lost three Ibis' in the last week. Three Ibisii, those get expensive~. The guy asked when we were bringing them a fight; I told them we already did that a couple of times (we had) but they didn't seem to want it at the time, and now that we were moved in we were pretty much done with high sec for the time being. I invited him to come out to the wormhole to play (and gave him the wrong Null system to come to, of course) but he declined. He complained about being bored, and so I showed him some of the related loss pages for a couple of the bigger fights I have been in over the last couple of weeks and trolled him again about leaving high sec to get into the WH game.
I do hope that whoever is paying them feels it's worth it; I myself don't see the point of hiring high sec mercs if you aren't going to send them to cause any real damage. I mean, sure, if I want to move something pricey by myself I give it to an alt of mine... ooo~. Such horrid inconvenience. I need to quit Eve! Heh. At least they are camping pipes, and not station undocks.
Back in the wormhole, my bomber was almost decloaked by a Dropbear Stilletto passing through; it didn't sweep the hole, though, just passed on through. A Crow followed shortly after, then another couple of interceptors, and Patriot (the Dropbears CEO) in an Ares, all one at a time. It looked like they were getting an interceptor roam going in k-space or something. I let the guys know and we pulled together a half dozen pilots to camp in the chain and pick off ships passing through (hoping for the Dropbears to get a fleet together to chase us out), but I had to take off for dinner.
The hauler gank was nice, but I neeeed more pew. Taking off from work early (yay weekend) and getting my scouts out when I get home; if I can't find anything, I'll buy a cheap Drake or something and try to find a hilarious way to lose it.
o7
-K
I tagged my Manticore bomber and took up position on one of the in-use wormholes; the scout went back to reship into something combat worthy, and we waited for the haulers to come through again.
I heard a call of "Iteron on d-scan" over coms, and sure enough it showed up on my own d-scan shortly after; I got ready to hit my cloak and start pointing... and then the hole fired. (For people who are not wormholers: much like a stargate has a distinctive visual effect when it is used by a ship and it 'fires', a wormhole makes a very distinctive noise when it is used.) "What the hell?" I asked myself, since I knew the iteron hadn't landed yet... how could it have slipped past me? No, no, someone new must have jumped through from the other side.
Oh well! I announced the new unknown on coms, and then the iteron landed on grid. I decloaked and pointed it, and fired a salvo of torpedoes, and then the new ship dropped jump cloak - a second iteron! Their haulers had crossjumped. The first iteron jumped through the hole, and I started locking the second; it jumped back through to the other side as well. I called it out, and followed through - the one that had just jumped would be polarized now and unable to get away.
I came out of the hole and loaded grid, and didn't see anything. I knew an iteron couldn't warp away that fast, so both haulers were holding cloak - sure enough, shortly after my jump, one of them dropped cloak and started aligning. I dropped my jump cloak as well and pointed it, then hit my torpedo button... only to loose point. Whoops. I had hit the wrong one, and recloaked instead of hit 'make target explode'. I dropped cloak again, and started locking; the iteron jumpd back through the hole to the other side.
Now, at this point, hindsight tells me that I should have stayed on the far side of the hole to catch the iteron that had polarized itself, and let the fleet try and catch the one that had ran back through. However I was running on instinct, not logic, and instinct said "CHASE! CATCH! KILL!!!"
So I jumped after the fleeing iteron (and saw the second iteron dropping cloak to warp off as the hole fired and pulled me back through), locked it, and pointed it as the other two guys in fleet landed on the hole. The hauler exploded. \o/ It had been carrying POS fuel. The capsule got away, and warped back to the hole a couple of times before the pilot's polarization timer ran out; I kept trying to lock it each time (just on general principle) but we didn't bring a bubble to catch it.
Since they were running haulers, there had to be an exit down the chain; we already had a decent enough low sec connection, but the guys found the high sec C1 the Bears had been using two holes down. (Our static was connected to a C6, which connected to a C5, that connected to another C5 where we had caught the haulers, with that one connected to another C5 leading one way towards the Dropbears' home system and a C4 leading the other way to a C1 that connected to high sec. Chains are fun. :D)
With my bomber on station to guard the chain, I ran my pod out to low sec to pick up an epithal I had ditched in Minmatar space. I came out a couple of jumps from Bosena, and began motoring towards the market-pirate haven known as Hek. It is my least favorite 'hub', but at least the stuff I had was already there.
A couple of jumps into high sec, I passed a gate that had about a dozen red flashy ships on overview. I went 'huh' - there was no CONCORD force in the process of blapping them, no wrecks, so it didn't look like an in process gate camp. Then I remembered that we were at war! LOL! I switched one of my chat windows over to [Local] and sure enough there were a dozen war targets in system, with a few of them swearing at me, someone asking me to bring a big ship and not my (expensive~) pod, and one guy saying I was rude for not even waving. So I waved. "Sorry guys, I wasn't even looking at local! Good hunting and what."
Still... I didn't want to be rude. As I approached Hek, I dropped into their public channel to shoot the breeze. "Didn't mean to be rude. How are you gentlemen doing today?" This was greeted with some derision and some more swearing (I had to laugh at that, poor mercs) but one of them was civil enough to engage in discourse. :D I pulled my hauler out of my hangar, filled the cargo with more missiles and rail/blaster ammo, and set a course for the high sec connection the scouts had just found while we chatted.
Their client was happy with the kills they were getting - one of the EoL guys lost a Caldari Navy Raven in the first week of the war, although now that we were in week three and had finished moving into the new system
war kills were down to a few cheap frigates and one Sky pilot that has lost three Ibis' in the last week. Three Ibisii, those get expensive~. The guy asked when we were bringing them a fight; I told them we already did that a couple of times (we had) but they didn't seem to want it at the time, and now that we were moved in we were pretty much done with high sec for the time being. I invited him to come out to the wormhole to play (and gave him the wrong Null system to come to, of course) but he declined. He complained about being bored, and so I showed him some of the related loss pages for a couple of the bigger fights I have been in over the last couple of weeks and trolled him again about leaving high sec to get into the WH game.
I do hope that whoever is paying them feels it's worth it; I myself don't see the point of hiring high sec mercs if you aren't going to send them to cause any real damage. I mean, sure, if I want to move something pricey by myself I give it to an alt of mine... ooo~. Such horrid inconvenience. I need to quit Eve! Heh. At least they are camping pipes, and not station undocks.
Back in the wormhole, my bomber was almost decloaked by a Dropbear Stilletto passing through; it didn't sweep the hole, though, just passed on through. A Crow followed shortly after, then another couple of interceptors, and Patriot (the Dropbears CEO) in an Ares, all one at a time. It looked like they were getting an interceptor roam going in k-space or something. I let the guys know and we pulled together a half dozen pilots to camp in the chain and pick off ships passing through (hoping for the Dropbears to get a fleet together to chase us out), but I had to take off for dinner.
The hauler gank was nice, but I neeeed more pew. Taking off from work early (yay weekend) and getting my scouts out when I get home; if I can't find anything, I'll buy a cheap Drake or something and try to find a hilarious way to lose it.
o7
-K
Sunday, May 18, 2014
Laziness
The two biggest killers in w-space are ignorance, and laziness. When someone doesn't know how to protect themselves, or just doesn't put in the effort... that is when you leave yourself open to wandering hunters.
I had one of those weekends these last few days, where I was kind of out of it and didn't take proper precautions. Whoops.
Let's see... Saturday, I lost a Crane. I had planned to get my industrial alt corp set up in a wormhole, making and exporting goods (I've settled on T2 frigates/ammo/some modules as a decent compromise between profit, and assets at risk in the hole) and because my friend had had some people haunting her system, I decided to plant my tower in there with her. I anchored my control tower, put the fuel and stront it, set it to online... then cloaked up next to it and wandered off to make dinner, assuming that the cloak would protect me until the force field came up, and that the force field would take care of me after.
I came back just as my Crane exploded. It looked like a cheetah had spotted the tower onlining, brought a friend for backup, and either swung by and managed to decloak me, or the forcefield going up killed the cloak module but not before the friend could blap me. Either way, I really should have safe spotted instead. Whoops!
Sunday my favorite ship, my Stratios, went kaboom; we were breaking down POCO's in our new system so we could land our own, and the static we had opened the night before was inhabited by One Percent. It opened pretty late at night and there were only four of us online, so we had started rolling the hole; they spotted us part way through, so we called it off and called it night. Earlier today we also had a C2 open into our system, and a few systems down that chain we saw some members of Ixstab running ships in from high sec.
Mistake 1: I brought a Stratios to a POCO bash because it was the ship I was already in, when a Vexor Navy would have done the job just as well and would have put 400 million isk less on the field.
Mistake 2: when the POCO came out of reinforced, only one of us logged in a dual-boxed scout. We decided a potential T3/guardian fleet from Ixstab was a bigger threat, so that scout was watching the C2 connection.
Mistake 3: we had seen no activity from One Percent., and although we were moving into the EU prime time, we assumed things would stay fairly quiet - that even if they jumped us, it'd be a group we could brawl with.
Mistake 4: when the gank came, it was sudden - nobody caught them on d-scan in warp, and the tengu and huginn were joined on grid quickly enough that we should have spotted the inbound fleet earlier. I know I wasn't watching d-scan close enough, and it seems we were all being a bit slow on it.
I was the first ship scrammed and taken down; I reshipped immediately and was ready to get back to the fight, but the FC was already calling for a disengage. The One Percent gang was large enough, with enough logi, that he didn't think we could take them. We ended up losing my Stratios, a Vexor Navy, and an Ishtar in the initial skirmish, without getting enough fire focused on their side to take anyone down.
Still, it is only a matter of time before we connect to them again, and next time I'll give a better showing. Until then, the expensive lesson has been taught again: when you're flying in w-space, don't be lazy.
o7
-K
I had one of those weekends these last few days, where I was kind of out of it and didn't take proper precautions. Whoops.
Let's see... Saturday, I lost a Crane. I had planned to get my industrial alt corp set up in a wormhole, making and exporting goods (I've settled on T2 frigates/ammo/some modules as a decent compromise between profit, and assets at risk in the hole) and because my friend had had some people haunting her system, I decided to plant my tower in there with her. I anchored my control tower, put the fuel and stront it, set it to online... then cloaked up next to it and wandered off to make dinner, assuming that the cloak would protect me until the force field came up, and that the force field would take care of me after.
I came back just as my Crane exploded. It looked like a cheetah had spotted the tower onlining, brought a friend for backup, and either swung by and managed to decloak me, or the forcefield going up killed the cloak module but not before the friend could blap me. Either way, I really should have safe spotted instead. Whoops!
