Rokh Rules!

I'm so glad I chose to go for the Rokh instead of the Raven. Its so much fun.

The Insisto Oblivium II is working really good right now in missions, better than the original Insisto Oblivium (may it rest in peace). There are several reasons for that:
1) My Shield skills are improved so I'm getting more resistances out of my invulnerability field.
2) Tech 2 drones and levels of Drone Interfacing (along with a 5th drone) make them far more deadly.
3) While the 350s give less overall damage and range, they are better for nailing the small stuff which is often 3/4 of the battle.

I invested in an EM resist rig last night so that my base resists are all about 45% or higher and with the invulnerability field on I get awesome all-round defence.

Crush All Marines!

Last Friday's battle saw another space marine player line up and get knocked down, this time Max (aka Lostknight) and his Phoenix Marines. Once again I chased a squad off the table with a tank shocking wave serpent, this time Assault marines. Really quite sad.

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In other news, i.e. Eve news, I left No Quarter and moved into KODA. In order to run missions for raising ISK, Standings, and Salvage parts I bought a new Rokh instead of Raven and proceeded to outfit it.

I had the debate over whether to go with the 425mm rails or the 350s. The 425s have greater range and damage, but the 350s have increased rate of fire and tracking so while the 425s can reach out and hurt someone farther, the 350s can handle things in closer with almost the same amount of damage. In addition the 350s are much easier to fit and cost half as much for the best named. So I bought eight 350mm rails (Prototype Gauss) and gave that a try. So far in two missions I like it.

Wham Bam Thank you Ma'am.

Today was Knock-Off-Skills day for both Kirith and Derranna. Basically I had built up a lot of skills that were either level 1 or just started and I whipped through a lot to "grab the low hanging fruit" so to speak. For Derranna it was a necessity as her plan had only one skill longer than 45 minutes on it available for training, so she got the first levels of Clarity and Focus and Minmatar Industrial, as well as side show into Cybernetics and social skills. Kirith on the other hand cleaned up a drone and missile skill, and then waltzed through a bunch of shield compensation skills I've been avoiding.

Haven't had much time at playing last night due to wedding anniversary, but I'm hoping to log some decent time this weekend.

I'm Back!

Wow, no updates since the 18th? Well, I was gone all weekend with my wife to Toronto to celebrate our wedding anniversary and then excepting Monday evening I've had no real time to do anything in Eve due to being busy. Fortunately things appear to be getting back under control.

Still, the great thing about Eve is that things can happen even if you don't get online much.

My T2 sales tanked this past week as the market price dropped quite a bit and my stock stopped moving. Kinda sucks. I'm trying to sell some in another region where volume moves slower but prices are still high, but otherwise I will sit on the stock and see if prices rebound. If not, I'll chop my profits and get what ISK I can.

I sold my research assistant for a cool 300 million ISK that I'm not sure how to use yet. Is a new Rokh in my future? We'll have to see.

Skill-wise, I've made great progress getting my missile and drone skills increases so that they both do more damage, and I can use T2 Caldari light and medium drones. Still got work to do in the shields and exploration area, and I want to get into Interceptors soon too. Maybe thrown on Evasive Maneuvering V on today. Its a nine day skill that will only get shorter by training it.

A More Sanguine View of Eve Life

I'm pretty much gotten over the loss of the Raven. While losing 100 million+ for the ship and the clone with decent implants, it was still cheaper than losing the Rokh was. *shudder* PLus I got insurance payout which means my losses totaled around 50-60 million. Nasty but not devastating.

I've decided to get back on the horse and go back out to 0.0 and rat in the Drake. After all, it was not too bad and after reviewing my skills I found there was two skills (Guided Missile Precision and Warhead Upgrades) that I had access to that would improve my damage output. Plus my drone skills are increasing right now and should cause more damage as well.
Rebuild the wallet and think about the future for Kirith in terms of what ships to fly for PvP and such.

On the other hand, my T2 production is working very well and making lots of money. If it keeps up this well for a couple months I'll make enough money to own a couple battleships.

Gah, Screwed Again

lost the Raven last night trying to sneak it into 0.0. Stupid gate camps.

I came down from 0.0 in a Merlin and saw the route was currently clear. I got to Empire, got the battleship, but by the time I got to the 0.0 gate a camp was up and I was not good enough to squeeze through. Although the loss was not as great as the infamous destruction of the Rokh at the hands of NPCs, it still stings. I'm now back in the poorhouse should I decide to buy a new battleship.

I'm considering options, but right now I think I will simply get enough supplies to build some more Invul shields and get them on the market. At least that project is making great money.

Things Are Good

Invention working? Yes, very nicely.

Manufacturing T2 mods? Yep, and selling them at obscene profit.

Wallet climbing out of doldrums. Slowly but surely.

Skills accumulating? We are entering the end phase of the drone research and preparing a new round of self improvement focusing on shields and missiles (ratting FTW!).

All in all its coming together.

Money is Rolling In

Well, sort of.

I am definitely making money ratting in 0.0 although not as fast as I would like, but the better source of income is coming from the growing T2 manufacturing division of KODA. I sold 10 T2 Invulnerability Shields for healthy profit and I plan to produce another batch tonight. I paid out dividends to the investors (myself being the largest) and each share got 50,000 ISK. Although the initial investment was 1,000,000 ISK per share, its only the first and I hope to make it profitable for my shareholders eventually.

Eldar drive over Marines

As I stood across the table looking at 52 marines and two whirlwinds and two landspeeders, I was struck with the thought that I should just kneecap Paul (Fazzadien) and declare victory while he was writhing on the floor in pain. But as I was pulling the crowbar out from my bag the local blackshirt Matt gave me a scowl and indicated that such crowbar induced injuries could be grounds for being banned from the Bunker.

