Thursday 23 December 2010

astrals letter to Santa

Dear Santa,

Its me Astral Dominix. Now I know I haven’t really been very good this year, as there was rather a lot of piracy, but I think we can come to some understanding about putting me on the nice list.
Cos I recently trained slay jamming to v, and if I make it on to the naughty list im gonna set up a gate camp and pod ya , hohoho!
Now santa, aside form the little bit of piracy I have been a very good capsuleer, so I have asked for some big presents this year..
I want ….
A shiny new Absolution command ship.
Half a dozen pvp fit Abitrators.
A full set of snake implants
And several case’s of rum and a frisky exotic dancer.

Hope you and Rudolf are well…if you want to stay that way make sure the above is in my hanger in jel by the 25th. Merry Christmas.

AD.

Wednesday 22 December 2010

10 tips for lowsec exploration

Ten tips for exploration in lowsec.

1- use 2 ships, a dedicated scan ship preferably a cov ops, the second ship should be CHEAP, you don’t need huge tank or DPS output to solo radar and mag sites, something like a arbitrator or vexor will easily do. You want something cheap because while you are in these sites is while you are vulnerable as you cant use cloaks while hacking or slavaging ect. I prefer drone boats as they allow you do decent damage plus fit a good tank and all the mids/highs for code breakers salvagers ect. Also the size of the cargo hold in cruisers will normally just fit the loot from these sites.

2- Pick half a dozen low population systems in lowsec close together (never a high sec or null entry point) and set up safe spots to scan from.. when you undock in your scan ship warp to these spots to launch your probes the fly off in a direction cloaked while you scan. NEVER launch probes next to a station , gate or from a asteroid belt. If you have a nippy cov ops you will be near impossible to catch if you follow this rule.

3- Fit for speed. The biggest advantage of using small-ish ships is their ability to align fast and move before people can lock them- use this! You want to be nippy to zip through most gate camps and GTFO, also helps if there are asshats station camping.

4- If you have a Jump Clones, dedicate one to exploration and fill his head with the CORRECT implants. Snake implants are good as the boost your speed and align times, and the prospector implants help a lot. And can make the difference finding some sites.

5- Never start a site if there is a fleet in system, be patient , move to the next system in you cluster to scan sites down and come back to it..it will almost always still be there. If your already in a site and a fleet warps in, align out and watch d scan like a hawk, if you see incoming ships bail, but most fleets wont bother looking for a solo cruiser they hunt bigger game.

6- When you scan, use 5 probes, from a top down view laid out in a + formation with each of the 4 outer probes overlapping the centre probe. Start at 34 AU and work your way down, focus on one signal at a time. It takes practice. Line the centre probe up on the signal on the x,y AND z axis and keep reducing the scan size and pulling the outer probes closer until you get a 100% hit.

7- After each site haul you loot back to a station, this should be self explanatory, if you get caught with your pants down you don’t lose all your work. Also if you fill you ship up you may have to leave the site before you have looted everything and the site may despawn.

8- Don’t panic..it gets you killed. If you come through a gate into a camp or have someone warp in on you at the sites don’t lose your head, if you do you will always lose your ship stay calm, but act FAST, unless you have combat experience warp out ASAP. If at a gate align and warp quickly. If you have a cloak use it.

9- Deposit all you loot at 1 station, as close to high sec as you can get it. Then figure a way of getting the loot out..bear in mind hauls could be valued in the 100 mill mark, so have a plan to transport it, either with a blockade runner or some other means. If your like me you will prefer to do more runs at smaller value to avoid emo rage quit. When you get the loot out, it is a buzz.

10- If you become well know for exploration in a certain area, people may try to hunt you more often, counter this by every onw and again sitting at a site in a well tanked ship with several friends waiting nearby to warp in and lend a hand.. this tends to make people think twice before interrupting you in future.

If you follow these rules you can make lowsec exploration a fun and profitable experience, netting between 10 and 50 mill a site (the sites take around 10 15 min’s each once you find them). It breaks up the tedium of mission running and can get the blood pumping in a really good way. It also helps you become familiar with moving and living in lowsec. If you want to further increase profits, each time you ship a haul out of lowsec, import some ammo or other goods to sell in lowsec at a small mark up.

I hope this helps any budding explorers take their first steps into this sneaky fast paced world…and stay away from my sites ;)

Tuesday 21 December 2010

Supercap debate?

Ok it seems to keep cropping up in blog’s, the super cap debate…except, its not much of a debate. Everyone seems to agree there are FAR too many super cap’s tooling about the place.
From my point of view it doesn’t make much difference, the largest ship I can see me flying is a carrier in lowsec one day, and that would be more for logistics than any desire to take it into a fight. But never say never, I may return to null sec one day so, I pay attention when people talk about this stuff.
Now im not sure why CCP hasn’t addressed this issue yet, as it seems to be a large bone of contention and every one is saying we need less super caps, and the current mechanics seems to lend itself to super cap blob fests, which is dull for everyone.
There has been some suggestions about how to lessen the number , most of which seems to incorporate linking the super caps to revenue, so it takes x amount of isk to maintain one super cap…a good idea but overly complicated.

Why not just out and out put a cap on super caps?
What I mean is impose a cap from now, that a ALLIANCE may only have 5 supercap’s/titans. Once you reach that limit you are unable to build/buy any more. And that individual corps outside of an alliance cannot own any.
Now before all the people say what about the 100’s already built, leave them there. But they can’t build/buy another to replace it when they go pop.
The result would be in a year or so alliances would have 5 super caps each and , if they lose them it will leave the whole alliance a super cap down for the build time of a new super cap…a BIG loss. People would think if it was really needed before using their “big stick”.
It would also make people stop and think before committing the super caps out there already as once its gone it is really gone.
This would also make sov fights Far more tactical rather than “we have more money, blob them with super caps until they leave!” it may also see a return of BS fleets which would be a good thing.

Any thoughts ?

Monday 20 December 2010

back on the horse

Well desire to play eve properly kicked in again Sunday. I got up to quite a bit to make up for lost time. I started off logging on thinking I would work on some ratting, flying a rifter through low egghelende to ishomilkin and back.
This probably wasn’t my best idea on a Sunday as lowsec is quite active with piwates hunting belts, still only a rifter.
I got 3 jumps out in a system with 2 belts…warped in, and found a sansha cruiser and a sansha lord BS, too good to resist! Unfortunately one of the other gits in system had the same thought and came to relieve me of said rifter. Gf.

Slightly miffed, I podded back to jel and decided to run some missions, I got quite a nice lvl 3 (blockade) which I dragged out over a few hours to gain sec status, after 3 hours of : kill 5 ships- warp out – wait 20 mins- warp back – kill 5 ships- repeat. I gained about 0.2 sec status (which doesn’t sound like much but is almost half way to flying in a 0.7 system) and a few million.
I decided it was a good idea to use the cash from the mission to build a new arbitrator to do some exploration. That only takes about 10 mill, I keep them cheap so if I lose them I don’t care, I reason that I make 20-40 mill per site so if I can average a few sites before I get scanned down I’m well in front. After id built it I had some spare cash so I decided to build a “experimental” lowsec bestower for moving crap to and from my lowsec hub, again its cheap so I wont mind if I lose it and I shouldn’t be carrying more than 50 mill in good’s (in theory) if it doesn’t work I suppose I will invest the training to get a blockade runner. Anyway the bestower is fitted with a few warp stabs and nano fit ..it loses cargo space but should be nippy and hard to catch.
While I was waiting for our CEO to move some bits for me through the highsec parts I cant enter I used vespa to move some mins I have been collecting about..I now have between a third and half what I need to build my abaddon..I’m in no big rush as I only use them on lvl 4s and I cant do them with fed navy until I can enter 0.8 systems.
While all this was going on I found out the OLD CEO of Btek has become active again (welcome back marv if your reading this) will be interesting to see what happens there as I know Reltso our current CEO is looking to join a alliance (yes we have one in mind now) .
I also heard one of our newer members saying he was grinding lvl1’s for fed navy, I decided id give him a leg up and invited him to run some lvl3s as everyone else seemed to be on a mining op. they were quite fun, had a interesting time dashing across egghelende a few times for 1 mission, but we both made it with out losses (despite the piss poor gate camps- lazy and disorganised) after he had to leave I jumped back to lowsec and did a little exploration, only managed to do 1 radar site before the wife demanded I watch some Christmas movies with her but as I had been playing for hours I didn’t complain. I logged off, happy with the days play and with a much better feeling about eve as a whole than I have had of late.

Thursday 16 December 2010

eve on a mobile...soon?

Ok let me start by saying this post is more iphone and smart phone related than eve, if you have no interest in them skip this post.

Ok now its just us.. as some of you know I have an Iphone 3gs, 16gb, its nice. When I got it, it was a huge leap forward from the blackberry I had before. Then a few months ago I saw a post from our own blog father CK showing the eve client running on a over clocked android smart phone. It looked very cool
Since then I have been doing a lot of research on iphone vs android and some reading on how this was done.

The phones in question arnt really capable of running the eve client, what they are doing is using a app available on android that is similar to VNC to remote dial into their PC to play eve over the phone, this does come with some downsides as virtual keyboards pose a problem and apparently it suffers badly with FPS issues but is useable for market orders and mining ect. Also security of the connection is a issue, however the pros of being able to tap in from work school or trains ect would be massive. 8 hours a day mining would make a nice few isk for most people!

As a result I have been watching the development of android phones closely and with the upcoming release of a duel core mobile, I think the need for over clocking may be coming to an end..

On a side note the differences in android phones seem to be coming on in leaps and bounds and by the time I get offered a upgrade in 2012 I think I may well opt for the increased freedom of a android phone over the constrictions of apple.

It will mean however saying goodbye to a host of features available through apple, and part of me is hoping a similar sort of remote functionality becomes available on the iphone, or even better a CCP written “lite” client to be able to install and play from the iphone securely, that would be REALLY sweet.
I will have to keep dreaming for now but the day is coming where I can access eve from a mobile( while taking a crap at work) mwhahahaha

voice coms...its not all good.