Sunday my favorite ship, my Stratios, went kaboom; we were breaking down POCO's in our new system so we could land our own, and the static we had opened the night before was inhabited by One Percent. It opened pretty late at night and there were only four of us online, so we had started rolling the hole; they spotted us part way through, so we called it off and called it night. Earlier today we also had a C2 open into our system, and a few systems down that chain we saw some members of Ixstab running ships in from high sec.
Mistake 1: I brought a Stratios to a POCO bash because it was the ship I was already in, when a Vexor Navy would have done the job just as well and would have put 400 million isk less on the field.
Mistake 2: when the POCO came out of reinforced, only one of us logged in a dual-boxed scout. We decided a potential T3/guardian fleet from Ixstab was a bigger threat, so that scout was watching the C2 connection.
Mistake 3: we had seen no activity from One Percent., and although we were moving into the EU prime time, we assumed things would stay fairly quiet - that even if they jumped us, it'd be a group we could brawl with.
Mistake 4: when the gank came, it was sudden - nobody caught them on d-scan in warp, and the tengu and huginn were joined on grid quickly enough that we should have spotted the inbound fleet earlier. I know I wasn't watching d-scan close enough, and it seems we were all being a bit slow on it.
I was the first ship scrammed and taken down; I reshipped immediately and was ready to get back to the fight, but the FC was already calling for a disengage. The One Percent gang was large enough, with enough logi, that he didn't think we could take them. We ended up losing my Stratios, a Vexor Navy, and an Ishtar in the initial skirmish, without getting enough fire focused on their side to take anyone down.
Still, it is only a matter of time before we connect to them again, and next time I'll give a better showing. Until then, the expensive lesson has been taught again: when you're flying in w-space, don't be lazy.
o7
-K
Friday, May 16, 2014
Moving Again, and Moving Forward
Note: This one has been on my writing desk for a couple of weeks; I've added and updated a bit as I went, and didn't want to publish before we were all set up. :D
A while back I mentioned a project to open a C2 wormhole training corporation.
That project has been aborted; it didn't make it out of the initial setup phase before being abandoned due to reasons. I do not believe in spreading drama and so I shall not; there were simply some miscommunications on the leadership level that escalated poorly and led me to conclude that it was time for me to leave the alliance. I wish you guys at Infinite Anarchy the best, and when you find your pod under fire from my guns it's nothing personal, just w-space. :D
I am flying with Sky Fighters now; they lost a chunk of players when Rolled Out rolled out, and had just moved out of their old home system. I signed up just in time to join the scanning party - huzzah! So, after spending a day or so moving my ships out of the C2 Anarchist Asylum had set up in, I spent the next couple of days scouting wormhole chains with my covops alt while I consolidated assets with Karen.
I should probably add that I have been doing all of my high sec logistics under war dec - Infinite Anarchy was under wardec as I was moving out, and Sky Fighters had been decced shortly before I joined, which made my logistics work require a little more attention than usual. We even formed up a couple of times to hunt the WT's down, but they seem to want to dock up in station whenever a gang that is actually combat capable swings by. :shrug:
Sky found a few good systems to move into, and the plan was to begin cloaky bomber harassment last Friday after the Lazerhawk roam; however, on Thursday one of our scouts found an even better system, so plans changed, scouts were seeded, and Kynric decided to go straight for the eviction invasion of the new target system, without the harassment campaign first. Assets were moved through high sec, my Rattlesnake and a Paladin got into a brawl with a few war target proteusii (we ended up down a Domi), and by Saturday we had a seige tower, invasion orcas, and the big guns in the target system ready to start 'persuading' the prior residents to move out.
At first it looked like they'd try to pack up and ship out, but by the time we were ready to commence they were still dug in.
A while back I mentioned a project to open a C2 wormhole training corporation.
That project has been aborted; it didn't make it out of the initial setup phase before being abandoned due to reasons. I do not believe in spreading drama and so I shall not; there were simply some miscommunications on the leadership level that escalated poorly and led me to conclude that it was time for me to leave the alliance. I wish you guys at Infinite Anarchy the best, and when you find your pod under fire from my guns it's nothing personal, just w-space. :D
I am flying with Sky Fighters now; they lost a chunk of players when Rolled Out rolled out, and had just moved out of their old home system. I signed up just in time to join the scanning party - huzzah! So, after spending a day or so moving my ships out of the C2 Anarchist Asylum had set up in, I spent the next couple of days scouting wormhole chains with my covops alt while I consolidated assets with Karen.
I should probably add that I have been doing all of my high sec logistics under war dec - Infinite Anarchy was under wardec as I was moving out, and Sky Fighters had been decced shortly before I joined, which made my logistics work require a little more attention than usual. We even formed up a couple of times to hunt the WT's down, but they seem to want to dock up in station whenever a gang that is actually combat capable swings by. :shrug:
Sky found a few good systems to move into, and the plan was to begin cloaky bomber harassment last Friday after the Lazerhawk roam; however, on Thursday one of our scouts found an even better system, so plans changed, scouts were seeded, and Kynric decided to go straight for the eviction invasion of the new target system, without the harassment campaign first. Assets were moved through high sec, my Rattlesnake and a Paladin got into a brawl with a few war target proteusii (we ended up down a Domi), and by Saturday we had a seige tower, invasion orcas, and the big guns in the target system ready to start 'persuading' the prior residents to move out.
At first it looked like they'd try to pack up and ship out, but by the time we were ready to commence they were still dug in.
The Big Cat, ready to play
The guys we were kicking out were running a POS crammed with a double handful of hardeners (about 70% resistances across the board) and lots and lots of ECM, plus about a thousand DPS worth of lasers, a neut, and your usual requisite scrams. The ECM ruled out logi, and the DPS was enough to keep the usual POS Bash Ishtar/Gila/Dominix off field; we went at it with a pair of Vargurs and two Rattlesnakes. It was fun. I knew the marauders would be fine as long as they kept snacking on cap boosters, but I was rather impressed by the snake's massive ability to tank all of the things forever. Plus, I got to try out my Gecko super-heavy drones on the POS lasers and the neut. We left the ECM up, since it did more to help us against potential ganks than hurt us.
Over the rest of the week, we have been shipping in tower, setting up full defenses, and reinforcing POCO's. Soon, we'll be out marauding through C5 chains and blops-dropping into nullsec. Yay!
o7
-K
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
Hooligans
This is not the blog post I had planned on writing today; however, there are :opsec: considerations so it'll have to wait longer. For a quick update, though, I am out with my new corp, Sky Fighters, Doing Things to People.
Yesterday evening was, in fact, full of Doing Things to certain specific people, but last night as I was getting ready to log out I caught a concerning message from a friend of mine - some random people had been camping her wormhole, and at first she wasn't terribly concerned as, well, they were horrible at it and it's not unkown for corps to camp k-space connections in the hope of a juicy gank. However, these guys were remarkably persistent - they had, apparently, been camping her hole for eight or so hours now, and one of them just declared ownership of her system and demanded that she pay rent.
Oh my.
My friend is a very new player to Eve, having started around the end of March. She has also been incredibly enthusiastic about w-space; actively exploring every day, earning her first plex as a newbie by running herons into nullsec and hacking sites, things like that. She's shied away from PvP since she is definitely more of a builder than a fighter, but when I was getting started on my newbie corp I actively recruited her for her awesome YOLO attitude and her motivation to get out and play the game instead of just sitting somewhere 'safe' all day. When the newbie corp failed to launch, she decided to go make her own corporation and do things her own way then, scouting out her own C3/LS hole, shelling out for a POS on her own (I helped her plan the defenses :D), and moving in the fuel and scanner alts and things she'll need to start operations. And, now that she has Things she wants to defend, she's looking at options to get herself set up for home defense PvP.
I am very proud of how she's doing. Like, seriously, I am tearing up a little writing this.
So, when I heard that some no-name bunch of punks were harassing my friend, I took an interest.
Like I said, they were actively camping her k-space connections (she had two low sec ones at the time), but they were horrible at it; one of her scout alts got podded out several times, but she didn't have trouble getting it back in. Once they anchored a couple of large bubbles and brought in a sabre she scaled down the transit activity, but she has everything she needed to sit them out for a couple of weeks.
Although no POS is unconquerable, we had made sure it would require a significant investment to try and bring it down - the hooligans made some threatening noises at her and growled about seigeing her POS, but they clearly didn't have the guns to do so at the time... and trying to starve someone out of a wormhole is a horrible thing to ask your pilots to do, since depending on the fuel reserves in the tower, you might be doing a lot of sitting and hole watching for two or even three months. So after a bit of baiting (what, going to feed your loki to my tower?), they threatened to drop a fleet of Marauders on her POS. That had us giggling.
Just in case you are unfamiliar with Marauders, and their prices, an *empty* hull runs about a billion isk. A properly fit one can cost as much as a dread. They are tough ships, but they are also huge targets. Especially if they're glued to a POS that will only shoot them, and not your friends who come to get on the killmails. :D
My friend baited them a bit more, running her scout (who couldn't cloak) between their camps to keep eyes on them and openly laughing at their attempts to charge her rent, hold her hostage, or threaten her tower. Have I mentioned that I really like her attitude?
Sadly, I was unable to come to help in person, being stuck in a remote piece of uncharted space; instead, I ended up sending one of my out of corp alts to keep an eye on things, and began poking some of my contacts to see if anyone was in the area and interested in ganking marauders, should they actually show up. I discovered that this group of hooligans had in fact managed to piss off another friend of mine to the point where he would gladly bring a dozen or two guys to kick the punks in the nuts and collect their sweet, sweet tears, so I put him in contact with Lori. Bane, one of my corpmates/the diplo for Sky Fighters, also caught wind of it all and helpfully decided to convo the aggressor's CEO to see if they wanted to talk.
The CEO tried to charge Bane a two billion isk ransom.
Their CEO. Tried to charge Bane. A two billion isk ransom.
That got some laughs out of us as well, and I think around that point Bane had got his scout into the C3. This was too much heat for the Rejects - they pulled stakes and scampered, growling about our Huge Fleet (that was still five jumps away, not sure how they would have seen that) and that the POS wasn't worth their time to bash. Bane ran a scout up the chain to their home system; I wouldn't be surprised if he demands a ransom from them tonight.
Shout out to everyone who had my back, you guys are great. Sorry they blueballed you and bailed. To the Rejects: don't be dicks, guys. Yea, we all play rough here in w-space, but when you get put on someone's shitlist they'll come looking for you if they get a good chance.
The evening was sadly lacking in explosions, but it felt like a nice bit of diplo pvp. And hey, I'll remember those guys; I've got a C5 static, so I'm sure I'll run into them again. :D
o7
-K
Yesterday evening was, in fact, full of Doing Things to certain specific people, but last night as I was getting ready to log out I caught a concerning message from a friend of mine - some random people had been camping her wormhole, and at first she wasn't terribly concerned as, well, they were horrible at it and it's not unkown for corps to camp k-space connections in the hope of a juicy gank. However, these guys were remarkably persistent - they had, apparently, been camping her hole for eight or so hours now, and one of them just declared ownership of her system and demanded that she pay rent.
