Eve trading: Ships

I strikes me that trading ships is out of my league because of lack of capital that I really don’t want tied up in ships sitting in stations waiting for people to want to buy them. I understand that making tech 1 ships is fiercely competitive and tech 2 ships are out of my league.


I thought there might be a market is shipping some cruiser hulls into Providence and selling them in the CVA stations. Carraig should be able to fit about 4 or 5 of them into and Itty therefore risking about 30m a run. Say I sell them for 1m mark-up I need to make many safe runs to make this worthwhile. Eve-central shows this might not be very promising.

This is a snap shot of ships being flown taken from the 2009 Q3 Economic Report released by CCP.

Ship type	No. of ships	% of total
Hulk	16,258	2.49%
Drake	13,628	2.09%
Kestrel	11,269	1.73%
Rifter	10,998	1.69%
Retriever	8,923	1.37%
Raven	8,677	1.33%
Dominix	7,056	1.08%
Catalyst	6,866	1.05%
Bestower	6,680	1.02%
Condor	6,576	1.01%
Rookie ships, shuttles and capsules	276,002	42.32%
Other	279,205	42.81%
Total:	652,138	100%

Ships that I have both the ability to move in quantity and capital to buy include the Kestrel (Caldari Frigate), the Rifter (Minnie frigate) and the Punisher (Amarr frigate).

The Rifter is infamous as the best frigate for PVP and piracy. As such this should sell well in low and null sec trade hubs. According to Eve-Central the market in Providence is all ready well supplied at very competitive prices. There is a lot of movement in Tourier/ Alentene because of the Red v Blue.

Not sure what the Kestrel is used for and who flies it. It is a shield missile boat that fills the slot occupied by the Incursus in the Caldari line up. It appears to be sold everywhere.

The Punisher is the top of the line Amarr frigate (occupying the Tristan spot for the Gallente readers). It has a very nice armour bonus and is known for it’s ability to take punishment but not able to keep up with other frigates.

In conclusion
For the purpose of making money with the capital I have, ships does not appear to be the way to go. They are expensive, in good supply and bulky to move.

A look at trading in Eve

One of the various activities that I haven’t yet approached in Eve is trading. Seeing has how both characters are approaching their goals of having multiple R&D agents working for them, I am looking round for another goal. Trading might be suitable.

I suspect that I am like many people, I look through my hangar at the mess, shuffle it into containers and forget what is in what container. At the moment the containers are labelled, ‘Valuables’, ‘Recycle’, ‘Salvage’ and ‘Fittings’. When I am short money I go to the containers and starting at the top start selling to whoever is buying in Auvergne, Sinq Liason that day. I strongly suspect that this isn’t the path to riches, at least not for me, the guy buying the stuff off me probably carts it off to Jita and makes a nice mark-up.

So the next few blogs will be a brain dump on this subject. Any comments that anyone might have are welcome (Drifnir…)

Just because I have a nice screenshot I am tacking this onto the bottom – yes it is possible to fly through a hollow asteroid!

To get a handle on the market I am dividing I into the following categories.

1. Ammo & Drones
2. Ships
3. Tank modules
4. Gank modules
5. ECM and other specialised electronic stuff (hacking, archaeology, salvaging)
6. Implants
7. Manufacturing and invention

I will examine each of these areas in the following blogs keeping to 1 subject per page so I can update and correct areas as the trading experiment goes on.

Red v Blue: 3rd party war declarations

Well my experience with Red v Blue continues, not quite as I thought it would. When I logged on last night I fitted out a Tristan and flew in search of Blues. Found a gang made up if an Incursus, Incursus and Rifter. I thought about it for at least half a second and engaged managing to pop one of the Incursus before finding myself in a pod. So I can PVP, next time I should just pick better odds.


Out again shortly afterwards I find a Red and Blue cruiser at the same gate and let them 1 v 1, picked up the loot and traded it back to the loser.

Then the real education began.
The whole Red v Blue is quite well known so both corps have been war decced several times over. I get back to the base to pick up another frigate (have lost 5 Incursus, 4 Imicus and 4 Tristan’s so far) and find a Dominix sitting outside popping Red’s as they emerged from the station. He is from one of the corps that war decced the Red v Blue fun. First of all I lost 3 friagtes trying to figure out how to fight a Domi before settling on an Imicus with a sensor booster and 3 warriors. Every time he launched drones I would shoot them from 65k out. Eventually he called in a Megatron friend to chase me away. By the time I logged for the night 3 different corps had a variety of Tech 2 ships and battleships outside the base waiting for fun. They were disappointed as Red simply went to play elsewhere with Blue.

