@GamerChick42

Miles to Go

2013-04-23T19:26:00.000-07:00

It's been an interesting few weeks. I've unfortunately not had a whole lot of time to play, due to an upcoming major release at work, and a scheduled move across the country in a few weeks. (Packing your whole life and moving 1,500 miles away takes a considerable amount of time and effort, believe it or not!)

I haven't been paying a lot of attention to Warzone Control, though a quick look at the map tells me the Minmatar are still very firmly maintaining upper tiers. With all that LP flying around, I bet it won't take long after the June expansion before you're seeing those faction Hurricanes around every corner of EVE. ;)

The Amarr are not doing very well at all. Predator Elite's corporation left. He did not represent very many numbers, but he was the primary force in Kamela --the closest Amarrian stronghold near our own home. Pred's group didn't leave, as some may guess, because we took Kamela, but because he apparently wanted to shoot Fweddit.

Before I went semi-inactive there was a huge diplomatic incident, where Fweddit took down neutral capitals who were actually assisting the Amarr militia. Not a good way to make friends, by any means. But from what I know, an honest mistake. While Fweddit and Predator Elite's group never shared much love, an all out Amarrian civil war was just one more thing to add to laundry list of things going wrong for that faction.

I love my alliance. We're too lazy to have much drama these days. We did lose a corp because of some difference of opinion. But, there wasn't a whole lot of drama about it from what I could tell.

Anyway, I better unmute my speakers and see what my alliance mates are shooting at. But, before I do....100 million skillpoints! <does a little dance> Sadly, I wasn't training anything interesting when I rolled 9 figures. Some compensation skill I've been procrastinating on. But it's still a fun milestone. I wonder where I will be, and what I will be doing, and what I will have done when I roll the next 100.

Wallets and Wishes

2013-04-08T16:49:00.000-07:00

I’ve been working on several ‘projects’ lately, mostly of the business kind.

The alliance shop has been expanded somewhat to include several new ship types. Some of these came from suggestions and requests, and others came from a look at some killboard stats. A few of the new ships seemed to be a big hit. Some of the others haven’t seen a lot of movement, so I probably won’t restock. I want to focus my efforts on stuff people are going to actually use, and if something turns out to be a dud, I find something new and move on.

I’m toying with the idea of having some kind of fluctuating stock. Perhaps a ‘ship of the week’ or different ship types that are only offered once in a while.

I’m starting to hit hard limits on contract numbers. Unfortunately, while you can setup 500 contracts to your corporation with no skills, you can only set up around 60 to your alliance from your corporation with maxed out skills. Oddly, setting up a contract to your alliance essentially counts as setting up a public contract, and counts against the limits you have for setting up public contracts.

When you’re supplying an alliance, 60 contracts isn’t very much. It seems like there should be more available, especially if you’re operating as a corporation supplying an alliance –a common scenario.

I’ve run into some other problems also. Right now, I keep all the inventory in the different divisions within the corporation hanger I’m using. There is no other way in the inventory system to sort, or divide ships. And, I had to be able to keep my ‘shield thrashers’ separated from the ‘armor thrashers’ without individually renaming each and every ship each time.

It seems like someone wanting to provide such a service to their alliance shouldn’t have to create an entire corporation just to sort inventory, and have enough contracts slots.

The contract system is an entirely other story. I never thought about it much before, but now that I set up dozens (if not hundreds over the course of a month) of contracts, the ‘wizard’ process seems very tedious. There’s no shortcuts, or ways to select defaults so that I don’t have to select the same options over and over again. And you have to go through all the pages of the setup for each and every contract.

I wish I could just click a quick link or hot key, and have a one page item exchange popup where I could simply drag and drop stuff from my inventory if I wish. It would be easier for the alliance shop, and for simply giving loot to people by dragging it directly out of my ship’s hanger and not worrying about it getting mixed up in all my other assets. A sort of trade-contract cross over.

Also, looking through the records of what has been sold is interesting. I have to hover over each and every record to see what it was, since all I see is [multiple items] for each and every one. There’s no column for how much the contract sold for, and no column for the Description. And, even though it acts like it might let you sort by a certain column, it still only sorts by date. You can’t sort by client to see all the contracts a certain person has bought, or by description to see all contracts you’ve tagged a certain way….etc.

Hopefully, the contract system is something CCP is planning to visit at some point because it could definitely use some TLC. I’ll probably be writing a more thorough post about contracts at some point.

Other projects I’m working on are trade projects, the details of which I will keep to myself since I don’t want anyone stealing my ideas. The one trade project is netting me a sizeable amount of ISK per unit. My biggest concern was being able to move the stock –and not just accumulate a ton, but that hasn’t been a problem at all. I move quite a bit of it over the weekend and probably made a quarter of a billion ISK. When the entire project dries up I’m hoping to have made a good 2-3 billion from the one project alone. Not bad for something that just takes a few minutes once in a while of adjusting various orders, and a freighter trip once in a blue moon.

I’m dabbling, and testing the waters in a few other things. I’ve found some interesting opportunities with trading across regions –especially with meta items. The Jita – Amarr connection is interesting to watch. You can make a lot of ISK buying in Jita and selling in Amarr on some things. And then for others, it’s better to buy in Amarr and take to Jita. However, in most of those scenarios you need to move a significant amount of the item before you start making the kind of profits that tempt me, and I’ve found I don’t really like dealing with high volume stuff. You have to babysit it way too much.

I’ve also learned to play off other people’s manipulation. It’s hard to identify when the price of a certain item is being ‘controlled’ if you haven’t been paying close attention to it for a while. But occasionally I find something that obviously is being manipulated. Sometimes, I can find it significantly cheaper in another region that hasn’t gotten ‘hit’ yet, or simply buy the materials and build it myself. This is really easy to do for things like rigs…

Also, buy orders are my friend! People sell all sorts of things to interesting prices on buy orders, I’ve found. Even in remote places. 100K Damage Control IIs? Yes, thank you. Come again with some more please!

Anyway, I guess all of this makes me a bit of a carebear at heart. I’ve never been interested in mining, or major, full-scale manufacturing operations. But I do like the business and trade side of EVE.

And, it gives me something to do when there's nothing to shoot.

The CSM

2013-04-03T11:46:00.000-07:00

It’s that time of year again. The time where every blog seems packed with over-analysis about every CSM candidate, and where the forums chirp with discussion about platforms and carefully orchestrated propaganda put forth by lobbying hopefuls.

After the election is over, Fanfest will arrive and the winners announced. Some of them will roll up their sleeves and get to work, whether publicly with the community, or behind the scenes as invaluable grunt men. Others will disappear –the warmth, attentiveness, and community spirit they shared during election replaced by the cold reality of indifference. Until, such yammering yahoos as Poetic Stanziel insult and degrade them to the point they burst forth once again into the community eye to forcibly defend themselves.

I have my concerns about this election. The idea of ranking more than a dozen candidates seems daunting to me –a pirate who would rather blow things up then dig through treatises and long manifestos trying to make an educated guess on who will make good CSM representatives. And if it is daunting to me, then it will be even more so to many of the people I fly with –who do not even attempt to keep up with blogs and steer clear of the forums altogether. Many of them will not vote at all this year.

Furthermore, as I glance and skim and try to get the gist of what people think without burying myself I am increasingly frustrated. There are so many agendas. Wormhole candidates. Nullsec candidates. And the idea of running on some sort of a ‘platform’ seems so…important to people. But, I’ll be honest with you, voting for such a person makes me think I’m going to get a fraction of a candidate.

It seems critical that candidates understand things on a much broader level than simply lobbying agendas to ‘fix wormholes’ or ‘improve highsec industry.’ One thing I learned, in the discussion over the last year for all the Faction War changes is that what happens in low-sec….and in Faction War….doesn’t stay here. We can’t just throw up an upgrade for cyno jammers without completely understanding the implications for nullsec groups. We can’t just ‘do what is best for Faction War’ without considerations for many other aspects of the game—the economy, how the game is presented to new players, how our gameplay touches high-sec and neighboring regions, and etc.

I don’t mind candidates who have specialized experience within the game, but I’m uninterested in voting for candidates with horse blinders on –unwilling, and possibly unable to discuss the further reaching implication of their suggestions and ideas.

Furthermore, I hate the ‘us vs. them’ feeling I get when people talk about bloc candidates. "Why vote for them if they’re going to win anyway?" "Stay away from their sekret agendas." Some small-gang pilots and bloggers sometimes give no other reason for not voting for someone than that they are in a big alliance. As if, this is all the explanation needed.

Am I somehow betraying my low-sec brethren by voting for a bloc candidate? Am I voting against small-gang interests if I put a Goon on my ballot?

The Goon who is ‘running independently’ amuses me greatly. What does that even mean, exactly? Why should I vote for someone who seems to want to distance themselves from their own alliance, and why do they even feel the need to do so? How is an ‘official’ Goon different from an ‘unofficial’ Goon…from the perspective of a general outsider? I realize that within Goons, being official or unofficial might mean something, but to me?

The whole ‘I’m a Goon but not really’ was amusing, but the bloggers and forum posters who talk about voting for him with the idea that ‘ehh…he’s a Goon, but he’s running independently so it’s okay’ makes me laugh aloud.

What does the fact that some dude is or is not endorsed by his alliance have anything to do with the quality of the job he will do on the CSM?

Anyway, I’m eventually going to have to choose people to actually vote for. So, what am I looking for this election? I think I have some criteria narrowed down:

1. People skills, and a sense of humor.

Yes, the number one thing I’m looking for in a candidate has little to do with EVE, and a lot to do with how the candidate communicates and conducts himself. And I’m not talking about the ability to produce flowery speeches, or how much ‘forum time’ they have done.

How do they deal with people who really don’t like what they have to say? Are they too stubborn to consider other ideas and opinions? Are they wishy washy –changing their opinion to whatever happens to be popular at the time?

Can they let their hair down and crack a joke? Does it seem like they enjoy EVE and will enjoy being on the CSM, or are they a grumpy bitter vet setting out on a mission of some sort?

2. Experience.

If all you’ve ever experienced is wormholes, I’m not going to vote for you. If you’ve never spent a day in null-sec, I probably won’t vote for you either. I realize EVE is a vast place, and that not everything is for everyone. I don’t expect candidates to be experts at everything.

But on the same token, EVE is a vast place, and in order to take educated suggestions to CCP, you have to know the implications of those suggestions outside of the small narrow, world of a specific aspect of the game.

If your experience is limited, I would suggest you go enjoy the game some more before trying to change it.

3. General Philosophy.

Like anyone else, I’m going to vote for people I agree with. But instead of looking at ‘specifics’ I want to know what their broader thinking is. How do they view EVE as a whole? What do they think it means for EVE to be a sandbox? Do they bend toward open, interacting mechanics, or closed off mechanics? What are their views on all the intersections between game mechanics –where Faction War players affect high-sec mission runners and pirates affect null-sec sovereignty holders and wormholes affect economics and etc?

