A weekend without EVE

For the first time in a very long time, I've spent an entire weekend on shore leave from New Eden. I was very busy with real life with my boys, this being Halloween and all, and I basically caught up on some much needed Z's by going to sleep at the same time as or only shorter after my boys. I thought I could log on after the Halloween candy run but just as the boys were about to nod off after a successful candy harvest, one of 'em had gone to the bathroom and managed to jam the toilet. The next few minutes were frantic as you can imagine, so yeah, no EVE after that! Sleep please !!!

But my parental duties are coming to an end for this week so I plan to make a bit of a comeback. In the plans for this week:

- Caldari T2 frigates: Having ended Caldari Frigate V I now have access to these, but I have yet to buy and fit some. I will most probably get a Crow and a Harpy tonight, with maybe a Flycatcher or two very soon. My missile skills are still limited to T2 rockets, but at least the support skills are now at IV. At least the Harpy is a blaster boat, and I'm covered there.

- 6 days to Interceptor V: Just in time for the changes to rockets and T2 ammunition. I can't wait to fly my Claw and Taranis next sunday, and even more after Incursion hits :) And that is a good thing because:

- The plan that all PvPer's dread to think about: After Inty V I'm starting the Orca plan, so that means training interesting stuff like Mining 3-4, Industry 3-4-5, Astrogeology 3, Mining Barge 1-5, Mining Foreman 1-5, Mining Director 1 and finally Industrial Capital 1-4. I just couldn't stomach training any more carebear shit after that. The use of the Orca will be for field deployment only. I will never boost a miner, and I will never tractor cans. Hell, I may even use it as bait!

- Necessary carebearing to fund the expensive stuff: An Orca and a Loki are not exactly cheap toys so I have no choice but to make a bit of ISK. I don't have the vast ISK flow of industrial players, and I don't buy GTC's for ISK, so I have no choice. It's not a choice I like... that's what I find the suckiest part of EVE, one that may cause me to leave at some point. There are just no fun ways to make ISK; I'm not about to be branded a scammer!

Of course I will try to find some time for The PvP in there or else I will go crazy. Now let's hope I can have a normal weekend for once.

Fly hard

o7

Waiting for rockets to finally work

Lately I've been polishing up some training I had left behind when I decided I had had enough of getting killed by Taranis pilots and wanted to get in on the action. This was followed by intense training for the Broadsword and the Vagabond, sprinkled with a smidge of Cheetah and Rapier, and finally with good battleship skills, followed by Field Command Ships. All of this had the effect of putting a serious hole in my training: missile skills. Until recently the damage I was doing with missiles was just a little extra over the awesome output of my guns. I can fly a nicely tanked bait Drake but even for this particular battlecruiser my damage output would be anemic enough to pass it up. But among the things that are coming with the Incursion expansion is the long awaited rocket fix... ABOUT GOD DAMNED TIME !!!!

One ship that I have the feeling will receive some love because of this is the Republic Fleet Firetail. Having already suffered a lot at the time of the Quantum Rise speed rebalance, it received a quasi death blow when the Dramiel was raised to Uber Tackling King status. I don't know (and seriously doubt) if the Firetail will de-throne the Angel frigate, but with rockets being a lot more effective I suspect that the 2 gun/ 2 launcher setup will make the Firetail a great assault frigate. Other ships will also feel the love given to the rockets: the Flycatcher and Heretic interdictors, the Malediction, Crow and Claw interceptors, the Hawk assault frigate, the Gurista Worm frigate... those are a few ships which will surely become very popular once Incursion hits. I have already patched up missile training to the point that I can finally use T2 rocket launchers, and after a bit more support skill polishing I'll be training up Caldari Frigate V, followed by Amarr Frigate V. This will allow me to fly all of the ships named here with T2 setups.

Once all that is done I will come at yet another crossroads in my EVE career. Do I go the Caldari or the Amarr way? Do I get my Gallente Battleship IV and T2 weapons? Or do I keep deepening my Minmatar skills? Some of the minnie ships are really nice and useful like the Scimitar and Claymore, but I see myself more of a loner even in a fleet setting. E-war frigates... never been interested, plus if I want to play that type of game I have access to Huginns and Rapiers now. Marauders? Meh, I'm not enough of a mission runner, and my Sleipnir kills L4 missions quite quickly; the only things that would make missioning more fun would be a Loki or a Machariel, but my EVE play style makes me a poor guy so I'll be in the Slippy for a good while. Besides, I want to keep the Machariel as a gift celebrating Minnie BS V and Gal BS V... still have a while to go!

