Eve I Missed you!

Ok I got on for a couple of hours tonight!!! I now now what's going on and where I am headed.. Indigo bias is disbanding and we are joining a new Corp... Sons of Viagra... If they accept us that is ( but who wouldn't love us), so it seems we will be part of sys-k if all goes well!

For the most part I spent the evening on autopilot jumping the 43 jumps to get my ratting ship near to their null entrance , had a nice chat with a few of them they seem cool and I think I'm gonna get the chance to learn a lot about fleet fights out there!
I also need to give a shout to wolfduke for being more than fair paying me for the crap I had that he can't find and just being a general cool cat.

Only problem I can see coming is I am 17 days away for a 3 week holiday so I'm hardly gonna have time to settle in before I dissapper for a bit.

As a side note I'm keeping several frigs and jump clones in rens for Wednesday fight nights, anyone that has emailed me please also eve mail zombinuts as if one if us can't make it the other one should be there!


Have fun



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BLOODY TEENAGERS!!

I have offically turned in to my father! I am now seeing all teenagers as trouble makers since my two cousins moved in, this is still limiting my playtime at the moment as i have spent the last few nights either on the phone trying to sort everyone out or running them about to see their "freinds" (read loacl hooligans and drug addicts).
As a result i appologise to anyone that was interested in the wednesday PEWPEW i will get it sorted for next week, and worse case senario i will forward all the invites to SOB to sort out..but im hoping life will settle back down for me this week.
In Eve our corp has now left null completly but due to the assets and ships being moved this week while i have been offline i have no idea where any of my ships are, I have seen eve mails some saying the corp is disbanding and joining another corp some saying we are headed into a new alliance...who knows. either wayt i need to get back into the game and back to null as soon as posible...if those SODDDING TEENAGERS WIL GIVE ME SOME PEACE AND QUIET.


(old man rant over)

A Weekend of Change

Lots has happened this weekend for me, in Eve annd in RL!
In real life I have had some major issues with some of my family that has resulted in me getting the police involved and as a result i now have 2 of my 16 year old cousins living with me for the forseeable future, this may have an impact on my play time but i hope not (incidentally if any of my corp is wondering where I went sunday afternoon, that was where I was).

In Eve life Indigo Bias (the corp I belong to) is going through some big changes , our CEO has changed the leadership structure to a more open leadership and is going to be taking the corp in a new more "fun" direction, and i have found myself as one of the new directors, a new challenge for me to learn as i have never had access to everything before but one i am looking forward to mastering, so far the only real thing i have been able to help with was setting up a new corp fourm. I cant say much more than this at the moment for security reasons but also because nothing is set in stone yet, but things are going to get very interesting very soon.

The first rule of fight club is..

Ok this will be quite short ..Last night was filled with a bit of ratting (and some nice loot drops) a nuet fleet getting close to SJJ and me getting all excited about a impending fleet fight..only to fizzle out, and me jumping back to lowsec about 9'ish and going on a low sec roam,with Zombinuts where we failed to get into a fight...interesting but dull.

On the up side we (me and zombinuts) came up with a idea, holding a "fight club" on a wednesday night, a few people comented on our pvp practice and said they were happy to cme fight 1v1 and learn and teach ect..
So heres the idea, if your game, eve mail me and next wed I will try to find a system probably near rens or jel and set up so 1v1 frig fights..
the rules will be :

T1 hulls only
no T2 or office mods
Fighting is consentual
NO podding
No bitching if/when your ship gets popped.


We will take turns fighting or observing , to make it leagal you will can flip 1 unit of ammo each warp out, then warp in at location and begin.
If a few people are interested we should be able to get 2-3 fights each and see how everyone does.

This will be ment as a bit of fun/learning expirence, expect to lose everything you bring..as I said if this sounds like fun to you eve mail me and i will let you know the time an venue.

