And two Scythes bite the bullet.

After an attempt by the corp CEO to get a hub bash going, it was decided to fold our small fleet into a larger fleet that was going after other targets.  Amusingly enough we initially started out in gank thrashers and a lone bait Hurricane appeared on grid.  With 5 Thrashers and a Heretic it's shields vanished with surprising rapidity.  At which point it's damage intake slowed to a crawl and the Guardians and Harbingers jumped in.  We obviously bail although one of the Thrashers didn't make it out (tackled by the Hurricane).  Obvious bait cane is obvious.

Then we re-ship to join the larger fleet.  Guess who we tangle with again?  yep C.L.O.N.E. again.  This time I loose the Scythe I'm in.  The fleet commander dis-engages and asks for some re-ships so that we may engage these guys and take out the Guardians.  4 Scythes and 3 Blackbirds (Amarr targeted obviously) make up the key composition.  Once again I'm in a Scythe.  This time I go down 3rd in line.  But the Scythes kept the Blackbirds alive long enough for the assault frigates to kill the enemy Guardians.  Apparently one hero Scythe and one Blackbird survived the main engagement.  For 4 Guardian kills.

Nice.

All in all I don't mind loosing ships when we're getting exchanges like that.  Figure the average Scythe is about 20mil (hull, fittings and drones) and the Blackbirds were being valued at about 13mil each.  The Guardians were apparently worth about 136 mil each.  (according to eve-kill, here).

Once the Guardians were down the AFs went to after the Hurricanes and Harbingers.  We ended up with control of the field.  And all told I think it's obvious we won the Isk war in that engagement.  Although I'm left with some supply logistics work to get some Scythe hulls (and fitting kits) to the war zone.

In an aside issue, I just noticed that there is currently an over supply of Scythes in Dodixie.  As evidenced by their under mineral value sell prices.  Note to: self buy the hulls in Dodixie until the price goes above mineral value.  I assume we're still burning thru the pre-(Scythe re-ballance) supply of hulls (when Scythes were only worth something like 2.5-3 mil each).

Another corp fleet

I started off the evening doing some plexing.  Rather slow due to the initially excited pirates and squids in the area.  Then things settled down and I was able to finish a medium and a small plex.  Only loosing a novice plex to a squid.  Hookbil vs Slasher... na, I'm going to stay cloaked thank you very much.  Which wisdom was revealed when two pirate Condors came in and got waxed.  Things were quiet after that until it was time for a corp fleet.

Only 4 of us this time.  But a good time was had none the less.

Quiet night

So, I had my first corp roam last night with my new corpies.  We did not encounter a lot of action.  The only engagement of the period during which I was online, was a poor lonely Rifter.  Who obviously didn't know what he was doing.  He probably panicked radically when being confronted with 6 Tristans and a Navitas.  I didn't need to rep anyone.  Most disappointing.

We did run into a pirate cruiser gang at one point.  I'm surprised none of them locked up any of our slow lumbering Tristans but I'll take a roam with no losses.  Heck I'm logi.  It's what we aim for when we ship up.  We're usually wildly unsuccessful at it but it's what we aim for.

The FW front was kind of quiet last night at least when we were roaming around.  We'll need to see if the next corp roam has more action.  Looking forward to it.

Moved to a new corp

Having decided that I was not going to go down the road of starting recruitment and building up my own corp for the time being.  I decided to accept the invitation from Marcel Devereux and join Aideron Robotics.  So I made sure the old corp is under control of one of the many alts and it's currently sleeping the sleep of the just.  Ready for re-activation sometime in the future, when I need it.

POS repping.

So, after getting online, I managed to navigate a Scythe from where it ended up (loaned out to a fellow FW pilot with instructions: either contract it back or cover the isk).  It was contracted back but 4 jumps from the low sec station it is usually housed in.  One suicide run later and it was back in it normal home.

Then I got in a fleet that was setup to go save a POS.  That didn't work out so well, although my Exequror did survive, two caps did not.  In the words the Clear Sky's captain "It's Hot Drop O'Clock".  Note:  When you only have 2 armor logies in fleet, we can only slow down the damage, not stop it...  After a we bit of re-grouping I ended up re-shipping to a Scythe to shield rep the POS.  Then it was a bit of shield edge work while an enemy fleet tried to bash the POS, they they almost got pounced and it was back to repping the POS.  For obvious reasons we declined to loose any other caps repping a POS so the rest of the time until I left the fleet to log off, it was rep away.

