Mordant Core

I must be doing something wrong...

2009-03-11T11:11:00.004Z

I fit out a Jaguar after posting that post last night and headed back into the wormhole I found (I had a probe launcher with me this time, just incase, I spent about 45million isk on that ship).

That shot is the Alarm Clock getting pounded by a Sleeper battleship.

With that one little ship, I was able to take on 4 cruisers. I killed 2 of them and that spawned 3 more frigates and a battleship. So all at once, all on my own this time, I was taking on 6 sleeper ships, plus 2 turrets. Sure I had to warp out a couple of times just to be safe, but I had it under control.

Everywhere I look, I'm seeing people telling of how they got totally owned by Sleepers here and there. Sure, I started off in hi-sec so my spawn is an easier one, but still...

I got a lot of cool loot, and even went back for a salvage ship to hoover up all the leavings - I've started training for reverse engineering too so I can see if I can get some Phat Lewt from all the goodies I found.

I think a lot of people have fallen into the old newbie trap of "Must fly biggest badest thing possible into wormhole", my trusty Jaguar does the job brilliantly, I just need to tweak it a little more - shield booster goes on in place of the second multispec hardener (which I can't really perma-run anyway) to minimise the downtime on warpouts!

Small is beautiful.

Hey you! Wake Up!

2009-03-10T19:24:00.005Z

I was a bit cheeky today and downloaded the patch whilst I was at work, installed it all and was ready to go when I got home this afternoon.

All my probes had been converted to Core Probes, so I loaded up my CovOps and set out to see what I could find!

I was in empire space, because that's where I was when I logged off and I figured I'd have the most chance of killing stuff if I started in easier systems!

After about an hour, I found my first site - it was a salvage profession site and I didn't get a whole lot from it about half an hour later though, I got an 'unknown' hit and got very excited.

It took me about 20 minutes to scan down the wormhole - at one point I somehow had 4 probes at 0.25AU, all getting a 100% hit each, they must have all just had an edge on without actually overlapping! crazy!

Finally though, I got the magical green dot and I warped on in

I really like some of the new effects they've added and wormholes have to be the most impressive

Well I didn't come all this way to look at pretty swirls, so of course I hopped on through

I didn't bother dropping any probes and just used the onboard scanner - found 2 'plexes and warped in cloaked

2 frigates, 3 cruisers and 2 turrets. Not gonna get very far launching probes at them, let's go grab a shooty ship and see how we do!

I didn't really plan ahead properly so I only had a crap shield fit Rifter from some work I was doing a few months ago. Off we went - I was joined by a corpmate in an Arbitrator.

I warped in first to test the water and took out one of the frigates on my own - didn't take too much damage at first but they started to chip away at my shields eventually so I warped out then warped back in with my bud. With one frigate down, the second fell pretty quickly and then most of what was left was struggling to hit me. I'm pretty confident that with a few tweaks, the Mordant Core will have a whale of a time in these low-level 'plexes.

After we killed everything but the turrets (they were really hard to kill!), a second wave of 5 cruisers warped in and my corpie's Arby was getting a bit beat up.

We warped out with a handful of interesting bits and pieces, worth about 500k each to NPC buy orders. I didn't get a chance to salvage so I'm not sure what kind of stuff these little rats have to offer.

All in all, a very successful first foray into Sleeper territory and I really enjoyed all the probing to find it. I am liking Apocrypha so far!

busy busy bee

2009-03-06T10:06:00.002Z

I've been very busy, both in RL and in EVE. I've hardly played this week at all, but last week things moved on quite a bit:

I now have an Orca at my disposal - my industry alt can fly one and I bought a shiny new one Euclidean. I haven't actually used it for much yet, but flying it around with a load of ships loaded onboard is way cool.

I'm working on building my cash reserves back up and with my main combat dude I've decided to spend some time 'Ving up', stuff like Surgical Strike and Navigation always nice to get the last few percent of whatever it is.

I put a POS up for my corp a couple of weeks back, didn't get a chance to post about it, but it looks like we might have to take it back down at some point soon, so I'll probably write about that - all depends on whether or not our CEO logs in any time soon...

Tuesday soon!

It's space Jim, but not as we know it

2009-03-06T10:00:00.003Z

I just had to repost something I thought was pretty awesome in the latest Dev blog:

So when you enter a wormhole system and see something ‘unusual' off your port bow, proceed with the knowledge that some of the things you know about how your ship performs may no longer be true. Your ship drives may push you faster, your weapons may hit harder, you may find yourself with no shields or less effective armor... and just when you think you've got it all figured out, things may change again!

I'm thinking I'll just find myself a w-space system and live there, I wonder if it's possible to be completely self-sufficient in there, ice? asteroids? I hope so.

Milestone

2009-02-20T00:42:00.002Z

I haven't posted very much lately, mostly because I've had a week off work and I've been playing EVE pretty much non-stop.

The picture should help to illustrate.

Number OCD

2009-02-11T10:49:00.003Z

I can be a little OCD about numbers - volume on the TV has to be an even number or multiple of 5. 27 is a no-no, 26 is better, 25 (assuming I can still hear it) is best.

so the patch notes cause me some trouble:

2499 new solar systems are now accessible through the emergence of mysterious wormholes throughout New Eden. These celestial gateways open doors to lucrative new opportunities for the bold and wary traveler.

2499?! Why 2499? What happened to the 2500th system, is there a secret Dev party there that we're just not invited to? I NEDE TO KNOEW!1!one1"!

Testing, testing...

2009-02-11T09:34:00.005Z

My play hours over the last week and a half have been a bit unusual, and as such, I haven't quite found the time to post anything.

Monday and Tuesday last week brought snow to my part of the world and with schools being the first to close (I'm a teacher), I was given the gift of 2 solid days of EVE Online. I spent most of that time mining in null-sec whilst chaining a spawn of juicy battleships.

In related news, I broke the 700million isk mark at the week end!

I also decided to have a look around the test server. It was all really quite straightforward, copied the EVE installation directory into a new directory, applied the test patch and away I go. Then came the waiting.

