Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas everyone, have a happy holliday and fly safe.

Oh Noes, how depressing!

I'm ashamed to write this.
Today...... I lost a Battleship..........To a lvl 4 mission.
It's the first time I've lost a battleship to a PvE mission, I've lost them in PvP but never to a mission.
It was Serpentis Assault, I fielded an Apocalypse class battleship, and it died, horribly in a fire.

I'm not even sure what happened, I'd just moved an old Apoc up to my primary agent and decided to do a mission before calling it a night.  I get "The Assault", check my hardeners and undock, I punch in the gate activation as I land and stuff started happening from there.
I lock up the rats, smallest ones first and start firing.  The destroyer dies in one volley, naturally, but my modules are stuck, I've had guns stuck in a few lag heavy situations before, but never in a highsec system with 77 people in it.
By the time my guns start cycling proper again, everything is on me.  The whole room aggroes for some reason and my tank is failing horribly, I'm pointed and my drones aren't killing the scrammers fast enough for me to warp out.
Apoc goes boom and I'm left staring at my wreck in disbelief.
I did fetch my trusty Megathron right after and headed back for some proper revenge on the Serpentis Corporation, but the damage was allready done.  I suffered a severly bruised pride and my ego took a serious dent.

First Battleship loss to a mission has now come and gone, fortunately, it was an Amarrian ship, I could not bear the loss of my precious Megathron.

On another note,  I've bought a Noctis and set it up for salvaging, was a little expensive as I bought it early, but well worth the investment.  I payed around 58 mill or so for it, but I don't forsee loosing them very often and I'd still have bought it.  I have to say, it's awsome for salvaging.
The tractor range, speed and salvage speed makes cleanig out a mission site a breeze, nothing to it, very little moving around and the increased cargo space you get is worth it by itself.
You can even pick up all the cap boosters and scrap metal without worrying about cargo space or docking up just to clear out the Destroyer.

Fly safe.

Incursions, part one.

Not had a chance to log in much these last days, been a little to busy with things, so today I was welcomed by a new and shiny log in screen.
Incursions has dropped it seems, or at least the first part of it.  I have to say again, I really like the fact that CCP decided to release it in stages with more of a "when it's done" philosophy rather then on time.
Seems there aren't too many drastic changes as of yet, the things I welcome from this first part is the ability to show probes on the overview, that's a long time coming in my opinion.  I never use the "unofficial" way to get them on the overview in the past, I wasn't sure if it was "safe" or not, but this new ability has great potential.

I'm also welcoming in the changes to various T2 ammo, and the rockets among them, or I will appreciate the rocket boost at least when I train up for them on Evv.
The Noctis is looking really sweet, but a little expensive as of yet, I'll either opt to grab a BPO or wait for the price to drop before I grab one.
Either way I'm gonna wait a little bit, I'm sort of asuming that the Outer Ring area is swarming with people right now, I'm also asuming they don't have my welfare in mind.

The addition of a Meta column on items also makes hangar/loot sorting a little easier, it's a nice touch.
Seems the "nice touch" thing is the thing of this first patch, several small things that are not revolutionary, but nice additions.  I will eagerly await the changes to PI, the actuall Sansha content and I'm really looking forward to having my SP from learning skills reimbursed.

Fly safe all.

Nerfing the Drake?

There's been rumors lately about some incoming nerfs for the Drake battlecruiser, pride of the Caldari Navy and cherished favourite of newbies and missionrunners everywhere.
Personally, I don't fly the Drake to often, Evoran has one Drake in his hangar set up for the occasional combat site or mission, the one time a year he does that stuff.  Evv flies armor, armor all the way, he's trained for Gallente and Amarrian ships and shield tanks are'nt really their natural element.  I have trained some shield skills on him recently though, but mostly just for the buffertanked speed/shield extender ships, and mostly just for the shield extenders themselves.  There should be no need to state that Evv does not fly shield tanked ships very often.
I do have some experience flying a drake, and my impression is as follows, massive and impressive tank, not quite so impressive DPS and it handles like a beached whale.  The Drake is in short a massive brick, and quite an impressive looking brick at that.  I do understand the appeal it has to missionrunners as it seems to be a very AFK friendly ship with a big tank, it's also quite an impressive ship considering that it does not take to long to train for.