Ironies of ironies, I ended up contracting out the Scythe that I did the suicide run with to another pilot to help things go faster and he ended up buying it off me.

At least I got an osprey fit out of it.

I once again found myself without sufficient time to really hunt down a fleet and fly in one.  So Monday I simply mined on my alt figuring that if someone needed a logi pilot they'd pipe up in GalMil visitors.  Relaxing.

Yesterday I moved my main to a plexing system and did a bit of light plexing.  I know that the "strategists" want us to simply let the squids plex out everything but core systems leaving them with very little to plex in but since I can't find any centralized place letting one know which systems are considered "central", and I have yet to figure out exactly who's who of the upper structure of GalMil, I figure fuck it - they want logi that can pay for itself? then I'll plex where I want until I find out what and who.

*shrug*

When one is working 10h days, day after day, one does not have a lot of free time for stuff.

Humm, Adapting.

I find myself pensive this morning.  I got back to EVE in a fairly big way this weekend.  Between moving new hulls around and getting ships from point A to point B (by various and assorted means).  I actually got around to using my alt quite a bit.  Both for transport and for mining (passing time while waiting for a fleet to form and what not).

Between various endeavours I feel I'm finally starting to make use of my 2nd account "properly" as opposed to just skill flipping it.  The biggest change is to using it independent from my main.  I was so used to using them together since one is the cyno pilot for the other's carrier.  But you need to remember that my alt account's main character is now a 57mil SP.  He is very far from a one trick pony.

So I set up a Venture for him a few weeks ago.  Just to see what that's like.  I finally got around to using it in "anger" this weekend.  Not a bad little ship.  about 15min "cycle" time (station to station) if you're paying attention.  And it's cargo bay is just about the right size that you can arrive at a belt, target 2 rocks and come back in 10min with a full ore hold.  Very nice.  These days that works out to 675k isk per hold full except for Scordite which is just under 850k isk (mine all the scordite).  That's for the base ores.  In a venture you are mobile enough to cherry pick the +5% and +10% ores.  A real newbie will take longer but it really shouldn't take long to mine up the replacement value of your Venture.

By the end of the weekend my main had gotten in on the late sunday POS bash (followed by engagement with Sniggwaffe(Sniggwaffle?)).  And my alt between mining and other hauling work for my main managed to get himself into a Retriever.  (7 times the hold size with about a 35min "cycle") time.  It's not as hands off as the venture though.

Other stuff in the winds, but nothing concrete yet.

Still all in all feeling good about the weekend.

Blip and a o.O;

After events last Friday life took a bit of a turn towards "getting busy".  Such is life.  Friday started off good but tired.  I managed to get into an EVE Radio fleet for a bit (as a logi pilot again) and on my way back from the fleet fell victim to a smarbombing battleship...

Ouch... and bye bye implants.

After this incident I managed to catch myself heading to Jita in my main...  While I'm in faction warfare.  At this point I decide I'm too tired to keep playing and simply dock up and log off.

Then the busyness happened.

So I have barely managed to keep skill-flipping while I deal with RL dragons.

Then Fozzie's Command Ship revamp for Odyssey 1.1 post came up.  Humm, so in about a month and a bit I should be able to get ahold of skirmish implants for around 80mil instead of the current 230-ish (yes I lost a skirmish implant) and there will be faction ones with dual bonus????

Ok, I can wait (and build up my LP for that).

Also going to need to work on my Siege and Armor warfare specs...

Also the Petition for that plex came back.  Apparently you CAN be close enough to a button to run the timer down but too far for LP.  I can only assume that there is a slightly different point for both items and/or the distance calculation may involve object "bubbles" in some of the calculations and not in others.  So slightly in from the edge may be necessary (i.e. 29km is safe but if you're at 30km you may be OK, or you may be out of luck like me).

And a wild Real Life apears

So my entertainment time got gobbled up by real life yesterday.  No EVE for me.  Meanwhile the petition is still not even looked at.

Good fleet again.

This time I managed to get into a decent fleet again.  It was split between two FCs and both were fine.  Once again flying as logi.  The first part I was the only logi, after a re-ship we were 2 then 3 logi.  I felt much better about my performance this time.  No one died that wasn't busy chewing off more than they could handle (like when the FC orders the logi to burn out to 50km, then decides to jump to the other side of the gate and engages... dude takes us time in cruisers to crawl (MWD) back to a gate.  Did manage to save the 2nd frigate.

