Holiday Break

Well it’s been a few days since I blogged last and I have had a pretty decent holiday I have bought and have been playing a bit of SWTOR. Though I have been wanting to PVP in EVE, every time I log in there is no one on in Corp that is doing anything, I am just going to figure that everyone is taking a small vacation and will be back soon. So my training plan is underway and I have 333 days till it is completed and that’s with +4’s as I jumped into my combat clone last night expecting some PVP for a scheduled op but no one showed up, so I will jump back into the training clone tonight.

I think the plan here is to get most of the folks back into a wormhole by the end of January. I am currently looking for an empty class 4 with a class 3 static. Once I find this I will drop an alt in there so that I can find my way back to this when we are ready to move into it. The class three we were in was a bit of a pain in the arse as far as logistics, I feel that if we are in a C4 with a C3 static and we need to get to empire we can just roll the static until I find a C3 with a HS or LS static. We became quite good at mass closing WH’s in the C3 so now I feel it is time to move up a bit.

I am looking forward to having the carriers and possibly a dread in the system, I think we can make more than the 1 billion a week we were making in the C3 and we can use the capitals to our advantage. I have to think in reality, anything I take into the hole I am planning on losing, so we will have everything we need to survive for several months set up and placed in a central location where we can just throw it into the freighter and jump freighter and get it to the system where our entrance will be.

Straight forward I learned quite a bit about setting up and taking down the POS, it is not quite near the pain it was before the winter patch when it took me all day to set it up. I like the idea of having a Dick-Star setup but also having 3-4 times the amount of guns needed for a Death-Star anchored and offline so that they can be on-lined if needed. Everyone in the alt corp. is a pos-gunner so that is a plus we have 9 pos gunners and 4 carrier pilots and 2 dread pilots. I think we will do ok in a class 4 even if we are attacked.

I will probably go with the multiple tower defence like we had denying anyone else a staging moon. Yes it will be easy to take down an offline tower, but it will give us plenty of warning about what is coming if we are going to be attacked, and force them to spend quite a bit of time removing us if they really want us out.

Vulnerability and I have been talking it over about getting our security status right again and I think that we may do this soon so that we can get back in HS. I really didn’t enjoy losing the Navy Gheddon to the game mechanics because I was a pirate, I think this was pretty lame just because I am flashy someone shouldn’t gcc because they rep me. I didn’t have gcc why would they get it as I was attacked first. Anyway bad game mechanic that needs fixed as far as I am concerned.

Just finished listening to the latest Fly Reckless, was impressed at the level that “The Mittani” has put into the game , so props Mittani, not a fanboi but interesting to hear your thoughts on the game.

Zandramus

A bit of fun to be had by all...

So I log in last night to resolve a new signature in the wormhole that leads to a class 4 system I will call class 4-A. I jump into this system and it is empty, no towers, no ships, and It has a C3 Static, which I entered from. Someone had to open it… it just doesn’t open from the K162 side like that. So I blanket the system to find a bunch of rocks, gas, rocks, gas…. Ah there we go a k162 to class 2 wspace we will call this class 2-A.

Class 2-A is occupied, I spy several people at their POS where I narrowly avoid a bubble trap. Seems they had every approach to the POS bubbled and canned except the one from the planet, which somehow doesn’t make sense to me, but warping to the moon at 100 has me drop out of warp 2k from the POS shield, between 2 large bubbles and the shield.  This is a Russian corp, I add all of the members I observe to my contacts and since this C2 has a hisec static, I will be back to investigate more later on when the Russians are all nicely tucked in their bed.

I log into Zandramus and find out that we are knocking down a customs office ahead of what I am sure to be a WiDiot cap-athon to come and rep the office back up. These guys are off of their routine, they usually make it here just as the CO comes out of reinforced, we have the CO into half armor before the cyno goes up and WiDiot brings in oh yes 5 thantos… so they have superior numbers and ships again and the smak talk begins in local. We ship up and prepare to defend the POS as the last time they were here they attacked the POS but sadly they will not bite tonight and they leave system having only repped the Customs office into half shields . 15 minutes later the CO is reinforced again, maybe next time they will give us a fight, to me seems like they are wasting a shit ton of oxytopes moving those ships around every other night to defend a customs office that probably will never pay for itself.

