Well, that was disappointing.

Got the message through today from CONCORD: The war with 'The Gentlemen of Low Moral Fiber' has been dissolved as they have not held up their side of the agreement - as a guess, they didn't pay the bill.

Aside from 2 seconds of them appearing in local on the first night the war was active, I had never seen anything of them during the entire war. Seems someone just wanted to burn a little bit of cash to waste wardeccing someone for a week.

Now though, back to business. The corp i'm in is a little in the doldrums at the moment, I'm racking my brains to think of some useful 'anyone can join in, newb or oldie alike' activities just to get the corp spirit back again, rather than sitting there grinding missions or building stuff all day and chatting.

Some things we have done in the past:

Corp Missioning nights (showing the lower guys what happens during level 4s, and earning them relatively megabucks in the meantime from their share in bounties)
Ice mining / regular mining nights.
Frigate wars - the general concensus from this was the newer players didnt want to join in because they worried they would be outclassed, but as one of our newer members ended up winning, at least we proved that wasnt always the case.

Is there anyone else out there who has any ideas a 'interesting and different' corp activities that even those without a specific skill set can get into? Ideally if it needs skills trained, they should be relatively quick to get (people can haul or mine decently for corp mining ops for example with 2-3 days training away from their preferred skill paths.

All quiet...

... on the northern, southern, eastern and western fronts. In fact, we haven't heard a peep out of our war targets aside from a 2 people warping in and quickly out of the system on the first night it was active.

That may be partly because we have been spending a lot of time in lowsec recently chasing down a few pirate corporations (well... not me, i'm out there at the moment because its the best place to get research slots, but i'm watching the action with interest since im running around in my covops ship and running intel) and I don't honestly believe our would-be attackers would ever dare go out to where they couldn't dictate the fights.

In other news, I've finally sold one of the covetors. OK, i'm not a billionnaire overnight (in fact I noticed my wallet drop from 1.05 billion isk down to 104 million over the past few weeks whilst I've been investing in starting up my production operation) but I've now got a few Tech 2 BPCs to produce, which is where the decent money is hopefully going to lie. I just need a few more days training to get the skills up to where I need so I can manufacture things.

Now of course, the main issue is actually getting the components to finish off the tech 2 manufacture - now that Jita has been effectively closed to all but the first few hundred pilots on every day, it would be a struggle to get the components at their best possible price - I may have to investigate some alternate locations over the coming days as I approach 'tech 2 go time.'

After that, I've been telling myself I'm going to spend some time working on my scanning/probing skills since they have been sitting there half finished for weeks, and I really need to get back to improving my combat effectiveness, even minor skirmishes against corpmates for PVP practice usually end up with me running the other way - of course, those guys are all 4 year or more veterans so I do have a bit of a skillpoint disadvantage, but on the other hand, its always good to learn by being thrown in at the deep end, it's how I learned to swim after all, and I haven't drowned yet.

War Update

So... the 'Gentlemen' have made their demands... pay up for a 'mining licence' or else we will get can flipped and hounded out of existence.

I wonder exactly what they think they are... self appointed privateers of the space lanes who have never even sniffed lowsec never mind lawless space perhaps... too scared to risk entering into space where anyone can have a go at them.

I'm at an unfortunate situation where a lot of my cash was tied up in my manufacturing endeavours - which unfortunately to say, aren't going exactly how I would have originally planned, theres no use predicting a 10%-20% profit when nothing is selling, but I suspected as much at the start, and perhaps 'pricing at usual price around the system' isnt the best method of generating sales, but on the other hand, to make anywhere near as much profit as can be made running missions, i'd need to start getting sales at those sort of margin levels... anyway I digress.

Where was I... oh yes... I'm skint in short. I've got capital tied up in dozens of smaller things, and It's leaving me a little short funded for this war. Aside from the fact that I don't risk my CNR during wartimes, which limits my ability to run missions for my corporations of choice since I don't have any other ship capable of running the highest difficulty missions, and buying a new ship, outfitting it and insuring it would be just about wiping me out.

So we have to be sneaky for this war. Not like we aren't always sneaky and do hit and runs when we need to do damage, and disappear when we need to regroup, but speaking personally, I cant afford to lose any big ships anymore at the moment, so I'm in Tech 1 frigates/cruisers again for this war... which compliments our attackers, as unlike the CE guys this lot seem to also enjoy the T1 disposable hulls during their combat from what I can see.