It seems my character was last mirrored about 2 months ago, so I was short about 1million skillpoints and a few corporation roles. I wanted to play around with putting up a POS you see.

So first I had to renounce the roles I did have with the corp, then wait 24 hours.
Then I discovered that you can only launch a POS on behalf of a corporation, not yourself, so I had to fly into empire space, set up a 1-man corporation and then fly back to where I'd already bought all the modules!

Eventually though, I spent an interesting few hours anchoring and onlining various structures. Bizarrely I actually enjoyed doing it, made me think seriously about setting up my own POS somewhere - until I realised that the fact that test-server is not only mostly empty, and the no non-consensual PvP rules in effect made it all seem much easier than it would likely be in the 'real' world.

I started downloading the Apocrypha patch last night but I have a fairly narrow pipe so it's going to take a while before I get to play around with all the new exploration stuff (assuming they re-mirrored my character and I actually have any of the skills! in which case my POS will no longer belong to me! It's very complicated). Kirith Kodachi has written an introductory post about the new probing stuff though.

Also, I wanted to mention the recent dev blog post about the POS exploit. Genuinely interesting stuff and I just loved this part:

The opening action on our part regarding the exploit included the total destruction of all the POS complexes involved. This entailed flying to each one and basically nuking everything in sight - a fireworks show of epic proportions but with no witnesses except the GMs in the demolition team.

I mean, surely they could have just opened up a link to the database and just deleted all the various entries associated with the exploited POSs, but instead a strike force of GMs was assembled and sent off to destroy them the old fashioned way. How cool is that?!

GMs must have a fairly rough time of it, so this must have been a fantastic little party to be part of!

This week in skill training

2009-02-06T09:00:00.001Z

Drones V
Astrometrics III, IV (ongoing)
Target Painting I
Armor Rigging I
Energy Pulse Weapons I

Skill Queue - Yay!

2009-02-04T17:40:00.003Z

So, I've been playing EVE on and off for about 5 years; setting alarms, swapping skills here and there when all of a sudden: The Devs announce a skill queue system!

This is very exciting news.

I haven't bothered to read the forum replies, MMPORG forums make me sad, but I'm guessing their chosen method of implementation is going to come under some fire but I think it's really thoughtful. Allow me to discuss.

The Devs were talking about skill queues a while back in one of the CSM meetings and they said that they didn't like the idea of people setting huge queues and not logging on for a year. I thought this was a bit odd - surely they only care that people are coughing up the monthly fees. Reading the post above however leads me to believe that the EVE Online Development team really do love and care about the game - they actually want people to play the game.

That gives us the 24-hour skill queue. Put up to 50 skills in the queue and as long as they all begin training within 24 hours, all is good. That means all those stupid mid-range skills you can usually only get to at the weekend can be queued up and run through in a day. I also noticed in the UI mockup that you can queue the next level of a skill, which is probably the thing that I am most excited about.

Now, obviously there are going to be some limitations in this system - what if I go on holiday? But the important thing to remember is that it is the start of a system that once in place can be tweaked later - if CCP see that suddenly people are playing so much more because now they can actually use all that cool stuff they bought, maybe they'll make it even better later on.

Marvellous!

Serious Playtime

2009-02-04T11:07:00.002Z

We were lucky enough here in the UK to get a whole bucketload of snow which closed schools and stopped trains and all that stuff. Being a teacher, this is most definitely Good News. I got 2 extra days of solid EVE. So what did I do?

When it's cold and snowy and you were up at 6am posting closure notices on the school website, it needs to be a pretty low-impact task. I chose a mining & rat combo.

I found myself a nice belt in my 0.0 home system with juicy 'roids and a dual-battleship spawn, parked the Mordant Entropy and made with the pew pew whilst Orobas parked the Endless Light (hulk) and munched through asteroid after asteroid.

I did this for about 20 hours in total, bounties racked up, minerals piled up and I now have a new Raven cooking in the local outpost.

I was also able to start fitting out the as-yet-unnamed Typhoon that Malphas will be training up over the coming month or so. He can already fly it, but he can't really fly it.

All in a very productive pair of snow days! Wallet is well into Orca affordability territory now but I really can't decide if I'll get enough use out of one...

This week in skill training

2009-02-01T09:00:00.003Z

Hull Upgrades IV
Minmatar Industrial IV
Fuel Conservation II
Signal Acquisition I & II
Idetic Memory III
Astrometrics II

More Wormholey News

2009-01-28T09:29:00.004Z

Eve News posted a summary of the new wormholey exploration stuff that is coming in the next EVE expansion.

I have to say that this is really going to be a lot of fun.

I already have a small cache of probe blueprint copies in my hangar and I think I'm going to go ahead and buy some more, and I'm going to build a small stockpile of some drones in anticipation of them all being converted. I guess it's kinda gaming the system a little bit but I think it's fair.

As I've posted recently, I trained up for Covert Ops so I could fly a probeship. I guess my only disappointment with the new system is that whilst I can still use it and it will give me bonuses, it's probably not going to be all that useful on the other side if I actually want to kill any of these new UBARLEET NPC ships to take their PHATLEWT and make PWNMOBILES out of it. I hope I can squeeze a probe launcher onto the Mordant Core.

One other observation I had was that Lasers are going to continue to be FOTM for this stuff as you're very likely to run out of ammo in these new areas. The Mordant Core tears through ammo so fast and I still need to keep space for probes and PHATLEWT.

Perhaps the Mordant Entropy, my hurricane, would be a better option. Obviously the ultimate solution is to always take corpies along with me, but it's not always feasible.

One thing is for sure, my first trip through a wormhole will be in a cloakyship packed full of emergency backup probes so I can get back again :O)

Holy cow, this is gonna be sweet!

2009-01-26T14:44:00.002Z

I've just finished reading the dev blog about the upcoming expansion to EVE, specifically how the wormholes will work and how we will find them.

