Monday, October 31, 2011

The winter patch gets jucier for an old pilot

With the recent devblog about hybrid balancing and ship rebalancing brings a tear of joy to mine eyes... Being a caldari toon when I started I trained missile and railgun skills only to find those skills were almost useless in pvp at the time. So I naturally crosstrained gallente skills as the most easier time sink only to have those skills made useless as the nerfbat was swung. As a result Zandramus has frigate 5 cruiser 5 battleship 5 in caldari, gallente, and Amarr. He has carrier 5 and dread 4 in Amarr, and he has hac 5 , recon ships 5, heavy interdictor 5, is training logistics to 5 currently. He also has 16m sp of drone skills, needless to say I am elated about the upcoming changes as almost every ship listed on this fix I can pilot perfectly, and with 21m sp in gunnery can fit tech 2 weapons on all of them.

I cannot wait to brush off the cobwebs of the blasterthron, or piloting all of the blaster ships in close and personal.

Let me just say Ccp I love you right now

Zandramus

A Comedy of Errors Part 2...

Sunday dawns a new day, I decide to roll the hole and successfully roll the hole and the new exit is in the drone regions… No good for grinding security clearance, so I decide to roll again. In the process of doing this I get a t2 Geddon stuck in the middle of the drone region as the hole closes behind it on the wrong side of the hole. Sigh not again…

I open the new static and the good news it is in a dead end system in Angel Cartel space… The bad news is it is 42 jumps through 0.0 to get the Geddon back to the hole. I begin my journey and find the drone regions relatively empty this Sunday morning and make it 20 jumps until I get around the Curse region and Jump into a system with 45 in local. I dscan and see no one in space and a station in system and I warp to the gate.

Mid warp I start seeing a lot of ships, a lot of BC’s but local seems to be emptying out, as the warp bubble collapses I see a 3 ships jump through the gate I just landed on and the total now in local is 3 including me. I just missed warping into a 40+ battlecruiser gang.  I warp to a safespot and log out. I call my brother on the phone and explain the predicament to him and he is laughing as we start to formulate a rescue mission.

We decide to ship into stealth bombers and scout the route between the hole and where I am stuck, each jump through towards where the geddon is there is more and more activity, we end up somewhere in Curse looking at about 30 guys gate camping the gate we need to go through lots of dramiels and stuff we would get caught trying to bomb so we decide to SS and log out for an hour or two and run some errands.

I log back in three hours later to find a lone megathron killing a bubble at our exit gate, I call my brother and he gets logged in. We are both thinking it’s a tarp as I bomb the Megathron and engage. Vulnerability bombs and engages, the megathron is into half armor and can’t hit me he has heavy drones when the gate starts going off and local starts to fill up… As the two dramiels break gate cloak I align and warp off and my brother makes it out as well…It was a very fun experience, we watch the gate and everytime a group jumps through they come back in pods so we are stuck here for a while, the next system shows 40 ships destroyed in the last hour on the map.

Time for more chores and we log back out.

We log back in and the route is clear and we make it back to the hole uneventful and decide to take a break for a few hours and watch some tv.   

Zandramus

A Comedy of Errors Part 1...

So Saturday started with me logging in right after downtime to find that someone had just been in my hole. I notice this right away as usually right after downtime, I get kicked back to the loading screen saying that the system isn’t loaded and please try again in a moment, not this time I get right in.

I hop into the Legion and deploy probes to find out what is going on and I notice that all of my anomalies are gone, I now know what the three bears felt like missing their porridge …There is only the profession sites left along with the static wormhole and a new k162 from dangerous unknown space. I hop into the class 5 to investigate the site thieves and I see 2 POS’s one with a pod in it and another with a Tengu in it both of course piloted, and no one leaving their POS anytime soon. There is also a dreadnaught unpiloted in the POS with the Tengu.

Well if they are not going to leave their POS then I am going to log some alts into the game and close this wormhole. I log in 4 BS capable pilots and put them in the WH closing Armageddons. As I am doing this I notice that they begin to organize a tackle gang in their system. I see Falcon, Loki, Cheeta, show up in their POS. Well while I can quad box a WH closing on my laptop, It is impossible to do combat on any more than 1 account, so I decide the better idea is to log off for a while and see what happen’s.

I log back in 3 hours later to find their system empty and no one at home, I log in the BS alts and close the connection between the systems. Since my brother will not be on for another few hours and I cannot do any of the profession sites by myself I log off until he is available.

