War - The First Night

The first night of the war was fairly uneventful - no one was willing to trade the first blows.

Unfortunately, me in my wonderous sense forgot to set my clone skills away early enough so I had to wait around 30 minutes from the start of the war to get my next clone available (so as to protect my implants during these war-times) which meant that I couldn't take part in any of the events of the first night.

It was typical things - 1 of their ships sitting around outside base acting as bait with 2-3 others on scan in a safespot (probably aligned for immediate warp in) along with possibly another 2-3 stealthers either at the base or at the safespot. The bait ship was unwilling to engage even when we had pilots buzzing around it - so much for the big bad corp who declared war only to sit there inactive when we presented targets.

Anyway - in the end we got bored and sprung their trap - we only had time for 1 major skirmish for the evening, so we gathered at our own safespot, and engaged their bait. Immediately we were engaged by a Typhoon, as well as a Falcon, and 2 stealth bombers, and 1-2 other ships I can't remember at the moment.

The Megathron who attacked the bait ship was immediately locked, and as our other pilots headed in, they found themselves Jammed by the Falcon and unable to assist. The falcon pilot was smart, they were over 150km from the main combat, so we did not have the time to catch up with him to do any serious damage before our pilots were jammed and unable to target anyway.

In the end, we lost the Megathron, no major loss due to insurance, but it provided us a wonderous amount of intel on the pilots and their combat methods, which can only help to serve us in the future.

As for the reason for the war - it seems to be purely financial, probably extortion in the end. They refused to tell us the reason for the wardec unless we paid for it. Ultimately, whilst we can very likely lose a fair few ships to this war, we are only fitting inexpensive modules, and recovering the majority of the cost of the ships from insurance, so our enemies will soon learn that it costs a lot of money to keep a war active, with the hope that it costs them a lot more than they make - every PVP victory for us will be a major blow to their finances as they are using some very expensive fitted ships, whereas we will lose next to nothing, and their loot from any of our deaths will not pay much towards their costs of maintaining the war never mind recovering the costs of any lost ships.

Should be interesting to see how the next few days pan out.

War !

Woke up today to see a nice message waiting for me on the internal corp mail : Criminal Element [ATLAR] has declared war, hostilties can begin around 10pm Eve time.

This should be interesting - we always seem to attract the attention of war dec corps, not sure if they see our 'we run missions and are industrialsts' type bio and think we are easy pickings, but we've sent many a pirate corp scurrying back to home base with their tails between their legs.

Been spending the last hour or so buying some disposable ships for corp mates and generally getting prepared for the combat... should be an interesting week, definately spice things up more than blindly running missions again and again for the Republic Fleet.

No doubt you will hear more as it happens.

Time to begin some research

Just a quick post to let anyone know who is interested - managed to get the appropriate standing and skills for research via Core Complexion Inc. and now I'm currently sitting back letting my lackey... erm research team leader compile me stacks of information on Quantum Physics.

Ultimately I want to go into production of Cloaking devices since I dont believe theres anyone in my current corp who can produce the Tech 2 varients of those, but in the meantime, I'm happy to stockpile the research to give me a nice head start whilst I try and get the appropriate skills and the equipment needed to look into the invention system.

Trying to make my way back to 0.0 (slowly)

Back before I left, the corporation I am in was part of an Alliance (Electus Matari) which had links to U'K alliance (Ursha Khan I think, I'm going off memory here) who had an outpost by the name of Unity in 9UY system in Providence.

Since I came back to Eve I've since found that we left the alliance, and Unity station was captured by CVA alliance, now called Deliverance Reclaimed, and with it, my access to 0.0 was removed as we are no longer under the flag of any local alliances in the region.

Now I'm busy checking around trying to find the local alliances in the various regions around where we live and seeing if I would be welcome to roam around their space and get back into the swing of things. I'm having trouble of course finding out this information - once I get through the lowsec dangers of Molden Heath, I wouldn't want to end up in the Great Wildlands and podded by the first Foundation pilot I ran into.

The strategic maps are proving to be quite useful for this, but of course, the sovereignty of the various regions around the Minmatar space border leading into the drone space is a bit varied at times (look at the big wars list on the map, everyone seems to be fighting everyone around that area trying to claim dominance) so at the moment it seems to be more 'every man for himself' around there, though I'm sure experience will say otherwise.