War... again

... but first a word from our sponsors:

Karox Enterprises is now in business, having reached the lofty levels of PE5, A fresh new batch of Covetor mining vessels has been placed on the market in the Heimatar region. Priced very competitively, with local 'within 6 jumps' prices, i'm sure theres ships will be very helpful for their prospective new owners. Please note warranty is limited - you break em, you keep em.

... and back to our featured presentation:

It seems that our combat abilities are back under the spotlight yet again. I'm quietly buzzing with excitement, because it gives me something to write about in here again rather than 'yeah I'm still training.'

We have been declared against by 'The Gentlemen of Low Moral Fibre' a 2 bit pirate organisation who seem to be relatively new to Heimatar/Molden Heath but have already made their mark by can flipping and ganking (in fact, their website takes pride in the fact that they will only accept those with a proven track record of can flipping, oh well, each to their own)

We should be at war around 6pm UK time, and whilst the war against Criminal Element was a fairly easy walk in the park wartarget wise (most of them appeared to be on American timezones play wise, so we only seen them for a few hours a day) these guys seem to be UK based - could mean we have more targets, could mean they camp us all day long and don't let us do anything... we shall see.

Invention success

Managed to take my first tentative steps into the world of Invention today - using a Hammerhead drone print.

It was a success !

So there we go, I'm going to stop inventing now when I'm on a 100% success rate just so I can buck the trend of failure after failure that seems to plague everyone else.

Tech 2 Components

...and the ever expanding list of skills required.

I decided to invest in a full set of researched T2 component BPOs to try and cut down the risk of carrying lots of pre-manufactured components around (plus the complex reactions seem much more universally available on the markets, albeit at a higher price, so that needs to be weighed up) only to discover that I would need at few more skills trained up to actually manufacture with them.

Ultimately these skills were on the plan anyway (eventually I wanted to get all the t2 manufacturing skills high enough to be able to build anything from a BPC - its just going to be a bit sooner than expected with most of the skills)

Thankfully they only need level 3, so thats less than 24 hours total training for each skill (around 45 mins + 3 hours + 18 hours) so it's not as bad as it could have been so my skill plan has been extended by around 6 days before i'll be T2 manufacture capable.

I'm now running down to around the 3 day mark on PE5 and another 5 days on Industry 5 but I can see the end of the tunnel now. Hopefully once PE5 has been completed, I can start making money with T1 manufacture, or at least help liquidate my mineral stocks at least, because I have a few hundred million worth of materials sitting in my hangar gathering dust. The main issue is actually having the manufactured parts sell, which is a whole different level of research I have to do to make sure im getting the most bang for my buck (so to say.)


In other news... hopefully soon we could be looking to return to 0.0, discussions are on the way with old contacts, of course, since I had the option of moving to the drone regions, I have been investing a lot in manufacture, so I need to maintain an empire base of operations, at least until theres the possibility of getting in on the 0.0 manufacturing market - but thats a little too high risk at the moment, as one bad gank could wipe out a lot of my capital if im transporting enough to cut down the number of trips to a mangeable amount, but theres the possibility of getting minerals out in 0.0 and manufacturing from a base out there as well as simultaneously making things in empire.

The possibilities are endless - I hope.

Friday morning update

Unfortunately not much to say today, but I'm bored at work so need something to bring me back from the doldrums.

Skill training is going fine at the moment, I'm now about 5 days 5 hours left to finish PE 5, so it's getting there rapidly.

I intend to carry out my first invention runs over the weekend (I spent the time I had yesterday visiting my research agents to give them their Tritanium gifts to boost their output for the day, whilst relieving them of any datacores they had researched for me to date) so it should be interesting to see just how many 'streaky failures' I get since that seems to be the general consensus on the forums, everyone seems to be failing invention attempts these days.

With luck by the end of the weekend I'll have a decent stock of Tech 2 blueprint copies ready for manufacture by the time I get the skills needed to produce them efficiently.

My mineral stocks are coming along great now, I could do with a lot more Megacyte since I only have a very limited stock at the moment, there is some available locally priced about right for my intended profit margins, but I need to decide if I will simply buy it now, risk the price dropping or raising before I can use it, and tie up yet more of my money in assets, or place speculative buy orders to see if I can get a decent deal since theres still around about a week before I'd be in any position to use it, and maybe about 2 weeks after that before my stock runs out and I need to resupply - and 3 weeks can mean a lot of price variations in Eve, especially on fairly low supply/high demand materials like Megacyte.