Lastly, a screen shot of a real nut case, a Red pilot that brought a faction Frigate to the fight!

The blaster Domi

Hmm, read this blogand thought it good enought to post, one of the ships he mentins is even affordable and Slay might be able to carry it off without too much more training. Without further ado:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=_2fBwK2uDbA0FFaG6FB1CaTQ_3d_3d

I thought I might paste his blaster Dominix here too incase his blog disappears:


DOMINIX

Lows
Damage Control II
Large Armour Repairer II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
1600mm Reinforced Rolled Tungston Plates I
Magnetic Field Stabiliser II x3

Mediums
Warp Scrambler II
Stasis Webifier II
Warp Disruptor II
Heavy Capacitor Booster II
100MN MicroWarpdrive II


Highs
Heavy Neutron Blaster II x6


Ammunition
Dread Guristas Antimatter

Rigs
Large Hybrid Burst Aerator II
Large Trimark Armour Pump I x2


Drones
Ogre II x5


The Gallente Dominix can deliver the 1K DPS target with relative ease. Fielding five Tech 2 heavy drones combined with the six Heavy Neutron Blaster IIs, the Dominix can deliver over and above what’s required. As the turret hard-points are not exclusively delivering the DPS, it is possible to include a moderate tank helping the ship survive some retaliation.


Best used up close and personal this setup can vaporise most targets quickly while shrugging of incoming fire. Be warned though, the heavy drones are the key to the ships arsenal and should be carefully managed to avoid destruction.

Red v Blue

Eve has been slow recently, I haven’t got to play much as my daughter brought a tummy bug back from the crèche for her parents. For a 7 month old child it is just part of the experience of growning up and to be endured, for her parents it is misery.



In Eve meanwhile, Slay is on furlough from MNEE. After reading about Red v Blue I signed him up for some inexpensive frigate fighting to get the hang of it. So far I have lost 5? Frigates and taken down 1, an Atron, pretty pathetic but I am beginning to see how important dictating range is. So the theoretical fits are slowly being discarded.



There is no standard frigate that can fly 5 drones, and tech 2 ships are frowned upon, so the Ishkur is out. In it’s place I am flying the Imicus which can fly 3 small drones. The idea is now to release the 3 drones on the ubiquitous Rifter and fly away using the MWD. Tonight I’ll try it out. Otherwise there have been small fleet ops where we fly to the blue station and wait for them to come out whereupon a running battle occurs back to the red base.



It is all good humoured and people are willing to share fits. There are joined ops from time to time, but I have missed them. I have also missed any purple days which occur when other corps war dec us.



http://www.rvb.tech-pc.com/

Another severe PVP lesson

I lost 2 Iskurs three days ago. I have been thinking about it since and have drawn a few conclusions. I have Tester128 to thank for these harsh lessons*. He was flying a Pilgrim, a recon ship (covert tech 2 cruiser) with what must have been an entire rack of energy neutralizers in his highs, and a peculiar tank in which his armour collapsed as fast as his shields. He used drones as his dps.


Lesson 1: My armour tanking Iskur died because my capacitor booster couldn’t keep up with the energy draining. I shouldn’t have been using cap booster 100, the small cap booster can only fit three charges and then needs to recharge.


Lesson 2: I need different ship set-ups for different types of encounters, after losing the second Iskur I flew back to the encounter with my passive shield Myrmidon and was perfectly safe, his neuting didn’t matter and his warriors couldn’t break the tank, I will have to see if Hammerheads could break the tank.


Lesson 3. I need to understand the mechanics of session change better. In the first fight I was circling the wormhole and was half way through armour before I realised I was being attacked. I tried to jump through the wormhole into high sec and got a session change in progress. When the ship blew up I tried in my pod and he managed to lock me and get me half way through structure before I managed to jump through the wormhole.


Lesson 4. I need a smart-bombing ship that can take out drones.


Lesson 5. I need to sort out my overview – I need hostile ships, hostile drones.



* What sort of person calls their character Tester128?

Tactical use of Wormhole Space

When one is used to the uniform nature of known space it is easy to ignore the tactical considerations that wormhole systems can confer on ships.

Last night we successfully ran an anomaly in a class 5 system with assault frigates, stealth bombers and 2 guardians. Up to then we would have all tooled up in Dominix battleships warped in and sat still while the sleepers would come at us. Last night that static battleplan changed forever.

