Online

It was one of those rare Eve weekends where I find myself with multiple hours to play. It seems to happen once a month or so when the Mother In Law comes up to visit and I am free to scuttle away.

So beyond the "excitement" of Cap'n Sandi coming to smack me in local and decline to actually, you know, engage, there was some other goings ons.

On Friday night I felt eager for a fight and found out as I settled in that the alliance had just finished a big battle with Atlas Alliance in which apparently one of their carrier pilots was quitting Eve and wanted to go down shooting so he and several friends took his Nidhoggur and parked it in one of our belts with several ships for support. And proceeded to taunt us.

Well, our alliance and friends rose to the challenge and took that carrier and support fleet down. And all the action was done just before I logged in. My PvP curse is back on folks; all the action happens when I'm not around.

I patrolled the constellation to see if any stragglers could be engaged but it was quiet. I spent the rest of my evening moving more combat ships to the corporate head quarters and preparing a ship to go to 0.0 with.

Saturday night I logged in determined to get into 0.0 so I could rat some ISK back. The low wallet was really stinging and if I didn't rat I would have to start considering selling some stuff. *GASP* So with Derranna using her new Cheetah Covert Ops to scout for me I prepared to jump into low sec on my way to the show.

Except... there is an Abaddon on the low sec jump. Waiting.

Hmmm. The tier III Amarr battleship is a nasty piece of work and with the right setup can deal damage equivalent or better than a good Blaster Mega. My Cerberus wouldn't stand a chance if tackled and I felt risking the jump was not prudent. Fortunately a couple jumps through high sec could get my into the low sec system through another gate and I decided to try that.

Jump clear on both side and I was in low sec heading to the next gate.

Uh oh. My Abaddon pilot is in local and he's with a corp mate also in an Abaddon. In the next system I decide to cloak and move off the gate instead of warping. The two Abaddon hostiles jump in and spend the next few minutes patrolling the system I was in, the one I came from, and the next one on my route. These guys are looking for kills and I had no intention of adding myself to their killboards.

I docked up and jump cloned back to base to wait for quieter times to sneak myself into null sec. Checking corp comms I found a friend was going to run some missions so I offered to help out. It was my first time with a new setup on the Rokh, trading the two Power Diagnostic Units for a Tracking Enhancer and Signal Amplifer for more locking range and more optimal range. The idea is to use Antimatter ammo more and use lead ammo for those 120km + engagements.

The ship performed adequately although I did feel the loss of the extra cap from the PDUs, but with the cap booster I never felt worried. We were halfway through the second mission when Cap'n Sandi showed up and started jabbering. All in all I earned a good chunk of ISK from the bounties and I will probably use that to start some manufacturing again to get the wallet growing more from that direction as well.

EDIT: I forgot that before we started that second mission an alliance member in a Dominix was engaged in a belt by an Astarte command ship. We (and several others) rushed to engage and the Astarte was quickly reduced to rubble. I failed to get in on the kill mail as I mis-warped to the first belt of the eighth planet instead of the seventh. Sigh.

Next time!

I Love It When A Plan Comes Together

In contrast to the multiple missteps and backtracks of the previous evening, last night was much much better.

First off the 24 hour downtime for the new expansion was over 6 hours early meaning by the time I got home I could download the new patch, apply it, and was playing in no time.

By the way, the downtime news events posted here while the expansion was being installed on the server were brilliant. I loved checking the website during the day and seeing what major world changing events were taking place in the universe, just amazing.

Anywhoo, I logged in and immediately went looking for those Maru Hackers with the Hacker ID Slice I needed for that mission. I got to the Neferanter (spelling?) ruins and quickly dispatched the waves of rats and the three Maru Hacker ships. I checked the cargos and ... nothing of interest. Drat! Now I have to wait for the next spawn.

I spent about 30 minutes waiting, checking out other wrecks, killing other spawns, chatting with ex-Strife pilots, and finally the Maru Hackers respawned. I engaged and my Scourge Precision missiles from the launcers of the Cerberus quickly dealt with them. I checked the wreck of the first... a drone and ammo. Grrrr. The second blew up and the wreck was empty. The third I attacked with a sinking feeling. He blew up, I opened the wreck and... there it was! One Hacked ID Slice!

I warped off to the mission system, docked to throw on my Recon Probe Launcher, flew out to a planet, and laid down the probe to find the gate. A minute and a half later I had it bookmarked and I re-docked to put back on the heavy missile launchers I had to take off to fit the scan probe launcher. Hmmmm... we really need Tech II exploration vessels capable of tanking, damage, and fitting scan probes. Tech II Drakes anyone?

I entered the mission area and quickly went to work. These guys were tougher than the rats at the ruins and my shields were taxed to the max tanking them while my Tech II missiles flew out and destroyed them one at a time. There was 6 cruiser rats left and my shields were falling, 23%, 22%... all the way down to 17% by the time there was only three left. Was my max recharge higher than their damage output? Survey says... YES! It climb back to 18% and I had the time I needed to blow up the last three without warping out.

With that mission completed, I realized I needed to complete two more for this same agent in order to get my faction standing increase. Fortunately the next two missions were a lot easier and less convoluted.

The first had me retrieve 500 units of small arms from low sec. I couldn't contract them to Derranna to fetch in her Prowler blockade runner, but didn't want to use Kirith's crappy hauling skills either. So I had to both of them into low sec to get the stuff, Kirith to scout and Derranna to haul. There was no gate camps or pirates and the trip went off without a hitch.

