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.

Wednesday 8 September 2010

Shameless recruitment


Hi guys, as I said before I have rejoined brightstar tek, a mission running and mining Corp mainly tho I may broaden into wormholes and lowsec ops in time. Trouble is we only have 2 members at the moment that are active, myself ( and my main is stuck in low sec for a month) and reltso yand.
We are looking to get the Corp back on it's feet and this is a ideal opportunity to get in at ground level, we are looking for players that want training and casual players that want a friendly group of players to mission and mine with. I'm normally on I'm the evenings uk time and relt comes on a little after me till late.
If you fancy giving us a try please pop in to our public channel btek pub and have a chat, it will be hard going for a month or so but we will make something very special.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Cleansing fire..pt 1

The gate flashed in the remote system.
Astral ran a quick scan of the system while the tempry cloak, a side affect of the gate, kept him from the non existent eyes,
“1 capsuleer in system.. 4 belts, 1 station” he quickly noted..
His thrusters flashed aligning the rifter to one of the belts..
“Lets go fish” he whispered to himself as the inertia of the warp drive washed over him

The rifter landed smoothly at the edge of the belt, he checked for local pirate types, 2 sansha cruisers were patrolling the field..perfect..
The rifter kicked off towards them as fast as the afterburner would permit, locking both targets astral began chewing them up with the 3 150mm auto’s he was using. A few moments later only the two wrecks remained..
Awarning light sounded urgently on instinct astral pulled the ship into alignment at full speed with a planet..as he checked the scanner..
“shit!”
A Arbitrator class cruiser landed a few KM away…astral kicked the rifter to warp as the capsuleer piloted cruiser lanched a flight of T2 drones towards him..
He entered the warp tunnel before the arbitrator could resolve a lock..the main reason he had chosen the rifter for this job…it was very hard to catch..and he knew he was alone..
He landed at the unfamiliar station and was towed into the docking cradle by its drones..the battle scars seemed to amuse some of the locals.

An hour later astral walked freshly showered into the main supply depot of the station, the manager made a beeline for him clearly eager for capsuleer business..

“ My name is jarod, what can we help you with sir?”
“ I need ammo, preferably barrage S..lot’s of it”
“We only stock EMP S sir…I’m sorry.”
“fine, move 10,000 units to my hold..if there is any problems contact me at the bar..its going to be a long trip”

rat..bang..huh

Ok my first major gripe with eve.
Grinding sodding security status.

Who the sodding hell thought up this mechanic! For those un-familiar with it, the only way to gain sec status is by killing NPC rats, fair enough. And the amount of sec status gained depends on the type of rat and the security level ,of the system you are in …unfair to those in low sec as opposed to 0.0 but I can see the thinking there..but WHY THE FUCK only count 1 every 15 mins!! You can gill 50 rats in 1 system if you like but only the highest one will count per 15 mins…this means you have to keep moving systems after each kill looking for another belt with a semi decent rat to kill.
This means you spend twic as long moving around as if you could just move belts killing them..STUPID IDEA!

Next on my grip list, the amount of sec status gained is CRAP and there is no way round it, when you are dropping sec status you can kill a pod and drop like 2.3 off your rating, which means a drop to -10 is quite rapid, gaining it however there are no big hits, the rats I have been killing:

Frigates = 0.02- 0.04 sec gain
Cruisers = 0.04 – 0.075 sec gain
Battleships (rare) 0.06 – 0.12 sec gain

A massive difference! if I can pod some one to drop 2.3 or some thing I SHOULD be able to gain at a similar rate for some action, but as it stands I can rat for an hour and make the wondrous gain of about .15 …

Now some may think I am being unreasonable expecting to be able to come back to high sec reasonably fast, however, the game is now stopping me playing the part of the game I want to be playing.
Its not a case of improving for profit, a large area of the game is not available to me and wont be for quite a while, by my guess about a month. That’s if I rat every day. Constantly.

It almost make you want to quit..almost.

One of my friends came up with a alternative solution that may work better, a bribe to concord, working along the same principals as a nural remap it has a year long cool down and would be expensive ish (50 mill say) but once a year you could have a standings reset with concord. This would enable those with low ratings to return to high sec but wouldn’t be often enough to really help greifers. This would make the game far better in my opinion.