The system in question reduced the signature radius of ships, improves small weapons and the remote repping of armour. A perfect combination for our set up of assault frigates and logistic ships. The fly in the ointment was the loss of 3 ships, 2 Manticores and 1 Taranis. The Manticore losses both happened at the spawning of a new wave, first time it just popped to alpha damage, the second time it fell to the second volley. The Taranis disappeared to a 9k shot from the last ship in the anomaly just as he was going down, we are not sure why this happened.

Of course we all prefer to note that the three ships that popped were all repped by one of the Guardians pilots whereas those of us being repped by the other all survived…

For those newer to Eve, small signature radius allows you to avoid most damage that large weapons do. Or to put it another way, if the same weapons hit a bigger ship they would do more damage. My Assault frigate sailed through this explosion with all the sleeper battleships throwing missiles at it.

One of the truisms of wormhole space is that it is cold and dangerous, NBSI (not blue shoot it) is the standard and people you come across on scan will tend to be bait for a TRAP OF DOOM. Mr Lazybones above wasn't actually bait, he was just an ordinary victim picked on for being alone, next door and visable. Sometimes I wonder about the souls of the corporation members, the pearly white gates certainly won't be swinging open for them as they approach.

Nice name, pity about the place Mr Lazybones chose to loiter.

One of the advantages of Wormhole space is that every so often you get a nice WH to a quiet 0,0 system perfect for ratting. This opportunity lead to Slayfoe's Bull taking his Myrmidon and doing his part on exterminating the pirate scum that live in Delve - Blood Raiders! Persistance paid off and my first faction drop, an EM smartbomb, dropped. Sold in Jita for 28m, not bad for an evenings ratting.

For those that didn't know, any ship that has Dark in front of it's name in Blood Raider space is your primary and your piggy bank - unless you get some faction ammo :) Handy link to the equivilants in the different parts of the Eve universe.

The value of Crokite

As time passes in the game interest meanders. I took a few days out in high sec to sell some Crokite and grind some Duvolle labs reputation. First things first, compressed ore is great! A suitable wormhole allowed the corp to ship the compressed ore to Jita. 2.5 Crokite mining sessions sold for about 60million. A faction EM bomb dropped for me last week and that sold for 28m so with 4 L4 missions and their salvage I had over 100m for the first time in ages.

What it really high-lighted was how valuable the wormhole grav sites are. I have been popping out into low sec and null sec recently and Arkonor, Bistot and Crokite are really rare. While selling the ore I really came to realise the difference of value between the ores. GIVE ARKONOR!

Contrary to the photographic evidence above, Slay does not frequent Krull's Pleasure Dome as a customer...

Wormholers Guide to the Regions - Aridia

A wormhole popped me out here last weekend and for the record here are a few of the impressions that I got.

1. It is far away from ANYWHERE! I calculated routes to Dodixie (30 something jumps), Tash Murkon (27 jumps) and Jita (44 jumps). Unfortunately my covert ops fell prey to a gang in my way back home so I had to fly the route from my clone bay (Tash Murkon) to Aridia.

2. It is low sec with a tiny island of high sec.

3. It is busy enough, I saw 2 gangs but they chose not to engage my shuttle.

4. It serves as a connection from Empire to Delve (0,0 space)

Minding Fort

Well minding the fort is not the most engaging of activites. Most of the corp had taken off for a bit of piracy in another wormhole. Those of left behind were tasked with staying alive. Something I failed to do over the weekend as my trusty Helios, Slay’s Wayfinder, died a tragic death caught at a hole by dictor. Fortunately we had already found a low sec exit in Aridia that allowed me back in a shuttle.

So come Sunday we found another way back in just as another corp found our WH and set up camp on the WH out. We ran through the ambush, re-shipped and headed for the WH they had come through. Rubico was first on scene, Slay following in an Ishkur, Slay’s Way. Draconica landed in grid with a Myrmidon and after that I was too busy trying to keep Slay alive to notice anyone. The Phobos we jumped was naturally bait. Seems to be the only type of ship we run into these days. Recons and Stealth bombers uncloaked and the fight was on.