Some other, more specific criteria:

1. If you have the attitude that you’re going to ‘dictate’ things, ‘take back’ the game or ‘fix what CCP broke’ you’re no longer on my radar. This is not a democratic governmental position where you tell CCP what to do –and I’m not voting for anyone that I think will not be able to communicate with, and work with CCP.

Most likely, you will do more harm than good.

2. If you have a very specific game mechanic you are championing, I will probably ignore you. If you have a really good, specific idea, that’s what forum posts, and blog articles are for. You don’t need to go to Iceland for that.

Anyway, I’ll know soon enough who I am voting for. I might tell you. Or, I might have more important things to write about.

Cup of Tea

2013-04-01T15:27:00.001-07:00

“Where is Tea?”

“We want Tea!”

“TEEEEEAAAAAA”

There’s nothing like being fashionably late to your own birthday roam.

Late Night never plans much of anything, but for the birthday of one of our FCs, Tea EarlyGreyHOT, we had something very special planned. For over a week, we planned the remote rep vengeance roam to null-sec. Around thirty people showed up, which is quite a lot of Late Nighters in one spot.

This time, they weren’t just any vengeances. Many had dead space reppers, and Navy hardeners--A shiny birthday fleet with almost everyone fully aware that we’d probably all die.

And all die we did, shortly after bus riding it out to XHQ. A group of sev3rance tackled our bonus Loki, and we all warped to the gate and jumped through to see if we could save it. It died before most of us loaded grid, and as we all poured into local, a fight broke out with the sev3rance BCs and cruisers on gate.

Being a bit spread out from jumping into them, and being significantly out shipped, we didn’t stand much of a chance. Their DPS plowed through our light reps, sometimes before we could even lock the fleet member taking damage. We managed to hold up a few people, but as they carved away at our fleet, we quickly ended up with too few people to set up a sturdy enough spider tank.

We took a few with us, before most of our fleet died.

It was only about fifteen minutes into the roam, so the fight merely wet our appetites. Everyone charged back to low-sec to reship.

We took a quick detour to kill a trio of Prophecies on the Huola gate, who had ganked one of our guys attempting to reship. And then, a second detour to bridge on a lone maller who had aggressed on the Kamela station. We left local with the Amarrian Maller pilot spouting and spewing in local. I’m not sure I’ve seen a Maller die so fast, and he was very, very angry about it.

“More remote rep vengeances!”

It was Tea’s birthday, and he wanted to try the fight again –hopefully this time with us better set up and organized.

“I don’t have another vengeance.”

“Yeah, I only had the one set up specifically for the birthday roam…”

I had toyed around with providing the vengeances for the roam for free –but almost everyone was already set up for the first wave. I still had at least a dozen sitting on my alt –ready to be thrown up on contract for the alliance store.

What the heck. It IS a birthday party after all…

“I’m giving out reships for free. Anyone who needs a vengeance, open up a trade window with my alt.”

There was a happy noise on coms, and I quickly had a bunch of trade windows. Goodby vengeances. It was nice knowing you.

I knew that if any of them lived for longer than a half hour, it would be a miracle.

We died to sev3rence a second time. They knew exactly what we were bringing, as we sat waiting for them for at least fifteen minutes. What did they bring? Battlecruisers and at least one Battleship. Not exactly what I would have chosen to take on assault frigates, but not entirely unexpected. We don’t exactly go to null-sec to get fair fights.

They had a huge fleet, and a pile of battlecruisers, but we fought them anyway. We held reps for a little while, but under the battleship neuts and heavy BC DPS, we broke. But not without taking down a bunchr of them with us.

We scurried away in pods, back to low-sec just as our scout announced that Pandemic Legion had arrived on the scene with a crap load of caracals and shield logi, doing quite a number on the sev3rence fleet and forcing them off field. Some of us giggled a little to hear that.

It was getting late at this point. We had lost billions worth in ships, a tier 3 cruiser, and at least one slave clone. So we did what any LNA drunken fleet of birthday rousers would do –we reshipped and went back!

This time, we ditched the remote rep vengeance idea, and jumped into kitey, range ships. It’s another favorite comp of Teas –sometimes five or so of us will harass a large Amarr fleet with a few kitey ships. It’s often worth it just to see the Amarr rage, though now they seem more inclined just to run away, knowing that several of them will die, and they probably won’t catch us.

We bridged back to Providence, but ended up in a situation where we’d need to jump into them. Not exactly a good thing for tier 3 BCs, and rangey ships.

But, we did it anyway. We uncloaked a drake first, hoping to distract them. Most of us got to range, and grouped up, and we started picking off their lighter targets that burned out to try to catch us.

We fought quite a bit that way, taking out any tackle that got in range, and some of their larger ships. We had been fighting them for ten minutes or so, and were doing pretty well, when the cyno lit, and Pandemic Legion once again started piling into local.

Sev3rence fled almost immediately. There was no way they were going to fight LNA and PL.

Our FC also called a bail. “A large fleet of caracals could volley some of us before we even lock with our own logistics.”

I personally think we could have easily taken PL. They only had a dozen or so…but I think people automatically assumed they had the huge fleet of 20 caracals from earlier. By the time we gained more intel on exactly how many they had, most of us were back in low-sec.

It was also kind of sad sev3rence ran away so fast. It could have been a very interesting three-way, though playing with two fleets of kitey stuff was probably not on their docket for fun.

Oh well. Next time, PL. Next time.

By then most of us were whipped and called it a night. We had blown up enough. (And died enough) for one day. But we all had a lot of fun.

Happy Birthday, Tea.

Keeping Up

2013-03-27T17:00:00.000-07:00

I’ve been busy lately.

PVPing of course. And attempting to do Faction War missions and failing miserably, yet again. Being at tier 4, I have this unshakable urge to farm something. After making it through a single level three mission last night, I decided, once again, that missions are horrible and that I HATE them. And that I would never do them again and that I’d rather put pins in my eyes and dip my fingertips into hot acid.

Okay, maybe not that bad. But I would rather do almost anything else, and am decidedly far enough away from being poor for it to not be worthwhile.

I’ve also been busy with the alliance shop, having expanded with a bunch of new ships. I’ve sold over 830 ships since the middle of January, and it seems the more I give them the more they want. “Susan, how about fitting up a bunch of THIS ship?” “Susan, could you please fit and sell some of THOSE?”

“SUSAN, there are no more [Insert Ship Name Here] on contracts and I neeeeed one!”

I feel like a Spaceship vending machine some nights.

The Amarr have been more quiet then usual as of late. At least, on the PVP front. They've been less than quiet in other places, but I won’t get into that.

There’s been a lot of speculation about why the Minmatar are winning so thoroughly. It’s this group or that group. It’s because the Amarr are terribad.

I have no idea really. I don’t know if the Amarr aren't as active because the Minmatar are winning or if the Minmatar are winning because the Amarr aren’t as active. I don’t know if some big group is taking over and farming us (I’m sure there’s probably more than one) or if the speculation about a big group farming the Minmatar has made the Amarr give up trying, since they think the situation is out of their control.

I don’t really care either.

And then of course we have the whole CSM 8 election. I should probably say something, or provide some analysis or opinion about the various candidates. If only I knew who they all were…lol I know the dude that spammed me last year is running. I know the dude that writes a lot and makes people mad is running. I know a Goon is running. And a bunch of other people.

Granted, I only have three votes. And, I don’t even pretend to be influential, though I’d love to throw support behind someone I think would make a good candidate. Right now, I just don’t know. I guess I should start reading up on these guys. Ugh

Anyway, alliance contracts are waiting to be put up, and Amarrians are waiting to be blown up.

And promises to keep...promises to keep.
And AUs to go before I sleep. ;)

In a Galaxy Far, Far Away

2013-03-22T18:03:00.001-07:00

On a whim, I moved one of my alts over to the system of Luminaire this morning, to check out the site of the live event that would be going on. I've never participated in a live event, since they are usually not within a convenient time for my time zone, nor in a convenient place. (Since it was high sec, I couldn't participate on Susan with her being -10.0)

It was pretty busy, even 3-4 hours before the thing was supposed to kick off, so I just cloaked up and went to get some work done for a few hours. I'm glad I jumped into the system early.

When I came back, all hell had broken loose. The system was in deep TiDi, and you could practically feel the system shake from people beating at the gates to get in. CCP locked it down initially to 1,000 pilots, and then later to around 1,600 pilots.

The Caldari Navy brought in some Wyverns and other caps initially. It's funny, a question I was asked more than once was, "how did they get the capitals into the system if they can't cyno?"

Guys, it's CCP. They...you know...built this game. They can drop ships wherever they want.

We started getting Gallente on scan --a rather large group of Moros, as well as Nyxs and etc. The Caldari dudes apparently saw them too, and started jabbering about "Defending the State" and that the Gallente should leave the system. The players also were spamming local --about fighting for the Glory of the State, or the Glory of the Federation. There was more Glory in local than at a Baptist revival meeting.

Of course, the Gallente Navy warped right in and started pounding on the Caldari Navy. That's when the Global Suspect timer went up, and the field turned into a sea of flashing yellow targets. It was like a John Wayne bar fight...
in the middle of outer space...
in slow motion.

I stayed at a careful distance, cloaked up a little distance from the titan. I'd have thought that everyone would have killed each other off within a few minutes, but it seemed like for everyone who got podded, another was immediately inbound to take his place.

The Caldari and Gallente Navy shouted at each other in local, or just shouted in general. They yelled evacuation calls just before their ship was about to go down. The Caldari yelled at the Gallente to disengage. They even called primaries in local, though in very 'official' language of course.

And on the planet, apparently, tons of Dust 514 battles were taking place. It's too bad they couldn't see the light show going on around the planet.

After killing the Wyverns, and several of the other capitals, the Gallente turned their attention to the Leviathan. According to CCP during the Live Feed, at one point over 900 people were shooting it at the same time. That is a LOT of incoming DPS.

The Leviathan finally exploded, part of its 'wreckage' catapulting down onto the planet to take up residence as Dust 514's first Live Event monument.

Overall it was a pretty cool event. I've never been to a live event so I really have nothing to compare it to. Next time, I'm going to forget the press badge and bring a ship with guns on it.

With a Vengeance

2013-03-15T20:32:00.000-07:00

Last night, we decided to go out in remote-rep vengeances and armor assault frigates. The setup can be pretty powerful, even against larger ships and more numerous forces.

The first group we encountered was Fweddit, who attacked us in a sizable gang comprising of destroyers and frigates. Our reps held through, and we managed to kill all that did not run away without losing a single pilot from our gang.

As we were beginning to clean up the field, a pirate cruiser gang warped into the plex, probably hoping to gank a few tech 2 frigates.

Imagine their surprise when they all died.