Another rule of hauling...

Note to self: 18 million units of Tritanium takes a long time to move, even when youre only going 4 jumps.


This post was brought to you by the wish that I had a freighter, or at least a rigged Bustard to use, but unfortunately training for Transport ships and all the glorius benefits they bring (i.e. not much, just a bit more cargo capacity) is now a few weeks off, once I've concentrated on a few more skills.

It's times like this make me wonder if im ever going to get any more combat skill improvements this side of Christmas... 2010.

Manufacturing - Progress update

I've not posted much recently, and to be perfectly honest, there's not been much happening - i'm at that awkward stage of any project where almost everything is in place, i'm just waiting for things (such as skills mainly) dropping into place to work.

Main progress updates as follows:

Materials - 300 Million isk in buy orders placed for common materials, as well as common loot drops at mission hubs for reprocessing. I've raised requests for corpmates to sell me their minerals at slightly higher than buy order rates (but lower than sell order rates) to help as well.

Skills - About 10 days from Production Efficiency 5. Need to get Refining 5 and then Refinery efficiency, as well as Industry 5. Metallurgy 5 is a lower requirement, but it is needed to carry out ME research on my Prototype Cloaking BPO which is needed to help reduce the costs of any Tech 2 items I may end up getting through invention (before I get Metallurgy 5 I plan to buy from the market if it is cheaper than producing with a 10% waste). All of the science skills that I need plus the encryption methods skills are at level 3 which is where I hope to be for starting invention, eventually these will be worked on as time permits.

Blueprints - Purchased BPO and researched for 4 items - Prototype Cloaks, Ballistic Control Systems, Hammerhead Drones and XL Shield boosters. All but the Cloaks have copies made, and the Cloaks are in copying, it will be 20 days to produce 2 Full-run copies. I intend to buy in BPCs of items that I can make a profit on in the market - first project is to manufacture Hulks - I purchased a 10 run Covetor BPC, with a view to selling 7, and using 3 runs to go into a hulk BPC. The seller of the Hulk BPC has been gradually raising the price of the BPC's though, so after this first batch, I may not bother looking into them again, as the profit margin is disappearing quickly - add to the fact that I lost all of the T2 components required for the first run of the Hulk after the suicide ganking incident, this means that after the first 'break even' run on 3 hulks (presuming I don't get ganked with the next set of 3 run BPC components) I won't have much of an option to make more.

Now presuming that there isnt a giant market crash (or alternatively, someone reads this blog and takes it upon themselves to undercut me now they know my plans) my foray into manufacturing should be coming to fruition sometime around the beginning of October and I'll see how long it takes to sell everything once they're listed on the Market.

The Cardinal Sin of Hisec transporting

Dont go AFK, even if its 24 jumps from Jita to go back to Heimatar.

Been buying some T2 components at Jita for my current T2 manufacturing mini-project im undertaking, which is to get some Hulks.

I had bought a Covetor 10 run blueprint, and a small selection of the T2 components needed for the Hulk itself, as they were much cheaper in Jita.

On the way back, I decided to browse the forums and check the blog pack for new posts (PS the websites coming along nicely Mynxee) when I swapped back to the screen at Hek only to be met by a blinding flash of light and a killmail in my inbox.

Seems I had been suicide ganked.

So theres a lesson to you folks out there, dont go AFK travel through Hisec even at the moment, seems that some people still quite like to suicide gank even if the payout they get is much lower than the value they could have ever gotten for their ship (by the way, is the 'no insurance for ganking' rule come in yet?)

The real annoyance was that I had gotten 20 out of 24 jumps along the route, and it was that last little step entering into Heimatar that caused the problem.

The kill was more an annoyance than anything earth shattering (means I've got to go out and get more stuff, so any hope of making a profit on this batch is well and truly gone) but thankfully the most expensive item, i.e. the Hulk BPC itself, was bought a bit closer to home in Eystur, didnt want to risk carrying that too just incase.

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.

Girls and Guys and Games

Theres been a little something ticking over in my head for a while, after the mention by Mynxee that she is starting up a female only pirate corporation, and thats of cross-genered characters.

