combat « Our EvE

Asleep In My Pod

I once had a dream of a gleam, of a gleam in my eye
And I’ll have it till the day I die
I had a thought bubble of trouble, of trouble and strife
And I’ll have it for the rest of my life -(TMBG)

It Sucks

The warm fluid surrounds me. The merest thought engenders actions that serve only to indulge the slightest whim of my fancy. The only thing missing is euphoria of human contact – and that is easily overlooked in lieu of the near omnipotent control available via my synaptic pathways. I am the capsuleer. I am immortal.

And good thing too – when a capsuleer falls asleep in their pod, bad things™ happen. Take for instance the most recent escapades while harvesting gas. It’s not a difficult job and sometimes your mind wanders. This time it hasn’t just wandered, my mind has set out on full scale expedition to calculate the inertial energy involved in blinking. My mind was gone, Gas Gone, as it were. Fortunately, my partner, the estimable scanner extraordinaire and EFT mogul, Mick was along with me, happily sucking in his own share of gas. [With his Tech 2 harvesters and the ability to mount 5 of them, his share is larger than my share.] So at least one of us is on guard, paying attention to d-scan, watching for probes/ships and generally preparing for anything.

Um, no.

Ripping a hole in fabric of time and space, two cocky jockeys in significantly powerful ships step appear right next to us, locking us down and shredding what little is left of our ships, pods and dignity. I know they had to have cheated because sure an alarm would have went off in my head [if I had been paying attention] and no one can sneak up on Mick. Unless of course we happen to be mining gas. I am more convinced that some of the fullerenes either leaked from the cargoholds into our pods, or messed with our sensors.

In a heart and frankly hull pounding few seconds, I am relieved of a small Gallente cruiser with 4 gas harvesters and some expanded cargo modules. Mick is in a similarly equipped Dominix and well insured. In the interminable few seconds that it takes for the foes BS to lock our pods, we are desperately and simultaneously trying to exit the warp disruption bubble the Onyx has thrown up, spamming the ‘warp to’ button and praying that something would go horribly wrong with their systems in the meantime.

The last thing I happened to see before waking up somewhere else is my pod flying through Mick’s wreck and thinking, “It should be bigger for a battleship”. I honestly feel a bit dazed and confused, not unlike waking in an unfamiliar room after traveling and having to remember that you even made a trip. It begins to filter back in bits and pieces. Gas. Exequror. Onyx. Domi. Megathron. Pods. Flash. At first it seems strange to be in a station, having flown so long without docking. And where is my ship? My pod? “Oh, look, someone left a selection of ships for me to chose from. How thought of her.”

So now I get to start over. The ship and modules were relatively cheap and no great loss. I have other. I lost some expensive implants, but frankly I considered them lost soon after I plugged them. If I was worried about losing them, I would have never undocked, let alone fly around in a wormhole. I managed to somehow remember that I had a jump clone somewhere in the universe with some old ‘plants in her head and after running into every conceivable error managed to repeat the whole unpleasant wake up in an unfamiliar place routine of a few minutes ago.

This station turns out to actually be quite far away from anything, which I think maybe why the clone was out here to begin with. I have also neglected to leave a ship in the hangar resulting in a hurried search of the market for an appropriate shuttle or frigate to get out of the system in. A few moments later I am busy flying a Gallente shuttle across seventeen jumps back home, 11 through low-sec. Why choose the low-sec route? Well, I just lost my ship and several million in implants, who really cares if I lose a few more low level implants. Besides, the 29 jumps through high-sec was more likely to kill me.

In a final twist of irony, I had been trying to get out of the wormhole for a couple of days to get some manufacturing jobs installed for some of my corp-mates. Using this fortuitous depodification, I zip over, put the job in the oven to bake. Carpé Diem.

Sensing that enough adrenaline has finally burned off to allow an attempt at sleep, I decide to call an end to flying and dock up for interim. I am immortal, yes, sleepless, no.