Again, we lost no one. But, that was just the beginning of our evening.

A large Eve Uni fleet was reported, and we made a beeline toward Kourmonen to see if they would engage. They were in a mixed fleet, including various frigs, cruisers, logistics, (including an oneiros) and at least one battlecruiser.

It took quite a while, but we slowly burned through their fleet, even under gate guns. We lost a single tech 2 frigate in the process, though I think some militia not in our gang may have lost a couple things as well.

We finally met our match after attacking a pirate battleship fleet.

They dropped a triage archon on us. (lol)

Talk about a fun evening, and non-stop PVP! But, for once, don't just read about it. Go watch for yourselves. :) Warning: the video is a bit long.

Running the Shop

2013-03-15T09:48:00.000-07:00

Late last year, I started selling fully fit ships to my alliance mates. It was not very organized, with only three or four ships being offered, which was perfectly fine back then when pretty much everyone flew thrashers and ruptures.

Then I took a three week break over Christmas, and Retribution happened. The shop pretty much dissolved as many of the fits weren’t relevant or even valid anymore, and the demand was completely different.
(In 2012, I probably sold over 500 fully fit thrashers alone, in the few months I ran the shop.)

In the middle of January, I completely reorganized everything and started from scratch with a completely new ship and fitting list, as well as a whole new way of organizing inventory. No more manually counting how much I had left, or crossing my fingers and hoping I wasn't losing ISK because those modules went way up in price.

What to Sell?

The first challenge was deciding what to sell. With the frigate and destroyer changes, there were so many more options to choose from –and so many more ships in high demand. As a PVPer myself, I had an idea of some of the popular choices in our alliance. And, a glance through the killboard gave me a pretty good idea of other ships that were particularly popular.

What to Fit on Them?

Some fits were pretty easy –I already had an idea of what was ‘standard.’ But other things, especially ship types I don’t ever fly, were a little tricky. I asked some alliance mates for some favorite fits, but had to be very careful. I wasn’t interested in fits used for a ‘specific’ purpose, or Joe Shmoe’s super weird fit that he uses while out soloing. I wanted solid, general fits that worked in lots of situations and would provide a good starting point for people to customize as they want.

What to do with the utility highslot? What about that new, extra mid slot? It’s amazing how a simple question posed on Teamspeak on a slow evening can spawn a huge, two hour discussion about what is ‘best’ in such and such situation.

So extra highslots are left empty for people to fit with whatever they want. And in the event of an ‘extra’ midslot, I usually just fit a web. They can always switch it out later depending on the situation –a TD, a sensor booster, some ECM, a Damp, a target painter, etc., etc., etc.

How Much to Charge?

Then, I had to decide how much to charge them for everything. I made a couple decisions right off the get-go:

I would have to make enough ISK for the entire project to be ‘worth it’ to me. Otherwise, I’d just get burned out and the whole thing would probably dissolve after a month.
I would focus more on making ISK by selling volume, vs. marking things up exorbitantly. In other words, I would make ISK more from selling a lot of something, vs. charging super high margins on everything and only selling a few.

This plan is working extremely well for everyone involved. My alliance mates are happy, because the small ‘extra’ they are getting charged isn't that big of a deal on a ship by ship basis, and is completely worth the convenience of being able to jump into something ready to go with drones, scripts, ammo, and etc.

And I’m happy because I’m selling so many of these ships, I’m making a decent little income.

How to Keep it All Straight?!

My goal, in pulling all of this together, was to create an organized system that once set up, would be little work to maintain. And, I’m happy to say it’s finally reached that point.

With just two data entry points on a simply spreadsheet, I can keep track of tons of stuff regarding my store. I keep track of each ship I sell by going through completed contracts and updating a single column. And then less frequently, I enter incoming ships –when I replenish a stock of something, usually in bulk quantities of 15-50.

Ships coming in, and ships going out.

If there are huge changes to ship or module prices, I update these values but this is very, very rare. I don’t keep track of nickels and dimes, and market fluctuations are more or less accounted for.

From there, I can see many wonderful things:

How much ISK I’ve made this month, as well as total profits since I started in January
How many ships I have left of each type and fitting. (I offer multiple fitting options in some ships.)
How much ISK has exchanged hands, ie: volume.
What ships I’m selling the most of, and which ones I’m making the most money on
What ships aren’t selling very well
How much ISK I have tied up in inventory

The Details

Obviously, I’m not going to give you all the details. Some things I choose to keep my secret. But I will tell you a few things because I know you’re curious.

In the two months I've run the new shop, I've sold nearly 700 ships, most frigates, destroyers, and cruisers.

I currently sell 20 different ships-fitting combinations, and keep 5-8 billion ISK worth of ships in inventory at all times. (It takes ISK to make ISK.)

I'm currently working on expanding to public contracts on a limited basis. Currently, I'm 'testing the waters' as it were.

I spend 10 minutes now and again updating records. How long it takes me to fit, and purchase ships is hard to quantify since I rarely take time specifically to do this exclusively. (If you see me shooting an I-HUB, chances are I’m dual boxing and have an alt dealing with shop stuff in Jita. ;) I always buy in bulk, and I always fit in bulk.

I build a lot of stuff on site, which cuts back significantly on logistic overhead. I also make use of courier contracts to get stuff from other parts of the Universe where they might be less expensive.

This of course, is all done on top of my normal trading that I do. I've found that running a shop and being a trader complements each other, as understanding some of the trends I've observed has helped with decisions I've made regarding where to buy some of the fittings, among other things.

Apparently, this all also makes me a bit of a closet carebear. =D

Don't Forget to Bring a Towel

2013-03-14T10:11:00.001-07:00

The only thing more boring than shooting an I-HUB for a good fifteen minutes, is shooting at three right in a row.

I glanced at the system breakdown last night and was somewhat surprised to see that the Minmatar have regained control over a significant portion of the warzone –enough to possibly get Tier 4 in the near future.

Late Night assisted in three system flips last night alone, with Rothgar’s booming ‘radio’ voice keeping us entertained as he quoted, from memory, the entirety of “Jabberwocky” as well as several excerpts from “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” over coms during the I-HUB bash. The bad thing about having push-to-talk turned on, is that it makes it very difficult to applaud over Teamspeak, I have found.

Later in the evening, we ended up engaging the Amarr only to have a PL fleet join the party, breaking up the fight. Pinky Feldman, who is quickly gaining a reputation in the Minmatar for his “propensity for succumbing to acute infantile weeping,” immediately accused LNA of ‘batphoning’ PL to assist in destroying Amarrian tech 1 cruisers.

LNA ended up shipping up, and ganking PL, killing several of their fleet including their Loki. In general, we usually avoid engagements with PL, knowing that they are rarely without some sort of capital back up. However, after shooting three stationary I-HUBs for the better part of an hour, I think everyone in fleet was ready to shoot at something –anything that moved, and/or would shoot back.

We then shipped to sniping, artillery Tornadoes and went after the Amarr’s cruiser gang. We practically volleyed one of their Augorors, and managed to kill a few others in their gang, before they ran away to another gate in system. We warped to that gate at 70, attempting to take out another cruiser or two before they warped away again. We played chicken with them for a little while in local, until finally they hightailed it back to the safety of their home station in Egghelende.

So, we went and camped their station for a while, instapopping anything that tarried outside too long.
Either Predator Elite caught wind of the situation, or was called on for assistance by Fweddit. He came from Kamela with a gang of battleships and guardians, and sat camping the Egghelende gate in Siesede for when we would make our departure.

“Let’s just jump into them and burn away.”

We ended up jumping into them, and quickly realized that their battleships were set up with long range weapons specifically to take us out as we burned away. Not surprising at all, considering the amount of time we had been roaming around in our fleet composition –giving them ample time to come up with a counter.

We burned back to Kourmonen, and reshipped into general, brawling battlecruisers, and then parked ourselves around the Kam/Kourm gate as they came back with their battleships.

We outnumbered them significantly, and were able to plow through their logistics, killing their augorors, and then both their Guardians. We then killed several of their battleships, with a few of them deagressing and running back through the gate.

They circled around through Lamaa, and ended up docking up their remaining BSes there, as we quickly had the nearby gates camped when we saw where they were going.

Not a bad night for pew, even though the Amarr have seemed a bit more scarce then usual as of late.

Perhaps they are all out farming on their Minmatar alts. ;)

Waiting for the Other Shoe

2013-03-11T17:33:00.000-07:00

“How on earth do you guys deal with this crap in local?”

We started our weekend educating our Gallente friends on how to completely block an entire alliance in EVE. If you’re flying around our warzone, it’s a handy trick to know if you like to keep your local window open and your sanity intact.

The Gallente had been planning to help us take the system of Dal, but were unfortunately about 12 hours late to the party. So, those who decided not to head back to their own warzone hung out Friday evening, roaming the warzone. We found a few things to kill, and generally had a good time hanging out with some people we don’t frequently get to fly with.

I spent some time fitting up some ships for alliance contracts. The alliance shop I revamped, and setup in January has been a huge hit. I’ve already sold nearly 150 ships for March, and we’re only a week and a half in. I admit, while gates are being camped and plexes are being run, I occasionally sneak back to Huola to fit up another stack of something.

In fact, I was coming back on coms Sunday, after muting things so I could concentrate on fitting up another 70 ships or so, when I heard Annah Kitheran getting ready to bridge on the Amarr in the system of Lamaa. Everyone was in sniping Tempests, so I jumped into my Condor to run to Kourmonen to get something appropriate.

That’s when the Amarr started dropping dreads. We had two carriers on field, so the call was made to get some dreads of our own.

“Should I go get my Dread?”

“Yes, go Susan.”

I turned around and headed back to Huola to jump into my Moros—a ship I’ve had for nearly a year and have sadly never dropped into a combat situation. I was beginning to think my tech 2 siege skills, and Gallente Dreadnaught V were a waste of time to train.

I quickly checked to make sure I had enough fuel and strontium, blew off the dust, and then headed out.

“Cyno up.”

I glanced at my friendly overview when I landed on field, trying to gauge the situation, and choked a little. We couldn’t have had more than 15 on field, most in sniping battleships and things that weren't particularly appropriate for what we were going up against.

The Amarr were like a swarm of bees, in one of the most diverse kitchen sink fleets I have ever seen. They had at least 2 times our numbers, in everything from dreadnaughts, to faction frigates, to tech 1 cruisers.

I clicked my siege button. It was a good day as any to die in a glorious fire.

“Primary is Predator Elite.”

I locked up both the dreadnaughts on field. Predator was almost into hull by the time I arrived and got him locked up. I finished him off, and then set to work on his alt, who was the other dreadnaught.

He was hitting low armor when my siege was starting to run about, but I decided not to siege another cycle. Once the hostile dread was down, I would be useless against the Amarr’s smaller support.