I’ve been thinking a bit today (yes it hurt) about voice coms in eve…they are a wonderful tool, and a huge pain in the ass for many.
Im not looking to change corps or anything but I look through the recruitment forums now and again, and one of the most common requirements for corps (behind a limited API) is “must be able to use voice” …for PVP I totally understand I have tried to FC without voice and to be honest it doesn’t work. But for mining? Ratting? Its not needed.

Im not against voice in any way, I think it adds a very fun social side to eve that many enjoy as much or more than the game itself, but for a lot of us it bars us from the majority of the corps. If you have kids/wife/ overactive dog ect you may not WANT to be on voice all the time, if at all. Not because you cant or there is anything to hide but if your on the sofa with the wife lost in something like “strictly come celebrity factor” she isn’t gonna be amused when your aguing with your mates that piracy isn’t wrong…
Infact it will spur on a argument over the game she resents you playing because your “ignoring her” for several hours. ..however, as I have learned, if you spurn voice in favour of throwing the odd comment her way, and do things where you make her a drink and a snack now and again, all arguments are avoided and she appreciates the use of the TV. Much better.
The limiting thing is you wont meet the requirements for most corps and null sec is almost totally out of bounds ( I have never heard of a null corp that doesn’t insist on voice coms) lowsec becomes far more dangerous as you can only operate effectively solo, even large swaths of high sec think don’t want you.

There is hope however some corps, like btek, don’t require voice, we do still have the option but many don’t use it, it means you can pretty much play your way doing what you want. The voice is there if you wanna chat if not just type. Its very flexible, but can seem a little more distant.

There is no real solution to this problem and it exists across all games not just eve, but older players tend not to use voice as much, teenagers locked up in there rooms on there own playing have no such restrictions but they will understand in 10 years..
Some have an understanding partner or make deals for some “quality time with eve” but the fact is family comes first and it can seriously dent your prospects in eve.
Im sure there is pleanty of people who disagree with some of this but I know a LOT more casual eve players are in this boat ..maybe a lot more than people realise, but they tend not to be vocal or well known because of there assumed “lack of commitment”.

Musing over.

Wednesday 15 December 2010

im leaving...the blog pack

I don’t know what’s going on with me lately but I have been VERY lax with anything eve related..its weird because I’m not bored with it, I just cant seem to find the motivation at the moment to do very much. I log in run a few lvl3’s ( I can access lvl 4’s with fed navy, but only in 0.6 systems which is some what limiting) I normally log off after an hour or two, sometimes mid mission, my money is slowly building as is my stock pile of minerals from salvaged crap – I am planning on using the min’s to build a abbadon for running lvl 4’s, I could just buy one but building one seemed like a good way to use all the crap I salvage while I’m gaining sec status.
And on to sec status, my god is it ever slow. See I am now only really gaining sec status through mission running, which doesn’t go very fast as most rats don’t count and the ones that do, well they don’t give big frequent increases.
It’s a real pain because the corp tends to be running social lvl 4s in the evening id like to join in with but they all seem to be in 0.8 or 0.9 systems. CCP really needs a better system for gaining sec status than the one that is in place, and until you have to climb back you don’t see how broken it is. Still I’ll get there in time.
I did get a very generous donation the other day from a lovely woman reader of my blog who wished to remain anon, 100 mill contribution toward my plex funds for a alt, I have currently saved about 200 mill, I am aiming to get enough for 2 plex, which with the 21 friend code I will send myself should give me enough time with the alt that the second account will pay for its self..in theory. I am currently sending all surplus money and donations to my piggy bank slot “sekrit banker” and its is building up quite nicely, I think I am gonna need about 800 mill so about quarter of the way there.
Lastly due the infrequent postings I am going to send a email to CK to remove me from the blog pack, I will still be active and posting, just less often, the blog pack has been a huge inspiration and help to me when I started blogging and gave me a nice steady reader base but I feel its time to let someone else have the limelight I was afforded. It would be my personal preference to give it to a new player with a new blog as I find reading about people as they begin there eve career more interesting than large fleet battles or the endless “I’m a uber pilot” blog’s. Reading about people’s mistakes and how they learn and overcome take me back to when I was new and making those mistakes, and recaptures the fun for me. But its CK’s baby and he will put whoever he thinks in there.
Please if you would like to continue reading, hit me with a follow or subscribe to the RSS feed.

Talk soon peeps.

Wednesday 1 December 2010

The twilight zone

Good morning people!!
I apologize for the lack of postings recently, I have been consumed with other projects..like christmas…and rum.
Eve has become a quiet release from shopping for me over the last week or two. I have taken part in a corp ice mining op..dull but takes the weight off our CEO who works his socks off to meet our needs. It did point out how much work I need to put in with Vespa to make her a competent miner, trying to harvest ice alongside 3 mackinaws really highlights highlight’s my need to improve vespa’s mining ability. Need to get her into a hulk ASAP.

I said a post or two ago I was going to train vespa to run missions..I scrapped that. Trying to make her a combat pilot isn’t working she is a carebear. Killing things with her just feel's..wrong.

I have resigned myself of late to spending a night with the corp mining to buld the various ships I desire, the next night I wander aimlessly around lowsec with astral popping cruisers. I hope to be able to renter 0.7 systems by Christmas and resume mission running with him.

Long term I am planning on using astral as intend- a combat pilot/mission runner. Vespa as a miner, and on the accumulation of enough isk (god willing) I will start a second account for a orca/freighter pilot so assist vespa and in time take over her PI and building duties so she is a pure hulk pilot. Which I plan to funsd with plex so the wife doesnt kick off.
But this is all subject to change at a moments notice on a whim.


I have had a revelation of sorts recently.. I was kinda bummed since I left null about how slow gaining sec status was. Also how slow training 2 toon’s on 1 account was…about how I wasn’t doing the stuff I wanted to be doing.
Then it hit me like a shovel!
Whats the rush?
Im a carebear essentially at the moment..I have all the ships I need, I have all the isk I need, if it takes a month to raise sec status or 6 months in the long run it’s not that big a deal…taking 3 months to work on vespa..not that big a deal when im looking at 2-3 year skill plans. just sit back and smell the roses.
Everything seems more relaxed and sedate when you stop waiting for things and just, go with the flow. The down side to this I have become lax on my blogging too.

On a more interesting note-
I have been popped twice while doing some exploration, once by forgetting I couldn’t enter 0.6 space yet (and being a little drunk) and once when a corp mate came out to give it a go and brought a dominix with him…which drew the attention of the local pirates, who appeared just as I cop wife aggro of “are you gonna help me wrap these Christmas preasents or not!!”
I have however got about 60 mill in loot sitting in a station in lowsec, all small and moveable in my new pilgrim, I could have had twice that much in a few days if I dedicated myself a little more but casual is fun at the moment for me.

I will report more as life picks back up and I can get back to doing more interesting things, but for now im in a weird twilight zone of eve…
Fly…somewhere

Tuesday 23 November 2010

my good dead for the day.

Well one good turn deserves another
A Friend of mine Durzo who runs a nice blog seems to be having trouble recruiting a few good pilots…or some not so good ones as well.
Now durzo did me a favour recently by “donating” some prospector implants to me, so I thought I would raise awareness of his cause.
ALL HIGH SEC PILOTS LOOKING FOR A HOME, GO JOIN THE DEAD JESTERS AND PLEDGE YOUR LIFE TO DURZO!!!

At least until btek recruitment reopens ;)


Seriously he is a good guy and you could do far worse than to fly with or learn form him.

the vespa cunundrum

A question has been bugging me for a while. What to do with vespa dominix?
I created her while a pirate as a means to ship crap to lowsec and join in on mining ops run by the logistics corp. but as she is on the same account as astral I never wanted to invest a huge amount of time on her as it detracted from all the new shiney’s I had astral training for.
As a result I never properly developed her, she has “some” learning skills, but no advanced and none to V, she has minmatar industrial ships to 4 to haul crap and a “few” supporting skills. She can fly mining barges but is lacking the exhumer skills.. she has just about got the skills to fly a rough t1 fit caracal on missions…you get the idea. She gets by but lacks any real skill and can do most things but nothing well. This is in sharp contrast to astral who is a specific armour tanked killing machine, and he does it VERY well.

Anyway last night vespa was moving some mods and implants up to astral, who I have recently decided to use mainly for fun (in that I now refuse to grind sec status with him, I do what im in the mood for, roam, do exploration..shoot passer by’s) , his sec status is still going up tho slowly and I am finding he makes a fair bit of money in the process without really meaning to, which stacks up as I’m not replacing PVP ships every few days. Anyway I was doing a long run back from jita and I decided it might be time to round out vespa’s skills and make her more useful. Besides astral doesn’t NEED to train any skills for anything new, he is stable and does what he wants well so I don’t mind losing training time at the moment.
So I dropped of astrals bits and picked up vespa's shit fit caracal and had a look what skills I needed, I set a que of learning skills and core skills going and opened up the fitting window on my carcal, 5 standard launchers 1 medium clarity shield thing …that’s it.
I looked through my hanger for shield mods…nothing. Its all armour and lasers for astral. So I opened the market..after browsing for a few mins I realised, I have NO IDEA how to shield tank.
As stupid as it seems I have never needed it, as a shield was just a buffer to my armour tank, I never worried about it before. So I called in relso out CEO for some fitting advice, and between what he suggested and my skills on vespa we came up with a fit that “gets by”. Now I was going to start running lvl 1 and 2 missions for fed navy and grind up to lvl 4’s as I build vespa up to a drake over the next few weeks to make her a source of income, then get her into a blockade runner for shiping to and trading in lowsec. But a few of my corp mates invited me to join them on a lvl 4, and I figured the standings boost would be good for vespa and it would be a nice test for the caracal and more “social”.
I learned a few things.
I am very out of practice with missions.
The difference between running missions with a character with over 10 million SP compared to 2,7 mill is HUGE.
I do NOT like shield tanks

My caracal had to warp out twice when she drew aggro I was doing hardly any damage with my missiles basically I missed flying astral in a mobile death machine. Still I will continue developing her when I can and see if she becomes the income source I want.