I don't think theres a single man out there who hasnt made a female alt in some way or another in any game where you have the option of genders (not necessarily in Eve since all your are is a portrait, but maybe Ambulation will change that) with the argument that 'If im going to be staring at a character for hours at a time, I'd rather stare at something pleasing to the eye than a man's backside' - does the same apply to females?

I know in my more juvenile moments, I've made female characters in games like World of Warcraft and Star Wars Galaxies because some of the secondary requirements in those games are getting a character that looked good, and typically the female characters had better wardrobes than the men. I've picked female characters in fighting games because their 'ready stance' was frequently rather, ahem... bouncy and all the other reasons why someone picks a female avatar over a male one - but does the same apply for Females - do they go for the big buff male characters (or the gangly thin ones if thats their thing) because they like the look of em... or do they exclusively go for female characters ?

All of the women I knew who played World of Warcraft all went for female characters exclusively, and it seems that none of them wanted to play male characters at all. As with all games though, my sample size of people I was in regular contact with was only in the half dozen figure, so I can't say that its a decent sample to get a good idea, so im hoping the global pull of the Eve Blog pack can get me some more answers (even though it seems that theres even a lower female population playing Eve than WoW)

In a change to our irregularly scheduled posting...

... Something for the new guys out there.

There has been a few 'new to eve' guys join our corp recently, and whilst most of them joined slap-bang in the middle of the Criminal Element war (I know, dont take on unknown newbies during wars as they are probably spies, but these were friends of existing members), they couldn't do too much except fly frigates and tackle during excursions, so they spent a lot of time training skills when we were preparing to jump out of station, and flying when they could.

Most of them fall into the new player trap of 'bigger is better' and 'I have the skill to fly this ship, so I'll get in it' only to find that what they actually posess, if they dont have the correct support skills, is a few million tonnes of scrap metal.

I've made reference to a post originally by F'nog on the Eve Online Forums which details some very useful skills that all pilots should see about investing in, which will help fit tech 2 equipment, and bolster their basic skills at flying their prized buckets of scrap metal so hopefully they dont turn to scrap quite as quick.

Take a look and see if theres any other skills you would reccomend to looking into training.


Firstly - Basic 'all ship' skills:

Electronics (more CPU)
Engineering (more Powergrid)
Energy Management (more Cap)
Energy Systems Operation (Higher cap regen)
Long Range Targeting (target farther)
Signature Analysis (target quicker)
Targeting (target more things)
Energy Grid Upgrades (some very useful modules such as cap rechargers)
Repair Systems (don't have to pay to repair ships)

Defensive skills (priority on the specific type you tank with, but should invest in all due to the benefits if you lose your primary means of defence)

Shield Management (more shields)
Shield Operations (regenerate shield quicker)
Mechanic (more structure)
Hull Upgrades (more armor)

Movement skills - Not particularly important for a mission runner if they know what they are doing (and keep aligned, so do you dont have to turn from combat) but very useful in PVP

Navigation (fly faster)
Evasive Maneuvering (turn quicker)
Spaceship Command (turn quicker)
Warp Drive Ops (warp farther) - This is more useful for general day to day, not really combat-critical.
Acceleration Control (go faster w/AB/MWD)
Afterburner (go faster)
Fuel Conservation (use less cap)
High Speed Maneuvering (use MWDs) - currently almost a necessity in any form of PVP, not useful as much for the mission runners due to deadspace issues preventing use of MWD's

Drones Skills - Most ships can use drones to a greater or lesser extent, the ability to deploy 5 drones is always a bonus.

Drones (use drones)
Scout Drone Ops (use combat drones)

Combat skills (depending on your choice of weapon)

Gunnery/Missile Launcher Ops
All Support Gunnery/Missile skills (this is a catch all, theres a LOT of support skills, some are more useful than others early in the game)
Weapons Upgrades (improved CPU use)
Advanced Weapons Upgrades (improved powergrid use) - Not a priority for me, I've yet to find a ship which struggles with powergrid after Engineering 5, as long as you're fitting ship specific modules.


Add to that, your ship skill of choice to at least level 3 that the skill requires (i.e. so you get 3/5 of the bonus that your ship gets from its mother skill, levels 4 and 5 are where the training time starts to get fairly large) and you should have plenty to be getting on with.

The end of the war post

The end of the war caught us by suprise more than anything - it was 3-4 days before the renewal date that it was formally cancelled by Criminal Element.