They hit me hard when I can out of my siege, and I was quickly pointed by several things. Bahamut turned his triage onto me, and I never slipped much below 60% armor. I didn't want to use my local reps, because I needed the cap to jump out.

“This maller is still pointing me.”

I started rattling of people who were attempting to keep me on field so that our support could chase them away. Finally, I saw my moment, and jumped back to Huola. I had a few dents, and more than a few new scratches, but was happy my Moros had finally done some battle time.

Our other capitals were not so lucky. Bahamut ended up losing his dreadnaught and his triage carrier during the fight. Our friends in Iron Oxide lost two carriers, and AmyMuffMuff, of Wolfsbrigade, also lost his carrier. (He’s an X-Minmatar who still flies with us on occasion.)

We lost hands down, but everyone still had a super fun time. We agreed we much rather lose caps in a fight like that, then to a null-sec alliance dropping a hundred caps on us. With how long we were on field in capitals (probably at least 20 minutes or longer throughout the whole fight) I was somewhat surprised that PL didn't catch wind of the thing, and jump all the supers on our head.

Things calmed down a bit, and we went back to roaming around in smaller stuff the rest of the night. I hopped in my condor, and ran around. I think I may have found a solo fight or two, but nothing particularly remarkable.

I was heading back to Kourmonen when I noticed Bob FromMarketing and his two buddies hanging out around the Auga gate in two vigilants and a scythe.

“Guys, Vigilants to kill!” This of course brought everyone romping toward Kourmonen. I buzzed to station to ship up to a SFI. My Condor was probably not going to be much help for this.

We killed the Scythe easily, and DeBug managed to suicide point one of the Vigilants in his Jaguar. Just as he popped, someone called a secondary scram. As the first Vigilant started to go down, Bob FromMarketing ran away, leaving his buddy to die.

I scooped a faction Web, and promptly gave it, along with a Jaguar I had sitting unused in station, to our suicide pointer. People who die pointing shiny things for us to kill get free stuff. That’s just the way it is.

“Uh, guys, the other Vigilant is aggressing me on the Auga gate again.”

“How far off is he?”

“He’s really close to the gate actually.”

People started scrambling back to the gate. Someone scrammed him, and the second Vigilant went down.

We roamed around Auga Siesede area for a bit, in our cruisers and BCs, and finally caught wind of a Fweddit fleet of similar composition. They unfortunately ran from us, but as we balled up on gate, Sugar Kyle’s corporation dropped some BCs on us. They were outnumbered, but they fought us anyway, and managed to take a few of us with them.

It was extremely obvious that they were competent pilots, and I couldn't help wishing they would move into the area. LNA needs more competent pvpers to fight to shake our lazy bones now and then.

Or maybe, it’s time for us to do a bit of roaming of our own.

An Amarrian, Minmatar, and PL Walk into a Bar

2013-03-06T09:51:00.000-08:00

“This is a super bad idea.” I was not the only one to voice this when TeaEarlyGray HOT suggested we go into the plex where Fweddit waited with at least 15+ destroyers and frigs. We had 5 in fast cruisers and frigs.

“We’re kitey so we’ll just burn away.”

“Someone is going to get caught and die in a fire.”

“Maybe.”

“They have a Griffin.” I was particularly wary of griffins as not a half hour early, Killer420 and I had experienced the full effect of what it was like to be permajammed by one. We had spied three Amarr in a novice plex in frigs, and taken our two frigs to go kill them. It should have been a fun fight, but instead they uncloaked a Griffin and permajammed both of us.

Needless to say we went into the novice plex.

“I’m caught!” It was Tea.

“I’m not caught.”

“I’m caught again!”

“I’m away…”

For thirty seconds we all scattered, trying to gain range on the Fwedditers. As we were doing so, a conversation popped up from Predator Elite, one of the Amarrian FCs. I flew with Pred in nullsec long before I ever joined Faction War, and was one of the people that convinced him to join the Amarr, back when I joined the Amarr myself. I accepted the conversation, but minimized it so I could focus on the fight.

Tea started calling primaries, but Fweddit started to run away.

“What on earth?”

“Did that really happen?”

The guys were a little incredulous, but I didn’t really blame Fweddit for bailing. It’s not like their tech 1 fit Thrashers can do much against us once we’re set up to kite.

I noticed that Predator had now convoed my alt, on my other screen. He must be excited about something.

I opened the window back up. “What’s up Pred?”

“Do you guys want to go kill that PL gang?”

First, I laughed. We had seen the PL gang a while earlier over near Amamake, after attempting to gank their obvious bait Dominix on a gate. They had at least 30+ with Oneiroses, Prophecies, Tech 3 cruisers, faction battleships, and etc. The Minmatar didn’t really even have a main fleet up. I was in Tea’s group that had 5-7 or so, Anz had a little gang up of 4-5, and then there were other corps roaming around doing their own thing.

I mentioned on coms, “guys, the Amarr want to know if we want to go kill PL.”

We talked a minute or two about whether it was even remotely possible. It was decided that it was probably not remotely possible.

“Susan, this isn’t Fweddit asking is it? Because there’s no way I’m getting into a fleet with Fweddit.”

“Nope, it’s Pred.”

What followed was some very strong adjectives and descriptions of where Pred could go, and what he could do once he got there, which I will not repeat here.

“You do realize, that Predator Elite was the one that lit the cyno when PL dropped on us last time, where we lost three dreads, right?” One of my, now Dreadless, alliance mates pointed out.

The probability of the fight happening dropped. I mean, lower than it already was.

“In all the time I’ve known Pred, he’s never back-stabbed someone he’s called a truce with.” I cringed as I said this, hoping that Predator was not about to make a liar out of me.

What followed was at least twenty minutes of people chattering back and forth what would need to be done for it to even remotely happen. This seemed to distract them from who we would be doing it with. We would need to get into a single fleet. But, no one made a move to decide who’s fleet we would move to. Then we’d have to get on joint coms. Eve Voice? Or invite the Amarr to our Minmatar coms? What would we bring? How many could the Amarr bring?

At first they could bring 15. Then 5. Then maybe more. We could bring 6. But then 5 from somewhere else, and maybe this other group would bring some Tornadoes.

It was not going to happen.

“Tea, make a new Wing and invite Pred to it.” I told Pred we were inviting him to a Wing position so he could invite any Amarr he wanted. We had to start somewhere, and we might as well see how much we could pull together.

We continued talking about what we would need. Should we bring battleships? If we brought something too shiny they would drop supers. They might drop supers anyway….

Predator Elite accepted the fleet invite and started inviting his guys into fleet. We managed to merge some of the smaller Minmatar groups into our fleet, with the Periphery alliance promising to bring a significant number of Tier 3 BCs. The Tier 3 BCs changed things considerably, bringing some much needed DPS to the field.
LNA split into brawling battlecruisers and Augorors. Pred’s guys brought a mix of Augorors and battlecruisers as well.

“They have a Damnation on the Huola gate in Kourm.” Someone mentioned.

“Amarr in Kamela, warp to Kourm. Minmatar in Huola, undock and warp to Kourm. Guys in Kourm, warp to the Huola gate. Let’s do this.” Predator took the reigns.

We jumped onto the Damnation and began to let loose, as the rest of our fleet, and Pandemic Legion’s landed.

We did okay at first, but then started losing logi. With the trust between the Amarr and Minmatar still a bit shaky, we only had tech 1 logistics on field, not to mention nothing much bigger, or more expensive than a general battlecruiser.

Predator continued calling targets, rapidly switching in order to attempt to break through their logi, until we lost four logistics. And then, the call was made to bail.

“We did pretty good, considering.”

“That was still super fun.”

A few BCs were lost, as well as at least five Augorors. But everyone on coms, both Amarr and Minmatar were pretty ‘awake’ at that point. The fleet was finally together in one place, we had everyone on the same page, in coms, and felt more or less organized.

“Can we try that again? We’re going to need to ship up a bit.”

“Yeah, those augorors evaporated once they got primaried. We will need tech 2 logistics for sure.”

There was a moment’s hesitation. And then, several LNA members offered to bring Guardians.

“I can bring a Guardian.”

“I have one too.”

“I can bring a battleship…”

“I can bring a Bhaalgorn?”

“NO!” There were several resounding negative reactions to that suggestion.

“Nothing shiny. No faction BSes. Or they will more than likely drop supers.” Predator said. We already knew there was still a chance they would drop triage, if we posed a problem.

The fleet reshipped, several people shipping up to BSes, and the logistics switching out for Guardians. People also started swapping out for ECM drones, sensor dampeners, and neuts.

“In a fight like this, you can never have too many neuts.”

We were almost ready to go, when our scout told us PL was leaving back through Auga.

We pursued.

To Amamake. And then to Gulm. PL was on the move, and they seemed oblivious that they had a huge militia fleet trailing behind them.

Predator cursed a bit, crankily. “Someone scout ahead and go tell them to stop already so we can fight them.”

The scout did as he was asked. Conversations were opened. And rather quickly, PL turned around and came straight back for us.

They wanted this fight as much as we did, and were probably intrigued and bemused by the joint militia fleet coming at them.

We set up on the Egmar gate, our logistics burning off a ways. PL dropped a BS on us first, and it was quickly called primary.

Predator started barking orders. “All DPS on this battleship. Get those damps on those logistics. Spread your ECM drones around. Come on people, more DPS.”

We switched to a SFI, killing it. And then, the first Oneiros. And then, the second Oneiros. Our own logistics were holding. “But it’s tight.” One of the Guardian pilots admitted. We were obviously winning this, with two of PL’s logi already down.

“Cyno up.”

Well, of course there’s a cyno up. It IS Pandemic Legion after all.

Nothing came through at first, so Predator Elite continued calling primaries.

A single Thanatos dropped into the mess.

“Someone tell me when he triages.”

“He’s triaging!”

“Hell, let’s primary the Thanatos.”

We cut through his shields like stiff butter, and then started pounding at his armor.

“Second Thanatos in!”

“He’s in triage, so there’s nothing he can do. We have maybe two minute. Come on guys, all DPS possible on that Thanatos!”

The Thanatos still had quite a bit of armor left.

“This is going to be close.”

His armor crept down, and you could practically hear people’s hearts beating loudly when they spoke on coms, and imagine their palms sweating.

“This is soo close. He’s going into structure! We probably only have a few seconds left guys. Overheat everything! Don’t burn anything out but overheat as much as you can!”

“Half structure! Come on guys. OVERHEAT. OVERHEAT!!!” Predator Elite was pretty much shouting at this point.

“He’s almost down. Come on, more DPS. Come on!!”

The Thanatos exploded.

And chaos erupted on coms. –a cacophony of Amarr and Minmatar excitedly talking about how they had just killed a Pandemic Legion carrier.

“Guys, we did it!”

“Oh my god….”

“You’ve got to be kidding me!!!”

“Second cyno!” PL dropped several more triage in, including at least two archons.

