SO much for being torn

Remember my last post? About how I was torn between joining my friends for some random ganks and sticking with Coreli? Well, a whole lot of worry over nothing because Coreli annouced this evening its disbanding. LOL

This weekend is now known as Get Out of Fountain weekend.

Torn

I look back fondly on the IPORC days where a lot of us were bright eyed and bushytailed. Where we ran around in T1 cruisers and frigates and thought we were the bomb. We had enthusiasm, that's for sure, but we lacked experience and it told. We tried a lot of things: living in 0.0, running moon mining POSes, low sec piracy, and later when most of us formed Strife we tried Empire wars.

Good times.

But we flew apart for many reasons. Some people got caught up in real life issues and cut back on playing time, others went hardcore carebear, some wanted fierce 0.0 action. That was last winter.

Now a couple core guys are coming back and playing again. Others of the old team, we all kept in touch, are joining up with them for some low sec gang squads. There is talk of hoisting the IPORC banner once again and they want me to be a part of it. Replace our previous innocent optimism with T2 ships and experience, but the evil laugh would be the same.

I'm seriously considering joining them should IPORC rise again, but at the same time I really want to make my relationship with Coreli work, and I want to prove to them and myself I can hack it in a 0.0 alliance. I'll probably join the guys for a few runs through Placid, but I'm determined to make it in Fountain. Dammit, but why do they have to have so much fun without me!?!

GAH, SO STUPID!!

Last night I was in Aridia in a station, ready to continue my journey to Fountain with my hauler full of ammo and a Harpy and Buzzard. I undocked in a shuttle and checked the next gate (clear) and as I returned to station I saw an Ammar battlecruiser, an Absolution, sitting and waiting.

I thought to myself, I can get to warp before he gets me. So I jump in the hauler and undock. I hit warp to gate. He starts targeting, scramming, and shooting me. I get up to speed... and run into the station. What the FRACK?! NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

*BOOM*

I died because I got stuck on the station. DAMN!

I got my pod out (more because he probably didn't want the sec hit from podding me) and limped back to Vehan. I was determined to get to Fountain that night so I stocked up my Ferox with ammo and hit the road again, getting to core without any other excitement.

Although my wallet was looking better since they cancelled the 100 million corp tax for October, I was still feeling the effects of three ship losses in one week so I packed up the Myrmidon with ammo and head out to do nothing but rat for the rest of the week. Its time to make some ISKies. This morning I picked up about 10 million in bounties and hopefully tonight get even more.

Invasion!

Last night I was online doing some ratting and then I headed over to Y-Z to unload loot, get some more ammo, etc. Antimatter Medium is hard to come by on market in Fountain so I considered pod jumping up to Empire and getting some ammo and stuff and smuggling it down the pipe. And then comms reported this:

"Twenty five outbreak in E-B heading to core."

Oh frack. Outbreak are the guys that got my Scorpion on the weekend (more my fault than their skill TBH) and the rumour on them is that they have a lot of skill points (40-50 mil), lot of nano-ships, and more capitals than we can muster. Worse yet, it looks like they are moving in to stay for a while.

Immediate the orders started coming down from above to get multiple fleet battleships ready, multiple PvP ships, etc. I look at my hanger: one Myrmidon, one Covert Ops, one Stealth Bomber, one Raptor equipped for shuttling. I look at my wallet: 70 million after Oct corp tax. Hmmm.... I'm screwed.

I did pod jump myself up to Empire and bought new +2 implants for my clone, then I packed up my T2 harpy and flew back to Aridia where I currently have stopped to pick up a second covert ops frig. Since I can't see getting enough scratch to fly a fleet BS, I plan to fly a couple covert ops and be the eyes and ears for operations where I can.

Oops!

I decided to try out a Myrmidon for ratting instead of another battleship or using the scorpion. The reasoning is that the Myrmidon can field 5 heavy drones (for now) and 6 medium blasters and should be able to cause enough damage while tanking the return damage.