First order of the day, strategic withdrawal. Rubico and Draconica got out as Slay aligned to planet 3 and home. The Arazu on Slay was tenacious and the Falcon locking down the targeting wouldn’t let go, fortunately the trusty Warrior II’s don’t need much encouragement to beat up ships! The home system has armour rep advantages and this must have kept Slay’s ship together, flames pouring from the engines as it strained to escape. It felt like an eternity, but the Arazu must have capped out and his Scram failed, and the Ishkur disappeared into warp and home.
Having taken a beating our fearless leader mocked them in local as people re-shipped again. Slay spent 5 minutes with a hull repairer going flat out before it was decided to try again.

Again the Ishkur, hastily refitted with a capacitor booster (thanks for the suggestion Mono) warped into battle. This time with the rest of the corp positioned round the hole in stealth bombers. An Onyx heavy interdictor appeared and locked before spewing out heavy precision missiles. His mate in an Arazu was next, the bait was well taken but the Ishkur’s armour is strong! The Arazu found himself lit up with target painters and torpedoes rained down on him from the stealth bombers, Aelius not quite fast enough to get out got popped with the Arazu as Slay entered close orbit round the Onyx. The Onyx’s guns couldn’t track Slay and Slay’s drones and blasters couldn’t break his tank, he retreated through the WH.

Soon after he was followed by a stealth bomber and covert ops. The system was once again ours. Casualties were light on both sides, one stealth bomber exchanged for a Arazu recon but the excitement and adrenaline was good.

Being a quiet Sunday evening Slay went out to see real space with Drifnir. I am pleased to report that it is still there and they havent all migrated back through the Eve hole without telling us. Like yesterday our connection was to Goonie 0,0 space, deep in Querios or Delve where there is plenty of big bounty battleships waiting for my Ogre II's. I took a nice dead-end system and ratted till a Goonie came calling, I safe spotted and went to bathe the baby. Hope they had a productive time scanning for me.

When I came back I was booted from the server when the connection closed. I hope my ship is still there when I get back in !

Locator Agents and Wormhole Space

This question of trying to find someone in wormhole space came up last night so I thought I would try it out. Slayfoe's Bull was offline at the POS in the wormhole system when Carraig asked this nice Duvolle Labs agent where he might be, this was her answer.

For those too lazy to click:

"I'm sorry but I just can't help you with that one, I'm pretty sure Slayfoe's Bull's well out of my zone of influence"

Getting beaten up

Last night we had a good online presence, the Euro-zone players were busy mining next door when the Americans started to logon. I believe the encounter started with Drifnir getting jumped by a Legion while in a Mammoth hauling gas home to the POS. Everyone made for the POS and jumped into a hodgepodge of PVP and not so PVP ships. A little while later someone had a point on a Loki at the sun.

In retrospect I should have got suspicious right there, but I thought that maybe someone had called out the wrong name of a ship in the excitement and into a C5b Domi jumped Slay and warped in on top of Mono. I am not used to PVP and it takes a little while to be able to discern what is happening in the chaos of a fight but the ships rapidly filling up the sky were not purple.

We had fallen for bait.

They were called Black-Wing, there were 12 of them in a mix of tech 2 cruisers, battle cruisers and tech 3 ships. They focused fire, knew what they were doing and had us blown up and podded before we even understood the depth of our mistake. We lost 3? Dominix, Mono’s Pilgrim, Drif’s Mammoth and our capsules. I wasn’t even able to align and warp out before I was in a new clone in TashMurkon. Link to killboard.

Bought myself 2x +3implants (all I had the ISK left for), picked up a Myrmidon left in high-sec after the last move and flew back to the POS.

A New Direction: a passive shield Myrmidon

Continuing on my series on passive shield tanking Gallente ships I come to the current pinnacle of my ambition, the passive shield Myrmidon (See here for the passive shield Tristan and here for the Celestis).

A quick flick through Battleclinic shows a very highly rated passive shield Myrmidon that the commentators claim can solo most L4 missions. Now I am neither rich enough nor confident enough to leave my drones shooting rats while I change the baby’s nappy but in the long term the idea is to have Carraig missioning while Slay participates in the MNEE Wormhole operation.