Monday 22 November 2010

Low sec exploratio day 2 (and 3)

Ok the low sec exploration is still going well…sort of. I have had a couple of minor set backs.

Firstly a couple of nights ago while looking for mag and radar sites I found a grav site..gensis lots of it. I let my CEO know I had a large private field if he wanted to fly a barge out to low and mine it, which he did. Now relts is a good pilot but a little rusty at low sec ops, still the first half hour went by easy enough although as we docked to drop some ore a fleet passed through with a wyvern..now the silly cap pilot left his cyno ship completely un guarded..alone..what’s a ex pirate to do?
Anyway I killed it for a giggle and went back to guarding my CEO. Half hour later I had to log off for bed thinking he would “probably” be fine. He wasn’t he was popped later that night by a wyvern pilot. Oops.
The next day I was again running some radar sites when a corp mate in a thorax said he wanted to come to lowsec and have some fun with me…as he was on the way out I found a nice juicy site to do..and it turned out a combat site!! Excellent.
Now I haven’t run these before but figured they cant be that much more than the others can they, and a extra ship should make it a cake walk..shouldnt it?
Wrong.
I didn’t check the DED rating of the site, the biggest lesson I learned here…on warping in my computer got really jittery and unresponsive but the amount of cruisers and battleships locking me told me the “dora 1” was shafted. My corp mate got out in deep armour but I was leaving in a pod, the laptop didn’t like all the incoming fire and wouldn’t accept the warp out command in time. Glad it was a fairly cheep ship.
Moral of the story- check DED rating on combat sites BEFORE you enter and bring the right tool for the job, a PVE drake or BS might have survived but that site was ment for multiple BC’s. oh well.

Friday 19 November 2010

friday musing

Have you ever noticed how thinks have a habit of morphing into something you didn’t expect?
I was looking back over some blogs lately and I noticed our own corp Bright star tech has morphed beyond what I ever imagined for it.
When I left flashy red and my pirating ways I rejoined Btek, which at the time had 1 active member, Reltso Yand, CEO, uber industrial guru and all round good egg. My plan on joining was simple, grow the corp most likely by training new players to run missions and make some isk.. however when I advertised we were recruiting we had almost no interest from new players, what we got was a very eclectic mix.
We have a pirate (ex…sort of)
A ninja ( sort of….)
Several very advanced carebears/ ex null dwellers
And sarj…im not sure how to describe him…hates pvp loves to mine , and thinks shooting ninja’s is a good idea. He will learn.

What I thought would become a tight knit group of newbs and a couple of players to follow became a laid back alliance of solo artists working under one banner more for a social element than anything. Which means Btek has people everywhere..and nowhere specific. It’s a odd arrangement but seems to be working really well so far. Recruitment is currently closed due to war (if you call this a war) but I am interested to see how this mix grows in the future.

On a side note I believe children in need is on tonight till the early hours which means I will be online ..a lot.
Maybe I’ll see you out there.

lowsec exploration - day 1

I got my first real bite of lowsec exploration last night, and I gotta say I really enjoyed it!
My evening started on a bit of a downer, the wife had had a bad day at work and I knew that meant eve time would be limited as she needed some cheering up. I did however manage to get on for a couple of hours, the first thing I noticed was a few of my contracts had sold and I was now sitting on 200 mill of isk…that to many of you isn’t much but I normally don’t have that much liquid isk …as a pirate it was boom or bust and I spent it before id earnt it most of the time. I however am not blowing this isk as it is my “pilgrim fund” my CEO is building it to reduce cost and then I will fit it out and replace the arbitrator I am using for exploration with it.
After running through my email’s and assessing my isk I decided to get looking for a site to run, I have been working on my scanning skills and thought I should find something.. and I did, I stayed in super sekrit base system (not that secret but as Btek is at war I wont tell them where to look). I undocked in my covert ops frigate “sneaky ass” and saw a myrmidon sitting 13 k off the station, I quickly hit warp to safe as he tried to lock me, unable to activate cloak that close to the station, I entered warp as he yellow boxed me and was away.. I de cloaked at the safe for a min or two as I launched 5 probes and re cloaked and headed on my way, stealthy is fun!
I found a lot of static sites in the system that could be found by d scan ..i wasn’t really interested in these at the moment, im looking for hidden complex’s so people have to work to find me, I had 2 such sigs in the system 1 radar 1 mag site.. I went for the radar first as it had the harder sig to scan.
The site took a good 30 min’s to scan down at the death I had it to 98.95% with probes scanning at 0.5 au on top of it, I learned here two important lessons for scanning, firstly I managed to get to 100% by moving all of the probes closer to the sig, which means the strength varies within the scan sphere ..I didn’t know that I always thought the strength remained constant within the radius you set to scan. Secondly I learned I need to invest in a set of prospector implants, unless some kind reader of this blog is willing to donate them that will be in a few months time.
Once I did have the site to 100% I bookmarked and warped back to the station, the system was devoid of life as it normally is and it seemed a good time to run the site, I swapped the cov ops for my arbitrator “dora 1” and undocked warping to the site at 20 km …no bad guys 5 hackable cans. Great! On hacking the first can a NPC cruiser spawned, I sent a flight of warrior 2’s to eat him while I finished hacking the first can, as I emptied the can of its salvage and a skill book the cruiser went pop, still over 30 km away.
The rest of the cans failed to spawn a single enemy, the closest I got to a fight was a scout for a passing fleet mentioned in local he was a reader of the blog and thought it might be fun to probe me out, but he didn’t, and I was pretty sure id be able to finish the site and dock up before he scanned the site out, we did have a friendly chat in local as I always try to if I come across people that read the blog, and he seemed like a pretty decent guy ( to be honest I wouldn’t have minded if he did try to scan me down and pop me, it is lowsec and if your able.. just keep in mind I bite back ).
In the end I docked up with 1 skill book 1 blueprint a shit load of salvage and a few datacores..not bad for 45 mins work. Plus it wasn’t dull. I even got a sec gain for killing the NPC cruiser, bonus all round. I was about to go do the Mag site when the wife decided play time was up and she needed some spoiling. So I logged off a happy bunny.

O and before I leave you 2 other things .. the Russian corp that wardec’ed us “kingdom of shadow”, made of fail. A supposed PVP corp , we have only ever seen 2 of them..ever and they have never attacked. We currently have 0 losses. It just seems a massive waste of time and money on their part.
Secondly a blog to recommend by a corp mate
tgl3, check it out its pretty good, also mentions me from time to time lol.

Fly sneaky all

Tuesday 16 November 2010

Lowsec carebear survival tip's

I was browsing the net today looking for some information on running some of the exploration plex’s in lowsec, and I found quite a few “guides” or threads with advice to people looking to move out to lowsec for something other than piracy. To amuse myself as I was bored at work I decided to read a few, and I am beginning to understand why so many of you are getting killed and thinking lowsec is un liveable!

So here is a few tips from someone that knows both sides of the piracy coin for people who want to move to low sec to explore run missions or mine.

Firstly there seems to be a theory that the deeper you go in lowsec the safer you are. This is bollocks. The people that wronte that reason that pirates all hang about in the entry systems to lowsec looking to pop newb’s that don’t know what they are doing, what they are forgetting to tell you is pirates LOVE to roam ! and as they cant enter hi sec the roam deep into lowsec looking for faction warfare people to pop or to fight other pirates. No system is safe in lowsec ALL the time, you need to learn to see who is in local and read the scanner to see what if anything is in space. If you’re the only one in a system it is safe,for now. if there are 4 others all with positive sec status and no ships on scan …your safe. If you see a -10 in system but no ships on scan ..check for probes…no probes and your good. If you see 6 pilots all of the same corp all -10, it is a fleet hunting , dock up or cloak or they WILL find you and kill you.

Second rule, know your ships understand probes. I will let you in on a secret, if your at a mission spot or a exploration site ect you CANNOT be found with a d-scan, they can get a rough direction for you but they cant get a warp in. so if your running a mission and 10 hurricanes jump in, unless one has a probe launcher fitted (unlikely) your not gonna be bothered, they are looking for another roaming fleet to fight. If you however get 9 hurricanes and a helios jump in…run. They ARE looking for you, and the helios pilot Will be able to get a warp in right on top of you.

Thirdly download a overview that lets you see probes in the overview, it can be done believe me, I just cant find the link to the overview at work, if your having trouble it is done by exporting the overview file from eve, and editing it out of eve to add the item codes for probe’s then re-importing it (someone will link it im sure or I will find the sourse and add a link later). This should then show all probes in the overview, if you see combat or sister probes out..they are looking for you.


Lastly. When in lowsec Never EVER stop paying attention to your surroundings, you may think the thing your killing deserves your full attention but always keep an eye on local (which should have its own window always open) compulsively 360 scan to see whats in system with you, and never go afk unless docked or cloaked at a safe. Always have 3-4 safe spots set up in the systems you inhabit so you can hide if needed. And mining, if you do mine in lowsec..ONLY EVER mine in a ship aligned out of the belt to a station and ONLY if the system is completely empty. Never mine the top belt ( it is the blind warp to for many pirates checking) the instant you see another soul (red or not) enter the system dock until they leave..anyone seeing a mining barge will try to kill it.

If you follow these rules you will still die but FAR less often and it may become profitable to live in lowsec, it is also a lot more fun. For example you can actually find exploration sites with out as much competition, you get much higher rewards for missions and best of all, no ninja’s bothering you..if anyone turns up looting your wrecks ..pod them lol

Monday 15 November 2010

Metric's

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This doesn’t give a true reflection of site traffic as it doesn’t pick up feeds such as capsuleer when it was active or google reader type feeds but shows how the site traffic has grown through the life of the blog, as you can see I started in January and am now approaching the blog’s year birthday!

