Bloodraiding

It seems like a while till I last wrote about killing stuff. And with Muira Bull’s inspirational killing spree I decided it is time to go out and raid some blood!

I started in Olfeim shortly after downtime but the only thing in system is an Archon, so I’m moving on to my favorite system: Amamake.

Sitting at my safespot I can blanked to whole system with my directional – which is kinda nice. No annoying having to warp around. Starting to scan I see a Rupture. Not sure if I can take him on I narrow him down anyways – there’s only one way to find out.

Rupture jumped out.

Rifter on scan. Rifter leaves system.

What’s that? A burst at belt IV – 1? I’ll have to check that out. I warp in and am a bit stunned to see the beams of mining lasers. Before I can recover my chin from my desk he warps.

Back at my safespot I decide to convo the guy to ask if he has in fact the necessary mining permits. Convo rejected. Guess not.

Oh, he’s back at the belt! This time he just sits there as I explode his ship which is in violation of the Amamake Nature Protection Area Act. Having done my duty the little bloodraider in my rears his ugly head and I corpsify the offender.

- I may not be a very good blood raider because I felt a bit bad for the one day old guy, so I gave him 1 million ISK -

Anyways, with a nice and fresh corpse in my hold I decide to move on and peek around the neighboring systems a bit. In Frerstorn a fight could have happened. I had narrowed a Rifter down to one belt and warped in. And he flees!

I aligned back to the next Stargate on my route, and scanned quickly around to maybe find him again.

Just as I’m about to warp out he comes back  - he wants to fight after all – but what is that? He has his corpmate in a Hurricane in tow.

Time for my dramatic exit of course. Sitting snuggly at zero on the Stargate I challenge him to a frigate one on one but nothing comes of it – a potentially very fun and even fight ruined.

With only 20 minutes of today’s playtime left I decide to make my way back to Olfeim to log out there. Amamake is busy but there are too many T3 cruisers for my taste on scan, so this time I don’t linger.

I jump into Olfeim just as a guy called nerdkiller in a Rifter warps to the couple of belts 65 AU away. Time to follow him and scan from my spot down there. He seems to cycle through the 3 belts – maybe he is ratting? Then I have him on 5 degree scan at one belt.

Warping there shows the tail of his ship warping off in direction of the Dammalin gate. Following again – maybe he’ll peek into the Angel plex there. He is sitting at the gate though.

I somehow feel that he is staring at me as intently as I am staring at him. Then he warps to one of the two belts in scanner range.

Honourable space samurai duel is on!

I reload to Barrage to test my theory on his Rifter fit – if he wants to fight he is probably PvP fit. And given that our characters have much the same age I guess we have a similar if not the same fit because from toying with Evemon and EFT I’m quite sure that most other fitting variants are a bit more skill intensive to get on the ship.

Score. I kite him at 6 km without taking much damage and his ship becomes space litter – attempting to lock up his Pod to raid another corpse fails though. He warps out and greedily I approach his wreck.

Smart pirates check their scanner before looting! Psimana anti-pirates me in his Dramiel but at least I get my Pod out and satisfied to have had a good fight I dock up and log off – looking very much forward to my next session which will hopefully be a bit longer.

Tattoo

Today I really wanted to go blow shit up.

CCP got in the way.

They updated the Singularity build of the character creator and introduced a new station service which allows for recustomization at will – without the use of the sculpting tool though.
Your face and body stay the same but you can change your outfit, hair and so on as much as you like. On Singularity this service is free but I think there is the possibility to use this as an ISK sink once it goes live – anyways this remains to be seen.

So, from the title of this post you probably guessed it: the build includes the tattoos we’ve been missing! And not only that but piercings as well. Also there are horrible disfiguring  scars.

All of that is p. relevant to my interests so instead of jumping into a Rifter and killing people I play Space Barbies with – I think I mentioned it already – horrible disfiguring scars!

