Where you can find me

Although the alliance knew my plans, I'm not sure the rest of you did.  Sure you knew I'd be taking a break from EVE, but I'm not sure I mentioned where you'd be able to find me while I'm on break.  Now that the game went live it can be revealed:

You'll be able to find me on the Selbina server of Final Fantasy XIV.  For once I've started a blog on the first day of my new adventure:

Letrange's FFXIV Blog

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Not horribly original but it works and it's fairly consistent with my EVE blog.  Any EVE related posts as I skill up and or see the need for commentary will of course still be posted here.  But the bulk of my posting activity will be over there for the time being.

Fly safe (or fly dangerously depending on your preference).

The quiet conspiracy

As I'm reading through various and assorted articles from non-CCP sources, one of the most frequent whine I see on comments about an EVE article is how all the articles glorify the negative. To a certain extent this is understandable. Positive articles don't generate as much reader interest as negative ones. And there are some ostentatiously negative articles about shenanigans in EVE.

I think I need to point out a few things here the casual reader might have missed. This is not just the media focusing on the "bad" stories. The truth is there is a lack of investigative reporting going on. The reason for that is that most gaming media relies on someone telling them what is going on. When someone gets his ass handed to him in spectacular fashion, either he or someone associated with the event usually screams the details of the event either on the EVE-O forums or some place like scrapheap challenge.

Then there is the secret to moderate success in EVE. RUN UNDER THE FRICKEN RADAR YOU NOOB! I'm not what could be considered massively successful by any means in EVE. But most of my endeavors have ended on positive notes with progress being made. You will note that I'm also one of the FEW blogging industrialists in EVE. I'm not much into the traditional routes to riches that the truly rich players follow. One of the major things I have noticed is that a lot of success can be had by keeping quiet and not attracting attention. There's a reason for the preponderance of pirate blogs vs any other type of blog. In this game, flying under the radar means you remove yourself from the "low hanging fruit" syndrome. Visible people get targeted by those aforementioned pirates. Opening your mouth and whining in public does nothing but paint a big "tears can be had here" sign in front of all your ships.

Letting gankers know just how successful you are means they will start to track your location within EVE and get intelligence on your operational procedures for a proper attack on your operations. So all the smart people learn early on to "fly under the wire". They also learn such things as "avoid the Saturday/Sunday gank fleets". "How to move things relatively safely". "How not to get lazy". There is satisfaction in operating successfully in a dangerous environment. But it's a quiet satisfaction. And since it depends on operational security, if you're not able to keep quiet about your successes, you won't be successful for long.

The corollary to all those insane blow up situations the news reports are thousands of successful operations that no one except one person or a few, tight lipped mature players know about. Because they are mature players, they don't feel the need to boast about it. So the successes keep coming. There's a reason EVE keeps growing. There's a reason the average age of EVE players is higher than a game like WoW. It's the quiet conspiracy.

One last roam

So, Sunday at noon we had organized one last roam before I effectively reduce my presence in EVE. I put out the call to "bring the good stuff". We did not get lucky (the pirates were being cagey Sunday), but this kill mail should show what I meant by "The good stuff". Altogether a successful roam. Not as target rich as one could wish but 2 kills for no losses during the OP puts it squarely in the "success" category.

I was on grid for the Thorax kill, but was a little slow getting to the target.

And I got my PvP Loki blooded.

*evil grin*

It also gave me a bit of a feel for the fit.

About the only things that were a little lacking with it for this type of a roam was targeting speed and agility. Definitely more of a the "pocket battlecruiser" feel than the "overpowered cruiser" feel.

My gut feeling is that the fit might better suit a 0.0 roaming HAS gang more than a low sec roaming HAS gang. Although to be honest this was more of a roaming Recon gang (We had 5 Recons in the gang as you could see and 2 Vagabonds and an interceptor. The Tengu was a gang boosting Tengu and My Loki was fit like a Huginn. As requested if you couldn't fly a T2 Cruiser or an interceptor, bring a well fit cruiser. We only had one of those. All in all a fun 2.5h roam through low sec.