Along the Way

Now listen all you swingers, don’t you try to tag along
I know monkey see, but monkey’s dead, for you it would be wrong
Put a dime in my jukebox, you’ll only hear this song
And it won’t be fun for long -(TMBG)

The end is nigh!

The end has passed and off into the night we continue swimming past planets, moon and stars. Wormholes open and close and wars and rumors of wars are left in our wake. All and all, everything continues on as it did before, so what is different?

Training for the Damnation has been completed. Mostly. Sort of. There are few days left to fit the armored warfare links, but everything else is fit and fine. I should be jumping for joy, holding parties in low-sec pirate filled dens of iniquity and generally announcing it to every stray passer-by I meet. Instead I’m merely looking at the next couple of weeks of training and thinking, “Now What?”

The whole trip to Damnation has been a grand adventure. It marks the third, major, long training plan I’ve completed. The first plan was learning skills, which can be debated ad nauseam both on the forums and in various other postings. They were long, arduous and imminently debatable, however I have never once regretted doing it. The second was maximizing my asteroid warfare potential, including a few weeks on Exhumer V, Cybernetics V, and a host of ore specific refining skills to level IV for tech 2 crystals. Again, there were parts of it that I probably could have cut corners on, but I haven’t regretted being able to field a really sweet Hulk, that can mine about 27 m³ of ore per second without being in a gang and significantly more with a good Orca pilot boosting.

Finally, the trip to the Damnation, which has been a slightly longer journey than the others. Over all it was uneventful and all the skills that I have picked up in the interim have been useful across the board. In the beginning it started with the look for a decent armor tanked missile ship to swim alongside my remote armor repairing corp-mates. The Sacrilege was an option, but wasn’t really able to fit a decent remote rep fitting. The Damnation could do that, had enough tank to be able to use ballistic computer systems without sacrificing tank and could still theoretically fit a RR with it’s missiles. The DPS worked out to a similar end as the Drake with the added benefits of helping the whole fleet’s tank.

Now that I’ve reached the Damnation, I have to admit I’m feeling rather blasé about the whole thing. I love flying it. It corners like an Orca, tanks like a very large plated battleship and hits about like a Drake, but from slightly farther away. This is all well and good, but my eyes were taken by something else shiny that had cropped up along the way.

Somewhere along the way I realized that in and amongst the skills for a Damnation, was hidden the skills for a Guardian logistics ship. So on a whim I began to research them, ask questions and look at fittings for them. I got to looking at just how the efficiency of remote repair modules compared to their ‘local’ counterparts. What did it take to use them and or abuse them. Since the Guardian is also bonused for energy transfers, I threw that into the mix as well, looking at how that could be used to the best advantage. I began to develop a real sense of respect for 0.0 fleet logistics pilots and the work they do. Flying a logistics ship well takes a fair amount of capacitor savvy, shrewd targeting and really tight fittings. Tried and true skills like weapons upgrades and advanced weapons upgrades have no effect on RR’s and Xfers, so it’s down to rigs, reactors, PDU’s and CPUs to make it work.

[Editorial Aside]:

I tend to scoff when I see CPUs, PDUs and Reactors on a lot of fits. They are mostly used to compensate for a severe lack of real fitting skills or to ‘tide one over’ until their skills catch up to their hulls. [I still maintain it would be an interesting study to compare the number of killmails between the pilots having 'helper' modules like CPUs/PDUs/Reactors versus their opponents.] I fully understand that even given max skills and an expensive implant, occasionally you still run into a fit that just won’t. I myself have used these modules to great success in the past and will continue to do so in the future and even recommend some fittings that do so.

All of this to say, “Congratulations logistics pilots for making it all fit. Large remote modules on a cruiser hull with a tank that survives and makes things so much easier for the other pilots to just shoot things.”