Recently though, word has come in from the lawless regions of null security space that the Drake has become a very popular addition to alliance fleets.  So popular in fact that CCP is looking at nerfing it.
There are different reasons for the nerf, but the biggest one at the moment seems to be lag, or rather the fact that a hundred Drakes all firing missiles at once starts to create quite a bit of lag.
The popularity of the Drake in null seems to be much the same as in high sec, big tank, easy to get into, cheap and very replaceable, and excellent counter to armor HAC's.  Seems the the change of the old doomsday had some "unforseen" effects on warfare allowing for bigger fleets of smaller craft, along with the changes to the scanning system making it very easy to get hits on BS sniper fleets, the BS fleets are all but extinct it seems.  Armor tanked HAC's with logi and CS support tore things apart in nullsec for quite some time and then people started countering it with Drakes.  Why Drakes one might ask?  they are  a good counter to the AHAC's, they have huge buffers making it easy for Logi pilots to keep up, they have great alpha strike damage in a fleet of them, the missiles have great range and an easier time of hitting AHAC's then BS turrets have and they're cheap.  You can probably loose about four Drakes for every Zealot isk wise and in a war of atrition that accounts for quite an advantage.  You can also commit more pilots to a fight since you can get fresher pilots willing to loose a BC in your fleets.

Now, I'm not a fan of nerfing ships, people have invested time, money and practice in flying these things (whatever ships is the current big thing).  I think it's a little "cheap" to take this away from them and it's not like the Drake trains are some invulnerable death machine that can't be stopped.  This is EVE, adapt or die.

There are several ways, I've heard, of countering these Drake fleets.  Snipe BS does a great job of stopping them, disciplined AHAC gangs, Zealots in particular also rips through them in a lot of cases.  The point is that they're not invulnerable, instead of nerfing I think we should just sit back and wait for the mastermind FC's to come up with an effective counter to the whole problem.  I would certainly not be happy if a ship I've trained for, bought and fitted got nerfed because something that happened in a particular theater of war.
Either way, all you Caldari mission runners, now's your time to shine in the lawless lands of 0.0.  You're beloved Drake is no longer scorned and primaried by friendly FC's, imortality awaits you, take it.

Fly safe.

Skill Training Completed : Exhumers V

I'd say finally, but it's more been a case of not bothering until recently, I have however "finally" completed Exhumers level 5.  I trained it straight to 4 when I first trained for the Hulk's and it's just been sitting there ever since, it was only after my last skill completion that I decided it was about time to max it out, even though I don't mine as much any more.
I usually trade for my minerals these days, buy cheap, sell high or keep for production.  I've been making some decent money since I got my freighter and started some inter regional mineral trades, there are some good deals to be had out there if you look for them.
Can't say I really feel the difference of those last 3%, but I have been hitting some belts lately, zoning out to the "zen" of the strip miners humming.  Either way, it's a skill I feel I should have as a proper industrialist/miner.

I've also spent some time on SiSi with Evv these last days, testing out some of the sansha stuff, or rather getting me behind handed to me by the Sansha stuff.
I've been flying solo so far so I've not gotten into the sites, I did however head off to an invaded system with the intent to check the belts for the new residents.
So, I fitted up a Sacrilege, figured I'd want tank over gank if I wanted to see anything, tanked it up as best i could and set a destination for Lermireve.  The new journal page is rather handy, it shows you the invaded systems, effects present in the system, the influence ratio and buttons for easy autopilot settings to systems or staging systems.
I arrived in Lerm, checked the gate for nasty pirates, even though there should'nt be any, I'm paranoid, and was immediately greeted with the effects thingy on the left saying your tank, damage, and bounty rate sucks now.
I was however not intimidated by some lowly rats and pointed my noble Sacrilege to the first belt i could see.  There were several beacons in the system, but I wasn't stupid enough to solo warp in on them.