Oh and to the few of you fellow bloggers that decided to put adds on your site and in the feeds, don’t bother. I had ad’s active for about 9 month’s on the site and the feed..in 9 months I had accrued about £0.20 , but I had the down side of isk seller ad’s plastered all over the blog which I hated. If your worried about making money from a blog put a donate button on it from paypal and see if anyone donates. I put one on mine but that was more to see how to do it than to make money, its linked to a paypal account that has never been used (or checked for that matter) I may go back to it in a few years time and find a account full of money…but I doubt it. Blog for fun not for money.

make lowsec carebear freindly

Improving conditions in lowsec seems to be getting a lot of attention lately, there a LOT of threadnaught’s and discussions on the subject, and a lot of good ideas..mainly from pirates on how to make lowsec better, and from a PVP point of view a lot of them have some fantastic ideas. However no one seems to have much of an idea how to lure the more industrius side of eve to lowsec besides putting a few more shiney rocks there.
Now shiney rocks may be a good idea but with the current system no one in there right mind would take a mining barge into lowsec, they are far to slow. A better way would be siney rocks and a new ship class that is about the size and spec of a retriver but much faster align times and a bonus to warp stabs, and if sad ship were available for around 10mill…you might get a few more miners trying for those shiney minerals
Another idea is to improve missions, the very slight increase in pay doesn’t balance the risk of losing your ship, maybe either vastly increase the money or..and I like this better up the amount of LP earned permission AND the rate you gain standings. All of a sudden bringing a BC out and chancing it to up you standings fast or get the LP for the faction items you want seems a fair trade.
Thirdly give the exploration sites in lowsec more faction loot make it woth living there hunting for them, a ratio like 1 in 8 gives faction loot in high sec, 1 in 5 for lowsec and 1 in 3 for null. Its now worth bringing a scan ship out to do more than safe busting.

Im sure some of these ideas have been mentioned before but im starting to think that the best thing lowsec could ask for is a few decent care bears, but it needs to be profitable to go there and take the risks.
When we do the pirates have more targets and SOLO PVP may make a return and you don’t need to blob care bears. It would become viable to roam on your own. That in turn makes even more care bears come out as they have half a chance 1 v 1 instead of 5-1. PVP wins , care bears win (isk until they get shot), pirates win .. more targets.
Implement some of this along with the changes to criminal flaging , PVP and bounty hunting that have been suggested and you have the makings of a pretty shit hot expansion that breathes new life into lowsec.

Rant over.

ratting, war, and dora the explorer.

Hi my reader’s
It has been a interesting couple of days for me, and the corp as a whole. I have also had a revelation of sorts.
The first bit of bad news is I lost one of my rifters over the weekend.. in a shocking turn of events I was out ratting minding my own business in lowsec and some pirates turned up and shot at me!!
Only took 61 systems before it happened.
I had been flying up and down from egghelnde to ishomilkin for a couple of days popping 1-2 rats in each system to puch my sec status up a tiny bit more, in a cheap rifter and I finally got jumped by a merlin and I think I saw a amanthea as well..but I wasn’t really paying attention :S I was at the time booking restaurants for my next holiday, oh well..
I offered a GF in local got my pod out and went on my merry way. I’m glad I did save the pod as a day before while running the pipe I found a faction spawn …in a belt…in lowsec.. that dropped a very nice snake implant, that now resides in my head.
After zipping back to a trade hub I decide that I’m bored ratting for now I want to have another go at exploration, I have a decent cov ops fit for scanning I just need a little ship to run the sites while our CEO builds me my pilgrim.
Now I have been reading up on exploration for ages, trouble is there is very little info on anything other than wormholes and most of what is out there is either probing guide vidios or outdated crap. So I will as I learn try to share my findings. I decided as a cheap ship to run a few sites to learn I would use a Arbitrator with a custom fit (sekrit fit) so I bought what I needed (15 mill give or take). However by the time id done this it was late and the wife was craving attention.
I log on the next day with the intention of beginning my exploration work only to find we have been wardec’ed.
It seems some Russian “pvp” corp has decided to wardec us. Lmfao. Ok.
Now some of our newer members were a little concerned at first, however there are a LOT of ways around a wardec, and we have put measures in place to make everything as secure as possible. The corp has decided not to bother fighting them, as most lack any real pvp experience yet we have just put avoidance in place, let them chase shadows till they get bored.
For myself it makes VERY little difference.
Initially, I thought id have a few fights with them and see how many I could pop..however, while that may be fun for me..they may see it as amusing and drag the war out for everyone, so I decided to ignore them for now.

As for my revelation that came the same day after sorting a few bits for the impending war, I got back to my exploration, now when I first tried exploring it was in lowsec (in the pythons home system which probably wasn’t the best place to start as they arrived and killed me half way through lol) still the thing I noticed straight away there seems to be a lot less to find in highsec, I don’t know if this is because some one has already run the sites or the spwan rate is lower but all I could find was sodding wormholes. I had also read somewhere competition for sites in highsec is fierce and you need to be very quick to get anywhere…seems like a lot of work to be honest..why am I trying to do this here?
I know how to live in lowsec…I am comfortable in lowsec….i like how un crowded lowsec is…there are more sites with better rewards in lowsec…
You see where I’m going with this.
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So new plan. I will keep nudging at my sec status so I can run missions in high sec with my corp mates for ISK, as it provides a steady income…however I will be moving SOME of my ships out to a undisclosed lowsec system to indulge my exploration habit. I will be living mainly in a cov ops with a few other ships to run the sites. I will keep separate jump clones so I can give my lowsec dweller a few prospector implants, and my high sec will be a walking tank for missions.
I will also be training vespa for a blockade runner to get stuff in and out when she isn’t mining for BTEK..i have a lot of half formed plans…

Now I said a few lines up this war makes Very little difference to me..its because of the amount of time I spend in lowsec, where everyone is trying to kill me anyway, another bunch of ruski’s on the hit list wont matter at all.

Fly…sneaky apparently

Thursday 11 November 2010

RL can drive you mad..

It seems I am not alone in my solitude.

As some people know I left lowsec piracy and to a lesser extent null sec due to not being able to contribute in the way others expect of me and what I expect of myself.
That is I cannot garuntee hours of concentration on a roam anymore..life seems to want to interrupt me. A lot
I cannot use vent at all times as 1 it slows the computer even more than before and the wife objects as she is often beside me watching some form of reality TV
Lastly I dislike being told what to fly, if you want a snipper BS fleet and I don’t have one or cant fly one don’t try to guilt trip me, I’m not gonna waste isk flying a ship I cant fly well.

Until recently I thought I was the exception to the rule, surely everyone else doesn’t have these types of restrictions but reading my fellow blogger’s posts I realise it is far more common than I realised, meny players feel restricted by real life and have left parts of eve due to it.
Take a good friend of mine, EVESOB’s post "be a man about it", he tried the null sec life and found that due to restrictions in RL he felt leaving was better for himself and the corp.
Today another post by a blogger I have a lot of respect for "frustrated" by evoganda, feeling the pinch of real life, he hasn’t said he is packing up shop but I can certainly relate.

So what is the answer for those of us hemmed in by real life? For me I chose to return to to high sec to my beginnings as a mission runner, to help others and to lead the odd roam to lowsec for PVP when life allows. A side affect of this is im hoping to make a insane amount of isk and but a nice fleet of ships so that if in the future I feel the need to return to null I will have every resource I need twice.
SOB did a similar thing in returning and starting his own newbie training corp, and I truly wish him the best of luck. I have even considered trying to organise some friendly corp on corp frig tourny’s or maybe a 3 on 3 BC showdown for fun…but I digress..
Do I still miss the thrill of PVP, of course I do, and part of me would love to return to piracy or maybe even join a decent null sec or WH corp, but I know that I cant maintain the commitment they need, so part time PVP is all I can muster, a roam to lowsec now and again and Btek has a fair few pilots now that I think wouldn’t mind losing a ship to join me, which means we/I can lead effective raids into lowsec looking for a fight.
Im curious to know just how many of you feel RL is inhibiting your eve life and have any of you found a nice way around it?

Im back!!!

I am back in action!
After far too long without my eve fix I am back. A Day or so ago I managed to get the wife’s laptop sorted, it took a memory wipe, manual update of all driver’s some erm..steamlining ..of crap and a hardwired internet connection but I am back and flying. The first evening back I spent shooting rats in the deltole plex as was my plan to continue raising my sec status so I can enter the rest of empire..that did not quite go the way I planned…I shot a lot of rats and made a reasonable amount of isk, I also learned rats in these persistent plex’s DO NOT give sec status gains. Trouble is I only realised this after a few hours. I knew it would be slow as id only get gains every 15 min’s but not even that it seems.

So plan B.. I jump cloned out to Auner (my old lowsec home) and grabbed a rifter and decided id spend a hour or 2 a night arsing about in lowsec moving between auner and ishomilken ( about 40 jump run each way) popping 1 rat in each system then moving on..its a bit of fun dodging wannabe pirates and gate camp’s.
I’m using a odd rifter fit but I’m finding it a bit of fun, it kills cruisers fast enough and will give people a shock if a pirate does get the jump on you.. my rifter fit for your amusement

High slot- 150mm T2 autocannon
High slot- 150mm T2 autocannon
High slot- 150mm T2 autocannon
High slot- Small T2 NOS

Mid slot – cold arcjet AB
Mid slot- x5 prototype web
Mid slot- tracking disruptor with tracking speed scripts

Low slot – T2 nanofiber stucture
Low slot- small armour repper
Low slot- T2 damage control

Rig – trimark pump
Rig – empty
Rig – empty

It is pretty fast and hits hard, it’s more or less cap stable and almost nothing can hit it, if you are jumped by anything big, you can burn out of scram range with ease ( over 1000m/s without overheating) and enemy frigates have problems as the tracking disruptor makes you even harder to hit while your guns and web combo lay down the hurt. Its not designed to get kill people, just to out run bigger ships and force lone frigates to piss off while you get out. Also it has a very quick align time for whipping through gate camps.

