EVE on a different gear, redux

After making the decision to go back to my real-life buddies' alliance - I mentioned 5 in my last post but it's more like 7 or 8 - I was thinking things would be very quiet the way they always were at AMC, but I was surprised to find a bit more action than there used to be on the various channels, and as Letrange had told me the combat wing is kind of on the small side, but willing to go out and find stuff to kill at a moment's notice. The wing is made up of players ranging from industrialists finally coming around to training PvP skills, both in-game and practical, to veterans even more skilled than I am. And I'm really comfortable with the knowledge that if push comes to shove, the other industrialists of AMC can flip a switch and turn from carebear to kodiak in an instant. Carebear tears these guys do not shed. I would even go so far as openly inviting a third bunch of clowns to come setup a POS in our Grotto wormhole system, just so we can practice our eviction tactics!

So as I mentioned in my last post, the Welcome Back party was tons of fun, with 2 battleship kills and a Phobos for good measure. But in case you didn't know, the Bhaalgorn is a force to be reckoned with; when that ship showed up at the gate the fight was on our little Jihad gang started popping real quick. But go down fighting we did, and 81% efficiency is something to be proud of. And to all the people dissing the Claw interceptor, go back to the previous blog post, click the battle summary link, and check who did top damage on the Dominix... yeah baby! I didn't do much after that because I had to get downtown for the Montreal pilots' meet, but when I got back I went on a shopping spree and made use of the newly fitted Orca to haul an entire fleet of disposable ships, as well as a few interceptors and assault frigs for good measure. My bigger ships will be added to my hangar when they get delivered from that POS in Providence, though I do have one of my VagaCanes, because I do want to take a slightly more serious gang out than a Jihad in the near future.

Sunday started out really relaxed, with a blog update, the fitting of Rifters and Stabbers and Thoraxes (oh my!), and a clone jump to get out of my implants because I planned more mayhem; yes, the WB party op was done with +4s in my head... silly me :) At least I rarely get podded so all is good, I didn't have to replace them. The first op was run by my buddy Havegun and had a smaller fleet composition than the previous day's and after finding the Heimatar/Metropolis Low-sec to be very quiet we decided to head towards Caldari space. It didn't take long to find trouble because a few systems were full of people, probably on Faction Warfare ops, and even some carriers were out and about. We went through that real quickly in search of easier targets, and were soon joined on a gate by a pirate Dramiel. When the fastest ship in fleet is a Stabber, you will not catch that thing. But he did his job perfectly as he lead us away from the gate and two HAM-fit Drakes landed on us and killed our T1 stuff in no time flat. Lesson learned: do no engage a Dramiel unless flying one yourself!

Havegun had to leave the game for Real Life stuff so we took a break (it was also supper time in Montreal), but I then took control of the small fleet and had another pilot join us, Montrealer Uozag who is also new to The PvP. I decided to take a different route than Havegun to go on a Tour de Molden Heath. This didn't pan out too well though because there were even less people out in space, and all the -10s were staying docked and not falling for my noob ratter tactic; maybe having Clown Punchers as one of my previous employers is not helping in that regard! Anyway, after getting to the far end of Molden Heath I get everyone's approval to go to Great Wildlands, where at least we can shoot at anything and anybody. And we didn't have to go far to find a target. As one of my guys has to drop fleet and heads home he scouts 2 pirates camping the Teonusude gate in Bosena, but has he is saying this on comms a neutral Myrmidon appears in our midst, clearly on autopilot! The slight distraction of the scout report was enough to make us fumble the bumping attempt and the Myrm was able to jump to safety, for now. Seeing that there is traffic I thought maybe it would be a good idea to camp here a bit... and that was a good idea because the Myrm jumped right back in! We made short work of him but one of his buddies arrived in a neuting active-tank Dominix. There was no way our small gang was going to break his tank, and he started popping one cruiser after another, so GTFO was called, which allowed 2 cruisers to survive. But the Myrm.... dammit man, just look at that fit !!! If you do not see the fail in this fit you need to give me all your stuff and uninstall the client.

I spent the rest of the evening just tooling around, checked out the changes in LCSC's corp hangar since the time I left last fall (had to pick my jaw off the floor there!), and as Let mentioned I helped him get rid of some Amarr Navy NPC from that ever-so-nasty mission. All in all a most excellent day. I had missed flying Stabbers, but I did miss the punch of either the Cane or the Vaga. But no worries, it is looking like the very small AMC combat wing is getting back into the swing of things, and unlike what we did at the start of Apocrypha, when we were getting into wormholes and moving stuff all over New Eden, we will keep training from our base in Empire, and try to get a few more members each time we go out, and maybe even recruit a bit. Yes even carebear alliances can be a lot of fun when you put the effort at the right place.

