Sentinal industries

Astral has left faction warfare..for now, I have left vespa in the crimson guard as I still think f/w is a good laugh but I want to focus on exploration a bit for the next year or so.
With that inmind astral has taken back control of my holding corp "sentinal industries (343i)", named as a little nod to the halo franchise which I also enjoy. I will for the next year or so be building a large database of all exploration sites, how to find and run them and blogging a little about the experiance.
Some posts will be reveiws of sites I have run some may be combat reports and some will be fan fiction depending on my mood.
I see sentinal industries mainly as a solo corp, however I am willing to let people in who wish to learn exploration or pool knowlage or resourses, however as exploration sites are finite anyone joining would be based several jumps away so we dont overlap  but close enough to lend a hand..and i would only teach people that play at the same times as me...no point if we never see each other.
But I digress.
I have a lot of side ideas to this project, for one id like to build a reliable trade hub in placid lowsec to supply lowsec types.
I would also like to start a shared channel purely for people doing exploration to share info lend a hand and pass on intel about gate camps and roaming fleets, however this requires the imput of many explorers and we tend to be overly secretive.
If anyone would be interested in any of these ideas email me in game or leave a comment and we will try to work something out.

Fan fiction-Jaspers fortune pt 1

Med bays were nothing new to jasper. He had found himself in and out of them through his breif career. The gallante navy had seemed a good career choise..good money, stable job, they didnt tell him in 6 months he would be blown to hell 3 times..

The last time jasper had been working as a engineer on a frigate defending a small information relay..the caldari had payed off a few capsuleers to take the relay out..which they had with their usual ruthless efficiancy.
Jasper had made it to the escape pod but not before a plasma conduit blew scorching the left side of his face.
The doctors could fix it of course...but plastic surgery was expensive..jasper didnt have that kind of money, he never normally had more than the cost of living another week in his account, and when there was more , he drank it!
When Jasper was discharged from the med unit with a few hundred credits and a thank you for his "participation" in the gallante war effort, it wasnt really suprising he headed for the local bar. 

He was almost half way through his first drink when a man sat beside him at the bar, from the way he was dressed he had money..lots of money.
"You look like hell, you should really get that face looked at" said the guy "been looked at..cant afford the repairs right now, unless you wanna lend a war vet some cash"...thats how the  conversation started that would be one of the most important in jaspers life...this guy was crew on a ship owened by a capsuleer, people signed up with capsuleers a lot, they paid a crazy amount of money but your life expectancy was pretty low! Still...one trip and jasper could fix his face up..maybe even buy a little ship of his own, the more he drank..the better the idea sounded..and apparently this capsuleer paid very well...he mainly explored little deadspace pockets, that wasnt as dangerous as all that was it? By the end of his sixth drink..he was sold on the idea..and his new drinking buddy alex was gonna  take him back to the hanger to meet the head  mechanic and see if they had a job for him
..and to meet the big boss, something dominix....

A small huge project

A while back i started trying to do a explorqtion guide...I intend to finish it with a database of every known site, and how to run them...it may take a while but plans are coming into place i just need a few more skills to finish up..and maybe a t3 ship for the null sec sites.
Happy hunting

Infrastructure hubs...

The war with the squids is not going as well as i would hope..while a lot of systems are vulnerable to attack it seems we cant/wont send out a bunker busting fleet to bring some systems back under our control.. I am finding this very irritating.
I did in a moment of bordom and madness attempt to retake the ihub with a comet...it didnt work. Then 3 frig's tried...that didnt work either. (bit like taking down a POS)
Then i got bored and went looking for a fight. The other frigs found a gang in intaki and got themselves all blown up (tbf one frig didnt even have guns...it was more of a lolz thing) i missed that fight. However on there way back to change ships they ran into the talented Rixx from Evoganda..he very bravely took on my comet in a 1v1  in his new slasher fit... And won. I even landed on him close enough to web and scram and set a flight of ecm drones on him...but he still came out on top! Gotta give him props for A good  fight and a blinding fit. Wish there were more like him in low that always look for a fight, ignore the odds and honor 1v1's.