I hit belt and I'm greeted by 2 non descript frigates, a named cruiser and a named battleship.  I lock them all up and fire a volley off at the first frigate, asuming they're the ones that will tackle me I want them dead first.
The Sansha was not impressed however and within a few seconds I was jammed out by the cruiser and neuted dry by the battleship.  I did get another missile volley off at the cruiser between jam cycles, but a few seconds after that my tank was hurting bad and I had to bail out.  The Sansha means bussiness I guess.

Incursions should be very interesting and certainly make high sec a little less safe, I've heard rumors of Sansha gatecamps, but I've no idea if they will scram you or otherwise force a fight.  I do know that I will not be taking my freighter through invaded systems without a heavy escort.
I sure will try to check out the sites on SiSi aswell, and maybe even attempt to kill one of the things this time.

Very pleased that CCP pulled the release of the expansion, opting to do it "right" rather then on time, all in all it's looking pretty good as far as I can see.

Fly safe.

Empire wars, PI and other stuff.

I've bought a freighter, yay me.  I'm the proud owner of an Obelisk class freighter now, and have been for a month or so in fact.  I buy the freighter and three days later we have a wardecc on the alliance, good timing indeed.
Anyway, two wardeccs later, we had one declared a day after the first one expired, I still have my freighter and I'm eagerly awaiting the Incursions expansion.  The reason I'm so anxious for it is summed up simply with two letters. PI!!
I have three planetary colonies, they've been dormant for ages, I mean ages.  I've not had the will to keep them running, but hey, I figure I'm missing out on iskies here so I go to fire them back up just now.
I suddenly remember why they've been dormant for ages.
The amount of clicks needed to do anything is horrible, but I do at least get a yellow circle now on the ones that have been edited.  I've been promised a better PI system in Incursions and I really hope they deliver, cause I am missing out on iskies here and I don't like it.

Either way, lifes been pretty quiet here in high sec lately, haven't done much exciting things for a while.
Been finishing up on some industrial skills, getting my freighter, working up the courage to manage my colonies and thinking of trying my hand on T2 production.

Fly safe.

AUMIN heads into Low Sec.

Today, AUMIN had it's first roam into low security space.
The reason is quite simple, we want our pilots to get used to low sec, get used to fighting, used to operating as a fleet and used to dieing.  This is in the event of future war decs against our alliance, it pays to have pilots with basic grasp and some experience under they're belt.  Fun factor plays another role in this, it IS fun to go on a suicide OP into low sec every now and then, and who knows, you might learn something along the way.

The fleet started out pretty quiet, it was the first time I've FC'ed for the corp, second time I've FC'ed in my entire EVE career, so I opted for cheap T1 cruisers.  They're insurable, easy to replace, gives you great mobility and still offers a great bang for the buck damage wise.
Our little gang consisted of some Thorax'es, Caracal and a Blackbird for ECM support.

We roamed around abit in the low sec pockets near our home, but did'nt find much of interest, we also let several neutral targets go as we're not into pirating.  There was  few moments where a neutral Harb seemed to bait us into attacking, we did however not take the bait and headed on.  We also nearly jumped into a gatecamp out in the FW territory, but thanks to the scout we avoided any losses on said camp.

The we jumped into a system with several low sec status pilots.
We headed through they're system and was followed to the gate by a flashy Megathron.
We jumped though and decided to hold on the other side and fight no matter what came through.
Gate fires, Falcon de cloaks and heads back to the gate as he's locked, we don't get him bumped off and he gets through gate.  Gate fires again and a Myrm de cloaks, as we've decided to fight no matter what I gave the order to fire, fully aware that it was a trap.
Long story short, we hit the Myrm, get him to low armor and get popped as the trap springs on us, the point was to kill the Myrm before backup arrived, but unfortunatly we were unsuccessfull.

Still, it was a good fight, it was valuable experience for our gang and for me as FC, and when it was all said and done we got our pods out.  GF was exchanged in local and we headed back to our home system.