So I bought and outfitted it on Friday and was sitting in station considering trying it out Saturday morning when the word went over vent that a friend got owned by some neutrals two jumps out. Dreaded nano ships, Huginn and a Vagabond. I sat in station and listened as they showed up in local and a while later a corp mate reported being pestered by one of them outside a station. Nothing serious.

I lost it. I felt the overwhelming need to demonstrate my willingness to engage in PvP. So I jumped in my Scorpion and undocked with the plan to warp to 100km from the other station and jam from there. If they came at me, I would warp away as he would be unlocked, savvy?

Well just as I arrived two enemy vagabonds warped in and all three ships hit the MWD towards me! FRACK! I tried to warp away but being in a slow boat and they in 6km/s+ nano ships I didn't have the time. I jammed a couple of them but didn't have the chops to jam all three simultaneously and get away. Down and podded. Ouch.

Sunday I was feeling a little down. Rokh? Gone. Scorpion? Gone. I was running out of ships out in 0.0 and my money situation was not good with the looming 100 mil corp tax for October. SO I decided to try and rat in the new battlecruiser.

Wow! Was I surprised. Not only am I killing the rats as fast if not faster than the Scorpion, I'm hardly taking any damage in the process to the point where I've deactivated my hardeners. I guess the speed I fly with the afterburner is enough to avoid the tracking of the battleships and the 6 neutron blasters do awesome damage along with the heavy drones. I have to say I'm really loving blasters right now and I wish that the Ferox had 6 or 7 turret hardpoints as I fear 5 would be insufficient.

Sigh, do I have to become a Gallente pilot?

One Week Painting Challenge

I went into Games Workshop to buy the new chaos codex on the 15th and found out that there was a painting contest in one week. Buy the new plastic terminator chaos lord, paint him, and enter the contest on the 22nd. In a moment of impulse I bought the model and decided to try and paint him in one week and win the contest.

Day one: Saturday
Brought home the box and tried to decide how to assemble it as it comes with a lot of spare bits.

I decided on a pose with a more in-action style and very few bits to distract from the model.

Then I primed it black and it was ready for painting.


Day two: Sunday
I started the silver trim and found it very very bright! I was going to have to find a way to tone that down. I also got to work on the red cape.

Day three:Monday
More silver trim, more work on the cape. Next its washing time!

Day four: Tuesday
I applied a black watered down ink to the silver and red cape in order to darked the colours and add some depth to spots there was none due to the monochromatic style. I think it worked very well, here are before and after shots.

Day five: Wednesday
No painting due to game of Epic.

Day six: Thursday
Yikes! Running out of time!
I worked on the cape highlights and I'm very pleased with the result. Easily the best part of the model. I also started details on the body.

Day seven: Friday
Except for finishing the base, I completed painting. The claws were done with four shades of blue and an edging in white, and the black was highlighted with edging of Ultramarines blue. I spiced up the green cables with snot green washed with dark green ink. The base was done in brown and then washed in black ink, followed by drybrushing in brown again. I considered highlighting in brown/white mix on the edges but decided against it as it might make things too bright. On Saturday morning I added some gravel to spice up the base and sealed the paint job.

I submitted my entry to the contest along with four other chaps. As soon as I saw the winning entry I knew he would take away the prize as he did an excellent job with conversions, blending, and style. Still, I was proud to be awarded second in this little contest and the model is definitely one of the best painted ones in my current Chaos army, mainly since no of the others have been painted in the past three years.

Next up: finishing the Dire Avengers :P

I Hate That Mission

I dislike missions where I warp into a deadspace and I'm surrounded by rats that immediate aggress and start pounding me. But hey, you win some and you lose some.

But I really HATE missions that do the above but I have to travel through gates to get there. Nothing worse than warping out and having to spend 10 minutes to trundle back to fight again. Stupid gates.

The mission that prompted this was Silence the Informant. The first room with the drone battleships required a couple runs at it. The second room with all the mercs could have been a pain but they properly aggressed in waves and I was able to deal with them easily.