Soon after, they seemed to join back up with Blackguard Coalition (where some of their members came from, and which they had links to, and who we suspected were funding the operation overall, because theres no way a 14 man corp could generate enough cash to fund the ship kills we had made when they spent all their time station camping us) and were gone just as quick as they had appeared.

I have to congratulate them in a way, they were civil during their losses, and they didnt mind to lose some very expensive ships (one, that wasnt our kill, but went to friends of ours who they wardecced as well was rated at around 2 billion isk, a very well fitted Machariel battleship) but we as a corp were always prepared for the long haul, having been in many wars of attrition in our time meaning we tire the opponents out by having them station camp us all day, strike fast when the opportunity arises, and do what we can to keep normal operations up at all times when we can.

As for me, it gave me a chance to bring the Navy Raven out of its dock, and continue to use it on missions, instead of a cheaper, more replaceable battleship or battlecruiser, and the added speed in completing the missions has been a refreshing change over the last few days. I've been spending the majority of the time getting my blueprints researched, training up the 'Research project management' skill to allow me to get more datacores for future invention use, and now 'all' I need to do is work on my production skills, as well as improve the science skills to high enough degree where I would be happy to use them - which is looking to be around 75 days of training or thereabouts - which is a long time to train when you aren't getting any more combat skill improvements.

As I've said before, the Eve universe is definately not for the short-term gain minded, it takes weeks of planning to get anything off the ground, at least anything thats worth putting the time in.

The building blocks of manufacturing - minerals

One question that I've been wondering about for a few days now i'm looking into manufacturing as an income stream - where do people get their minerals from ?

As far as I see it, theres 4 main ways of getting them:

1) Mining for yourself
2) Placing speculative buy orders at lower than sellers rates
3) Buying at sellers rates
4) Reprocessing item drops from missions

At the moment, i'm mainly doing 4) at the moment, I've been stockpiling minerals for a while, but as I'm trying to get away from doing missions as my main form of income, thats going to dry up if this goes well. 1) is a very slow option, and I can't imagine it will get enough solo to be able to cope with demand for materials in a high volume manufacturing setup - but when starting up, it's a great way of getting minerals, but I'd be wanting to work towards a Hulk ASAP, which is now a bit lower on my plans.

At the moment, I am doing number 2) - I have placed orders for about 80 million isk worth of materials at a major mission hub, hoping to get some of the unwanted minerals that mission runners get - problem is after getting about 0.1% of the materials in after a day, I realised a critical flaw in my plan - anyone who has bothered to train up refining enough to make it worth more than selling the mods themselves directly is probably stockpiling the materials themselves for their own use, and as such won't be selling the ground down items.

I may have to begin instead to place buy orders for the parts that are common mission drops instead and then reprocess them myself - problem with this of course is that because of the large number of individual items, I'm going to need a lot more training in my trade disciplines to be able to get enough orders out there to make it work - and then its a matter of managing all those orders to ensure that I'm competitive with the market rate so people will actually sell to me as well.

Ultimately, it seems the easiest way is to just buy minerals at the sellers rates, which are usually around 10% higher than the buyers rates, which directly relates to a 10% loss in potential profits. Is there anyone out there who does a lot of manufacture who uses this approach ? It seems self-defeating, especially with Tech 1 manufacture, where the profit margins are already razor thin in the first place.

Moving into production - continued

My industrial side has been well and truly let loose over the last few days. I'm going hell for leather to see about getting production started before the new year. I know its only August, but I worked out my training schedule, and uninterrupted (i.e. no more combat side of me gains) would be going until early November, and then theres things such as fitting in the time to actually research BPs and copy them, carrying out the invention on them etc as well as actually gathering the datacores needed and such, that all adds to the time that isnt exclusively waiting for that good old 'skill training completed' announcement.

I have identified 4 types of datacores I will need, with my chosen R&D corp (Core Complexion Inc) being able to supply 2 of the types - thankfully both the expensive ones I need, therefore I hope to get my Research Project management skill (still require to train Research V) up to at least level 3 so I can simultaneously use 4 R&D agents, selling off the excess datacores to fund the ones I need to buy features heavily in my plans - unless theres a major market blip and the expensive ones become the cheap ones of course, and well, that could be a bit of an issue.