When we log back in there is a new k162 from HiSec, and we run out the loot from the last few days and buy some new shiney We don’t have enough to buy the Paladin I was thinking of getting for Zandramus, so I buy him a Navy Geddon and fit it out for him and deliver it. I put it in the ship hanger and we take a peek out of the 0.0 static to see where we are. Looks like we are in Providence 2 jumps into 0.0… way too busy to do some sec grinding so we decide to roll the static and see where she ends up.

Well this being Saturday evening, I have been doing a bit of drinking, and drinking and spaceships always ends well so let the comedy ensue… Everyone ships up to armageddons to close the 0.0 hole and we fleet up, I warp us to the wormhole and 4 of us jump through. The hole collapses behind us, that was shocking… what was more shocking is that Concord preceeds to melt the Criminal Zandramus’s Geddon, Doh I warped us to the HiSec hole instead of the static….. and we are now in Amarr Space and down 1 T2 fitted Geddon…. Sigh now we have to get the remaining 4 battleships back in the hole that is 17 jumps from where we are currently, at least its only 2 jumps in 0.0

I run to Amarr and get a new Anethema to recon the route, everything goes well and we get back into the hole, and I even go back and get the other T2 Geddon that I left behind to scope out the route. It is getting late so I go to bed.

Zandramus

Friday, October 28, 2011

How do you fix Hi-Sec Griefing

There are several things I would like to talk about that are currently being discussed in the blogisphere which comes down to the CSM and the Mittani, and Hi-Sec Griefing, or forcing a playstyle on someone who may not want to play that particular style of play.

Now I have been in the game since late 2004 and I have seen quite a bit of different styles of gameplay, I enjoyed empire war dec's, but one of the things I had never seen to the extent that it is now when I came back into the game was the suicide ganking that is what I feel currently out of hand.

Now let me emphesise something, I used think that you should be able to gank someone in hi-sec at the expense of losing your ship.  However I think that Pend insurance should not be paying on policies where concord is on the kill mail. There is not enough decentive to gank someone in hi-sec. So I am thinking that not being able to attack another player in 1.0 systems without being at war with their corporation might not be a bad idea.

I also believe that isk is flowing a bit too freely in Hi-Sec making it too easy to make effortless money with no risks. This needs to be moved into low-sec / Null / WH space. Currently there are very few people inhabiting Null-Sec it has actually become more safe to operate in Null than operating in Hi-Sec, with all the jump bridge networks, there is no risk getting assets into and out of null-sec currently.

The only scary space at the moment is WH space, where you can get ganked any second by someone that you never saw coming, and I think that this is fantastic. This is how Null-Sec should be, the biggest rewards should be in this no-local type of system where you dont see your adversary coming.

Frankly the whole Goons ice interdiction scheme has done nothing but piss off players that might want to casually log in and multibox while watching TV, Because mining Ice is freeking boring with the 6 min cycles, I know this was done to stop server lag but holy smokes its no wonder so many botters are ice mining because it is like watching grass grow.

So for solutions for the above issues I propose this....

1. Players cannot attack players in 1.0 systems unless there is an active war declaration.
2. Players cannot avoid a wardec by the current exploits that are being used.
3. Players may not attack players with less than a certain amout of skillpoints. (we want to retain new players right?)
4. Move level 3+ agents to Low-sec
5. Move Incursions to Low-sec
6. Get rid of Jump Bridges in 0.0
7. Beef Up Isk generating activities in Null - Sec
8. Beef Up Isk Generating activities in WH Space
9. Make Null-sec local like WH local.

This will bring more people to low and nullsec / wh space as there will be strength in numbers and make risk/reward to move the players out of hisec space.

Zandramus

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

All logged in and nothing to do...

Well last night found the WH with 2 K162's into it 1, HiSec,  1 Class 4, so the first part of the evening I ran out the loot and padded the corp wallet and bought some essentials, but with the lack of people logging in last night it was pretty slow. I go and investigate the class 4 but it has 16 cosmic signatures, and I didnt feel like resolving all of those.

I jump out the 0.0 static to find myself in the drone region, so there was no sec status to grind last night, there was not enough in the corp wallet to go fit my Archon, and I was pretty tired so it was an early evening for me.

Maybe something more exciting tonight.

Zandramus

New Ships, Lack of Content

I know everyone is excited about the new ships and the balancing issues, but what about some new content. How hard is it to add a few new WH anoms, some new missions, some 0.0 anoms, and exploration sites. The construct for these is in place, I am sure a content team can come up with these in rather short order.