This recent mission had me wondering about my setup and if I could apply some things I learned in 0.0 to improve its tank. Maybe play around with it, we'll see.

Return of Epic Battles

Last night I hooked up with Dave (theDragonsBane) and played my first game of Epic since last November when the new Eldar codex drove all thoughts of 40K from my head. We shook out 3000 pts and prepared for battle.

Black Storm Battle Force
Platoon #1 - 8 marines, 4 havocs, rhinos, supreme commander
Platoon #2 - 8 marines in rhinos
Platoon #3 - 8 marines, 1 obliterator, 3 defilers
2 x Forlorn Hope in rhinos
Bike Company
6 Terminators
Deathwheel
2 Hellblades

Space Marines
Can't remember exactly, but there was 2 or 3 tactical units in razorbacks and rhinos, one or two dev formations with land raiders, 1 predator formation, whirlwinds, 2 Warhound titans, some AA support.

I decided to make a push up the eastern side of the 4x4 board while Dave decided a more balanced line across the centre with some emphasis on the east. We traded some salvos and headed into turn 2 with high hopes.

I teleported my terminators into cover near the whirlwinds and Blitz objective. Dave got first turn and decided those six stands could not, well, stand. He fired the whirlwinds and an infantry formation at them but just missed breaking them.

I decided to push on the East before he had a chance to respond. I launched the bikes into one tactical formation and secured a victory driving them back, and then I retained the initiative and sent my Chaos Warlord and his attending marines and havocs against the Space Marine force commander in the ruins. The battle went poorly for me as he made 5 out of 6 armour saves and I lost three stands, but the roll off was a tie! We fought again and this time my numbers and lack of blast markers saw me through to victory and the death of the enemy supreme commander.

Dave tried to regain control of the battle by threatening my defiler formation on the Blitz objective with a warhound, but he had too few units to cover all the objectives and I was pushing determinedly up the east side and breaking everything that got in my way. Turn three he was able to prevent an outright victory by chaos, but he was broken and falling back and outnumbered and we agreed going to a turn 4 would see the most likely demise of the Imperials.

Victory to the Black Storm!

Analysis:
This game pivoted on the crucial assaults I launched in turn 2. Had either failed, especially the second one, I would have been thrown back and the battle would have been drawn out perhaps to his advantage.

Admittedly, I started the game with a huge advantage in that Imperial Marines are about 10-15% too expensive. Yes, that ATSKNF is really handy but the smaller formations and the fact they die just as quickly and shoot just as much as my chaos marines means that my larger formations often are overwhelming the Imperial lines, especially the mechanized lists.

The only Space Marine Epic list I fear is the one Al perfected with the thunderhawks, Terminator company, Imperial Navy fighters for support, and Titans, and a handful of marines to fill it out. That list was so flexible and hit so damn hard wherever he wanted I had a lot of trouble dealing with it.

Great game Dave! Thanks!

RIP Blaster Rokh

Last night I was out with Hakk blowing the craps out of rats hither and sunder. Good fun. I logged in a safe spot so I could rat for some this morning and pick up a few more million.

Well, I log in, warp to belt one, nothing. Start warping to belt two, neutral shows up in local. Crap. I land in belt two and immediately hit warp to safe spot. As I'm aligning and accelerating, a Rapier recon shows up in the belt and starts targetting me. Oh frack. Warp scrambled, webbed, damped. And ultimately, screwed. Two of his buddies shows up seconds later and the two ravens make short work of me.

I got my pod out so saved that indignity. I totally understand why people fly battlecruisers and HACs for ratting, the speed to get out is much appreciated. I might have escaped had I not been just in warp when he arrived in local. Plus there was only a few belts so it was easy for him to pinpoint my location on scan.

Ah well, the insurance payout means I have enough money to pay for the outpost tax next month, so I'm not under any pressure to make huge amounts of isk right now. Maybe see if I can get some PvP in to boost my fortunes.