Or the scout who engages a shiny when logi is not only 1 jump back but at the start of a 100au warp (frigates warp twice as fast as us lumbering cruisers).  He new he was going to loose the ship but at least 2nd tackle got there in time.  I mean we don't like loosing ships in fleet, but if you're going to do that type of stuff there's not much we can do.

I saved enough ships in that fleet enough times that I'm happy with the way I flew.

I also got a nice shiny bug it looks like at the start of the evening.  I burned a plex down and it didn't give me any LP even though I was the only player in the plex (heck the system) at the time I ran down the timer.  Petitioned, we'll see what happens.

Slooooow night in GalMil

Last night was a slow night with little or no fleets in my time slot.  So I took the opportunity to do some plexing.  Not a lot to say about it since it's plexing.  Ya go in, while d-scanning, ya kill the rat while d-scanning, ya loot the rat while d-scanning, ya move off the wreck while d-scanning.  Ya sit within 30km of the button while d-scanning.  Ya cloak up when ever ANYONE shows up  by (95% of the time it's the local pirates).  Ya watch the local pirates warp away and un-cloak to get the timer working again while d-scanning.  Rinse and repeat until the timer is done then on to the next plex while d-scanning.  The only time you stop d-scanning is when you're the only one in the system.  Boring, but I'm not plexing to get fights, I'm plexing to get LP so I can buy logi that get used in fights.

I still say this is lazy design on CCP's part but it's the system we need to live with in FW.  I also say a system that rewards fleet participation as part of plexing would make things MUCH more interesting.  But since FW has already been the subject of much re-factoring in the last few expansions, I suspect that would be too much to ask for at this point.

Movie night

Not much to say EVE wise.  I went to a movie. I'm assuming my character chilled in station chuckling at the latest Gallente Adventure production's interpretation of capusleer life.

And more fleet time (with power outage interruption)

After finishing off some final shuffling of hulls and ships.  I got some more fleet time on Sunday.  Then partway through the fleet I got a power outage...

Everything goes dark

I managed to re-join the fleet once I was back online and we had a few engagements.  At one point I had to once again overheat the reppers to save an expensive ship.  I'm noticing that these T1 meta 4 reppers can overheat for quite a while.  Note to self - get some nanite repair paste on each hull (lord knows I make enough of the stuff).

Overall I was much happier with this outing.  Less stupid mistakes, more saving ships.

There was a Scythe lost in one of the actions, but that's par for the course when you're flying logi.  You get in fleets but you will get primaried at some point.

Re-fit time

So after loosing 3 Breachers and generally disliking the lack of performance, I have come to the conclusion that my current Breacher fit is made with absolute fail.  Not surprising since this is the first time I fly them since they've gotten the revamp.  I went with a more traditional buffer tanked kitting setup and it was just in-effective with the current meta.  So changes there.

The two Brutix Navy Issues have now sold so it's time to revamp my hull selection a bit.  Obviously I'm going to need more T1 logi hulls, so that's a priority.  3 Hulls incoming there.

As for the Breacher  I'm only keeping 2 hulls on hand for the new fit.  We'll see how it works out.

My Burst fit is fine once I switch the prop currently has mod it has.  My Navitas fit is fine, I'm just going thru them at a decent clip (to be expected) so I'll just want to build a new batch of those (4 more).

I like my Talwar fit so no changes there.

I'm not sure what to do with my Rifter fit.  It's not total fail but it's not great either.  I think I need to re-think it some more.  It would be fine for shield fleets but GalMil does not run enough of those.  So either re-fit as a passive armor tank setup (useful for armor fleets) or go to some active shield boosting setup (for 1v1).  I think I'll just expend the rest of them in combat and see which way I'm leaning once the last of the current ones is gone.

I think I'll also change my slasher into two separate fits.  One for tackle and one for plexing.  Where I'm only going to keep 2 hulls for plexing (one active and one reserve), and the rest as throw away T1 tackle.   Although we'll have to see if those get any use as I seem to be getting into fleets as a Logi pilot more often than not.

That pretty much covers my "ready hulls" situation near the warzone.  We'll see how the change-up works.

Regarding Opsec on this information.  There have been enough loss mails on my part that most of this can be figured out by the squids if they really really wanted to examine my loss history on eve-kill.  Most of the above should be blindingly obvious to any squid analyst and I'm mostly blogging this so that people get a feel for the way I prepared for and how I keep myself supplied in hulls in Faction Warfare.