Other than that I am excited for the new ships, I may have to train large blaster specialization as I already have large hybrid turret to 5. It very well may make the gallente ships fun to fly again, as it is I havent been in a gallente ship other than a Dominix in a long time. and I was using the Dominix as a Neut / Drone boat.

I am very interested in when the promised winter expansion will be released, and am looking forward to seeing what new skills I will have to train for some of the ships / modules.

Zandramus

Monday, October 24, 2011

The Lowsec Market is Horrific - or Whats a Pirate to do...

Friday, I took a break from the wormhole to take a trip into lowsec to see if I could find some stuff to do. After losing my interceptor to a cleverly disquised badger II gate trap in Geminate which involved somehow getting one shotted by a battleship that warped in to help the poor badger... I took my pod into lowsec through Oijannin.

Now somehow all the bookmarks I used to have of Geminate are missing and as such whilst warping to the Oijannen gate, I got sucked 70k past the gate with my pod and even though there were 8 people in system I was able to slow boat in my pod to the gate and leave the system. (Clearly someone was asleep at the helm)

So I start looking around to see where I have Ships and where there are some level 4 agents in low sec so I can grind some sec status that way. Well everywhere there is an agent, there are no ships on the market, or if there is a ship on the market there are no fittings for the ship on the market. So with everyone still back in the wormhole I found that there was nothing in empire for me to do, so I purchased a shuttle and headed back out to the wormhole.

Surely some industrious person would realize there was money to be made marking up ships / ship packages in lowsec where there are security agents. Or even at the gatepoints going into 0.0.

The market used to be like this.... Having a negative security rating means I cant to into above .5 and buy a ship, there are quite a few people like me how do they do this, do they all have high security alts that can fly everything that they can? That seems like a waste to me...

Whoever thought up that everyone would be willing to travel to a major trade hub to buy something is not understanding markets in this game, but that is how the market seems to look at the moment, I may just have to start investing in the lowsec missioning hubs and making some isk that way.

Zandramus

Slow Sunday Evening

Well, after the hurting applied on Saturday, where we lost 2 Hulks, 2 Retrievers, an Iteron V, and a PVE Drake, and 500m in implants no one wanted to log in and do much today, so I was left grinding Sec Status out of the 0.0 Static all by my lonesome in NPC space.

I did have a bit of fun, though... I had my alt character sitting under the belt that I was working a double battleship spawn with 3 cruisers. He was cloaked in a stealth bomber. I was generally watching TV and when the rats would respawn I would pop out of the wormhole in a pvp gank geddon, kill the two BS rats and hop back in the wormhole and sit in the pos and regen my shields.

While sitting under the belt, there was a Cynibal that kept entering the system coming to the belt, warping off and exiting the system. Having no ships in the POS to deal with a quick Cynibal I just was watching to see what they were doing. About the 5th time they came into system she deployed drones and started to kill off the cruiser spawn... to which I was upset about, so I right clicked all of my wrecks and chose abandon all nearby wrecks, thus changing them from white to blue.... This freaked out the Cynibal who warped off, came back at 100 to the belt for a double take and warped out of the system to not return, which gave me a good laugh.

Other than that, I watched the new Walking Dead on AMC last night and got my Security status from -8.4 to -8.09... I need to get the social skill that makes this goes a bit faster I am thinking.

Zandramus

Sunday, October 23, 2011

In a wormhole, things can go bad incredibly fast...

So last night started out like any othe rnight, I scanned down the system and resolved all of the signatures and anomolies. We ran all of the anomolies, I rescanned the system and finding no new signatures and no new sites to run it was decided we would clear out some of the rocks and gas.

All of the industry alts were logged in and a mining op commenced, I was sitting in the site in a drake even though it was a PVE drake, this would not have mattered anyways. My scannin alt was checking dscan, and he had out some combat probes, right until it was time to haule some ore, he would then hop in the iteron 5 and haul teh ore back to the pos, jump into the legion rescan the system. Everyone was hitting dscan from time to time.

My scanning guy had just scanned the system, found no new signatures, hopped in the iteron and picked up a load of ore. He dropped off the ore in the hanger, turned and was in warp back to the mining op when I hit dscan and saw a unfamiliar drake on dscan.

Upon Landing at the Mining op, 9 ships land on top of us 2 Tengu's a Drake, an Onyx, a Sliepiner, a Dramiel, a Legion, and a Protius. it was a very fast trip to the clone station for all of the op. I have to say these guys scanned us down and jumped us within minutes of opening up their static to us. I logged in  another scanning alt that stays in the system always to find us a way back to the system, to see them closing their hole to us with an orca. An there was not enough guys left in the hole that could scan to try and get someine into their hole.