Right now you can only get tattooed on your face but from the looks of the UI I’d like to guess that in the future we can get inked all over – full sleeve tattoos would look p. good with the sleeveless shirts on the characters I think. But since we can’t walk around yet facial tattoos are of course higher priority.

BTW I think the Sisi patch included all that Captain’s Quarters jazz but if I’m right it is currently not enabled.

Anyways, look into the face of evil – The New Sebadai:

 

Got hit in the face with a shovel.

I mentioned in my last post that I’m thinking about getting a second account. Well, I did! So let me introduce Toshnem, Vherokior, Serpentis loyalist. Currently sitting in a station and training some skills before I move her to Syndicate (not actually Toshnem, because the account is not mirrored to Singularity but close enough):

Knifefight at age 13.

That is a newly implemented Top by the way.

Anyways of course I didn’t stop there but rather continued playing around with my empty character slot (Protip: never finalize a character in an empty slot on Singularity) and here are some more examples which I’m liking alot:

Amarr male:

 

Slaver Hound wasn't properly trained.

Civire female:

 

Just let me scan your forehead, Lady... OH MY GOD, WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR EYE?

Brutor male:

 

Broke his nose and fucked up his tattoo at the same time. Turns out rust and duct tape don't cover holes in the floor very good.

Gallente male:

 

Nice glasses, dude. No wonder you're a bit emo with that kind of chemical burn though!

Intaki female:

 

What?! No scars? You living in a plastic bubble?

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Overall these are pretty amazing. The character creator is very nice as it is on Tranquility but with this update it gives the character the much needed final touch to move them from regular old dudes to Capsuleers in New Eden.

I for one look forward to seeing them on the live server! Make it so, CCP!

Mindfields

First of all I’d like to thank Jager Da from Guns Ablaze for including me in his excellent Pirate Blog Pack.

Second of all last weekend I got drunk instead of playing much, so this will be mainly another planningsession/thoughtdump.

Well, I got three fights in on Saturday, two which I lost to one win. I am now at a intermediate stage in my PvPing. There are fights I can win easily and fights that I can’t win of course and then there are – most interesting to me – fights I could’ve won if I had done something differently.

In my opinion there are three factors which determine PvP prowess in EVE: SP, gear and skill.
Each is important but not the sole deciding factor. Many have this misconception that SP is most important. Well, it’s not. But it’s not totally unimportant either, just make a fit in EFT and plug in the skills of a new character and the skills of a trained one. Note the differences in tank and damage.

Gear is of course enabled by SP or simply ISK in the case of faction stuff.

And skill is of course knowledge, experience, all that hard to define stuff you have to learn by dieing repeatedly.

Let’s look at Saturdays fights. This I won easily. I think skill had little to do with it. We slugged it out at point blank range and my fit was simply better. SP, too, probably because I’m able to fit T2 guns and pretty much all my SP are focused to make my Rifter better.

Didn’t stand a chance. I should’ve run. I don’t know why I didn’t. In fact I knew better beforehand but engaged anyways. So, the loss could’ve been avoided.

Interesting fight. I guess from how the fight went down that he had either the same or a very similar fit. So, with gear being the same he won because of superior SP. More damage and more cap to repair himself longer killed me. But I believe I could’ve won.
Instead of going for shortrange I should’ve loaded barrage to kite him and maybe even reload to fusion and close in once he had reloaded himself. The fight wasn’t short and it was reasonably close, so there would’ve been plenty of time for tactic decisions.

Next time I’ll do better I’m sure.

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Time for some more plans:

I have started to stockpile gear in Jita and Rens which awaits shipping as soon as I have decided on where exactly to put my bases. The plan is to move them through highsec with Red Frog and split it in smaller packages for the final jump into lowsec for intrepid newbies to hopefully make a quick profit because between time constrains and the possibility to use courier contracts I really can’t see why I should bother with hauling myself.
I really hope this will work out!