/rant over

Tuesday 7 September 2010

real life pwns eve time.

Hey guys,
Just wanted to let you guys know that I have some major drama going on in my life. As a result I am having to cut eve time back a lot and will not have the focus or the dedication while I am on to continue to PVP for the time being..
I did consider stopping eve altogether during this period but feel it would be a waste and I would miss it to much..

As a result my new plan is to slowly rebuild my sec status during the infrequent play times I do get, and head into high sec to build my wallet and skills up until my life returns to a point I can play more.
So I will be leaving my friends in flashy red, I would like to publicly thank everyone that has flown with me for the past year, I have had a blast! Special thanks to mail lite, a superb pilot, a drunken pirate and a good friend.

I have decided once my sec status allows me to enter high sec again that I will go back to a corp that has been in stasis for a while, Btek , and try to help rebuild it with indy pilots and mission runners in the time I do have. Until then I will be flying round lowsec solo in cheapish ships popping rats (and anyone foolish enough to mistake me for a noob ratting)
It may be a good thing if I can help get newer players into the game, and hell maybe even teach them a little pvp when I get time.
I will keep you updated, until then if you see a pirate ratting his heart out, please don’t laugh to hard, life is full of twists.

Friday 3 September 2010

FLA5HY RED.

Just thought id let you all know where I have gone.

A few days/weeks ago a plan was formed by some of the Black rabbits to leave the corp and the alliance as they were not happy with certain things going on, mainly they wanted to lose all the alliance level politics and go back to being true pirates, which is what we all love – lowsec piracy.
I was asked to come along and agreed, many of the best pilots I have flown with were leaving, and TGA seemed to be edging towards a 0.0 alliance, which held no interest for me..It was a hard decision, I lived and loved TGA. Leaving behind some of the friends id made was a hard call, but I reasoned they would be able to follow if they wanted and if not, I truly wished them well.
Every thing had to be kept reasonably quiet as we moved a lot of expensive assets out, we didn’t want people loosing everything if TGA got the asshole with us. So while assets were evac’ed and roles dropped it was all kept quiet…till yesterday, when a mass of good bye threads were posted on the internal forums and everyone set off for their new home..
FLA5HY RED.
I wish I could tell you a bit more about the new corp, but I don’t know who is running it, who the directors will be, who is invited…
All I know is it will be run by and include some of the pilots I trust most in eve, and we will be a pirate PVP corp.
Good enough for me.

Thursday 2 September 2010

unseen. (IC)

You couldn’t see it.

100 k from the station the amanthea sat cloaked…watching them.

Inside the pod the pilot looked almost dead, totally still totally focused on the information being fed to him.

A internal channel clicked open, a private channel.

“ astral are you drunk?”

“not today”

“So this is serious”

Astral knew she was referring to the order he had dispatched earlier that morning.

“yes”

“we are leaving TGA?”

“yes, pack up all our equipment and move it to the destination I gave you”

“why”

“that’s where my rum is”

“I was being serious”

“so was I, trust me it will all become clear.”

The comm’s channel died

Astral continued watching his friends dock and undock for another hour, his course was already laid in for the trip, he had time.

He willed the ship into warp towards the outbound gate with a mental sigh.

He was leaving TGA but would always be a pirate. He liked the flashy red.

is that a klingon off the starbord bow? or a worm hole.

I am a true blue explorer.

Last night I made my first tentative steps into probing.
I took out a magnate, didn’t want to risk an amanthea yet, and decided to tech myself to scan crap down, I figured cosmic sigs were good to practice on as they don’t move or disappear.
It took a while to get the hang of it, I found setting the probes in the right formation to perform the scans the hardest part, I kept putting them all on top of each other instead of a nice lattice.
The first 45 mins of scanning were very frustrating, I kept getting 45% hits then losing the sig altogether and restarting, then I realised my mistake and something clicked.
I scanned down 2 wormholes in the matter of a few mins. One was a worm hole leading to hisec, the other was a class two WH.
I am beginning to understand how to do this, once I get good with cosmic sigs…I move on to ships..the watch out fella.
As a side note, im very close to being able to fly a pilgrim…a bloody long way from affording one tho, so may have to look in to hacking and such in low sec as a extra way to make astral some isk, might be fun.