Fly safe? Never!

o7

Always on the move

"You know things are bad when a player leaves a 0.0 alliance to join essentially a carebear alliance and gets better PvP right away!"

- Letrange


This may sound a bit weird but it's pretty much what happened to me. No offense to any Chaos Theory members who may be reading this, but from my point of view things just didn't work out in Providence. Sure the weeks prior to the official start of the "Ciao CVA" campaign things were looking good, with camps and roams to keep the PvP senses honed. And then AAA gave the green light and all Hell broke loose for the so-called Holders. There was much action as sovereignty modules had to be first put into reinforced mode and then blown up, space had to be patrolled, and assets had to be moved in. Sovereignty got switched in systems left and right, the last CVA station went down to a fully Minmatar fleet, and all was beautiful in the universe. For all of one day.

Before leaving for work the next morning I decide to fit a few ships, but Lo and Behold, the fitting service is dead. Awesome. If I would've been on the enemy side I would've done just the same to piss off the enemy. But here's the bad thing about the Chaos Theory systems: they are very spread out. Fitting a single ship became a pain in the ass. Furthermore, it seemed that the drive to take some sovereignty had quieted down a tad because not only were the stations not being fixed, but finding someone to fly with in eastern prime time was getting harder and harder. The last nail in the coffin for me was last Thursday, when a new PvP corp was to be added to the alliance to jump-start activity, and with this corp is supposed to be an old veteran from the Beta days, with supercap access, oodles of accounts, and a nasty foul mouth. That I can deal with, but as I have said before, the next joker to start barking orders would have that bark right back at him, and it came pretty close to that after I had lost a Hurricane, at least in an honorable way. When the unmentioned newcomer started saying things about people not flying what they're supposed to and losing BCs flying solo, I told him straight: you're not happy about my BC loss, you tell it to my face. I was looking for trouble on purpose, found a bit too much, died. Big. Fucking. Deal. I didn't push further as it would be in-constructive but then spent a couple hours hearing about his plans. At the same time a 10-man red BS+support fleet had decided to start shooting at another station, and me and some other guys decided to form up a defense fleet. There were 55 in alliance... we got 5 people in the fleet even after spamming the alliance channel, at 10PM Eastern. Hear this? it's the sound of the last nail hitting the coffin. Goodbye Chaos Theory, thanks for the kills, and good luck evading the fail-cascade.

I spent the next evening gathering my better ships together at my real-life friend's POS, sold the rest, and started looking at my options. I did think about joining the reds but being branded as a turn-coat doesn't sit well with me. I thought of knocking at Noir's door but I know these guys probably have BOZO-style discipline and I'm looking for something more casual... shout-out to Alexeyev Karrde who flew with us prior to Hell Week, and to Mynxee who has my vote in the upcoming elections! So I turned Skype on and called AMC CEO Letrange and asked how things were, and gave news about my own activities, or lack thereof. AMC is a tad short on combat pilots but is working on that, so I informed him that he can have a couple more. Let doesn't want more corporations so I will be leaving my 2-man corp along with my buddy Si Gong and we'll both become part of Let's own ChaosStorm Corporation. Dock 94 will remain alive for our alts.

The decision made, I get to AMC's PvP op HQ and got in a training fleet ran by fellow Montrealer Havegun Willtravel, and started roaming the Heimatar Low-sec corner. We had 7 Jihad cruisers plus my Claw, and a few jumps later, this happens. I couldn't have asked for a better Welcome Back party than this!

Just prior to this, I had phoned my buddy Si Gong to inform him of the upcoming changes because he's been without internet access lately. At the same time he asked me to complete the training for his Orca, which I then proceeded to pick up. It was quite an operation because it was 2 jumps into Genesis Low-sec, and I have very little experience dual-boxing. but the Orca is now safe in Rens, and I did Si a favor by fully fitting it, small payment for me using it to move some assets to AMC HQ. The Orca is an awesome ship. At some point I will have to break down and have Cozmik train for it. But as I was discussing with Havegun here's an idea for CCP: how about a combat version of the Orca, a combat deployment vehicle usable in Hi-sec? It sure would be fun to not have to train the mining skills I'll never use :)

So there you go. A new start once again but this time I'm pretty sure it's for good. there's nothing like having corp and alliance mates you know in real life. One is good, but five is better.