“Okay, let’s primary this one last faction BS, and if it’s obvious they’re saving him we’ll deagress.”
The battleship got reps and everyone started deagressing. There was no way we could burn through 3-4 triage carriers, especially with archons on field.

“Oh, they are SO mad.”

The guardians kept up their cap chain, and logistics, keeping everyone alive as we prepared to get out.
“Aggression down in 3…..2…..1…Everyone JUMP.”

We were through.

“Good job guys.”

“Yeah, that was awesome.”

“Awesome logistics there Guardian pilots!”

“Great FCing Pred.”

“That was great.”

Things calmed down a bit. The Minmatar and Amarr split, the Minmatar being able to dock up, where the Amarr could not.

“Well, see you guys in Kamela tomorrow.” Someone said cheekily, as Pred’s group prepared to log out of Minmatar coms and leave fleet.

“Yep. Tomorrow, it’s back to killing each other. Fly safe guys.”

“See ya.”

Just another day in the Amarr-Minmatar warzone.

What We Meant

2013-03-05T06:39:00.003-08:00

I’m generally a positive person. I hate spouting doom and gloom because of some game mechanic flaw, or claiming that it’s the ‘beginning of the end’ because I don’t like something in particular about where things are headed. So, you’re not going to get a ‘sky is falling’ speech from me today.

But there is something about Faction War that has been bugging me.

And, I know that there are tons of new people in Faction War and that people are fighting over systems and pvping left and right, just as they should be.

The thing that concerns me, is that the single largest thing the Faction War community asked for, was not realized in either Inferno or Retribution.

Meaning.

We get LP for kills, LP for plexes. Taking systems has meaning, as far as warzone control goes. But, Faction War itself has no meaning –has no impact on the greater EVE community.

The fact that Faction War is the most tightly closed system in EVE, is probably the biggest thing I hate about it. Who wins, and who loses has little to no impact outside of FW beyond a few faction item market prices.
I can write about which systems were taken, who is gaining a foothold, what interesting battles took place.

But unless you, my reader, are in Faction War, none of this really impacts you in any way. It’s nothing more than a cool story bro.

So what can be done about it? I’ve heard several interesting ideas over the past months:

1. The warzone control in FW could impact taxes in highsec. If you’re losing, the taxes could soar in the NPC stations of your Faction. If you’re winning, they drop through the floor.

It makes sense from a storyline perspective. Though I think that if not done very carefully there could be a lot of unforeseen consequences.

2. The warzone control in FW could impact security in highsec. This is a lot more controversial, but also very interesting. What if, as a Faction is ‘pushed back’ they send more and more of their highsec navies/police to the front? It would become more and more easier for the winning militia to ‘hunt’ in their opponent’s high-sec systems, with a much slower response from the faction navies. Furthermore, that faction police may have a harder time responding to pirates in system. (CONCORD would be unaffected.)

3. Warzone control could impact highsec mission payouts.

4. System Upgrades that affect non FW pilots, such as cyno jammers, or significant industrial bonuses.

What are some of your ideas? How could Faction War be opened as a mechanic so that the rest of the EVE community is interested in it and/or affected by it's outcome?

Miles to Go Before I Sleep

2013-03-02T13:21:00.000-08:00

"The Primary is...."

I love logging on to a good fight raging. So long as I have time to get involved in it. Apparently, the fight over Dal had been raging for quite a while before I logged on, and ended up lasting quite a while afterwards. Someone who was there for all of it claimed it lasted at least 2-3 hours.

I was already in Auga in my Condor so I ran over and activated the gate to the medium plex, not even stopping to ask for a fleet invite first. My Condor was a bit light, considering most were in cruisers, but it proved itself useful getting rid of their light tackle and destroyers from field.

I lost my first condor to something or other, and ran back for another one. As I hit Auga, people on coms started complaining of getting dropped from the game. Several thought that maybe the node was crashing. (It wouldn't be the first time the Amarr/Minmatar have broken something in the middle of our shenanigans.)Dal, and neighboring systems were spiking with TiDi.

I glanced at local and immediately detected the problem.

"Uh, guys....there are 350 neutrals in Auga."

"What?!"

"Yeah....350."

A massive Brave Newbie fleet was passing through. Thankfully they weren't heading to Dal to disrupt the faction fighting, but until they left the whole area slowed to a crawl.

Both Amarr/Minmatar had a significant amount of logistics on field, mostly in the form of Augorors. They are quite 'the thing' these days in Faction War, especially for larger cruiser fleet fights. I've tried flying one a few times, and between trying that, the Guardian, and the Scimitar, have decided that running logistics is something I should leave to other people. I prefer ships with guns. Or missiles. Anything that goes boom, really.

Our target callers kept trying to focus fire suddenly, hoping that we could charge through someone's armor before their logistics had a chance to get to them. Sometime it worked, sometime it didn't.

Then, somehow, we started losing our logi, and things started going downhill from there. So, we decided to retreat, get people more ammo, reship, reform, and come back. The plex still had almost a half hour on it for the Amarr to count down.

We decided that the only way we were going to be able to counter their logistics was with some significant dampening power. So, our SFIs traded some of their webs and such for damps. We got more people in logi, shipped up some of our smaller stuff (including myself into an SFI) and headed back.

As soon as we landed, every single one of our logi were instantly locked and perma jammed. They had at least four blackbirds on field, as well as ECM drones, and etc. Our FC knew within minutes that the Amarr had essentially refit themselves exactly to counter what we were bringing, and quickly called the retreat once more.

The plex was lost. (The battlereport is a bit mangled, and has a few later frig/dessy fights on it from later that night.)

We reshipped to destroyers, but were eventually forced out of the smaller plex due to the Amarr having gained numbers we just couldn't remotely match at that point.

The fleet split up at that point, with the main fleet still roaming around the area, killing stragglers and smaller Amarr groups --avoiding the large Amarr gang.

I jumped into fleet with the newest members of LNA --WEPOP. They are, as far as I can remember, the only corporation that has ever been explicitly invited to join the alliance. Most others were either founding members, or flew so long with us previously, joining was just a formality.

We roamed around the Kamela area, looking for small engagements, running plexes here and there hoping someone would come at us, and etc. Of all the pvp I've done in EVE, this kind of PVP is my favorite. No formal FC, and not even a formal engagement per say. We were all kind of soloing it, until we needed some help, or camping things in twos and threes. I got a couple solo kills, but nothing particularly significant.

I caught this guy jumping into Sosala. There was a lot of wartargets in sosala, which is kind of unusual, so I fully expected to be ganked at any minute, but he died, and no one came.

I killed this guy in a plex in Kamela. He was easy prey. Gravy.

I had another solo fight with one of those gift herons. He kept putting drones on me, so I switched to my drone overview and started killing them. At one point, I noticed that there were more drones then people are technically able to have in a ship --all attacking me. I switched back to my other overview, and apparently I was fighting three enemies, not one.

"Uh, guys...can you come help me?" Hopefully someone was around.

"We can't fit in that plex right now."

Ugh. I burned away and glared at the three Amarr for a minute, considering if I could try...nah. It would be obvious suicide. I'm all for trying something difficult, but I'm not going to start throwing ships away for nothing.

We killed quite a bit, just the five or six of us romping around. It was relaxing. Relaxing enough that I eventually started getting sleepy and called it a night.

Dal is still under Amarr control today. It will be a hard one to take, with it several jumps from our base.

And, the Amarr are going to put up one heck of a fight. Though, I wouldn't have it any other way.

The Non-Consensual Non Debate

2013-03-01T17:10:00.003-08:00

I was going to write a comments on Poetic's post today, but it got so long I decided to just make it a post of my own. You can read his original post here.

First, what is a sandbox?

Wikipedia defines a sandbox (in our context) as an "Open World [...] where a player can roam freely [...] and is given considerable freedom in choosing how or when to approach objectives."

Wikipedia further states that "in a true 'sandbox,' the player has tools to modify the world themselves and create how they play."

"The sandbox is a metaphor for real life. Nobody gets to go through life in a bubble. We are interacting with people every day, in some form or another, whether we want to or not. Interactions are inescapable. Like life, like EVE, in a sense."

"They want to play EVE as though it were a solo game. These are anti-sandbox people."

Actually, what is and is not sandbox behavior, in terms of game design, has nothing to do with player interactions. Minecraft is a true blue sandbox game whether you play multiplayer or solo. It changes nothing.

While it can be argued that more interaction creates more desirable gameplay, I do not think that you can redefine what 'sandbox' means, and then proclaim that people are anti-sandbox because they do not hold up to your version of it.

"what gets my goat are the people [...]who feel that they deserve their own little sandbox, and that they should be allowed to dictate all of their interactions with the rest of the playerbase."

Is not saying that people should be more social, in and of itself a dictation of their interactions with the rest of the playerbase?

To not be allowed to dictate our interactions is to be forced or guided, which is the opposite of sandbox gameplay.

"Let's be honest."

Okay. You champion non-consensual pvp, and yet you have chosen the most consensual pvp gameplay in EVE --Faction War. Not only do FW pilots have to actively sign up for a militia in order to engage in the consensual war, but due to the nature of FW plexes they can pick and choose their fights --running away if something threatening lands on their plex gate, and even determining what ship size they would prefer to fight by the size plex they choose to fight in.

You, as a Fweddit pilot, take it one step further by refusing to base in the warzone. Preferring your safe home in Egghlende to a warzone base that could potentially force you to fight to defend your assets.

You, are what people would call a hypocrite. The only non-consensual activity you really seem to want is that which you can inflict upon other people, while remaining in the safety of your own, very consensual situation.

Furthermore,

1. There is no such thing as non-consensual anything in EVE. It's a video game for goodness sake, and as a sandbox, no one is forcing you to do anything. There are consequences for actions, and risk associated with various gameplay. The real debate is not about this so-called 'non-consensual' pvp, or about CCP ruining the sandbox by making a 'pvp-free' zone.

The issue is one of risk vs. reward.

I think the anonymous commenter on Poe's post may have had it right when he said that Poe is fighting windmills with his obsessive dialog against CCP removing non-consensual pvp from the game.

2. This being said, I do not think CCP should create a 'pvp-free' zone, or make high-sec perfectly safe for miners. But, nor do I think they will ever do that.

It has been my experience over the past few years that CCP likes to solve problems by introducing new and interesting gameplay. Creating a pvp-free zone might appease a certain set of people, but it's ultimately a passive approach that offers nothing of real value to the game. I'm not sure it would be CCP's style...

3. While I'm pretty hard on Poe in this post, I agree with the 'sense' of what he's getting at. I don't want EVE to become a cartoon. I don't want it to become 'easier' or less dark, or have little safe zones. But I think we need to step beyond the vagueness of raging about non-consensual pvp and throwing around sandbox jargon to make our ideas seem more legitimate.