So the plan for the next week or so is to do some money making in deltole and some ratting in lowsec, its slow but I don’t have a lot else to do at the moment, once I can I will move into jel (0.6) and resume running missions for republic fleet, I have also asked our CEO Reltso to build me a pilgrim (force recon) for some high/lowsec exploration work, although I may need to remind him about that.
As for the corp, Btek has become quite active again, we have several very active members mainly on in the evenings UK time a good mix of mission runners and miners, we recently held the first of many frigate touny’s and are now running profit sharing corp build projects making freighters and other massive ships, we are always looking for new pilots and as long as you have a full account not trial we are willing to teach you or give more experienced pilots a friendly low pressure home.

Have fun 07

Wednesday 3 November 2010

message from beyond...eve.

Hello happy reader types!
I have a few thinks on my mind and space is limited so..

I firstly wanted to say thank you to every one that posted messages saying the are/will miss the blog while I am out of action, it’s nice with the odd troll posts to hear people enjoy the blog the way I enjoy writing it.
Secondly to every one in Btek, I can’t wait to get back flying with you, being suddenly disconnected at a time where the corp is really taking back off is very disappointing however I will be back soon…
To that end I have managed to re-jiggery-poke finances (and bribe the wife) and I will be procuring a EVEN BETTER laptop on the 24th of November and rejoining you all.
I have tried to play several times lately with the wifes heap of shit laptop, however for some reason that eludes me, I am disconnected after a few min’s playtime and returned to the log in screen. If anyone has any ideas why that may happen please feel free to let me know, it would be nice to get on even if only to mine.
Finally to all the bloggers out there, especially those I count as friend’s please keep blogging it is nice to keep up with comings and goings via your bloggs even If I cant play myself.
Oh.. and congratulations to Mail Lite who has recently become a father! Really pleased for you mate, althoughthe question, is the world ready for “mini mail”, is worrying a lot of people lol.

Have fun all, I will be back before you know it, and if things go according to plan I will have battle cruisers v completed on my return.

Thursday 28 October 2010

FIRE!!!!!!!!!!!

FIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now in most eve blogs this would be in reference to activating your guns..sadly in this entry it is not.
On Saturday evening I sat down with my wife for the evening and as she flicked on “strictly come dancing”, I tuned out, and out came the laptop ready to get my eve on. I sat down and placed the laptop on the arm of the sofa and hit power…my first clue something was amiss..no power to the screen, followed by smoke from the vents and a nice warm orange glow…

Several muinites later and my laptop is a smoldering wreck. The timing couldn’t be worse this close to Christmas and a holiday, and my wife’s laptop is so full of crap and virus’s it barely loads eve to let me change a skill..
As a result I have been forced to take a break for eve until I can replace the laptop..when ever that may be.

Friday 22 October 2010

yipppeeee

WOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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The party is underway…

I am back in high sec people! After a shit load of ratting I am finally allowed back in 0.5 systems, I have moved some of my gear to deltole and will be ratting in the plex over there and doing a little exploration in the surrounding systems over the next week or 3.
My return to high sec also means I am now a director of Btek properly and myself and Reltso the CEO have been toying with lots of ideas for the corp, we have several very cool events coming up such as a lowsec frig roam in November and a frigate tourney on the 7th with some nice prize’s. its quite likely we will also be starting regular corp mining ops and have lvl4 missions and exploration training for newer players. If any of this sounds like a corp you want to be involved with drop in to “Btek pub” and have a chat with us.
Another thing we have been weighing up is joining a hi sec alliance? We have looked at a few but none seem to really offer that much we need. Most seem to think their alliance will protect us from war dec’s, which it may stop 1 man corp war decs , but im not exactly worried about them…they are actually fun ( for me). The war decs that people need to worry about are from well run merc corps or greifing corps with large numbers of experienced combat pilots, such as noir, and a 50m war dec fee to them wouldn’t matter at all neither would more targets in the form of alliance members.
I guess what id like from a high sec alliance would be things like possible access to wormholes, help protecting large assets and a LOW PROFILE lol. Will I find a alliance like that who knows?

Wednesday 20 October 2010

like capsuleer...only better

Ok now capsuleer has officially gone. Its very sad. So I was thinking to myself today about trying to develop an app to replace it, in reality it wont happen as im shite at programming and have no knowlage of building apps for apple..but some of my readers might, so here is what I would like to see in a app for an I phone that I would be happy to pay for.

• Real time training tracker, much like what we had in capsuleer, see how long till training finishes on each toon
• A blog reader, ideally for all blog pack blogs, but able to add blogs you like to make it more custom, I like many blogs not in the blog pack
• A item data base for all ships mods and skills, that shows items pre-requisits, base training time and your training time based on skills/implants
• A link/parse to my ingame eve mail
• A link/parse to my in game calendar
• Optional jump planer
• Maybe a link to eve central to look up trade routes and buy/sell orders
• A link in to eve survival to view mission guides


I know that is a hell of a lot of programming but that would be one hell of an eve app. Id gladly pay through the nose for it…
Someone build it..i dare you
What functions would you like to see in mobile app?

-4.8...so close

I had yet another fun night in provi last night.
My night started off quite subdued, a few battleship kills and a couple of true sansha cruisers nothing much of note, after an hour or so we had CVA begin coming in, including one guy in a caracal that thought he was some thing special lol.
As killing people tends to be counter productive to repairing my sec status I left him be, hell its not my war. I then started getting asked questions in local about my corp ( its not mine by the way, Reltso yand is the CEO) and are we hostile to CVA, I tried to explain in the nicest way possible, I could not care less either way with CVA, I am however hostile to people that continue interrupting my ratting. He then got a bit defensive and started telling me im not that bright because CVA don’t shoot neutrals (first- in provi I trust no one that isn’t blue to me, second I have no way of knowing if im still nutral), at this point the pirate in me reared its ugly head, I modified my harby fit and with the message in local, “ok lets test the NRDS policy” I undocked and made full speed towards the caracal sitting 120km off the station..

Him-“are you going to shoot me?”
in my head-Of course..mention to all legio members in system am going for tackle
me-“no of course not im seeing how close I get before you shoot me”
100k
80k
60k
Him- “I need to go shoot hostile’s now”
Warp out of system asap.

Runs away, not seen again that night lol.

I had a chuckle to my self about that, and went back to my ratting I thank fully did not change my fit..im happily killing a couple of battle ships when a nuet hop’s into system, from something like the 107th space marines ( one of CVA merc corps I think), a scan shows him in a tyrannis.
Ok ill align out …a few seconds later it appears next to me and starts shooting..as I said im glad I hadn’t changed my fit..drones kill kill kill! Web! Scram! Lazor lurve attack! Lol, he ran out of my point range with 80% structure remaining, I offered a GF in local and got chatting apparently he was hoping CVA would jump in and assist him and they… refused as im still a nuet lol.
I know this is gonna jinx it now but, the entire time I have spent in provi I have lost a total of 0 ships…not even close to losing one, and as im now at a sec status of – 4.8 and leaving when I hit -4.5 I don’t even care if I get popped.
Fun times indeed
07

Tuesday 19 October 2010

im AM a nice ex pirate.

Last night I got to repay some eve karma, and I felt pretty good.
While I was messing about popping some of the rats last night I was musing about the bounties on them in our corp channel, one of our new members, uncle shen, said he was looking forward to the day he could handle rats that big.
He then went on to explain he was having trouble with some of the more “difficult” lvl 1 missions. I asked what he was flying ..a destroyer.
He said “ I was doing ok but im fighting more cruisers now and finding them more difficult, I really need to get into a cruiser”…at this point I had a flash back to my early days, and how hard some of the missions seemed.
I asked what was stoping uncle getting in to a cruiser, he told me he had seen a vexor he was aiming for costing 3.5 mill but he didn’t have the isk yet …another flash back to my CEO helping me buy my first battle cruiser then another corp mate helping me replace it after I got it blown to bits on a lvl 4 …
I decided to pay back some karma, of the friendly corp mate that lent me a hand at the start of my career.
“check your wallet” I said
“DAMN! Thank you”
To me it was 20 mill, maybe an hour or two ratting, to him it was his new shiny and all the fittings he needed.
Felt good to help again.

Monday 18 October 2010

arsing about at the weekend

Hello my happy reader types..
Had quite a bit of eve time this weekend much to my wifes annoyance, some was carebear-ish some was not.

My weekend started in the normal way for me at the moment logging in to astral to commence several hours ratting in the pursuit of high sec, however I kept being interrupted by CVA types, a few fleets passing through but for the most part it was assholes in cov ops and interceptors, with the odd T1 frigate passing through.
After an hour or so of keep darting back to the station I gave up trying to rat, broke out some rum and thought it might be more fun trying to pick off stray CVA bods for a giggle.
I missed a few to begin with but then worked out there was a big fleet battle next door and it was reinforcements coming through, as this dawned on me a Merlin came through, he immediately warped to the other gate (sadly before I could scram him) I followed.
As I landed he was 7 k off the gate slow boating in..i was in my trusty punisher of DOOM lol I locked all auto cannons webs and scrams and opened up …sadly at this point he woke up and bolted through the gate denying me a kill. Bugger.

As I sat waiting for the next idio…..CVA person to roll through a claw appeared next to me, wonderful, started shooting that too, he also ran and jumped through the gate. Why does no one want to fight me?
Then hello the claw re-appeared. ..open fire!! After a few mins swapping shells he realised close range with me = dead captor and moved out of my optimal and web range…now im not sure what this guy was thinking but he never threw a scram on me, so when he started winning , I left lol.
I warped to the station but didn’t dock.. a few seconds later, he appeared again, open fire!! Shot him till he again moved out of range …still didn’t have a scram on me, I leave again.
At this point I mention he sucks at frig killing in local, he tells me he can easily kill me and he is no refusing to chase me. Despite the fact if he gets close enough to keep me there my thicker armour wins and he dies and if he moves out of my range I can leave at any point. He seems annoyed, I am satisfied I have annoyed them back for disturbing my ratting.
Sunday I returned to my ratting and I didn’t see much of anybody all day, a few corp mates came donw and istalled jump clones near me so thay can come play, I had a awesome message from some one called “frognugget” in local wishing me well with the ratting, that made me smile. I also had a nice true sansha spawn in one of the belts, I am now the proud owner of a couple of true sansha hardners but the real gem was a meta 8 true sansha heavy NOS, I have no real idea what its worth, so I had it moved to jita and vespa stuck up on a auction contract, if any body wants it go bid lol. After several hours of ratting my sec status is now a healthy -5.2 another evening or two (depending on CVA) and I should be able to move to Deltole and pop rats in high-sec.