Don't wait for stuff to happen... FLY!

o7

New benchmarks

Yesterday was a good time for me and AMC as we saw the fruitition of hard labor, pure luck, and plain old skilling up. Here is a short run-down:

After mining tons of gas sites, looting and salvaging hordes of Sleeper wrecks, hacking many combat sites, doing lots of reactions and reverse-engineering and being extremely patient, The first AMC Tech 3 strategic cruisers are coming off the assembly line. One of our pilots got his Proteus yesterday, as described in Letrange's blog, and others should be getting their own favorite T3 ships soon. I'll be waiting a bit as I have neither the ISK, shares, or skills to fly and support them. but I'm not feeling left out. Read on.

Last week in an extremely lucky exploration trip I had found a very valuable piece of equipment courtesy of the Serpentis Coreli people, and was even lucky enough to find the same module twice! One of those sold (I have to split the profit of the second one though) and I was able to buy and fit a ship I've been waiting a long time for, my very first Maelstrom of Shield Boostin' Tankiness !!! This ship already is a champion at the active shield tank, but when you put it in a pulsar environment it becomes a Behemoth. Knowing I wouldn't be able to fly a dreadnought for a good while (if ever) I decided to give it the name I had in reserve for the capital ship: Shub Niggurath, the original Quake game's final boss. The ship will mostly see action in our colony system's Sleeper sites, but should some jokers decide to pitch a tent in our backyard again (more on that when I have time to elaborate) I will glady fire VW Bug sized bullets at said tent.

Shub Niggurath on its way home

I also want to take this opportunity to salute the new AMC members who are friends old and new who will soon get a taste of what this small seamingly carebearish alliance is capable of.

Fly dangerous,

o7

Dad Week

Yep, I'm at the beginning of one of those weeks when I have absolutely no access to EVE since Apocrypha came out because the second computer is short on memory, and the GeForce 4200Ti is very 2003 and will just not cut it; something in me wants to try the Lite version but typing this blog is activity enough while the boys watch "Go Diego Go" *shudder* Maybe tonight after they've gone to bed I'll try just to get the "Fail!" message.

So, what to do on a cold and rainy weekend with two young boys happily playing with their armada of toys? Here's a few ideas:

• Spend copious amounts of time on my alliance's forums and try to get news of what's happening in game, from awesome battleship kills to OMFGWTF battleship losses. I also try to get news from ops that may have happened, succesful or not, and make cunning plans (the kind you put tails on and call weasels) for future ops to keep the pilots on their toes and to look forward to my return in-game.
• Spend some time fiddling with EFT even though the app is now outdated. It's always fun to come up with a setup that's suddenly more tanky or more ganky or faster. In my Bozo days I was exposed to a bunch of guys who kept out-EFT-ing each other and coming up with extremely refined fits so I'm doing my best to keep up the good work. Can't wait for the Apocrypha version to come out!
• Read the EVE-O forums; this is about the only time that I really get up to date with what's going on in the Big Picture. Reading CAOD can be extremely funny at times (or a complete facepalm) . I also check out Alliance recruitment threads to bump some old friendlies, who may get to shoot at me now of course (!), and have a good laugh at some other ones, mostly from my knowledge of them in past encounters :)
• Watch videos and listen to podcasts; I do have to tell my boys to cover their ears at times, especially when listening to BOZOKast, which can now be considered the steadiest podcast in all of EVE... scary thought isn't it?! The boys and I really enjoy the videos found on YouTube. We spend pretty much the entire Alliance Tournament watching the 'puter screen and yesterday I showed 'em Day of Darkness II which they found really impressive, even if they call it "Star Wars"... I train my Padawans well !!! :)
• And of course read up on the various blogs from all my buddy bloggers! Special thanks go to Letrange for showing the industrial pilots' bad influence on a pure PvPer like me! Like Let said, have no fear, the Taranis is back to its normal painful configuration:

[Taranis, Rapist]
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Pseudoelectron Containment Field I

1MN MicroWarpdrive II
Fleeting Progressive Warp Scrambler I
X5 Prototype I Engine Enervator

Light Ion Blaster II, Void S
Light Ion Blaster II, Void S
Light Ion Blaster II, Void S
[empty high slot]

[empty rig slot]
[empty rig slot]

Warrior II x2

And there you go. A small sample of the things I do in between preparing meals, doing dishes, changing diapers, settling fights, and mending bruises. I have no clue if the Lite version will run even if this box is a little below the required specs. It would be way sweet if it does run because I'll be able to make ISK with the trade alt and I won't have to bug Letrange with skill changing; yes it does go against the EULA, but CCP thinks 24 hours is enough for a skill queue... my situation is the reason why I think it's not enough.

So until I can join up a gang in game, you guys fly hard and deadly...

o7