Gah!

Note to self: When you jump clone, remember to REACTIVATE THE SKILL QUEUE!!!

3 Days later I finally notice...

Darn jump clones...

Woopsed into the wrong jump clone last night.  I just picked up the Skirmish Mindlink.  So I decided to take one of my combat clones (i.e. one without implants) and make it my command clone.  9 days left until I get warfare link speciallist 5 then it's 28 days until command ships 5 and finally it'll be going after wing command 5.

Yes I know that this isn't immediately useful - just put it down as long term character development.  A fully bonus-ed Claymore/Loki pilot is never a bad thing to have available - especially if you're going to do a roam.

So, after some afk hauling ass back to base, I now have that clone setup.

Missioning to get my legs back under me.

The problem with EVE online (well one of them anyways) is that if you're away long enough you start to rust.  ATM I'm running missions in order to get the basics up and running again.  One of the advantages of doing this is that it permits me to try out the mining ships on mission roids.

In other good news I finally have 0% tax for refines on my main base.  If you think about it it's not surprising it's taken THIS LONG to get there.  Various breaks, trips to 0.0, wormhole space, incursions, faction warfare etc..  All these various things mean I haven't been able to do a lot of missions.  I also don't really have a proper L4 mission boat.  Interesting factoid:  I've gotten some of the standard L4 missions lately.  The Assault, Worlds Collide, things of the sort got spooled up.  Now most of these have decent roid belts.  So I got to fit out my Mak as a normal miner for the first time.  And you know what?  I still went into those mission belts with my alt in the Orca...  One VERY nice change about taking the Mak was with the larger roids.  I could get up and stretch without worrying that my hold would over-fill and I'd be back to lasers not working. 

Yes I realize that's more dangerous with gankers going around killing things in belts.  But then again it's a law of averages thing.  Going for mission roids is safer than belt mining.  Why you ask?  Simple.  Most gankers are lazy.  If they weren't they'd be in 0.0 doing something harder like helping their alliance take/defend space.  So they go for the easy kills (there are enough of those to keep em occupied).  Namely Hulks in normal asteroid belts...  Makinaws in a mission deadspace?  95% of the time it's not worth the effort:

1) he's behind an acceleration gate
2) he's probably 50+km from the gate - quite a few mission roids are.
3) he's probably paying more attention than your typical belt miner
4) ships that can travel 100km from a gate to a Mak before said Mak can warp off usually don't have the DPS to suicide gank the new Mak.  Especially if it's been tanked.
5) ANYONE randomly appearing in someone's deadspace intends something "nefarious".  So there's no hesitation - you see someone in your mission, you react.
6) even with a cloaky trying to get a warp in if it's over 150km away from the arrival point there are issues.  Most deadspaces don't permit warping....
7) Given the above, why waste the time scanning down mission miners and probably have them easily get away when you can simply go for the lazy Hulk miners in belts?

Sure some gankers are dedicated to their craft.  And will hunt someone down.  But they are much more rare than the typical suicide ganker.  Remember it's not paranoia if they really are out to get you...

Yep re-building the proper paranoid attitude is part of knocking off the rust.

Inferno 1.2 - bravo on the T1 frigate changes

No, not dead

Skill flipping and otherwise just lurking but still following EVE.

The Inferno 1.2 patch however is drawing me back in.  The inferno 1.0 and 1.1 patches didn't do it.  This one on the other hand...

And although you would think it would be the mining barge changes.  You'd be wrong.  The T1 frigate changes are what's REALLY got me interested.  The work CCP Ytterbium, CCP Tallest and CCP Fozzie have been doing is rather nice.

I just spent part of the evening playing around with pure T1 fits for the Slasher.  Arty armed diruptor/mwd.  Arty armed disruptor/dual prop  Arty armed AB.  They all works, they're all maneuverable they all FEELs like they are proper interceptors and they don't feel as underpowered as the previous incarnations.

Heck one of the mixes was - using pure T1 modules so even with rigs it wasn't more than 1.5mil - I had clocking at 4550 m/s and still ridiculously agile.  And it still had 2.5 pg and 41.8 cpu left over to play with the mix and match T2 and Meta.  Oh and perma mwd with perma tackle...  Obviously still vulnerable to neuts that are able to reach out to 18+km but otherwise... NICE

Yum.  I'll be rather curious to see what RvsB and the FW people think of them.  I have a feeling we'll be seeing some rather interesting fits.  Not to mention that you'll be wanting to fly these using exactly the same tactics as T2 interceptors.  This should lead to newbies graduating with better skills into the T2 interceptor roles since there won't be as great a difference in flying style if they cut their teeth with these ones.

Colour me impressed....

The barge whining on all sides I only find amusing.  Like what they've done but those changes, although excellent, do not grab me as much as the changes to the T1 inties.  I think we're going to see some surprised pilots out there who based on historical fits will rather underestimate the capabilities of the re-balanced frigates.  At any rate this should liven up the T1 frigate fleets rather nicely.

I can't wait for the next set of ships to be balanced by this team.  You do good work gentlemen.