Secondly I toy with the idea to get a second account. Ever since I quit smoking I measure everything I pay for to entertain myself in cigarette packs and two EVE accounts would come to six packs. I blush to admit it but in the old days this wouldn’t even be a full weeks supply.

So, why the second account if I don’t want to do my own logistics and don’t have the multitasking abilities necessary to dual-box? Well, Sebadai is a lowsec warrior but it occurred to me to try out life in NPC Nullsec – clearly Sebadai can’t do this because PvP there doesn’t lower security status… maybe I am a bit weird?
Also it is a current ambition to fly all races frigates which I could speed up considerably by splitting the training between two characters.

Maybe I should just say that I’d like the added flexibility a second account would offer.

I’ll have to sleep over that some more.

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CSM voting has begun, so make your voice count. Personally I go for Prometheus Exenthal. My vote may be slightly uninformed but from reading the Jita Speakers forum he seems to be most relevant to my interests.

In Limbo

I’m in a curious situation right now. I feel a bit as if in freefall. Not because I have no direction in EVE. I found my playstyle but not yet my region. I have no home in New Eden.
This is a problem.

To  begin with the lifestyle of a nomad had its allure, however EVE is designed in a way that makes this very difficult. Sure, one can always buy a new ship “on the spot” after getting killed. But I believe it would be much faster to just fly back to base and jump in a new ship. On the other hand I enjoy roaming. It’s no problem for me to do a hundred jumps or more in a session. I don’t like “lazing about” waiting for fights to come to me.

So here’s my solution: more than one base.

My initial goal are at least three bases. One should be central, possibly somewhere between Amamake and Old Man Star – I quite like that name and have for that reason alone considered basing in OMS itself. But I think then I would have to have a forth base near Amamake.
Second base should be near or somewhere in Molden Heath because I make my ISK in the Angel complexes there – more about that later.
This leaves Caldari lowsec as the last location, Black Rise or Lonetrek are likely candidates.

Amarr lowsec I’ll still have to scout out, if I like it, sure, there goes number five.

The limiting factor is cash of course. If one T2 fitted Rifter with faction ammo clocks in at around 8 million I have to make some major cash to stock each base with at least five fully fitted ships.

I also need to think about where exactly these bases should be as in how much jumps apart?
Thinking 30 or 40 at the moment.

Some people were so kind to offer me corp memberships which I declined. The above is the reason. I feel like doing my own thing at the moment and I don’t want to be the guy who never participates in corp stuff because he’s always at the other end of the universe.
Having said that I enjoy hanging out in chat channels, so if you have or know of a cool channel let me know by all means.

So, ISK:  I’ve been running Angel Creo-Corp Mining Complexes. They can be pretty good. Early on I lucked out and got the b-type small shieldbooster which sells for 50-60 million.

Sadly more often than not the plex only drops some crappy Overseer Personal Effects. Why CONCORD buys these I don’t know. 200k for old socks and dirty underware seem a bit excessive.
You guessed it: the money is infuriatingly inconsistent.

The shield boosters are also the reason that the complexes are pretty consistently camped in Highsec and get run pretty often in Lowsec by Dramiels. On the positive side they are very low effort to do if you see an empty one while roaming: just check Overseers Structure in your overview settings, kill and loot the structure in each pocket, ignore all the NPCs and they take no five minutes to do.

If I get good loot I drop it off at the nearest station and contract them to my “market alt” who can pick it up and sell it at my leisure.

In Highsec you can maybe get a guy who’s just waiting around in the third room till the structure respawns to aggress you so you can steal his fat loot:

Fig. A: Fat Loot

I was really glad about that kill. Not only was it a destroyer with fat loot but the loot did actually drop, too. Also this broke my chain of bad luck incurring loss after loss for a week straight.

I’m also pretty proud that I managed to stop overheating my guns right on time. One cycle longer and I would’ve burned them out like a fool. Again!

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This post is sponsored by Bug Akane who gave me a stack of Rifters.