PVP practice

As some of you know I have been toying with PVP for a few weeks, my chosen tool of destruction at the present time is a punisher or one of its T2 varients..however i have been finding it hard to find a good place to practice where im not wildly out matched in skills or out gunned by multiple opponents.
Last night I had such a fight, I logged on in the evening and began ratting as normal out of SJJ, people wernt talking much in corp chat or the alliance channels so I wandered in to the "stig hut" the public channel for my old corp (top gear ventures) and got chatting to them, and more specificly evesob, who joined TGV just as i was leaving with his combat alt "zombinuts" who is roughly the same skill level as me..he to has been looking to learn PVP and we have been threatening to kick each others ass for a while (in a freindly sorta way).
We agreed that last night would be the night to have a little practice, SOB already had several rifters fitted and ready to roll in high sec, wich just left me to come meet him, so I podded down to Rens and picked up a punisher hull.
we agreed before the fight we would go with T1 only and no podding and our fight venue was Bei 1. I gave my punisher A nice fit of :-

3x 200mm AC
1x "langor" web
1X named AB
1X named Adaptive nano plate
1X named DC
1X EANM
1X 200mm steel plate

Decided not to take a scram as the fight was consentual neither of us would be running, and I oppted for higher resistance as opposed to a repper as I had a feeling he would fit a neut..my suprise in the bag was some fancy arch angel faction ammo.

we both made our way to Bei 1 and each jettisoned 1 unit of ammo, canflipped each other so concord wouldnt spoil our fun and warped away from the cans...
As we warped back in we landed about 18k apart, perfect for me as I knew my lock times were slower and he was using close range guns (same as me) we burned towards each other both locking each other up..his rifter's speed was incredible..as we hit 10km we webbed each other and opened up the guns to start the damage..he had also fitted a scram, a wasted option as I had no intention of running.
as we got close to each other he peeled my sheilds back with ease, while I was struggling to hit his rifter that was doing something insane like 1500ms as I entered armor he was only 1/4 into his sheild..then he hit my resists, over 60% across the board, his damage slowed to a snail's pace, but was still going..mine began to catch up..but sadly not fast enough.
during the fight i also noticed i had been nueted, this made very little difference as only running a DC, web and AB I had loads of cap left as I went POP! SOB was still between 20-25% armor :(
Well done to SOB!! was a very fun fight, his rifter was just to fast for me to do any meaningful damge to him, I had expected the speed of an escort he arrived in a porche.
After the fight we both had a fair bit of adrenaline pumping and were hungry for more..sadly he had to shoot off to get his RL ride sorted, but we have agreed next time it will be a Full T2 fit..I may even bring a assult frig, and we will be going on a few low-sec roams together in the near future to practice ruining some poor bugger's day..watch this space!

P.S a pirate like bloodlust decended over both of us after the fight...i feel the lure of the dark side ...

RR carriers are awsome - volcanos are not!

I had chance to run a couple of sites last night with one of the guys in my alliance, I was in my trusty harbinger, he was in his carrier..and damn those things are awsome!! He was eating the cruisers and above with his drones while keeping me alive during the inital wave of DPS that would normally pop me fast!!

Also I have had a lot of advice now on my idea of a industrial alt..Mrs dominix will be created soon..if I Win enough for a plex or two on CKs blog banter contest she will be here before my holiday if not, I will be creating her when i get back (more likely as I cant even win a bigmac at macdonald's normally). im thinking about having her as a minitamar char, that way if I ever dive into the fan fiction could do a back story of a slave girl my main purchaced and grew to love...corny as hell but I like it!

on a totally un related note im bloody relived the ban on UK flights has been lifted as im due to fly in 28 days...and iceland im warning you ...if you screw with my holiday...bad things....lol

Is eve a man's world? - EVE BLOG BANTER

Welcome guys and I hope girls, to my reply to Crazy Kinux's latest blog banter, this time round he is asking a interesting question -

"What could CCP Games do to attract and maintain a higher percentage of women to the game. Will Incarna do the trick? Can anything else be done in the mean time? Can we the players do our part to share the game we love with our counterparts, with our sisters or daughters, with the Ladies in our lives? What could be added to the game to make it more attractive to them? Should anything be changed? Is the game at fault, or its player base to blame?"