I've only just got the training for exploration, having set off on many tangential paths that have finally converged on me being able to fly a half decent exploration ship. I still need to boost my Astrometrics skill, but I'm well on the way.

I loved the whole idea of the exploration mechanic and I'm excited about the new content. What I'm even more excited about are the propsed changes to the scanner and probe mechanics:

You will be able to drop more than one probe in a grid
Probe scan ranges can be adjusted via a drag and drop interface in the 3D map, removing the need for multiple probe types
Probes can be repositioned in the solar system map using a drag and drop interface and will warp to their specified positions
Scanning will now use triangulation to refine and improve accuracy of scan results
You can recall probes for re-use at a later point and time
The transition from ship view to 3D Solar System view to Universe Map view has been made near instant, allowing for quick switching between them

Awesome!

I had been wondering how the whole "probe out wormhole, fly through wormhole, wormhole closes, run out of probes before you find the way back" thing was going to work and this answers it and really makes the system cool!

There's lots more in there and I really think this will add a lot of really cool stuff to the game.

Drama Bomb

2009-01-25T20:53:00.002Z

Mynxee wrote a discussion post about the Corp Drama Bomb. When I read it, it made me smile as I've read loads of accounts on the forums and in other peoples' blogs about it but I didn't have anything of my own to add to the discussion; until today.

As I've mentioned before, I have mostly played solo or with a small group of close friends. Just before Christmas I joined up with a corporation and have been enjoying the opportunity to experience new things in game.

This weekend, the shit hit the fan, but not only did the shit hit the fan, but I WASN'T EVEN THERE!

Now, so far, the corp is still alive, the bomb didn't strike a killing blow but I think it will be a while before we fully recover.

It all started with a mineral windfall.

One of our corp members had been dilligently mining a metric fuckton of various minerals. He dumped the minerals into the corp hangar but at this point things got a little tricky. Our corp offers about 80% of market value for mins, they build stuff with it and proceeds go to the corp. However in this case, the value of the minerals far exceeded the corp wallet. An arrangement was made that things would be made with the minerals and sold and money would be paid in installments. Everyone is happy life goes on.

Second corp mate, bit in production, running a big recruitment & training programme for the corp inquires as to the availability of some of the massive stockpile of minerals in the corp hangar. Corp tells him the situation denies him access to them, he offers to pay for them, still no go.

This irks him ever so slightly but it takes about a week for it all to kick off. He makes repeated appeals for a small amount of minerals to be made available; he hasn't been able to mine because of the time he has spent with new recruits and is told repeatedly that he won't be given access to any corporation assets. Eventually, CEO gets fed up and expels him.

Other members, loyal to this guy are up in arms and "I quit and this is why" corpmails abound.

Now, I'm wise enough to realise that there has to be more to it on both sides that this (this account is pretty much all I've been able to squeeze out so far), but what is very obvious is that it was very much avoidable (from both sides again).

I'm not making any plans to leave the corp over this, but it does leave me a little sad. We've lost a fair chunk of our 0.0 sec pilots to it too, so I think our operations down there may well be affected.

I think this is just the first chapter in what will probably be a long drawn out affair.

This week in skill training

2009-01-23T12:50:00.003Z

Electronic Upgrades V (yay)
Covert Ops I, II & III
Instant Recall IV
Hull Upgrades IV (ongoing)

Finally got my Cheetah, now I'm going to spend some time going back and picking up some of the useful bits that I've been neglecting. Generally, I'm pretty happy with the shape of my skills now, I'm currently very focused in one area and it really shows when I shoot at people (and when people say "You're ratting here in a jaguar?"). Gives you the warm fuzzy feeling again.

OMFGWTFBBQ!

2009-01-20T22:56:00.003Z

I finally got my Covert Ops frigate tonight and it is sooooo cool, I just spent about half an hour warping around cloaked just because I could.

Then I actually tried to fit some other stuff to the damn thing. Mucho :(

I can have a covops cloak II, or a scan probe launcher, but if I want both online at the same time I have to use a co-processor II (or I can't have a MWD). I pretty much can't have an autocannon at all unless I train Advanced Weapon Upgrades to V (and put power diagnostics on), which isn't going to happen any time soon.

So I figure I'm just going to have to fly this thing with half its slots open.

Skirmish Report

2009-01-19T15:22:00.004Z

I'm quite getting into living in null-sec, even mining isn't boring...

I've reactivated my alt and having realised he is not good for much else, I've put him to work in the mines. In my new 0.0 home.

I was irritated to realise that because of the utter noobishness with which I trained this ancient character, he can't even tank sub-million isk rats in a Hulk at the moment, so I have to keep watch in the Mordant Core.

I was doing just this on Saturday when a red popped into the system. Orobas was duly dispatched to the safety of the outpost station whilst I took the Mordant Core to sit in my safespot, in case anyone needed assistance.

Sure enough, a member of the Alliance called for help from a belt and I set off. Other pilots in the Alliance also said they were on their way so I felt confident that we would be ok.

I arrived in the belt, and promptly engaged the hostile just in time for my ally's pod to escape, sadly he lost a Drake.

Hostile was flying a Sacrilege, which is a little too much for the the Mordant Core, but I had 2 points to lay down and the promise of support incoming.

I was giving a pretty good show, but my damage was insufficient to break his tank and with my armor down to 50% and no support yet on grid, it was time to bug out. I pointed my ship at the nearest planet and spammed the warp button until I was clear of his warp disruptor. Predictably he followed me to the planet but I was already boucing off to a safespot and after a few half-hearted shots fired at another Ally at the gate (oddly the one who was incoming to my belt...) he left the system.

As with all of the fights I've gotten into so far in null-sec, I learnt some things:

Our Alliance needs to sort out its battle comms, people were talking in local, no fleet was ever formed and it was generally a dropping of the ball.
If you want something done properly, do it yourself - I was waiting for someone to take charge of the situation. Next time, I'll be the one in charge.
My little Attack Ship actually held its own for much longer than I expected against a HAC, I couldn't have killed him on my own, but if I'd had the backup, I had him locked down ready for some sweet justice.