Wednesday 1 September 2010

thinking over the past.

The more I think about it, I think I have more or less graduated the academy in all the ways I wanted.
For those unaware I have spent the last 3 months in The Black Rabbit academy, a awesome training corp for pirates, who’s door is currently open to new members looking to learn to be a “pirate” .
I came to the rabbits after dabbling in lowsec combat, and an offer from fellow blogger Mail Lite (thank you btw., you have altered my eve career in big way.), my intentions were realistic. I wanted to be involved in small fleet warfare, learn to find and kill targets on my own, I wanted to appear on a few kill mails and become a real pirate.
What I got was a LOT more than that.
I am able to find and kill most people now, I can act as a scout for fleets effectively (when the wife sods off so I can use team speak) , I have become a exceptional tackler of ships, I have completely lost all fear of losing ships. I am an effective fleet member, I can fly a good spread of Ships and fit them properly for pvp.
I can roam solo or lead roams, and I have so far appeared on almost 80 killmails.
I am -10 flashy red
I am a pirate.
I have around 20 kills to go before I fully graduate the accadamy, but I feel like its just waiting out a GCC timer now. It is only a matter of time.
I am very pleased with my pirate career so far, the small scale pvp I find far more interesting than massive fleet battles, I love the thrill of the chase hunting people, I love the rum.

I guess I just wanted to thank all the people I have flown with in my past especially those at the academy for turning this carebear in to a dirty rum soaked pirate.

And welcome the new students to the academy, and offer some advice..
Don’t be afraid to lose..be gracious when you do, and learn from it.
Listen to those that teach, and ask why a lot.
And always have a rum on hand.

cage fighting goodness

Ok people ..my good friend Eve SOB, has come up with a interesting idea…

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“My own ranting has left me considering a more positive reaction to apparent dwindling of solo PvP action. The idea in my head is simple and revolves around organizing a last pilot standing fight to the death for as many brave and/or crazy frigate pilots who choose to sign up and enter the “CAGE” system to fight.

Of course there will be an entry fee, rules, and prizes for the participants all wrapped into a semi regular event where frigate junkies can get there solo PvP on. Sure you could bring a group, but in the end only one pilot gets the gravy.

The draft rules are simple (and open to suggestion):

- 5M to enter with all ISK going to the Last Frigate flying in fleet (minus fleet referee)
- T1 non faction frigates only with any fittings.
- All entrants join a single fleet and fighting begins when they enter the “CAGE” system
- If you leave the “CAGE” system you are removed from the fleet.
- If you dock in anything in the “CAGE” system you are removed from the fleet.
- If you are in your pod you are removed from the fleet.
- Once removed from the fleet you are out of the fight and no ISK for you.
- Gate crashing the system is allowed and expected.
- No restrictions on implants or boosters.
- Faction/T2 frigates or above are not allowed unless a gate crasher. :)

Fittings are unlimited as warping to fleet member will be allowed and should take care of the cloakers and folks who safe up. The “CAGE” system region will be in LowSec and easy to reach from Null or Empire space. The region will be announced to entrants a week before and the CAGE system 1 hour before the bell.

It’s a simple idea, might have been done before. I think it would be a fun event and I am looking for feedback from the community and bloggers. Perhaps some donated promo art if the graphically inclined a like the idea **hint hint*. Some linkage to the idea and comments if fellow bloggers wish to offer some support **hint hint**. A pilot date and time will be published based on feed back and interest.”

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Now…I picked up on two important points here… 1st ” Some linkage to the idea and comments if fellow bloggers wish to offer some support “….done you are linked and supported mr SOB, I whole heartedly endorse this madness.


2nd “- Gate crashing the system is allowed and expected.”
Now I read this as..
“Mr astral, please make this event more interesting by bringing a yourself and some fellow pirates to the party in your shiny ships to make life that bit more interesting..and being pirates you are expected to break all rules and conduct yourself in a drunken manor at all times”
…..excellent idea Mr SOB ..I’ll do it!

If you are interested in the cage fight idea please visit SOB’s site and show him the love. Solo pvp isn’t dead, but your gonna have to fight for it!