As always there is some stuff I won't blog about if I feel I need to keep it away from general knowledge (or it hasn't showed up on a loss mail yet).

The other logistics

I decided to fit up the Scythe hull that I had gotten the previous evening.  Between less time available due to other commitments and quite a bit of distance to cover, Sorting that out took the entire session.  But that's fine.  Sometimes you need to get stuff done.

So no fleet for me last night.  But I will be slightly more ready for a fleet next time.  I also have a Probe of rapid warping to help me move VERY low volume cargo around the war zone.  Basically 3 low friction nozzle joints and 3 Inertia stabs and you've got something that can haul 400 m³ but get to warp faster than most interceptors.  The fittings and ammo of most cruisers will fit inside that.

Think of it as the Minmatar version of a Jeep.

AF fleet this time.

Another fleet,  Another logi.  I started off the evening with a bit of light plexing in order to get some more LP which I'll turn into isk at some later date.  Then I started hunting for a fleet.  Lucky for me some people recognized me from my blog pack days and I was able to get into a shield AF fleet.  Once again as logi.  Since I still have a rather extensive reserve of Bursts (that I build and got the fittings for at the start of all this) I was kind of glad I'd finally be able to use them.  Except of course since I've got full logi skills the fc wanted me in a logi cruiser for this evolution.  So I traded in one of my Bursts for a Scythe and the Burst went to a less skilled pilot.  Fair enough.

I'm not going to describe each engagement of that fleet as we had quite a few (4 or 5) and there were pauses for re-shipping (never for the whole fleet, just for those who waxed after a particular engagement).  I ended up in an other of my Bursts by the end of the evening.  There was one fight where I was rather glad I could overheat the reppers as it allowed me to save an other Scythe (Fleet Issue this time).  In that fight due to warp in issues, the other logies landed dead on the other fleet and I landed at 100km, so I got in rep range late (other two logies went down) but I managed to keep the SFI alive by overheating the reps.

Overall I'd say a 75% performance.  There were times we (the logies) were on the ball and times we weren't.  Getting in the fleets is allowing me to get better though.  So I'm happy with that.  Now if those sell orders would just sell I'd be even happier.

At the end of the evening I got gifted a Scythe hull and an Exequror (fit).  I'll be keeping those out where I was traded them for use in future fleets.  Getting the modules to the Scythe now that I know what sort of fit the FC wants should be a snap.

Excellent evening with GalMil all told.

More fleet action

Once again with a new FC.  Going to be nice once I get some consistency with regards to FW FCs.  Then I'll actually be able to judge who I'll listen to when expensive ship requests come up.

When the request went out for more bodies to an existing fleet.  I jumped in one of my Talwars and burned to the fight.  Got in on 2 kills and then the FC called the bug out.  I wasn't quick enough and -1 Talwar.

Still, trading a Drake for a Talwar, not a bad exchange per see.  Then the FC started requesting Logi as I was flying back to reship.  I indicated that I would be coming back in a logi frigate as I had no fit and ready logi cruisers.  The FC made some assumptions about someone having a spare logi cruiser available but no trade window showed up and the call to roll was made before anyone traded me one, so I rolled in a logi frigate.

And after some warping around I manage to cover myself in lack of glory.  At this point the logi chief had assigned me to ride heard on the blackbirds as I could lock them up early and get reps on them faster should a fight break out just after we get out of warp.  At this point a lone harbinger screws up and uncloaks into the fleet (sucks to be you dude).  At this point I have the Blackbirds covered and try to sic my lone ECM drone on the squid Harbinger...

And I miss target and send it against one of the blackbirds...

Wince...

Gate guns hurt when you're in a frigate...

-1 Navitas and I burn back to re-ship to another one.  Brilliant -.-;

I'm still 2 jumps out from re-joining the fleet when the fight the FC has been trying to engineer breaks out.  Just as I get on field our Blackbirds are under heavy pressure.  I manage to get 2 of the 3 locked up before they die and get reps on them.  Unfortunately the enemy's Alpha and DPS is just too high for the logi squadron and we eventually lose all 3 Blackbirds.  At this point outnumbered in cruises against BCs and having lost a good chunk of the DPS ships, the FC calls the fight and miracles of miracles I managed to get out in once piece.

One thing I'm going to work on if one of those BC's I have on sale sells, is fitting up some T1 logi ships for use in these larger FW fleets.  Also an armor cruiser or two would probably not be out of place.  I'm still waiting on the sales though so not until that.

