Wanderlust

At Kirith Kodachi's suggestion, here is the in-game stellar map showing the places I've visited in New Eden.



Yes, I have visited 49-U in Querious twice with Jihad fleets. The first time the place was pretty dead and we caught some ratters, and the second time our T1 fitted Jihad gang got hot-dropped by no less than FIVE carriers !!!

But yes, sometimes I do miss Curse, Scalding Pass and Wicked Creek, and all the crazy denizens found there, both blue and red :))

Edit, May 31st 2009: I think I will re-post the screenshot with the regions clearly labeled; I kinda show that I did this on the fly :))

Late update, but worth it :)

Yes, I'm a bit late in updating the blog and it's because once again I'm in the process of moving, and computer time is at a prime even though I'm on "vacation". I did get a chance to get on EVE though, and Tuesday was especially succesful.

Last Monday a Golem pilot made it into one of AMC's wormhole systems, and managed to pop one of our guys who was mining a tad too casually. Getting a miner popped is one thing but using what this guy calls diplomacy was not the greatest idea ever. The next day Mr Golem was still in the system, this time with two BC buddies and the trio was happily clearing out the various Sleeper sites. One of our pilots got in a convo with him and apparently he wanted to make some kind of a deal where he and his buddies would leave our miners alone if we gave them the combat sites... this alone causes some problems:

- AMC currently has ONE diplomat and his name is Letrange (this name may ring a bell) and even when Mr Golem was told about him he never contacted him.

- AMC has more than enough combat pilots to chew Sleeper sites to bits.

- And as I may have mentioned before, AMC has some carebears who can take a small break from their mining/industrial thing to do a bit of The PvP to get rid of unwanted visitors.

So even though the Alliance was very quiet and very spread out we managed to prepare a big surprise for Mr Golem and his buddies. I got to the wormhole system in my Broadsword but with what we had in there that didn't scare them much; but with a good battleship squadron waiting on the K-space side things were about to heat up. The culmination of our plan was the arrival of our Falcon pilot who is adept at finding ships anywhere in space and landing the fleet perfectly in our signature "Poetry in Tackle" maneuver. One of our battleships must have gotten scouted out when he got close to the wormhole a bit too early because this sent the trio from their combat site to safespots where they decided to take a break... BAD MISTAKE !!! The Golem got scanned out by both our Cov Ops and Falcon. When everybody was in position and ready, our Falcon pilot executed the PiT maneuver and warped only my Broadsword on top of the Golem. Bubble goes up as I get there and start shooting, but the pilot is clearly AFK as he stays there immobile and not shooting back, even after I bump him. The rest of the gang arrive on the scene, the Golem gets jammed, and the rest, as they say, is history >:)

To add insult to injury, apparently his clone was fully implanted; he told our pilot who was still in a convo with him that he had a full set of High Grade Crystal implants, so his little venture into our space was quite expensive for him. Just so you know, I was the one to make pod omelet because pods caught in a bubble are pretty easy pickings. So now my Broadsword is officially blooded :))

Short Banter paragraph

I don't have time to do the full Banter thing but I'll take a few minutes to give a response to Ga'len's Banter #8 question: "What new game mechanic or mechanics would you like to see created and brought into the EVE Online universe and how would this be incorporated into the current game universe? Be specific and give details, this is not meant to be a 'nerf this, boost my game play' post like we see on the EVE forums."

The thing I miss the most especially in a 3D envrionment is pretty simple for a pilot like me: Dogfighting. I know there's probably no way this will make it into EVE but since Day One I've dreamt of flying ships in New Eden using my Saitek X52 flight control system. I know there are some MMOs on the way that will try to do this but even if they get it right their universe will not be as vast and deep as EVE currently is. Oh well, I can always dream, can't I? :)

And that's it for me. Fly dangerous and never underestimate carebear alliances !!!

o7

Edit: my New Eden Meme will be posted when I get home; I'm currently babysitting my boys cuz one of 'em has a fever.

Spazzzzztik

Yes, I am bored...


