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

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

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

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

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/)

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