Coreli Corp Initiate

I was accepted into the Coreli corporation and have been working on making myself known and useful so that the disaster that was Omen Inc does not repeat itself in miniature for just me.

I need to get into some more ops with these guys. Its been difficult because at first I was setting up after moving from Omen and then I just got my brand new Rokh ratting ship and I've been rebuilding my wallet after setting it up. Plus the forums were not accessible so I had very little idea who was who and what was going on in general. That was rectified today so I'm hoping things get better quickly.

BTW, the blaster Rokh? DAMN fun, and lots of DPS. Definite improvement over the torp Scorp which has been given over to PvP fulltime now.

Corporate History As Told By Signatures

Being a forum whore that I am, forum signatures are always on my mind. They define a poster visually and can create an instant link for a viewer between content and quality. They recognize a post immediately by the signature and will stop to read if they liked what you said before. As such, almost as soon as I started Eve and visiting various forums, I started collecting signatures of the corps I was engaged with at the time. So here is my signature history.

1) Interstellar Privateers of Res Communis. Or IPORC as they liked to call themselves. I thought the ticker was a tad crude so I shortened it to IPRC as the game stored it. Ah my days of flying a Merlin.


2) After a month or so, I graduated up to destroyers and cruisers as you can tell by this sig. One version with the destroyer was for IPORC forums, the other for Eve Online forums which had more stringent requirements.




3) Strife Mercenaries was a merc / empire war corp made up of a lot of pilots from IPORC. I graduated to using railguns in a battleship and became quite proud of this monster until it died in a mission after warp scrambling NPCs were introduced. Still the favourite of my own created sigs.


4) Desiring access to 0.0, Strife merged into No Quarter and its Vae Victus alliance (my first!) and I went back to a Caracal in the sig. Then a corp member with Leet Skilz in photoshop made up the second sig there and although I left No Quarter for various reasons soon after, I still love that sig.




5) Needing to rebuild my assets after losing my Raven weeks after losing the Rokh, I worked for myself for a while and put together this sad signature. I eventually improved it by fixing the black areas that show my lack of abilities and it sufficed for a while.


6) I didn't make a sig for the short time I was with Omen in Storm Armada, but after we joined the Corelum Syndicate I tried to incorporate the alliance logo into the sig. Didn't work to my satisfaction.


7) After a while I wanted something new and decided my new and improved mission running Rokh that I perfected while in Kodachi Enterprises deserved a new sig. Hence this one. My second favourite and perhaps more classy. but the dithering from the conversion to JPG annoys me.


And that's it! Now I have to see about getting one now that I'm part of Coreli corp.

Worse Than A Job Application

It turns out that Coreli wants us to apply as normal and go through the whole interview process, which I can totally understand. So last night I filled out the questionnaire which was longer and more detailed than a job application. I approve of their thoroughness.

To be perfectly honest, I don't know when all is said and done if they will accept my application. My play time is limited due to being older and having more real life responsibilities than the guys in college with no significant other. I hope they accept, Coreli looks like a group of guys that I've been looking for in a corp.

If they don't, I have plenty of options available to me. I'm a 15 million skill point combat pilot with 0.0 pvp experience and access to T2 mods and ships. Damn, maybe it would be time to get KODA up and running.

But my first preference is Coreli.

It all happened so fast!

As I write this, I'm sitting in a NPC corp with an application to a new corp hoping that the agreement we made with them holds true and they are not screwing with us.

What the hell, right?

Ok, let me get you up to speed. As you recall, a group of us friends in Eve call ourselves the Black Lotus order. We joined en masse to Omen Incorporated to get access to 0.0 in exchange for them getting more numbers and PvPers. Omen left Storm Armada after we joined and we moved to Fountain to work with Coreli Syndicate which merged with Exuro Mortis alliance after we joined.