So I am left with Well Played Gentelmen... You caught us with our pants down and I salute your ninja scanni ng skills lol.

Linky to killmail...
http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=14478767

Was up till 5 AM getting everyone back in the hole. One upside is I dont thing the corp members will ever do another mining op Lulz....

Zandramus

Friday, October 21, 2011

A Fruitless Evening Roam

Logged in last night and resolved the signatures in our class 3... Gas, Rocks, 1 radar Yay.. and our static to 0.0 So no new wormholes in the last 2 days maybe things are slowing back down. We run a few Anom's while we are closed in and pick up the bloot, then we decide to go on a little roam out of the static.

We refit to a more pvp fit drake and the three of us that are online dip our toes into 0.0. The system that we are in tonight is a dead end system one way in and out, no stations and only 1 asteroid belt. In other words it is perfect to stage from tonight. We bookmark the hole and head out, we jump into the next system, it is empty as well. Now I want to say there are two goals any time we get into 0.0, Goal number 1 is to try and find some pew, Goal number 2, is to get my security status back to 0. I am currently at -8.4 so this is a long term goal.

So with those intentions we start lookig at the map to see where there are some pilots in space, each system we go through we go through the belts and kill a BS rat if there is no one in space. If there is someone in space and we can locate him on dscan we will attempt some pew.

So the first system we come across with 1 person in local, there is nothing on dscan and there is a station in system, so we move on. We jump into the next system and I see a noctis on scan, but also a thantos, we are not going to be able to take 3 drakes vs a thantos so we wave and move on.

The next system there is a person in local, though nothing on dscan we believe they must be in a cloaky, we kill a 3bs spawn here and move on. We go through 6 more systems and all of them are empty and it is beginning to get late. We are 7 jumps from our dead end system and we start to head back. We kill a BS rat in each of the empty systems on the way back, wave at teh thantos pilot who thinks we are there to get him and I actually have a good convo with as we are lol'ing that a dramiel tackled him last night, I told hime he wasnt interesting to us as we didnt have the dps to take down a carrier in drakes.

We get one jump from the hole and head out in a different direction to check the 2 ice belt systems nearby, both systems are empty but we get sucked into a large tech 2 bubble in the second system which has no one in it, upset we got pulled to the bubble we destroy it and head back to the wormhole. It is now almost midnight so we roll the hole and go to bed unsatisfied, but tucked back in and closed in tight with the new static unactivated.

Maybe some pew this weekend.....

Zandramus

Thursday, October 20, 2011

In the Beginning, or The Times they are a Changing

I can remember my first trip to 0.0 back in 2004 back then you only had NPC Stations and Player Conqurable Stations in Nullsec. Of those very few were in systems that had ABC ore in them, and if you wanted the minerals from ABC ores, the only place to get them was in null-sec.

So essentially a mining op would commence in a system without a stations and you would have 1 Battleship on overwatch to tank the npc spawn, and the rest of the battleships would commence mining with mining lasers and drones. The king of the mining ships depending on if you had the drone skills or not was the Dominix, It could fit a massive tank field mining 6 or 7 mining lasers?? cant remember but it could field 15 Harvestor Drones which would be able to harvest ABC ores, regular mining drones could not pick up ABC ores as the mass was too big for them. Second choice of mining ships was the Amarr Apocolypse which could field 8 mining lasers and 10 drones. now the best hauler was the iteron 5 and you would have several haulers hauling the ore from your mining location back to the refining station which could be as many as 8-10 jumps away. IE isk was not easy to make and haulers were frequently the target of pirates between the mining location and the refinery station.

What made me think of this was a rant I heard recorded about how the game used to be. It makes me wonder if they have made it too easy for the people in Hi-sec to make isk, and I am glad that they are focusing on fixing the 0.0 systems, there should be a risk/reward payoff.

I also want to say that 0.0 is so very empty at the moment, I find myself traveling around some of it and not seeing people for many many systems. Part of this is because I think that the Sov system broke 0.0, you couldnt own space before SOV came in, all you could do is hold the conqurable stations and control the choke systems but right about the time I left the game due to RL stuff someone can come in drop a station egg and have a station in any system they have SOV in. POS's were something new just as I was leaving and mining barges and salvaging came in right in the last month I was in game. These things made 0.0 too damn safe. There were no cap ship blobs, the biggest ship you could fly was a battleship, large fleet fights might have seen 100 or so to a side.