Now the problem of course is that I could quite easily apply to a local alliance subcorp and presuming that I'm accepted, would have at least some access to 0.0 but I don't want to do that - I've been with my current corp since I first joined Eve, its from a set of both RL and Online friends who I have known for years through various games and whilst we do expeditions into lowsec, we don't particularly have any alliance contacts in 0.0 that I know of.

Is there anyone out there who has any experience about personal affiliations with 0.0 Alliances, what seems to be the best course of action to prove the 'I'm not a spy, just wanting to look around and fit in with the crowd' without leaving a long standing group who may not share the same point of focus as you do at this time.

When I left, I was just beginning to explore my 0.0 career, learning the fun intricacies of PVP and being more active in an Alliance, and now, its all been taken away again and I've got to start from scratch learning the ropes once more.

The Eve Online Blog Pack

I've recent poking my nose around other blog sites in Eve to try and garner what other people feel about the game, and came across a project which seems to be headed by CrazyKinux (of 'The Drone Bay' podcast fame) who is trying to get a lot of Eve bloggers together into some sort of semi-coherent community.

I couldn't help but jump at the chance to be featured, so got in contact and managed to get my name added to the list.

I'm going to poke around this blogging stuff and try and sort out what I need to do to get up to date feeds from the other blogs on the list, but in the meantime, I'll refer you back to the original post on CK's blog which lists all the current members.

I'm sure you will find something on there to tickle your literary tastebuds no matter what your preferred activity in Eve.

You can access the original Blog Pack post at the following address:

http://www.crazykinux.com/2008/06/eve-online-blog-pack.html

Brainstorming Names for ships

I always struggle to think of really good names for ships - I used to name a lot of them from old references to old games I played (I even have some ships named after the Ultima Online dungeons from 5 years or more back) but I'm trying to focus more on generic naming in the future.

I was suddenly hit with a moment of inspiration - I'm going to call my Covert Ops frigate 'Cognito'

That way, when im cruising around space cloaked up looking for interesting things to spot I can be flying 'in-cognito'

The Permatanked Raven (Hybrid Passive a go-go)

I've been playing around with an interesting new setup where I honestly can't remember where I first saw it, but made me realise that I was not doing something really obvious, and you know... it might just work.

That little thing was offsetting the cap recharge of my Raven battleship by using Capacitor Power Relays (the one that reduces the boost amount to provide a large capacitor recharge) to allow me to permanently run my shield booster.

I was obviously a bit perturbed about reducing the effectiveness of my main form of damage mitigation (my XL shield booster further reinforced by a shield boost amplifier) but by taking a 20% approx cut in shield booster effectiveness I could run the booster permanently, thereby allowing a much more resiliant overall setup (I previously used capacitor booster charges to offset the capacitor drain for high damage missions where I needed to run the booster a lot, which meant that a lot of my cargo hold was dedicated to cap booster charges, and even then I only had about 20 minutes of sustained shield boosting, this is usually enough to see the mission through, but the price soon began to mount up at around 3,000 isk per cap booster charge.)

First tests were a bit disapponinting, I arranged for a corpmate to come along and go full fire on me, with a Navy Raven of their own, 7 missiles going against my weakest resist (EM, which even though I was using invulnerability fields, were only providing around 48% resist) stripped my shield bare in about 1 and a half minutes. Definately resigned this to the 'not for PVP' school of thought - add in the possible ways that capacitor can be drained in PVP and the very delicate balance of regen vs cap use is skewed in the wrong direction.

However, this setup absolutely shines in a few level 4 missions I have tried - I never dipped below 95% shields at all during the 2 missions I have had a go with - 'Massive Attack' vs Serpentis (using racial shield hardeners) and 'Silence the Informant' using a generic hardener setup.

I did have to go out and invest in a Caldari Navy Shield Boost Amplifier which greatly improved my shield boost rate to offset the reduction from the Cap Power Relays, but that was 'only' 77 million, which should be possible to make back in less than 5 missions, and saved me the equivalent of 15 days training to be able to use the advanced tech 2 shield boost amp which I was sorely lacking in my setup.