I thought for a long time about how to answer this...well half an hour at least, and decided the only way to answer the question properly was to explain how I got to my conclusion.

First off I decided to draw on my best frame of referance for female gaming..my good wife, Now although I have said meny times how she will not join me in my EVE addiction that is not to say she isnt a gamer herself, infact if you were to compare gammer score on the Xbox she is a few thousend points ahead, she is relentless in her quest for gamer points, BUT only if she likes the game..

I tried very early in our courting day's to get my wife to play Oblivion (Eldar scrolls) with limited sucsess, she REALLY enjoyed the creation of the charecter but hated the missions because things "jumped out at her".

On the flip side I have seen her play games like "Viva Piniata 1+2" and "the Sims (all of em)" as if they were crack.. and looking through her collection of games for her PC, they all follow a pattern, Building.
While I and meny other Male gamers take our delight in making things explode or die, In my opinion female gamers (in general), take far more delight in the creation of life.
I Cant Help but think this must be related to urges deep in our behavior..going back to the beginings of man. We have on some level retained the basic urge to fight and destroy to prove our dominance, we hunger kills to feed our kin!
Women will fight to defend what's their's but are far less agressive (again in general) and seem to delight in creating empires and building and taking care of those in need, with a mothering instinct instead of a killer's instinct.

I have come to realise my failure to attract my wife, and maybe CCP's failure to attract more women to the game is the focus on combat, my wife see's me sitting there blowing up rat's (and occasionaly being podded by someone at a bubble camp) and has 0% intrest, however if she saw me interacting with planets in a simcity type way, or being able to stimulate her "nesting" urges with a apartment in a station that we are able to customize? tht may grab her attention long enough to get her interested in the larger eve world..
Perhaps with incarna and being able to relate to a more familar avatar that you are able to dress up as you see fit will amuse her.

To answer Mr kinux's question, I think CCP are going the right way about attracting more female gamers although it will be a gradual process, once tyranis hits, if they can build on the social side and the building side of the game to make it more accesable to newer players and bring incarna to the table with all the customisation options that brings they will be well on there way to content that will amuse and keep a much larger female fan base.
Of course advertising will play a large part, and if those of us already playing were to make more of an effort to get the girls involved once these expansions arrive we will see the player base grow.

IF CCP really wanted to encourage a growth spurt of female's they could maybe advertise in female driven magazines, with Ad's aimed at the girls.
Or maybe offer double the reward for buddy code sign up's IF its a girl, you get 60 days free if you talk a girl into joining (although im not sure how on earth you could varify it). A third option would be game specific advertising..how meny girls would be playing Eve now if a free trial pack had been shiped with every coppy of the sim's? I'd bet a LOT. If CCP could negotiate some deal where a prominet female oriented game is shiped with a Promo code you may see numbers soar.

Well thats my 2 cents anyway...a bit of a ramble but on a topic this large there is no set answer. i will be linking all the relevent banter posts to this post as they are submitted, any feedback is always welcome.
**EDITED**

Some links to the other entries i have read so far..

Ombey
cataclysmic variable
podlogs
eveoganda
evesob
starfleetcomms
arukemosy
garhead
PsycheDiver
rantuket
Zajamaru

Have fun!

Imagine if you will..

I was reading a very interesting post today by one of the new blog pack members over at the hydrostatic capsule (congratulations by the way) he raised a VERY interesting point about being able to track large fleet's.
It got me thinking about how this type of idea would work and the impact it could have on the game..I like the idea of being able to track the Large fleets but the way i would suggest to do it is introduce a skill that at lvl 1 you can see if there is a fleet of 30+ ships within 3 jumps..not where they are or what they are..just somewhere within 3 jumps, the range could expand with the skill level.
It would make eve Blob tactics a lot more interesting so as to disguise movements you would have to break the large fleets in to smaller roaming gangs to move into a system then form to attack, it would make fleet ops a LOT more interesting in my eyes, and would encourage a rank system for FLeets of junior FC's that would be responsable for getting there "section" of the fleet into the target area safely..

maybe in a future expansion but id love to hear your veiws on it..even if its just to blow holes in the idea.