So I missed the introduction of Wormholes which I am enjoying so very much at the moment, as I think that CCP finally got the message we were trying to convey to them was that it was beginning to be too easy and safe in 0.0 you could not sneak up on anyone which it should not have been as the risk needed to be high for the reward of being there. I feel that the people who have never left empire and continue to make loads of free isk without any risk are missing a big part of what this game has to offer.

I am hoping that CCP brings back some risk to 0.0 as right now whenever I do happen into a system where there are players making reasonably safe isk, they all see me in local and run to their pos where they can sit there and wait until I am bored and move on.   I feel like I am rambling now but I really wish the game were more risky than it is now though back then having 2-3k players online was a normal evening and a 7k weekend you had loads of targets.

Zandramus

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

The great Pos Bash mark 2.0

Well, when we moved into the system there was a large offline gallente tower in the system , and we have been wanting to get rid of it so that we can have a tower at each moon, thus denying anyone from coming in and setting up a foothold pos. We were concerned that the corp that owned the pos could just come back and fuel it and we would have to fight for the hole.

Well first attempt was 3 battleships versus a large tower which did not work, after 18 hours of shooting the shields were only at 30 pct and it didnt appear we were making any more progress. Well tonight we try again with 6 battleships 4 armageddons, 1 raven and 1 Kronos. In an hour and a half we have it about halfway through the shields so I think this is going to turn out better than the last attempt.

Also gives us an idea of what it might take dps wise to get rid of a customs office.

Z

Solo stealth bomber fail

Well I logged in last night to find 3 k162's in the system on top of the k346 exit to 0.0 after scanning down all of the sigs I warp to each hole to get some info on what we have to explore tonight. There are wormholes to a class 3, a class 5, and high sec hemitar region.

I have some errands to run so I deliver the loot out to RENs from the previous nights anomalies, and now 500m more is in the Corp wallet. My brother logs in and he makes a run to Rens to get some supplies, I need to purchase a couple more geddons for an upcoming operation.

I buy the geddons and contract them to the pilots that will come and pick them up, I head back to the hole to do some investigating. I pop into the class 3 and in the process of dscanning the system I notice a ferox on the scanner as I am warping between 2 planets to get a fix on him I warp right by him. I may be able to get his position without dropping probes. I warp back to the previos spot and open the create bookmark menu. As I see him appear again I click the bookmark button. Once I land I warp to the bookmark and lo and behold there is the ferox 300k from me.

I go get a stealth bomber, though in hindsight I should have closed distance bookmarked the spot and came back with something a bit more substantial. As I close and drop cloak be warps off. I still have him on dscan near an inner planet, I pop out combat probes from my cov ops in the system at 1au range to the planet and get a 100 pct hit. I warp gang to the spot 18k from him drop cloak and bomb which misses him completely, I set orbit point and start torping him, which is doing very little damage. I call on a corpie to help out.

While my corpie is in warp he pops out minmatar small drones which chew up my Amarr stealth bomber hull to shreds and I pop just as my corpie arrives with a Legion. He warps off again. He convos me and gf me in convo, I gf him then he asks if he can pay me 20m isk to show him the exit to hs as he is stuck with no probes.

After I finish laughing, I consider this... If he hadn't just gf'd me I probably wouldn't have let him out but he had a good attitude and I collect the isk and escort him to the exit.

I take a break and reflect on the battle, first fight in a stealth bomber for me, should have brought the geddon and warped right on top of him having made the bookmark first. I need to set up an account for the test server and test out some of these ships I have never flown in combat before, I expected the torps to do much more damage to a BC than what they were doing. I should have expected small drones and warped as they were deployed. 1V1 might have not been the way to approach this fight.

I log in later to see scanner probes out in my system, I close the Hisec and the 0.0 exit leaving the class 3 and the class 5 alone as it is getting way late in the eveing, the class 5 was reaching the end of its life, the class three didnt seem much of a threat.

Z

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

A visitor

Well looking at dotlan it appears we have a spy in our hole as I am seeing recurring jumps in the eastern European timezone. Around 2 am for me. So I will continue to monitor this activity and if they are still around this weekend I will try to be online around this time. I suspected something last night when we had a new static as we had not activated our static lately. We had some other k162's over the weekend which I thought might have explained the jump count. But today when looking I show 2 jumps at 6 am eve time and yesterday there were exactly 2 jumps at 6 am eve time.

As if someone is jumping out the static, seeing where they are jumping back in and logging off. I am also seeing a jump in the last hour that tells me there is probably a k162 today that will have to be looked at.

So much for running some sites tonight, though there may be some opportunity for some pew pew.