I can only encourage other industrial outfits to do this aswell, it's alot of fun and valuable experience that will come in handy several times in your EVE career.  You might even like it :)

Fly safe.

HULKAGEDDON Ends!!

And so, Hulkageddon ends.
I've played it smart during the event, like I usually do, and kept my expensive and easy to catch industrial ships docked.  Now Hulkageddon doesn't really hamper your way to make money, you just gotta look elsewhere.
I've mostly been doing missions, scanning various sites and traded, it's not to hard to get around safely in a Blockade Runner after all.
I don't mine that much these days anyway, rather relying on the market for my minerals, it just took a little more time then usuall to round it all up (blocade runners are great, but low on cargo space).

Been plenty of outlaws in my local though, so I expect a fair few people got caught out there, more money for the rest of us I guess.

Fly safe.

Alliance/Corp agression mechanics in high sec

Can flippers, suicide gankers and other thieves.
If someone steals from your can, it's theft and they open themselves up to fire from you and your entire corp for 15 minutes.  The rule applies to all forms of in-space theft, you steal, turn flashy to the corporation you stole from and risk getting shot for 15 min.
This is all well and good, CONCORD does not interfere with small scale theft, but you expose yourself to the risk of combat instead by doing it.  Now, we all know that most of the "thieves" are not very interested in the theft itself, but rather in baiting others into firing and thereby get the rights to fire back
Most of the "thieves" pick targets that can't beat them, in ships that can't even fight and fly something that can run if the opposition is harder then expected.  There's nothing really wrong with that I guess, not a fan of it myself, but it's allowed so it's fair game.

The problem I have here is the agression mechanics for alliances.
By attacking a person in an alliance, only the persons corp gets to fight, not the alliance as a whole.
This causes certain problems for alliances in high sec figthing off random people like canflippers.
We had a specifc incident a few nights ago, a can flipper went after a miner in the alliance, his corp was rather bled for people at that timezone however and he had little means of fighting back.
There were several alliance members in local eager to help though, I was out there with a few others trying to bait the flipper into agressing one of us, but to no avail.  The "thief" holds all the cards in that particular game, he can choose who, when and how to fight and by constantly harrasing one person, he's immune to harm from his alliance friends.

Yes, there's ways of fighting back, but they're limited, very cumbersome and sometimes costs too much (sec status etc)
The alliance can wardec the "flippers" corp, it only takes several days to do so and costs money, this flipper was in an NPC corp so it dont' work at all on him.
Suicide gank, possible, but you pay with your ship and your sec status, something that means little to some people and more to others.

It's EVE, I'm ranting, I know.
I just dislike a situation where several people who are "allied", officially, by game mechanic rules have to stand practically helpless in defending what is rightfully theirs.

End of rant.
Fly safe.

AUMIN sorta wins and joins an alliance.

War's over, lasted two weeks and there wasn't alot of fighting.
We had decided to fight this one out, but it seems the "enemy" hadn't, they stayed docked for most of the time and logged on less and less.  There were some fights, as described earlier, in the first week where we lost some BC's and cruisers, but traded it for "high value" targets and then it was over.
The motivations of the war decc puzzled most of us, they did'nt fight, the did'nt undock and then they did'nt log on anymore.  We all expected the war to drop as the first week ended, but to our surprise it was renewed.
We prepared ourselves for a new initiative from our enemy, but none came, their corp was pretty much dead for the enitre time.  People started dropping out as we progressed into the second week and at the end there was only two members left, neither logged on.
War dropped after two weeks and we were pretty happy with the outcome to be honest, we stood our ground and sorta came out winning.

The corp has now joined an alliance aswell and we shall see what the future has in store for us, hopefully good things, but it's EVE after all.

Fly safe.

War, again!! We killed someone though.

War has again been declared on the corpopration.
This time we decided to fight or at least try to fight off the Decc. I don't claim to be a very seasoned PvP'er, because I'm really not, but I know how to lock and shoot.