I do so enjoy learning lessons without my ship going pop. I guess that means that I am actually learning something!

This week in skill training

2009-01-15T09:50:00.005Z

Electronic Upgrades V (ongoing)

urg, will it ever end? :)

This skill has ammused me. First off, it is almost completely useless, no-one would ever train it for its inherent bonus:

"5% reduction of sensor upgrade CPU needs per skill level."

No, the only reason anyone gets this baby to level 5 is Covert Ops.

When I first started training it, the timer was 15 days and some change until my overexcitement got the better of my judgement one day and I lost my attribute implants. That put it up to about 17 days and a bit more change which was irritating. I spent those 2 extra days training up some of my long-neglected learning skills and managed to get the timer back to about 15 days and chopped time off a whole bunch of other skills.

Sometimes EVE's skill meta-game drives me to distraction, other times I get that warm fuzzy feeling from having accomplished something worthwhile.

At least whilst I'm training an important long skill I don't have to make any difficult descisions about what to train next...

Escort mission successful

2009-01-14T23:20:00.002Z

We just finished a short 'n' sweet escort op to get an allied freighter into hisec.

Was a nice opportunity to meet some new people in the Alliance. I get to fly scout most of the time and although the trip was entirely uneventful, I still get a warm fuzzy feeling knowing I've done my bit.

This is something I've been missing from my MMPORG career for a while now; having a good group to play with, help out and all that and it really does put the MMP into MMPORG (I like to pronounce that 'em-em-porrrg' in my head, I'm weird like that).

Battle Stations!

2009-01-13T22:28:00.003Z

Well, that was interesting.

As mentioned previously, my corp are currently in the process of moving to nullsec and thanks to my previous Jumpclone grinding, and a well planned, careful move to our new home, I'm in a more stable position than most.

I still have my main store of BPOs, spare ships and other crap in the corp's hisec empire base and I made the trip back tonight to take advantage of a fantastic market opportunity I found (which I was going to post about until this all happened. Read on).

I was just contemplating logging off for the evening when we got a call in Corp chat, one of our guys was under attack in our nullsec home system and was taking damage fast. We're still a little noob in these matters, so it took a few moments to get a position but I eventually realised that I'd flown to hisec instead of Jumpcloning so I could head right on down and fly support.

I warped into the fray at a respectable distance in the Mordant Core, locked target and hit him with 2 points and my quick-hitting 150mm AC IIs, a second corp mate was already engaged and laying on the hurt.

I was feeling pretty good as our target hit structure and we were still holding strong - teamwork FTW and all that when Corp chat lit up with:

Stop shooting! It's xxx

WTF? was my reply (by chance my ACs were down for a reload!).

It turns out 2 corpies had decided to test our 'combat readiness' with a faux call for help, one of the second corpies was running an alt.

So far, I'm slightly less than impressed, but I will conceed that we learnt a few lessons (and not neccessarily all of them intended).

I refrained from making my own point and finishing the job...

No matter where I roam

2009-01-07T14:28:00.002Z

The corp I joined at the tail end of 2008 have an agreement with a larger alliance that gives us access to 0.0 space and we're all slowly moving our stuff down into a friendly station and finding our way around.

Part of the agreement is that we help to keep our little corner of space clear of any undesirables and to that end once a week we go aromin'.

I've been on 2 of these roams and they've been a little less than eventful so far. As with most things online, particularly where not all parties are fully experienced veterans, getting started usually takes a little longer than it should, and then there's usually someone who keeps crashing and needs to be re-invited and all that jazz, but generally we are fairly well organised.

I usually get to play scout, which make things a little more interesting. I get to be all serious and military and it's great fun.

So far though, we're a little short of making any significant kills. This isn't because we aren't very good so much as because we seem to pick nights where no-one else is online! We see the odd red in local but since none of us are packing probes, finding them isn't always easy.

What it does do though is give everyone a great introduction to moving around 0.0 space, following orders and all that jazz so hopefully when we finally do meet some nasty red people, we'll be ready to take them down quickly and cleanly!

Dust sheets

2009-01-05T10:53:00.001Z

Wow, did I really post last in August? That's pretty poor really.

Basically, shortly after that last post, I pulled the dust sheets over my ships, switched off the hangar lights and suspended my accounts - I wasn't playing very much, I didn't really know what to do with my time in the game and I just hadn't quite found a corp to join.

As I've said before, I've played a lot of MMPORGS in the past (it used to be *most* but there are so many now that it simply isn't true any more) but EVE Online is the only one I've gone back to again after I've left. There's something about the shiny internet spaceships that makes me want to log in and play. I had already decided I wanted to start again but was putting it off because I had all my stuff spread across 2 accounts and couldn't really justify reactivating both just for a look around. So the good old "Why not reactivate your account for 5 days for free" christmas email came as a very nice christmas surprise! I was able to reactivate 1 account and use the free days on the other to transfer all my stuff! Job's a good'un!

Quantum Rise didn't add a huge amount of particular interest to me, but I still had a few things I wanted to try out. I've also found a corporation to join. Blood Moon, it's a small corp currently who are part of a smallish alliance with access to 0.0 space, which opens up a part of the game I always felt a bit excluded from.

So, I've liquidated as much junk as I can, trashed the rest and moved all my remaining worldly possessions 45 jumps into the great unknown (without a freighter, with my own crappy indy skills).

So far it's been fairly exciting; I've been on a roam in a fleet of 11 other ships, searching out the enemies of our alliance (we got 2, 1 was a pod and the other one no-one seemed to be able to find the killmail for - we're still fairly inexperienced!) but it was a good introduction into moving as a fleet around null-sec. I even got to play scout, which I did fairly well (if I do say so myself).

Training wise, I'm still very much a fan of small ships (I got that Assault Ships 5 skill, along with a few other useful bits) and I've started work on my Covert-Ops skills (cos I think being able to move around unseen will really come in handy in null-sec).

All-in-all, a fairly successful return and I intend to start writing about my EVE experiences again.