Oh my.
My friend is a very new player to Eve, having started around the end of March. She has also been incredibly enthusiastic about w-space; actively exploring every day, earning her first plex as a newbie by running herons into nullsec and hacking sites, things like that. She's shied away from PvP since she is definitely more of a builder than a fighter, but when I was getting started on my newbie corp I actively recruited her for her awesome YOLO attitude and her motivation to get out and play the game instead of just sitting somewhere 'safe' all day. When the newbie corp failed to launch, she decided to go make her own corporation and do things her own way then, scouting out her own C3/LS hole, shelling out for a POS on her own (I helped her plan the defenses :D), and moving in the fuel and scanner alts and things she'll need to start operations. And, now that she has Things she wants to defend, she's looking at options to get herself set up for home defense PvP.
I am very proud of how she's doing. Like, seriously, I am tearing up a little writing this.
So, when I heard that some no-name bunch of punks were harassing my friend, I took an interest.
Like I said, they were actively camping her k-space connections (she had two low sec ones at the time), but they were horrible at it; one of her scout alts got podded out several times, but she didn't have trouble getting it back in. Once they anchored a couple of large bubbles and brought in a sabre she scaled down the transit activity, but she has everything she needed to sit them out for a couple of weeks.
Although no POS is unconquerable, we had made sure it would require a significant investment to try and bring it down - the hooligans made some threatening noises at her and growled about seigeing her POS, but they clearly didn't have the guns to do so at the time... and trying to starve someone out of a wormhole is a horrible thing to ask your pilots to do, since depending on the fuel reserves in the tower, you might be doing a lot of sitting and hole watching for two or even three months. So after a bit of baiting (what, going to feed your loki to my tower?), they threatened to drop a fleet of Marauders on her POS. That had us giggling.
Just in case you are unfamiliar with Marauders, and their prices, an *empty* hull runs about a billion isk. A properly fit one can cost as much as a dread. They are tough ships, but they are also huge targets. Especially if they're glued to a POS that will only shoot them, and not your friends who come to get on the killmails. :D
My friend baited them a bit more, running her scout (who couldn't cloak) between their camps to keep eyes on them and openly laughing at their attempts to charge her rent, hold her hostage, or threaten her tower. Have I mentioned that I really like her attitude?
Sadly, I was unable to come to help in person, being stuck in a remote piece of uncharted space; instead, I ended up sending one of my out of corp alts to keep an eye on things, and began poking some of my contacts to see if anyone was in the area and interested in ganking marauders, should they actually show up. I discovered that this group of hooligans had in fact managed to piss off another friend of mine to the point where he would gladly bring a dozen or two guys to kick the punks in the nuts and collect their sweet, sweet tears, so I put him in contact with Lori. Bane, one of my corpmates/the diplo for Sky Fighters, also caught wind of it all and helpfully decided to convo the aggressor's CEO to see if they wanted to talk.
The CEO tried to charge Bane a two billion isk ransom.
Their CEO. Tried to charge Bane. A two billion isk ransom.
That got some laughs out of us as well, and I think around that point Bane had got his scout into the C3. This was too much heat for the Rejects - they pulled stakes and scampered, growling about our Huge Fleet (that was still five jumps away, not sure how they would have seen that) and that the POS wasn't worth their time to bash. Bane ran a scout up the chain to their home system; I wouldn't be surprised if he demands a ransom from them tonight.
Shout out to everyone who had my back, you guys are great. Sorry they blueballed you and bailed. To the Rejects: don't be dicks, guys. Yea, we all play rough here in w-space, but when you get put on someone's shitlist they'll come looking for you if they get a good chance.
The evening was sadly lacking in explosions, but it felt like a nice bit of diplo pvp. And hey, I'll remember those guys; I've got a C5 static, so I'm sure I'll run into them again. :D
o7
-K
Sunday, May 11, 2014
In Memoral
On Friday, the Lazerhawks hosted a memorial roam/fleet welping in honor of DJ Destruction, one of their pilots who recently passed away. All interested wormholers were invited, and told to bring battleships with lasers. Lots of lasers.
All of the lasers.
By the time we left the staging system there were a hundred some pilots in fleet, and we paused on the first out gate for some words in memory of DJ. He sounded like a great guy to fly with, and I am very sorry for his loss.
In proper wake fashion, shots were called for, and then the fleet started went up on Twitch and we set destination for a known low sec staging system, ready for a brawl. It didn't take long for the targets to become aware of the Twitch stream - after only a few systems, one of their guys was spectating our fleet as we hopped gate to gate in a controlled, stately manner. It was no surprise that, by the time we were ready to enter our target system, a fleet had formed up to greet us - Ninja Unicorns With Huge Horns, Psychotic Tendencies, and assorted other allies.
We had a fleet of brawling Abbadons, Armageddons, and Random Laser Shit. We jumped into a fleet of Navy Apocs with some miscellaneous support (a smattering of pirate battleships, a few dreads, and some carriers). They were just far enough off the gate that we had to switch from the close range ammo, so we dropped cloak, reloaded, and engaged. The FC (ForgetMyFace) began calling targets, and our cynos went up; a team of five triage archons, a moros, and a revelation landed on our side.
The battle was ridiculously fun. The Psychotic logi carriers did a great job of keeping their ships up when they could catch them, but the combined fire from our lasers melted through quite a few battleships throughout the fight, while our dreads worked on chewing down the opposing seige dreads (we killed a moros!) and then got to work on their carriers. The fight took a dive though when Psychotic Tendancies called in supercarrier support; three Nyxs and a Wyvern dropped on field (escalation!) and it was pretty much game over at that point; the dreads exploded, the archons began going down one after another, and after the last capital on our side was dead we got the order to warp out to a station in system.
'Good fights' were exchanged in local, and it had been an excellent fight; many things exploded in fond memory of a fallen pilot, and we explained the purpose of the roam in local. The brawlees commiserated, and we were informed that the battleships left in the fleet were free to go without being camped. The fleet extracted to our staging system, our hosts thanked us, and most of the fleet began heading for their home holes.
However. There were a few of us that decided we had signed up to welp our battleships, and we weren't going home until the insurance had been paid out. A new (and quite drunk) FC was appointed, our fleet was marshaled, and the FC announced our desto. "Fuck it. Desto is VFK. YOLO. Holy jesus. Come on, scrubs, move out!"
The trip to VFK was chaotic, messy, drunken, and highly amusing. We barely saw anyone on the way, but there were about fifty to sixty other pilots (compared to our dozenish leftover battleships) online in VFK itself. We all warped to the station and, lacking other targets, opened fire; then our scout found an offline POS in system, so we all warped to that instead and began bashing it. We chatted amicably in /Local with the Goons that were on hand, and watched as the local pilot count spiked, and spiked again.
Eventually, they jumped on us, and I could hear many of the guys in fleet giggling - a swarm of sabres, flycatchers, and other small stuff landed on us and space was filled with warp bubbles and disco lights. We began popping them, but within thirty seconds a giant fleet of capitals dropped on us; we laughed on coms and continued free-firing on the smaller targets. The thirty-ish slowcat archons and two dozen naglfars ripped our fleet to pieces, but we actually came very close to breaking even on isk lost.
So, as we were getting blobbed off the field, we waved to the Goons and offered 'gf's in local, then took the high sec express. It was a night that will be remembered.
All of the lasers.
By the time we left the staging system there were a hundred some pilots in fleet, and we paused on the first out gate for some words in memory of DJ. He sounded like a great guy to fly with, and I am very sorry for his loss.
In proper wake fashion, shots were called for, and then the fleet started went up on Twitch and we set destination for a known low sec staging system, ready for a brawl. It didn't take long for the targets to become aware of the Twitch stream - after only a few systems, one of their guys was spectating our fleet as we hopped gate to gate in a controlled, stately manner. It was no surprise that, by the time we were ready to enter our target system, a fleet had formed up to greet us - Ninja Unicorns With Huge Horns, Psychotic Tendencies, and assorted other allies.
We had a fleet of brawling Abbadons, Armageddons, and Random Laser Shit. We jumped into a fleet of Navy Apocs with some miscellaneous support (a smattering of pirate battleships, a few dreads, and some carriers). They were just far enough off the gate that we had to switch from the close range ammo, so we dropped cloak, reloaded, and engaged. The FC (ForgetMyFace) began calling targets, and our cynos went up; a team of five triage archons, a moros, and a revelation landed on our side.
The battle was ridiculously fun. The Psychotic logi carriers did a great job of keeping their ships up when they could catch them, but the combined fire from our lasers melted through quite a few battleships throughout the fight, while our dreads worked on chewing down the opposing seige dreads (we killed a moros!) and then got to work on their carriers. The fight took a dive though when Psychotic Tendancies called in supercarrier support; three Nyxs and a Wyvern dropped on field (escalation!) and it was pretty much game over at that point; the dreads exploded, the archons began going down one after another, and after the last capital on our side was dead we got the order to warp out to a station in system.
'Good fights' were exchanged in local, and it had been an excellent fight; many things exploded in fond memory of a fallen pilot, and we explained the purpose of the roam in local. The brawlees commiserated, and we were informed that the battleships left in the fleet were free to go without being camped. The fleet extracted to our staging system, our hosts thanked us, and most of the fleet began heading for their home holes.
However. There were a few of us that decided we had signed up to welp our battleships, and we weren't going home until the insurance had been paid out. A new (and quite drunk) FC was appointed, our fleet was marshaled, and the FC announced our desto. "Fuck it. Desto is VFK. YOLO. Holy jesus. Come on, scrubs, move out!"
The trip to VFK was chaotic, messy, drunken, and highly amusing. We barely saw anyone on the way, but there were about fifty to sixty other pilots (compared to our dozenish leftover battleships) online in VFK itself. We all warped to the station and, lacking other targets, opened fire; then our scout found an offline POS in system, so we all warped to that instead and began bashing it. We chatted amicably in /Local with the Goons that were on hand, and watched as the local pilot count spiked, and spiked again.
Eventually, they jumped on us, and I could hear many of the guys in fleet giggling - a swarm of sabres, flycatchers, and other small stuff landed on us and space was filled with warp bubbles and disco lights. We began popping them, but within thirty seconds a giant fleet of capitals dropped on us; we laughed on coms and continued free-firing on the smaller targets. The thirty-ish slowcat archons and two dozen naglfars ripped our fleet to pieces, but we actually came very close to breaking even on isk lost.
So, as we were getting blobbed off the field, we waved to the Goons and offered 'gf's in local, then took the high sec express. It was a night that will be remembered.
Saturday, May 3, 2014
Fanfest from the Sidelines
I had a few busy days at work and so I've been unable to follow most of the Fanfest stream as it happens, and have been catching up in the evenings and then watching today (Saturday).