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A glimpse into the future

Cyberin from Hands Off, My Loots! gave me a Firetail, so as soon as I can reasonably fit the thing you’ll be a able to read about its life and fiery demise.

I’m still working on some fiction, so stay tuned. It’s about the janissaries of EVE: Kameiras

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Edit:

I have changed my blogs look because the transparent textboxes seemed to cause long loading times as well as slow scrolling speed when viewed with the IGB. Rather retarded because I have the link in my character bio.
This theme performs much better and I’ll probably change the background, too, because now it doesn’t need to be dark to keep everything readable.

EVE Blog Banter #25 – Human nature what art thou?

Welcome to the twenty-fifth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week or so to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check for other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This month’s topic comes to us from @Tetraetc – “Tetra’s EVE Blog” – who asks: “Have Alliances and the sovereignty system limited the amount of PVP and RP potential in Null sec? Imagine a Null Sec where anyone could build outposts wherever. Would the reduction of the alliance game mechanic, and the removal of the sovereignty game mechanics (or the modifcation of it from Alliance level to Corp level for that matter) force more PVP into Null sec, or would giant power blocs like the NC still form themselves?”

Oh boy, the first Blog  Banter I can join in. Of course I’d write an article!

Even if it should be about something I know next to nothing about like these humongous alliances which control New Edens vast 0.0 zones.
I’ve never been to Nullsec. Yet.

Luckily I know a bit about sociology and philosophy – I took several courses at University and yes, it was because of a girl, we were a couple for a short while, no, the story doesn’t have a happy ending, my ego suffered a bit but at least I picked up some education.
Anyways. What I am saying is that I can do this. I can actually say something about alliances in EVE!

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So. I think I will have to start at the beginning which is the individual player.

My assumption which may be pure fallacy is that I can take every individual player and shove him kicking and screaming in one of several broad drawers:

Carebears. It’s EVE, I got to mention them. Irrelevant to my topic though  - I’ll define these as players who treat the game as if it was single player and generally don’t like it if they get “interacted” with.

You have the regular dudes. They build stuff, explore, mission and even might fleet up and shoot people in these huge fleetblobs (100+) I hear so much about. I think EVE forum speak calls them carebears, too. I shall call them citizens.

Next are the soldiers. They like PvP. A lot. But they hate losing, so they make sure they always have the odds on their side and call this tactics.

Then there’s Dr. Evil. Psychotic, megalomaniac supervillains. I think you know what I mean.

And last but not least we have lone wolves. Channeling Mad Max. The misfits. They do it solo.

Note for the easily offended:
I am talking about playstyles as I have observed them in the last weeks, no personal reflections whatsoever are intended! I believe that most players are not what they play – I am no lone wolf in my real life but I really like that playstyle.

Now imagine a brand spanking new EVE with todays number of players. No one knows anyone.

IT’S THE AGE OF THE WOLF, MAN!

A golden age for the lone wolves. Everyone scatters before them while they roam freely, killing whom they please, whenever they like.
I think this is what’s lamented when someone says “solo PvP is dead” – if this mythic age ever actually existed I am not too sure about.

But in either case: soon it’s all over.

FEUDING TRIBES

Soldiers start banding together and they start killing the wolves. Some might join up with the soldiers, others roam on, still admired because they are romantic figures, Quixotes, but largely without much relevance to the “big” stuff.
The move from single fights to proto-warfare is complete.
Citizens, too, form corporations for mutual protection and cooperation in this new environment where not a single killer is out to get you but a whole gang of them.

STATE

It’s just a question of time till “tribes” start cooperating as well. Much easier to kill of the other guys if you bring twice the numbers. Dr. Evil is born and with him alliances dominate all.

EMPIRE

That’s today. Repeat the last two steps as Dr. Evil becomes even crazier. Only this time it’s alliances forming powerblocks.

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So, to finally answer Tetraetc’ question:

I think this is a natural  progression. If CCP were to restrict this with game-mechanics players would work around this and eventually form these powerblocks anyways.