Have fun all!!

Tuesday 12 October 2010

General thinkage...

Today is a general smattering of thoughts that popped into my head..

Firstly, I am honoured to say I have my own troll lol, he pops up through my blogs comments every now and again and seems to have a real dislike of me, you know you have a good blog when you have your own troll. As is normal troll fashion he has no basis for most of his comments, which are anonymous, and normally consist of “ your dumb/stupid!!”. If you ever have a valid critique to make feel free, I am not made of glass and comments correcting my mistakes I am grateful for, I even tolerate people with differing opinions, I even except people who point out spelling and grammer mistakes (of which I make many).

Secondly people have been asking if I move around systems while ratting as this increases the number of sec status gains you achieve per hour…short answer is yes I do, when I can.
I am currently a guest of LAA who set me blue and kindly allow me to rat within their systems and make use of their stations, they have been exceptionally kind and lenient with me, asking very little in return , they are however at war at present and as such my ability to move around the systems without attracting to much attention is gone as most of LAA’S systems have covert ops camping them waiting to hot drop people like me out ratting.
I have been getting the general feeling LAA aren’t fairing to well, I truly hope I’m wrong, and If I’m able to help them defend these systems I will, but as a single pilot with limited funds I may not be that much use.

Lastly I have been considering aging and gaming.
Most people of the generation above mine (I consider my generation 30-40) are not gamers, video games really came about with our generation in the 80’s and 90’s and have gone from strength to strength over the years, if you look at who is playing vido games today the percentage og gamers over 40 is probably quite small, however looking at the amount of adult gamers aged 30-40 is much larger than you would think, I can tell you from personall expirence I have grown up playing and prefer to be gaming to watching T.V
Makes you wonder if in 30 years I will still be gaming and it will be common for pensioners to be keen gamers still, logging on to play MMO’s or having nursing home “clans” lol, seems far fetched but I don’t dee me stoping playing anytime soon, some memorable moments in my life have come from gaming and it is a big part of my life, and as my life is evolving with time so is my gaming.

Monday 11 October 2010

absent minded ratting

Hello all,
Hope you had a productive weekend, mine went quite well. I managed to do a fair bit of ratting and have dropped my sec status from -7.8 to -6.9 on Saturday, which I was very pleased with.
I did however almost get caught with my pants down. Since I have been in null ratting I have avoided losing even a single ship through cunning, skill and blind luck. However half way through my ratting on Saturday my concentration began to wander…which is never a good sign.
While killing the last big rat at a belt I checked my armour, 65% and holding the rat is going down, I’m in no trouble…I look away at the T.V, I look back at the screen a few seconds later Bs rat half dead…dramiel at 54 k…WTF!! I tried to align out and warp but the dramiel closed the gap as fast as I knew he would and his scram kicked in half a second before I would have entered warp…fuck.
Now the problem the drameil had was I was flying a harbinger, and my skills and fitting are pretty good, but this was a PVE harb, not fit for killing dramiel’. I had beam’s fitted which was a problem as the tracking speed on them couldn’t hit a dram I also only had T1 drones on board and no scram. A war of attrition then! I was a little worried as I was already at half armour and also had a sansha lord trying to kill me..but my tank was holding just fine ..my cap was running low tho, I still had 8 cap charges left..I felt confident I could hold on till a friendly in a combat ship would show up and lend a hand….then some thing funny happened…the dram came inside 10k.. that was silly, web and NOS went straight on, drones kill kill kill… to be fair my lasers still couldn’t track him so he wasn’t really in trouble and what happened next was either a stroke of luck or him seeing a NOS and web on him and thinking he was fucked, but he E-warped.
I of course recalled drones and docked up, he came back a few min’s later saying he had disconnected..possible. regardless I offered a GF in local and waited for him to sod off before continuing my ratting.

Null-0 Astral-1

In future I must pay more attention to local while ratting.

Friday 8 October 2010

fridays musing- free to play in eve?

Morning guys,
If your looking for any for of action this morning this post contains NONE.

I have spent my Friday morning the way I often do, reading google reader at work catching up on all the comings and goings. Now my google reader account is totally filled with eve blog's (hundreds of em), but also a few of the larger sites/blogs like kill ten rats, massively and ten ton hammer ect, which let me know what’s going on in the MMO world as a whole. And as anyone not living in the most remote wormhole will know, many MMO’s old and new are adopting a free-to-play business model.
Now the free-to-play thing is false advertising in my eyes as it really means we will have a real money store where you buy things you need to progress through the game. In eve terms it would be like a indefinite trial period, you cant move money around or fly anything bigger than a cruiser or train half the skills but you can “play”.
For a while now I have been looking at these business models and thinking if they could be applied to eve if CCP got greedy, and they probably could in a whole bunch of ways. the most money grabbing would be to charge for ships, say 20p for a frigate, 50p for a cruiser, £1 for a battlecruiser ect, and at the rate ships are destroyed you could garuntee a fantastic turn over of revenue.
The slightly less gready way would be to charge for skills, a pound or two for each skill would again see a fair turn over of profit but would be far less regular, and would I think lead to having far more specific specialised character’s in eve.

Now I am really off the opinion that I DO NOT want eve to go to a free-to-play model. For one thing it tends to lead to far more assholes in game, secondly I don’t like people trying to grab my money in a stealthy way..if they want £100 a year from me id rather they just say that, it allows me to budget for it with ease, and its easy to judge if the enjoyment of the game is worth that.
Now taking all that into account I don’t think eve could go to a free to play model for 1 reason, most items in eve already have a real money value. Because of the plex system (which I like) we have a real money value for isk. If you can buy 2 x30 day plex for £25, and sell them in game for 500-600m isk (roughly) then 1 million isk is around 5p.
So now every item in eve already has a real money value, including things like titans which are valued at thousands. To introduce a real money shop would either, devalue every item in eve massively, or you would have items that most people could not afford without some major savings, can you imagine the conversation “honey that 4 grand we had put by for a holiday this year..i’m buying a titan with it on eve instead” or “mum can I have an advance on my pocket money this week I need £200 for a command ship”.

Would you guys like eve to go free-to-play? have you got any thoughts or experience with this? id be interested to know.
07

Thursday 7 October 2010

a year on and lowsec advice.

So I have been thinking about the future in eve a bit today.
The main reason for this is astral is almost a year old ( on the 21st I think), I have spent the first year of my eve time in a somewhat unfocused blur. I have been a care bear to begin with, afraid to go to places like lowsec, I then became a null sec dweller for a few stints and saw my first actions and grew as a player, then moved to lowsec to learn to fight properly as a pirate, the wealth of experience has been awesome but there is still so much to do and learn!
I now find myself in the situation where I am trying to return to care bear land, but unable due to my adventures in lowsec, which are forcing me to stay in null for now lmao!
It’s a funny old world this… eve.
So where do I see myself in a years time? Hard to say with certainty, still playing I imagine, tho I will have a son or daughter by then . Id like to think still with btek, my current plan is to run missions and train new players and also to take some of the older players out for the odd roam to lowsec for some pvp practice when we get time. I also plan on running lowsec scan sites for a little fun now and again, and am working on my pilgrim skills so I have a decent cloaky lowsec boat. I can see these goals lasting a year, id also like to think doing al this carebearing will increase my wallet a little, tho I will probably blow it all, I have recently developed the urge to buy a pilgrim a absolution and a archon …so that’s a years isk taken up lol.Photobucket

In other news I have been informed that btek will be hoasting its first t1 frig fight soon, the details are still being hammered out (our CEO sent the rules out today but I will make a couple of additions, as he has not taken boosters, implants ect into the rules which most carebears wouldn’t think of but I would use to cheat)

Lastly I recived a email form someone called tekei, asking some advice about setting up a lowsec corp. I will reply to your eve mail later when I get home with specific’s but thought id share some general pearls of wisdom here for anyone with the same idea :
Photobucket

1- If you are looking for a “friendly” system in lowsec you have the wrong idea, all lowsec systems are unfriendly the only variable is how often you will be station camped. In low this doesn’t happen as often as you would imagine but if you are worried pick the system to base out of a couple of jumps out from high sec, the reason for this is most pirates will base them self’s in a high sec entry system to allow ease of bringing in supplies with a hauler alt and picking up easy pray that drifts in from high sec. also stay away from faction warfare systems.

2- Pick area based on what you are looking for, if you are a pirate as I said you want high sec entry points, for pirate hunting you want several (active) pirate corps in the area, if you a small group looking for mild pvp, pick a back water system with little traffic and pick of roaming gangs and the odd solo pirate while running plexs and scan sites.

3- Get to know the locals. After a while you will get a feel for what they like to fly, know if they are a threat and what the threats are hell if you keep friendly and respectful in local you may even make some friends or be asked to join their corp/alliance.

4- The golden rule of eve applies double in low sec “NEVER FLY WANT YOU CAN’T AFFORD TO LOSE” you will be killed in lowsec, but it happens less with practice.

5- See rule four for all further rules. and enjoy lowsec.

Have fun guys 07

Wednesday 6 October 2010

WTF?!?!?

Im puzzled?
Last night I was doing some bits with my indy alt vespa which saw me roll into hek at about half 8 GMT last night, in local there were crys of the sansha invading?
Wtf I thought the sansha incursions were due to start in November?
There was even calls of a sansha titan, although im pretty sure that part was bollocks. So although I was only in a shit fit merlin I followed the noise to see for my self. I warped to the planet the sansha were supposed to be at …as I arrived I was blown away , the remains of a HUGE battle containers sansha wrecks and about 2 dozen capsuleers rocking about in everything from haulers to battleships.