First, OMG, that music video they did before the Eve Keynote... it was incredible, and awe inspiring, and I nearly swooned. CCP has earned my love. Especially CCP Guard. Amazing.
Second, CSM9 was announced. I did not make it in, which did not come as a surprise; I met some pretty stiff resistance while I was campaigning and talking to people, but I am still glad I ran. I met a lot of good people, had fun making connections with other players, and I didn't try to be anyone other than me. I just wasn't the candidate that people wanted.
Aside from Corbexx, I am very pleased that Sugar Kyle, Ali, and Mike will be on the CSM this year. If you mash them together in the right way, I think you get close enough to the views I'd want represented. ;)
Some other cool stuff came up: the summer expansion is dated for early next month (wow! Yay!) and along with the various rebalances and adjustments that have been announced, there are some more new things coming. The T2 Venture looks pretty awesome, and I might fly one just for the looks; the real beauty is that it has a ton of low slots (Venture has one, Prospect gets four?!), and a reduced signature, so if you throw some armor tank mods in it'll be one hell of a tough little frigate. And it's covops capable. And can fit a covert cyno. I can already see another three "OMG NERF CLOAKS" threads on the Eve-O forums from the nullbears.
The AT ships are also pretty cool and I would fly the hell out of a Chameleon, if I were ever able to pick one up. Part of the fun of the Stratios is the extra tank it gets; the Chameleon gets that bonus to shields instead, plus jams. Plus some crazy strong drones - it'll be a nasty gank boat.
The other new ships are the Mordus Angels line. I've been fairly lukewarm towards the Legion in game so far, but the frigate and cruiser are pretty, and they're finally shield ships with an EWAR bonus, instead of just shield ships that do extra damage. Yay!
Anyway, from what I saw, Fanfest looked pretty cool. One year I'll go. :)
o7
First, OMG, that music video they did before the Eve Keynote... it was incredible, and awe inspiring, and I nearly swooned. CCP has earned my love. Especially CCP Guard. Amazing.
Second, CSM9 was announced. I did not make it in, which did not come as a surprise; I met some pretty stiff resistance while I was campaigning and talking to people, but I am still glad I ran. I met a lot of good people, had fun making connections with other players, and I didn't try to be anyone other than me. I just wasn't the candidate that people wanted.
Aside from Corbexx, I am very pleased that Sugar Kyle, Ali, and Mike will be on the CSM this year. If you mash them together in the right way, I think you get close enough to the views I'd want represented. ;)
Some other cool stuff came up: the summer expansion is dated for early next month (wow! Yay!) and along with the various rebalances and adjustments that have been announced, there are some more new things coming. The T2 Venture looks pretty awesome, and I might fly one just for the looks; the real beauty is that it has a ton of low slots (Venture has one, Prospect gets four?!), and a reduced signature, so if you throw some armor tank mods in it'll be one hell of a tough little frigate. And it's covops capable. And can fit a covert cyno. I can already see another three "OMG NERF CLOAKS" threads on the Eve-O forums from the nullbears.
The AT ships are also pretty cool and I would fly the hell out of a Chameleon, if I were ever able to pick one up. Part of the fun of the Stratios is the extra tank it gets; the Chameleon gets that bonus to shields instead, plus jams. Plus some crazy strong drones - it'll be a nasty gank boat.
The other new ships are the Mordus Angels line. I've been fairly lukewarm towards the Legion in game so far, but the frigate and cruiser are pretty, and they're finally shield ships with an EWAR bonus, instead of just shield ships that do extra damage. Yay!
Anyway, from what I saw, Fanfest looked pretty cool. One year I'll go. :)
o7
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
The OTHER New Project
First, a note on the latest Eve Dev blog posts in regards to industry: <insert little-girl-getting-a-pony-squeal here>
Although I am not happy that the POS assembly lines are being pushed back attention-wise, and I am a little wary about how manufacturing in systems without any stations/outposts will work (Will we still have teams? Will it become cheaper to manufacture in a cluttered high sec system with -50% costs due to station bonuses?), I still think it is an overall positive change. The UI and usability cleanup alone is amazing; as a newer player, I have had many arguments with the industry UI, trying to bully it into doing what I want. This will be great.
And now, the 'screw industry, GIVE ME BLOOD' berserker Karen demands I stop talking about lame stuff and move on to the other new project I have started.
I spent all day at work yesterday checking my phone, watching for notifications that my POS might be under attack. I was up until 3 AM in the morning Sunday night/Monday morning, setting up a new large Amarr control tower and anchoring/onlining defenses. I got maybe a third of the things I wanted up and online before I crashed due to exhaustion, and although I didn't have anything inside the bubble aside from an (empty) tayra, the tower, and the hardeners (YES HARDENERS GO *INSIDE* THE BUBBLE) I still worried.
Last night, I got the rest of the defenses online and the bare necessities of storage put up. If you glance at the 'About the author' box in the top left corner, you will see that I moved out of Sin Factory's C5 wormhole; I am now the CEO of a new w-space corporation, Anarchist Asylum, based out of a C2.
I love w-space. I am passionate about it. I want to spread Bob's blessings to many people, new players in particular; at the moment I have about a dozen newer players in corp, with half a dozen of them highly active. :) I will also freely admit that a couple of them were sniped from the 'holy god brand new player' (as one put it) help channel, selected for inquisitiveness about PvP and wormholes. I'm getting them trained up, and trying to instill a Proper Wormholer Attitude in my trainees - we will give no mercy, no fucks, and all of the fights we can.
Anyway, still a little administrative work to take care of tonight, assigning titles and roles now that I know I have it done right, and then to secure the POS fuel for the rest of the month... and then some hopefully fun and hilarious cruiser/frigate roams.
If you have a nice cruiser gang fit you feel like sharing, look me up in game. We're experimenting with stuff. :D
See you in space, cowboys.
o7
Although I am not happy that the POS assembly lines are being pushed back attention-wise, and I am a little wary about how manufacturing in systems without any stations/outposts will work (Will we still have teams? Will it become cheaper to manufacture in a cluttered high sec system with -50% costs due to station bonuses?), I still think it is an overall positive change. The UI and usability cleanup alone is amazing; as a newer player, I have had many arguments with the industry UI, trying to bully it into doing what I want. This will be great.
And now, the 'screw industry, GIVE ME BLOOD' berserker Karen demands I stop talking about lame stuff and move on to the other new project I have started.
I spent all day at work yesterday checking my phone, watching for notifications that my POS might be under attack. I was up until 3 AM in the morning Sunday night/Monday morning, setting up a new large Amarr control tower and anchoring/onlining defenses. I got maybe a third of the things I wanted up and online before I crashed due to exhaustion, and although I didn't have anything inside the bubble aside from an (empty) tayra, the tower, and the hardeners (YES HARDENERS GO *INSIDE* THE BUBBLE) I still worried.
Last night, I got the rest of the defenses online and the bare necessities of storage put up. If you glance at the 'About the author' box in the top left corner, you will see that I moved out of Sin Factory's C5 wormhole; I am now the CEO of a new w-space corporation, Anarchist Asylum, based out of a C2.
I love w-space. I am passionate about it. I want to spread Bob's blessings to many people, new players in particular; at the moment I have about a dozen newer players in corp, with half a dozen of them highly active. :) I will also freely admit that a couple of them were sniped from the 'holy god brand new player' (as one put it) help channel, selected for inquisitiveness about PvP and wormholes. I'm getting them trained up, and trying to instill a Proper Wormholer Attitude in my trainees - we will give no mercy, no fucks, and all of the fights we can.
Anyway, still a little administrative work to take care of tonight, assigning titles and roles now that I know I have it done right, and then to secure the POS fuel for the rest of the month... and then some hopefully fun and hilarious cruiser/frigate roams.
If you have a nice cruiser gang fit you feel like sharing, look me up in game. We're experimenting with stuff. :D
See you in space, cowboys.
o7
Thursday, April 24, 2014
New Projects
I have had ... numerous ideas for new projects pestering me lately, begging to be put into action now that the CSM campaign is over and things have settled into their latest groove. There is certainly something major being worked out this week, but the number two project is what I want to talk about today: Industry.
I have devoted many hours over the last half a year to building and managing my PI empire, and I am pretty happy with where I am at the moment; between the nanite paste production and the other byproducts that I ship out and sell, I clear about a billion isk a month - small potatoes compared to major market movers and full time industrialists, but I feel very proud that I can say that as someone who has only been playing Eve for half a year.
I have been managing our corp's industrial tower in our C5, as well, running the polymer reaction array, and sorting through blueprints to see if there is anything we have on hand worth making; the down side, however, has been that... well, we are a pretty small corporation. The alliance has nowhere near enough demand for things to justify running a POS full time, and the logistical obstacals inherent in living in a C5 wormhole with a C4 static likewise makes manufacturing for export a highly problematic endeavor, at least on a scale that I could run and manage with my current assets. (Look at me, breaking out the economics lexicon! Heee~) If I were like Proclus, and cornering the capital weapons market in a major trade hub, I'd have enough volume and enough profit to justify it. With the meager level I am working at now... ehn.
This is why I have decided I need to scrape a couple of my alts together and make establish and industrial outpost somewhere in k-space (:boo: :hiss:, I agree, w-space is best space, but there are reasons!). I have also decided that the bulk of my new operation will take place in high sec, despite the pending industrial revamp eliciting cries of a falling sky from much of the community.
First, there is no way in hell that I would rent space in Sov Null. Never. Ever. Even with an alt corp.
Second, NPC Null and Low Sec are just too... labor intensive for me to make a major industrial investment in without having a solid corp presence backing me. Much like in w-space, territory in NPC null and in low sec is secured through force of arms and an active corp presence. If I were part of a low sec alliance, I would feel safe enough shipping in large quantities of materials or making a base of operations out of an NPC station, but not with just a couple of alts.
So, that leaves high sec, and it's where I'm going to set up... on the eve of an incoming nerf and rebalancing to high sec industry. #yolo
Of course, I am not going to move *everything* to high sec. I'll maintain most of my PI in w-space, but retool my alt's planetary production lines to require semiweekly maintenance instead of daily with more infrequent pick ups, and finish PI training on a couple of other alts to pick up the difference. I am also going to keep a few things running in a POS, things I want to baby sit and keep a close eye on, or items that just make more sense to manufacture out of a POS instead of a station. And, of course, when we get the rest of the details on the industry revamp things may need to change again.
