Paradise

Welcome to the 39th Blog Banter - the community discussion that stretches across the many communities of EVE Online through the use of arcane bloggery. The conversation is open to all and readers are encouraged to visit all of the entries that will be listed below as the discussion progresses. Be sure to leave your thoughts there when you do.

For enquiring minds who would like to know more about the Blog Banters, check out this short explanation or read this overview of the subjects covered in the last year.

After a some heavy topics in the last few editions, this time we'll be taking a more relaxed trip through the thoughts of the blogosphere. The origins of this month's concept come from a suggestion from EON Magazine editor Richie "Zapatero" Shoemaker.

"Some say a man's home is his castle. For others it is wherever they lay their hat. The concept is just as nebulous in the New Eden sandbox. 

In EVE Online, what does the concept of "home" mean to you?"

Alright let's have a go at this while 1- I'm still in home in Montreal at my 'puter, and 2- this banter is still alive!

Let's see. Over the 4+ years I've been in New Eden I have called a few places home for various amounts of time, from the safest space in the middle of Empire - well, as safe as New Eden can get... it's never totally safe you know - to deep wormhole space. Hey even if it was just for a single op, the logistics required meant I spent over a week in there! Let's go over a short list of the places I've called (still call in some cases) home and I'll finish by what to me is the best dark jewel of the star cluster.

Eram (Metropolis): Minutes after graduating from Republic Military School, I was sent to this system by one Letrange as he had his own home in that neck of the woods at the time. Yes this is where I started the nasty climb up the dreaded Learning Cliff; I was so green that I couldn't even see the overhang! But Letrange and I both knew that I wouldn't be staying there long because after an interview and just slighly more knowledge (very slightly) I was off to...

Berta (Derelik): I've mentioned before that at a mere 3-weeks old I joined the Clown Punchers Syndicate but the springboard to Curse was here. At first I couldn't be with the BOZOs full time because frankly I was so green I couldn't be of much use for 'em. But my thirst for the PvP was so great that I stuck around and flew many a Rifter and Stabber to its untimely demise, but slowly but surely I was getting better, faster and able to understand just what the fuck was going on. I kept asking tons of questions to the dismay of some of the more experienced players but at least I made it up by participating and even performing adequately, until I made the move from Clown College to BOZO proper. By this time I was living in...

Jorund (Curse): This was my first Null-sec home; hey, don't bash Curse because it's NPC space... as a true BOZO at heart I couldn't care less about any Sov bullshit, or moon-goo mining or any other crap you can think of that would make Sov space better. To me it's not. Period. We lived in Curse for one reason only: to kill stuff. And with the traffic we had it was like shooting fish in a barrel. but I'll go deeper on the subject of Curse later. Let's fast forward a bit to a time when planet Seyllin I blew up, and wormholes started to appear left right and center. Needing a break from all-out BOZO killing frenzies and knowing my buddy Letrange would need some combat pilots to train some former high-sec industrialists to the rigors of Null-sec space, I packed my stuff and headed towards the center of the cluster to...

Azer (Everyshore): Its central location made it the perfect place to start exploring this new frontier called W-space. I still have a lot of stuff going on in this area because the location is great! Close to the market hub of Dodixie, right next to a few low-sec pipes to keep us blood-thirsty PvPers happy (ok, we had to keep it "anti-pirate" at the time... me remembers getting flak for killing a TCF cyno XD), and decent proximity to Null-sec space through Syndicate, where incidently the BOZOs had just moved, in the system of...

Poitot (Syndicate): After a few months things got kinda slow for me at AMC and I got restless to the point of going back to BOZO, which had gotten a lot more serious during my absence. But as I got there I was told not to bring too much stuff because a move was being planned. We were heading back to...

Curse! Ah yes, that crazy place was calling again, and this time it was in the system of Hemin. Still a lot of traffic, still a lot of kills. And of course someone who flies as crazy as I do also happens to fail a lot. Where I take failing in stride and just move on, sometimes the brass higher up doesn't take kindly to say, ninja-ratting with a red in system (fully knowing what can/will happen and not giving a shit) or missing what should've been an easy tackle on say a Ferox. At some point the seriousness wasn't fun anymore and knowing that I probably would fail again (and not care) I kicked myself out of BOZO before it was done to me. I just had to go solo a bit and that's when Dock 94, my own tiny corp, was born. And where did I decide to park D94's HQ?