Yay, A fleet.

So, just after I started killing the rat in my first plex of the evening, GalMil channel lights up with a call for pilots to get in fleet.  So I stop killing the rat and burn back to my base of operations and switch to a combat frigate.

Jump in fleet and get on comms and burn towards the fleet.  At which point I learn they have a carrier tackled.  Unlike the time I got in fleet and got the Guardian aced, this time Things work much better.  Turns out the carrier was not an FW carrier, but was entirely defended by squids.  When I got there, the carrier was in triage and trying to keep some squid BS and cruisers alive.  With some very good target calling on the part of the FC we were able to slowly whittle the enemy force down.  It took a while until a neuting BS could get on the field and really break the defenses of the triage carrier.  Once that happened it was all over rather quickly.

All in all a good outing and I managed to get on some kill mails finally.

Converting that LP

Yep, when you're with GalMil it takes longer to build up LP and longer to get iskies for it.  I've just figured the reason for the Squid farmers being so much more active than the gal farmers.  Just look at the difference between the price of a Brutix Navy Issue and the equivalent Drake.  200-ish mil vs 300-ish mil...  The squids are making over twice the LP per plex AND they are getting Much more isk per LP due to the popularity of the faction Drake.

The whines we hear in GalMil channel about how we can't seem to capture anything are pretty much due to the combat pilots whining about the farmers not farming.  The thing they seem to forget is that most farmers are professional farmers (in a lot of cases, for 0.0 entities) and they go where the isk is.  Even if we had better FW zone control, they'd still be flying for the squids since they can get 2-3k isk per LP instead of 1-2k isk per LP.  Not to mention, since they consider themselves "combat pilots" and won't lower themselves to plex for the most part, you end up with the current situation in the GalMil.

Anyways I spent most of the weekend (the few hours I was actually on EVE) converting that LP to iskies and re-building my wallet after the Guardian loss.  Depending on the sales of hulls over the next few days I should finally be recovered and can start being more pro-active about getting in fleets again.  This time no Guardians with any FCs I haven't flown with before.

Nothing to see, move along

Didn't have a lot of time last night.  So just a bit of light plexing to kill some time.

More rust shows

I ended up in a situation where I decided to engage pirates instead of fleeing or cloaking up.  Mainly because I got into situations where I was not in a plexing boat with a cloak.

Oh yea I'm still making mistakes.

a) when in a frigate with hail, don't forget to switch out of hail and into something a bit more effective against frigates after you've kill the NPC BC's...  loss number one attributed to this (Rifter).  Also to the fact that I engaged with a passive extended tank instead of an active tank (which rule 1v1s).

b) when engaging with a kiting Talwar vs a condor - running away will extend the engagement time and penalize his rockets by allowing you to hit him on his approach to you longer.  Don't maintain your orbit around the warp in point like a putz.... loss number two attributed to this (Talwar).

Note that both these losses could have been avoided by not engaging the pirate in question but both losses where eminently affordable and can be considered the price of re-learning how to fight.  So I'm annoyed at my mistakes, not at the losses.

After some relatively un-exciting plexing (other than those two items) I got a request for help from ...

ya know what? details are un-important compared to Opsec on items like this.  Let's just say that stuff was done and I got a Plex (the in game item, not the abbreviation for complex) in payment of a successful job 1.5h later.

Once I get either the LP converted to isk or the Plex sold, this will finish off the building back up of funds after the loss of the Guardian.

All in all, not a bad night in EVE.

Lack of action.

So I was doing some plexing last night (still recovering from the loss of the Guardian).  When I noticed what seemed to be someone forming up a frigate fleet for a roam.  Once the last plex in the system I was in capped I decided to join fleet and see what was what.

Seemed like a relatively newbie FC (you can tell when they say jump when they mean warp etc...).  After laying out the "built and ready to rock" choices for the FC he elected to have me in a Navitas (armor logi frigate).  We almost made it back to the carrier kill that went on last night but not quite.  Otherwise it was lack of tackle and nervous targets getting away from us all evening long.  The squids where elsewhere apparently.

So not a lot of action but at least it was a fleet.

Not a bad evening after burning my brain with Regex's all day.

Still in FW

Wellp, still not having lots of luck finding GalMil fleets.  The one major fleet I did find ended up -1 Guardian.  I have since been building back up.  Lots of plexes.  And yep, my Slasher now has a cloak.   Pirates are otherwise just too annoying.

