Member of the EVE Tweet Fleet

Friday, January 20, 2012

Mord's Maxim

We'll see.

Monday, January 16, 2012

Send some timers my way would you?

One problem with being in an alliance that seems to be predominantly euro time zone is that it seems a lot of timers happen in other time zones.  Like when I'm at work.  And strangely enough it often happens that RL takes over big chunks of my weekends.  So Friday came around and many POSes were put in reinforced.  At one point on Sunday I asked, "So, should we be doing X now?"  (X had gotten delayed by all the POS work).  And the HC replied "only once we deal with all these timers" and he gave me a link to the pos timer list.  So I check the link and every single one of the timers comes out while I'm at work or in bed...

Ironic...

So I started working on X since it was either that or rat or log off with nothing to do...

Friday, January 13, 2012

I used to know this stuff

EVE's learning cliff is alive and well.  I am re-scaling parts of it I had not seen in a while.  Case in point:  Bombs launch in the direction you approach, not the direction the camera is facing...

Bombing run #1 over in right field, bombing run #2: on target...

I didn't kill any blues, and I managed to return the ship I borrowed, but yea, it's been a learning experience.  Lucky I wasn't the only one channeling the god of dumb last night.  Someone forgot to fit a cyno on their ship and that did not end well...  "I'll cyno you in on them"...  "oh shit"...  "-.-;"...  Glad that particular incident was not me.  Also: "take fleet warp" when there's no one in fleet or wing position...  Let's just put that fleet behind us and try not to do it like that again.

So I was dangling over the cliff by my finger tips but all ended well, for most of us anyways.  The devil is in the details.  Like where to set the exact keep at distance value (i.e. on the button in the selection tool, not in a right menu in the overview....  or in space...  like I said, details...

Also, good thing I noticed my skills were 4 million above my medical clone BEFORE I ended up needing to re-upgrade a clone....

Those of you coming back to EVE after an extended stay away may want to brush up on those items.  I know there's more than 2 or 3 of you.

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Back in fleet ops.

And I get back in fleet ops.  Was a station op and there was an actual attempt to oppose the fleet.  I was flying my Scimitar so I won't get on kill mails, but our kill to loss ratio on that op was nice and tasty and we (the logi group) kept people alive (at least those who brought the right ships and broadcasted for shields).   It felt nice to get in a proper fleet again.  I'd missed that.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Argh! The rust! and an uncharged headset!

Note to self:  Remember to plug in the headset.  I end up doing this about once a week.  So the headset has a short time to charge before I go online and it's inevitable that it dies right at the important part of an op.  Murphy is alive and kicking.  I'm probably going to have to get a spare wired headset for when that happens.

Screen #2 died as well, This weekend that will solve itself, but I'm down to 1 screen and DAMN do I miss screen #2.  Makes running dual accounts MUCH simpler, not to mention having maps and such open in the 2nd screen etc etc etc...

Figures all this stuff would go wrong right after xmass when ze budget needs to be watched like a hawk.   Come on 15th, move your ass.

Also:  I apologize to the alliance mates for all the noob moves.  Being away from the game for a few months really does rust things up.  Gonna need some virtual WD-40 (and duct tape, cant forget the duct tape as I'm Minmatar).  Hopefully I won't get too many ships killed while I un-rust.

Also, as a general rule in 0.0, DO NOT JUMP BETWEEN JUMP BRIDGE SYSTEMS WITHOUT CHECKING YOUR INTEL CHANNELS.  Bloody lemmings (and yes I include myself in the list - not so much because I didn't figure they would be there last week as because I'd forgotten how to "bust thru" a cloaky bubble camp - all that rust I need to knock off).  This has been a public service message brought to you by 90% of the alliance leaders in the game.

Monday, January 9, 2012

After an abortive attempt - back to 0.0

After a first abortive attempt to get to 0.0, my carrier is finally out of low sec and in the deep end of the pool on the 2nd try.  Just need to get it to the alliance staging system and I'll be able to get in fleet ops.  Bout *expletive of choice* time.

Meanwhile, I keep hoping for my DUST 514 beta application to come thru... Time will tell.