Created by OnePlusYou - Free Dating Site

197 clicks in 30 seconds if you want to know, with the thumb no less cuz I'm using the trackball >:))

Me and Nighthawks... *sigh*

Once again, this Caldari command ship has managed to cause me some trouble. Every time I try to take down a Nighthawk in a small-ish gang something usually irreversible happens to my ship. The latest incident happened yesterday after we had scanned one down hitting a Magnetometric site somewhere in W-space. I admit we were short on firepower and tank: Vagabond, Thorax, Broadsword and 2 Cov Ops at first, and one switched to a Cerberus after. When the warp-in happened I landed right in the middle of the site's structures and was bouncing away as I was trying to get a tackle. Not a fun proposition. I don't know if the Sleepers had heard about our newcomer Cartboard Box's negative sec status but they primaried his Vaga as soon as we arrived. The Nighthawk pilot didn't mess around with me too much though as his Warrior IIs ate me alive; to fail a bit more, I had forgotten to bookmark the exit wormhole in our haste to warp into the site. Bravo! Despite pleas of ransom (in 0.0 space.... right !!!) the pilot manage to tank the Vaga and HIC quite well, especially because the Vaga kept having to warp off because the Sleepers liked him too much. That's when one of the Cov Ops pilots decided to go pick up his Cerberus but with the Broadsword fitted for big fleet work it was having problems keeping in range of the Nighthawk. So at some point soon after the Cerb arrived on the scene, the Nighthawk found just the inch he needed and warped off never to be seen again. I did get the chance then to get a bookmark to the wormhole and go change ships for an interceptor, but it was too late.

Wanna hear more sad stories about me and Nighthawks? Here goes:

- When I did one of my first ops in AMC I had a Jihad fleet head straight to Syndicate space in search of trouble, and maybe Bozos. The entrance system of PF-346 was camped by various HAC, cruisers, frigs, and a Nighthawk boosted by a Basilisk. We took out a cruiser and maybe a frig, but in my failure to primary the Basilisk something bad was starting to happen: ships were dying to Einherjis and Firbolgs... yep, there was a Chimera on scan. We did get some pirate kills after the debacle though.

- As I was showing the game to one of my friends, I was flying solo in a cheap fit Rifter around my then home system of MN-7WD in Curse and in an effort to show him a bit of The PvP I got in position to tackle the first thing that would jump through my gate. Take a wild guess what jumped in! The encounter lasted all of 3 seconds. So I told my buddy "when you're in a T1 frig you're not supposed to solo-tackle command ships with no back-up...!".

- This isn't quite a bad experience but let's just say this Nighthawk died way too fast. One of the Bozo pilots has a weird tackle-fit Falcon that works great for him, and he had found a Nighthawk happily ratting away somewhere close to HQ in Curse, so he tackles him, jams him, and then calls for DPS... but apparently that wasn't needed because the ship was so fail-fit it died to the Falcon's missiles and the Angel rats' guns in under a minute !!! So much for DPS :)))

And there you have it, the reason why the Nighthawk command ship annoys the shit out of me !!!

Fly deadly,

o7

Oscar Mike Foxtrot Golf !!!!

Download Clear Skies 2 NOW. That is an order.

Even if you barely play EVE download this. Even if you have no clue what the Hell EVE is download this.

Thank you.

:)))))))

Baptism of fire

Some time last week, in a chain of event mention in my buddy Letrange's blog, one of my alliance's wormhole systems got co-occupied by a corp that was looking for nothing but some kills and LOLz. No need to repeat all of Let's blog here about the first assault on the enemy POS but all week long the only thing that I could contribute to the war effort was a few comments about tactics, ship fits and planning, and I could only hope that something was left for me to shoot at one way or another. So with the first op putting the tower in reinforced on Wednesday the action was expected to start again on Friday, and then we could put an end to the enemy's little party in our backyard. The timing could not have been better for me as I got back from my parental week, and I had a brand-spankin' new Tempest that was ready to fire VW-Bug sized ordnance into stationnary targets.

Shambler mkII

So after a bit of refitting (I had autocannons on and our system has certain "features" that affects ships) I make my way slowly to the K-space system that has the entrance wormhole while listening in to battle updates on comms, being careful not to intrude on Letrange's FCing. An obscene amount of jumps later, especially in something as slow as a battleship, I finally get to destination and Let gives me my first order: there's a Falcon messing with everyone at the tower and because I am arty fit, I will be arriving basically in my optimal so I'm to send him a good volley, with love of course :) So a single shot of my six guns and the Falcon loses all shields and its armor is dented and he warps off just before the guns are reloaded. Good decision on his part. Bad decision on our part though was trying to shoot the tower with its guns still shooting at us and many enemies in system. And then my Tempest is starting to be hit very hard and it's now clear that there is a POS gunner active. I try to warp away but then notice a dinky Crow holding me down with a point, so the only thing I can do is wait for the inevitable and then warp my pod back to K-space. A few other ships go down and then a retreat/regroup is called. End of Round 1.