How To Fail

Hip, hip, horrific are the words we sing
Hip, hip, horrific is our thing -(TMBG)

As I look around and back at the posts I’ve written for the last year or so, I am reminded how well things have gone, but also how spectacularly I’ve managed to fail. If you are looking for pitfalls to avoid – you’ve found them. If you want to see how not to train for something; look no further. If you would rather have less isk at the end of the day, then this is your lucky blog!

Seriously, the posts that inhabit these pages are filled with the heartache and misery of a pilot bashing her head against the same asteroid day after day after day. At the end of the day there is a hangar full of veldspar and tritanium, some trash modules and a ship that desperately needs a tune up. Along the way the pilot has learned that you shouldn’t trust another pilot but you have to trust the other pilots until they fail you. You can’t put 4000 m3 in a GSC and there’s no way to get a station container out of a station. Overheating missiles is not so effective and skilling up adequately for boosters is going to be very expensive.

There are a few bright spots along the way. Namely, the ships and modules that have been opened up through a varied training programme that includes tech 2 mining equipment, logistics cruisers and some command ships. This is easily countered by the fail combat skills that barely allow for named heavy missiles on a Drake and some lame, unsupported rails on a Moa. It’s rather comical sometimes to be able to fit a full Tech 2 tank on every ship in the game, but then realize you still only have the equivalent of light weapons for armaments. Fear the fail firepower of 150mm rails on a Ferox! My heavy missile Drake of Dewm causes fits of laughter when people can safely orbit at 55 km and pick off my drones and then me.

Other suggest that I should be proud of the fact that I can invent nearly anything possible on the market, but even that seems to fall flat. I have consistently managed to lose money or break even on Tech 2 invention and production. My volume approach is low and slow, so as to be moving backwards in appearance. I can train people to use the towers, labs, production facilities, but seem to fail in doing so myself. What was I thinking! Science is for smart people. Production is for people who are actually motivated.

So what have we learned from all of this:

Train all the skills you possibly can [let's start with 231]
Train a wide variety of skills to level 5 [53 is a good number]
Science skills help you store lot’s of SP [9.6 million and counting]
Collect ships [So you can collect dust]
Every 3-4 months spend everything you have on one ship setup and then poke a pirate.

And I think I’ve rambled on enough for all of us today. And that is how to fail.

Addiction and Mediocrity in Ubiquity

I know, I know, I said that I would quit
All right, I promise, no more after this
You don’t know how I’ve tried
To forget what it was like – (TMGB)

So things have been busy and I’m at a bit of a loss where to start. Who knew that managing a bunch of raving lunatics with delusions of insecurity could be so much like running a corporation. All that time at the asylum is finally paying off. [Warning, excessive use of <sarcasm> makes my hands overly tired so just apply liberally where you feel it's appropriate to make it interesting for you to read.]

Towers: Apparently you have to keep putting fuel in them. Otherwise minor details like shields, guns, labs all go offline.

Labs: Mostly full of jobs, except for when something happens to a tower.

Wormholes: Much fun. I hope to stop running errands and get back in them.

Combat: I think I remember fitting a ship with something other than cargo expanders once upon a time. It was cool. I died.

Skills: Battlecruiser V was cool and the implications are still settling in. Though it’s nice to be able to jump in all the racial BCs, albeit without being able to weaponise them currently. I can fit a whopper tank to them all, but not so much DPS. I blame the ferrets.

Corporation: Growing. Leaps and Bounds. More people means more annoying opinions opportunities, but also more things to manage. Need to train Delegation [5% workload reduction per level] to level 4 and start handing off some of this stuff.

Organisation: What? Hmm? I filed that here in the stack of papers on my desk back in the tower that went offline. I’ll get back to you January 4th. Some year.

Mining: See combat. [I think I warped to a belt in a NOS Drake. Sadness.]

Invention: Lot’s of invention going on. Need to get some of it finished.

So a little bit everything goes a long way toward getting nothing accomplished. Happy times!