Shall i get my indy on?

I have been considering setting up a indy account for a while now, I like the idea of a Alt that just mines builds and hauls..no combat. two things are stopping me at the moment, firstly cost , cant get the wife to spring for a second account, and secondly, i really like the idea of using him to mine while im ratting or in fleets, and focus on him while im waiting for fleets to form ect, trouble is my laptop wont handle two eve clients.. yet.

What i am thinking, is after my next holiday ( may 17th-june 23rd its coming and i may go a bit quiet) i will be upgrading my laptop, which will mean i could handle two clients. Also with the money I will make from ratting and mining im hoping to be able to afford a plex each month..

what I'd really like to know is ..am I being realistic? to make the alt I would send myself a 21 day trial and activate it with a plex from my main..so effectively getting 51 days free to build my new charecter and get a headstart, I could throw 100 mill a month at it from my main with out to much hassle so would leave the mining alt with 150-200 mill a month to find..anything on top would be gravy baby!!

But as I dont know much about the indy side of eve at the moment I'd like to know is what im thinking do-able? is 100-200 mill a month achiveable in 51 days doing maybe 8-10 hours of mining a week? I could mine in null but would rather keep him in high sec to "go shopping" for stuff I use in null? also, is it going to be worth my while doing this? I have heard tales from some miners that they can make 100 mill an hour ice mineing, is this a myth or am I just in the wrong ships? If it is posible to make that kinda money I will use it to support my main..hell if I could make just the 300 mill a month to cover the plex it will be worth it for a hauler in hi sec..

any advice please drop me a line. Also I have set up a email account specificly for my eve projects and chatting astraldominix@hotmail.co.uk feel free to mail me or add me if you use msn.

lastly a little shout out to the fan I met lurking in btekpub channel last night, always good to hear people are enjoying the blog, and a thank you to reltso yand of Btek for my new retribution.

have fun!!

Im playing match maker now..

I had a small adventure last night, I logged on in high sec space (teon to be exact) and bought my self some skill books and some faction crystals ready to go back to null, I couldnt inject one of the kill books, drone interfacing, as I had about 15 hours for drones V to complete and couldn't jump clone back to null for about 2 hours, so I decided to throw the book and ammo in an amarr shuttle and go back the long way.. I got started on the 33 jump route back to SJJ and it was going quite well.. then as I warped from a planet to the stargate bad things happened..I went flying past the gate, dragged into a warp bubble about 70 km from the gate..bollocks!
At first I thought I was going to get lucky as at first glane there didnt seem to be anyone about.. so I aligned to the gate and hit full speed, hoping i'd make it before anyone noticed me..in hindsight I should have warped off and come back from another angle..but I didn't and a few seconds later the dramiel appeared in my rear veiw and opened fire..and warp scramed me.. bye bye shuttle, as my clone was in FEM near our home system I didnt even try to save the pod..it saved me a long trip.
Turns out it was a Solar fleet bubble camp... git's.

All the while the events above were happening i was talking to a few people, mainly the Guys in Topgear Venture's public chat including fellow eve blogger SOB. a few hours later I was talking to my old CEO Noah about his plans for TGV joining an alliance, he was still looking in to all his options, I asked if he wanted me to introduce him to the Guys in SHA and see if he would like to join our alliance, seemed a good fit, we were looking for small - medium corps to join us and he wanted a good alliance, plus i trust both party's and know they would get on. So later that night I gave Wolfduke (my CEO and all round good egg) the contact detail's to see what happens, couldnt stay on long enough to see the out come of those talks, but if TGV were to come on board, would be great for me as they were a good bunch of guys and i loved flying with them, I love Ingo bias to, and trust Wolf totaly.. if my attempt at match making comes off i will be very pleased but we will see.