We need concrete ideas. Concrete reasons why specific solutions could be good or bad. What is a SPECIFIC idea for something that could help player retention, or make the game more interesting to new players?

If we can't do this then we just become the 'them' that Poetic talks about:

" ... they create nothing, they give nothing to the game, nobody even knows they exist, except for their complaining."

Fool Me Once

2013-02-25T09:45:00.001-08:00

It was a bit like the wild west in the Amarr/Minmatar warzone this weekend, with a larger number of neutral gangs floating around then what is usual. At one point, we went to engage one neutral group, then ended up engaging another. Then the Amarr showed up, then the first neutral gang came back, and then DNS blopsed on the whole thing to make it one glorious mess of a multi-way fight.

On Sunday, we got blopsed on by DNS again. Not that we didn't expect it. A DNS tech 3 cruiser sitting 15K off a gate in low-sec isn't obvious or anything, right? Most of us scattered, being in smaller ships. We shipped up quick and came back, but they took one look at what we had and dispersed themselves.

Apparently, however, we only wet their appetite. Not ten minutes later the same bait ship was once again sitting on the gate, this time on the Kourmonen side. We hadn't even gotten out of our battlecruisers and guardians yet.

So, we did what any self-respecting Faction War pilots would do. We flew over to their bait proteus and started vigorously shooting it.

It was an odd situation. We knew they were going to Black Ops on us. Duh. And they knew that we knew. And they knew what we had, since we had just dropped our BCs and guardians on them only minutes before. And we knew that they knew that too.

But there their bait proteus sat dying. His armor…slowly chipping away.

Finally he lit the cyno. I called it on coms. “Cyno up, Cyno up!” It was about time.

“Prepare to point any blackups that comes through that cyno. Put your drones on the stealth bombers.” Bahamut420 barked.

But, nothing.

“Uh….nothing is coming through the cyno?”

That awkward moment when you’re killing something that obviously thought he had backup and lights a cyno but no one comes to save him …and you’re wondering what sort of yelling is happening on their coms, because you know if it was you there would be a lot of yelling on coms at that moment….and your own fleet is kinda quiet for a second because everyone is thinking how much that would suck…

And then, local spike, and his backup arrives. First, it was just a few stealth bombers. And then, the redeemer arrives, and the rapier…then another Redeemer, who warps off almost instantly upon seeing what was waiting on the other side for him.

The proteus is almost dead, so we decided to finish him off before turning on the Redeemer. Stealth bombers are dying, and people grab points on the rapier.

And they all die in an epic blaze of a fire.

It was a rather entertaining conclusion to a very chaotic weekend. Hopefully we will continue seeing neutrals roaming around the warzone, as it adds a very interesting dimension to things. Warzones are a good place to find fights in low-sec, and with politics being what they are today, there’s little chance of opposing militias ganging up on neutrals. Though, don’t be surprised if all hell breaks loose. It is, after all, a warzone.

Not So Snipey Now

2013-02-15T14:45:00.000-08:00

I knew it was a bit like bringing a knife to a gunfight. Okay, so maybe more like a box cutter to a gunfight. But, I didn’t care. I wasn’t really in the mood to ship up. So I didn’t. Even for a fleet fight that would have been more practical to have a BC or a cruiser for.

I had just returned from Gallente/Caldari space. Me a couple guys had romped around up there, but things were pretty quiet. Except for the Caldari we killed. He wasn’t quiet at all. And I thought the Amarr could cry loudly….

I was flitting around in my Condor, peaking in on war target gangs and looking for interesting things I could take on by myself. A fleet was forming up to take on some other Amarr fleet in Kamela. I wasn’t particularly in the mood for a fleet fight, but I’d help. In my condor, of course.

The fight ended up breaking out on a small plex acceleration gate in Kamela. And, it was not good for us from the beginning. The fleet warped in with our logi at 50K, only the Amarr were at 50K. So, the logistics ships were in the middle of the Amarr fleet while the rest of our fleet was off a ways.

Next time, we should really probably scout.

I started buzzing around, looking for tackle and small things I could remove from the field, as well as looking at heavy hitters to put my tracking disruptors on. That was when I noticed an Amarrian Oracle who had arrived at range of the fight, preparing to snipe my fleet members.

Well, I would just have to take care of that. I knew that, depending on how he was fit, I could possibly instapop. I tried not to burn at him in a straight line as a precaution but he never even seemed to notice I was there, so focused he was on the fight happening 50K+ away from us.

I locked him quickly, and immediately activated my TDs, essentially removing his DPS from the fight. I got a point as I got close enough, and started a steady orbit. And, since I was there, I might as well shoot him, right?

To my surprise my little Condor actually started to hurt him pretty bad –and it was obvious that he was pretty much completely untanked. Also, his gang’s logistics were way too far away to assist him, though I wonder what sort of conversation they had on coms….

“Uh, guys? This condor is killing my battlecruiser…please come save me from this utmost shame?”

“Sorry dude, you’re too far away and we have a fight going on!”

An Amarr condor did come at me, and I switched damage to him. I thought he ran away, but when I checked my kills later, I noticed I had actually killed him. The guy hadn’t even completely fit his ship –not particularly the kind of backup the Oracle pilot was probably hoping for.

At any rate, the Oracle died around the time our FC called the bail order. We took a lot down with us, but warping our logi into the middle of their fleet and subsequently losing them all at the beginning of the fight had taken its toll.

Maybe I would have been more useful in a bigger ship. It probably would have died in a fire with everyone else. Or, perhaps my little condor saved someone by removing the Oracle’s effectiveness from the field.

I’ll never know.

I Tried to Save You...

2013-02-14T17:29:00.001-08:00

I was a particularly slow night, with a few people half-heartedly chasing a few Amarr around Huola local. One Amarr, a rather new pilot running around in a Drake, finally escaped to Amarr highsec via the Otelen gate.

So, we started to camp the gate, even though there was little chance he’d come back, or that other Amarr would choose that route.

With everyone already on the gate, Gritz1, one of our alliance directors, decided it would be an excellent time to bring in his neutral freighter.

Now, you probably think you know where this story is going. A bunch of pirates camping the gate, somewhat bored and irritable. A hostile drake on the other side, chilling in the safety of highsec. And a neutral freighter jumping into the mix. But, this story is far stranger than what might usually occur with such a concoction.

The Amarrian, seeing the neutral freighter about to jump into low-sec, quickly started to scream in local that there was danger ahead.

“Do not jump, there is a pirate camp on the other side! Don’t JUMP! DON’T JUMP!!!!”

Gritz1’s alt, of course, jumped anyway, and his freighter was soon away due to the plentiful webs available on the other side. And, it could have been the uneventful end to an uneventful story.

But there was evil in Gritz1’s heart, and a twinkle in his eye.

With his neutral alt, he starts a private conversation with the Amarrian, who was still chilling in his drake on the other side.

“You were so right, I should have listened! PLEASE, can you help me?!”

Of course, the Amarr demanded ISK. What’s his help worth, anyway?

“I’ll pay you whatever you want just help me please! They’re going to blow up my freighter!! Hurry!!!”

So, the Amarrian jumps back into Huola –directly into the arms of the flashy Minmatar gang on the other side who make short work of his drake.

Still not realizing his error, the pilot apologized to Gritz1’s alt.

“Sorry, I tried to save you….”

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I Fly Spaceships

2013-02-12T15:59:00.000-08:00

I started the evening by doing something I rarely do, and then convincing my alliance mates who were online to do it with me --join a general militia fleet. We were in for a rare treat.

Polska, apparently, leads what he calls a 'MACO' fleet every Monday evening, open to anyone who wants to join. He is an interesting individual, but for all his faults, cannot be called risk averse. It is the risk averse FCs I detest the most --the ones that really waste your time. You prepare too much, take too much time beating around the bush of a fight usually to end in you not getting one at all.

Not this fight. Our first orders were to attack, in our thrashers, (many tech 1 fit) a tech 2/tech 3/logi gang Pandemic Legion had just brought into Auga.

I, too, scratched my head at this. And, I admit that I burned my ship off gate and watched the 'fight' in horrific fascination. PL also seemed a bit confused. Imagine a well trained battalion of knights, marching through the forest in full battle regalia only to be attacked by a small mob of bunny rabbits.
And, you have a pretty good idea of what the fight looked like.

After wards, after the people in pods reshipped, we engaged Fweddit a couple times, first on their station in Egghelende, and then on our station in Huola.

I admit, I'm not a 'fleet' girl, nor are my alliance mates. I like less organized, small-gang stuff. So, it was later when the real fun began. We skirmish a lot in Kamela with some of the smaller Amarr groups that live there. Sometimes, the evening is spent fighting in really tiny frigate groups with maybe no more than 4-5 on field on each side at a time. Other nights, things escalate into a larger, more organized engagement.

We played around with Predator Elite's gang for at least an hour before things began to heat up. We reshipped a half dozen times, sometimes shipping down into frigates to go into a plex, or shipping up to cruisers to attack them on a gate somewhere.

At one point, people on Teamspeak spontaneously broke out into 'pirate' talk. Or, maybe that's what it was? Everyone was talking in weird accents and slang. And then, it stopped a few minutes later. No one really laughed about it, and it was not discussed --everyone continued as if nothing had happened. It was very strange, and another reminder that I don't fly with the most sane people in EVE. (Nor the most sober!)

Things escalated a bit more when the fight moved to the Kourmonen gate, as we are not tied down with plex restrictions there. We brought some battlecruisers as did they. I can't tell you how good it was to fly a battlecruiser again!

Our first major kill was a macherial, and they started coming pretty heavy after that. It was obvious they were itching for a good brawl. Not a huge fleet brawl, mind you. Both sides had a dozen pilots on field, or less. So it was going to be a good old fashioned small-gang brawl --just in bigger ships.

We reshipped to battleships, BCs, and two guardians. Our scout reported that they had three guardians, and were shipping into BCs and tech 3 cruisers.

"Will we even be able to break that?"

"Probably not."

We took the fight anyway, and an all out bloodbath began on the Kourmonen gate in Kamela. Someone had sensor dampeners and was able to dampen one of their guardians down to uselessness. I had some ECM drones, as did a few others, and we must have gotten some successful cycles off for their guardians couldn't keep up the reps.

We took down their harbingers first, and then switched to the Megathron. It melted into a pile of scrap metal.
It was then that people started to realize we were actually doing well --we were actually breaking their tanks. Bahamut started yelling for people to get points on everything, and we started killing guardians. Two exploded, and we were so focused on pointing up Tech 3s, that the third one managed to sneak out in structure.

We killed both of Predator Elite's tech 3 cruisers --his proteus and his legion. (He was dual boxing.) I think another tech 3 managed to deagress and get through the gate, and several other ships from their fleet got away. Overall, we killed 2 BCs, a BS, a Comet, 2 guardians, and 2 Tech 3 cruisers. Several billion ISK in loot dropped from the engagement.