Now have I been living the the back of beyond to long or is this unusual, I was under the impressions these hadn’t started yet?
Oh and for those keeping track astral is now at -7.8. im not ratting as often as I could due to the wars going on in provi at the moment.

Tuesday 5 October 2010

a rethink.

Ok…earlier I was a bit harsh.
I said with out capsuleer we would only be left with “iclone” which is a poor substitute, and that was unfair to iclone and its developers. I clone is a very good app for eve users, I have used it in conjunction with capsuleer for quite a while, as it has a decent item data base, jump planer and a few other nice bits that capsuleer lacked. Its biggest flaw’s were it at times felt a bit buggy and sluggish lacking the polish of capsuleer, and of course the blog pack was on capsuleer meaning you had access to a knowledge base and entertainment.
I have over the last few hours (along with doing some work) been reading a petition started on nashh kadavr's blog to keep capsuleer alive (please go read then sign it!!!)
The pessimist in me also was looking at other iphone apps to see if anything could replace capsuleer, and I clone in its current state is the best alternative…
What I was day dreaming about would be a combination of the two, the polish and the blogs from capsuleer and some of the more in-depth functions of iclone ? would it be possible to merge the two? Or maybe if capsuleer cant be saved donate some of the code it uses to iclone to give blog readers a new recourse?
I’m no programmer I don’t even know if that could be done but it would provide the best of both worlds.
I’m still hoping capsuleer can and will be saved it, but if not maybe another program will step up to the plate.

Back, but to sad news.

Hi guys,

As some of you may have noticed I haven’t really posted over the last week and a half. This has been due to several reasons, firstly a little bit of eve burn out, secondly the release of halo reach, I’m no halo fan boy but I have enjoyed the series and wanted to get some play time in with the new game. Thirdly a nasty wisdom tooth extraction ( my third) which saw me not doing a lot for a few days.
I am however back and will be a little more active over the coming weeks. Btek has grown considerably in my absence, and is well on its way to becoming a some corp again, my toon’s are developing well, Vespa is currently getting a little love rounding out her core skills and science skills so she can delve into r and d. My P.I ventures are not doing so well, I keep forgetting to restart the cycles and find the whole process “unnatural” feeling but I will continue trying to learn.

On a Sad note I have seen capsuleer is coming to an end. I cant express enough thanks to they guys that developed it and am secretly hoping a random rich person will step up to finance capsuleer as it has provided the best external eve app for skill tracking and blog reading, and with out it we will be forced to use “I clone” which is a very poor substitute.
If ccp ever reads this blog, please work out some arrangement with capsuleer to keep it running, the community will suffer with out it.

Fly safe guys 07

Friday 24 September 2010

even my maths isnt that wrong...is it?

Hello people!

I have 2 bits of news. First bit, I have filed my very first petition in eve, let me explain further..

The other night When I logged on to Astral I checked his sec status, as I normally do , and noticed it was -8.2 ..fair enough, I went off to do some ratting I returned after 20 mins having killed a battleship and escort and went afk for 20 min’s while I eat dinner.

On returning I checked my character sheet to see that rat had given me a “alleged” increase of 0.2, the standard for BS rats in null for me, which most normal people would assume would take me to -8.0?
When I checked however..-8.15? wtf?
Do tried again , same thing.
So last night I sat down and added all the sec status gains that I have apparently been given on the character sheet (I can only see back as far as the evening of the 14th) however just adding those I should have gained over 4.417 in sec status!
If you include all the rats I have slaughtered I should probably be in high sec! so I have registered a petition to look into said scandal lol.

Second bit of news is Btek is shaping up to be an awesome corp, we have a fairly active EU TZ base now, and while we are all chilled and getting on with our own odds and sods, its nice to have a active corp chat again to chat and chill with like minded souls.
The forums I built are starting to look good and soon we will start running some regular corp op’s.
If there is any players looking to learn eve or people that don’t have the time to commit to a full on corp that requires voice coms and minimum this and that, check us out, its relaxed fun that fits around how YOU want to play. Come have a chat in “Btek pub” channel.

Wednesday 22 September 2010

Incursion -my take.

So. Incursion, our new winter expansion..sounds like fun :)

The info we have so far is as follows:
EVE Online®: Incursion will also include many improvements as suggested by the Council of Stellar Management, as well as hardware upgrades, software improvements and new cluster components aimed at increasing game and fleet battle performance to even higher levels.
Further improvements include updating the character creator with CCP's Carbon character technology for fresh pilot portraits, a Sansha Mothership, Fighterbomber, the Noctis salvaging vessel, improvements to NPCs and their AI, new coveted loot and rewards, storyline events, amazing new visuals and a more dynamic and simplified system for Planetary Interaction.
EVE Gate, the web-based social networking platform for pilots, sees improvements and additions such as new forums which underline the importance of organizational and communication tools in the virtual world. The expansion enhances the power of individual choice in the context of meaningful relationships with other players - EVE's true strength - as highlighted in the Causality trailer and the classic Butterfly Effect trailer.
"Incursion marks a point where our PVE experience moves towards the co-operative roots of EVE and the largest introduction of our Carbon Technology platform to date. Never before have so many players and developers contributed to EVE's living universe", says Sr. Producer Arnar Gylfason.
____________
Now my take on the above.

Improvements in cluster components – should be good faster load times and less lag, but not all that significant in the grand scheme of things, I expect these sort of improvments to go along with EVERY expansion to improve performance as eve evolves.

Updating character portraits with carbon tech thingy..bit that worry’s me here is the “for fresh pilot portraits” which I read as on new toons only. Perhaps it will auto update existing portraits, I will be disappointed if this is the case as I wanted to fine tune astrals looks.

Sansha mother ship’s , cant fly them…probably wont make a lot of difference to me, but I bet they will look cool, same for fighterbombers …makes no odds to me, but im sure a cap ship pilot somewhere has a hard on.

The Noctis salvage ship, looks cool may buy one for salvaging my lvl 4s if they are a reasonable price, would think they will see the most use in W space but time will tell, people will discover creative uses for this ship.

Improved AI for NPC’s…I reserve judgement on this, however I half expect rats to do random things like scram each other or start shooting random objects.
What I would prefer is to redo NPC ewar so I can’t be jammed from 10000000000km out!

Coveted loot and rewards…yes please, give to me and save me stealing them lol.
As for the incursions of the “feared” sansha. Lol, I will likely join some of the open fleets for some fun (assuming I can get astral near them) however if they are in lowsec or null I can see every PVP pilot thinking it’s a shooting gallery, and all carebear’s thinking it’s a mass TARP! So im hoping a good deal of this will be in high sec. even then joining any open fleet is asking to get ganked so fly something cheap people.

Till then …back to the endless ratting.

Tuesday 21 September 2010

Clensing fire- pt 2

“Shit that hurt”
Astral was burning towards another Sansha patrol, the cruiser escort were doing little damage but the battle ships were slowly peeling the shields off the harbinger..
Not that it mattered Astral has stayed true to his Amaar heritage in a few ways, favouring amour over shields was one, still it annoyed him to lose shield before he was even in range.
The cruisers drifted into range first, each sent back to the void quickly by the 7 T2 medium pulse lasers aboard the harbinger..
A flight if drones left the harbinger’s drone bay as astrals mind directed them to strip the first Sansha lord of his shields.
As the last cruiser disintegrated Astral settled in to a tight orbit on the battleships his Nos sapping its cap and the lasers and drones eating its armour…its death was both inevitable and profitable.
As the harbinger aligned to warp back to the station a CVA covert ops pilot entered the system..
“more blood shed for other peoples politics” thought astral, null sec was helpful for his wallet and security rating, but fighting for anyone but himself was not something astral would tolerate now.

___________________________________

30 min’s later astral was entering the local bar, unarmed for once, in an effort to become law abiding.
He saw his contact sitting across the bar, a typical concord type, a fat self important Caldari that looked like he had a stick up his ass.
Astral ordered a cold quafe and sat down opposite him, his relaxed attire made him look scruffy next to the official.
“Mr Dominix, I’m pleased to see you have eliminated another 5 outlaw battleships today, and several escort ships ranging from frigates to cruisers…all belonging to the Sansha nation, and not a single act of piracy for nearly a month”
Astral answered only by sipping his quafe, although the thought of smashing the glass on the table and jamming the jagged remains into the pompous pricks wind pipe made him smile.
“for services rendered we will compensate you with 7 million isk and a security rating increase of .7” he continued “at this rate you may be allowed back in the fringe systems soon”
“transfer the ISK to Vespa, my associate, and pray that I don’t rethink going straight concord, you would be the first person on my list”
Astral downed the rest of his quafe and turned to walk out the bar, the concord representative sat perfectly still, his face drained of blood.
It will be a long climb to become law abiding again, astral would have to play concord lapdog for now, but he didn’t have to like it.


Several hours later hundreds of light years away Vespa was just returning from a bar herself, she had been drinking with some of the Btek pilots in her new home, she had been tasked with setting everything up for astrals return, also with helping to administer the corp in his absence and to begin work on astrals next projects R and D and planetary colonies, she had established the test colony a few days ago and was just waiting for funds to come in and training to finish to start the project in earnest.
She was excited and wary all at the same time, astral had picked a system to colonise but it was in lowsec. It seemed a good choice though not far from home and was a dead end system, one way in and out connecting to high sec…a real back water system.
As she entered her new apartment she drunkenly tore off her clothes as she crossed the main room, throwing all cloths at a sofa in the far corner. She was headed for her bed when a subtle blinking on her data screen told her there was a message for her.
“computer play message thingy’s” she giggled as she fell on the bed
“this is an automated message from concord. 7.1 million ISK was transferred to your account today, you balance is now 40.23 million”
As she drifted to sleep above laying on top of the sheets she dreamt sweet dreams of the colonies she would create and the empire she could build….

