Corporate Machinations

I made my new corporations in the wrong order with the wrong CEOs.

I originally made Insisto Oblivium on a whim with Korannon, and then later made Katana Securities with Tatianna after Derranna took over as CEO of Razor Technologies.

The problem is that while Korannon has adequate leadership skills for allowing characters from other races to join, Tatianna does not. Therefore I need to switch their positions and for that I need someone to hold control of one corp while the two characters swap. Enter Kirith.

I used Kirith to join Insisto and had Korannon assign him CEO. Then 24 hours later Korannon can apply to Katana (after Tatianna trains one level of Ethnic Relations so she is allowed to have a Caldari pilot in her corp (she's Minmatar like Derranna)) and become CEO where he is supposed to be. Then 24 hours later Tatianna can apply to and join Insisto, take over from Kirith, and finally Kirith will be free to apply to Katana and become director there and get to work on standings. YEESH!

Had I had Korannon start Katana and Tatianna create Insisto I could have avoided all of this but alas, plans evolve and we adapt.

So as I enacted plan shuffle plan I finally had Kirith leave Strife after 4+ months of employment. It was a sad moment, I really wanted that corp to work but the spark that powered us at first flared and died in the last month. Ultimately I blame the politics part of the game; it burnt out our CEO, demoralized the pilots, and scattered our efforts. Our failure was the one of properly regrouping.

Regardless, I take these lessons with me as I create Katana. Once Kirith and Korannon (brothers in my internal roleplay) are safely ensconced in the corp I can begin recruitment for the upcoming empire wars.

It Arrived!

Since I had tennis last night and got home from work late, I didn't beg off my wife with the twins to play Eve. But I did get a package in the mail that I was quite excited to see finally.

My copy of the Eve Maps arrived and I wasted no time in opening it up and marvelling at its sexiness. Its not that I needed the book; Ombeve's 2D maps work create and have pretty much the same information but I wanted to splurge on something Eve-related (a habit from the Warhammer hobby I'm sure which never lacked more things to buy) and its nice to have all the regions pre-printed and bound in a nice format that easily works on the desk. If you are an Eve pilot and have some coin to spend, I highly recommend it just for the feel of the pages and the coolness factor.

This morning I had some time before work and completed the jump of my friend's assets from low sec to high sec. Once the goods were in a contract, I auto-piloted the Nomad through high sec to Minmatar space leaving only a Blockade runner of stuff left to be moved which I shuttled back for and will move tonight. All of Kirith's stuff is gone as well. Goodbye Placid, its not your fault I am leaving again and I'm sure someday I'll be back again.

A new dev-blog on Factional Warfare was released this morning describing more details about the combat system they are putting into place. It sounds very exciting with both missions and encounters (i.e. cosmic anomalies) will have gates limiting access to certain classes of ships:

• Level 1 – Tech I frigates and destroyers
• Level 2 – Tech I frigates, destroyers and cruisers, Tech II frigates
• Level 3 – Tech I frigates, destroyers, cruisers and battlecruisers, Tech II frigates, destroyers and cruisers
• Level 4 – All ships not requiring "Capital Ships" skill

Its interesting that Battleships and Command Ships (along with all capital ships) won't have access to Level 3 or less areas. I'm mostly pumped about the level 1 and 2 areas where the less used ships can really get to shine. Assuming they can get to the areas through pirate infested space.

Of course, the release date is a lot sooner than expected, June 10th. I need to get booting to get Katana Securities ready in time to sign up!

Warning, Dominix Off the Port Bow

A corpmate had stuff behind enemy lines.

Well, more accurately my ex-CEO had left a bunch of stuff in our old base in Syndicate and was going to get the out with his carrier in the future before it got blown all to shit. Since he had no realistic way to get that stuff himself, I offered the services of the Nomad.

We set up last night and he took a cyno pilot down to the area and got some liquid ozone. I setup in range and waited for the heads up.

"Ok, 15 second warning, only a Cheetah on scan..."

"Roger, undocking. Clear outside station here."

"Cyno up."

"Jumping..."