I've also been doing a lot of hangar cleaning; last week I was feeling horribly, incredibly space-poor with only a couple hundred isk to my name. Then I remembered that I had a Megathron Navy Issue in a station in high sec gathering dust, and a few faction frigates - both navy and pirate - scattered around high sec that I wasn't using. So, I've been flying all over New Eden, collecting my spare ships, mods, and whatnot in a central location, then going through and deciding what I actually wanted to keep and what could go. This has given me a surprising pile of funds to work with, and since I don't like just sitting on money, asking "What can I do to put this isk to work for me?" is what led to my musings on an industry outpost. And/or helping out with or establishing a trade hub. We'll see!! :D
o7
I have devoted many hours over the last half a year to building and managing my PI empire, and I am pretty happy with where I am at the moment; between the nanite paste production and the other byproducts that I ship out and sell, I clear about a billion isk a month - small potatoes compared to major market movers and full time industrialists, but I feel very proud that I can say that as someone who has only been playing Eve for half a year.
I have been managing our corp's industrial tower in our C5, as well, running the polymer reaction array, and sorting through blueprints to see if there is anything we have on hand worth making; the down side, however, has been that... well, we are a pretty small corporation. The alliance has nowhere near enough demand for things to justify running a POS full time, and the logistical obstacals inherent in living in a C5 wormhole with a C4 static likewise makes manufacturing for export a highly problematic endeavor, at least on a scale that I could run and manage with my current assets. (Look at me, breaking out the economics lexicon! Heee~) If I were like Proclus, and cornering the capital weapons market in a major trade hub, I'd have enough volume and enough profit to justify it. With the meager level I am working at now... ehn.
This is why I have decided I need to scrape a couple of my alts together and make establish and industrial outpost somewhere in k-space (:boo: :hiss:, I agree, w-space is best space, but there are reasons!). I have also decided that the bulk of my new operation will take place in high sec, despite the pending industrial revamp eliciting cries of a falling sky from much of the community.
First, there is no way in hell that I would rent space in Sov Null. Never. Ever. Even with an alt corp.
Second, NPC Null and Low Sec are just too... labor intensive for me to make a major industrial investment in without having a solid corp presence backing me. Much like in w-space, territory in NPC null and in low sec is secured through force of arms and an active corp presence. If I were part of a low sec alliance, I would feel safe enough shipping in large quantities of materials or making a base of operations out of an NPC station, but not with just a couple of alts.
So, that leaves high sec, and it's where I'm going to set up... on the eve of an incoming nerf and rebalancing to high sec industry. #yolo
Of course, I am not going to move *everything* to high sec. I'll maintain most of my PI in w-space, but retool my alt's planetary production lines to require semiweekly maintenance instead of daily with more infrequent pick ups, and finish PI training on a couple of other alts to pick up the difference. I am also going to keep a few things running in a POS, things I want to baby sit and keep a close eye on, or items that just make more sense to manufacture out of a POS instead of a station. And, of course, when we get the rest of the details on the industry revamp things may need to change again.
I've also been doing a lot of hangar cleaning; last week I was feeling horribly, incredibly space-poor with only a couple hundred isk to my name. Then I remembered that I had a Megathron Navy Issue in a station in high sec gathering dust, and a few faction frigates - both navy and pirate - scattered around high sec that I wasn't using. So, I've been flying all over New Eden, collecting my spare ships, mods, and whatnot in a central location, then going through and deciding what I actually wanted to keep and what could go. This has given me a surprising pile of funds to work with, and since I don't like just sitting on money, asking "What can I do to put this isk to work for me?" is what led to my musings on an industry outpost. And/or helping out with or establishing a trade hub. We'll see!! :D
o7
Monday, April 21, 2014
The Endgame
Gevlon Goblin has a 'meh' post up from Friday. However, one of the things he says in his post struck a note:
My first thought when I read that was "Uhm. End game? What end game?"
In most MMO's, the 'end game' is the set of content designed for characters at max level. The standard formula for that includes things like 'hard-mode' dungeons, Nightmare levels, massive raids, or top-level, competitive PvP. The end-game implies "this is why you play the game; this is why you bothered to grind 90-some levels and then spent another two months gathering the exact best equipment and perfected your skill rotation. Now you are here, now you are at the top of the game."
Frankly, ideas of an end game just do not belong in Eve. At all.
Granted, there are many areas of the game that use a small and localized progression scale as players invest more skill points and isk: going from running L1 NPC missions in a frigate to L4 missions in a battleship or T3 cruiser, going from mining in a venture to mining in a Mackinaw, starting frigate PvP in an Atron and moving up into an Enyo... however, even things like 'doing solo PvP in a frigate' and 'doing solo PvP in a cruiser' have their own distinct progression, nuances, and 'play area'. Everything in Eve is about the niche game, and how the myriad of niche games interact with each other, not about everyone progressing from mining in a venture in high sec to flying a titan in a battle like B-R.
There are two places where this "We are the end game" perspective seems most pronounced, at least that I have noticed: Sov Null, and C5/C6 wormholes. Many groups assume that, since nullsec offers higher rewards and Sov Null is some of the safest space in the game, that and large corporation will eventually want to end up in a coalition in Sov Null. In the wormhole community, it is commonly assumed that corporations that move into 'lower class' wormhole have an end goal of building up to the point that they can move into and hold a C5 or a C6 wormhole. These are certainly progressions that some players and corporations plan on taking, but many others are content to find their niche and live in it. Each class of wormhole offers its own distinct flavor of play, and there are plenty of pockets out in null sec - from NPC null to places like Providence - that are divergent from the coalition mentality.
If you are a newer player, dabble around a bit! Find something you enjoy, and move into that niche. It's a lot easier to break into a new area of play than you might think.
o7
"Instead of endgame, nullsec became niche game."
My first thought when I read that was "Uhm. End game? What end game?"
In most MMO's, the 'end game' is the set of content designed for characters at max level. The standard formula for that includes things like 'hard-mode' dungeons, Nightmare levels, massive raids, or top-level, competitive PvP. The end-game implies "this is why you play the game; this is why you bothered to grind 90-some levels and then spent another two months gathering the exact best equipment and perfected your skill rotation. Now you are here, now you are at the top of the game."
Frankly, ideas of an end game just do not belong in Eve. At all.
Granted, there are many areas of the game that use a small and localized progression scale as players invest more skill points and isk: going from running L1 NPC missions in a frigate to L4 missions in a battleship or T3 cruiser, going from mining in a venture to mining in a Mackinaw, starting frigate PvP in an Atron and moving up into an Enyo... however, even things like 'doing solo PvP in a frigate' and 'doing solo PvP in a cruiser' have their own distinct progression, nuances, and 'play area'. Everything in Eve is about the niche game, and how the myriad of niche games interact with each other, not about everyone progressing from mining in a venture in high sec to flying a titan in a battle like B-R.
There are two places where this "We are the end game" perspective seems most pronounced, at least that I have noticed: Sov Null, and C5/C6 wormholes. Many groups assume that, since nullsec offers higher rewards and Sov Null is some of the safest space in the game, that and large corporation will eventually want to end up in a coalition in Sov Null. In the wormhole community, it is commonly assumed that corporations that move into 'lower class' wormhole have an end goal of building up to the point that they can move into and hold a C5 or a C6 wormhole. These are certainly progressions that some players and corporations plan on taking, but many others are content to find their niche and live in it. Each class of wormhole offers its own distinct flavor of play, and there are plenty of pockets out in null sec - from NPC null to places like Providence - that are divergent from the coalition mentality.
If you are a newer player, dabble around a bit! Find something you enjoy, and move into that niche. It's a lot easier to break into a new area of play than you might think.
o7
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Evictions, E-Honor, and the Metagame Part 2: A Commentary
For anyone reading who isn't up on w-space, most of the fights there occur on/around the connecting wormholes or on a site of some variety. There are a lot of ganks, there are some straight up brawls, and there are fights with back and forth maneuvering around one or both sides of a wormhole. Most hostile fleets will avoid engaging a Player Owned Starbase, because they have a crap ton of HP and are usually packed full of more guns and ewar than the tower can online all at once (so that spares can be brought online as needed). There are, however, a few times when a tower will come under direct attack:
Eviction - With an eviction, the goal is nothing less than the destruction of every tower owned by the enemy corporation in a given wormhole system. The evicting fleet will also often pull down any Player Owned Customs Office that the enemy corp holds in the system as well, since they may as well while waiting for the tower reinforcement timers and skipping them can leave a feeling of a job unfinished. Evictions are a major undertaking, requiring the attacker to bring enough force to bear to overcome the defenders in the first place, to assault each of the defender's towers in turn, to forcibly take control of the system and all connecting wormholes, and then to maintain enough active pilots garrisoned in the defender's system to prevent attempts to bring in reinforcements or evacuate valuable assets. The garrison needs to remain attentive and in position for up to 36 hours or longer, and there has to be enough pilots available to handle whatever might come up. Once the reinforcement timer runs down, the attacker has to still be strong enough to defeat whatever final defense is mounted (if any), grind down the last HP from the towers, and destroy and loot whatever assets are left behind.
Invasion - Much like an eviction, an invasion involves planting a large force in an enemy system for a prolonged period; unlike the eviction, however, total destruction of the defender is not necessarily the end goal. Many invasions are done in order to force a large fight, with the invaders leaving (and the defenders functionally intact) once they are satisfied, although one group can also invade another just to make life hell for a while. Usually by that point, though, it's turned into an eviction instead.
The Stront Check - By far the most common, when one group is 'checking' another group's tower, they attack it and put it into reinforced mode. Strontium is the fuel that towers use to become invulnerable and reinforced - if a tower doesn't have any, it won't reinforce, hence the name. A stront check is often called for on towers that look weak or undefended but potentially full of valuables, or if an attacker is trying to apply pressure to another group in order to goad them into a fight. The biggest difference between a stront check and an invasion or eviction is that once the tower is reinforced they (typically) return home or go on their way - the attacker is not committing assets to a siege of the defender's system.
If I did not make a big enough point of it in my last blog, or up above, an eviction is a major undertaking and a pain in the butt, even for a major C5 or C6 wormhole alliance. Capital class ships are often required to perform a successful eviction in a C5 or C6 wormhole, but they can only be brought in intermittently; that also means they can not always be extracted in a timely manner. Even if an alliance has forty or fifty capitals in their home defense fleet, a dreadnought is a valuable asset and they'll want to maintain sufficient force in the defending hole after the eviction, long enough to escort the ship out. While the eviction is going on, a significant number of the active pilots of an alliance will be busy - there were times this last weekend where scouts found hostile forces in/near the home wormhole chains of Ragnarok or NOHO, but with the skeleton crews left behind they couldn't engage. That kind of deployment can leave home systems vulnerable, as well, bringing additional risk beyond the number of assets committed to the siege.
In short, nobody does an eviction just for funsies.
However, one of the best things about Eve is that people can do whatever they want; one of the things that makes w-space so great is precisely that everything can be destroyed. Nothing in w-space is safe. If someone is willing to put in the time and effort and can dedicate enough resources, they can blow up every single thing a corp owns in w-space; the question then becomes "What tilts that reward/effort equation from 'stront check them and move on' over to 'EEVICTIOOOOON'?"