Monday 20 September 2010

weekend update

Hi guys did you all have a good weekend?
Mine was ok, got on a bit on Sunday, but my ratting was interrupted a fair bit by CVA keep parking cloaky pilots in system…CVA if your reading this, in the nicest possible way , sod off and let me rat in peace lol.

On a side note I am now at -8.25 sec status, it is creeping down , but I’m not working on it as hard as I could be ( it may drop even less next month when fable 3 hits, but that’s for another blog).
My sec status ratting is having one side affect I am finding nice, my wallet is quite healthy, even when I keep buying crap it keeps bouncing back up within a day or two, as the rats I’m popping are worth over a mill each and the salvage sells (slowly) which means I have a semi steady income, making about 15 to 20 mill in a hour or 3.
The real problem has been deciding what to blow this money on, so far its been some pvp mods, a 10 mill punisher fit, and other odds and sods and saving a large chunk to buy another high-sec BC. However now I’m thinking I may send it to Vespa and get her started on PI.
I have been meaning to restart her training for a few weeks and I think getting her skills up for PI and low level missioning will be a nice break from the ratting when CVA crops up. I may also look at grinding her standings with a R and D agent, so she has a duel passive income with PI and data cores. Then use her for mining and such like when needed… could be a good plan.
Also I am now about half way through reading the “empyrean age” (eve novel), so far I’m impressed its been quite a interesting read, and has re-ignited a fire in me to delve into the role playing side of eve, may do some more IC posts and may try my hand at some out and out fan fiction. I’d recommend the book to any Eve fans especially if you like the cannon and lore surrounding eve.
Lastly the Recruitment for Btek is going very well, we have about 8 new members and a few more in the pipe, its slow going but will shape up to be a awesome corp to fly with In the future, if anyone is looking for a relaxed industrial corp with a VERY relaxed attitude where you can balance eve and real life drop into “btek pub” for a chat with me or Reltso. We have a lot going on in high sec there will be little bits happening in lowsec soon (once I get astral back out from null) .

Friday 17 September 2010

quiet night cearbearing..here's a fun game.

Today I have been thinking about how to amuse my inner pirate once I’m allowed back in highsec and came up with a game I intend to play when I’m bored..I call it “omgwtf can flipping”
The basic idea is to take a recon ship, in my case a pilgrim, out mining with a few noobs that don’t have an orca…except here is the twist they mine into MY jet can while I sit cloaked a few km away, but still in point range.…
Mr cock sure can flipper comes in, and I commonly see rifters and such used for this, and flip the can..however instead of giving the defenceless miners the right to attack..it gives Me the right to attack lol. I would then decloak web, scram and nuet him into oblivion.
It would be fun to see if he would then cry in local or accept it as a occupational risk?
Couldn’t do it too often but as little fun could be good.
I encourage all of you to think up new and ever more creative ways to give people that “omgwtf” feeling we all know and love lol.

Thursday 16 September 2010

MORE GUNS LESS PHONE CALLS!!

So what can I tell you about yesterday…it was almost exciting lol
I logged on a little after 5 to get some ratting done, however after popping 1 battleship my ratting was rudely interrupted by a pilot entering system that I was informed is neither friendly or blue, he does have a habit of hot dropping ratting ships tho..
Being careful I docked up my odd pve fit harb..gave it 15 mins he didn’t leave..i was getting bored at this point so I undocked and did a scan to see what he was in,.. a Tristan.
Now a Tristan is defiantly killable, however the likely hood of it being a cyno ship is quite high…I wasn’t gonna fly a pve fit harb at it…so after half hour asking about I pod over to another system to buy myself a pvp fit punisher…much happier risking that.
However at that point my night went to shit and I had endless phone calls for a couple of hours. By the time I got back he was long gone and there were a few nuets in system but I had no way of knowing their standing with legio so I left them be.
Still I have a pvp ship on stand by now just in case, and im sure my landlords at legio wont mind me popping the odd war target if the chance presents itself…

Wednesday 15 September 2010

fun in providence!

I had fun fun fun yesterday..
I unfortunately I had a boiler that needed replacing at home wich ment I had to stay home instead of going to work…it was VERY upsetting lol.
So while the builders were in I settled in for a nice day of EVE, now as I mentioned before I had spoken to one of my old CEO’s Noah Vale about going ratting up with his alliance in providence to get my sec status up, and yesterday morning I got the approval I was waiting for!
So I bought myself a shuttle and made the 50 odd jumps from my base in lowsec to Legio Astarte’s systems in providence. I am pleased to say I made the trip without incident, not a single gate bubbled along the way, the only fun parts were the two High sec systems I HAD to cross, I did so at high speed leaving a message in local for concord to kiss my ass lol.
I then spent most of the day ratting with some great members of legio, Noah for one Eenbal for another.
I managed to go from -9.28 to -8.7 in a pleasant afternoon, the Battleship rats I was popping were giving sec gains of around .22 far better than the 0.055 I was getting for lowsec rats..the money is a lot better to lol which never hurts.
I’m using a harby set up I managed to cobble together from what was on sale down there, not my best set up but its working really well.
If I keep going at this rate I sould be back in high sec in a week or two , and there is less chance of being ganked at a gate camp…happy days

Monday 13 September 2010

weekend update

Quick update of what has happened over the weekend, I shot some rats and some rocks.
I moved a lot of may smaller ratting ships to egghelende, like the vengeance ect, oddly no one wanted to pick a fight when I fly that, fly a rifter and everyone wants to take a pot shot at me..still.
I also had a chat with another old friend of mine, noah vale, who is the CEO of Top Gear Ventures (the corp EVE SOB is in) who have a little chunk of null out in provi now, there is a chance I may be able to be set blue to them to go rat out there for a month to repair my sec status, which would make life easier. Rather than try to move my battlecruisers down there, I have sold a couple of them off and will buy one down there if it goes ahead. Just waiting on an answer for astral now.

Vespa spent most of the weekend popping rocks, I have discovered I really need to invest another month in her to get her into a hulk and get her refining and manufacturing skills up so she can build me my ships cheep. Will do that soon…probably.

The recruitment for Btek is going well we have had several members join, seems a lot of people that have been sitting in 1 man corps because they didn’t feel they could commit to the requirements a lot of corps have in place, but are now looking for a bit of company and are finding Btek is perfect for casual players. It surprised me as I was expecting a lot of new players what we are getting is a lot of quite experienced players that have always operated solo. If any new players do join they now have quite a large pool of experience to learn from which can only be a good thing.
Lastly I have been ordered to remain in contact with flashy red and given an open invite to return or join them on any ops in the future, so I can still get my yarr on if I have time. Goes to show what a good bunch of players those pirates can be lol.

Astral = -9.28
Have fun

Friday 10 September 2010

bloody pirates.

Bloody pirates! lol.
Went out last, again grinding my sec status, and for want of a better term got shafted. First loss was due to some skilled scanner use on the part of my attacker, he landed right on top of me at a belt and unleashed his drones before I could burn out of point range, I congratulated him on a nice kill and went back to reship.
Took another rifter out, got 4 gates out and was stalked and killed by a gifted pilot in a Hic, wasn’t going well for me.
Next I tried my arbitrator, went well for several systems until I ran in to a very large well equipped gate camp that decided to pop then pod me…bit of a crap night for me really lol.
It Was only cheap ships and was all good fun but it took away time from the very important business of killing rats.
Trouble is that lone ratting is exactly the sort of activity pirates like to prey on, and the fact I have to keep moving systems to keep getting sec status makes me very vulnerable to well organised gate camps. I’m not complaining, its part of low sec, but makes life much more difficult. As a result I will only be flying rifters in lowsec for now and the only T2 gear on them will be the guns.
I have decided with astral I am going to get him the fast talk skill ASAP then switch skill training over to Vespa for a while, I’m hoping the fast talk will improve the sec status faster but its still gonna take a while, and while its going on Vespa will become my main, I will try to use her industrial skills to make a ton of money and just do half hour or an hours ratting when I get on now and then with astral. He will return to high sec when he can.
We also got our first new member to Btek last night, a vet trader player moving from a one man corp to us for a little more company, I’m hoping he will be the first of many to join us and help make Btek great again.

I have decided at the end of each post now to give you a update of astrals sec status so you can see how he is progressing..

Astral = -9.38

07

Thursday 9 September 2010

smattering of real life and clarification.

Last day or two has been most surprising, the amount of negative comments left on the blog from bitter carebears and alike, all anonymous of course, has been very surprising.
It seems bitter care bears are delighting in the fact im having to rat for my sec status, a dull task but, meh, if I have to I guess.
Also some seem to be criticising me for leaving flashy red to move back to a care bear corp. now my initial reaction was to say some thing along the lines of , who are you to judge me? , but after some thought, I have chosen to share my life in eve through the blog so maybe I do owe my readers some more explanation.

Let me start by explaining I am married , 30 and have a lovely wife.
My wife tolerates my gaming the way I tolerate her shopping, she has always been less than amused when I log in to eve pop the headphones in to log on to vent and ignore her for hours on end (and belive me pvp ops on a roam are hard to leave mid way though). This was always explained to corps when I joined that I may be less vocal than others.
These arguments culminated a few nights ago just after moving to flashy red with a some bad news and some good news, either calm down eve playing and leave the headphones alone, or she is leaving. This was followed with the news she may be pregnant. Hense my “I will have less time” comment.

After some talking I decided to leave the PVP time intensive side of eve, and go back to care bearing which allows me to drop what I’m doing at any point to help her I have also said I wont spend EVERY night playing, tho I am on a lot at the moment killing rats. I rejoined Btek as I get on well with the CEO reltso and wanted to build the corp back up with players that want a causal eve life that focus’s on fun and team work.

I hope this has clarified my point of view for people, if you still feel obliged to troll, feel free, I only delete extreme comments or links to gold sellers ect.
Should you be one of the few gamers out there that like me has limited playtime and wants a casual corp or a new player looking to be taught, please come give btek a try, we will be getting on our feet over the next month I have just set some forums up ect, and after I have a chat with relt will be helping with getting more ops in place.