WHOOSH... damn, I still love that effect. Gotta break out the screenshots sometime.

"Dominix on scan!"

"He's right here! Dock, DOCK!"

Dominix battleship 12 kilometers away, then 11, 10... damn he's fast!

"DOCK!!!!"

"Docking request accepted." Whew! Safely out of the way before I was bumped off the station. My buddy's cyno ship was stuck and quickly got squished by the enemy but he was able to get his pod away and we completed the trade of his stuff to my cargo hold. I decided to put off jumping out right then as it was possibly too hot and waited until this morning before downtime. The jump back to low sec went without a hitch and no cyno ships were harmed this time.

Factional Warfare: How?

I made my resignation as CEO of Strife official today at lunch, assigning the role to my successor and removing all roles. I saw no point in waiting until the end of the week and figured others might relish to role more.

As I make steps toward the reality of Factional Warfare, I need to figure out how I'm going to make use of it. After all, there are a lot of features being released this summer and I don't know which is the most attractive to me.

1) Plain Old Empire War - The first upshot to joining a militia is being at war with all pilots in the opposing militias. In this case, having my corp Katana join the Minmatar militia will put us at war with everyone in the Caldari and Amarr militias. So in essence no where will be safe just like a normal war (for example, FINEG) but with a hell of a lot more war targets.

In addition, joining the militia means that the NPC navies of the opposing factions will shoot on site in the high sec systems of those nations. Suddenly half of high sec space will no-go zone unless I'm really ready to fight. This will lead to a somewhat more polarized space I hope, but it remains to be seen what the end effect is.

2) Militia Missions - Joining a militia gives access to special mission agents. These missions will be directed at helping the war effort and will involve fighting NPCs of the opposing faction. Problem is, the mission locations are in low sec (IIRC) and become visible on the overview for everyone in system as soon as you start it. It could be exciting to try and quickly blaze through missions with corp mates watching my back or even alone, but the fact that even neutrals can see the mission and barge in is off-putting. It might be more fun to patrol and look for such missions myself.

Not to mention the possibility of ninja salvaging! No need to probe, just sneak in and try and get whatever wrecks I can. Heh.

3) Encounters - new cosmic anomalies are being added that are specific to factional warfare and found only in the low sec (and maybe some high sec?) warzones. (Side note on warzones: I'm not sure where they are, how many there are, and what differentiates them.) These things promise to have gates of varying levels so that some of them will only allow tech 1 frigates and destroyers for example, and others will allow everything, and levels in between the two. Again, once found and activated they appear on the overview for everyone. (Another side note: do missions have similar restrictive gates? Need to find out.)

These are attractive because I would try and find the lower level ones and bomb around in cheap frigates and cruisers and see what hell can be had.

4) Fighting for System Occupancy - warzone systems can be fought over by the factions (I think) and have special system bunkers that need to be held for a system to become occupied. Working with the militia and trying to take these systems could be very exciting and an alternative to alliance fleet battles. It remains to be seen how often people try this and the resulting rewards for having your faction gain occupancy over a warzone.

5) Just bombing around with the militia. Screw everything, just log in and find out where people are fighting and go join in.

6) High Sec Terror Runs - Get some decently fast and tankable ships and attack enemy high sec space, avoiding faction navies by staying on the move and attacking any targets foolish enough to lower their guard. Risky but could be exciting.

* * * *
So as you can see, I'm not sure what my participation in factional warfare will look like yet. It remains to be seen but there appears to be lots of options to start.

Moving On Out...

Last night I got some time to get online and proceed to move my assets out of low sec in Placid. I used the jump freighter to get all of Kirith's and Derranna's stuff in two round trips. On the end of the second trip some pirates came in and blew up Kirith's Condor frigate the "IPRC Target Practice" but as you can tell by the name I'm not too broken up about it.

Next stuff is to load up the freighters (yes, I have two: the regular Fenrir and the Tech II Nomad) and boogie it all out to Minmatar space where a new base of operations will be setup.

BTW, I'm never setting up base for all my stuff in low sec again. What a pain in the ass all that hauling is, even with the Jump Freighter.