Im a giant NOOB!!

Until recently I have Not really thought of my self as a Noob since the first month or so of playing..I had told my self one i could fly that battle cruiser i was a bad ass...once I could fit most of it T2, I was a little tough nut...once i was breezing lvl 3 and 4's i was unbeatable...WRONG!!!!

My recent move to null has shown me just what a NOOB I am! From the small but interesting revelations such as living in a POS, you dont dock your ship...so how to you change fittings?? (to answer, you fly close to the control tower and open the fittings screen) to the relatively massive ego blow of fighting a few cruisers and a battleship and not packing enough of a punch with 5 T2 beams to break the big rat's tank. It has been humbleing to be sitting in system following carriers about ratting and watching the way these giants eat the rats around them.

The best thing I think to come out of being in null sec is the desire to perfect my skills now, and seeing how to.. for instance.. I currently have 4.6 million skillpoints..with my current harby set up, I have 1 min 35 seconds of capacitor (running everything..which i dont) and output for the sake of argument 150 dps (it's not that but I wont tell people exactly what to tank for)..using evemon and EFT and seting all skills to V, I have 6 mins of capacitor with the same setup and am doing almost double the DPS.
This has caused me to look at where exactly I can make the gains, currently i only have Drones to IV so that was my first move, field another drone, i also recently learnt the bonus the skill "Drone Interfacing" give's and will be training that.. In the longer term I can also increase my battlecruiser skill from III to V giving me (in a harby) 20 less cap drain from my guns and 10% more damage..you get the idea what im trying to do, I intend now to focus on making the relevent skills I have much more efficant squeezing every drop of DPS out of my ships instead of focusing on the prerequisit's for the next ship or skill I want. I think this is the biggest difference between the carebears and the Null or lowsec PVP dwellers..in empire near enough is good enough and you can get by far to easily without optimizing what you have, in null, less than perfect is waking up in you new clone vat.

To anyone thinking of moving to null, I would say go for it, but before you move, check the logistics set up. get your ships to the POS and start working on any of the skills you glossed over.

0.0 is ...

Not what I expected, but not in a bad way. I have been in 0.0 for about a week nowand have made a few discoveries about null and the practice of living there..
First off getting about in null, for any carebares reading this, you can fly throughlow sec and null fairly safely if you follow some simple rules, NEVER use the auto pilot- it's like asking to get popped. Don't fly anything to flashy , avoid attention, and always fly gate-planet (not moon)- gate in null, this helps avoid bubble camps. The reason you pick planet's over moons is so you don't stumble in to a POS and it's guns!
Follow those rules and it is
Much safer.

I'm finding living out of a Pos fun but harder as I'm waiting for a lot of stuff to be jumped down and have limited supply's, I'm also finding it much harder to take down the battleship rats than I thought it would be, they tank much more than a lvl 4 rat! Not helped by a lack of t2 or faction ammo.

I am loving the emptyness of null, I can go hours without seeing a soul, I see the odd blue fleet fly through and some times a red or two but normaly I am alone with my Corp!


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1 ship 2 ship 3 ship...

I spent most of today in hospital woth a prolapsed disc ( nasty back problem) as a result I will be spending the next few days home on the sofa ...playing eve.
This afternoon I found a station close by in null to buy a punisher and half the mods to kit it for pvp, I then made the daring trip to get it back to our POS and felt quite proud of myself, I even managed to get a corp member in high sec to buy the remaining mods and ammo I wanted and get it on the jump freighter coming up ( eventually).
I was about to log off an hour or so later when my CEO wolfduke and my first pvp instructor and friend curzon jazz jumped in to system, I remembered jazz flew amaar ships and asked if he had anything I could buy for ratting, and as luck had it, he had a fully rigged harby that with a few Tweeks will work perfect!!
I took it for a quick test run with jazz and it seems to do great against the rats, only problem I had was keeping up with jazz, his ship was a animal, I really hope to learn a lot about fittings and pvp from him!