I have to give the current plex design a D-.  Maybe a E+.  Hard to say.  They need to have LP per pilot bell-curve like it does in incursions to encourage small gangs to plex together instead of splitting the FW population between plexers and combat pilots.  So that right there is VERY BAD DESIGN.  But very CCP so *shrug*.  What I've come to expect from their design team.

Back to plexing and dodging pirates to make back what I lost with the Guardian.

Also: Post #700.  I do believe I sound like a proper bitter vet now :P.

Lots o pirates

Well,

You can't say I don't engage.  Screwed up my exit last night and got podded for it, but at least I do get into fights.  Still re-learning and all that fun, but it's starting to feel better.  Still can't do it when I'm tired but at least the pirates are giving us lots o practice at dodging and when the signs are right, engaging.

Still learning the pros and cons of the environment and the ships though, so all is good.

A tale of two claw (fights)

Humm, better bring things up to date first.

I'm back in EVE.  I intended to get back in FW (Faction Warfare) much sooner after Fanfest.  Stuff(tm) happened.  First of all I found out that Cathrianne wanted to divest himself of the AMC alliance.  After taking a 70bil asset hit mostly due to the way he was living in WH I offered to re-take the alliance for half a bil.  It'll help him get on his feet again.

So, then came all the shenanigans of dealing with the EVIL Corp UI and getting the alliance and corporations shuffled like I wanted them - new holding corp in charge of the alliance with alt in charge of that corp.  Main corp out of the alliance so I can join faction warfare.  Shuffle shuffle shuffle.

The end result is that I once again have control of AMC as an entity and it's parked and sleeping nicely with my alt holding corp.  My corp (Chaosstorm Corporation) is now in Gallente FW like I wanted.  This permitted the two friends who wanted in on some FW action to join the corp at the end of the weekend.  Yay!

So, early in the weekend, I decided to take my Claw out and test the waters.  No joining fleets yet until I can tell the trolls from the more serious FCs.  Ended up warping to a site and running into a Condor.  So I think: Claw vs Condor, should be do-able.  The fight ends up being inconclusive as I make a metric tonne of mistakes.  Gah! the rust, the rust!  Long story short - I'm failing horribly so I bail on the fight.  Lucky it was a kiting condor so it wasn't able to impede my exit.  Post fight analysis revealed that only once in the entire fight did my guns land a hit.  Note to self: Claws orbit too fast at scram range under full mwd to land hits.  I would have been better off charging straight in.  DOH! #1.

Then last night I was able to get together with Othon (one of the two aforementioned buddies) who was piloting an Executioner (think T1 interceptor) while I was in my Claw (T2 interceptor).  I manage to cap one site in a system we get into and we get to a second site.  Pirate Hawk on the warp in gate.  We both go in.  And I decide "Well it's 2v1 if he comes in, might as well go for it".  Turns out once again rather badly.  This time at the cost of the Claw.  This time it was probably more of an ammo choice issue.  I was definitely damaging the Hawk, just not enough, even with the help of the Executioner.

All in all, a good start to FW.  Not so much in the loss sense, more in the "Holy frig, I need to get back in the game" sense of things.  On the good news side of things, I was never really happy with that Claw fit and never really happy with the way to fly it.  So all in all I'm not as disappointed in it's loss as I otherwise would have been.  Lessons re-learned and on to ships better suited to how we're going to use them.

Alive!

And I crawl home after the epicness that was Fanfest 2013.  The announcements were I must admit, nice but nothing to write reams over.  Plus I missed the Friday keynotes (feeling under the weather at that point).  Didn't miss the pub-crawl after though.  And did get to the Saturday keynote.

I must admit that the big thing for this Fanfest was meeting people I had known for over 6 years in the flesh for once.

Shout out to Cerui and Arancia.  Nice to be able to put a face to the voice.

Congratz to Ripgard again.

And once again thanks to the Montreal crew that made it:  Louis, Jean-Louis and Jean-François.

Oh and of course a shoutout to Pub Crawl team 12 and the Ops guys.

(p.s. what is Anders's CCP name - anyone know?  I asked but I was drunk so memory spotty at this point)

First day

And I have discovered empirical that Iceland bars close at 1:00am on Mondays.  Read into that what you will.

In Iceland

Welp, I'm in Iceland for fanfest.  Blog entries will be short since I'm doing this from my iPhone over Wi-Fi.