At first I was disappointed at the market in the area where the wormhole system was in, but a quick check later fixed that as I noticed I was only 6 jumps away from Jita! Going on a shopping spree in the middle of a battle is weird but that's exactly what I did so in no time I was in another Tempest, but this time I had oodles of Warrior II drones so inty pilots would hate me. We also get more people in our gang while the enemy, who we know to be mostly EU timezone players, is less and less as it's getting really late/early morning over there. So once everybody is refit, present in system and ready to go Letrange once again grabs the reins of the AMC war machine and points the fleet towards the enemy tower, with a different tactic this time: kill the guns! A good thing is that there are now only 2 or 3 active enemy pilots now and there is basically nothing they can do but watch us incapacitate each gun one by one. By the time the last gun was out the enemy had lost a few ships to our lighter elements and then gave up and ran for it, leaving us with the slow but rewarding job of blowing their tower to smithereens :))

Kablooey !!!

My evening wasn't quite done though. After working my trade alt like the slave she used to be (poor Cassy!) I finally had the ISK to purchase my very first Broadsword heavy interdictor cruiser !!! So yeah, you could say I was rolling in ISK yesterday, but after the purchase I am now back to scrounging, but I will admit that if I lose the Broadsword it won't be too long before I go buy another one. Plus, I'd have to get massively ganked before I lose it because I'm using The Fit (tm). If you don't know the ship, it's basically a slow cruiser that out-tanks battleships, can survive a Doomsday or three, and will stop anyone in its bubble from warping away. Can't wait to fly it in anger :)

Fugu, the Puffer Fish of Death

In closing news I also showed a local pirate how bad his Taranis was fit by taking him to the cleaners with my own Taranis. Pro Tip: Tarani have 10m3 of drone bay space. Use it !!! I didn't collect the 9mil ISK bounty because I didn't catch his pod but where I blew his ship up he barely dented my shields :)

So there you have it, an awesome Friday night and Saturday morning to come back to the game after a break. Good Job to everyone who was a part of this, and word of advice to any other corp or alliance that would want to become our neighbors without permission, we have carebears that can turn into Kodiaks !!!

Fly dangerous,

o7

Blog Banter #7: So much to do, so little time

Welcome to another installment of the EVE Blog Banter, a monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter invites enthusiastic EVE bloggers to address a common topic for a period of one week. Posts run the gamut: short, long, funny, serious, and everywhere in between, but always fun to read! This month's topic comes to us from CrazyKinux of CrazyKinux's Musings who asks "What 3 things haven't you done in EVE and why? Would you be willing to try one day? Why so? Why not?" Direct questions about the EVE Blog Banter to CrazyKinux.

Jumping straight in, here goes:

1- FCing a big fleet and not choking up on primary calling. It's one of my downfalls as FC and I don't get enough practice these days (thanks a lot RL). I know what to call in theory but on the field I tend to waste time on easy targets while better ones could be dealt with, or hit a nut that's too tough to crack. I've done mostly frig and Jihad gangs though so I think it's time I step up to a real fleet :)

2- Doing a "Tour de New Eden" and visiting some funky looking exploration sites, spying on cap battles, and visiting the EVE gate of course :) I've covered this before and EVE sheer size makes tourism interesting.

3- Flying my new battleship in anger. Yes, it's now official, Cozmik is a Tempest Pilot! Now I have to find something big to fire those humongous autocannons at, and I'm not talking NPC !!!

Now let me put a spin on this and mention the "3 things I will never do even if life depended on it":

1- Scamming. I feel tempted to set scammers full red alliance-wide every time I see 'em. If I could put a bounty on every 0 sec status trade alt to make their podding appealing to everyone I'd do it. Believe me, I tried and was disappointed to see people needed negative sec status to have a bounty placed on them. Well, maybe losing some of MY sec status would be worth it.....

2- Power-missioning. Doing the occasional (read rare) mission may be OK, but I just don't see myself doing it full time for ISK and/or standing. I hate grinding with a passion. Which brings me to...

3- Mining. Without any disrespect to all my industrial buddies who make all the fun stuff I love blowing up, mining is THE MOST BORING THING IN ANY GAME SINCE PONG! It is the Holy Grail of grinding. I would just as soon hit the uninstall button then hit a belt for its veldspar, scordite, omber, or even pure f***ing gold !!! I've heard that people fight the boringness of mining by chatting, surfing the weeb, listening to music and whatnot, but the fact that you need to do something else when you're playing EVE says it all. ORE ships are not for me, except maybe as fragbait :))

Fly safe? Never !!!

o7