Skills Update

Kirith finished Caldari Battleship V on the weekend! Woot! Now he is training Drone Interfacing V (18.5 days) followed up Advanced Spaceship Command V (22.5 days). Once those are done, its only 2.5 more days until the Chimera can be flown. Its all downhill from here. :)

Derranna on the other hand, is doing maintenance skill training now that Korannon is adequately trained as a Corporate CEO. Anchoring, Corporate management, Drones, Industry, Salvaging are all on her list and those will take all summer for the most part. In the fall, her next goal will be to go for a Hulk followed by a Rorqual which is only 52+ days training for her now.*

* Plans may change between now and then.

Rebuilding

I didn't have hardly any time to play Eve on the weekend, the twins just take up so much effort and when they are peaceful the housework and cleaning up take the rest. But I did get to do some planning on how I'm going to rebuild.

I've lost Razor Tech's high sec small tower during the birth the boys and the Medium tower I had up for Strife in the war, so my research division is basically out of commission for the moment. I'm doubtful I'm going to anchor a new one as it would have to be in low sec and I'm too pressed for time to take care of it properly. Plus now that I know I can't unanchor things when the tower is in reinforced, I'm less willing to risk that much ISK without proper protection.

But even without the tower, research can be done in public labs. It make take a lot longer due to queues, but its not out of the question.

The current feeling is that I'll be joining the Minmatar Militia with either Strife or Katana corporations. There was a concentrated effort to make Strife work for Factional Warfare for a bit, but it seems others are not as interested as I am and are willing to take over. I don't have the time for running Strife and I really want to do factional warfare so I'll part peacefully and happily and follow my own destiny. Good luck Strife Mercs, may you find your man.

I'll spend some time consolidating my assets and planning my resurgence. Hopefully we can get the boys into enough of a schedule that I can start playing some Eve in blocks again.

Rare Eve Night

My wife didn't get home until late last night so I had a rare evening to just sit and play Eve with no distractions.

I wanted to do something with someone, anyone. So I asked around in my chat channels and found a good guy, a corpmate, who was running missions in Caldari space.

WHAT?! We're not supporting those fascists! So I offered to let him come down to my old stomping grounds in Minmatar space and piggyback on my level four missions for the Republic Fleet. Only problem is that he has no ship in that region so I offer to loan him a nice little Drake to be my wingman in my Rokh Battleship. He agrees and we fly to Rens to meet up.

I get to Rens and see a war target from FINEG in local. Rens is a major hub so its quite populated with pilots and I am able to dock. While waiting for my corpmate I decide to outfit a Kitsune Electronic Attack Ship to act as scout and escort for my buddy flying the Drake. While doing so I see the enemy dock at my station and undock a few minutes later and I figure he is going sit in a Pilgrim Force Recon cruiser cloaked outside and see if he can catch us.

My ally arrives and I trade him the Drake. Since the enemy doesn't know what ship I'm in, we decide to see if he attacks the Drake first and I have my wingman undock and warp to a gate. Once he hits warp, I undocked and followed. The Kitsune is fast and can jam; if I had been engaged, I probably could have easily escaped.

The Drake jumped into the next system and proceeded to the next gate. The war target followed and I did a few seconds later. As I materialized in the system I saw the enemy and confirmed he was in his Pilgrim. I held jumping cloak for a few seconds and watched him activate his Covert Ops cloak. I decide to try and confuse the enemy by heading to the mission running spot a different way so I backtrack and go back the way I came. The Drake pilot reports no following enemy after a couple jumps and I never see him again either.

We got to the mission system, jumped in my battleship, and proceeded to tear up NPCs at a fierce rate. I finally got to try out my new 350mm Tech II rails guns and was pleased with the increased range and DPS. I let my wingman do the salvaging and looting, I was more interested in the grind to a Storyline mission for standings increase.

We ran5 regular missions and I did get a Storyline mission which we executed as well. We made 20 million ISK in bounties each and he got tons of salvage and loot and I picked up a really nice implant for accomplishing the storyline mission as well as a 0.56 boost to my Minmatar standing (up to 3.87 base). The implant was a -5% decrease in shield recharge time, an expensive implant great for passive shield tanking.