The last mission was a simple kill mission: go to an ice field and kill a named rat in a Battleship. It was not hard; the Scorpion battleship was so toned down I could have killed it in a Caracal much less a Cerberus.

With that completed I received the desired faction increase and after downtime my corp Katana Securities Inc was able to apply with the requisite faction standings. After tomorrow mornings downtime I will officially be in the war. Boo ya.

Of course, my wife and kids will be back and I will be unable to play Eve anymore. Sigh.

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.

Empty Handed

Last night I continued my hunting in the Falcon but couldn't find any targets to attack. Either the belts were empty, the ratters were battleships (twice), or they moved on before I could scan them down (three times). So after an hour of that a corpmate was on that was going to do a mission so I figured I would join in.

The first mission we did together in my Rokh and his Raven battleship and we made short work of the Serpentis rats. The next mission was the infamous Damsel in Distress mission and we tried it with me as the Damage Dealer in the Rokh and him in a Osprey cruiser with two shield transporters and shield repair drones so I could take a world of abuse and not break a sweat. It was easy, so much so that I'm now thinking of seeing how much training Optivus or Korannon would require to do the same thing.

Industry-wise, I've built 60 Invulnerability Field IIs and 20 Covert Op Cloaks that are going on the market today, and Derranna is only a handful of days from Cruiser Construction V.

"Reinforce the Shields!"

I didn't have a lot of game time this weekend, so what time I had I used to run some small missions to build up the wallet. I'm not sure what my next big purchase will be but I'm sure it will require a ton of ISK.

I switched my passive shield tank on the Rokh for an active one for the three missions I ran. Only one of the missions taxed it a bit, the other two were very easy. Still, so far I'm happy with it even if it does require more attention when things get hairy, balancing shields, capacitor, and cap booster charges at the same time along with the drones and guns.

The training for tech II missiles continues this week, with a number of support skills getting raised to IV before starting the two week effort for Heavy Assault Missiles V. Still on the fence about whether I'll finish Heavy Missiles V too or not.

YAAARRRRRR- oops!

Last night I was out in my trusty solo-Thorax looking for targets to melt. Soon thereafter Seven Six, a corpmate, joined me in his trusty Iskur Assault Frigate. We hit the space lanes and found a whole lot of nothing.

Nobody ratting, no one mining, the belts were empty.

Finally just as I was getting ready to log off we enter a system with one other in local. A Drake is on scan.

"Don't know if we can take a Drake," pondered Seven. I check the profile.

"Hell, he's a 2008 char, he shouldn't be in a battlecruiser and sure as hell shouldn't be out here," I reply.

We warp in, get the points on him, and start chewing him a new one. But wait, what if he is part of that alliance we are trying to get blue to? Sure enough, Seven checks the profile and finds Foundation alliance. CRAP! We call in the drones, disengage the weapons, and kill the rat pounding on him along with us. We send our apologies and some isk for the damage (we had him down to less than 25% armour), curse our bad luck, and head on.

Almost a kill. Sigh.

* * * * *

This morning I was online for about 45 minutes and figured I'd complete this storyline mission assigned to me where I had to move 40 units of sealed cargo cans from Gulfonodi to Hrokkur in low sec space, four jumps away. The catch? Each unit is 1000 m3.

In my trusty Badger MKII I would need about 4 trips and that was without warp core stabilizers, a death sentence should I run into any pirates. I decided to recruit Barak and his Occator Deep Space Transport vessel which could carry 10,000 m3 and have 4 warp stabs to boot.

I figured it would take thirty minutes for the four round trips. I was wrong. The Occator is slow slow slow! After making one trip I realized it would going to take too long to get the juicy 5 million isk bonus, so I opened a second client and got Derranna and her Mastadon Deep Space Transport on the go. She went without any warp core stabs in the lows, instead all cargo expander IIs so she could carry 20 of the cans and the last 10 by Barak. With Barak effectively scouting, I slogged the slow ships to Hrokkur, contracted the cans back to Kirith, and logged in as him.

"All done!" I told the agent with only minutes to space in my playing time.

"Nope," he replied, "you need to hand over the items in person."

FRACK!

So I will complete the mission tonight, no bonus isk included. Sigh. On the upside, another boost to my Minmatar faction standings is always welcome.

Take That Caldari State!

Last weekend I got assigned a 5 part mission set and completed the first four parts in short order. Last night the expiry date on accepting the last part of the mission was getting close so I decided to do it and get it over with before it was too late.

In the Midst of Deadspace 5/5 was annoying more than challenging. I hate flying against Caldari State NPCs because they like to stay at range and spam missiles. The range I can deal with, the missiles are tough; I like rats that need to get close to be effective. To make the situation more frustrating they had some blackbird jammers that were breaking my lock a lot.

Still, I was able to lock enough to kill one and the frigs, warp out for shield repair, and warp back and kill the other and the battleships of the first pocket. There were three pockets in all and each one could be pulled separately and dealt with easily once the jammers were disposed of. Then I had to blow up a Caldari Factory which took a few minutes and ton of ammo.

Still, after rewards and loot I made about 20 million isk and salvage which is pretty good for an hour and a half effort. Now I can outfit my new Scorpion in style and roll with my homies.