The Long Dark Hull

In the process of dreaming about my future and while staring at the picture posted in my pod, I have already started fantasizing about potential fits and what not for my Damnation field command ship, Al Abd. Come on, admit it. You have all tried fits for ships you can’t yet fly. It’s the dirty little secret/Pandora’s Box that EFT and EVEHQ when they become prevalent. Armchair capital pilots everywhere are fitting out their supercaps to do battle in their minds eye. So skipping the reverie and amorphous thoughts about what might have been, I managed to cobble together the following [mind the Tool Tips].

[Low Slots]
- Damage Control II
- Armor Thermic Hardener II
- Armor EM Hardener II
- Armor Kinetic Hardener II
- Ballistic Control System II
- Ballistic Control System II
[Mid Slots]
- Cap Recharger II
- Cap Recharger II
- Cap Recharger II
- Cap Recharger II
[High Slots]
- XT-2800 Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I, Fulmination Assault Missile
- XT-2800 Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I, Fulmination Assault Missile
- XT-2800 Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I, Fulmination Assault Missile
- XT-2800 Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I, Fulmination Assault Missile
- XT-2800 Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I, Fulmination Assault Missile
- Large ‘Solace’ I Remote Bulwark Reconstruction
- Armored Warfare Link – Damage Control
[Rigs]
- Medium Hydraulic Bay Thrusters I
- Medium Rocket Fuel Cache Partition I
[Drones]
- Hobgoblin I x5
[Statistics] Using Level V Skills For Comparison
- Effective HP: 85,934
- Tank Ability: 20.56 DPS
- Damage Profile – <Omni-Damage> (EM: 25.00%, Ex: 25.00%, Ki: 25.00%, Th: 25.00%)
- Shield Resists - EM: 12.50%, Ex: 89.06%, Ki: 73.75%, Th: 30.00%
- Armor Resists – EM: 85.66%, Ex: 87.25%, Ki: 89.24%, Th: 81.35%
- Capacitor: Stable
- Volley Damage: 1,121.98
- DPS: 269.28

Bah – this whole post too long to format. Nearly twice as long as dreaming up the fitting that I am sure I will iterate through at least another thirty times. Are you not entertained? Ten million to the first comment that collects all the eggs.

The Long Dark Hall

I ‘m staring down a long dark hallway that is only dimly lit with some bioluminescent globes that are spaced much too far apart to give any sort of definition to the length or features of the corridor. I cannot see the end, nor can I see any distinguishable openings or portals either. My choices now are to turn around and abandon this path or proceed onward to see what will become of it. Where will it lead…? What have I begun…? What have I become…?

And so my thoughts on beginning the journey towards my current skill objective come to the fore. I’ve had long training plans before. They got me into my Covetor and my Hulk and have helped me max out most of my core skills [AWU - I love/hate you]. They are not pleasant to watch, but they are fun to achieve. Kirith Kodachi has kept many people entertained with his own regales of routines passed on his way to the Ninveah and later a ill-fated Nighthawk.

My own plans are much more modest. I am working toward the skill set needed for the Amarrian Fleet Command Ship, Damnation. The die has been cast and the decision made. Currently I’m just getting rolling on my Battlecruiser V training. Then it’s a relatively shorter time to Amarr Cruiser V, Warfare Link Specialist IV, and Logistics IV. I’m already excited, but trying to temper that elation with the knowledge that it will still be awhile. I’m also trying really hard to ignore the results of my rather Scientific Background which includes such minor details as having pants for offensive skills. I’ll need to pick up some more training in heavy missiles and heavy assault missiles to be an effective fleet member.

The impetus for this impulse is the desire for our fleet to be able to run sleeper sites more quickly and efficiently. With the added range for HAM’s, I think it might even be useful to fit them. With a couple cheap [it's all relative right?] rigs I can fling a HAM out to 40 km for approximately 260 DPS and just a smidge over 1,000 alpha strike volley. This is modest damage, but coupled with the ability to be cap stable while running both RR and links is too hard to ignore. In the meantime, I’m an entertaining myself by pasting pictures of my new ship all over the inside of my pod. [In case you hadn't noticed them all over this post by now. I'm also playing around with fittings for Al Abd [the name I've already chosen].