We kept an eye on local all night, but no whiff of the war targets appeared.

Damn

My first combat loss in a month occurred last night.

My wife was out of town with the new twin pilots so I was actually able to log in and fly around. FINEG had two pilots in Stacmon so I decided to be proactive for a change and do some scouting. A corpmate was in the system too so he fitted up a Rapier Force Recon to compliment my solo-pvp Falcon.

We found them docked at a station and started a camp while my wingman went to get his ship. One of the war targets undocked in a shuttle and I tried to lock him, but his buddy undocked in a Drake battlecruiser and I quickly cloaked as I was too close and alone and the Drake's tank would not even flinch at my firepower.

The enemy docked and we got back into position. With two of us we might be able to take him down.

The Drake undocked again and we uncloak; the Rapier goes in fast to bump the ship off the station's docking perimeter while I locked and activated the ECM. Why is he not jammed? Uh oh... missiles slam into my shields. The Falcon is not built to take abuse from damage so I immediately hit warp.

"Unable to warp because you are warp scrambled."

Shit. I know I'm dead but I still make a run for it. Moments later, boom. It sucked but at least it was combat on our terms for a change. And I won't make the same mistake of being in scram range with my Falcon again.

I got my pod out of there to avoid losing any implants and flew back to base to pick up another ship. I debated between several choices but finally settled on a nice little Kitsune for speed and jamming. The enemy gloated a little in local and then logged.

* * * * *
In other news, I've settled on Katana Securities (KATAN) as the name of my new military corp for Factional Warfare. I plan to create it tomorrow night but it won't be active for a while yet. I've had an offer from a corp mate to go and become a member of his corp aimed at Factional Warfare and I'm considering it as I'm going to be very busy this summer with the boys and being a CEO, even in a relaxed corp, might be too much. But I really want to see my vision through.

Decisions, decisions.

Also, Kirith is 3 days from Caldari Battleship V and Korannon is almost done his training of Ethnic Relations IV so I can go back and work on Derranna again. She'll be going hardcore Corporate training for the Alliance creation skill. I know I'm crazy but its a good kind :)

Article on the Jump Freighter

In this week's Eve Tribune: Driving the Big Jumping Bus

Error In Judgement

I evemailed the CEO of FINEG to grudgingly acknowledge the success of their war efforts against us. He evemailed back an explanation for their war declaration and included a ransom demand of 1.5 billion ISK to end the war.

I had a lapse in judgement. Knowing that one of our recruits was the reason for their war against us, I offered to expel him from the corp and pay only the war dec fees to end the war. My reasoning internally was that Strife was dying anyways so expelling the member was not a huge punishment for him and I evemailed him to let him know what was going on so he wasn't blindsided.

I should have talked to the member first and let kim know what I was thinking before making that counter offer but I didn't. Stupid.

Anyways, FINEG came back with an offer of a 1 billion ISK ransom along with expulsion of the pilot in question, along with a description of extending the war to alt corps and suicide ganks with alt characters in high sec of haulers should we refuse. Well, it became obvious this was not negotiations but rather a little bit of extortion and since they are kicking our asses in the war, not surprising.

I told him no thanks. I saw no need for making outrageous counter demands like some other Strife members suggested. We're losing, no point in making us look stupid. So I posted in the main discussion area about FINEG's demand and how I told them no.

Of course, the member in question came forward asking how it was I was talking out of both sides of my mouth. Sigh. I forgot to evemail him to tell him negotiations were a sham and he was safe and the combination of events left him wondering what I was really doing. So I tried to clear the air in the forums explaining the course of events and accepting responsibility for the confusion.

In hindsight, I should have never considered expelling a member who has done nothing untoward our members or corp, but I felt it was my responsibility to see if the distracting war could be ended so that Strife would have a chance to regroup.

I feel like things are slipping through my fingers. What was a friendly slowdown for the corp is turning into a a large degree of frustration and some accusations of failure to step up. Something tells me its going to get ugly before its over.