I think it might actually be better to introduce an actual mechanic for them, so that “outsiders” can see who is in bed with whom but that’s a consideration far beyond my limited horizon regarding EVE.

So, I’ll just say all Empires fall eventually, either crumbling from within or because unwashed barbarian hordes come visiting.

Of course that’s when history repeats itself.

EVE can be seen as a quite interesting social experiment. Maybe there’ll be revolutions leading to democracies one day.
I’m not 100% on this but it seems to me that as far as systems of governments are concerned New Edens alliances are still stuck in the Godking-phase, so there certainly should be room for some evolution.

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So, that’s it for my first Blog Banter. Here’s to many more to come!

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Participants:

1. CrazyKinux’s Musing: EVE Blog Banter #25: And by Alliance you mean…..?
2. BB25 What sov changes will come? | A Mule In EvE
3. Confessions of a Closet Carebear: Alliances and Sovereignty
4. Blog Banter 25: Nerfing Nulsec « OMG! You’re a Chick?!
5. Have Alliances and the sovereignty system limited the amount of PVP and RP potential in Null sec? | Nitpickin’s
6. Blog Banter #25: Alliance and Sovereignty Limiting PvP in 0.0? | Sarnel Binora’s Blog
7. Blog Banter #25 – Mad Haberdashers
8. Alliances and sovereignty | Eve Online Focus
9. …Shall we not Revenge?: BB 25: What if the Alliance vanished?
10. Blog Banter: Alliances and Sov
11. EVEOGANDA: BB25: Sov ‘n Go!
12. » TBG:EBB#25 – Alliances and Sovereignty To Boldly Go
13. Freebooted: BB25: Leviathans of the Deep
14. Wrong Game Tetra ~ Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah
15. EVE Blog Banter #25 – Human nature what art thou? | Way of the Gun
16. Who cares about Sov? – Hands Off, My Loots! ~ well sorta like an entry! :p
17. The 25th EVE Blog Banter: Alliances and sovereignty – The Phoenix Diaries
18. Achernar: The space commute
19. Wandering the Void…my EvE musings. – Blog Banter: Alliances and sovereignty
20. (OOC) CK’s Blog Banter #25: How To Break EvE. « Prano’s Journey
21. Captain Serenity: Blog Banter #25 – Crappy mechanics
22. Helicity Boson » Blog Banter #25 Nullsec and sov.
23. BB #25 – “With whom lie the advantages derived from Heaven and Earth?”
24. Boom! Hull-Shot?: It’s the End of the Eve as We Know It
25. sered’s lives: EVE Blog Banter #25 – Size does matter
26. 25th EVE BB – Medieval Solutions to Spaceship Problems | Inventions of a New Eden Industrialist
27. Eve Blog Banter #25: “Have Alliances and Sov Limited PvP and RP in 0.0?” « Align Outbound
28. Banter 25: Sovereignty, Alliances and Power Blocs | TheElitist
29. Blog Banter 25 – But I just left all that! « A Scientist’s Life in Eve
30. Nobody likes losing « One capsuleer against all
31. >>>Vigil Ant: Alliances and SOV by Munny’s eyes.
32. Latro’s Bunker: Blog Banter 25 -Nullsec and Sov
33. A “CareBears” Journey » Blog Banner #25: Alliances and Sovereignty, and their affect on PVP and RP
34. Blog Banter #25 – Unstoppable « Roc’s Ramblings
35. Nobody likes losing « One capsuleer against all
36. EVE Blog Banter on PVP in Null Sec « Evehermit’s Blog
37. Sleepless in Space: Blog Banter #25: Moar Low Sec!
38. Escape Velocity: BB#25: The Condition of Mere Nature
39. Imagine a Null Sec…. « the hydrostatic capsule
40. Blastrad tales » Coagulation
41. Yosagi Yojimbo – Gallente Exile: EVE Blog Banter #25: And By Alliance You Mean Blob?
42. More to come…