Some w-space corps will say that is is an e-honor thing, that corps who fight are encouraged to stay while corps that hide are evicted. This is not true, though: granted, refusing to fight someone might piss them off, and pissing someone off makes them more likely to want to evict you, but any cause that the attacker feels passionately enough about is good enough for them. Ragnarok evicted the Goons from their hole because Goonswarm is a major Null Sec power. People have ended up on eviction lists for being asshats on the forums or on a podcast. Honestly, if someone decided they absolutely hated my fashion sense and wanted to evict me for it, they are welcome to try. The thing that matters is how much they care about it, and if they care enough about their cause to put in the effort.
While I am on the topic, this does lead me to something else I have been wanting to write about: e-honor. Bluntly, it doesn't exist and expecting other people to live by it leaves you open to be taken advantage of. Most of the corps I've met in w-space are, at the end of the day, pretty cool. Many of them are just out to have a good time. Expecting another pilot/corporation/alliance to abide by a set of rules that has not been agreed upon, though, will put you in a bad spot and if you get burned for relying on 'honorable conduct' you'll have nobody to blame but yourself.
That may sound harsh, but w-space is a harsh environment. You can count on yourself. You should be able to count on your corp mates. You might be able to count on your blues, be they in your alliance or just diplomatic friends. Anyone else is someone you are competing against, and is a potential enemy, no matter how friendly they may be. Instead of expecting someone to follow a set of rules that you may or may not have told them about, be practical on the matter. Expect them to behave in a way that they have acted in the past. Alliances and corporations like having their reputations; for example, I would expect NOHO to honor a ransom request, because that's something they are known to do. If someone from SSC offered me a spot in a roam and told me they wouldn't attack me, I would trust them - I've seen that behavior from them in the past. I myself try to be extremely trustworthy, but it isn't out of a need to feel honorable. It's because people like other people they feel they can trust, and life is easier for me if people know they can take me at my word.
This also ties into the metagame - not the game knowledge aspect of the meta, but rather the people knowledge side of it. For anyone who hasn't delved too deeply into it, the 'metagame' refers to a number of things - the game beyond the game itself, knowledge of the game as a set of rules, the 'universe' of things that are Eve-related while not strictly coming from within the game client itself, and so on. When an FC is prioritizing targets and telling the ewar ships who to hit with what, they are using their knowledge of how people play the game in order to guess at what ships will be fitted what way and how they are flown, as opposed to basing it strictly off of what they can see in the present engagement. When a fleet engages in a fight that they should lose from a strictly by-the-numbers numerical standpoint, it is often because the FC believes they have a psychological edge over the enemy fleet - the knowledge of how people think and react giving them an edge. For example, a few weeks ago we rolled our home system's static connection and it opened up on a system with four battleships and a pair of basilisks running sites. I had three pilots available to me, so it certainly wasn't a fight I could take and win; one of our alliance members, though, urged me to ship up into a group of Talos battle cruisers and jump on the logi ships, because who would jump a fleet like that with only three attack battlecruisers? Ideally one of the basilisks would explode and the rest of the site fleet would attempt to warp off and away from the (non existent) remainder of our gank fleet, and we could point the last battleship to align for another easy kill. I love that sort of player versus player competition; where it isn't the amount of isk spent on ships or the age of the account that decides the outcome, but a player's skill at reading other players and predicting what they will do, and the player's ability to influence that reaction. I love my Stratios because it is such a versatile cruiser; it can be fit with guns, with neuts, with double webs or dual prop, and with the covops cloak on it nobody will know how I have it fit until I am on them. It's one of the reasons I am fond of the Gnosis, and weird things like the blaster naga or the armor/ECM drake - when you throw a curve ball at someone and catch them flat footed, you get to dictate the engagement.
With that being said, I personally feel that the benefits of being trustworthy are too good to pass up and so I leave my metagaming at the engagement level. I may bluff, posture, or feign weakness before an engagement to get an edge but if I say that, no, for real, my fleet has moved off of the wormhole and it is safe enough for you to jump through... then it has moved off, and it is safe enough.
Just don't expect everyone to play like that, though - anyone can do whatever they want in Eve, for whatever reason, if they want to put in the effort and don't mind the reputation and reaction it'll get from other players. And if you don't like what someone else has done, you are free to tell them as much, in whatever way you feel will cause them to listen.
Personally, I don't have any Causes in game that would incite me to evict anyone, nor has anyone pissed me off enough to get put on an eviction list - I just want to fly my ship through space, blow some people up, and hopefully be able to afford to replace whatever I lose.
o7
Eviction - With an eviction, the goal is nothing less than the destruction of every tower owned by the enemy corporation in a given wormhole system. The evicting fleet will also often pull down any Player Owned Customs Office that the enemy corp holds in the system as well, since they may as well while waiting for the tower reinforcement timers and skipping them can leave a feeling of a job unfinished. Evictions are a major undertaking, requiring the attacker to bring enough force to bear to overcome the defenders in the first place, to assault each of the defender's towers in turn, to forcibly take control of the system and all connecting wormholes, and then to maintain enough active pilots garrisoned in the defender's system to prevent attempts to bring in reinforcements or evacuate valuable assets. The garrison needs to remain attentive and in position for up to 36 hours or longer, and there has to be enough pilots available to handle whatever might come up. Once the reinforcement timer runs down, the attacker has to still be strong enough to defeat whatever final defense is mounted (if any), grind down the last HP from the towers, and destroy and loot whatever assets are left behind.
Invasion - Much like an eviction, an invasion involves planting a large force in an enemy system for a prolonged period; unlike the eviction, however, total destruction of the defender is not necessarily the end goal. Many invasions are done in order to force a large fight, with the invaders leaving (and the defenders functionally intact) once they are satisfied, although one group can also invade another just to make life hell for a while. Usually by that point, though, it's turned into an eviction instead.
The Stront Check - By far the most common, when one group is 'checking' another group's tower, they attack it and put it into reinforced mode. Strontium is the fuel that towers use to become invulnerable and reinforced - if a tower doesn't have any, it won't reinforce, hence the name. A stront check is often called for on towers that look weak or undefended but potentially full of valuables, or if an attacker is trying to apply pressure to another group in order to goad them into a fight. The biggest difference between a stront check and an invasion or eviction is that once the tower is reinforced they (typically) return home or go on their way - the attacker is not committing assets to a siege of the defender's system.
If I did not make a big enough point of it in my last blog, or up above, an eviction is a major undertaking and a pain in the butt, even for a major C5 or C6 wormhole alliance. Capital class ships are often required to perform a successful eviction in a C5 or C6 wormhole, but they can only be brought in intermittently; that also means they can not always be extracted in a timely manner. Even if an alliance has forty or fifty capitals in their home defense fleet, a dreadnought is a valuable asset and they'll want to maintain sufficient force in the defending hole after the eviction, long enough to escort the ship out. While the eviction is going on, a significant number of the active pilots of an alliance will be busy - there were times this last weekend where scouts found hostile forces in/near the home wormhole chains of Ragnarok or NOHO, but with the skeleton crews left behind they couldn't engage. That kind of deployment can leave home systems vulnerable, as well, bringing additional risk beyond the number of assets committed to the siege.
In short, nobody does an eviction just for funsies.
However, one of the best things about Eve is that people can do whatever they want; one of the things that makes w-space so great is precisely that everything can be destroyed. Nothing in w-space is safe. If someone is willing to put in the time and effort and can dedicate enough resources, they can blow up every single thing a corp owns in w-space; the question then becomes "What tilts that reward/effort equation from 'stront check them and move on' over to 'EEVICTIOOOOON'?"
Some w-space corps will say that is is an e-honor thing, that corps who fight are encouraged to stay while corps that hide are evicted. This is not true, though: granted, refusing to fight someone might piss them off, and pissing someone off makes them more likely to want to evict you, but any cause that the attacker feels passionately enough about is good enough for them. Ragnarok evicted the Goons from their hole because Goonswarm is a major Null Sec power. People have ended up on eviction lists for being asshats on the forums or on a podcast. Honestly, if someone decided they absolutely hated my fashion sense and wanted to evict me for it, they are welcome to try. The thing that matters is how much they care about it, and if they care enough about their cause to put in the effort.
While I am on the topic, this does lead me to something else I have been wanting to write about: e-honor. Bluntly, it doesn't exist and expecting other people to live by it leaves you open to be taken advantage of. Most of the corps I've met in w-space are, at the end of the day, pretty cool. Many of them are just out to have a good time. Expecting another pilot/corporation/alliance to abide by a set of rules that has not been agreed upon, though, will put you in a bad spot and if you get burned for relying on 'honorable conduct' you'll have nobody to blame but yourself.
That may sound harsh, but w-space is a harsh environment. You can count on yourself. You should be able to count on your corp mates. You might be able to count on your blues, be they in your alliance or just diplomatic friends. Anyone else is someone you are competing against, and is a potential enemy, no matter how friendly they may be. Instead of expecting someone to follow a set of rules that you may or may not have told them about, be practical on the matter. Expect them to behave in a way that they have acted in the past. Alliances and corporations like having their reputations; for example, I would expect NOHO to honor a ransom request, because that's something they are known to do. If someone from SSC offered me a spot in a roam and told me they wouldn't attack me, I would trust them - I've seen that behavior from them in the past. I myself try to be extremely trustworthy, but it isn't out of a need to feel honorable. It's because people like other people they feel they can trust, and life is easier for me if people know they can take me at my word.
This also ties into the metagame - not the game knowledge aspect of the meta, but rather the people knowledge side of it. For anyone who hasn't delved too deeply into it, the 'metagame' refers to a number of things - the game beyond the game itself, knowledge of the game as a set of rules, the 'universe' of things that are Eve-related while not strictly coming from within the game client itself, and so on. When an FC is prioritizing targets and telling the ewar ships who to hit with what, they are using their knowledge of how people play the game in order to guess at what ships will be fitted what way and how they are flown, as opposed to basing it strictly off of what they can see in the present engagement. When a fleet engages in a fight that they should lose from a strictly by-the-numbers numerical standpoint, it is often because the FC believes they have a psychological edge over the enemy fleet - the knowledge of how people think and react giving them an edge. For example, a few weeks ago we rolled our home system's static connection and it opened up on a system with four battleships and a pair of basilisks running sites. I had three pilots available to me, so it certainly wasn't a fight I could take and win; one of our alliance members, though, urged me to ship up into a group of Talos battle cruisers and jump on the logi ships, because who would jump a fleet like that with only three attack battlecruisers? Ideally one of the basilisks would explode and the rest of the site fleet would attempt to warp off and away from the (non existent) remainder of our gank fleet, and we could point the last battleship to align for another easy kill. I love that sort of player versus player competition; where it isn't the amount of isk spent on ships or the age of the account that decides the outcome, but a player's skill at reading other players and predicting what they will do, and the player's ability to influence that reaction. I love my Stratios because it is such a versatile cruiser; it can be fit with guns, with neuts, with double webs or dual prop, and with the covops cloak on it nobody will know how I have it fit until I am on them. It's one of the reasons I am fond of the Gnosis, and weird things like the blaster naga or the armor/ECM drake - when you throw a curve ball at someone and catch them flat footed, you get to dictate the engagement.