I have bought the Data Interfaces I need (thankfully they are just the module data interfaces, so they set me back less than 10 million each) and I have trained level 1 in all of the appropriate skills needed, working from now on the higher level 3's and 4's i've got planned - I dont want to start researching and inventing until at least level 4 encryption and level 3 of the research skill (since level 3 is needed for manufacturing anyway)

I still need to rustle up the cash for the research project management skill (40 million isk - eep) as well as the blueprint for the cloaking device prototype (think that could be around 100 million, but haven't looked in too great a deal, cant afford it anyway at the moment, and its far enough back on my plans that it gives me some time to get the cash together)

I'm hoping that this eventually gives me a diferent income stream than what I've currently got, as missioning becomes very boring very quickly when everything becomes a walk in the park, and I don't have time to spend with all of the waiting around and baiting targets to move away from docking distance that is involved in PVP. I hope that a simple 'log in, set things away, come back in a few days, sell on the market' approach could be great to get income in so I can spend what time I do have enjoying myself and not letting the worry about how I'm going to fund my next ship loss be the overriding factor in the combat I take part in.

Getting into production

I've just spent 100 million Isk or thereabouts buying all of the appropriate research and production books for my future plans for Tech 2 production - currently looking at Drones and Cloaking devices as my main focus of tech 2 production.

Now I'm staring at weeks (perhaps months if I want to get the most out of the skills) of skill training ahead of me to get the the skills needed, and millions of Isk worth of saving up for a good mineral stockpile to make everything I need, get the blueprints needed, and buy things that I cant get easily (i.e. moon minerals etc) just so I can dabble in something to see if it provides a new insight into the game, as simply running missions all the time is boring.

At the moment, theres no solid plans within the corp to move into 0.0 space, though discussions are ongoing with alliances to see about getting involved with what they do to give us the much sought after 0.0 access we have craved for so long.

You can say what you want about Eve, but one things for certain, its the sort of system where you can easily chop and change from task to task in... that in itself makes it different to the rest, but it's incredibly frustrating to see a skill plan in front of you for weeks at a time until you think 'yes, I'm now ready to give this a go and be competitive'

Ship of choice

Question for all of those pilots out there in outerspace land - what type of ship do you prefer to fly ?

I'm not necessarily asking about a specific model, but more specifically, a category of ships - now I know each of the 4 races has a significantly different method of piloting their ships, so it may not be as easy a question as 'I like interceptors' for instance, but anyway, unless you want to be very specific, theres no need to be.

Personally, i'm a fan of small, fast ships - my PVP ships of choice would be anything frigate sized, either tech 1 or tech 2 varient, but at the moment I'm the most competent with the Caldari side of things, able to access all tech 2 frigates from their fleet, with Gallente frigates on the horizon, and Minmatar lagging behind (but on the other hand, I love the Rifter, though it doesnt seem to love me much based on the number I've lost)

I've recently been playing up to my drone combat strengths and started using a Vexor in the corp war, but thats only because there isn't a suitable drone frigate available at Tech 1. I do want to start working eventually on the Tech 2 cruisers and battlecruisers side of things, but I want to ensure I can properly field Tech 2 frigates for at least 2 races (including relevant Tech 2 weapon systems) before I move on and get bogged down in 'alternative routes' once more.

I am annoyed at just how easy it is to lose a tech 1 frigate in combat, and if the tech 2 varients are just as paper-thin then there could be a large cost to hit me even with the cheap individual price of each ship, if they die much faster than tech 2 cruisers and battlecruisers, it can mean a greater price overall.

The War - Week 3

Yesterday, we found that the war is again going to continue for another week. Our friendship with a local anti pirate corporation has not managed to diminish Criminal Element's resolve, even though we have achieved exceptional success in kills vs losses value.

Our simple 'hit and run' tactics are working well - gathering up a few systems out and then rushing in to engage as they bring their pilots to bear against our ships - of course this is counteracted by our opponents who almost blankly refuse to leave docking distance of a station, so as soon as they are attacked, they run with their tails between their legs - so much for the mighty wardeccing group who hoped for an easy few kills against a missionrunning corporation.

I must thank our associates however who have brought some much needed PVP experience to the table (faction warfare made us lose a significant number of our PVP minded members) as whilst we have 4-5 members who have a lot of experience fighting the various wars we have been a part of, the majority are simply mission runners caught up in game of politics that they would prefer to have no part of, instead training their skills and running missions until they get a few more months of piloting experience under their collective belts to allow them to participate more actively in the wars.