Z

Monday, October 17, 2011

Slow weekend

Not much to report this weekend, I did manage to sell a wormhole I found for 800m, though it tied up my scanning alt all weekend, I did manage to take a peek out into 0.0 and saw something that disturbed me, After asking some people about it. I found a system that was bubbled on teh outbound and inbound gates, when I entered the system there was only 3 people in it, I was told that this happens when people are botting, I will keep an eye out for this as I would love to bring teh pain on some botters.

I had also been looking for a corp, I am set up good in teh wormhole for now so I think I will stick here and build up some isk until it completely bores me and I have enough hulls laying around to do some good pvp. I bought a new Archon this weekend, though I didnt have enough isk to fit it out and buy fighters and drones for it so I have some grinding to do.

I have 9b invested in this wormhole so I figure I will be set for a while when I have about 18b in the wallet, and a stack of hulls to lose. Then I dont know someplace that I can get alot of small gang action.

Z

Friday, October 14, 2011

My sekrit identity

Well I have been kicking it around for a couple of weeks whether or not to reveal my main toons identity in the blog, I didn't want to give away too much operational security until we were confidently set up in w space, but I felt that an anonymous blog was probably going to begin to get boring, so here we are, I am Zandramus.

I have been parked in an aeon for several years only logging in to shoot structures and do sov warfare, well I am tired of all the sov bullshit mechanics of the game I want to get back to my roots.

What are those roots you ask? Well I was a member of the first premier pvp merc Corp in the game S.A.S. I flew with who I believe was the best fc pre-support ship and alliance tournament winner Zincol. Now as I say I have been away for a while and am very rusty but I am in now until end game and I am looking for some fun. I will hopefully be finding some new people to fly with that can get me into the type of fights I like and keep the game exciting.

If ya see me in space give me a shout out, Until fly it like you stole it.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Fun evening ending with pew pew and ship goes boom

We last left with my alt R.. out of the hole having been stuck on the other side of a closed wormhole and waking up fresh in a new clone station. Last night I logged in and scanned down the system with my scanning alt. 8 sigs in system 4 wormholes... After misguessing which was my static the night before I have figured out how to determine which is the k346 so I check the other 3 holes and we have 2 k162's that resolve at 1 au. A wh to a class 3 that resolves to .5au and the static which resolves at .25au . The k162's one is to 0.0 and one is to high-sec but the high-sec hole is reaching the end of it's lifetime. Acting quickly I start my alt on his way to the high sec system from minmatar space. He has 20 jumps to go in his purifier.

I jump my main Z.. through the hole in his pod and check the market and get the obligatory warning from concord that criminals are not welcome in empire space. There are drakes available in system so I buy a stack of drake hulls and launchers. Someone will need to run 12 jumps to Amarr to get the rest of the fit, I also buy a gheddon one jump over and jump back in the hole. I get a corpmate to log in and start moving the drake hulls into the hole while I watch the inside in the pilgrim with Z.. R arrives in his purifier and ships up to the legion to make the loot run into empire. He arrives at Amarr and sells the loot for 1.2 billion and buys the fit for the drakes and heads back to the hole. Once in he unships and goes and picks up the gheddon. About this time another corp member is logging in and just as I am telling him what's going on the hisec hole collapses.

We fit out the drakes for pve and look to grind some sec status. We hop out the k162 to 0.0 and end up in cache 5 jumps from HED-GP lots of traffic so we jump back in and go out through the static into an empty system with a cosmos agent. Hmm haven't done that before so I take the mission and we warp into the complex. We are almost done killing the spawn with the 3 drakes I am double boxing Z and R the site respawns... Ok this happened 4 times before we figure we don't have enough guys to clear the site and someone shows up in local.

We are down all our drones and almost out of ammo so we decide to head back to the hole and reship. Upon contact with the hole there is a Loki there who jumps into the hole. We jump through and engage the Loki. V..  cannot get him locked and this is where communication breaks Down when we are engaged by 2 more ships hurricaines... I am still shooting the Loki with Z and R, V switches to one of the hurricaines doesnt tell me on coms he is doing so. I try to gang warp us to the pos to reship.... Z warps the V & R get warp scrambled. So now it is a 2 vs 3 but we are holding our own until V goes down and gets his pod away R goes down and gets his pod away, I reship them in the pos Z into a pilgrim and warp cloaked to the hole to see whats going on and Z gets sucked into a bubble... He dies quickly to the 3 v 1 but gets his pod out... We give props in local gf all around they give props back.

After action analysis...

