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.