Good week so far.

Well, I've finally had a good solid week in EVE.  I managed to get some cyclones built right before the patch.  They haven't sold yet, but all the cyclones ahead of them have.  So it looks like the weekend should be good for sales.  So, what have I been doing?

1) PI.  I've switched my PI stuff over to NRP (Nanite Repair Paste).  Between the making of most of the P1's myself (most of 9 out of 11) I don't have to backfill with too much stuff purchased at a trade hub.  My main production planet has been switched over to be able to work on a 2-3 day cycle (there may be one final adjustment to make but hey).  So it looks like my sustainable production rate will be 750 NRP per day once I make some final adjustments.  With about 25% of materials sourced from outside sources.  The profits on this are currently very good.  I'm not even bothering to put up sell orders, just dumping on buy orders.  The spread between my costs and the buy orders is sufficient that I might as well dump.  Once the spread tightens up we'll see about putting up some sales orders.

2) Converting Concord LP.  I wanted an upgraded Capital Shield Transporter for my suitcase carrier.  So I got the 5 run bpc and made 4 to dump on Jita (at a profit above 1k isk per lp) while the fifth is simply upgrading my existing Capital Shield Transporter.

3) Republic Fleet Ammo.  There were some interesting surprises here.  I had been told by someone who didn't run the numbers that some of the Caldari Navy light missiles were great because of the spread between them and the T1 missiles were better than RF ammo.  Hah!  I ran some test runs.  Turns out the RF ammo came in with sometimes more than 2k isk per LP and handily beat out CN light missiles.  This is mainly due to the higher lp/missile cost of CN Missiles.  Always run the numbers.  After the test batches I settled on the 3 most profitable types of RF M projectile ammo and went to town.

4) Getting my bunker topped up.  Then burning most of it making aforementioned cyclones.  On patch day I put up the resulting production on the local market at a reasonable profit point based on the new mineral costs and have slowly been watching all the under-priced (i.e. cost less than the minerals to make a new one) Cyclones melt off the market (the Really under-priced ones got snapped up quite quickly, but I didn't want my liquid going any lower at the time, so I didn't get in on that action.  And I knew it would take a bit of time to clear out the lower priced orders, but as we approach the weekend, there was only one left.  So hopefully I'll see some sales.

5) Mining.  Nice thing about mining - it does not affect your standings with the various factions.  I'm getting to the point where I have to watch out for that due to my low standings with the Amarr and Caldari states.  So my main is now dis-inclined to run too many more missions.  So I'm slowly building up my mineral reserves again.  Looks like a good solid 28-30mil each time I fill my orca which takes about 2h.  Not great but not too shabby either and its a very low "opportunity costs" endeavor.

I'm going to see if I can hook up with some Incursion running corps over the weekend.  Hopefully if I can get with people that run incursions with some regularity I will be able to reduce the massive opportunity costs of incursion running these days.

We'll see.

And I get my EVE on over the weekend

Well my carebear part of EVE anyways.  The problems with returning to EVE are manifold I'm finding out.  Part of the problem is I have a lot of friends who used to play EVE that I like playing MMOs with but they are not going to ever get back into EVE again.  So, when we find something that we like to play together it draws me away from EVE pretty effectively.

Unfortunately it's not a problem that is likely to go away as there is a marked lack of work on the carebear side of EVE.  Ah the dichotomy between what EVE is and what it has the potential to be.  10 years on and it's still about EVE's potential, not about what EVE is.

Be that as it may.  Due to other factors, I got back into EVE on the carebear side of things pretty hardcore.  I've figured out why.  With the death of incursions and with my faction standings at the point where further missioning will effectively lock me out of various parts of high sec, my non-pure carebear ways of making isk in high sec are severely limited.  And being effectively solo atm there are a lot of group activities that are also locked out.  So I said 'screw it' and went back to my carebear roots and decided to a) convert some of those concord LP I made back when I was running incursions and b) get back to mining.  FINALLY some forward progress with the isk reserve.  I also decided to do something different with PI and get into making some Nanite Repair Paste.  Apparently I'm currently the only supplier of NRP in {censored}.  With the upcoming patch on Tuesday we'll see how that pans out.

Oh, and in case I didn't mention it, I'll be going to Fanfest this year.

Konkordorken

Yep got killed by Concord thanks to an idiot FC. 