I think I'm gonna fit in just fine out here lol!

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A Waiting game..

Well guys i am in Null and now a part of Indigo Bias and the severed hand alliance, it feels odd being back but in a good way. I have managed to get mysef out to our little corner of null and meet some of the guys and get some bookmarking done, however i have run into a small snag... i came out in a shuttle as it was fast and cheep after liquidating most of my assets in empire, however now im there trying to buy a ship to fly to start getting things done is proving harder than i imagined..the stations that have the items for sale i want i cant dock at and the ones i can dock at dont stock what i need..i may have to pay some corp members to import some ships and fittings to null for my use. until than im kinda in limbo.

Head first!

I have reached a turning point today, I have been it waiting as many of you know to get out to null and start living a life away from empire, also after my newbie freind losing a drake and blaming me I have been considering if I should move corps to avoid any bad feelings...
Well as I was running some missions today I was contacted by my first CEO, wolfduke, great guy that taught me a lot as I started out in eve, his Corp has evolved and is doing very well in null sec now , to cut a long story short, he offered me a place in null to call home and I accepted.
I have now sold most of my crap in empire and have a large ( to me) wallet, I'm now sitting in a trade hub in null sec waiting for the roles to drop so I can join the Corp properly and head over to the pos.
I will keep you all up on how the move to null goes but I think it will work very well as I have a lot of trust in wolfduke, and by this time tomorrow I will be part of the SHA again..
Exciting times!

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Rage quit!

Not me!

Got to see it for myself first hand last night though, my newbie friend and me decided to run a lvl 4 last night... The assult, which has scram frigs in it.. Nasty little buggers that stop you warping out, I lost a few ships to them in the past!
Anyway as the mission got started and I after a few kills we had to warp out as the incoming was harsh so we bugged out, as I was waiting for my repper to do it's job I had a important phone call come in, my freind instead of waiting for me warped back... 10 mins later I come back and find he has logged, after losing his drake he decided to ask my Corp to boot me and blames me for the ships loss?
I tried to talk to him this morning on messenger about it and explain it was his idea to warp back without me, that people have been telling him his setup was wrong for a while which didn't help and that he was ignoring the main rule of warping out when you get 50% through your tank, he was waiting till armor to warp.
I have offered as a measure of help 30 mill to get him set back up but it seems the loss of the drake is something he won't let go...
Personaly I hope he does come back, but understanding when you lose a ship it's almost always your own fault.


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advice from a ninja??

cyberin @ hands off , my loots wrote a interesting post on how to get rid of ninjas from a ninjas point of veiw..more insightful than i expected i have to admit.
i disagree with him on 2 points, firstly if you are in anyway expirienced with pvp, and you have a 50% chance of popping a ninja, do it on prinicipal. I adopt that attitude because it is A) fun and B) ninjas as he points out are not invincible, and while they can come back in a gank ship SO CAN YOU. if your nervous about getting in to a fight tho you probably should just pay them off.
the second point i disagree with is popping the wrecks which he see's as fun and causing tears, to me thats not tears thats just a "if I cant have it you cant either" way of thinking. But my dissagreements with these to points is my personal opinion, im not saying it will provide a better outcome for you in the slightest. was very interesting to read how to get rid of a ninja from a nija's point of veiw though.

On a side note I finally got to chat in game with Zombinuts (eve SOB) and fellow blogger last night, for any one that hasnt been reading his blog he has been looking for a new home for zombinuts and is considering the possibilty of joining Top gear ventures, he was most entertaining in public chat last night and I am hoping to fly with him soonish even if he diecide's to go with another corp ( I couldn't blame him after SOMEONE asked "borrow his wife" in exchange for entry.).

Have fun.