Home...

So I havent been on much this weekend but it seems my lowsec home of loes was captured by the squids! This is rather irritating as I have a few ships holed up there.

I do have a corp mate with a carrier alt that could easily move them to another system for me however..its MY BLOODY SYSTEM!
I will therefore be attempting to kick the squids out as soon as posible...
If any gall milita pilots are reading this- please plex the fuck out of loes and the surrounding systems, and if I can convince a few peeps to join me once the systems are vulnerable I will be  rolling in combat shops to retake..if I can get it together a small fleet.
That is all.

Wicked warchild

So at the moment in the crimson guards, it seems to be just me and one other guy on and active a lot of the time in the eu timezone, his name is wicked warchild and after a few nights off chatting we are getting on pretty well..
So last night warchild decided to move a  bit closer to me so we can team up for some pvp fun when the big fleets arn't out and we started arsing around hunting in loes and argoze, I was flying a venge and warchild was in a comet. after a little while we found a catalyst running a minor plex, we made a quick plan for warchild to go in and start a fight then warp to the sun hopefully drawing the dessie out of the plex to a ambush as my assult frig cant enter the minors. Sadly the catalyst didnt go for the bait but during the fun a rifter turned up and sat on the accel gate...so I warped over to see  if i could get him to fight ..I landed  locked him up and began shooting from about 35 km,  as I called for warchild to join me a flashy thrasher landed behind me..sensing a trap I bugged out to assess, aparently so did the rifter. Which left warchild and the thrasher about sitting about 70 km apart..
I warped back to warchild and burned for the thrasher but in an armour ship your not exactly fast..here I made my first mistake at about 35 km I asked warchild in his much faster ship to grab tackle, the dessie wasnt running I should have waited until I was closer.
Warchild got the tackle and started melting the dessie but popped as the dessie entered structure..by that point I was entering optimal and finished the thrasher off. Apparently warchild also forgot to start his repper qickly enough so without those two minor cockups we probably wouldnt have lost a ship.
I did offer to pay for the comet as it was my call to grab tackle early but warchild was happy with the fight, I did insist he took the loot as compensation. All in all I think it could be the beginings of a superb little pvp team!
If any of this sounds like your cup of tea and your looking to join up with the  gall milita, drop me or kirith kodachi an eve mail and have a chat about joining up, we are looking for people with the right intrests and good attitudes to join our team.
Fly classy.

Blue?

I have been enjoying my time in Faction warfare so far, the mix of casual pvp and the ease of making isk suit faction warfare to a casual playstyle, however listening to milita chat has made me aware of a problem putting off a lot of peeps.
Quite a few people have joined the militas with the sole intention of killing other members of the malita that let them get close thinking they are freindly!
This hasnt been a problem for me as after a long time living in low I am completly paranoid and treat everyone as hostile until they prove diffrrent,  however a lot of carebears moving to FW are getting powned by not being cautious. For example if your running a plex in low and another ship warps in ..ignore the fact they are your milita.. If they burn towards you, at best they are looking to steal the site reward normaly they are looking to pod you too.
Also dont jump into fleets with people you dont know..check them out first, a quick look at battle clinic will show if they are killing freindly's.

Of course the best way to avoid most of this crap is expirence and join a player corp doing FW. I am hoping we get a few more recruits in the kadaver crimson guards  soon  looking to fight for the gallante milita. Its a nice relaxed corp that lets you get on with whats interesting you, the corp is quite small at the moment  but if we get some more members i could see us having corp fleets going out now and again as a suplement to the alliance fleets which can be hit or miss.
may even finish my leadership plan off and try a bit of fc'ing. If anyone is looking to get into FW with the gallante drop a ingame mail to kirith kodachi to have chat.

Ideas...