Well, time passed and it became apparent that us Black Lotus members could not stay with Omen Inc. I won't go into details here, but we liked the alliance and we liked Fountain, so we approached Coreli and asked if we could move laterally from Omen to Coreli. The response was, yeah, sure, and good thing you asked because the alliance is booting Omen soon. Whoa.

So we scrambled and as Omen was given 48 hrs to get out of Fountain we Black Lotus pilots moved our stuff into NPC stations in Fountain and sent applications to Coreli.

And now I'm waiting. To make sure I had no roles with Omen anymore, I left the corp completely this morning and ended up back in Deep Core Mining. Of course, the thought had occurred to me that for a laugh Coreli might be saying yeah sure but really mean "you dumb idiots are going to be stuck in Fountain with all your stuff and surrounded by people ready to shoot you on sight." Which, in my humble opinion, would suck donkey balls.

On the upside, last night I was farting around and got in on a isk farmer bust with two other Black Lotus guys and three Coreli pilots. Haven't had decent PvP in a while and it was damn fun. Need moar Pew Pew!

Money, Its a Gas...

Friday night and Saturday morning were all about the ISKies, ratting in Fountain until the cows came home. Got my wallet back over 100 million with the ratting and selling of some stuff. Still debating what to do with the money. Save it? Nah, too responsible. Buy another scorpion? That was the original plan, but having a ratting scorpion and a PvP scorpion seems silly since the Scorpion is the worst ratting Caldari battleship. Raven? Now there is a ratting ship! But so predictable. Rokh? Expensive, but very tempting. Get to play with blasters! So I'm thinking Rokh once I make some more ISK since I can get a decent price on them from the alliance industry wing.

Of course, there is the whole possibility of getting into a Myrmidon and flying that sucker around but perhaps next payday ;)

Speaking of industry, I put in three ship invention jobs for Merlin 1 run BPCs simply to try it out, make sure the skills are where they need to be, etc. Won't be profitable but nice to see hard work come to fruition and I'll get the results this evening.

Ratting Again

Now that the drama of the past week has passed I'm back out in our 0.0 home with the Scorpion ratting and generally getting back into the groove of things. I spent about 40 million since last weekend on odds and ends and my wallet fell below 50 million last night, but a few BS spawns later and I'm feeling better. I'm going to concentrate on ratting and PvP hunting this next week and build up the wallet so I can look at getting a better ratting ship.

The Scorpion is not bad when fitted out with tanking and torps, but efficiency is the name of the game and a Raven would be so far more efficient and I could setup the Scorpion for PvP and leave it that way which would be nice. ECM anyone? On the other hand, a Rokh could rat pretty good and be used for PvP... damn, torn again. Regardless, I need some cash.

I finished Small Hybrid V last night and moved into Medium Hybrid V training of 15 days. Yuck. I figure I won't worry about the Small Rail Specialization skill until I'm back in Empire sometime. I got to thinking about what to do two months down the road when this effort is done and I'm torn between interdictors, recons, and HACs. Mostly between the latter two to be honest, as an interdictor requires a few skills that do not provide much use elsewhere while both Recons and HACs require Cruiser V (indeed, that is the bulk of both of them).

(Un)Fortunately I have lots of time to decide.

Welcome to New Readers

For the longest time this Eve / Warhammer blog was read by me and the guys of my warhammer gaming group when I linked here from the forums. Basically, the Eve posts were pretty much me yammering to myself.

Well recently I've been adding Eve blogs to my reading list and came across The Ancient Gaming Noob, a well written blog about MMO gaming and such. Since he is a new player to Eve I've been posting suggestions to help him in his comments and in the process unintentionally advertising this place. So I figured a welcome post was due and I hope I can provide enough interesting posts to get some regular readers.