This week in skill training

2008-08-21T12:00:00.001+01:00

Science III

Hull Upgrades III

Energy Emission Systems I

Assault Ships V (ongoing)

Factional Warfare Report

2008-08-20T16:54:00.003+01:00

Well, I was all set to not really have much to post about this week, which was a shame. I've mostly been shuffling stuff around between stations.

Today though, I got my first taste of factional warfare.

I'd spent the last day or so flying around kitting out a Hurricane and a Stabber and dragging them out to my FW base. This was my first Hurricane and I wasn't entirely sure how best to fit it, but I figured out something that looked ok, then I fitted a slightly less expensive stabber with a fairly standard autocannon/web/scram and took that out for a spin.

I figured I'd start off with a FW Mission, a test of my loyalty. I flew out to the 'plex and learnt my first lesson: minor beacons are only for Frigates! Back to my base station, swap ships for a Rifter and head back out to the mission area. Thankfully I still had the system to myself, but even so, it was a bit trickier than I was expecting for a level 1 mission, lots of frigates and destroyers that could hit me pretty hard. I was forced to warp out once, but quickly got the mission finished and headed back to claim my prize!

Not a bad start I thought, so I switched up to my stabber and headed out on patrol. After a few minutes a call came out that there were some contested systems that needed locking down, so I headed that way to help out. We didn't get much action, just a load of faction NPC ships and were mostly left alone. Once they were shut down and I'd gotten my standing rewards, I headed back out on patrol, not really sure quite what to do.

I ran into a Sacrilege on a gate and let my excitement get the better of me, instead of jumping through I engaged, quickly had my Stabber reduced to nothing and got a free trip to the clonebays.

Next up I dropped into my brand new hurricane and set out again. I responded to a call to help shut down some more 'plexes in a system a few jumps over, and that was where the fun really started.

I was sat on my own, guarding a Major site alone whilst my fleetmates wound down the timer on the minor site when a local pirate warped in to take a look around. Now normally I turn tail and run at the sight of pirates but I was feeling lucky so I stayed put. He engaged me and I quickly started returning fire. To my surprise I got some help from the Faction NPCs at the 'plex and I very quickly got my very first killmail:

2008.08.20 14:45:00

Victim: ****
Corp: ****
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Arbitrator
System: Ezzara
Security: 0.2
Damage Taken: 3539

Involved parties:

Name: Bane Torpedo / Minmatar Republic
Damage Done: 2316

Name: MalphasWats (laid the final blow)
Security: 1.2
Corp: subDimension Mercantile
Alliance: NONE
Faction: Minmatar Republic
Ship: Hurricane
Weapon: Hurricane
Damage Done: 1047

Name: ****
Security: -1.9
Corp: ****
Alliance: NONE
Faction: Minmatar Republic
Ship: Rifter
Weapon: Rocket Launcher I
Damage Done: 176

Destroyed items:

Valkyrie II, Qty: 3 (Drone Bay)
Thunderbolt Heavy Missile, Qty: 22
Tracking Speed Disruption
Overdrive Injector System II
'Malkuth' Heavy Missile Launcher I
Hammerhead I, Qty: 5 (Drone Bay)
Nanofiber Internal Structure II, Qty: 2

Dropped items:

Large Peroxide I Capacitor Power Cell
Small 'Arup' I Remote Bulwark Reconstruction
Valkyrie II, Qty: 7 (Drone Bay)
10MN MicroWarpdrive II
Balmer Series Targeting Inhibitor I, Qty: 2
Tracking Speed Disruption
Medium Energy Neutralizer II
Thunderbolt Heavy Missile, Qty: 968 (Cargo)
Nanofiber Internal Structure II

I was only responsible for a third of the damage, but I felt pretty good! I'd actually come out of an encounter with a pirate on top, for the first time!

I stayed on grid and was joined by my fleetmates to wait out the rest of the timer. It wasn't long before we drew the attention of another local.

This time we were up against a Deimos and things were looking tight. My guns were hammering him, webber sapping his speed, scrambler forcing him to stay put under the onslaught of our little gang (and the Faction battleships!). I was the biggest ship in the group and my ECM made me the primary target. Shields went pretty quickly, so I hit my armour repper and crossed my fingers.

We both entered structure within a few seconds of each other and it looked like I might just make it:

Victim: ****
Corp: ****
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Deimos
System: Ezzara
Security: 0.2
Damage Taken: 9411

Involved parties:

Name: Republic Sigur / Minmatar Republic
Damage Done: 6635

Name: MalphasWats (laid the final blow)
Security: 1.2
Corp: subDimension Mercantile
Alliance: NONE
Faction: Minmatar Republic
Ship: Capsule
Weapon: 650mm Artillery Cannon I
Damage Done: 2425

Name: ****
Security: 0.0
Corp: ****
Alliance: NONE
Faction: Minmatar Republic
Ship: Dramiel
Weapon: Dramiel
Damage Done: 351

Destroyed items:

Damage Control II
Warp Disruptor II
Trimark Armor Pump I, Qty: 2
10MN MicroWarpdrive I
Federation Navy Antimatter Charge M, Qty: 4971 (Cargo)
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Heavy Neutron Blaster II, Qty: 3
Federation Navy Antimatter Charge M, Qty: 189
400mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I

Dropped items:

Stasis Webifier II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II, Qty: 3
Heavy Neutron Blaster II, Qty: 2
Federation Navy Antimatter Charge M, Qty: 126

Got him! Sadly, he popped just a fraction of a second after I did but I actually found my self smiling at the loss of a very expensive (relative to my wallet) ship.

All I had left nearby was a Rifter, so I headed to collect that and started hauling my loot back to a station to pick up later.

My first real taste of PvP and I actually really enjoyed it. Everything was insured so I didn't lose too much, just a whole bunch of time flying around refitting the ships!

Refreshed and Invigorated

2008-08-17T12:15:00.003+01:00

I have returned from my very restful (although virtually internet free) holiday. Camping in the south of France. Mynxee made a post a few weeks ago about eve overlays, every time I looked at my car, the top box made me think of Expanded Cargohold I modules.