Last night i tested a theory..it will lead to kills I think, I also learned you cannot capture a FW site while cloaked.
Conversely you could sit a few km off a becon cloaked and the timer wouldnt give away your sitting there...
That is all.

Kadaver crimson guard

Ok.. I am now signed up with kadaver crimson guard, The faction warfare division of the kadavees lol
Most of my time has been spent plexing..lack of funds and an easy income arnt hard to put together.
Each month as a faction wide event all pilots donate LP to raise our teir  making the remaining points we cash out worth much more..for the gallante it should be the first saturday of each month, at that point I should become richer than I have ever been. As a side bonus I have been promoted ..doesnt make much difference.
I did manage to get out on another roam this afternoon.. As a rule the fleets in the millita are a lot less structured than im used to, most are bring what you like and the FC's can be hit or miss. Also it can quickly decend into a blob fest..however there are a few talented fc's and getting onto those fleets can be a lot of fun !
Tonight i only took out a thrasher as I didnt know the fc but we did ok ..the fleet ran into a trio of bc's to begin..2 got away  however this cyclone melted fast. Sadly I missed his freind coming back to try and save him as the fc asked me to make a safe to wait for other members of the fleet to catch up.
Shortly after this we ran into a large BS pirate gang with way more logi than us...we all died good thing the thrasher was cheep lol.

Simple idea..better game

I have been running FW plexs for the last few days to bump my isk up and have been reading up on running them. Most people try to hunt people in the plex's ( either as pirates or a opposing FW pilot) however unless you are super fast it is very hard to catch the people plexing ..this is bad. We want/need a game where things explode a lot.
My idea to fix this is very simple... Just like in a level 4 let the rats have a chance (good chance too this is the navy your ment to be fighting) to web and scram you!
This does two things, you will actually have to kill the rats not just tank them and if you are...disturbed..at a inconvinient moment , you gotta fight!
Simples.

I have given in...

After a fruitless morning of chasing fw pilots around plex's, I have given in to the nagging thought i have had for a week or so..try faction warfare properly..so yesterday I left the black dragons, which sucked a bit as they have some awsome pilots to fly with :-(
I intend to join a FW corp soon..I have one in mind if they will have me (most fw corps seem a little adverse to ex pirates) until then I will sit in the generic milita corp to earn myself some isk for some shiney navy ships.

Vespa makes a start

well tonight I took vespa out to play with a gallante malita fleet..it was a lot of fun although I normally prefer solo pvp.

I took out a t1 fit rifter, nothing fancy and as I have said before vespa isnt really a combat pilot ..at least not yet. Our FC was competant and found our rag tag fleet a opposing fleet to play with..however at our first run in I only managed to get in on the kill mail of this merlin, But i did manage to snag the pod..old habbit's and all that. We almost managed to nail a Hyperion as well but it wasnt to be and bailed before we could kill it. A few more jumps and we ran into a flashy fleet of piwates...as a fleet we lost a cynabal but killed a Tornado and a Phobos, I only got on to the Phobos kill :( still was a lot of fun and a good start to FW for vespa..I think i'm gonna train her up to fly a comet as i like the look of them and can get a bit of my geeky RP on. After the fleet disbanded I decided to take Astral out for a quick spin and found a hookbill doing a plex around loes....after vespa's loss to a hookbill recently I was in the mood for some payback. so I warped to the outpost he was currently running ignoring the dramiel that was also hunting in system, as predicted he ran away :( I sat at the site for a few mins and Polity asked in local if he intended to return, to which he replied "so you can pop me?", I find this lack of faith in solo FW pilots annoying, so I pointed out he could also pop me if he wins...at that he warped back to the site, but wisely asked to fight away from the rats, he asked to fight at a planet in local...remembering the dram in sys I suggested a better idea and warped to a safe and invited him to fleet. we did for a moment consider going after the dram together but I couldn't pin point him on D-scan so we fought our 1v1 in private...he had an odd fit in my opinion for a hookbill but then many question my use of AC on a vengence...still he was unable to brake my tank as i pulsed the repper and before long his hookbill turned to slag. all in all a fun evening for me.