I log back into the wormhole, and while the Russians have gone to sleep there are other people sitting on the entrance to the class 2 and it is reaching the end of its lifetime, so no exit tonight. I return home and blanket the system with probes to find 2 new signatures. A ladar sight which I activate, and whats this a k162 to Class 4 W Space… C4 – B is what I will  call this. A quick investigation finds their ships empty ion their tower, but belonging to the person I just added as a contact at C2-A. that’s interesting.. back to C4-A I go and there are 3 Tengu’s , a Sleipener, and a coercer on scan… me thinks they are running the sites, I do a quick probless scan of the system and warp to the first anomaly at 100 and there is no one there. I warp to the second anomaly at 100 and find the ships there killing the sleepers.

Very intrigued, I sit here cloaked and watch their work, when they are finished killing everything they warp off to another site out of scan range. I continue to hit D-Scan and am getting nothing on scan and the site de-spawns…. very interesting.  I decide to enact a toll for crossing my system and interrupting my routine tonight and I approach each and every large wreck in the site and loot the bloot, I make my way home with 60m isk of bloot in my cargo-hold of my anathema to pass a kestrel at the hole as I enter my home system.

Its off to bed for me tonight

Zandramus

Evening of Gate Camping, finds a Hilariously fit Phoon.

I log into the wormhole tonight and resolve the signatures present which total 3, there are no new signatures so I do some maintenance and un anchor the 17 small towers that were placeholders on the moons to deny any staging POS’s from being deployed. I bookmark each of them as I do this and return after they are un anchored and collect them in the hauler and deposit them in the corporate hangar. I am done with wormhole maintenance and I log in Zandramus, and Ref’Tal and plot their course back to Lonetrek for an evening gate interdiction.

I am joined by my brother Vulnerability when I arrive in Lonetrek and I decide that tonight I will provide heavy tackle in my Devoter. Vulnerability is also flying a Heavy Innterdictor an Onyx. So both of these ships have a giant tank on them and have no issues whatsoever tanking the gate guns and we have the scan resolution on both of them bonused to about 1200, so not a lot of stuff will get away from us.

I am interested in getting some expensive pod kills with this ship but basically we are killing anything unfortunate enough to jump into our low security system. We have other corporation members in system that are providing gang boosting, and dps. I am very comfortable with the fleet setup and would happily engage another small fleet of equal size with this one.

The evening progresses and we are getting nothing but noob ships and shuttles jumping in to us, I have missed several  destroyers tonight my computer has been a bit laggy and these ships are warping just as I get a positive lock which is strange as the targeted interdiction script is always pre-activated when I go to lock a target.

A phoon and a wolf warp to the gate on the other side of the gate and there is a tengu on scan, I feel things are about to get interesting, when the phoon and wolf jump into us. We ignore the wolf and concentrate on the phoon, knocking down his shields and just before he goes pop the pilot ejects, I miss the pod and the rest of the fleet is unable to stop dps fast enough to get us a free phoon. A look at the killmail and I am just baffled.  http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=14809353 Has there been a disturbance in the space time continuum, this phoon was fitted with miner II’s expanded cargoholds, had 2 drones in the drone bay, and heavy missile launchers in the launcher hardpoints. This fitting would have been normal minmatar fare for circa 2003-2004 before there was such things as mining barges which mine so much more efficiently.

A quick look at the pilot reveals he is brand new, first seen on battleclinic on 11/27/2011… with 1 kill and 2 losses including the phoon. What the hell is such a new player flying a typhoon fitted this way and jumping into lowsec with a ship he clearly he cannot fly proficiently.  This game never ceases to amaze me. I assume I just blew up some 10 year old just starting into the game and getting his first taste of EVE.  But he had the conscience of mind to eject to save the pod…. Something here isn’t right …

Anyway the eveing digresses into a few more pod kills and I go to bed feeling unsatisfied with the quality of my kills for the day.

Zandramus

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