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.
Photobucket

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.