Rens (Heimatar): Believe it or not, at this point the Brutor Tribe Bureau was literally giving away office space! Rens, kinda like Azer, is not badly placed on the star map; no wonder a market hub formed there. During this time I was able to get more ISK from missioning as I now had the skills to do Level 4's, plus once in a while I was giving help to my buddies over at AMC to say, kill a tower or something. But after a while I did miss gang action and a buddy of mine got in touch with some other buddies about to start a little party henceforth known as The Provi War. We set up shop in...

Kheram (Domain): Preparing for the war was more fun than the actual war because, let's face it, the alliance my buddy and I parked our corps in was full of fail. But the whole time leading up to the invasion of CVA space, that was a blast! Low-sec fuckery, killing RP'ers I was already shoot-on-sight with because of my BOZO past, making fun of said RP'ers who I must admit taking themselves waaaay too seriously, etc. But after the invasion the alliance got spread too thin and, yeah... EJECT! The funny thing is I went back to AMC which is essentially an industrial alliance and immidiately found more The PvP! And we found a nice little place to call home Letrange had named...

Chaos Central (Jxxxxxx, W-space): Tons of fun and ISKies were had in here. I can also say were lost in here! I remember a certain multiboxing troll who tought he would make us cry with Hall & Oates lyrics but got disappointed when we just shrugged off our losses. Ahhh, good times! but it came to an end when Letrange took a break from EVE. CC as we came to call it was just one of many AMC colonies in W-space. The one still operating today (not even giving away its callsign :p) is a veritable stronghold. On hit of the scan button will cause anyone to run away screaming like a little girl. One system I can talk a bit more about was called BBW; at around 200au across, yeah she was fat! This is the system where many attempts where made to either kill an AMC tower or to plant a rogue tower, which we utterly destroyed sometimes in hilarious fashion. And there was another one... oh fuck it was deep. A Class 5 pulsar which caused my weird-fit sniper Tempest to have about 275k EHP, with a full gank setup?! Yeah. We kicked out some sleepy russians to get it and it was one hell of a job.

But THE place I would go back to tomorrow if I had the chance. The place that to me had it all, and then some, and when you thought she couldn't give you more she just went ahead and did...

5E-VR8 (Paradise constellation, Curse): By far, THE BEST PLACE I have ever called home in the entire New Eden cluster. I have lived four times in the constellation, once for a short time before the Provi War started in J7A-UR (entry through Catch with AAA as blues had its perks), and once in D87E-A with Ushra'Khan, who at some point did have some links with BOZO. But the two times the Clown Punchers lived there, at the station we came to call BOZOMart, man those were the days! I could fill page upon page of all the funny stuff that happened in here. This is also where I learned the ropes of FC'ing. This is where I killed a Domination rat worth about 120 million ISK just in time to go help my BOZO brothers kill a ratting Nidhoggur (!) three jumps away in JWJ-P1. This is where Tackle-Falcon maestro Loofaro once called for help because he had just caught a Nighthawk next door in K-B2D3 only to belay the order because the Nighthawk was fit with nothing but fail! Ah yes, Paradise. This constellation could not be more aptly named!

Link to the main banter page for all the other banter stories (yes, I'm a lazy schmuck, I'm tired, and tomorrow I'm going on a 550km bike ride!) 

Edit: man Blogger fails at the copy/paste thing...

Edit #2: fuck it, I give up. Sorry if the top part is all wonky.

Home is where the heart is

Last Tuesday night I made official what a few of my corp-mates already knew and what I'm pretty sure some of my alliance-mates suspected. I announced to everyone that I would be leaving AMC and was actively looking for a new place I could call home. I had previously worked out my "looking for corp" advertisement and all I had left to do was to announce to all of New Eden that Cozmik R5 was ready to fight for a new cause. I was surprised at how fast attention was given to my post; remember, I come from a very quiet corp/alliance where chatter usually means business or trouble, and voice comms used only when necessary like fleet ops or board meetings. Within 5 minutes of posting on EVE-O Recruitment I had 2 convos going and 2 mails, and at the same time I was trying to skim through the various corp recruitment ads. This was faster than I expected because a lot of corps don't see EVE my way. Oh well! But one convo was catching more and more of my attention because the requirements I was asking for a new corp were being checked one after the other. It felt like I was talking to another "Me" who was understanding every single view I had of EVE. And in some weird way, it was almost predictable that I would be joining them. I still took a full day and a half to study the various options which presented themselves, but that first big convo turned out to be the good one.