We had wartargets docked in Dodixie and several of us set up outside the station.  We waited around for a bit wondering if there was going to be any fighting, when suddenly 3 Battleships undocked.  We were a little surprised at first and our own force consisted mostly of BC's and cruisers, some Ewar and Logistics.  Scorpion, Apoc and Mael drifted down the undock pipe and we opened fire on the Apoc.  I know, Scorp should be primary, but hindsight is 20/20 and I was only jammed once from the Scorp.  Whether down to Scorp pilot or our own Blackbird I don't know.

Apoc was however steadily going down, but as he dipped into low armor he started suddenly shooting back up.  Neutral Guardian had undocked and started repping him.  I don't know if they used the neutral repper or if they just wanted someone to agress them randomly, but the guardian was fired upon and a Machariel undocked right behind it.  At that point we did'nt stand much of a chance.  The Mach chewed through my Prophecy rather quickly and he pounded the rest shortly thereafter.
We did kill the Apoc though, before the Mach could pop our small fleet.

I'm not sure if the Mach pilot was working with our wardecc'ers or not, as I said, the corp could just be looking for people agressing.  The Mach pilot did score a killmail on our WT's Mael which is why I'm wondering what actually happened.

Regardless, we learned a lesson and had a good fight, we also got a bit of PvP experience under our belt.
While we did loose most of our fleet to that Mach pilot we did bring down a WT Apoc so we did'nt exactly consider it a complete loss.  Fleet chat was full of reflection after the fight and very little resignation, instead of bad moods, whining and accusations we were examining the fight and what we'd done.  I don't think any of us have a lot of experience with PvP, but I'm still proud to fly with my corp and of their attitude after the fight.

Ninja mining wormhole space.

A while back I found a wormhole, I was out scanning with a friend, the system was quiet and the scan on the inside showed nothing, so we thought "What the hell, let's try".
We hopped inside and scanned for sites, plenty of sites showed on the initial one and we went for the gravimetric sites right away (or whatever they're called inside the WH's).
After narrowing one down we bookmarked the WH on both sides and went in for some cheap ships.
I opted for a Covetor, fully insured off course and my friend went in with a Prophecy Battlecruiser, we figured we'd play it cheap and safe since we really hadn't done this before and if nothing else the Prophecy has a good tank.

It was a fairly uneventful endeavour, which was just what we wanted really, a couple of sleepers spawned once in the belt and the Prophecy had no issues dealing with them.  We had a couple of safespots set up so we could warp between them if we needed to and we kept the scanner running the whole time.  My friend also warped around a bit and found nothing even resembling a PoS or any sign of humans, I stayed in the belt and mined Arkonor and Bistot frothing at the mouth from the mere sight of it.
I've not been to 0.0 for a long time and even back then I didn't stay long, didn't get involved much out there, I've spent most of my days in highsec empire regions and the sight of all this ABC ore was just to much.

The ABC ore presented a problem though, there was so much of it and it takes up a lot of space, I also wanted to grab as much as possible of it while we were out there.  I kept jetcanning and after a while I'd filled 4 full can's and we were starting to plan the logistics part of it.
My friend warped out and fetched an Itty 5 for the hauling, I Stayed in the belt with the scanner running and provided the "mobile" warp in point for the Iteron.
The station I was basing out of back then was in the same system as our WH so it wasn't a long trip, it did still take a little while to get it all out however and we weren't quite sure on how the collapsing wormhole thing worked either.  I've rarely felt so lonely in EVE as I did sitting in there, thinking about all the horrible things that would happen to my poor Covetor if someone jumped me or if the WH collapsed as my friend went out.  In the end though, no one jumped me, we got all the ore out and the WH didn't collapse until I got my non probe fitted barge out of there.  We did get quite a few hauls of ABC ore out of there which promptly went in to producing several Drakes.  Money was made and pats on the back was had for braving the dangers of unknown space, we felt pretty good about the whole thing to be honest.