I had a fair amount of time to think about Eve and various plans and I think my continuing enjoyment of Eve is going to rely on me finding a decent Corp to fly with. I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to go about finding a group of likeminded pilots to fly with, but I think that in order to really get the most out of Eve, I need to be flying with a larger purpose in mind. For the glory of the corp , not just my own personal agendas!

I was able to keep a limited eye on Eve news via the blog pack, although data charges in for'n clims are extortionate!

I'm quite excited about the upcoming changes: speed nerf and suicide nerf. I never had the skills or cash to fly a nano boat, but I was always uncomfortable with the fact that MWD were mandatory; I like there to be an actual choice between fittings and personally I prefer the non-cap-killing-sig-enhancing afterburner, with the changes to the way stacking penalties will work and the MWD/scrambler change, afterburners might become a viable choice.

I think the 'suicide' changes are fairly ammusing, almost a non-event until the last little throwaway "Oh, and you won't get insurance payouts if you're killed by Concord". I have no real issue with suicide kills in hi-sec space, I think it adds to the rich tapestry of Eve Online, the only safe place is docked in a station and all that. At the end of the day though, it really is only used by a certain type of player.

All-in-all, it looks to be exciting times ahead.

Bon Vacances!

2008-08-09T12:50:00.003+01:00

I'm on holiday at the moment, camping in France. I've managed to find a McDonald's with free wi-fi!

I had planned to write a buch of post and set them to auto publish before I left but I didn't have time in the end

I'll be back in a week to scratch my ever growing Eve itch!!

...or not

2008-07-30T13:00:00.003+01:00

This evening was my first spell 'on duty' for the war effort.

It wasn't quite what I was expecting. I asked for a few pointers in the militia channel but I guess people were busy typing their x's and didn't notice.

I spent a while listening in on the conversations about war targets in distant system x, and war targets in even more distant system y although it didn't appear much came of any of the reports.

Eventually someone mentioned that there were some targets in a system close enough to be reachable before bed time so I headed on over. Local showed 1 red star and a handful of purple, it was also packed with a bunch of 'non-combatants' although it looked like Concord felt differently!

So I flew to the 'plex, nothing but a few NPC battleships (on our side!), did a quick tour of the stations expecting a small group of friendlies sat outside waiting for the target to come out. Nothing.

So then I wasn't quite sure what to do with myself. I did a quick couple of tours around the surrounding systems. Nothing.

Closest I got to a fight was a flashy pirate that warped into the 'plex just as I warped out. Probably for the best though!

Hopefully things will pick up and they'll be some slightly more talkative people around next time...

Into the fray

2008-07-28T21:34:00.004+01:00

I finally bit the bullet today and signed up for Factional Warfare.

Of course, nothing it ever quite as simple and straightforward as that, and I'm left waiting on timers again!

I'm really very new to PvP in Eve, obviously I've been shot at and killed plenty of times, but I've never actually entered into combat with another capsuleer voluntarily. Factional Warfare was (apparently) designed for people just like me, so I thought I'd give it a go.

I wanted the option to pull out of it later on if I find that it's not quite my cup of tea, but I didn't want my employment history to reflect my fickle nature so I created my own corp and signed that up. I've got about 16 hours of the 24 left, so I should be able to enter into my first pew pew sometime tomorrow. I really have no idea what to expect but I'm quite excited.

Most of all, I'm hoping I might find some like-minded pilots to join forces with somewhere down the line. My little crew has slowly dwindled and I'm the only regular player left so things have been a bit lonely recently!

So, Amarr scum, quake in your pods for MalphasWats will be bringing his guns to bear in a system near you!

Send in the clones!

2008-07-28T12:00:00.000+01:00

The hero always gets the girl.

I've been running missions for what seems like forever in an effort to grind my standing with Republic Fleet up to 8.0. I want to be able to use jump clones so that I can set myself up to explore 0.0 space and still be able to pop back to run missions or maybe get involved in Faction Warfare.

I read up a fair bit on the subject but the information I could find was a little ambiguous: In some places it said you needed 8.0 personal standing and 8.0 corporate standing, and in other places it said 8.0 personal or corporate. A very subtle difference and since much of the documentation was a few years old, and was mostly conjecture posted before jumpclones were even implemented, I was a bit stuck.

I figured I could just ask on the forums, but I'm allergic to MMPORG forums and I didn't want to come out in a case of The Rage. I took the other option instead: just bloody try it, once upon a time, someone else would have done the same.

Well, I finally made it to 8.0 personal standing, so I was able to try Hypothesis 1: since getting 8.0 personal and corporate would mean just creating a 1 man corp, setting up your jumpclones then rejoining your old corp, it seems pretty pointless to require both at 8.0, much more sensible for it to be or.

The result: Hurrah! You just need a personal standing at 8.0 or a corp standing at 8.0 to use jumpclones.

I figured that with jumpclones set up, I'd be able to send one off into the 0.0 void and have a wander about. I actually did a bit of scouting and found an area that looks like it might be a good '0.0 starting area'.

Of course, what I really need is to be a member of a corporation that actually has some presence in 0.0 space (or just presence in the game! my current corp has only 3 people in it, 2 of which are me!). Pretty much all of the commentaries I've read about 0.0 is that you don't last long on your own but we'll see, exploring is all just part of the adventure.

Last week in skill training

2008-07-28T10:40:00.005+01:00

Informorph Psychology I & II

Shield Upgrades IV

Assault Ships V (ongoing)

Spider Drones

2008-07-27T11:45:00.001+01:00

They codenamed it Angel Extravaganza, which I thought was a little glib but as long as I get paid they can call it Happy Fun Clown Time for all I care.

I headed to the station hangar bay where the new Mordant Core was being fitted ready. The 150mm Light Autocannon II sat on the hangar floor gave me the clue that things weren't going to schedule.