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Back to FAIL and thoughts on Incursions

My corp is transitioning back to Cascade Imminent.  So I'm in the "24h" transition phase.  The good news is I'm pretty much ready to head back to 0.0.  The bad news is that as a space holding alliance [FAIL] suffers from the usual constant annoyance wardecs of people looking for cheap kills in Jita.  And since I don't have an incursion alt (defined as a character with enough skills to run in good incursion fleets), this will pretty much put paid to my ability to run incursions for the foreseeable future.  It says something about incursions that I had very serious thoughts about dropping corp and either running solo or forming an incursion focused corp.  Only the thought that my gut tells me they are due for a pretty significant nerf soon swayed the decision towards staying in a null sec corp.

The problem for all the Incursion haters is that the truth is most of the serious incursion fleets usually include a fair seasoning of 0.0 pilots.  Null sec alliance leaders probably hate the damn things since they seriously reduce the attraction of null sec as a whole.  Heck look at me.  I KNOW I can make more isk more easily by staying in high sec and running incursions.  Since I didn't have the ships the join PvP fleets after I unsubscribed my alts for the summer and returned after Crucible, I didn't have any problem justifying doing incursions.  And I was right.  I'm heading back to 0.0 with a carrier that can move my PvP ships from high sec to 0.0 bases and staging systems.  I would not be able to afford this by now had I stayed in 0.0 or gone back to it right after becoming active again.  And therein lies the quandary for null sec alliances.  Null sec alliances need bodies for the fleets they run to protect their space.  No bodies, and the fleets don't happen.  No fleets and pretty soon you don't have any space.  The alliances need this space for it's T2 moon goo and renters.  The grunt pilots though are just looking for better income than in high sec and possibly some fleet action.  Or vis versa, some fleet action with some better income than high sec to afford the shiny ships fleet actions call for. 

The call of "Fleet up to defend your space" rings rather hollow when "your" really means "the alliances" and from the income point of view it's rather shit compared to incursions especially since the sanctum nerf.  The worse thing from the point of view of the alliance leaders is that this affects the "mid level" grunts the most.  The guys senior enough to fly the fleet ships but not senior enough to have a vested interest in the alliance's space.

Couple that with the 0.0 alliance influence on the CSM and CCP's stated interest in getting people to move to 0.0 (It's like herding cat's isn't it?) and you get "incoming nerf".  When I don't know, but it's going to happen.  Heck I suspect we'll see them move most if not all the high sec incursions to low sec.  That'll make the pirates happy.

Incursions as they stand are probably a rather large failure of design.  What they should have done is designed high sec incursions aimed at a fleet of 10-20-40 2-4mil sp pilots with apropriate levels of rewards for those levels.  Aim the low sec ones to to need Logistics ship support and aim the 0.0 ones to need logistic support with serious dps.  Then there's the problem of targeting 0.0 incursions, I would have made them smaller but more spread out and they would concentrate on "developed" constellations (i.e. make them 3 systems only (VG-AS-HQ) and spread them out more and have more of em running simultaneously (have 6-10 of em run simultaneously) so that it's not a twice a year experience for null sec pilots (which it currently is for those run in null sec).  Seriously: as a null sec pilot how many times have you run a null sec incursion?  I think goons and russians get like half of them - if you're a smaller entity they're a once in a blue moon thing you can mostly ignore.  I'd have the 3 system null sec incursions run for half the time so that they bounce around null sec more.

That would be more balanced.  Is it going to happen like that?  Probably not.  Sad.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Back to work.

Well, I managed to survive the holidays once again.  I also managed to run some good incursions over the holidays.  Spent just about all of it already buying materials and fittings for the ships I'm preparing for 0.0 as well as fittings for my carrier (yikes, fitting out a carrier is not cheap).  By tonight I should be able to learn the skill that will let me fit the last module in place.  By no means does this imply I am ready to fly/fight with my carrier.  It remains a suitcase carrier for now.  I have about 6 months of skill training ahead of me on the carrier skills.  And that's after I can get in the Guardian.  A rarity of me, I'm actually cross training to Amarr cruiser 5 in order to get into the armor logistics ships.

On the PI front, I've slowed down since Incursions and preparations for the move to 0.0 are talking so much of my time.  My research alts are banging away relentlessly on the holes in my BPO collection.  All is prepared for the fuel switch over later this month.  So all is well on that front.

All this progress makes me wonder what wrench is about to be thrown in my plans.  There's sure to be one.  Come on, this is EVE.

Fly safe all and a happy new year!