Corporate Plan

Now that I've settled on starting my own corp for Factional Warfare, I need to decide how to structure it.

The first thing is protecting the industrialist characters from total war. Derranna can't very well move around easily with every Caldari and Amarr militia pilot targeting her, so she will rejoin Razor Technologies and breathe life into it again. Whether or not I put up a new tower remains to be seen, I think for a while she will concentrate on manufacturing and transporting activities. Maybe some mining.

The next question is whether I will use the new corp I made, Insisto Oblivium (INSIS), or start a third corp for the actual sign-up-to-the-militia corporation. I had wanted to use INSIS as the holding corp for an eventual alliance and I think I will stick with that plan. That means creating a new corp.

So three corps in all: an industrial corp (RZR-T), a military corp (???), and the alliance holding corp (INSIS). I'll need CEOs to run them with decent skills for enough pilots of different races, and one character capable of creating my dream alliance.

INSIS corp needs only a figurehead CEO, so a basic out of the box character will handle that. Derranna will be trained to lead Razor and create the alliance eventually, and Korannon will upgrade his skills a bit to be a better CEO for the military corp. Eventually after the carrier training to done perhaps Kirith will train up for the skills but it remains to be seen if I get the gumption to do so.

Kick in the Teeth

On the weekend things went south in a hurry.

Strife is currently in a war with another corp called Fine Goods for Fine Gentlement (FINEG). They declared it on us due to an ex member of theirs joining our corp (apparently) and it was mostly a cold war for a long time. Then they started to finally show up in our low sec area and on Friday night they launched an attack on my medium POS putting it into reinforced.

I didn't realize how much I didn't know about reinforced mode until I was faced with it. Can't unanchor the labs, can repair shields, can't do anything except prepare a defense fleet to meet the enemy when reinforced is over. It is essentially a pause button for the attack to allow the defenders to muster.

I couldn't be there when reinforced ended as it was 4am my time and the twins were especially hungry this past weekend. A small number of Strife pilots did attempt to drive the enemy off but only ended up losing our ex-CEO's carrier in the process along with the POS afterwards. No words express my disappointment considering the carrier was worth more than the starbase structures.

As disappointing as that was, it was not as disappointing as the fact that my plans to have Strife join Factional Warfare have hit a huge snag. We need an average standing of 0.5 to Gallente to join but the Caldari/Amarr mission runners in the corp drag it down to negative numbers. I suppose we could join the Caldari militia but the Minmatar/Gallente mission runners hurt that standing as well.

Forced with gutting Strife to make it fit or starting my own corp, I chose to resign as CEO of Strife and start working on my own factional warfare ready corporation. I gave a two week notice to allow someone else to step up in Strife, then I will resign and start building up my vision from the ground.

The question is now do I use Insisto Oblivium or start a new corp?

CEO

I talked earlier how Strife is on hiatus and how I'm very very stoked about Factional Warfare.

Out of the 5 leadership pilots (including myself) and several higher ranked pilots, most are either taking a break or going on a walkabout in other corps for the summer. I'm staying in Strife and perhaps one other Director but since his time is not much more free than mine, I volunteered to take stewardship of the corp for the time being.

As of last night, I am now CEO of Strife Mercenaries. Insert evil maniacal laughter here.

My first action as new CEO is to order a consolidation of corp assets, return of loaned corp assets, dismantling of starbases as we lack adequate resources to fuel and protect them constantly, and an audit of remaining pilots and assets. This should take a couple weeks to finalize.

After that, I plan to propose gearing up for joining in Factional Warfare on the side of the Gallente Federation and fighting in Placid and the new Black Rise region.

We'll see if I can get enough support from the remaining pilots to pull off. If not, if most are opposed to signing up to the militia then I might step down for someone else's vision and dedicate myself to starting my own corp from scratch. I really think Factional Warfare is the PvP we've been looking for, I really do.

Time will tell.

OMG!

The new feature site for the next Eve expansion, The Empyrean Age, is up. Even if you are not an Eve player, check out that teaser trailer. That's AWESOME.

