15/05/11 08:39 AM
Arkonor 285
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Crokite 187
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Jaspet 152
Dark Ochre 147
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Kernite 106
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Moving, Moving, Moving

Like some sharks, our gypsy base must keep moving to live. A constant stream of new anomalies and signatures flowing over its hangars is required to keep it alive. The task of dismantling the current location, loading up the wagon train and heading out for the new frontiers is quickly delegated and distributed. In quick succession, the tower falls and is exported. We’ve collectively decided to move on to something a bit more challenging for the future, so we shall have to see how that comes out.

The medium Amarr tower has performed amazingly well for us and we’re proud of it. It has become a sort of second home for many of us and each time we set up, we give someone new the chance to give it a name. We have had some really good suggestions so far, including Slight Doom, and Event Horizon. The only real problem is on my end with the need to move stuff between the two holes for mfg or back to our high-sec base. The logistics behind it all haven’t been difficult, but I would be guilty of withholding the truth if I didn’t say they were time consuming.

As an aside, I want to put in my two bits in support of a corporate bookmark facility. If we can share corporate fittings, why not corporate bookmarks. Throwing a system of bookmarks in a can everyday for the crew is needlessly time consuming and a bit of logistical nightmare in and of itself. Surely it’s redundant and resource intensive for all of us to have a bookmark for the tower, the current wormhole or 3, the 10-12 anomalies and signatures. For the 3-4 people who happen to read this, pass the information on and see if you can get any action out of this too.

And so now the search for a new home for the mobile assault base continues with a couple of quick possibilities opening themselves up. Sadly we can find places faster than we can get to them and full utilize them. Perhaps with a larger contingent or a wider alliance we could manage them all, but I am still a bit skeptical of our participation in an alliance.

Finally, we’ve put some finishing touches on our rules of engagement and its application in wormhole systems. We are trying to balance our own carebear tendencies with the ever present need for defense and deterrence.

The Long Dark Hall

IAl Abd 03Al Abd 04.png‘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.

Al Abd 01My 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.

Al Abd 02 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].

Al Abd 05.png

Through the Veil

And so it happens. There is the past that is always with us. There is the present that is always running away from us. And finally there is the future that never quite manages to get here. There will always be another ship to build, another system to swim, another skill to train, et cetra. From my past I have trained to be a good scientist. For the present I am working on a few small projects, but the future draws my eyes to the misty veil of time. What then shall I do and where shall I go? Do I need this or that skill to get it done and how best to proceed in that direction? The future is always full of questions.

One of the things that has changed radically within the universe that we all swim through is the way new capsuleers join us. As technology has improved and the cloning and pod-pilot technology matured, we arrive at our current place where not only can you improve yourself towards any desirable end, you can also improve and train in what would seem like no direction at all. Now a pilot can not only improve her ability to learn skills that improve her ability to pilot ships that improves her ability to learn/earn/kill/thrill, but that same pilot can utilize the new technology available to rearrange the very fabric of the brain to enhance certain basic attributes or reduce others.

The veil around my own future has grown quite thick, and I am left without real pictures of what it will look like. There have been some things that I have always wanted to do, but given the lack of direction, I let them wander. I also know that sitting here in this present and expecting to get a clearer view of the future will never cause the past to go away or said future to become clearer. I have decided then, to walk off into that veil of mist. I have been to the new technology, and drank deeply of its mind altering draught. I am now as balanced in ability as any and only break down and cry a little about my slightly slower skill training in science on days that end in “Y”.

Moving Forward Through Time

Greetings from the past. I have arrived here to continue what was begun with a previous post on perspective. I wanted you have some background as I looked back at some of the things that have been going on lately, as well as what will happen in the future.

To some extent, we are all fellow time travelers. We do not exist here and now, independent of our previous self or actions. No matter how much we would like to be unassociated with what we might have done, or reconnected to a prior success, we are temporal creatures, bound by our own definitions and limitations of time. Now that was an incredibly long way to say, we can’t change the past and must proceed to the future while living in the now.

I have made some questionable decisions in my past. I live with the ramifications and know that my ships will someday all swim with a captain that has made those same mistakes in her past. But the ships all keep swimming. They have no mistakes made, no past memories, no baggage brought forward. Her Abbadon swims in the same space that her Burst does. Thankfully your Typhoon doesn’t regret not getting the mission time bonus any more than my Drake does.

I studied long and hard to learn how to invent things and do it well. I managed to pick up a few ships along the way, but not nearly like others have done alongside me. Most of my corp-mates can fly battleships [and a few of them even know how to fit them], while I am very happy in a battlecruiser sized hull. I don’t have much ability to deal damage, but most every ship I fly can soak a lot of it up. I have a lot of my training invested heavily in science and I have loved every minute of it.