So without any further ado, my passive shield Myrmidon:

[Myrmidon, Passive Shield]

Damage Control II
Shield Power Relay II
Shield Power Relay II
Shield Power Relay II
Shield Power Relay II
Shield Power Relay II

Invulnerability Field I
Invulnerability Field I
Large Shield Extender I
Large Shield Extender I
Large Shield Extender I

250mm Railgun I, Lead Charge M
Drone Link Augmentor I
Small Tractor Beam I
Small Tractor Beam I
Salvager I
Medium Nosferatu I

Core Defence Field Purger I
Core Defence Field Purger I
Core Defence Field Extender I

Hammerhead II x5
Hobgoblin II x5
Ogre I x3

With Carriag's currents skills she has 57.5k effective hit points and can tank 438dps. Until Carraig's drone skills improve, missions will be painfully slow and certain rats might well be able to tank the drone damage. Where she differs from the standard passive shield Myrmidon in BC is that her high slots are full of utility, after all I plan to aggro everything then walk away and come back when it is time to salvage.

Now all I need is some time to get my drones skills up and some money with which to buy her!

A New Direction: a passive shield Celestis

Well, a Tristan is well and good but level 1 missions aren't going to get Carraig's reputation with Duvolle Labs to the dizzy heights required to use level 4 research & development agents. A New Approach was needed.


Enter the passive shield Celestis, a Gallente Cruiser with 5 mid slots. First thing I found is that you can use the level of shield extenders 'above' what you think you might use, so a frigate can use medium shield extenders and a cruiser can use large shield extenders - shield upgrade skill is your friend here (the skill reduces the amount of powergrid required to mount a shield extender). Along with an invulnerability field (shield equivilant of the EANM) you get a nice large shield. The draw back of the extenders is that the signature radius of your ship gets larger - but not by much.

With Core Defense Field Rig being about 3m in Dodixie I popped one of them onto the ship, it makes a difference, after putting this baby on the shield hardly went beneath 80% in level 2 missions.

In the lows I have the ubiqitous Damage Control II and Power Shield Relays. As an old active armour tanker I found this module hard to stomach, it's draw back is to reduce capacitor regen time while increasing shield regen. However the idea of the passive tank is that you don't need capacitor, that your shield natural regen rate is sufficient to keep your tank up. The other good side of this module is that they don't appear to have a stacking penalty. Indeed there are battleclinic loadouts with 6 of these babies on the low rack.

Most damage in the level 2 missions has been from the drones rather than the missiles. So I plan to skill up to get hobgoblin and hammerhead tech 2 drones. Then it is a matter of trust and being able to walkaway from the computer while the drones do their business!

[Celestis, Passive Shield Celestis]

Shield Power Relay II
Shield Power Relay II
Damage Control II

Large Shield Extender I
Large Shield Extender I
Large Shield Extender I
Large Shield Extender I
Invulnerability Field I

'Malkuth' Assault Missile Launcher I, Sabretooth Light Missile
'Malkuth' Assault Missile Launcher I, Sabretooth Light Missile
Dual 150mm Carbide Railgun I, Thorium Charge M
Dual 150mm Carbide Railgun I, Thorium Charge M

Core Defence Field Purger I
[empty rig slot]
[empty rig slot]

Hammerhead I x3
Hobgoblin I x2

Effective hit points: 27.8k, defense: 108dps. Carraig needs to get shield upgrade V to fit this lot, until then she off-lines one of the railguns.

A New Direction: a passive shield Tristan

For a while now I have been comfortably as a Gallente Nationalist supporting Duvolle and Roden in their efforts to keep the fires of freedom burning. Both Slayfoe and Carraig fly Gallente ships, use combat drones and use hybrid guns to give the drones a sense of direction.

In an effort to understand the enemy Carraig has decided to learn to use shields and missiles and run some missions, shoot some pirates and get comfortable with another way of flying. Here is my first effort, the Tristan, the pinacle of Gallente frigates set up as a passive tank with rockets, hybrid blasters and a hobgoblin for good measure. She is called Petals and has close on 6k effective hit points.

She is a bit of a camel (as in the horse designed by comittee). To kill things she must get close but doesn't have the means of doing so. She therefore falls into the PVE category but with the hope that someone will warp into her missions and try to blow her away from close range...

[Tristan, Tristan passive shield]
Damage Control I
Co-Processor I
Shield Power Relay I
Small Shield Extender II
Small Shield Extender II
Invulnerability Field I
'Malkuth' Rocket Launcher I, Gremlin Rocket
'Malkuth' Rocket Launcher I, Gremlin Rocket
Regulated Light Electron Phase Cannon I, Tungsten Charge S
Regulated Light Electron Phase Cannon I, Tungsten Charge S
[empty rig slot][empty rig slot][empty rig slot]
Hobgoblin I x1

As Carraig's combat skills become more and more capable I hope to drop the Co-processor for a ballistic control. It turns out that shields and missiles are cpu hogs. First up is: weapons upgrades (which reduces the CPU requirement of weapons). It turns out that rigs ARE cheaper than they were, but that doesn't make them cheap, in Dodixie Small core defense field purgers still cost 1m and Small core defense field extenders about 1.7m.