EEE Pc 901 Continued

Work up early to ensure I didn't miss the delivery guy so I could give my new toy a go as soon as I got it... but as per usual, I had to wait because he took forever to get here (ok... it was just after 10am, but when you wake up at 7.30 on a Saturday because the delivery is anytime between 8am and 6pm every minute seems to take forever)

Unpacked the EEE from its box and went ahead and carried out the installation tasks required, spent the next hour removing all of the dross thats installed by default, and then go around to Eve.

Im happy to say, that Eve works, I wouldnt say it was brilliant (the smaller screen makes everything very cramped, and when youre out in space, theres a noticable framerate drop) but it does mean that if push comes to shove, I've now got a fully mobile eve client that I can hold in the palm of my hand, so I can log in, change skills, maybe do some missions (not tried yet) but definately do travelling around, trading and mining.

Theres a photo comparison above of my main laptop (HP dv9000) vs the EEE 901 so you can see just how small it is... that tiny 10" screen has almost the same resoultion as my office laptop from work (1024x600 vs 1024x768) and although its small and cramped, everything is very visible.

10 Million skill points

Just a quick note for anyone whos interested, I've passed a milestone today, as of a few minutes ago, I broached the 10 million skillpoint marker.

It pales in comparison to some of my corpmates (35 and 64 million skillpoints they announced yesterday) but I'm happy enough as I am, even though I do occasionally kick myself that I didn't keep on training skills during my break, as I worked out that with my current skill training rate, I would have gained around 15 million additional skillpoints in my year out.

As you can see, my skillpoints are fairly clumped up to one end - drones as main offence with missiles as secondary, as well as shields and utility skills in the engineering/electronics category being high value skills for me, this betrays my joint Caldari / Gallante training background, with both a Raven and a Dominix being my weapon of choice for level 4 missions.

Considering that we are primary an industrial based corp (though its expanded to missions most of the time, with occasional PVP) it goes to show just how much my industrial side is lacking in skills as well, something I need to work on over the coming year.

Hope this has proved a usedul insight into the pilot side of me, and feel free to ask any questions, otherwise, fly safe and look after yourselves out there.

EEEPc 701 vs 901

Not sure how many people have heard of these little wonder machines from Asus, but I've been a proud owner of a 4gb EEEPc 701 now for a few months (i'm actually writing this post on it now) but try as I might, even though some people have managed to get eve running on one, i've been unable to manage it (think the in built processor on the linux model, which is hard to overclock, isnt up to scratch, it always crashed on the character select screen) whereas those who installed Windows on their machine, which had an option to do software based overclocking, worked well enough)

So I decided to splash out today on a 901 model with larger resolution, a faster processor (1.6ghz vs 900mhz) and windows pre-installed with a hope to get eve working on a truly mobile system (I've got a big HP laptop i'm using with a 19" screen which is sort of mobile, but I wouldn't want to try and cart it around with me too far)

With luck it will be here tomorrow, so i'll write about it if it works - or if it doesn't.

Just for anyone interested too, the war is still ongoing, but we have secured assistance from a PVP focused anti-pirate corporation who have counter wardecced Criminal Element, there haven't been many skirmishes yet (their war only activated yesterday) but we are all hopeful that with a fair bit of pvp experience on our side, we can bring the pirates to their knees.

War - An Update

Just finished from a pitched battle of our corp vs Criminal Element, where we emerged victorius - so far today we have killed 3 Tech 2 cruisters - 1 HAC and 2 Recons.

Kills vs Losses as follows to date:

Kills (Us vs Criminal Element)

Huginn
Lachesis
Vagabond

Losses (Criminal Element vs Us)

3x Rifter
Blackbird
Atron
Hurricane
Scythe
Megathron
Retriever
Falcon

Seems their highest success rate seems to be ganking our mining craft, but since the majority of our losses were recoverable through insurance, we arent particularly down cash wise, whereas killing 3 Tech 2 ships of theirs puts a significant dent in their wallet.

Our greatest loss was the above mentioned falcon, which was a shame, it was sacrificed to give a few more seconds to get the people in so we could get enough scrambling and webbing on their 2 Recons to prevent them getting away.

I dont think that we have lost any pods yet, could be wrong, but we have definately podded one of their pilots, so hopefully a major loss of Isk in implants too, but we will never know.

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.