A Nyx mothership, second most expensive class of ships in the game, crashing into a station?! WOW! Best part is, during today's downtime the developers destroyed the station in game for real and its now a smoking wreck. AWESOME!

I was very stoked about Factional Warfare before, but CCP is going all out on this and I'm even more excited.

Suicide

OK, not really, but I made enough preventable mistakes that I might as well have just self destructed myself.

For the past week I've been forced to use Korannon to move stuff like POS fuel and building supplies due to the war declaration on Strife and my desire to not remove Derranna from the corp. The problem is that Korannon is untrained and can only haul ~10,000 m3 in a defenseless Badger MK II compared to Derranna's Mastodon with ~28,000 m3 and 10 times the defenses (not to mention the Fenrir freighter).

So last night I finally got the last batch of moon materials for ship component construction to Stacmon and contracted it to Derranna to move out to our low sec base. And then I began making mistakes due to my impatience.

1) Instead of using the Jump Freighter, I figured I'd avoid the hassle of cynos and such and just use a Transport ship with Kirith scouting the way.

2) Instead of using a Prowler Blockade Runner and making multiple trips, I opted for the slower and larger Mastodon Deep Space Transport ship to make one trip.

3) And even after seeing Ostingele was being camped on and off by a large force of battleships and HICs, I still decided to sneak through instead of waiting until the morning when it would be quieter.

The end result was this. Those are just the ships that were fast enough to get on the killmail, the campers had more ships. It was not pretty.

I was watching the gate in Ostingele with my Falcon and I saw this group on the gate, warp off, come back a few minutes later, and warp off again. At that point I tried to sneak Derranna through. But mere seconds after I jumped in and starting to align to warp the camp warped in on me and because the Mastodon is so slow I was easily warp scrambled before hitting the 75% velocity mark to escape into the warp tunnel.

They warped in on me so fast I believe it is more likely they have a position just off the grid of the gate (about 1000 km) where they sit and watch for gate activations with a cloaked ship like I was doing with Kirith. This allows them to surprise people like me trying to sneak through. Had I used the Prowler, I would have been fine as it aligns and hits warp so fast they would not have gotten me. And the Jump Freighter of course, would have avoided the whole damn system.

So there you have it. Impatience costs. Worst part is, as I was hitting the jump button to make the run for it, I knew it was a mistake. Every fibre of my being screamed out "NOOOOO" but I did it anyways. Listen to your instincts kids.

Published Again

Eve Tribune was struggling to get enough articles for this week due to real life issues for many writers, so on Monday I offered to take one of my blog posts, refurbish it, and submit it as a stop gap option. It was used and here it is: Drake Versus Cerberus, A Quick Look.

Two mistakes: Drake also has three Ballistic Control Units installed, and is using light drones instead of medium. Hopefully that will get corrected before long.

Contingency Plans

I posted yesterday how our corp, Strife Mercenaries, is going on hiatus for a few months. A few of us are staying in the corp but the bulk of the leadership including our visionary CEO and best PvP pilots are all going to be on leave.

The theory is that everyone comes back in the fall rested and recharged and ready to make the corp work again. But what if that doesn't happen? Enter the contingency plan.

I usually prefer to be the right hand man to a CEO because my strengths lie in organization and planning. Someone else comes up with the objectives, I present the best way to accomplish them and see it done.

But I've been watching and learning from my time in Eve, and making notes on what it takes to be a good leader:
- Vision of what the corp is going to aim for;
- Choosing good advisors and listening to them and trusting them to help you;
- Ability to make decisions based on the information and counsel even if it means disappointing some people; and
- Diplomatic not only with possible allies and enemies but your own pilots.

Our current CEO has these qualities but needs a break. If he doesn't come back and if the corp leadership doesn't reconvene in the fall I'm going to make a move to take over Strife and use it as one of the pillars of my grand plan, a new alliance completely owned and operated by me.

The vision: an empire based alliance that aligns with the Minmatar and/or Gallente faction for the upcoming Factional Warfare. PvP and missions combined. Screw 0.0 space for now until the corp/alliance is large enough and coherent enough to take and hold good space worth moving to 0.0 for.

