One pod a day keeps ship twirling at bay

I did it, you’ve most likely done it, everybody else too. You log on one morning, thinking of looking up a few things, and you find yourself twirling your ship in station. We’ve all been there at some point in time, not tired of the game, but not wanting to do what we usually do, which in my case was missioning. It’s normal, it happens in every game, but at least in Eve, there is always something new to try, and that’s where it shines.

I found myself in a bit of a down a few months ago, tired or doing the same thing, tired of seeing the same people and wanting to try my hand at something new. PvP had never been my thing up to this point, but I was yearning for some pew pew on something (or someone) that would be a challenge. I joined up with a corp that specializes in empire wars and so far, I haven’t seen much action due to my lack of logging in during summer time and because the few times I did log in, there were either no war targets online, or no pvp ops going on at that moment. Although I haven’t seen much action, the knowledge I’ve learned has been invaluable and I think that this is something that will serve me well in my future endeavours. As of this writing, I have only 2 kills on Epsilon that happened when I was in fleet. I would have liked to add more, but the simple fact is that you can’t really solo a battleship in either a frigate or a cruiser, and since this is all my opponents are flying, it leaves me with little to no potential victims. On the skill front, I’ve just finished learning evasive manoeuvring V, which will allow me to fly interceptors in a few days. I’ll be learning what it implies to be the tackler, and hopefully add a few kills to my name.

As far as the main is concerned, I’ve been running missions whenever I can in order to be ready for when patch 1.5 hits the server. I have a decent stock of salvaged materials, which will allow me to make small and medium rigs about 1 week after the patch. Not only that, I have also started specializing in medium hybrid turret so that I can fly a thorax for some pvp fun with the rest of the corp. I have about 15 days left for the fit I want to try. If I was intelligent (read: patient), I’d wait an additional 17 days to learn thermodynamics, which would give me the ability to overheat my guns, but since we mostly fly in small fleet, I don’t think that would give me such an advantage, or it’s not worth it atm. Our alliance has had an influx of new corps joining us, and a fw of the new guys invited me on a roam to null sec. It was for shits and giggles, but I’ve got a few kills under my name now and I’m really starting to dig pvp.

What about you, what have you guys been up to?

New Experience

Well, Things have finally started heating up on Epsilon’s End. You have to understand that this character is an alt of mine with which I will be exploring the darker side of Eve. What does this mean you ask? Let me tell you. As of a few days ago, I have now joined a corp that specializes in Hi-sec wardecs. My main’s corporation, being a PvE Carebear corp, has been on the receiving end of a few of those already, and I wanted to get a feel for what it was to be on the other side. And to be honest, for a first op, I’d say it’s equally boring on both end.

I joined their corp on saturday after reading their recruitment thread in the forums. Seemed like a solid corp and their description was very much to my liking. Barely a few minutes after I had joined up, they invited me to join them for a fleet practice. Saturday was spent doing that with them, learning the ropes so to say.

I logged in sunday to see what was happening and to say hello to the new corpmates. Apparently, the second wardec had been fully approved by concord, and since the first corp we wardec has apparently gone missing, we decided to try and give it a go on these new guys. One thing I learned is that a lot of preparation goes into wardeccing a corp, carebear or not. I’d never thought it would be as intense as it is, but a lot of people have alts scouting the systems where the players from the wardecced corp hang out, so we know roughly when and where they are. Players of targeted corps are identified well before the war is declared so that our guys can know in advance their usual haunts and gather intel in the process. In any case, we put a small op together on sunday with about 12 of our guys and tried to bait them into fighting us. We sent a team of 3 in a system where they had 3 players already. We figured we might be able to coax them into attacking us with a bit of smacktalk (the word of the day kids is “Ho’ card”) and a show of equal force. Of course, being the fair players that we are, we had a team of 9 other players in the system next to theirs, all aligned to the gate and ready to pounce should any action come our friends way.

After a long, long, very long, wait of 2 hours, we made a mistake. One of the guys in the other systems called that he was attacked by one of them, so we all jumped in. Of course, he hadn’t shot him so we wound up showing all of our forces on a small mistake. Not to be deterred, we decided to camp their station for a couple of hours, therefore making their day about as boring as I found mine. The conversation on vent was pretty funny, but after a couple hours, it grew stale. In any case, I think we may have proved a point. For sure, they now know we don’t mind camping them, have the willingness to do so, and will do so until we get our iskies. Either that or they know we have a shit load of time to waste. Pick one.

