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.