Now to address the next year+ of taking a break from EVE. I've stopped the subscriptions on my two alt accounts. I'll be keeping my main account alive though in order to skill flip through some rather tedious skills. I still have 4 BS weapons to get to T2 level 4s. Then there's Logistics and all the command ship skills as well as Interdictor/HIC. After that there's some more Industrial skills (Frigate Construction V, Battleship Construction, Various T2 Science skills).

I'll probably keep an eye on developments and patches and what not but from here on in, don't expect any posting regularity. I'll probably only post when skills ding V and/or when some interesting piece of information hits the news wire.

So either fly safe if you're a carebear and fly dangerous if you're a PvP pilot.

Free!

So, I wake up this morning and find a GM answer and that the switchover finally happened. Cathrianne is now the alliance leader of AMC and I was finally able to get my corporation out of the alliance.

I'm free :)

Still no resolution

Yep it's been close to 24h and still no answer to the petition. Yay fun! Not even an acknowledgment.

Evidently the CEO/Alliance interface terrifies GMs so much they delay answering the petitions as long as possible...

We'll see how long this petition takes to resolve.

Interface hell

Once again we dive into the interface hell that is the CEO/Alliance leader interface. The objective is simple: Get our alliance to switch executor corps. So, we get, theoretically of course, enough CEO/directors online to make the attempt. But even with 3 days and everyone assuring me that they have switched their executor support, my corp is still the executor....

Brilliant.

It's supposed to do a check every 24h.

Did something break with the sov changes?

Working as intended?

Who knows.

If it's not resolved by this evening I'm going to try a petition. If that doesn't work, I'll be reduced to kicking the corps down to two and maybe THAT will work.

And once again CCP Interface design FAILS! At the very least they should have a way to indicate the level of support each corporation is receiving (keep the vote secret but have the results public). That way we'd know if it was a bug or simply CEOs that are having trouble navigating the tortuous corp/alliance interface... As it is we're left wondering and giving the game bad publicity because of it.

Centralized!

I've done it! I've achieved what few pilots in New Eden are even capable of! I have managed to get my main to fit all his inventory in a single station!

Finally got a set of +4's in my skull as well. Also managed to get to Jita with about 500mil worth of materials and disposed of same. DST ftw. While I was there I bought up some T2 advanced moon goo in the quantities necessary to build 1 Hyena and 2 Hounds. As well as the missing Ship Data Interfaces (much cheaper now than in the day).

So I'm back at the high sec base with everything. Started some builds and all is good.

Disposing of ships

Welp, Cozmik got a great big present last night. So I get to the PvP HQ and I find a multitude of ships. Most of them "Disposable" PvP fit ships for practice roams (although they are rigged - frigate rigs are cheap enough that they got rigged). Looking at the hauling involved I then inquire of Cozmik whether he could use any of these fits.

16 ships contracted over later I only have 2 trips to centralize my inventory down to two stations. Sweet.

Hauling, hauling.....

I'm half way back to the centralized location on the 2nd trip when I quit for the night.

And I'm out of w-space

Unlike last night, tonight was un-eventful. I managed the final tear-down of the large tower in Chaos Central, quite easily. Everything fit in a single orca load and myself and my alt were able to get to high sec with every thing without incident. 8 jumps from home base. Sweet.

So yep This last stint in w-space was quite worth it since I get out of it with 3 Loki's in inventory and a pile of isk. The next few days will consist of da eeeeeeevil logistics moves as I centralize various scattered ship (mainly emptying the "PvP warehouse" and folding back a single station). I also have some final manufacturing to do (Build a Hound or two) to replace losses, and otherwise get my inventory of ships stabilized.

Then there will be the big sell off of materials. I have decided to dump the materials on the market (some shipped to Jita to be dumped, some disposed of locally). Acquiring new materials for any industrial plans I may formulate when I get back in game should be fairly trivial. A quick trip to Jita and some locally purchased minerals with my BPO collection and I should be good to go when I get back.

All in all a successful stay in w-space.