And finally, do I want to have a couple of big ships if only as haulers? Of course I'm talking Orca and Nidhoggur here; whenever I have lots of ships and stuff to move to an area I hate feeling dependant on other players. I know the Nid is the ugly duckling of the carriers, but because I have no intentions of taking a carrier into combat that makes it the perfect hauler for me, especially if I ever decide to go back to Null-sec. If I do such a move it will be after some careful corporation shopping though because I have zero interest in Sovereignty or Capital Ship warfare, and I'm quite happy here at MAPU. The Orca is an awesome asset in Hi-sec space, but over a month of industrial skill training makes me shy away from it. But having "borrowed" one I've seen how useful it is. Of course if I get one it has to stay docked up when (not if) Helicity Boson throws on Hulkageddon IV; I'll be too busy losing sec status anyway :))

My parental weekend is over, and I'm done with POS bashes for a while so I can see only one thing in my EVE future: FUN! :))

Fly safe? Why should I ?!

o7

20 million SP; the post that never was

As I'm slowly closing in on twenty-ONE million SP, I realize that I did not post my "State of Cozmik" article that I wanted to post just as Clown Punchers announced their little banter contest. And of course with things being extremely busy in Real Life even blogging time is at a prime so I'll take a short break before I attack the packing of my boys' clothes and toys, as well as picking up the debris left by the hurricane they made in the living room. Yep, as I mentioned before, this is not quite vacation!

So yeah, a couple weeks ago Cozmik R5 finally achieved the 20 million skill point barrier, not too long after getting the Vagabond decently skilled and rightly fitted (well to my taste; some people may tank it more than I do but mine is still a speedster), and once again it will be time to set my sights on the future and decide where I want to take the training. Right now Coz is training Medium Hybrid Turrets V because I also have Gallente Cruiser V, so when I got the HAC skill I was automatically able to fly the Deimos and Ishtar. Being a big fan of guns I want to get a Deimos first, but there's no way I'm buying one unless I can fit it right. Same with the Ishtar; I'm not getting one of these babies until I have all T2 drones with support skills trained up. I know drones are effective but I prefer guns so call me weird! After I get the Medium T2 Hybrids I will go back to training the Large T2 Projectiles for my Minmatar battleships and once that's done, I have to take a break from training new ships because I have to bump up a lot of support skills in a lot of categories. In the rush to get a newer ship or system trained up there's always something that gets put on the back-burner and I think that over the past say 6 months I've gotten my back-burner a bit too crowded so this will get straightened out.

Now, let's recapitulate the ships I've trained either completely or almost completely:

T1 frigates (Minnie V, Gal V, Caldari IV, Amarr III)

• Destroyer V (can fly Minnie and Gal interdictors)
• Interceptors
• Assault Ships
• Covert Ops (scanning skills need to get better, so do missile/bomb skills for the bomber)

T1 Cruisers (Minnie, Gal and Caldari... Amarr soon-ish)

• Heavy Interdictors
• Heavy Assault Cruisers
• Battlecruiser IV (again, Amarr soon-ish)

T1 Battleships (Minnie and Gal at III... yes I need IV before I can REALLY use them) with Remote-repair capability

When I cross-trained to Gallente I did make sure I had the T2 hybrid guns and T2 drones to go with the Taranis so from there I've tried to keep the hybrids up to par with my projectiles, but I did take the short-cut of skipping missile skills; it will be quite some time before I have decently fit Caldari ships or even a good Typhoon fit, but I don't mind because those ships are just so damn ugly that I don't even want to be seen in them; seriously, Caldari designers should be shot on sight and I would bet money that the 'Phoon designer was of Caldari blood! The Amarr ships are really interesting (got toasted by Absolutions enough on Sisi) but so far I have only very basic Lazer skills so it will be quite some time before I get a Scorch-firing Zealot Of The Pink Floyd.

So after I get my support skills sorted out, as well as some important ship skills to at least IV, here are the ships I'll have left to train up for before I decide (or not) to take the Capital Ship road:

• Electronic Attack Frigates: I may be skipping this because I'm not a huge fan. Apart from the Kitsune, I'll pass.
• Recon Ships: probably my next expensive ship after Cov Ops skills are straightened out.
• Command Ships: now that HAC is done, these aren't too far off. Must brush off some Leadership skills first though.
• Strategic Cruisers: testing on Sisi showed me I can fly one of those rather quickly, but they are quite a bit more than 600 ISK on Tranquility even if my alliance makes them. I can wait.
• T2 Battleships: I'm not a mission runner so screw the Marauder, and Black Ops are not much used. And anyway both are way too expensive. I can wait.

With that last one I guess I'll be training Battleship V for only two reasons: to get absolutely kick-ass T1 BSes, and opening the door to Capitals, even though I don't think I'll actually own one unless I get some massive money-making scheme going. I've done just enough POS operations (exactly one) to know that I absolutely hate them, and my playing schedule isn't exactly good for receiving a call at 4AM saying "get in your Naglfar, we're killing a Large POS in XX-123!". Cuz yeah, being an EVE gun-freak (I'm not one in Real Life) means I'd go to a Dreadnought before a Carrier. But even if I only have one for station spinning, a dread would be a cool ship to have because it would mean that all the smaller ships below it are trained up to the max, and who knows, maybe I'd be lucky and have a Mothership to shoot at!

And the Supercaps? Don't even think about it. To me, a Mom or a Titan means you have just sold your soul to a massively big alliance that is into all the "politicaillerie" shit that I absolutely hate about EVE. It's even worse than selling it to the devil! The only thing that interests me about Supercaps would be tackling one with my Broadsword and seeing my gang tearing it apart. Sure Titans are cool for the jump bridge thing but yeah... politics... (/me pulls out barf bag).

So there you have it, the on-going training of Cozmik summed up in one blog post. Sorry about the wall-o-text :)

Fly it like it's already dead,

o7