With that being said, I personally feel that the benefits of being trustworthy are too good to pass up and so I leave my metagaming at the engagement level. I may bluff, posture, or feign weakness before an engagement to get an edge but if I say that, no, for real, my fleet has moved off of the wormhole and it is safe enough for you to jump through... then it has moved off, and it is safe enough.
Just don't expect everyone to play like that, though - anyone can do whatever they want in Eve, for whatever reason, if they want to put in the effort and don't mind the reputation and reaction it'll get from other players. And if you don't like what someone else has done, you are free to tell them as much, in whatever way you feel will cause them to listen.
Personally, I don't have any Causes in game that would incite me to evict anyone, nor has anyone pissed me off enough to get put on an eviction list - I just want to fly my ship through space, blow some people up, and hopefully be able to afford to replace whatever I lose.
o7
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
Evictions, E-Honor, and the Metagame Part 1: BeeGone
I got home from work early on Friday and began settling in. It was a typical late Friday afternoon/early evening, with a low logged in player count across all of New Eden and nothing going on in my home system. I had just decided to get started working the rounds for my CSM campaign, finding wormhole groups to convo and chat with, when I ended up talking on Skype with Corbexx (a fellow CSM9 candidate, from No Holes Barred, one of the larger C6 PvP alliances and noted WH mercs).
The wormhole CSM candidates and the Chitsa have been using Skype to get to know eachother and chat about the campaigns - one of the recent topics that came up was the relative quietness of most wormhole corporations operating in C1 - C4 space. There are a lot of corporations there, but many of them try to avoid notice - partly because one of the big draws of w-space is being able to do your own thing and ignore most everyone else, and partly, some feel, because they don't want to draw the attention of an otherwise bored C5/C6 corp that will evict them for 'something to do'. One of the things I have heard a few times as I made my rounds was "If they want more people in w-space, why are there so many evictions?"
The short version is that evictions are a huge pain in the butt and a logistical challenge, requiring an entire fleet to dedicate several days to sitting in one place camping a hole and watching a timer slowly tick down. Nobody is evicted just for funsies - usually, you have to really piss someone off to warrant a full eviction.
Usually.
I bring this up because, during our conversation, Corbexx asked if I had done an invasion. I hadn't. Being the nice guy that he is, he then offered me the chance to tag along with NOHO on the invasion they were doing that weekend, so I could have first hand experience. I asked if that was what Ian was asking about in game, and got a moment of silence. Followed by a "What?"
In game, a guy I knew from a C4 alliance (The Amalgamation Initiative) had convo'd me. "I'm with a group...we're evicting some nullbears... I'm not supposed to be very specific, but, it's a nullbear corp that's part of a major null alliance you would definitely recognize and probably wouldn't mind blowing up." I relayed it to Corbexx and he told me that, no, it wasn't his op... so I mulled over a few rumors I had picked up, and I had it. "Oh. You're evicting goons, with Ragnarok." "That didn't take you long. I knew you were resourceful."
It turns out there were a few events going on in w-space: NOHO had an invasion they were launching, Ragnarok was evicting their group, and I didn't get details but there was at least a third invasion going on somewhere. Busy! Corbexx came into the convo in game, and Dmitry and Borsek (both of Ragnarok) hopped in as well in order to share the details, and off I went to a C5 pulsar to join their party with my Vexor Navy Issue.
I picked up some drones for Dmitry on the way, and soon enough I was heading up chain alongside a crew from Dropbears Anonymous. On grid, a pile of Ragnarok Ishtars were busily chipping away at the POS tower's shields, and glancing through the Fleet list and the tags on teamspeak showed that we had a scattering of people from Quebec Underdog League, The Dark Space Initiative, and Red Coat Conspiracy as well. I launched my own bouncers and began orbiting the anchor, and listened to the chatter on voice coms. A couple of Naglfars had been spotted in the hole earlier before they logged, and the Goons had at least three Chimeras, with two of them currently logged in and piloted inside of the POS we were shooting. There were a few other active ships as well, and we watched them moving things about in the POS as Ragnarok began bringing large mobile warp bubbles and planting them around the POS.
Eventually, before the tower went into reinforced mode, the Goons made their move. The chimeras in the POS warped out to a second POS, the other Goon capital ships logged in, and their fleet warped back to the first tower. The Goons had four Chimeras on field, two Naglfars, as well as a few T3's and other subcaps in their POS.
The capital ships landed in one of the bubbles, and the FC began calling orders. We started attacking one of the carriers, and although we had two dozen Ishtars and nearly as many Navy Vexors the four Chimeras kept everything up. We did volley out a couple of the subcaps that came out to help pop bubbles, but it looked like the carriers and dreadnoughts would slowboat their way back into the POS. The FC called for the carriers to be driven apart, with two of them bumped into the POS shields to break their targeting and the other two pushed further away. We took out a couple of subcaps that came out and more or less ignored the naglfars, letting our speed protect us from their guns. Still, the carriers were only barely losing shields, and it looked like it would take the rest of the night to even drop one of them.
However. I had earlier heard someone on coms mention that they were talking with Sky Syndicate, and that Sky was getting staged in high sec. When the carriers landed in the bubbles Ragnarok sent word to Sky, and our backup came up the chain.
In the firm belief that there is no kill like overkill (and that four Chimeras in a pulsar would take a lot of killing) Sky Syndicate brought plenty of firepower. There were about twenty five Sky Fighters and a couple of guys from End of the Line, and with the extra DPS and the extra energy neuts they brought we started cracking the carriers. They went down quickly, and one of the naglfars as well - the second had made it out of the bubbles, and warped off to a safe. We cleaned the last of the Goons off of the field, and then...
Erm.
There was an amusing incident. Short version, Sky got more kills than the Goons did, but what is a little friendly fire between allies? Somehow the full blue list hadn't been propagated, and if someone isn't blue or purple they get shot. S'how things work out in w-space.
First day killboard: https://zkillboard.com/related/31002136/201404120200/
(Of special note: Nota Ero from RCC's Laser Ferox <3. Also, Sky was on our side. Honest!)
A video from Sky Syndicate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_SzZORYyWI&feature=youtu.be
("Bring me everyone." "Everyone?" "EVERYOOOONNNNEEEE!!!")
Some screenshots from one of the guys in our fleet: http://imgur.com/a/WUwqg
The chain had collapsed when Sky exited, so I reshipped in Jita (Burn Jita had been postponed for some reason >.> ) while Ragnarok scanned out a new one. I made my way to the new entrance, and I heard on coms that the Goons had tried to loot and salvage the field; Ragnarok picked off the few who tried, then finished reinforcing the tower and hit the next one as well. I got back into the C5, helped tear down the Goon TCU, then hooked up with the hole control fleet and spent the next couple of hours chatting and watching the entrance hole. I ended up crashing from exhaustion about an hour before downtime, but the Dropbears were still going strong and Dmitry himself had been mainlining Red Bull all night.
Real Life had me busy the next morning, and extended Real Life Drama kept me from getting back in as early as I had planned; when I got back home, I logged into the C5 to find that things had stayed pretty quiet, with the Goons attempting to plant a third tower and Ragnarok blowing it to pieces early in the day but little else of note going on. I got back into place in the hole control fleet, and settled in to chill for the next twelve or so hours.
There were a couple of false alarms with new signatures showing up on the combat scanner, usually members of the Ragnarok fleet logging in, although at one point we jumped on a Caracal as it logged in - it was a prior owner of the wormhole that wasn't part of Goonswarm, and we escorted him to the exit without explosions. At one point, the Goons did try to get an orca to a safe spot and cloak it up in order to save some of their loot, but our combat scanners were on the ball and the guard fleet dropped onto the orca as it landed on grid.
https://zkillboard.com/detail/38151094/
Eventually I ducked out for dinner, came back to find things much the same, and the hole stayed relatively quiet until Sunday.
Nota's Laser Ferox, providing entertaining colors for the fleet to be hypnotized by: http://imgur.com/a/IUtB0
(Not my pics, from a reddit post)
On Sunday, as the towers neared the end of their reinforcement timer, the last active Goon in the hole began self destructing the nicer ships left in the POS and pulling the shinies off to take to safety in his cloaky, interdiction nullified tengu. Dmitry and the Goon bantered back and forth a bit, but eventually the tengu slipped off to a safe spot, the towers came out of reinforcement and were destroyed, and things were looted. Except for one of the Ship Maintenance Array wrecks that a friendly blew up. There is, apparently, ALWAYS things blowing up that shouldn't be exploded. :D
I should also mention at this point that one of the Quebec Underdog League scouts who had been with us Friday had been popping about on Sunday; there were a couple of times where his cheetah warped through, to calls of "Who's that Cheetah?! Is he blue??" and reassurances that, yes, QUL was with us it's cool. At one such surprise drop in the Cheetah did get pointed and its shields scratched, but damage was stopped before anyone even tagged armor.
This is important because, after the event was over and most of the Dropbears had made it out to k-space, QUL brought a fleet through into the C5. The hole control possee was taken aback and not sure how to respond... after all, we had been bashing the POS with them just the other day. We started asking what they were doing on coms and seeing if anyone knew what was up when they began locking our ships and blowing people up. I made it out, but only just; my poor Vexor Navy was quickly dropping through armor as my microwarp drive pushed me out of point range and I warped back to Ragnarok's staging POS.
Things were looking tight - most of the fleet was gone, down to twenty or so Ragnarok Ishtars, two or three Vexors, and a scimitar or two against an equal number of 100mn tengus and a squad of basilisks. We did have a chimera that had dropped from one of the Goon towers, and we fitted it up; the two naglffars that had been brought in on Saturday to help DPS the towers were brought online at our POS as well, but we knew the Goons still had at least two chimeras and a naglfar of their own (we had reason to believe that QUL was working with the Goons), and the FC suspected that QUL had a blingy carrier in the system as well - their C6 had been connected to the C5 (it was how Ragnarok got in) on Friday.
We warped the carrier and our drone boats to the hole at 100km, with the naglfars in reserve to counter escalate if the other capitals showed up; as it turns out, though, we didn't need to bother. Sniper ishtars are nuts, and any time QUL started closing the distance they came within drone range and began taking heavy damage. We evaporated a blackbird and a cruor into space dust, while the QUL tengus were beefy enough to shrug off the initial vollies and retreat back out of range; they dropped combat probes and for a little I thought they might warp off of the hole and then try to drop on us to reduce the range, but they ended up retreating back through the wormhole instead.
