Member of the EVE Tweet Fleet

Monday, February 27, 2012

And I get some incursions run

With most of my research tower worries handled, it was now time to work on that "getting iskies" thing.  One of the problems with when I went to 0.0 the most recent time was that I was hull rich but iskies poor.  So time to resolve that.

Was nice to get in a decent fleet.  Painful running against Ladytomohawk in the same system though.

Friday, February 24, 2012

Well, I was still in the area see...

So I log on last night.  I figure a quick scout of the ice system (since I hadn't gone back to base yet) and I'd probably head back and do something else.  The scout however was promising.  One other Mak/Orca combo mining.  Not a lot of trafic in the system.  So either the gankers have moved on or I was just being overly cautious the night before.  Either way, I decide "Well, since I'm already here and I do want a bit of a buffer...".

So I log in the alt, have him warp the Orca over to where I've positioned myself, swap to the Mak and get mining.  The mining is just the way I like it.  Uneventful.  By the end of the evening I've got a load full of Glacial Mass (178 blocks with my current setup) and I head towards a refinery.

This time I pick the correct refinery (0% loss + 0% tax) and my ice is converted into Hydrogen Topes and assorted other ice products for the trip home.  Switch the Orca to travel mode (translate this into: swap the Extended Cargoholds for some Inertia Stabilizers).  Then it's autopilot both the Claw and the Orca (with it's integral Mak) back to base.

Note to self - since the Orca itself is running with a tractor beam and a salvager (not to mention the drones necessary to take care of the rats involved) I really don't need to haul around a specific salvage vessel.  So next time I log the main and the alt in - swap the Thrasher for a Cheetah.

Humm, Might want to refit that Thrasher as an AC Thrasher since I'm rather beyond the needs of a salvaging destroyer.

I also did the old runaround with the main and the alts picking up the PI from my planets (I've been mostly remembering to re-start the extractors on a regular basis).  Got the stuff dropped down to the manufacturing planet (21 advanced 1 high tech and a launch pad).  Picked up the previous batch of T2/3 product and started a batch of fuel blocks.

This should bring my reserves for my research tower up to 2 months reserves.  (I still have 2 weeks burning away in the tower) and I should only need about oh 20-25 more days before I finish all current research and can take the tower down.  So the remaining Hydrotopes should be reserved for carrier operations and I can start building up reserves of that.  The rest of the Oxytopes (and I have a lot) I can start converting into fuel as my PI volumes allow.  This will eventually build up my reserves for my Gallente towers.

But all of that is PI and not ice mining for the most part.  So this should free me up to run after high sec incursions.

Thursday, February 23, 2012

My spyder sense is tingling

I noticed a rather suspicious ice system yesterday night.  With the oft delayed start to Hulkageddon and general ass-hattery pilots like the goons prefer to engage in I decided rather than simply get down to ice mining in my chosen system (that is totally devoid of ice miners - that's usually a clue right there) I decide to do a bit of scouting first.

Note to self - yes a Claw is a rather convenient ship to bounce around high sec in - goes like stink and all - but for real scouting I might want to put a Cheetah in the Orca for those times where I simply want to scout out the area and lie dogo observing traffic patterns.

Humm, bunch of characters flying destroyers that are less than 20 days old and they are yellow sec status.  Along with other characters in random ships that could be used to acquire warp ins...  Humm their employment history is getting to be a bit repetitive (npc corp -> FW for a few hours ->player corp seems to be the usual pattern with variations).

*sigh*

This is EVE.  It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you.

I smells gankers.  Time to do something different for a bit.

Nice thing about being a Jack of all trades.  If I don't feel like dealing with ass hats when they have the advantage of mechanics on their sides - I simply go off and do something else.  Besides ass hats are usually part of the ADHD set.  Blueball them and they go away rather quickly.

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

CCP Devs - best devs

As usual the patch notes do not disappoint:

  • The icon animations in the overview have been restored to their former constant-blinking goodness
  • The Jukebox’s UI has been de-hosed.
  • The input caret was sometimes missing from the chat window. We found it and put it back.
  • Keeping your mouse still over the overview will now release the sort-locking. People interested in having the sorting remained locked are advised to either hold down a combat action key (lock or look at, for example) or strap a vibrating device to your mouse.
Mind you it was never really with the devs we had the issues last summer.  Head up ass executives - yes.  Devs - no.  Of course you realize that having mentioned the last option in point 4, I wonder how many of EVE's players will actually go out and try that...  I'm willing to bet large quantities of isk that there's at least more than one.

Apparently I'm in need of a break

I seem to be happy to just do some PI and skill flip and then do some other games for right now.  I'm not going to push it, I don't feel like shutting down, just taking it easy for a bit.  I'm going to go with my feelings on this one.  I've pushed in the past and had burn out issues, so older and wiser than before, I'll just take it easy.

Hunh.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

I hook up with an old corp-mate

So Mord Fiddle (of Fiddler's Edge fame) and I get chatting in the pub R.H.I channel.  We're both up in high sec atm and he says he needs some ice for his tower.  Lookie there I'm all setup to mine ice lately.  So I figure we might as well hook up and mine some ice since I've got a full blown Orca booster.  Not to mention chatting in fleet makes the ice mining go faster.

So yesterday we agree on a system to work together in and after we log in, we meet up at the agreed upon system.  We then spend the time it takes me to fill up my Orca mining ice in system.  I do belive I scared the crap out of some locals mind you with my habit of using interceptors to find a likely spot in the ice belt then warp the Orca there and switch to a Mak using the ship maintenance array. 