The Caldari Navy Raven has been a significant investment, but it has been well worth it to date, with luck this stalwart of battle will serve me well in the future.

I'm like a kid at Christmas

As you can probably gather, my training in Advanced Electronic upgrades has now been completed, so I'm looking into what I need to know to begin piloting the Covert Ops classes of ships - I always love getting a new toy to play with - not quite as fun as my brand sparkly new Interceptor I got a few weeks back (1 careful owner... erm... me) but I'm sure it will become a very useful ship for my various trips in and around the more disreputable parts of space.

As well as this, I decided to splash the cash and look into a whole new plaything - a Navy Issue Raven. Now... even though I am Caldari by birth, my reputation with my former bretheren is a little... strained lets say. I fly with the Gallente and the Minmatar as a rule, and that in the eyes of the Caldari is a bit of a no-no.

My relationship isn't strained as far as they would shoot me on sight, I try and remain civil enough to be able to fly around in their space without getting a Navy entourage following me around, but working for the Navy itself and getting to be known well enough that they would sell me a Navy Raven is a little unrealistic given my reputation.

So instead, I need to buy one from the various privateers who work on behalf of the Navy and sell on their spoils to the highest bidder.

Thankfully I found one not too far from Minmatar space (around 25 jumps or so) for a very reasonable price - 420 million Isk. Quite a large chunk of change for a single ship, and my single largest expense to date, but worth it, I hoped.

I flew out and via a middle man, arranged to view the ship, and arrange ownership transfer. Thankfully my time spent at the Republic fleet had earned me a pretty penny, after all, the Minmatar were always under threat from the Serpentis and Archangel corporations, and I was paid hansomely to pit my skills against their better pilots, so whilst purchase of the ship cleaned out my reserves, it was finally mine, and I was relishing a good chance to take it out and see what it could do.

Unfortunately, the 25 jumps back to home back scuppered any chance of doing anything too productive on the evening of collecting the ship, so instead I took her back to my home hangar, and reviewed the needs for fitting her to the best of my abilities. Spent the rest of the evening finding the right modules and fittings from the various markets around Heimatar and Molden Heath so she's sitting there in my hangar, all brand new and sparkly with a camouflage finish which dictates her Navy background.

In the coming days I will test to see just how she handles in a firefight.

Phew...

Less than 1 day until Electronic Upgrades 5 has been finished training, and I've already penned down my shopping list of the next skill books im going to get, currently sitting at 10.

I know theres always room to better yourself, but theres just way too much choice in the different skills you can look into.

Fly safe, and hopefully if i'm in my covops, you wont see me soon.

Please tell me i'm not the only one...

No... its not a cheesy line from the chorus of a romantic song... its Eve... and specifically, skills within Eve.

I'm sitting here with 7 days (and 7 hours) on the clock for Electronics Upgrades so I can get my CovOps ship skill trained, and I'm just running that number over in my head... thats 1 week, 1 whole week of not gaining any more skills, sitting static and unable to progress.


I dunno... maybe im just impatient (ok... no maybe about it, theres a lot of skills I want to try and the timing of them is a constant irritation) but now i'm into the stage where i'm training levels 4 and 5 on the rank 2-3 skills as pre-requisites for others, the timers just keep on adding up - 5 days for level 5 on a rank 1 skill is bad enough... but 10... 15... 20... it's driving me mad.

Going to expand my repertoire a little

Anyone who knows me for more than a few hours will soon find out just how... I dunno... variable I can be with my interests.

I find it hard to stay focused on one main goal, and want to experience a bit of everything.

Unfortunately, Eve isn't really a game designed around that (specialisation is the key) but I've never let that be a good excuse to stop me.

So at the moment, as well as my listed goals earlier (a decent mission running Raven, Covert Ops ships, and an Exhumer) I've also decided to train up industrial skills to manufacture, and train up the required skills for R&D agent use, with a view to getting in on the act with the invention system.

Its a long slow grind getting these bits (manufacture is almost pointless without the production efficiency skill to level 5 to remain competetive, and working up access to a worthwhile R&D agent requires running missions for the parent corp as with getting access to any decent level 4 agent requires) but it's all intended to bring my main income stream away from doing purely missions, as that gets old very quickly.

Watch this space, i'm sure I'll change my mind again tomorrow.