War...

Well the devils tattoo alliance ( black rebel rifter club and black dragon fighting ) are joining the war between RvB and the NC..
Should be fun MATE ;)

A bit of fun.

As I am waiting for vespa to finish a few skills i need for a project I decided to use her to give faction warfare a go...now before I start, vespa is not at present a combat pilot...at all.
Anyway I signed her up with the federation (a decision made by the fact it was the only faction she has any standing with)  and hopped in a t1 fit merlin to try my hand.
I found myself out in loes with our system being plexed by a nasty caldari type...doing a little research I found the pilot was only 2 months old and in a navy hookbill. I knew my skills were shit but had to give it a shot. I warped into the plex and she ran!
I had a little dig in local and started turning the plex back to ours. After a few mins she warped back in...clearly didnt like being called a wuss in local. So my indy pilot took on her faction frig in a t1 fit merlin..it did not end well. I should have kept range better but really vespa just couldnt hit hard enough with t1 rails. I popped . Not to be a sore loser i offered a gf in local and congratulated the pilot on having the balls to come back.
Then I decided fair play was done and switched toons to astral...and discovered something I didnt know, you cant enter a minor plex with a AF. Bollox.
Denied an easy kill..
I spent a bit of time after this playing round with some fits and have come up with one I cant wait to try tonight , originally to kill fw pilots but should be pretty good against most frigs if I pick my fights well.  I will keep you updated.

time and isk

The last week I have been short of both. I have been doing a little exploration in my spare time and still find it a enjoyable way to top up my cash, however I now have the spare resources and skills to take it to the next level..at the moment i am finishing the skills Vespa needs to make use of the T2 rig bpc's and salvage astral finds a lot of in mag sites, i know they don't sell very well but when they do it it will keep me afloat for months at a time so I can live with the slow moving stocks. I hope to be back out roaming and killing shit very very soon. on a side note I have recived a new ad for EON,if you dont read it, start. for those like me that read this through the web feed not my wonderful (if slightly scruffy) site... volla

Of lowsec and faction warfare

A while back..maybe a year or so I and a lot of others were saying lowsec was empty. The mechanics were great but no one but pirates and the odd explorer lived there.
Since I have come back to the game I have spent a lot of my time in lowsec, and I have been seriously impressed with the change, FW seems to have given low a new lease of life,areas are teeming with industrialists and FW pilots exploiting low (in a good way), this has led to great times for piracy and small gangs!
I only really have 1 grumble..The faction warfare sites  make it to easy to run away!  you enter most of these sites through a acceleration gate and the objective is about 60-75 km away giving the pilots doing the site an age to warp out if a member of the opposing milita or a piwate arrives!
My idea to stop this slightly is to introduce a mechanic that when you use a acceleration gate to reach a deadspace pocket it overloads your warp core and has a 5 min countdown before you can warp again.
This wont stop people doing the sites fast but means you are commited when u warp in..and not just the inital pilot any attacker could easily become the victim if reinforcements show up...
Just an idea, what do you think?