"You do realize I'll get concorded if I jump to high sec right?",

"No you won't, JUMP!",

"Ok.... Yep can't warp and here comes Concord...",

"What!?!"

FCs... Guaranteed to get your ship killed in the most ignominious way possible.

...

...

Good thing I made the assumption that I'd loose the ship flying with these guys, but still...  It would have been nice to do something other than point a pod with the ship...

Not a lot of news over the last few days.  I am skilling up to level 5 on a bunch of navigation skills.  I'm kinda late to the part to get Fuel Conservation V, but better late than never I guess.  I did manage to get all the relevant BPOs for supporting orbital strike ammo (Tactical).  I wonder when they'll give us the "strategic" ammo?

Pardon the dust.... 514

I swear they named the game for my area code...  And it's crumbling infrastructure...  But I digress.  So over the weekend I fired up my PS3 and went and checked my Dusty character.  I think there's one more character wipe coming before the 22nd (when the open beta goes live), but it was a chance to see just how linked the Dust side of things is to the EVE universe.  I can't talk much about the Dust side of things (pesky NDAs), but yea on the EVE side things need a bit more polish...  So I had my alt apply to the corp I'm CEO of.  The application went smoothly.  Accepting - piece of cake.  Roles?  Why the hell does my Dusty appear 3 times ?!?

So, yea, good things they say it's still in beta.  It needs a bit more elbow grease.  From the EVE side.  Which we don't thankfully have NDAs about.  Got me some tactical ammo BPOs, going to go cook some up soonish.  With Incursions, unfortunately looking like a waste of time waiting around for nothing much happening, I'm going to have to go back to more carebearish ways for a bit to build up the ISK reserves.  Once my Isk reserves are back in shape I'll probably head into Faction Warfare.  We'll see how it goes.  I do need to get into Dust more so I suck less on the battlefield.

High sec incursions go poof

LOL.

So I log in.  Hit my journal to see what incursions I could go hang around.  Null sec, Null sec, Null sec.....

Humm...

Oh well, I ended up heading back to base and helping an old friend with some recycling.  Scrapmetal processing V for the win.  Didn't have much other time to mess around with things so that was it for the night.

Humm... Looks like Incursions will be a bit hit and miss.  Either I start looking hard for an incursion corporation or I look for some other way to make isk.  When you get in a fleet it isk/h is good.  But the problem is the amount of non-productive downtime you spend waiting for a fleet.  And since most incursions seem to take place in Amarr/Khanid space, it means that I can't necessarily mission nearby while waiting for the next fleet to form up.

Either that or I've just been unlucky.

Going to need to get proactive on the chat channels I think.

Getting in the pod again.

I think I've got the other games out of my blood for a bit.  We'll find out.  Yea, skill flipping for the last few weeks while playing other games has been the norm this time round.  I just haven't felt like playing EVE at all.  Part of it was some conversations with other friends who used to play EVE and won't be back.  Kinda makes things a bit of a downer.  Been playing Planetside 2 (PC based and yea Dust 514 is going to have it's work cut out for it), Minecraft for the carebear stuff,  World of Tanks for my MOBA PvP fix.  We'll see.  I've been playing EVE online since the start of 2007 and it's now 2013...  That's 6 years in February.  Still kind of at a loss for direction. 

But I've decided to get my (in game) finances under control over the next little bit and see what happens over the next while.  So last night, in celebration of the new year, I flipped the skill (so by tonight I will have finished off the ladar sensor strengthening skill to 5) and started in on the polishing up of some Navigation skills.  Yes I know a matari player without maxed nav skills.  I'll get there.  And then looked at my stable of ships.  Humm there's a Scimitar gathering dust.

Takes me a while to remember how this goes.  Then I remember "oh yea, Journal to find the closest Incursion".  Not bad 16 jumps away.  I head out to the incursion and just put my hat in the ring.  The first fleet that was looking for a Logi pilot was a bit of a bust.  Disorganized, only the two (two?!? where's the third logi???) Logi pilots in the fleet get on voice coms.  After some discussion with the other logi pilot about the state of the fleet and the lack of anything remotely resembling organization, we both decide to bail.

After that things went much better.  I get picked up by the fleet that was a few seconds late getting their invite to me the first time.  Things go much better right off the bat.  I've got two Basi pilots to work with and we're directed to a TS server for voice coms.  Much more comfortable.

Not much to say.  I managed to get 8 runs in, so it was a productive first session back in the game.  We'll have to see how things go tonight.  I did managed to knock some rust off.