Some Perspective

From an early age, listening to my parents wax eloquent about the physics behind their Micro Warp Drives and the best way to insure success when inventing various tech 2 ships, I was hooked on science. I received my first home-datacore set when the rest of my playmates were still tinkering with frigate models. I was far from the only Achuran to be born to in Inventor enclave, nor the only one to like science and pursue that as a career. But on the other hand – I also had a great passion for the way the universe was knit together and was determined to understand it all!

I quickly graduated with advanced degrees in a broad range of science fields related to capsuleer endeavors and knew that to continue to learn and explore I would need to get out of Saisio and be able to visit the stars. I managed to barely scrape through training and prepare for the transition into the life of a “pod-pilot.” Don’t let anyone lie to you, the necessary pseudo-suicide, transneural burning scan to jump into the waiting pod-clone was painful [and it still is]. However, now I was free to swim through the stars in a super-massive space fish.

My parents, through good investments with and years of working for the megacorporation, Lai Dai, had managed to accrue a significant sum of interstellar credits and fitted me with a modest Bantam frigate and some direction to pursue. I headed for the stars and began working toward my dream as a free-lance inventor. I left the construction details to various station-side facilities, sales were done by other representative and I left the ship in the care of the knuckle-draggers. I knew how to fit a mean scanning ship or mine with the best of them, but even the thought of combat was something that was endured as a means to an end. To that end, I was spending every last ISK that I could generate on buying the skills to train and learn.

Upcoming EVE Expansion Details

In a recent press release, CCP has announced that they fully intend to add the ability to actually get IN spaceships and fly them around the New Eden galaxy. No longer will players be limited to walking around in stations or duking it out over planetary resources, but will have the opportunity to see uncharted realms of nebulae and stars, wormholes and anomalies. Finally, a space based MMO where you can assume the role of a slick combat pilot or a disenfranchised trader. You could be a great merchant tycoon, spreading your wares and influence over hundreds of systems or a puny, low-sec pirate, camping a lonely gate in Aunenen. . . .

Personally, I’m very excited to be able to fly spaceships. As I look back to why I started playing EVE in the first place, it was so that I could fly a spaceship. Science & Maths, PvP & PvE, Research & Industry were all just icing on the cake as I get to fly a spaceship. So maybe in my excitement and desire to fly a spaceship, I missed the memo that said I would like flying spaceships more if I could only get out of my spaceship and walk around in a station or shoot other people on a planet. Shoe-horning the sovereignty mechanic on top of this seems like a poor and somewhat tenuous connection to flying spaceships.

If I really wanted a walking avatar, I would have probably not chosen EVE and a game designed around flying spaceships. Maybe it’s just sour grapes and disenchantment over the lack of any real science and industry features being delivered in the Quantum Rise patch [hardly an expansion] or perhaps it is just “old-timers” disease whereby I cannot embrace the inevitable changes that happen to things you love [they grow old and die]? I just cannot ken the path CCP is charting and what I can see does not really impress nor intrigue me.

In reality, if I was really desirous of shooting people from a first person perspective, I would have stopped flying a spaceship some time ago and bought and played a first person shooter. Maybe even something like Dust 514 where I hear they are going to add “Flying In Space” [FiS] Soon™.

Too Many Wormholes

Borrowing an idea from Letrange, I’ll break the following into some sections.

Old Business:

It’s been a wonderful run in the current wormhole [WH] system, but it’s time to move on. We were consistently getting Gallente and Minmatar high-security [high-sec] WH openings that made logistics a bit harder. We found another, very similar system that we are going to give a try. We had bought a second tower and wanted to switch it out for the medium one to upgrade our processes and home. The best way to handle it turned out to be set the new tower up in the new system and pull the old medium tower down to be a more transient base that moves around from place to place.

On the skills front, I’ve managed to finish up most of the science skills associated with the tech 3 invention and production. I didn’t realize how much I was specializing in science until I noticed that I had 8.5 million skill points. I also did a bit of training in electronic warfare. I have most of my engineering skills finished up and want to work on my electronics skills. I seem to have a real addiction to finishing things up in sets.

On the industrial front, we’ve started amassing a fairly large stockpile of salvage, artifacts and wormhole memorabilia. We’ve started working it over and managed to get our first blueprint copy for a Tengu electronics subsystem. We have a reactor up and are excited about the opportunities to get started.