Some advice for newer Ice miners:  If you're going to be going back and forth from the belt (i.e. you're not jet-canning and you're not transfer mining), then it's better to fit cargo rigs and expanded cargo-holds.  The reason is that the loss of cycle speed up by not using ice harvester upgrades is compensated by only flying to the station every 3 cycles instead of every 2 cycles.  Maks naturally take forever to get to warp.

Meanwhile my alts are all chugging away at the high sec PI.  We'll need to see if it drives me mad before I can get a decent amount of robotics out of it.

The plan for the weekend?  Get back in incursions.  I want to get back up above a billion in liquid isk before I go shopping for a new 0.0 corp/alliance.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Back to base

After two nights of ice mining - not much I know but I can always get back and carve off some more.  I headed back to base.  Most of the evening was spent kick starting my PI stuff again.  At least this time my main and my primary alt didn't have to re-seed the planets.  I hadn't bothered killing my high sec PI in order to do some 0.0 PI.  The situation was not optimal in 0.0 to get involved in that (nothing to do with 0.0 per see.  Everything to do with the alliance organization and operational patterns and requirements).

Most of the evening was spent chatting with various people. 

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Tower

Good thing I started mining ice.  My research alt's tower started screaming for fuel.  So I went and ran some fuel out to it (nice I can fit a full 4 weeks of fuel in the tower now).  But this got me looking at the fuel reserves I have on hand.  Not actually bad for a gal tower but a bit low for a matari tower.

Which got me looking at my Robotics and other fuel component reserves...

Yikes PI going to be necessary.  So I spent the rest of the evening doing some more ice mining.  Then I refined the ice and it's only after I did so that I realized I was using the wrong station to do it (Doh!)... Stupid 32% stations in high sec.  The devil is in the details.

Plan for tomorrow (today): get my alts cranking the PI goo with an eye to making some fuel.  Man I wish that PI was not so carpal tunnel inducing.  We need to pick up the goods on a very regular basis in space, there's no need to make the configuration/extraction side of the mini game so click intensive.  Still one of the worst designed sub-systems of eve online.  I suspect most producers would use bots just because of the shier useless drudgery of it all.

Monday, February 13, 2012

Relaxing to the hum

So, what to do my first full session out of the alliance?  After the stress and unhappiness of the last few weeks, I figured a little bit of ice mining was called for.  Not that the tower or carrier needed a lot of isotopes at this point but it never hurts to have a bit in reserve.

So I picked a system that was out of the way and had the ice I wanted after checking with various and sundry to see whether Hulkaggeddon had kicked off.  Apparently it's waiting on Helicity and The Mittani getting their act together (oh goodie a goon sponsored Hulkaggeddon...).  That's when I found out my alt's clone with the Mining Foreman implant was just a bit far off (segue into much pod auto-piloting...).

Once myself and my alt were in the target system and were flying the right ships it was just a matter of setting myself up in a nice spot in the belt and proceed to chew away on some ice.  Yes I know, I can make more per hour running incursions and buy the ice/ice products after.  That wasn't the point - relaxing was the point.

I had barely started when I thought "hummm... weren't there T2 gang links available now???".  Sure enough 5 jumps away for 3. something mil...  Quick change of ship (Orca ship maintenance bay FTW) and a quick trip and I was able to get the alt to reduce my cycle times down to 212-3 seconds.  Soon after that a bot army appeared.  I presume they were a bot army due to the names of the ships and their behaviour.  They obviously had a POS in this non-station system and a booster at that POS in an Orca.  I didn't bother checking but it was obvious from their behaviour and the use of a stopwatch.  It's simple I was watching all 17 maks fly into the ice belt one at a time in very close succession.  Then after a few ice cycles they would squadron warp off.  Since they were not jetcan or Orca mining It was obvious they had been fit for volume and were warping back to a POS to drop things off.

Some use of EVE HQ allowed me to see that if they were using pilots of my and my alt's skill levels in ice mining/boosting and they fit their Maks for cargo space, they could get 12 blocks per Mak (3 cycles exactly) and with a T2 orca booster they should have a cycle time of 253-4 sec.  Sure enough they were warping off at just about exactly the right time to get a full 3 cycles at that length in.  I suspect that if I had gone to see the POS I'd have found a large ship assembly array (the traditional mineral storage spot of choice).

At any rate, with a full load of ice at the end of the session I trundled off to a 0% tax refinery and proceeded to refine the ice.  Isk/h not great but I needed the relaxation and the isotopes.  Figuring out how the bots were working was just icing on the cake (all 17 of em - the names where nicely normal so good camouflage and some were in the same corp and others were in npc corps, but the give away was the name of the Maks - each one was named "m xxx" where xxx corresponded to the first 3 letters of the pilot flying it.  So either a massive multiboxer - or two multiboxers working together or bots.

At any rate - expect a few days of just chilling in high sec before I make a decision about where to head.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Back in high-sec

Sorry for the lack of posts recently.  I was wrestling with not having fun in EVE lately.  As I hinted I'd do in my previous post, I've left Red Horizon this evening and I'm going to take a bit of a break in high sec for a while.  Recharge my batteries.  By break I mean a break from 0.0, not from EVE.

Short story: it just wasn't working out for me.  Mainly due to time zone issues and alliance policies.  I've made my views known to my (now ex-) CEO and that's all I'm going to say about it.  Going to take it easy for a bit and make some iskies.

Trying to find the fun in EVE.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Guardian

Well I can now fly a Guardian.  Theoretically the other Amarr Tech 2 cruisers as well but since my medium lazor skillz leave a bit to be desired (s'what I'm working on), it'll be a while before I set foot into a Zealot.  Or a Curse.  Either way though, Now I need to get a Guardian.