Death of an Icon

This is one of those posts that doesn’t write itself. It doesn’t leap from your hands to the page [or fingers to the keys] with synaptic firing of ideas and thoughts that must be recorded quickly. It is quite frankly, the hardest post I think I have ever had to sit down and commit. It would be far easier to just walk away from it and try to ignore it, the pain and passion stuffed under the covers. Hot chocolate, ice cream and bon bons can only go so far before it must be dealt with. And dealt with is must be, or else there is no future and nothing more to move on to.

Lou Ferrigno died.

It was quick and painful. The Manticore uncloaked off the after impeller drives and locked and pointed my valiant Hulk. Almost immediately his friends were dropping out of warp, locking and firing. It was over before I could really do more than announce it on our com channels. Our hauler had just warped way, one other Hulk pilot lost his life as well as his boat and a third got back home easily.

A quick jump into a combat ship [any combat ship] and return warp, but they had already salvaged the wreck and cloaked or moved on. We chased the ghosts of combat past around the yard for an hour or so, never quite connecting or confronting our losses. It was probably for the best, as the taste of blood was fresh in my mouth [I bit my lip] and I was likely to have made even more mistakes and lost more ships. I am not, have never been, and likely won’t be a combat pilot of much renown.

And so it ends, the faithful friend of over a year, passing into the night of stars. There were many happy moments we shared together and I am choosing to remember them as well as the loss. I have already purchased and refit another ship in Lou’s absence. It’s not a replacement, but in time I will grow to love it just as much as I love my other children. I’ve been out and active in both the wormhole [WH] system we’ve set up in as well as flying around high security space. I’m coping and manage to contain my crying to the cargo hold of Luxury Yacht.

.On a related note, I’m learning Russian… Там будет кровь.

Busy Two Weeks

Well, there’s been a complete dearth of posts from myself as I’ve had a very busy two weeks. Though I’ve been able to fly around a lot, I haven’t had much time to sit down and compile a coherent thought. [Those of you who are reading this, stop laughing at the last statement about coherence.]

We removed a couple of no-shows from the corporation. It’s always a tough decision to make, but after only popping in once after joining, you begin to wonder at their future potential. We’re about as laid-back as you can get in an industrial corporation, but we do prefer at least some warning that you might be scarce for the next couple weeks, months, years. On the flip side, we’ve had three new people join us that are shaping up nicely to be good support for the corporation.

In a comment to a previous note, someone asked about the exact difference that the training skills made in terms of skill training. I’m working on adding all of this up and will try to get a more complete answer calculated. I know for instance that training your learning skills can reduce the time to get into a Hulk from over 90 days to slightly less than 60 days [including time spent on the learning skills. Similar calculations are true for PvP, PvE and Market Mavens. I'll try to have a more complete answer for you in the future. Have to spend some quality time with my trusty calculator.

On a related note [calculations], I’ve managed to rebuild my spreadsheet [with kudos to Letrange for an interim sheet while mine was reduced to electrons] to a pre-crash state. It’s a good thing that the School of Applied Knowledge trained me well to handle this sort of thing before I started piloting around the rest of the galaxy. I can now reliably pick various BPO’s that we own and run the numbers to see if we will make a profit on them. Given that we mine almost all of our ore, the manufactured products are technically all profit, but realistically only if we make more off the pieces than we make off selling the minerals outright. We could undercut a lot of markets to move merchandise, but would only be hurting ourselves. By giving the inventory full market value, we cut into our profits as well as weaken the overall market by potentially providing a cheaper source of refinable ore. I’ve done the same thing to others by buying large quantities of items that were more profitable when refined and either resold or manufactured into to more valuable items.