But the real kicker, was that we didn't lose a single pilot. Our two Guardian pilots were able to keep everyone up --one of them said that he didn't think anyone dropped below 80% armor at any time.

It was a great fight, and even the Amarr GFed in local afterwards. There were no hot drops, no batphones, and neither side brought overwhelming force. Just a good, old fashioned small-gang brawl. Honestly, I'm not really sure how we did it without losing anyone. Something must have gone terribly wrong on their end. Or, our guardian pilots must have mad skillz.

Either way, the battlereport from the evening's shenanigans (both this fight and the others) is here. Not a bad night at all.

We All Fall Down

2013-02-11T16:09:00.001-08:00

Late Night Alliance suffered massive, catastrophic losses this weekend, as the Amarr pulled together, in an amazing feat of coordination and skill, two large gangs numbering at over 100 total Amarr pilots.

A small KPP POS and an IFW POCO were lost, as LNA could not pull together enough friends to defend their valuable assets.

"I don't know what we're going to do." said KPPer Galdornae, after the POS was destroyed. "We had a lot riding on that POS. I may have to sell one of the faction mods from my vindicator to compensate for what we lost. Or worse, run a couple plexes. It's a painful prospect..."

The small Minmatar structure sported several small guns as well as a warp disruption battery, and a stasis webification battery. It was the only KPP POS in existence, and sources say that Manos Kdo, KPP's CEO, was disheartened at the loss enough to suggest the dissolution of the corporation.

Feyona, respected as being one of KPP's more elite small gang and solo pvpers, promptly joined TEST alliance after the incident. "I just want to go where I can get more of a challenge, pvp wise. Moving from LNA to TEST was an obvious choice." he said, when asked about his abrupt move.

Several Amarr also commented on the evening's events:

"We came for a fight." said highly respected Amarrian FC, Almity, via Twitter. Almity is greatly feared among the Minmatar, due to his successful, high-risk fleet strategies. "Once, he brought enough blackbirds to ECM our entire fleet." commented one Minmatar. "Blackbirds are one of the most top primaried ships in the game --it takes a lot of guts to put your fleet members in danger like that."

Also, last week, Almity is known for having published this detailed, informative expose on Late Night Alliance showing some startling insight into the alliance. " I believe the problem boils down to elitists within the Minmatar Militia." he claims. He goes on to detail LNA's failure at facilitating friendships within the militia, and how this is leading to their ultimate downfall.

Joni Hariere, an Amarr pilot, also weighed in on the events of the evening, expressing a vivid first-hand account of the Minmatar's response to the destruction of their assets: "... the Minmatar were shaking inside station..." he explained. Analysts visiting the station after wards calculated that the cumulative pressure of the trembling Minmatar, did indeed shift the structure out of its normal orbit by a fraction of a degree.

"It was terrifying...so many hostiles in local, and nothing we could do. All of our 'friends' turned their backs on us, --refusing to help us in our dire time of need. Honestly, I'm not sure what's going to happen next. Discussions are underway among alliance leadership deciding whether it's viable to even keep our doors open. This might be the end of Late Night as we know it." said LNA director Gritz1 in an exclusive interview.

Bahamut420, who almost never is available for questioning, was unusually candid with us when asking him about Late Night's issues and their more recent losses. "We really might have to shut the front door..." he said in a defeated tone.

We attempted to contact Hans Jagerblitzen, but kept getting told that he was unavailable for commenting.

However, sources tell us that several high ranking officials in the Minmatar Republic have been working on a technical document detailing their concerns over Faction War mechanics. They will be delivering the document to Jagerblitzen within the week. The document is estimated to be well over a hundred pages long.

"It is our belief that the sudden fall of the warzone, and our inability to come back to where we once stood so easily, is sure indication that the mechanics are broken. We can't fight because we can't make money, and the pressure of the winner snowballs out of our control. The proof is irrefutable." said one Minmatar official working on the document, who asked to remain anonymous.

"Hopefully, this document will make the CSM, and CCP more ware of our concerns. Hopefully, they will see that the mechanics are unbalanced toward the Amarr and that they will make the appropriate adjustments to facilitate balance in the warzone."

Ashes, Ashes

2013-02-09T14:29:00.001-08:00

I logged on last night to hear that the Amarr were amassing a huge fleet, supposedly coming to Huola to take out a POCO they had put into reinforced the day before. They ended up bringing around 65, which was more than double the amount we could pull together--I believe we almost got 20 in fleet at one point, including booster alts and scouts. And, probably half of those weren't even Late Night. Early evening is not a really good time zone for us. (We didn't choose the name 'Late Night' because it sounds cool...lol)

We attempted a drive by shooting, which didn't work out so well when their small tackle quickly burned to us and managed to snag a few of our tier 3 BCs--even with us aligned. Not to mention that the POCO died long before we even got into our ships and got everything in the same system. So we promptly docked up and let them romp around a bit. They put the KPP pos into reinforced, and I believe another POCO, both of which come out mid afternoon on Sunday.

With not a whole lot to be done, and small gang pvp not looking very promising, I clone jumped back to Gallente space and jumped into a QCATs fleet. They had just gotten done with a few fleet fights themselves, so were mostly running around solo, looking for things to kill and etc. It was just the sort of thing I love,--nothing particularly organized, just people looking to tackle something and calling people over to their system if they find something interesting. Though, doing this in an area you're unfamiliar with is considerably more difficult. We got quite a few kills just flitting here and there.

I did find out that MinutemanKirk, QCATs diplomat, can do one of the best Gollum (Lord of the Rings) impressions I've ever heard. I don't really know how it started or why the conversation turned that direction, but he did a "my precious" impression that had us all giggling a bit. Then, someone piped up that he should FC a fleet using that voice, to which he started calling mock primaries --sounding exactly like Gollum. I got to laughing so hard I almost peed myself.

Things slowly quieted as the night wore on, and things seemed to be picking up in LNA, so I jumped back on Minmatar coms, and started to burn back to Huola in my condor. Apparently, they were dusting off the battleships, and preparing for a BS brawl --something that doesn't happen very often at all. In fact, I can't think of the last time we had a good battleship brawl.

Both sides had logistics, and both sides had at least one falcon. I jumped into the fight in my condor, since I was late to the party, and started tracking disrupting things, before dying to some small thing they had on field. I ran back and got a griffin, since there were tackly things between me and the fight making a trip back with a BS a little difficult, and filled up the mids with Amarr jammers. Oddly, I'm not sure I got a single jam off. Apparently I fail at ECM.

At any rate, we ended up having two main engagements with Predator Elite's gang. We killed two faction BSes, an Abaddon, and another BS, and only lost two ships, the most expensive of which was Bahamut's Augoror. Not a bad trade at all.

Later, we went to camp the Auga/Sisiede gate in tornadoes. I was a bit late, again, having to run some errands first, and as I jumped through to Auga from Kourm, I noticed a neutral Charon sitting there.

"Uh, guys....a Charon on the Kourm/Auga gate?"

"What?!"

Apparently someone set their autopilot wrong, though how he managed to get through to the Auga/Kourm gate without getting killed is beyond me.

Needless to say his freighter died in a fire as everyone rushed from the gate they were camping to gank it. And, it ended up being a good conclusion to the evening. As most explosions usually are.

Ring Around the Rosie

2013-02-08T10:38:00.004-08:00

“How do I tell the logi that I don’t need any more armor?”
-General Gallente Militia

Last night, after dealing with some alliance shop stuff, I jumped into a fast frigate and headed to Gallente space for a much needed break from the Amarr/Minmatar warzone. I had been chatting with some Gallente friends, and was invited on coms, given a fleet invite, as well as access to buying some fit ships their corporation had lying around.

It was a general militia fleet, though in all honesty, having rarely flown with the Gallente, I wouldn’t know the difference. All the names and voices are unfamiliar to me.

At any rate, I laughed really hard when one of them, at one point, asked the question in fleet, “How do I tell the logi pilots that I don’t need any more armor?”

Sometimes, after flying with truly new players, I feel like older players are completely unqualified to even remotely begin talking about new player experience. It’s a subject that interests me a bit, and I’ve read various blog posts and ideas about how to make things more interesting to new players. But, truly, they think on a completely different wavelength then we do. And once you leave that wavelength, I’m not sure there’s really any going back…or really any sort of ‘remembering.’

I admit, I thought about trolling him. “Well, you need to tell them right away, otherwise you will receive too much armor and your ship will explode!”

But I didn’t. I just assured him the logi pilots would know, and he didn’t have to worry about a thing.
The Gallente FC was pretty patient for the most part, though I could detect a hint of annoyance here and there when people had difficulties following simple instructions. At one point, people were going squirrel on a kitey caracal we had no hope of catching. The FC told us all just to return the gate so we could move on. Some of the frigate pilots didn’t return to the gate.

“Fine. Stay out there and die. Everyone else, jump.”
Sometimes, people need to learn the hard way.

We chased a few things and reshipped here and there throughout the evening. It’s odd really, the fleet seemed to made up mostly of Gallente ships. Algoses…Vexors when we were running cruisers. When I fly with LNA, we tend to fly a lot of Minmatar ships –SFIs, thrashers, etc. Now, I know neither group is can remotely be called role players, and it may be just coincidence, though I still find it kind of curious….

I ended up leaving a jump clone out there, and plan to do a lot more roaming around Gallente/Caldari space. It seems like even solo roaming might have some possibilities.

Security Status

2013-02-07T10:02:00.000-08:00

Also posted on the EVE Online Forums here.

The Plan

Crime

Security Status is no longer percentage based, but ticks up and down in discrete amounts.

Performing a criminally flagged act will instantly drop you 1 point of security status
Performing a suspect flagged act will instantly drop you 0.1 point of security status

Sec should be straightforward and intuitive. Get rid of the four digit decimals, the rounding issues, and the percentages that make it hard to see how much you will get punished for various actions.

Punishment

CONCORD care about criminals. The Faction Police care about people with low Faction standings.

The speed in which CONCORD responds to a situation is based on the security level of the system AND the security status of the individual performing the crime.
The Faction Police only shoot enemies to their Faction.

The primary point of locking criminals out of highsec is achieved –and more accurately and efficiently so. Consequences for crimes will directly impact the ability to further commit more crimes.

However, the problems that arise from locking players from high-sec are eliminated. Players can freely visit trade hubs, (though they still bear the risk of being shot by players since they are still perma-flashy) and can freely shoot legal targets in high-sec, such as wartargets. This will open the door on a vast amount of legitimate consensual pvp that is currently being deterred due to risk via NPCs.

Regaining Security Status

There’s no perfect way to do this, so I settled on solving one key issue:

Players shouldn’t have to travel to null-sec to pay for crimes committed in low-sec and high-sec.