thrashers

This week I havent been on as much as I would have liked, however the time I have been on (and not hauling crap all over the galaxy) I have been trying out some thrashers. As I mainly fly Amarr I have never really taken this little DPS powerhouse out for a spin, but dessies are quite comon in low sec atm and are great for frig killing so I decided to give one a go. My first attempt at a thrasher started well enough...built what i thought was a ok fit started to move it out to lowsec and ran smack into a gatecamp. The second attempt met with slightly more fun, I was out roaming about and a fellow pirate challenged me to a 1v1 thrasher v thrasher...I dont often say no to a 1v1 (unless im doing something important) so we danced..I lost, but I did learn from it. and after having a chat with my opponent, a decent guy named Ilik Tanikalot. I decided to stop trying to use my piss poor sheild skills and go with a armour tank. so the third and so far final thrasher was built. I took it out hunting some FW pilots and got a few tears in local when they ran away from the sites but didnt catch any of them :( on the upside a tusker pilot (always fun to fight) turned up in a arty fit Rifter and tried his luck, my new fit stood the test and i got my first solo kill in thrasher here. I also Managed to make my second friday night roam with the BDFS and the BRRC boys, the "keada d00med us all" roam this weeks ship the line was ..a thrasher! we hunted a lot of systems for a couple of hours until we got into a bit of a fight on a gate..our 14 odd thrashers were out gunned by stabbers dramiels and a few AF's but i did manage to get in on a Fleet issue stabber kill before we had to bail. After that I was kinda beat so I left the roam but i'm deffo feeling a lot more confident in a thrasher. I think BDFS is still recruiting if anyone out there thinks this kinda shit, check it out here

Fun and Games

Well i'm having a blast out with the black dragon's at the moment, to be honest i've been drunk for most of it but have already got a couple of fun kills and a couple of reckless losses. One thing that is really standing out for me in lowsec is the amount of pilots running the faction warfare site's! It is making lowsec paradise for targets and im seeing a nice mix of new pilots and hardcore pvp'ers loads of good fights to be found :) First day out with the black dragons I was running some stuff out to my new home when a new member of the corp and only 3 days into the game asked if he could come hunting to learn..so in the way back i bought out the venge for a play, found a merlin running a plex and for 15 mins played a game of cat and mouse trying to teach my new freind to get tackle in his faster rifter, almost nabbed him a few times but after the site despawned, and I thought we were late for a roam so we left him. However on ariving home I found out I was actually an hour early for the roam...stupid BST (like i said slightly drunk) so i went to hang out at a belt looking for trouble and within minuites a jag landed ...rude not to and a few new corpies came to lend as hand here. I did get out on the roam later but had to leave before we killed anything other than rats, however the fleet looked pretty cool, like a angry swarm. I did take 1 quick pic

today has been some more rolling about moving crap and even a quick gate camp in null...rifters and drag bubbles lol! was a giggle, I lost a rifter in a valiant attempt to kill a cynobal here. Things are certainly more interesting since moving back to low. tho I still cant kill a cynobal in a rifter :(

New corp for astral.

It's official. I am now a proud member of the Black Dragon fighting society! The sister corp to the black rebel rifter club and part of the devils tattoo alliance.
What that means to anyone unsure is im going back to piracy in a BIG way and going to be flying with some very cool people! I shall be posting all my glorious kills and stupid losses here and hopefully atractying some more new recruits and potential pirates to the black dragons!
I have taken a pic of my custom built pirate tools...their will be rectal breaches coming up.

Another splosion

Ok sorry this is a little late, I got tied up yesterday. I logged in yesterday and was chit chat chatting with the guys in the black rifter club again. I am currently looking into joining them or the new fighting Dragon corp they are forming as I need to be ding something other than running missions. Vespa will still be running missions and i am just topping off her skills for a drake so she can run missions and mine (and transport crap to lowsec for me)so if anyone has a active indy corp in amarr space that wants a extra hand and doesn't mind if i'm only on when i'm not blowing shit up gimme a shout ;) After a little assing around yesterday i did manage to get a 1v1 with a fine gent I have been chatting with Saria Dehmov we both had 10 mins to kill if you'll excuse the pun and I wanted to test the punisher fit i was using against a pilot that was older than a few months. we woth pitched up in punisher's and agreed to a fight at a safe, saria warped to me, I agressed as lossing sec status wasn't an issue, for the first few mins neither of us could hurt the others tank, it looked to be a stalemate, so I overheated the AC's I began edging the damage but ever so slowly, then the damage I was taking started to creep up, I was engrossed..who would win, at this point 3 things happend, my repper NOS and guns all burnt out lol. silly mistake but meh full credit to Saria he was bang on with his fit, I couldnt break the tank without overheating and couldn't keep the cooker on that long..with no guns and no repper wasnt long till my experiment popped Later that evening I almost made it out for a roam with the Black rebels but got called away just before it started with a small problem... hence the delayed post.