Our little expedition back then has kept returning to my mind though, how viable is it to jump in, mine like hell and get it all out.  I have to say I'm not to fond of the idea of living in a WH, I like empire, it may be safe and cozy, but it's also very convenient.
WH has the ore though, the ABC ore, the same ore I really need for production and it's all there waiting to be mined.  So disregarding the idea of living in there and struggling with the logistical nightmare of PoS'es, manually collapsing WH's into other systems before someone else finds them and hauling everything back to empire from God knows what exit you'll find.  I've kept thinking about wether it's viable to just go in and grab what you can.

I'll need a fresh entry WH's that can take the mass of several hauler trips, I'll also need a quiet entry system to reduce the risk of others scanning for the WH's as well. I'm assuming populated WH's will have very few sites to mine and also be somewhat hostile, understandably, to someone coming in to mine or run sites.  Ideally there would also be a station in the entry system to reduce the travel time of haulers running the ore.

The operation would ideally consist of T1 ships, inferior to Hulk's in every way, they do have the massive advantage of being throw away ships and fully insurable.  The loss would be acceptable when/if something went horribly wrong.
A battlecruiser of something similar would be required for dealing with any spawns, again keeping it cheap and preferably a prober with a cloak scouting the system while the miners did their thing and in the event we'd need a new way out.

It seems like a possible operation, I'm not sure how viable it is though as I've not tried it with more then two people.  I'd also need to convince the other participants that it's a good idea, in the event of total failure however the ships involved would not represent a horrendous loss.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.  Braving new space is after all what EVE is about.
That and money off course.

Fly safe.

Eve Tribune Invention and T2 Production guide

Excellent read from the Tribune this week, if you're looking to get into T2 production you may want to give this one a try.
I'm considering taking the step into T2 myself, if nothing else just to try it a little and see if I can turn a profit on it, and I'll be sure to keep this guide close at hand.

Eve Tribune #17, Year 5 - An Industrial Guide to Invention and T2 Production

Where did all the belts go?

A long time ago, in a galaxy.......
Well, not that long really although i don't quite remember when this change went through right now.  There was a very real risk of warping to an asteroid belt and finding it empty.  You could find entire systems empty, only a few rocks left here and there, this was before the increase in high sec belt re spawn.
Miners rejoiced all over New Eden I guess, there would hardly be any competition over resources now, or rather competition didn't matter anymore.  There are many great and positive things about this, but I can't help thinking that it takes some things away from "us" as well.
Now, being a miner, and industrialist and a carebear, I should be happy about the change and not think thoughts like this at all, but where's the competition gone with this change?

There is no point in looking for "good" systems now, pockets hidden away from the pipes with good belts, private systems you spent days looking for.  These days you can just pick any old system with lots of belts, don't matter how many people mine there, the belts are back tomorrow anyway.
There are no empire wars fought over resources now, if an industrial corp is getting dec'ed these days it's most likely 100% "griefing".  That is a valid reason and tactic in it's own way, but it's a shame that we don't get the occasional war fought over actual resources and "mining rights", perhaps on somewhat more equal terms then the grief wars.

As stated above, I'm not much of a fighter, so me wanting a war might sound a little odd.  I would however be much more inclined to fighting with whatever I had against another industrial focused corporation to increase future profits or to protect a valuable system.  In the same way I'd also be more inclined to spend money on mercenaries to further the same goals.
Now, one can say that you can have all this, everything mentioned above, just move to 0.0.
I don't want to move to 0.0 right now, I like my empire life as it is at this time, I'd just like it to be a little more dynamic then it is right now.
The occasional fight over something that mattered to me would be a lot more fun then getting dec'ed by someone you can hardly fight, seeing as I have nothing to gain from fighting either there's little reason to undock at all.
Maybe we would get more "carebears" strapping guns on their ships if there were more reasons for doing it.

This could just be and most likely is wishful thinking, chances are that the state of affairs would be the same as it is now.  Stay docked, no reason to fight anyway.
Speaking from a personal point of view though, I'd be much more inclined to training for a little combat and even fighting a bit if I knew a tasty system with lots of belts where on the line.  Throwing those nasty strip miners out of my system so I could strip mine it instead would be a nice motivator.
Maybe Tyrannis and PI will bring something like this in, I'm not sure quite how the planets will work, if there's limited resources and if they're worth fighting for.
I would certainly find it more interesting if small wars broke out between industrial corporations/their Merc's for control over particularly valuable planets in a system.
It would certainly create a better contract base for High sec mercenary work as well.