A couple heated exchanges with the shipyard foreman and a few hours cooling my heels later and the new Mordant Core glided into space its spotless armour plating gleaming in the light from the system's star.

I plugged the co-ordinates I'd been given by Ornljorn and activated the warp drive.

Intel was pretty good this time, and they were sending exactly the wrong types of ship at me. The Mordant Core excels at taking out cruisers supported by handfuls of frigates and the odd battlecruiser and that was exactly what they sent. Not a good day for the Angel Cartel!

I'd been tasked with taking out an Angel commander by the name of Terzam Tazzon and I was pretty deep within the Angel deadspace complex before my scanners found his Battlecruiser. I was still a good 70Km from his ship when his 2 spider drones intercepted me. Drones don't usually cause a problem for my trio of light autocannons but these packed an extra punch: webifiers.

Now for missions such as these, the Mordant Core is kitted out to deal with stasis webifiers but with 2 fast drones both interferring with my engines they were able to sit just on the edge of my weapon range. Close up, my high-tech guns make short work of anything I point them at but if I can't get them close, they miss. A lot.

It took 5 full magazines of ammo to take out the first spider drone, by which time my shields were nearly depleted and my capacitor was heading the same way. I made a 'tactical withdrawal' to let my systems recover before heading back into the complex to finish the job.

With only 1 webifier left, I made short work of the last spider drone before shredding Terzam's ship to scrap. All in, a very successful maiden voyage for the new Mordant Core.

Plans within plans

2008-07-25T16:49:00.002+01:00

I don't know if it's obvious, but I've kind of got a 2 voices thing going on. I thought it might be nice to be able to post in and out of character so I picked 2 different fonts to use for me and him.

I realised fairly early on when I started Eve back in 2003 that it wasn't the kind of MMPORG where you could just log on and just sort of bumble your way through, following the golden exclamation marks. You really needed to have a plan.

Working with my little group of buddies, we had a fairly simple plan: make enough isk to buy us all a nice cruiser each. Now back in 2003 that was actually a fairly tall order, there were no agents to offer missions, NPCs had insultingly small bounties and a small number of people had a fairly solid hold on the markets.

A few corporations began offering BYOM deals. You rock up with the materials required to build your cruiser, hand them over, pay a small administration fee and they built you a cruiser.

We took delivery of our very first cruiser, a Minmatar Rupture, after much chipping at space-rocks and exchanging of currency. I was the lucky ducky that got to fly it and from memory, it lasted all of about 4 hours. On pretty much its maiden voyage it was struck down by gate campers in Eifer. We were devastated, and needless to say, I went to the end of the line for the next cruiser!

From that day on, I had a fairly unshakable view of pirates in eve: griefers.

A pretty extreme view, of which oddly I have only very recently corrected myself on.

It's not all my fault of course; I have a pretty high MMPORG pedegree. I started my online gaming career in the world of Ultima Online, before all the Felucca / Trammell bullshit when flashy red people meant you would be dead soon. Similarly to Eve, if someone killed you, they could loot your corpse and take your stuff. Unlike Eve, there wasn't really much of a deterrant.

In Ultima Online, Pirates were PKers, Can flippers were Noto-PKers and 0.0 space was anywhere outside of a town. The biggest difference between the two was that for the most part, PKers were almost entirely cockpouches. They didn't just kill you, they taunted you, and if you were stupid enough to rise to a Noto-PKer, you got killed over and over until your criminal timer ran out (there was nowhere to hide from this, town guards were of no help if you had a flag).

So from pretty early on in my online gaming career another player killing me was someone who was getting their enjoyment from making me miserable.

It wasn't ever a problem in WoW, because that had a big red 'I want other people to kill me repeatedly' button, and even if you pressed it, all you ever lost was the time it took to run back to your corpse to get your stuff that was untouchable to anyone else.

Coming back to Eve raised this issue almost immediately for me and very nearly stopped me from bothering.

It was just a few days after I re-activated my original account. I was slowly settling back into things by doing a little bit of tradegoods ferrying. It was always a bit of a fetish for me after my long-behind-me days of Frontier: Elite II, buying stuff for 5 galactic credits at station x, shipping them to station y and selling it for 8 galactic credits each, who could resist!

I had found a very nice looking route that would net me a cool few million but meant the small risk of a 0.4 system. I figured it was time to start taking the risk, spent half my wallet on the cargo and set off. On Autopilot.

You see, before I came back to Eve, 'Warp to 0' hadn't been invented yet, so flying around with the autopilot made no difference if you were sat in front of your computer. It just meant you didn't have to keep clicking, you just had to pay attention. I hadn't quite realised that 'Warp to 0' actually meant you could insta-jump at a gate and I bumbled into a gate pirate. Pop, oops, arse.

I actually cancelled my account at that point. I was annoyed that someone else was enjoying the game entirely at my expense. After about another 2 days, I logged on again - I still had a month left to play so I set myself a small goal: If I couldn't build my wallet up to 20 million isk by the time my subscription ran out, there wasn't much point in carrying on, there would always be gate pirates and stupidity if it took me more than a month to recover from each one Eve Online wasn't really going to be much fun for me any more.

Obviously I suceeded, I actually hit about 50 million by the time I had to re-activate my account and I did so gladly. I also had a very nice little bonus when I realised that the Domination Overdrive module I had sat on an old hauler from before everything changed and was about to destroy because I couldn't sell on the market was actually worth over 60 million if I sold it through a contract.

It took a little longer to get over my 'All pirates are griefers' ignorance, but at least I learnt some simple lessons (the hard way).

A Series of Mistakes

2008-07-25T15:28:00.004+01:00

I have a theory.

It's a pretty good theory.

Life, particularly life as a capsuleer in New Eden, is a series of mistakes, a chain of bad choices.

I'm pretty convinced I can see where the most recent chain started and it ended with the demise of the Mordant Core.

I'm not usually one for anthropomorphication but I really did like that little ship. The chain started with the incorrect choice to spend the first part of my cycle running errands. I needed more ammo, had to move some stuff around, check some prices. Y'know, donkey work that needs doing from time to time. If I'd gone right out and started shooting stuff for people, I probably wouldn't have been around when I was given this particular mission.