On the skill front, I shall soon be able to fly a Blackbird, which should make me much more of an asset in pvp situations. While my little punisher “Paper Mache” may be able to kill another frigate piloted by a newb not looking at his screen, it will be nice to complement the more experienced players and have a fun time of it.

Fun in Holes!

Live and learn or so they say. Yesterday was filled with new experiences for me, some good, some bad, but lots of laughs were had and in the end, it’s all that really matters. ME and a few corp mates ventured into our first wormhole yesterday, filled with elation and fully expecting to have some fun. Of course, hilarity ensued.

I logged in yesterday morning to change my skill and talk to some people in the corp. I have been in some form of slump or however you say that lately. I will log in and find myself ship twirling more often than not. Our corporation’s player base consists mostly of mission runners and industrialists and things have been pretty quiet lately on all fronts. I took my raven and headed out to do some missions while drinking my morning coffee. I must not have been completely awake because I didn’t read the mission description and didn’t go to eve survival to check the details, because I blew up the one ship I shouldn’t have blown. So I found myself with roughly 30 adds, webbed, scrambled and just generally expecting death. Roughly 130mil down the drain. Not to expensive by some people’s standard, but a very decent chunk of my wallet was taken off.

Current daily loss: – 130 000 000

I logged in on vent to talk to some friends and when I joined the channel, the conversation was about scanning and the proper way of doing it. Over the course of the conversation, one of our guys found a Wormhole and the call was made to assemble a fleet and head into it. It had been the first time in a while I had been really excited and I jumped in my nearest ship, a Harpy Assault Frigate, and headed out to join the friends. I would’ve gone in something bigger but I didn’t have another Raven at hand, so had to settle for the AF. We all met in the Ori system, in Tash-Murkon, talked a few minutes about fittings and what we thought we could expect and then headed into our the Wormhole.

Our fleet was comprised of 2 Battleships (Ravens) with shield tanks, and 2 Assault Frigates ( 1 Harpy, 1 Hawk). As I said, we had never been in a Wormhole and didn’t know what to expect. Our first encounter went fairly well. We found a spawn with 2 cruisers and 4 or 5 frigates. We dispatched them in short and a second spawn popped with 2 cruisers, 2 frigates and 1 battleship. Man, do these things hit hard! Again, we dispatched them with ease. Of course, being the retards that we are, none of us had brought salvagers, so we just looted the can and moved on to the 2nd site we’d found.
We cleared this one as well and with the exception of the 2 battleship’s on the 2nd spawn, we did well again.

We decided to head out to empire space to modify our fit and get ourselves some much needed salvager, since we’d all heard that the real money was in salvaging. When we got back, we could tell that the wormhole was getting smaller, and the description said so, but we decided to head anyways. That’s when it got funny. So we headed back out to the first 2 spots we’d found earlier to salvage the wrecks. Nothing wrong so far. We took a few minutes scanning another site and once done, headed for that new one. I never realised but I warped in first, and here’s what must have gone through my character’s head at the time.
Ouch, ouch, pain, more pain, ouch, blinding light, boom.

Maybe not in that exact order, but close enough. Being in the tiny frigate I was in, it took roughly 2 shots and I was in my pod. 3 Battleships, 2 cruisers had targeted me the moment I had landed and I couldn’t do anything. My friends landed and at that point, dealt with the threat while I watched (take note of that, I know I did) and proceeded to loot the wrecks and cans. We discussed going further, but I had been on scanning duties and we were out of a scanner so we decided to head back out. I got to the wormhole last and I saw my friend go through it…and I guess you can figure out what happened. The wormhole disappeared in my face and I was left alone in the wormhole, in a pod, with no way to get killed. I learned that a pod doesn’t come with a scanner, cheap things that they are.Vent was roaring at that point with no one laughing harder than me. I proceeded to self destruct my pod and got a quick trip through the clone vat express. Of course, I lost all my implants in the process, putting me way more in the red than before. So, let’s see where we are now.