The more probes, the better.

I've only done some minor industry this weekend, with the war going on and all I've been waiting on a few jobs to come off the assembly lines and adjusting a few market orders, pretty quiet.
My AF training finished though and I immediately set out to buy and fit an Ishkur Assault Frigate, it's a blast flying the thing.  It handles very well, tanks well for a frigate and even with my sad gunnery skills it still does good damage on account of the drones.  I've been ripping through some low level missions for a little standing with the stations i usually reside in, I'm rather impressed with how well it does.  Good looking as well, I've always liked the Incursus model hull.

I've mostly been doing exploration this last week, been taking my Helios out quite a lot looking for sites of various value.
It's been a good week, I've found several Radar site (think they're radar at least, don't remember right now) containing several datacores, some skill books and other stuff.  I'm sure it would bring in quite a lot of ISK if I sold it, I've held on to it in case I need it for some future build jobs though, there's some BPC's for named items residing in my BPC can requiring several odd parts like that.  They've been lying in there for ages now waiting for me to get around to building them, "slither" blasters amongst other things, I don't even remember where I got them.
I'm not the quickest scanner, my exploration career started with the change to the new system and it's not a skill I've refined and practiced for long.  I do get by though, I have moderate scanning skills now and a rigged Helios which certainly helps out on nailing the signatures.  I have also decided that more probes is better, five probes at a time is my preffered number.
Drop one or more probes to cover all the system celestials, find some signatures, then dump a probe on top of one with four others overlapping around.
There are some duplicate signatures at times, I'm not sure if that's due to the number of probes I'm using or not, but I usually nail the signature in the end and within reasonable time.

The war dropped on saturday so I'm still red until sunday afternoon, but I'm glad it ended so quick.  No idea behind the motivation of it or why it was dropped so quick, just glad I can revert to normal operations again.

War, again!!

Well, as I write this the corp/alliance I joined is heading into it's second war declaration within a month, 12 hours from now I will be flying red again.
Not much to do I guess, after all I did join a bigger outfit to get more activity, careful what you wish for I guess.
I don't terribly mind flying under a war decc, I got my routines for it now, the do's and don'ts, it's mostly the inconvenience of it all.

Ceasing all normal operations, reverting to cheaper ships, mostly focusing on station trading instead of mining and hauling.  I'll be the first to admit, I don't undock a lot during a war, I feel I have little to contribute with my combat skills so I stay docked.  I guess that denying the enemy the entertainment of cheap, free kills from me is a little contribution in itself.  Should I log on and find a CTA being issued I'll grab what I can and help out to the best of my ability though, gotta give something back to the people around you after all.
Fortunately I'm set up with most of what I need for the impending war and I have some experience in avoiding bad situations, I just hope I can stick by it yet again.

Probably gonna be a quiet week for me coming up then, some asset management, should give me time to do some market research again too, find me some new stuff to trade in and supplement my current list.

Undock only if you must.
Fly cheap and light, don't haul big stuff.
If it smells like a trap, it is.

I'll come out on the other side of this one as well, after all, this is EVE.

Rifter Drifter » Blog Archive » ECM For Dummies

Rifter Drifter » Blog Archive » ECM For Dummies

This isn't normally something I'd be interested in, but you never know when you can contribute a small measure to a wardecc.
This is by far the "best" ECM for dummies guide I've seen around, big thanks to Rifter Drifter for bringing this one up.
Enjoy the read.

Blasters, what's that for?

I was looking at my skill tree recently wondering what to do next, I've just completed Mining Director rank 5 and didn't have a clear plan of what to do after it.
Most of my industrial skills are perfectly fine for what I'm doing at the moment, my support skills for flying the hulks and the Orca are also pretty all right for now.  It struck me though, training a few basic combat skills might not be a bad idea, I need to get some missions going for standing increase after all and the courier stuff is just killing me with boredom.