I am clearly rusty at pvp being out of the game so long, I should have called one of the hurricanes primary we should have at least popped one or two of them. Granted we were not in pvp setup no one had a point but we had an advantage in our hole we didn't use which was to negate the hurricanes falloff.

Secondly we should have jumped back through the hole when we started to go down we were passive fit and could have used the 30 seconds cloaked to regen some shields before jumping back through and regenning some more. Also the Loki who was set up as neuting tank would not have been able to come back through because as I suspected they came from Cache through the hole and when he jumped back in his timer started. We could have separated them and dealt with the hurricanes.

Third.. Z could have reshipped to a gankgheddon in the pos and made short work of the hurricanes or at least force them to jump out reducing the hostile ship count and turning the odds in our favor.

All in all it was fun, losing the drakes was not bad. Losing the pilgrim was a fluke, I think that we will do better the next time.

The Lost Pod Trader

Monday, October 10, 2011

Well today was one of those days where everything goes wrong

Today started out good was grinding some security status out of teh 0.0 static, then when my brother logged on we ran through all of the anomolies in teh system before trying out a Forgotten Frontier Recursive Depot which we quickly lost a drake and our dominix before we finally got it finished, oh and our Kronos managed to warp out with 24 percent hull left. This was the second attempt at this particular site the first time we finished it without incedent.

So then it was decided to clear out a grav site and after 5 minutes in the site we see scan probes in the system, I had just scanned the system before we started, and it was clear but low and behold there was a new K162 from a class 4 WSpace. Wen I popped out scanner probes and probed down the hole, usually this is the hint that I saw your probes, but this person must have been persistant about scanning our system.

I get cov ops into their system and dscan down their pos, there are 3 people in the pos and another pos in the system, Ok I decide to close the hole and start running ships through it, we get it just about to pop when I hear the hole go off so I bubble up the heavy interdictor and a cov ops goes back out deciding not to stay. I jump the heavy dic in and bring it back through collapsing the hole.

Well apparently he was scouting to get his buddie back out of the system as soon as the hole colapses I see probes go up again. I put a cov ops on the 0.0 static and wait for them to leave then we collapse that hole. I scan the system again, and just my luck 2 new wormholes... I pick the wrong one first and activate the 0.0 static, and the other hole is a new k-162 to C5 Wspace. I am getting tired so I start closing both of these at the same time warping from one to the other, I manage to get the 0.0 hole closed just as the locals are deploying scan probes, and while putting the finishing touces on the C5 I accidently jump the Apoc in instead of the interdictor and the hole closes behind me.

Well rather than give the local russians a kill mail I self destruct the apoc and my pod and wake up anew in hodrold where I have a spare stealth bomber to go and find my way back in tomorrow, as I am done today.

The Lost Pod Trader.

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Goodby Aeon Hello Wormhole

Well my main char is finally out of the Aeon and in the wormhole, I am so looking forward to grinding up his sec status and doing some 0.0 roams with him. I have quite a bit of both pve and pvp dedicated ships for him in the POS and am just waiting for the game to come back up after downtime this morning to get started.


Let the adventure begin.

The Lost Explorer

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Immersion and what it means to me.

What is it about eve that appeals to me? Its the idea that at any moment you can loose your stuff. I enjoy the excitement of a combat system that has real penalties. In eve if you die there are consequences other than running back to get resurrected. In eve you loose your stuff, possibly your implants and a significant amount of time. Get killed 30 jumps away from your clone station and now you have to work to get back in the fight.

It means there is profit to be made from other players. There are no other games where when you kill a player he drops his stuff. IMHO this should be prevailent in all games but developers constantly take the politically correct route and protect players stuff through game mechanics.

In the first diablo you could loot the players belongings when you killed them, this was removed this was removed in diablo 2 though there was still a world pvp where if you played hard core your toon could be killed. I will not be playing diablo 3 as it has taken the wow approach and implemented arena's I was saddened to here this as I was anticipating it's release.

So we are back to eve being the only real game with a real death penalty which appeals to my gaming style. I enjoy griefing the griefers of the game. I enjoy killing can flippers and ninja salvagers and suicide gankers.

My 2 cents

The Lost Pod Trader

Hellmar's Post

Let me be frank when I say bravo, I cannot wait to see the expansion. I had been on an extended hiatus from eve until I heard about the controversy that the last patch stirred up. Having quite a bit of time invested in the game from 2003 to 2006 and my main char stuck sitting in an Aeon that I can't seem to sell at the moment. I came back to eve and ressubbed 5 accounts whilst everyone else was unsubbing.