Furthermore, I think that a player regaining security status is an opportunity for unique, interesting, and fun gameplay. While I’m not explicitly against ‘tags for sec’ or other such notions, I think we can do much more.

How about:

Level-less CONCORD agents scattered, in-space, throughout low-sec and high-sec. These agents would offer missions, each of which give a player 0.1 security status.

The missions would be similar to FW missions in that they pop a public beacon when opened, are relatively easy, and require some traveling
Agent locations would be prime places for players to ‘camp’ –both other pirates and anti-pirates.
Players could hunt pirates inside the public missions
Regaining sec may incur pvp in and of itself, as opposed to mindless grinding in null-sec

Pockets Full of Posies

2013-02-05T16:00:00.000-08:00

Last night, a member of LNA found a wormhole directly connecting the Amarr/Minmatar and Gallente/Caldari warzone. So, we went on a roam.

It was a bit hilarious listening to people try to pronounce the system names on coms. A Gallentean would probably fall out of his chair from laughing at us.

We had a dozen or so pilots, mostly in cruisers –a mixture of caracals, stabber fleets, and hodge podge. And the Caldari response to use was kind of funny. When they weren’t completely deer in the headlights, they seemed somewhat confused by our presence. They knew we were enemies to kill, but such a strange new enemy! At times I felt like a wild, exotic animal wandering far outside my natural habitat and being stared at by dozens of hostile locals.

“Uh…there’s a dominix at this small plex gate?”

That was odd, and we immediately assumed it was bait. Of course, having fought the Amarr for so long, we assume that their Caldari counterparts would more or less behave as them. A dominix at a small plex gate was bait. They had another fleet nearby. Perhaps even in system, judging by local.

“What else is on scan?”

“It looks like most of the rest of the Caldari in here are in the plex –lots of destroyers and small stuff.”
“What the heck, point the dominix! Everyone jump and warp to that gate. Let’s kill it…”

Lesson number one: the Caldari are not the Amarr. While a dominix on a plex gate in our territory might be the prelude to a very crafty, and unoriginal trap, a Caldari dominix on a gate might just be a silly dominix pilot –or perhaps a very confused pilot.

“No really guys, it won’t let me into the plex…”

At any rate, whether silly or confused, he was soon dead. But not before his friends tried to save him. The ones that didn’t run away died also, though they did take a couple of us with them.

Just as the fighting was about over, the Gallente showed up. Now, I failed to mention that we began our little excursion by awoxing one of them in a plex. Not one of the 'blue' ones mind you, just some random dude who was very upset about it.

"I'm going to report you!" he threatened in local. We wondered to whom? Hopefully people who would come and try to kill us!

No...just his alliance mates. An alliance I had never heard of. They yelled threats and called us out in local from the safety of their stations as we passed by in local. Three or four jumps worth.

"Late Night Alliance kills blues! What do you have to say for yourselves?" <<link alliance name in local over and over>>

Anyway, the Gallente who showed up here were blues. They gave us some reps, told us where the nearest bathrooms were. That sort of thing. They were nice. Probably a bit cranky we just killed all their Caldari targets --I would have been grumpy about that. But they didn't seem very grumpy. Just chill.

We were tired at that point and it was hitting midnight, so we decided to head back. But that was easier said than done. There was a large gang between us and the system our ride home was in. (The wormhole)

"They're pointing me." Rozikki said.

They had several cynabals, a loki, some cruisers, and random other stuff.

"What the heck...everyone warp to the gate."

We nuked their Thorax, then went for their Loki. He started dying fast and ran way even faster. It seemed like chaos after that --perhaps he was their FC?

We chased down cynabals that lets us scram them (derp?) and had a merry time of it bagging a few high ticket kills before taking the wormhole back home.

The full battle report of our evening is here.

I once tweeted that LNA is like a box of chocolates. It's one of the things I love --you never really know what we're going to do next. One night, we'll be having a huge epic battle with the Amarr, the next, we'll be gate camping in nullsec with bubbles, and yet the next we're hitting up a wormhole and roaming around Gallente space. (Or Goon space as they did a few nights ago.)

Which kind of leads me to another thing I wanted to touch on briefly.

Poetic Stanziel and Fweddit seem completely obsessed with the idea that we don't leave Huola. We actually joke ourselves over our laziness (though I can't tell these days if we're actually joking about ourselves or mocking them...)

They smack us in local, and mention it quite a bit actually. "LNA? Out of Huola? What a sight!"

It amuses me a bit, as well as my alliance mates, though I was somewhat confused by their sudden fascination with the subject. I came to two primary conclusions:

First, they don't really understand what they're smacking because they're relatively new to FW in the grand scheme of things. You see, Huola was once the primary Amarr militia base. Until we stole it from them and forced them out. (BEFORE, mind you, any station lock out gimmicks. LNA don't need no station lockout to kick the Amarr out of their home.)

So Huola is more or less a badge of honor, and smacking at us for living and operating there is basically smacking us for being awesome.

Secondly, they're probably pushing the whole 'LNA are dumb for not leaving Huola" thing to improve their own morale. And I totally understand and get it. They've tried to take Huola from us, and failed. They've had 'operations' and such. They just can't take the dumb system and it must be frustrating. So, instead of making Huola seem like this big oober thing they can't do --they downplay it, and take what is our badge of honor and try to turn it into a badge of dishonor.

Or they're just a bunch of brainwashed, blithering idiots...which I'm sure I could also make a case for, but I get into trouble going down such roads so I should probably just shut up at this point.

I have dinner to make, and 21 kills to get to knock Blackbeard off the top of the killboard position he stole from me. Things to do...people to kill...

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Shoot More, Think Less

2013-02-04T14:59:00.000-08:00

Faction War pilots think way too much about fights these days.

Back when I was in the Amarr, I flew under this crazy FC named Dake Darkstalker, who’s primary MO was to jump at opportunities without all the planning, discussion, and preparation you tend to see nowadays. He once told us, “shoot first, ask questions later.” And that was how we rolled.

Nine times out of ten it worked. You learned to keep up or get left behind, and at one point, our gangs were running so well together that we could respond to a situation at the drop of a hat. There was none of this ‘well, I don’t have the ship you’re asking for.’ Or, ‘can we get a scout on the enemy for a better count?’ or ‘should we bring ECM? I think they might have ECM…maybe we need more people, let’s try to get more people.”

You were at the location specified in the ship specified, or you were liable to miss the fight.

I was reading this post by Amarrian FC Almity, who relays his perspective on a recent Amarr/Minmatar engagement. I admit I laughed a little at the post. People who bring four blackbirds to take on a small gang are not looking for a good fight, no matter how they dress it up.

But I’m not really even interested in talking about the fight particularly, and I don’t care that they brought ECM or significantly more numbers, or yadda yadda yadda. What interested me most was his description of the fact that he’s risk averse.

Oh, he didn’t call it risk adverse. He said something about being a smart FC, and making his people trust him, and something about ships not being cheap. Etc. etc. etc. In other words, he doesn’t want to die and he doesn’t want to make other people die. Which is essentially the fundamental definition of being risk averse…

And it’s so common, both in the Minmatar and the Amarr. We think a little too much. We ask a few too many questions, and by the time we’re ‘ready’ the enemy is perfectly setup, or on their way home because you brought too much.

I miss the days of shooting more and thinking less. But it’s a hard habit to get back. Even out solo pvping, I find myself asking way too many questions. “Can I take on a Comet with my Condor? What are the Comet’s resists? What ammo type should I be using? Are his friends in local going to gank me? “

And then I kick myself. I’m in a cheap ass condor. Who cares? It’s worth a try. Can a condor take on a Comet? Can a condor take on an assault frigate? Can a condor take on an Algos….or a Talos? I guess if I instapop I’ll know the answer.

But , if I don’t try, then the answer will only ever be ‘no.’

Dust in the Wind

2013-02-01T13:25:00.000-08:00

“How is the war going on the ground?”

I had just logged on and was somewhat puzzled by the question posted by our European time zone FC. Until a big, booming voice I did not recognize piped up to explain that something was happening in one of the districts of the local planet.

I was quickly brought up to speed. Kamela, a system we have been pushing for several days, was vulnerable. EVE players had gotten it very contested, and several wins by Dust 514 Minmatar pilots on the ground had reduced the number of VP needed to take it, ultimately shoving it into a vulnerable state.

The catch was that the I-HUB was bugged--not allowing us to target it, and flip the system. EVE pilots were attempting to run more plexes, hoping that would ‘nudge’ it so to speak, and get it to unlock for us. But, the plan was not working.

It was quickly turning from late night to early morning for the Euros, so the fleet was handed off to the US TZ –primarily Late Night Alliance. And thus began one of the bloodiest nights in the Amarr-Minmatar conflict.

The I-HUB remained bugged for several hours. At one point, a member of CCP was spotted in local, probably trying to get more information on what the issue was.

Unfortunately, as time progressed, the Dust 514 Minmatar started to lose ground. Oddly, late into the evening, a cheer rose up when the system jumped from vulnerable to 96% contested. The Minmatar were hoping that we could now plex it back the rest of the way, and that the I-HUB would potentially no longer be bugged.

But, it was going to be easier said than done. The Amarr were bringing more and more reinforcements, and several primary hostile USTZ groups had to be contended with.

Thankfully, we had some allies of our own. We noticed another Minmatar fleet running around local and quickly started to coordinate with them.

I wish I could tell you about each engagement, but there were so many they all blur together. We won some, and we lost some. We clashed with a large cruiser gang, taking many of them down before the order came to bail. We obliterated a frigate and destroyer gang, and small engagements started cropping up on the outside of plex gates. At one point, the Amarr’s station was camped. A small contingent even jumped into nearby highsec, tearing through an Amarr Typhoon that was sitting on the gate.

Late into the evening, a glance at Dotlan maps showed Kamela as the most dangerous system in EVE –with well over 500 kills within a three hour period.

We did have periods where things were quieter –as we waited for more plexes to spawn and whatnot. During these times we chatted with a Dust 514 member who was hanging out in our Teamspeak channel.

Apparently, he had been hired by a large Dust corporation to essentially serve as a consultant, or diplomat of sorts to coordinate with EVE players. Members of his Dust corporation were eager to coordinate in such a way that would provide meaningful for their EVE militia counterparts.

“When this is over, just give us the next target. “

He seemed very interested in our end of things, and admitted he was amused by how we were with each other on coms. Apparently, on infantry coms, they were all business. Our jovial chatter, teasing and trolling each other, mixed with our ‘battle coms’ and intense target calling and etc. seemed to amuse him somewhat. One Late Nighter explained that we had been flying with each other for years…so was not surprised we sounded like a dysfunctional family of sorts.

It will be interesting to see how things progress going forward…especially with the Dust/Eve connection. The relationships, community, and politics of EVE make it a very complicated place, and I think what I witnessed between EVE and Dust 514 players coordinating last night was merely the beginning of a whole new level of gameplay.