New Business:

The new WH system has a lot of sites for us to run and we need to get started. One of the things we’ve also noticed about visitors to our systems is that they will often move right along if they don’t get signatures when they scan. So we’re going to wipe the sites out get ready to start roaming to other systems too. The benefit of having a static high-sec WH is that the logistics is greatly relieved. We now have three new [well, new to us!] recruits who bring an extensive amount of combat experience to the system. From the rest of the corporation there is an increased level of interest in the whole wormhole project.

For skills, I’m excited about getting more science skills and increasing my ability to actually manufacture these arcane things we’ve been looking for. I would like to get back to training my electronics skills and armor tanking abilities, but I’m happily putting them on hold for some more science. At some point I will need to get some combat and ship skills, but they seem so very long to complete in comparison to the skills that I’m good at [I have low perception and willpower].

We are looking at starting our T3 production in the coming weeks and getting some of the pieces to market.

So that pretty much wraps up the time to this point.

A Monumental Decision

I’ve decided to take the plunge and jump on the wormhole bandwagon. Several corp-mates and I are going to try to make a go of it and see if we can’t make some isk, have some fun, shoot some Sleepers and generally do some things we haven’t done before.

We planning to take a tower, fuel, ships, modules and ammo with us to see what all we can find. We’re still working on what exactly that will all look like when we actually jump through. I’ll try to post some of what we’re taking and why.

I’m Not Catching Up

I don’t have all my ducks in a row. If I did, this wouldn’t be only second notice after a big dry spell. I’m trying to get caught up and re-arrange a few things. In the midst of all of this, I think I have determined what caused the previous communications outage.

Sure there was the tragic loss of hardware, resulting in an inability to connect to the interweb. Sure there were a lot of changes going on around me. I think that the real reason is much more insidious. As I looked back over some of the last pages that I had written and the information I had disseminated, one particular piece stood out. I mentioned something about trying to get caught up.

What was I thinking? More about that later. First a look at some possible methods things could have come to the horrible state that I found them in.

Had I become so cavalier with my time that I felt it necessary to provoke that God the Amarrian Cape Covered Corps keep babbling about [Just kidding Empress Jamyl. Don't suicide bomb my Hulk.]. I only meant that I intended to catch up. I in no way meant that I had it easy and needed a strong dose of hardship to bring me back to reality.

Perhaps I had pissed off the pragmatic capitalist pigs, er, Caldari. They knew I was beginning to get into a swing with my medium hybrid ammo store. It could have just been a case of warranted market pvp that resulted in my whole system of work getting screwed up completely. I was only making an average of 300-500,000 isk per day, which is hardly worth a kingdom.

I really didn’t have the Gallente or Minmatar on the radar. Mayhap it was just that little slight of attention that warranted there subtle interference. They could have always just let things be as I fully intended to sell them hybrid and projectile ammo too.

Regardless of the method, the reason was always the same. I had tempted fate and destiny had rained down ruin and distruction. Well pain and suffering. Well really just inactivity and boredom. I danced with destiny and she trampled all over my tulips before passing out drunk in my ship maintenance bay, obscenely blocking the airlock safety sensor. I’m to blame.

If you got this far, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get caught up. I will always be behind.

Je suis le ténébreux,- le Veuf, – l’inconsolé,
Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie:
Ma seule étoile est morte, et mon luth constellé
Porte le soleil noir de la Mélancolie.

Getting Caught Up

While those in the western hemisphere are busy getting some rest and the little island of former Vikings is busy patching the universe, I am finally taking the time to get caught up on some of the little things that needed doing around the universe. Not the least is a bit of formatting help for the industrial spreads that I use for mining, manufacturing and invention. I have been a little bit like the hermit crab sticking an anemone on my shell. Picking of bits and pieces of useful information from here and there has resulted in a very useful, but somewhat unorganized spreadsheet.

I was also thinking this would be a good time to get some extra rest and take a long nap. This plan worked well until my boss decided that sleeping on my desk was not really the professional approach to time management. So it’s ok if we play FPS or EVE and such at the office, just not sleep.

Other agenda ideas for the downtime included going to the dentist, getting the car washed and waxed, semi-annual visit to the gym, window shopping for a new computer and finally sending Mum an email. I’m still hung up on the nap idea personally.

So what do you all do during the long patches. I especially like browsing the forums after they come back up and reading all the “OMG I forgot to set a long skill”, “Why is the game not up?” and “Can’t they hurry up! I need to log back in so I can idle in the station and whine about CCP never improving things!” posts that invariably occur with an extended downtime. It never ceases to amaze me how many times GMT confuses people. If they’re going to already confuse people, let’s make it complete and use @internet time or some such to thoroughly bamboozle them.

Ok, off to work on catching up with myself.