Why you ask? Because this game was awesome with 2k players logged in on average and it is so much better now with 30k logged in and I don't want it to go down in flames because a few toss pots don't get their way and stomp their feet like 2 year olds. So I am here till the e d now whatever that may be though I hope that end is far far ahead of us rather than being just around the corner.

Now if I can just get my Aeon sold so I can get my main into the wormhole. Then I will be paying close attention to all you 0.0 residents whilst I grind my sec status back up from -9.1 by killing all the rats in your space along with your alliance members.

Sounds like such a fun winter ahead.

The Lost Pod Trader

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

No one on and nothing to do...

Well there are 10 anomalies in the system last night but everyone was busy with Rl issues. My brother had to drive to Tuscon after work to pick up his new computer so he wasnt home to well after 10 pm. So I spent an evening anchoring more POS defense that we pocked up in empire over the weekend. I think we have spent about 5 billion on Pos modules over the last 3 weeks. While I am anchoring modules I dscan core scan probes in the system which can only mean that there must be a k162 that just spawned as I just scanned down all of the cosmic sigs less than an hour before that.

So I switch to the cloaky legion and throw out 7 combat scanners which I am able to get a warp in on the k162 with so I warp up there and wait and see what's what. I leave the combat scanners out and scan every few minutes for ships. After watching the hole for about a half hour I see a Helios uncloaked and leave the hole. I wait a few minutes and collect my probes and jump into a class 5 with the legion and locate their pos on dscan. Corp info on their Corp shows 97 members it appears to be an industrial Corp. I do a qick scann with combat scanners and find no ships in space and no anomalies... Hmm they were looking to run my sites it looks like .... Well if I can't run them tonight I'm not going to make them available for someone else. I look up the hole on daopa's site and see that it only has a billion mas max. I log in to my Alts accounts and I run three battleships out and back in then warp to the pos wait and warp back up I run 1 ship out and in and it didn't shrink a second time yet so one more out and in and it closes behind my abbadon coming back in.

After that I head for bed in hopes I can run some of these sites tuesday night.

All for now
The Lost Trader

Monday, October 3, 2011

Wormholes wormholes and more wormholes

What a busy weekend in the wormhole.... As I previously have posted our first 3 weeks in this hole were without a hisec or lowsec opening. Well that must have not been the norm as this weekend we spent most of the weekend closing holes to lowsec hisec and unfriendly wh space. We at one point had our static to 0.0, a wh to a class5, and 2 low-sec wormholes.

We did make a fuel run when the first low sec hole open-end to gallente space, though the system we opened into was involved in an incursion. It was 10 jumps to ourselart we filled a freighter there and jumped it a few more jumps back towards us in a .5 bordering a .4 which of course was being camped by pirates yarr...

I jumped my trusty legion in to the gate camped system there were a alpha ship on the gate being repped by a armor logistics ship. I tell the haulers not to jump in and burn back to the gate. They only take half of my shields off before I jump out. Now I remember low sec tanking the gate guns back in the day and you had to warp off after an attack. So I go back to the other side of the gate and jump in again.... They are still there tanking the gate guns lol well that's new... I burn back to the gate again and sit there just to see how much damage they can do to my armor. I am able to tank the dos they are doing but there are others on dscan and I am sure if I agrees they would warp in. I jump back out and we mark that system as an avoid which makes our trip back to the hole a 26 jump adventure with 2 transport ships the last 10 jumps will be through low sec lol. Looking at the route all the pirates would have to do is camp 1 other system 3 jumps for them and we would not be a able to get back to the hole.

Lucky for us they are not that clever and the trip goes uneventful.

Back in the hole we close that exit and a class 5 opened we begin closing that one when as we just warp to the pos from the hole an orca jumped into our hole that the cov ops spots. We race back to the hole he didn't appear to warp off but he is not there we try and find him but cannot. So frustrating, another low sec opened up and a half hour later the cov ops pilot sees the orca leave via that hole.

We close that hole and a class 4 opened up that as we are closing a cheetah jumped into us our onyx bubbled up but he cloaked before anyone locked him fail fail...
We see him leave through the 0.0 static which is the only open hole at the moment.

That hole collapses at the end of it's life and we get a new 0.0 static, a class 5, and a hisec 4 jumps from ourselart. Lol could have saved some time waiting for that one. At the end of Sunday all holes are closed or choked and I go to bed not having been able to run any anomalies all weekend and the Corp account back to 10 mills having spent 2 bil in empire on supplies. Back to the grind tonight

Cheers
The Lost Trader