I believe I have the other skills to do this (although it will mean forcing myself to trust others to do things that I usually do myself) and now I have the vision that was lacking.

To this end I created a new corp last night with my alt CEO Korannon and called it Insisto Oblivum which is tortured Latin meaning "To Make Destroyed" or "to force things into oblivion". It will be the alliance holding corp if Strife does not revive, and there will be two other main corps: Razor Technologies out of the mothballs to be the industrial / research arm and Strife Mercenaries to be the military arm. This will allow me to safely keep the BPOs and POSes at arm's length from the masses in the military wing as only trusted industrialists will be invited to Razor.

In order to make this alliance Derranna will do training for the alliance creation skills which is a good skill to have regardless.

More Info On Factional Warfare

A new dev blog about Factional Warfare finally hit the streets and I lapped it up. The juicy tidbits:

How does it work?

The core gameplay element of Factional Warfare is small-scale PvP combat. We believe that rounding up your posse, rolling out into contested space and having a healthy exchange of opinions and weapons fire with your sworn enemies is fun. Factional Warfare is designed to make this kind of experience accessible, with low entry requirements and a target-rich environment.

There will be two core drivers for this sort of combat. For those looking for direction, missions will be available, sending you on surgical strikes deep into enemy territory, battling through or sneaking past enemy players to reach the objective. For those who prefer to set their own goals, combat sites will be distributed throughout the warzones. Each site will be contestable by all sides involved in the conflict, with the winning side scoring both immediate rewards and points for their faction.

And what do points mean? Systems! As your faction racks up points in hostile systems, control will slowly swing into your favor, until eventually you're given the opportunity to occupy the system outright. Of course, the enemy's trying to do the same to your systems, so a good defense as well as well as a strong offense will be needed if you want your adopted faction to prevail and dominate!

Is that all?

Pfah! Is that not enough? But no, that's not everything. Ranks, intel screens, a lot of NPC tags and so on are all part of the design. But that's all for future blogs, so watch this space…

And in the thread about it:

Factional warfare is not just in Low-sec. It is just concentrated there.

If you sign up for a faction you can be attacked by anyone in opposing factions anywhere. it is that in low-sec we have marked out control points which will bring the combat to them making it easier for you to find and take part in.

You can sign up as an individual or you can sigh your entire corp up to fight for a faction.

Fracking Awesome! This is exactly what I wanted to hear. Low sec battlezones, large scale war anywhere, affecting control of systems.... *drool*

This is more and more sounding like my thing.

Scorpion Versus Falcon/Rook

In order to safely move some fuel around, I had Korannon jump out of Strife and he ended up in Deep Core Mining NPC corp. This is a catch-all corp for certain types of Caldari players (determined by your starting choices) who quit their player corps without going to a new player corp. Some people spend years in this or other similar NPC corporations while others spend mere hours.

While in the DCM the corp chat was working away and the topic turned to Scorpion setups. I proclaimed in a huffy voice: "Ninety percent of the time the Falcon or Rook is far superior to the Scorpion." And: "The only time the Scorpion is if you have to tank sentry guns."

Others took exception to my hardline stance on the tier 1 Caldari battleship and proceeded to point out situations where the Scorpion is as good or better than the Falcon/Rook.

- With more mid slots, it has the possibility of running some ECCM along with the ECM to frustrate enemy jammers in return.

- In a remote-repping battleship gang (aka Gestalt Gang) the Scorpion would actually benefit from remote repairing while a cruiser hull would be a wreck far too soon. Not to mention the Scorpion can use large remote repairers whereas the Falcon cannot.

So I accede the point that there are more uses for a Scorpion then just straight up low sec gate camping. Mea culpa.

But someone pointed out that the Scorpion is cheaper. I countered with three salient points: its also slower to move, slower to lock, and bigger target than the Rook and Falcon. And the Falcon has cloaking abilities second to none. For a price tag a mere ~20-30% more.