Current daily loss: Raven 130 000 000
                                       Harpy 50 000 000
                                       Implants 32 000 000

We talked a bit about what we’d thought of our first foray into wormholes and decided to head back out later that night. I decided to build myself a passive drake, a ship with which I’ve had much success in missions in the past, and which I thought was a good platform for NPC’ing. We gathered again in the same system, this time with 2 battleships, my drake, and a buzzard for probing and salvaging. It took us a solid hour to find a wormhole and get through it. We scanned a couple more sites, bookmarked them, and then proceeded to clear them. At some point, we got a spawn that we couldn’t handle, in a beautiful site with roughly 20 cans to hack in. the first spawn consisted of 2 battleships, 2 cruisers and 5 frigates. We killed the first battleship but when the second one died, it triggered a second wave with 3 Battleships, 2 cruiser and 4 frigates. Add to that the remains of the first spawn and we were in trouble. My friends in battleships warped out easily, but of course, when it was time for me to warp out, I had 5 frigates on me scrambling the ever living shit out of my navigation system, which resulted in another decent explosion. Again, laughter ensued.

We went back to the original entry point to find that it had collapsed. Our prober spent the next hour trying to find an exit which, ironically, was in our home system. So, for the final tally we have:

Total Daily Loss: Raven      130 000 000
                                   Harpy        50 000 000
                                   Implants  32 000 000
                                   Drake         65 000 000
                                  ––––––––––––––––––––
                                                       277 000 000$

That’s right folks. My first foray into W-space cost me all in all 277 million isk. Not the best of day for my wallet, but oddly enough, I couldn’t care less. Had I lost that amount of ships in missions, I would’ve been furious and yet, with the amount of fun I’ve had, I consider it a fair trade. I’ll leave you with a list of things to consider if you head out to a wormhole for the first time.

- Always bookmark the original wormhole once you get inside, and warp to a planet and make yourself a Safe spot.
- Bring salvagers. We spent a very short amount of time actually making money and we still ended with roughly 25kk in loot and salvage.
- Jump clone before heading out so that you don’t loose valuable implants. Thank god I only had +3 installed
- Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, has to have a probe launcher installed
- Bring a Towel.

Empire of Memory

They called us heretics. They said we were inciting rebellion within the empire, a plague to the faith and  a threat to the way of life of all Amarrs. The Empress herself, who once called us her chosen, now looked at us with revulsion. She asked my father to reconsider his ways so that they would more closely align with what faith thaught us but he refused, holding fast to what his heart told him to be the true path.

My father believed we, the Amarr, had lost our ways. He was convinced that, over the years, the faith had been twisted to suit the needs of the wealthy and powerful, that it was a perversion of it’s true form. While he upheld most of the tenets of our faith, his views concerning slaves and the rights granted to them, or lack thereof, were far different than the one written in the original Holy Books.

Our Fiefdom was situated in the Kor-Amoz solar system on planet XVI. It covered 15% of the planet’s surface, with lush forests and rivers swarming with fishes. I can still remember the view of the rising sun from my balcony, on the north side of the palace, it’s light creeping from behind the Sehmyr mountain range, a halo of pink clouds covering it’s tallest peak. I recall vividly the survival lessons with Ashakor, the old minmatar living with us on the estate. He was an old slave that my father had taken a liking to and had moved to our house so he could teach me the skills needed to survive in the wild should anything happen. He had been part of the fleet, taken as a slave after his battleship had been crippled by an amarr laser.   I cared for him very much and i believe it was mutual.

I also remember the view from my room as beams of light pierced teh night sky, setting ablaze everything they touched. There was a sort of of terrifying beauty to it, and i was mesmerized by the spectacle, until i heard the first screams of the dying. As graphically advanced as we are in this day and age, technology will always fall short of the visions the mind can conjure. I was frozen in place in sheer terror, panic turning my limbs into hard steel, unable to move, unable to think until the first agonized scream from inside the palace woke me from my trancelike state. There was a secret passage known only to my family, to be used only in the most dire of situation, that would get me to a safe place. I ran for it with the strenght born of desperation. It brought me to the base of the Sehmyr mountains in a quiet spot in the forest. I climbed the mountain to get a better view of the situation, to see who would dare attack a monarch of the Amarr Empire. My young mind conjured up images of Gallentian troops running in the streets or Minmatar Fleet Squads, freeing the slaves in our capital but nothing could prepare me for the truth. The sky was filled with Empire ships in all their terrible beauty and Amarr troops were on the ground, butchering our citizens or bringing them to slave carrier ships. Fear too a hold of me and i ran to the base of the mountain. I lost grip and fell,  hitting the ground and loosing conciousness.

My name is Kain, and this is my story.