Introductions are in order to my Eve characters. I consider my main to be Kirith Kodachi who I created when I first joined the Eve universe and had no clue about anything. I started in Sept '06 with 5K skill points and joined a group of known friends in their corp out in Placid where I cut my teeth on mission running, PvP, and 0.0 life in Syndicate. I originally started down the missile route (and the Caracal is still one of my favourite cruisers) but decided to be different when news of the Rokh started to come out and have been training gunnery skills along with other combat stuff ever since. Well, not completely true: I did spend a couple week training Trade skills for a while when I considered becoming a full-time trader but my bloodlust was too much.

Right now Kirith can fly all T1 Caldari and T1 Gallente up to Battlecruisers, and for T2 ships I can fly all the Caldari frigates. I'm currently training up for T2 rails.

My alternate character I started on a second account soon after I started is called Derranna Elkadar and she was designed at first for doing manufacturing. Then I got her into blueprint research. Then she trained up for ice refining, which started me towards Invulnerability Field module invention, which lead towards cloaking device invention, and now ship invention starting up in a couple weeks. She also trained up for some mining in a retriever and T2 minmatar transports. If it has to do with industry, she'll be training for it sooner or later.

I also have a series of "supporting alts" that are trained a bit (if at all) for very specific tasks:
- Korannon who is CEO of my original industrial corp (Kodachi Enterprises) and has some hauling skills and trade skills. I use him to buy and sell stuff that the industrial division needs or makes.
- Joeseph Darvony who is CEO of the corp I purchased called Razor Technologies with faction standings to set up a high sec POS.
- and Sun Tomah, a research assistant capable of doing Time Efficiency research and copying so Derranna doesn't use up all her available skills on T1 BPOs at the POS.

And that's me. Cheers!

Corp Theft Troubles

On the weekend a friend apparently got his account hacked (I say apparently because you can't be 100% sure with people you only know through the game) and lost about 2 billion in assets. Worse, he was a director so cleaned out the corp wallet as well of another billion or so.

The problem is that the friend with the hacked account was the leader of a group of us called the Black Lotus that basically merged with the corp. With this corp theft the trust levels have plummeted and all of us from Black Lotus have had all rights revoked and access to hangers denied "indefinitely". I can't blame the CEO really; he has no way of knowing if it was a hacked account or plain old theft and if it was theft and the leader of us merger guys is crooked, how far does the rot go? On the other side, if we were all crooked we could have coordinated a complete gutting of corp assets and not just the wallet but I think the CEO is not ready to chance it.

Anyways, the question of what to do now has arisen. Wait out the mistrust and work our way back into the corp good books? Or cut our losses and start over in Empire space running missions and building up the industrial side of things?

Time will tell.

Wacky Weekend Adventures!

Its been a wild weekend.

First off on Sunday I decided to try and PvP in my Blackbird with three corpmates, but some miscommunication saw me engaging an ishtar by myself. Whoops! I jammed his ass but subsequently was quickly dispatched and podded by his drones. I thought an Abaddon battleship was warping with my and I forgot to give the signal on Vent of what was happening. Out of practice definitely.

On the upside, it was a T1 cruiser and didn't cost very much to replace. I spent the rest of the weekend taking care of things in Empire before flying back to 0.0 with a vow to get more PvP action.

On the business side of things, I'm in the process of producing Shield Emitters (all four racial types) from advanced materials in an effort to reduce the middle man and cut costs of T2 Invul Field production. I've got 30 Invul Fields slated for manufacture this week and I need the money since I went out and bought the Esoteric Ship Interface this weekend for the upcoming ship invention effort (I had help from investors).

In other invention news I tried two more cloaking device inventions and got one 10 run Covert Ops Cloaking Device BPC! So far the success rate is 33% and that is on par with other module invention. Only problem is the long copy times. Maybe I might get more BPOs and copy them simultaneously.

Also: I received a comment this weekend from someone browsing my blog for the first time that having T2 ships without T1 weapons was not good. I agree and right now Kirith is in training for T2 rails and I am on schedule to get small Rail specialization later this week and medium Rail specialization next week. Large Rail specialization will be a few weeks after that (darn Sharpshooter V and the 24 days for Large Hybrid V).