Hey man, I do the banning, I don't get banned. But in the interest of not causing a fuss for the poor deluded manager, I opted to play the game.

Some Pictures!

We played a Recon mission, but we might as well did Engage and Destroy because that was almost what the end result was similar to. He drove 32 marines into the centre of the board and I threw everything I had in reserve at him. In the end my guardians and scorpions sacrificed themselves to tie up the assault marines and chaplain while the wave serpents, vypers, and jetbikes chased the Force Commander and one tactical squad off the table while the Dark Reapers and Pathfinders murderized the other two squads.

The landspeeders were mostly ineffective against the wave serpent rush and the whirlwinds were held up by escalation to arrive too late and have only the Dark Reapers with their 3+ armour as decent targets. The remnant of one tactical squad took a desperation shot with a rapid fire plasma gun at the advancing Fire Prism and brought it down late in the game, an impressive feat. But it was too little too late as the game ended and a good portion of the Eldar army still survived.

In the end, my victory was mostly due to some serious luck. Lucky that escalation kept the whirlwinds out of the game until turn 3. Lucky that the Scorpions held up the assault marines despite losing 5 models on the charge when I failed five out of six 3+ saves. Lucky that the Force Commander failed a tank shock leadership test and that allowed me to run them off the table.

In the end, it was not a runaway victory and one of two bounces in Paul's fvour could have seen a vastly different result. Awesome game, and I look forward to the rematch someday.

Hey you... DIE!

So last night I finally got to go out and rat. I was sure looking forward to the big bucks, yessiree.

First belt I warp to, I find two cruisers and two battleships. Nice. Bounty on each BS is 1.25 mil. Sweet! I engage and wipe out the cruisers easily, then take on the first BS.

Hmmm... slowly going down. Ok, this could take a while.

Wait, what? He boosted! Crap, hope he doesn't do that too often.

Jammed again! Frack!

Ok two thirds shields gone but I have to reload. Ah crap, he's boosted back to one third!

It quickly became apparent that my DPS was insufficient to break his tank. Fortunately there was a corp mate in the system ratting in a raven and he let me join him for the rest of my time online. Later on I reworked my setup removing two assault launchers I had on for frigs and putting on two more heavy launchers, which also forced me to downgrade one shield extender. This morning I went out and found an identical spawn to the one above and tried my luck again.

I was successful. Barely. Took longer than I would like but was doable and got decent loot out of it. I'm going to tweak the setup a bit more and train up a couple missile skills that help with DPS, but eventually I'm going to have to get a battleship up in 0.0 to do real ratting.

Letting Go Of The Life Line

Last night I logged in, found out my old mentor was in system with me and was heading out to 0.0 space, and I joined him. Earlier in the day it was no sure thing.

I spent a lot of the previous 24 hours debating the merits and demerits of going out to deep 0.0. Yes, ratting would be great money, a section of space protected by allies, corp bonding etc. But the downsides were significant: long route through dangerous space to 0.0 base, long way from any NPC stations, no way to jump clone back to empire, difficult to get back, living out of cans... it was all very different from the life I was used to, and very intimidating.

At one point I was strongly considering changing my mind and going solo into my own destiny. But I realized it was all based in fear of the unknown. Fear of trying something new. So I logged on, found my friend, and fit some warp stabs and a cloak.

The trip out to the 0.0 base took a while but fortunately we had a scout to lead the way and warn us when danger approached. It took over an hour to get everything ready and get through the pipe, but we did it and I'm now safely in deep space 0.0, ready to kill rats until my eyes bleed or I have enough cash for a shiny new rokh.

Endings and Beginnings

How things change.

Where once I proudly proclaimed "Strife for Life!" this weekend I traded in my Lieutenant stripes for a new corporation called No Quarter.

NoQ is much bigger than IPORC or Strife ever got to, and its quite intimidating meeting all these people at once and going through all the info of an established group and getting the hang of where to go and how to be. Heck, they already have some people doing invention and running industry so my strengths are no unique or interesting here. That being said, I do bring my unique brand of organizing so I'll keep my eyes open for any opportunities to step up and show my skills.

Speaking of invention, I completed three more attempts this weekend and picked up two more BPCs, this time with 12 runs because I used some decryptors. I also built 10 T2 Invul fields from the first BPC that I need to sell.

Finally, the dismantling of the POS was started Sunday morning and all that is left is the tower itself which I need 30 minutes to do. I'll try and accomplish that tonight maybe.

Just when I was Getting the Hang of It

It looks like our corp is merging with another larger corp based in 0.0. This is at once very exciting and a little intimidating. I really just got organized and now another upheaval.

I debated cutting lose and going my own way for a while, but this game is all about socializing while having fun so I decided to give it a whirl. I won't move everything to the 0.0 base though, I'm only taking my Drake for starters to see how it works out.

Meanwhile, I've got my second R&D agent going and the dismantling of the POS has begun.

In other news, for the first time in weeks I picked up the paint brush Wednesday and Thursday night and got the base coats of the wraithbone on the ten Dire Avengers. Brown wash should be applied this weekend.

Getting Organized

Last few Eve sessions have been about getting re-organized. Moving stuff around, selling old stuff, getting new batteship, getting new research agents, etc. Its all coming together:

- Raven is ready with Cruise Missiles
- Will have Research Project Management for second R&D agent today
- Have skills to build from T2 BPC
- Bought materials for building
- Moved jump clones to necessary systems

All I have left is the dismantling of the POS and to actually start building and more invention. Its all good baby.