Splosion!

Ok happy people let me explain my post earlier.....
I was at work today reading some blogs, one in particular I enjoy is the brutor bullfighter and the black rebel rifta lot, I was reading also about them in through newb eyes and thought they seem like a cool corp if I decide to get back into some pirate action.
So I took a look at their forums and what they want to let you join, one thing stood out..a recent kill or loss mail and a discription of the fight.
Now other than a couple of idiotic losses lately due to playing afk I didnt have a good kill mail for show and tell, so i decided to travel to heild listed as the black rebels home system and pick a fight...preferably with the bull fighter himself for a fun loss or kill mail.
When I got home I built a custom punisher and flew down to heild..and after asking in local and the rebels local channel for a 1v1 and a small game of chase with a rupture..no one wanted to fight.
I was determined I would fight someone...after a few moments i found a rifta on scan and asked the guy in local for a 1v1..
To my suprise mane dust accepted, we agreed to warp to a station can flip and fight..as I landed on station I found a few canes sitting there so warped out and made a safe, i invited mane to fleet and let him warp to me...he made it past the canes and landed 30km from me.
I locked him up and sped towards him my 150mm autocannon's (yes on a punisher) started chewing up his sheild with fleet emp, it looked a fair fight until we hit armor he could barely scratch my tank and as i switched to my armour shreder's his armour melted like butter.
A few moments later he popped and offered a good fight as did I. In the rest of the convo he mentioned he was new at this... But he dodged canes...he flew his pod out before i could lock..he didnt seem that new?!?
Checking the age of his toon, he was less than a month old..my guess is a new pvp alt. I felt bad as he never really had a chance with those skills. I offered some encouragement and after asking for any other takers for a 1v1 docked for the evening.
The kill mail is Here.
Fly classy

Intention.

Tonight I will explode some one or be exploded.
That is all.

FW FTW?

Since my return a lot of people have been talking about faction warfare? after some research i still don't know if this is fun or worth it now, has anyone had many experiences with this? I might even give it a go if I find a corp that knows what they are doing... I like the idea of faction warfare but I would wanna be down with the ammar lot for the faction ships.

Funds...

I have posponed my impending return to null. After getting all my assets in line I didnt have the funds i assumed i did..a poultry 200 mill and a couple dozen ships but only 6 of any real use to me.
I withdrew my application to the corp i was looking at, the grey council, and havededicated the next few months to two goals...i need  my own carrier to move ships and I have set my self a personal goal of  2 billion in my wallet!
Since my return mining seems to have become far moee profitable..im getting insane amounts for ore. And my old fall back running lvl 4s in my trusty apoc. To this end i have formed a small indy corp to make me some isk, if astral takes a trip to null in the future I will leave vespa in charge of things.
If anyone is reading this and wants a indy corp to park an alt or in the evning run a lvl 4 around fricoure gimmie a shout in game !

Decision

Ok I have decided to give null another shot. Hopefully I will get some good pew pew and make some isk.
I have considered joining some of my old contacts in null, but after some thought I decided to have a completly fresh expirence.
I have found a corp that after some research I like the look of and have applyed. Now have a few days to wait to find out if they like the look of me as well so I will be moving a few assets around...fun hauling fun..

Im back

After nearly a year off, i have returned to the game that owns my heart, after a small trial of swtor I had to come back..I missed the intensity of the game that makes it feel so real.
As you can tell by the fact I became inactive after starting a 1 man corp..it didnt pan out as intended.
I am again at a crossroads..I have had some changes at home that will make voice comms possible, so I am trying to decide if i should go back to piracy or shall i give null sec another shot?
Over the next week or so I will be building some capital and moving assets around to make a leap one way or the other.