Packing up my troubles... or not as the case may be

I've been doing a lot of soul searching as of late - the corp I've been with since I started in Eve, has changed, all the friends that dragged me kicking and screaming from WoW have all gone, or at least don't show their face anymore - all we are left with is a fairly hardcore group of about 8 pilots, and 3-4 newer players who thankfully log in almost every night.

With this in mind, I've been expressing my disappointment that we don't go looking for an alliance, if only to get more people to spend time with, but ultimately with a hope to get back out into 0.0. I had been viewing different alliances to make reccomendations as to where we could be looking, and waiting for the corp leadership to follow through the leads I provide.

It was during this time that I had gotten speaking to Intrepid Crossing alliance based in the drone regions, and upon speaking to their members, had an idea that if the corp were not going to commit to an alliance, I would prefer to rather leave than spend months more grinding missons for no benefit but an increasing wallet.

I wanted to get out into null space, stake a claim (or latch onto someone elses already placed claim via an alliance) and help defend and expand their space, which many believe is the main focus of Eve. I had struggled to find a corp/alliance that wasn't interested in anythng but my ability to PVP, and I'll have to admit that I'm hardly the most proficient at killing opponents, so a purely PVP focused group was out of the question.

One of the 'benefits' of the drone regions is that you get a lot of minerals from refining the drone alloys - the drones do not have any bounties, however so making cash is only as good as your refining skills permit - because of this, many 'pure combat' characters avoid these regions, but for me, a hybrid Fighter-Industrialst it seemed almost perfect - fairly competent at both aspects, it would let me kill enemies to hold onto space, and manufacture using my spoils of war in the downtimes using the more than ample supply of minerals that drone-killing would allow.

Actually converting that to Isk is a different argument (would have to get the equipment I manufactured back to empire to sell, as most internal manufacture in the region was handled by the corp industrial arm, which would usually provide things for free if the minerals were provided, so internal selling was out of the question) and one that among many other points eventually tipped the balance to make me reconsider the application.

I was wanting a corp that would allow me to make most use of my hybrid skillpoint spread, which includes exploration and invention, and whilst the corp within Intrepid Crossing did provide POS's for invention, further investigation into exploration within dronespace lead me to believe that this wasn't a very profitable enterprise (i.e. only drone parts and hybrid drone BPCs were available, but these didn't have much value) so that was beginning to sow the seeds of doubt in my mind.

After talking it through with the current corp, I found that whilst discussions with many alliances had stalled (typically people looking for pure pvpers or pure industrialsts) there are some discussions still ongoing about joining former friends a little closer to home in the Angels inhabited regions.

In the meantime, whilst nothing is finalised, I still desire to get back out and explore 0.0 again, so I may go on a pilgrimage into the lawless space once more, spend a few days here and there jumping around semi-friendly space, getting to know some of the locals again, and hopefully find a few occasions where battleships of the Angel Cartel can fall to my guns or missiles to help my wallet during these lean times of non missioninig.

... or I could fly 2 jumps from empire and get blown to smithereens by the first pilot I see, I suppose thats the beauty of it all.