I'll take a Falcon any day of the week. Speed and mobility and flexibility are more valuable to me and my play style.

Real Life Strikes Again

But this time not me. Others in the corporation in leadership positions are suffering from real life aggro and its hurting the pilots to the point of frustration. So we decided to call a hiatus of the corp for the summer so that we can all come back re-energized and ready to rumble in the fall.

For many that means leaving the corp and going off to do other things. For me that means staying in Strife and continuing my rare play times with the the research and invention and such.

Skill Training - What Next

Every once in a while I have an existential shift and change my long term skill training plan. Moods change, stars realign, I get bored and fire up Eve Mon, whatever. Well, now that I'm slowly getting back into the groove, its time to analyze my skill plans again.

Kirith is still 57 days from sitting in his Chimera and I have no intention of taking a break from that task now that the longest skill in that plan, Caldari Battleship V, is 65% complete. Once I get to July 8th I'll probably train some misc skills on the back burner before continuing on improving the Chimera and going for Tech II heavy drones (finally) and Fighters.

Derranna is another kettle of fish altogether. Her major project, the Nomad Jump Freighter, is completing in a week. I could train some skills to level V for a bit more performance, but for all intents and purposes the ship has good range (10 light years) and reasonable fuel mileage (973 isotopes/light year) and I really don't feel like training another 36 day skill.

So what next for her?

Well, she is going to spend a couple weeks on secondary skills. Drones for one thing, more factory slots for another. Then after that she is going to improve her Anchoring skill up to level V and perhaps even Starbase Defence Management for more POS fun.

After that I'm tempted to train her up as an Alliance creator character. That skill plan takes to August right now. We'll see if I change my mind before then.

I'm Baaaaacccccckkkkk!!!!!!!

Fatherhood rocks. Nuff said.

Back in New Eden...

Despite not having much time over the past few weeks, I have managed to log in here and there and do some minor stuff. A few jumps with the Nomad to move stuff around, running research jobs for the corp, and generally minor market stuff. Its hard to do much when you get 20 minutes at a time at most.

Our corp was war dec'd a couple weeks back. Apparently one of our newer members brought some baggage with him in the form of some grumpy ex-corp mates and they declared war on us as a plan of annoyance. The first part of the war was quiet as they were offline but they are coming on now and starting to hunt us. This will be a big test of our corp and its unfortunate I'm so offline that I can't help a whole lot except keeping the industrial fires burning.

During my time off where I didn't log in for a week, Razor Technologies was also war dec'd and my offline small tower destroyed in Gulfonodi. I'm a little pissed but it was only a tower with no other structures and it wasn't even faction so I'm not overly distraught. And I'm confident I have the wherewithal to run a tower in low sec by myself now with the fuelling problems I had last year.

In Skill Training news, Kirith is still chipping away at Caldari Battleship V, now with only 12 days and 18 hours left, and only 57 days from the Chimera carrier itself.

Derranna has completed Jump Drive Calibration IV, Jump Fuel Conservation IV, and is a week from completing Jump Freighters IV which will mark the end of her training in that regard. Her next project will probably be mining skills starting with drones and then working towards a Hulk Exhumer, as well as training up Advanced Mass Production for the ability to control more factory slots. And if I get ambitious, I might train up for the Rorqual.

On a final note, I'm stoked to hear that Factional Warfare is coming this summer and I am very tempted to check it out. A hybrid system of combining PvE and PvP would be welcome at this point since real PvP requires a certain amount of time I don't find available to me at the moment. We shall see.

Update: One More Week Off

Everything with my wife's delivery went well and we are now parents of two bouncing baby boys. Click to embiggen.


I actually logged into Eve long enough to load more missiles into POS defences, move around some research jobs, and change skills. Derranna has Jump Drive Calibration IV now which gives her 10 light years range in the Nomad, woo hoo. Now working on fuel conservation skills. Kirith on the other hand, has just passed the 24 days to go mark on his Caldari Battleship Skill.

I'll be off next week from blogging again, but back to the grind at work the week after which means blogging break (in lieu of smoke breaks) at that time.

Cheers!