I’m working at slowly rebuilding my wallet as well after spending a lot of getting some production underway. I’ve got a fairly decent supply of various T1 drones on the market and they are providing a steady [if somewhat low] amount of income. I’m also working on doing a lot of jobs for the FedMart corporation out in Everyshore. I need the ability to refine my ore out there more than I have loyalty to my Caldari upbringing.

More to follow…

A Carebear’s Carebear

How we conceptualize the universe around us plays an important part in determining what we find enjoyable. I once commented to a friend that I am that most detestable of all MMO participants. I am the carebear’s carebear. I find an enormous amount of fulfillment and satisfaction in helping people out and even more so if that person is an industrial ship flying, mining & manufacturing, POS-building, spreadsheet yield calculating fool of an EVE player. I see EVE as a relatively inhospitable, cold place that takes new pod pilots and tends to mount their broken, lifeless corpses on the ends of blasters and auto-cannons while simultaneously spreading any remaining biomass all over the scrap metal shavings to gum up the salvage scavengers.

From this point of view it a short jump to utter fatalism, that if we’re all going to die, we might as well go out with a bang and take any poor pods we meet along the way with us. There are some people who do this very well and with aplomb. They warp, web, point, shoot and pod all in the same breath. They tend to speak loudly and carry large sticks. The are only two options, death and victory. May the gods forgive any poor pilot who happens to escape their wrath. Anyone who runs is then inept and unprepared for life and will obviously meet their end in a quick and hopefully painful manner. How dare someone not engage them in combat! What lowly, incompetent fools to think themselves above an encounter. They should be vocally and wildly ridiculed from the com channels so that everyone else can look on in disgust at their craven behavior.

Or you can decide that this is a place that obviously needs your kind and patient touch. Your isk can make the difference in a young pilot’s life. They might decide that there’s nothing worth the time and energy when the world is out to get them. Oh, how extravagant the gift of a new frigate seems to the player who loses 2 in the first couple of days. The bonds of fraternity forged on the sharing of information and piloting proficiency are strengthened by the application of liberal amounts of understanding and redemption. What uncommon operators and precious pilots lie beneath the common dross of humanity waiting to be refined?

There is a balance that must needs be reached between the pain and providence of new players. Heavenly help does not replace the harsh reality of hell in space. Neither does being beaten bloody mean better basics. If we are to watch our world continue to grow, we need each other. You pirates shoot, maim and kill. However know that I will be teaching other to run, hide and if necessary crawl.

The Occasional Missioner

I hear a lot of people talking about mining as a means to be able to do missions or support a PvP habit. I’ve always viewed missions that way. It’s a necessary evil for mining. You could concievably mine without ever running a mission [check out the macro mining isk-boys] but as a complete miner, you will conceivably need to refine some ore at some point. Then it’s nice to have a better than 6.7 standing with an NPC corporation. How do you get that if you are a dedicated miner?

To be sure, you can use connections to get a little bit closer, but at some point you’ll need to actually run a mission to even get started. Given that a large portion of mining training has not been in combat related skills, doing missions for standings can be a slow process. I’ve approached this rather in the same way that Dee Carson talks about training your learning skills. I do a mission now and then as time allows or when I’m done for the day with all of my mining trips.

I have skills to mine well in an Osprey, so that allows me to also pilot a Caracal. The tank is shield tank is also something that I’ve trained based on needing to survive in belts. Drones as well. The only thing missing is the weapons skills. I evaluated missiles v. gunnery skills and opted to go with the missles. This was based in part on the desire to possibly use a Drake or even Raven later on down the road as well as the ability to do mission specific damage.

So I mostly run level 1 and 2 missions for standings. Occasionally there is a level 3 agent that offers courier misssions that I can run for a bit more standings. Finally there is one other use for running missions, the LP store. There are some great mining implants that can be had from those stores. Not much else that a miner needs from the LP stores.

Isk Per m3

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