On the face of it, it looked fairly straightforward: go here, shoot this, steal these documents. No problem, that's that the Mordant Core is all about but then there's the bad choices.

To cut to the chase of what could end up being a very long and boring story I should have gone for the defiler first, it would have cut the transit time between targets right down and it would have taken more damage out of the equation.

I've grown complacent over the last few days - I very nearly lost the Mordant Core twice last cycle and it was mostly because I wasn't paying attention. They say you learn even the simplest of lessons the hard way in New Eden and I wouldn't argue. I had plenty of time to think about my complacency, my lesson learnt on the long trip to Rens to pick up a shiny new Jaguar Assault Ship to once again fly under the banner of the Mordant Core.

The Blockade

2008-07-23T11:28:00.006+01:00

I've been working for the Republic Fleet since I first got my Capsuleer status approved. They're not bad to work for, the pay isn't overly insulting and they don't ask too many questions; It's not as if I have anything to hide, my behaviour has been exemplary since day one, I just don't like people asking stupid questions.

"I just received a transmission from reliable sources"

Ha! 'reliable sources', I've heard that one before and I didn't buy it that time. Of course, I said nothing to old Ornljor, he's a nice enough guy but he is pretty straight down the line, 'You can count on me'.

I made my way to the hangar where Mordant Core was waiting silently, almost menacingly. Her systems lit up at my touch as my pod slid into place, engines roaring to life. 'Steady' I thought, 'no rush'. I fired up my 'net interface, a new model comms unit I had installed just a few weeks ago. I had my own 'reliable sources'.

From what I could see, the Angel Cartel weren't putting much effort into whatever it was they were doing: you move fleets of ships and ordinance around, people notice. From what I could see, the biggest threat was going to come from a stasis tower that had gone 'missing' from a poorly guarded deadspace area a few systems over.

So, all that was left was to point the sleek, gleaming shape of the Mordant Core at the co-ordinates and activate the warp drive.

'Yeah, just what I thought, few frigates and a stasis tower, nothin to it'.

I'd like to think I handled it gracefully. I'd like to think that the metric fuckload of hurt that was visited upon the Mordant Core didn't leave me with the kind of look you see in old cartoon vidcasts. I'd like to, but I'd only be fooling myself.

I didn't realise until it was too late that they weren't your average run of the mill Angel Cartel cannon fodder. I was facing down 4 elite frigates and 4 elite destroyers.

I got out but only just. Not a happy bunny.

Thing is, if I don't complete the mission, I'll never live it down. I have a spotless record with the Fleet but you fail one mission and they really make you pay for it.

Gonna need a bigger boat.

Next up is In Awe, it's certainly bigger but that really just makes it easier to hit. I launched again, determined not to let what should have been a simple mission get out of control. I ready all my systems as I feel the warp drive spinning down, no need to rush, the sequences are burned into my muscle memory, just relax and let the ship do her thing.

It goes better, the frigates go down without putting too much strain on my shield generators but by this time the Angels are well and truly onto me, they've got re-enforcements coming and this is really turning out to be a bad day.

Gonna need a bigger boat.

I have a bigger boat, but it's not my favourite ship. It's a Maelstrom class Battleship and it's as slow as a spacecow.

I spent the next hour and a half strafing in and out of the deadspace pocket whilst the Angels sent ship after ship. The pounding was overwhelming and a freak sensor glitch nearly lost me my ship! This was not going well but eventually, I got a lucky shot in and killed their Fleet Commander. The resulting chaos forced the Angel Cartel to withdraw and re-think their assault.

I've no doubt they'll be back but next time, I'll get better intel and I'll be ready for them.

Introductions

2008-07-23T10:24:00.000+01:00

I figured the best way to start off this blog was with a fairly standard introduction. My name is MalphasWats and I am a Pod Pilot in the universe of New Eden...

I was inspired by the EVE Online Blog Pack, put together by CrazyKinux. I've been reading all about the various adventures of various Pod Pilots throughout the universe (some I even recognise the names of) and figured it might be interesting to keep my own blog.

I first joined the ranks of pilots in 09 June 2003, New Eden was a different place then; my first million isk came slow and hard, endlessly chipping away at floating spacerocks with a civillian mining laser. I can remember being overjoyed at getting my first Probe and finally being able to fit a second mining laser! Ah heady days.

I played Eve with a small group of friends whilst we waited for Starwars Galaxies to be released. Naive times. After SWG failed us horribly, our little group shifted between City of Heroes and a short spell back in Eve whilst we waited for World of Warcraft. Wow stole us for a good while, but I got out before it could consume me whole.

I went cold turkey from MMPORGS for quite some time, spending afternoons shooting glowy twirlly shapes on my Xbox 360 but I couldn't get over the vague feeling that there was something missing.

Every month or so, my inbox would be graced with a newsletter from Eve Online. It didn't feel like they were begging me to come back as so many of the SWG newsletters had. Eventually in February of 2008 I gave in to my urge and returned.

My how things had changed.

New ships, a new graphics. A whole swathe of new features that had been mere glints in the developers' eyes when I had last stepped into my pod. When I'd last played, cloaking devices hadn't quite been released yet but were promised in the next patch and here were shiny new covert ops ships, entirely dedicated to this clandestine technology.

My delight turned to dismay as I realised that it was all so complicated! I could barely remember how to get out of the station, let alone fly complicated combat manuvers. How did I ever remember all of this? Am I just too old to play this sort of stuff now?

It's surprising how fast it all comes back though, once you start to immerse yourself in the world!

I quickly realised that my carefully trained character, nearly 5 years old, was not the future of my Eve Career. I started a new trial account and quickly realised that with the changes to character creation since I last played, I effectively started off with combat skills almost as advanced as the mish mash of cross trained this and multi-specced that.

MalphasWats was born into New Eden, a newbie in a veteran's re-newbified hands and this is his blog.