So I started looking at combat missions, and some nice ships to rip through them with to get some basic standings up, always nice to get better refining yield and evading those pesky tax collectors.
My gunnery skills are awful, as are my missile skills so that kinda rules out dedicated gunships and missile boats.
My drone skills however are pretty decent, seeing as I tend to rely on drones for protection in the barges and the Orca, so why not go down that route.  I'm already a proud Gallentean so drones should be a very natural form of combat for me.

Looking over my skills again I quickly realized I'm only missing Mechanic to 5 in order to train for assault ships.  I already trained Gallente Frigate to 5 for the Cov Ops frigates, so that bit was sorted, I also need mechanic 5 for various industrial skills eventually so I figured I might as well get started on it.

As for now, I've decided to train up the mechanic skill and buy an Ishkur, it looks like a pretty good ship.
Nice tank, big dronebay, decent speed and not as reliant on gunnery skills seeing as the drones does the dirtywork.
I've also gone and bought me a Navy Vexor to play around with and I have to say, that's one fun ship.
Expensive for a cruiser and to be honest a normal Vexor would have done just as well, but I sorta like the paint job on it and the low slots are awsome.

Just hoping I don't loose them both due to fetching coffee in a mission site or something.

Evoran Shin.

Settling in.

I've had a few days to settle down in my new corporation now, getting to now a few of the people and the routines and such.
I have to say I'm so far very happy with my decision in leaving my independent corp behind, becoming a grunt again and just doing my thing.
I've also participated in a mining op with the corporation with the intent of producing ships for members and I have to say it was an enjoyable affair to mine in a fleet again.  I'll give you as much, mining can at any given time only get so interesting, it's refreshing however to mine in a fleet as opposed to alone, breaks the monotony.

I've also resumed my old business of ship production, focusing mostly on a few cruiser hulls and a battleship hull, business is good.  Looking for a new goal, something small to work towards or branching out my current business, I've contemplated getting into some T2 ammo production.
I've not run any numbers on it yet, no research, just a thought for now, it does seem a lot less intensive then full scale T2 ship production though.  Ammo should also have the benefit of higher turnover.
I'll probably hold off any new ventures in preparation of Tyrannis though, I'm guessing I wanna get in on the planetary action as soon as possible and I've no idea what kind of money or time that's gonna require yet.

A New Beginning

After a recent return to EVE after a short break due to real life circumstances, I've decided I need to make some changes to my in game life.
EVE is an MMO and as such is best enjoyed playing with other people, before my little break I was sitting in a small corp I started a long time ago with the intent of making it the next high sec industrial powerhouse.
Powerhouse was somewhat optimistic and it quickly ended up being me, a couple of friends and a precious few random recruits coming and going.

I decided I wanted a little more out of the game this time, both in and out of New Eden, so I remembered this little blog account I had and thought I'd jot down some words every now and then.  The life of a high sec industrial carebear, albeit not tremendously exciting might after all be worthy of a mention and if nothing else, it might add another dimension to my own playing.

The other thing I quickly set out to do was finding a corporation of some size.  I didn't want a corp that was to big, getting lost in the numbers right away ain't fun, but rather some smaller sized corp with a goal and some growth.
I faced the dread of the spam channel (recruitment channel) and browsed the forums until I found something that looked promising.
Not to big.
Part of an alliance.
Clear goal and equal mindset.
Teamwork and few "mandatory" ops, respecting real life.

After hopping into their public channel and having a few chats with the members and directors I decided to make the plunge.
I was strangely hard to close up my affairs in the old corp, even though it clearly wasn't what I wanted at this point in time, it was still somewhere I'd spent a lot of time and effort.
I transferred CEO, closed down my hangars, rounded up assets and started the move to greener pastures.

And here I am, new corp, new space, new ores to mine and new friends to make.
I'm feeling pretty good about my choice and I'm looking forward to what lies ahead again, instead of just the daily grind I used to be in.