And so just as the weekend was about to arrive I joined an alliance that though it has seen its share of trouble and drama, it is still alive and well. And I must admit, it sings a special song to Cozmik's racial heritage. The corp is called Trust Don't Rust; The alliance is called Ushra'Khan! When I started thinking that moving out of AMC just might improve the fun I have in EVE I had a short list of possible places where I could do what I like, some with people I knew, and some I had heard about. But even though I didn't know what had happened to U'K after they got disbanded from the inside, it was still in my list for a couple reasons: in my early days U'K was in Curse and one of BOZO's rare blues, at least when I joined 'em. We even had mixed fleets together and I know of at least one U'K pilot who later became a BOZO. And a bit later, I fought beside them in the Provi War. In fact, the first time I ever docked up in Providence was in a U'K held station. I then moved out of Providence, some guy disbanded them, and I sort of lost track of them for a while. Well, until the big convo that is.

So what's up with Ushra'Khan now? I could barely believe it when it was announced to me: back in that crazy place called Curse! As I've said before, this region's map is pretty much imprinted in my brain, and close to 50% of my collection of bookmarks is in that region alone. I still know some people who live there so I may get to score kills on 'em, or vice-versa. And this time around when I move there I will have the hability to jump back to Empire easily to resupply, and learn skills faster when I'll be a few days offline.

On Thursday evening the alliance switch happened and I was ready to haul part of my stuff to the Low-sec jump-off point. Kind of interesting as I had to do the trip in my Orca, but I took care to spend a lot of time not only scouting the way, but also monitoring the traffic I may encounter, and when I felt ready I went for it, without encountering any problems. Yes, this is dangerous flying people :) After this was done, I docked up the Orca in the last truck stop before Curse known as Berta, grabbed the trusty Taranis I had left there and proceeded to do what a lot of people fear to do and jumped straight into Doril. It helped that things were starting to quiet down but Curse is the last place in New Eden where you'd want to let your guard down. So with the help of my numerous tacticals and safespots I made it safely to U'K HQ. Cozmik has come home!

On Friday I didn't do much in EVE because 1- the only ship I had was my Taranis, and 2- I was dead tired from a crazy week at work. I did undock when there was a chance we could fight a few ships in our system, but a few ships became a lot and we had to get safe. A bomber gang and sleepiness followed so I logged. Saturday I was in full vegetative mode; this was the first weekend where I didn't have any moving-related activities so I took it very easy. There was the Montreal EVE Meet in the evening but it was one of the smallest ones with 3 pilots (me included) showing up; blame family suppers, gf birthdays, and NCDOT for this :) But on Sunday morning my stuff had been delivered and I decided to make good use of the 3-4 hours I had to kill before I had to go out. Not too long after I logged in a Scimitar was spotted flying unassisted (!) towards us so we set up a quick trap. I fumbled the first tackle and we came close to losing him because of my impatience, but we had him trapped on both sides of the gate so I took a deep breath and waited for the next opportunity. And I redeemed myself quite nicely: for my first U'K kill I got the final blow, top damage, and even scrammed the pod. Not a bad start!

I then got into a small 6-man fleet for a guy who wanted to practice his FC'ing, flying cheap to semi-cheap ships. It was cool to have a bubbler in gang again, something not possible in Hi-sec wardecs! So we charted a path through -A- territory in Catch, which would have us getting back into Curse from Jamunda. There was very little traffic on the way, with ships being very elusive or POS'ed up. But the action would happen at the Litom/Utopia gate where a Heretic and a Thorax were camping. I was then ordered to tackle the Heretic and proceeded to fuck him up. Once again final blow and top damage; the pod was very quick/lucky in escaping 2 bubbles. But the Heretic had put his fire on me and I came a bit too close to popping. We then got a good bead on the Thorax on the Utopia/Hemin gate, but Lo and Behold, about 15 reds jump in on us. Pancake gets called; a few ships like my oxygen-spewing 'Ranis get out, but some don't. Things started cooling down a bit and when the gang had moved off the gate we got into Hemin and docked up. Some waited out the heavy traffic, and some like me logged, but not before making repairs and finally planting my medical clone in Curse. God how I have missed this place !!!

Trust may not rust, but in rust I trust

o7