We moved our drone boats up to get optimal range on anyone coming back through the hole, and then warped the orca (full of Ragnarok's loot) onto the static; while we had the advantage at range, going after the tengus at point blank on the other side of the wormhole would be suicide. The orca jumped through and back, closing it off and shutting the door on QUL, and then we scanned out the new chain and I made my way home.
All in all, the weekend had a couple of fun fights, and a lot of time spent staring at d-scan and guarding a wormhole, chatting with other fleet members to stave off the boredom. Evictions are a pain in the butt.
Here's a write up from BBP, one of the Dropbears: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bravenewbies/comments/22yrvq/operation_beegone/
I've got another post cooking, with extended thoughts and musings, but egads this is enough typing for THIS post.
o7
The wormhole CSM candidates and the Chitsa have been using Skype to get to know eachother and chat about the campaigns - one of the recent topics that came up was the relative quietness of most wormhole corporations operating in C1 - C4 space. There are a lot of corporations there, but many of them try to avoid notice - partly because one of the big draws of w-space is being able to do your own thing and ignore most everyone else, and partly, some feel, because they don't want to draw the attention of an otherwise bored C5/C6 corp that will evict them for 'something to do'. One of the things I have heard a few times as I made my rounds was "If they want more people in w-space, why are there so many evictions?"
The short version is that evictions are a huge pain in the butt and a logistical challenge, requiring an entire fleet to dedicate several days to sitting in one place camping a hole and watching a timer slowly tick down. Nobody is evicted just for funsies - usually, you have to really piss someone off to warrant a full eviction.
Usually.
I bring this up because, during our conversation, Corbexx asked if I had done an invasion. I hadn't. Being the nice guy that he is, he then offered me the chance to tag along with NOHO on the invasion they were doing that weekend, so I could have first hand experience. I asked if that was what Ian was asking about in game, and got a moment of silence. Followed by a "What?"
In game, a guy I knew from a C4 alliance (The Amalgamation Initiative) had convo'd me. "I'm with a group...we're evicting some nullbears... I'm not supposed to be very specific, but, it's a nullbear corp that's part of a major null alliance you would definitely recognize and probably wouldn't mind blowing up." I relayed it to Corbexx and he told me that, no, it wasn't his op... so I mulled over a few rumors I had picked up, and I had it. "Oh. You're evicting goons, with Ragnarok." "That didn't take you long. I knew you were resourceful."
It turns out there were a few events going on in w-space: NOHO had an invasion they were launching, Ragnarok was evicting their group, and I didn't get details but there was at least a third invasion going on somewhere. Busy! Corbexx came into the convo in game, and Dmitry and Borsek (both of Ragnarok) hopped in as well in order to share the details, and off I went to a C5 pulsar to join their party with my Vexor Navy Issue.
I picked up some drones for Dmitry on the way, and soon enough I was heading up chain alongside a crew from Dropbears Anonymous. On grid, a pile of Ragnarok Ishtars were busily chipping away at the POS tower's shields, and glancing through the Fleet list and the tags on teamspeak showed that we had a scattering of people from Quebec Underdog League, The Dark Space Initiative, and Red Coat Conspiracy as well. I launched my own bouncers and began orbiting the anchor, and listened to the chatter on voice coms. A couple of Naglfars had been spotted in the hole earlier before they logged, and the Goons had at least three Chimeras, with two of them currently logged in and piloted inside of the POS we were shooting. There were a few other active ships as well, and we watched them moving things about in the POS as Ragnarok began bringing large mobile warp bubbles and planting them around the POS.
Eventually, before the tower went into reinforced mode, the Goons made their move. The chimeras in the POS warped out to a second POS, the other Goon capital ships logged in, and their fleet warped back to the first tower. The Goons had four Chimeras on field, two Naglfars, as well as a few T3's and other subcaps in their POS.
The capital ships landed in one of the bubbles, and the FC began calling orders. We started attacking one of the carriers, and although we had two dozen Ishtars and nearly as many Navy Vexors the four Chimeras kept everything up. We did volley out a couple of the subcaps that came out to help pop bubbles, but it looked like the carriers and dreadnoughts would slowboat their way back into the POS. The FC called for the carriers to be driven apart, with two of them bumped into the POS shields to break their targeting and the other two pushed further away. We took out a couple of subcaps that came out and more or less ignored the naglfars, letting our speed protect us from their guns. Still, the carriers were only barely losing shields, and it looked like it would take the rest of the night to even drop one of them.
However. I had earlier heard someone on coms mention that they were talking with Sky Syndicate, and that Sky was getting staged in high sec. When the carriers landed in the bubbles Ragnarok sent word to Sky, and our backup came up the chain.
In the firm belief that there is no kill like overkill (and that four Chimeras in a pulsar would take a lot of killing) Sky Syndicate brought plenty of firepower. There were about twenty five Sky Fighters and a couple of guys from End of the Line, and with the extra DPS and the extra energy neuts they brought we started cracking the carriers. They went down quickly, and one of the naglfars as well - the second had made it out of the bubbles, and warped off to a safe. We cleaned the last of the Goons off of the field, and then...
Erm.
There was an amusing incident. Short version, Sky got more kills than the Goons did, but what is a little friendly fire between allies? Somehow the full blue list hadn't been propagated, and if someone isn't blue or purple they get shot. S'how things work out in w-space.
First day killboard: https://zkillboard.com/related/31002136/201404120200/
(Of special note: Nota Ero from RCC's Laser Ferox <3. Also, Sky was on our side. Honest!)
A video from Sky Syndicate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_SzZORYyWI&feature=youtu.be
("Bring me everyone." "Everyone?" "EVERYOOOONNNNEEEE!!!")
Some screenshots from one of the guys in our fleet: http://imgur.com/a/WUwqg
The chain had collapsed when Sky exited, so I reshipped in Jita (Burn Jita had been postponed for some reason >.> ) while Ragnarok scanned out a new one. I made my way to the new entrance, and I heard on coms that the Goons had tried to loot and salvage the field; Ragnarok picked off the few who tried, then finished reinforcing the tower and hit the next one as well. I got back into the C5, helped tear down the Goon TCU, then hooked up with the hole control fleet and spent the next couple of hours chatting and watching the entrance hole. I ended up crashing from exhaustion about an hour before downtime, but the Dropbears were still going strong and Dmitry himself had been mainlining Red Bull all night.
Real Life had me busy the next morning, and extended Real Life Drama kept me from getting back in as early as I had planned; when I got back home, I logged into the C5 to find that things had stayed pretty quiet, with the Goons attempting to plant a third tower and Ragnarok blowing it to pieces early in the day but little else of note going on. I got back into place in the hole control fleet, and settled in to chill for the next twelve or so hours.
There were a couple of false alarms with new signatures showing up on the combat scanner, usually members of the Ragnarok fleet logging in, although at one point we jumped on a Caracal as it logged in - it was a prior owner of the wormhole that wasn't part of Goonswarm, and we escorted him to the exit without explosions. At one point, the Goons did try to get an orca to a safe spot and cloak it up in order to save some of their loot, but our combat scanners were on the ball and the guard fleet dropped onto the orca as it landed on grid.
https://zkillboard.com/detail/38151094/
Eventually I ducked out for dinner, came back to find things much the same, and the hole stayed relatively quiet until Sunday.
Nota's Laser Ferox, providing entertaining colors for the fleet to be hypnotized by: http://imgur.com/a/IUtB0
(Not my pics, from a reddit post)
On Sunday, as the towers neared the end of their reinforcement timer, the last active Goon in the hole began self destructing the nicer ships left in the POS and pulling the shinies off to take to safety in his cloaky, interdiction nullified tengu. Dmitry and the Goon bantered back and forth a bit, but eventually the tengu slipped off to a safe spot, the towers came out of reinforcement and were destroyed, and things were looted. Except for one of the Ship Maintenance Array wrecks that a friendly blew up. There is, apparently, ALWAYS things blowing up that shouldn't be exploded. :D
I should also mention at this point that one of the Quebec Underdog League scouts who had been with us Friday had been popping about on Sunday; there were a couple of times where his cheetah warped through, to calls of "Who's that Cheetah?! Is he blue??" and reassurances that, yes, QUL was with us it's cool. At one such surprise drop in the Cheetah did get pointed and its shields scratched, but damage was stopped before anyone even tagged armor.
This is important because, after the event was over and most of the Dropbears had made it out to k-space, QUL brought a fleet through into the C5. The hole control possee was taken aback and not sure how to respond... after all, we had been bashing the POS with them just the other day. We started asking what they were doing on coms and seeing if anyone knew what was up when they began locking our ships and blowing people up. I made it out, but only just; my poor Vexor Navy was quickly dropping through armor as my microwarp drive pushed me out of point range and I warped back to Ragnarok's staging POS.
Things were looking tight - most of the fleet was gone, down to twenty or so Ragnarok Ishtars, two or three Vexors, and a scimitar or two against an equal number of 100mn tengus and a squad of basilisks. We did have a chimera that had dropped from one of the Goon towers, and we fitted it up; the two naglffars that had been brought in on Saturday to help DPS the towers were brought online at our POS as well, but we knew the Goons still had at least two chimeras and a naglfar of their own (we had reason to believe that QUL was working with the Goons), and the FC suspected that QUL had a blingy carrier in the system as well - their C6 had been connected to the C5 (it was how Ragnarok got in) on Friday.
We warped the carrier and our drone boats to the hole at 100km, with the naglfars in reserve to counter escalate if the other capitals showed up; as it turns out, though, we didn't need to bother. Sniper ishtars are nuts, and any time QUL started closing the distance they came within drone range and began taking heavy damage. We evaporated a blackbird and a cruor into space dust, while the QUL tengus were beefy enough to shrug off the initial vollies and retreat back out of range; they dropped combat probes and for a little I thought they might warp off of the hole and then try to drop on us to reduce the range, but they ended up retreating back through the wormhole instead.
We moved our drone boats up to get optimal range on anyone coming back through the hole, and then warped the orca (full of Ragnarok's loot) onto the static; while we had the advantage at range, going after the tengus at point blank on the other side of the wormhole would be suicide. The orca jumped through and back, closing it off and shutting the door on QUL, and then we scanned out the new chain and I made my way home.
All in all, the weekend had a couple of fun fights, and a lot of time spent staring at d-scan and guarding a wormhole, chatting with other fleet members to stave off the boredom. Evictions are a pain in the butt.
Here's a write up from BBP, one of the Dropbears: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bravenewbies/comments/22yrvq/operation_beegone/
I've got another post cooking, with extended thoughts and musings, but egads this is enough typing for THIS post.
o7
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