Ships I have flown and ships I have loved

I haven’t had much access to a good connection recently to indulge in my favourite pastime of flying internet spaceships in Eve Online. I do think about it a lot and catch up on the eve Blog-pack every morning before work which keeps the imaginative part of my brain mulling over possibilities through-out the day.

Ships I have flown and ships I have loved.
Being a Gallente patriot, Slay supported Roden and Duvolle from the beginning flying the Atron and Tristan before graduating briefly to a Catalyst destroyer on the way through to cruisers. Rushing through the tutorial in Eve is a mistake, I hadn’t even realised I had been given a ship as a reward but money is easily come by at the beginning and Slay was flying a sturdy Tristan until he could afford the tough Gallente Thorax cruiser.
Unusually for a special forces Gallente (Drone specialist) I didn’t see the attraction of the Vexor, after all, the Thorax also could put out 5xHammerhead II AND have a kick-ass tank. It was in my Thorax that I first got PVPed. I won’t even pretend it was consensual, an Azaru warped into my mission in low-sec and left my Thorax as space dust slowly drifting in the light of Sharuveil’s sun. Picking on beginners is not something pirates seem to shirk from in padding out their kill boards.
In the way that I jumped into a Thorax, I jumped into the Myrmidon. The Brutix never even got looked at, it must have been covered in dust sheets in the battlecruiser showroom that day. How I love my Myrmidons! Tougher than the Thorax, able to store more drones and with it’s bigger power-grid I could fit more on. It also looks like a creature of space, this ship could never land on a planet.
I had joined MNEE by this point and everyone else was running level 4 missions making more money that I could even dream about. So I had to join in and as such fitted out a Dominix battleship as soon as I could. Three missions later that ship was also slowly spreading out through the void as I got caught by warp scrambling frigates in a level 4 mission when someone else warped out. The person very kindly gifted me a new Dominix that was carefully bubble wrapped and put away for when my skills caught up with my ambition.
The workhorse of wormhole space is the battleship and in our case, the Dominix. So it was back into this battleship that I went to reap the rewards of exploring the domain of the Sleepers. Generally it serves as part of a remote armour repairer gang with sentry drones providing the dps. She also has a PVP role where she can suck the cap out of anything within 20klicks of her while laying down the hurt with a collection of drones.
Though the Dominix does the heavy lifting in Sleeper space, Slay spends most of his time behind the controls of the Helios, the Gallente Covert Ops tier 2 frigate. This machine is the invisible scanning eye of the gods, where anomalies are found and wormholes tracked down.
Not forgotten is the Myrmidon though. She still serves me as a very able gas mining ships complete with a tank in her lows, dps with her drones and 5 gas miners II in her highs. She can engage the defenders of a class 4 ladar site and be round to mine the gas after.
Who knows what the future will bring, Slay has the skills but not the money to fly an Ishtar, he loves his Iskur appropriately named Slay’s baby which carved it’s merry way through the first epic arc that came out with Apocrapha. He has 2 Brutix that he uses in the same way as he uses Thoraxes, up close and personal with heavy neutron blasters and drones laying down the law. The Nemesis requires missile skills which in the interest of improving his current skills Slay is ignoring but certainly plans to invest in the future.
The immediate plans call for maximising his drone and sub battle-ship skills: Drone interfacing 5, combat drone 5 being the top of the list with various guns skills immediately after.

Gang PVP

We move into out new home, meet the neighbours and declare war. We camp a WH waiting for them to come out, it turns out that there are rather more of them than we anticipated and we need to stage a 'strategic withdrawal', at least I assume that is what it was called as I hadn't any comms so I was watching the others VERY carefully. As it turns out, the WH collapses behind the last one of us out leaving two of them with no where to run to and a fight against 4 domis.

The picture is of the domis greiving the loss of there new Abadon mate that was left behind next door. Not sure of the final tally at the moment though I do note that it was the trusty tier 1 domis that survived!

First dive into solo PVP

Following on from the last post I put my plan into action. After some shopping Carraig was in an asteroid belt in Arraron with Slay off-grid. Before long a flipper turns up and transfers Carraig’s Ore into his own jet can. Now, he was already red and didn’t start flashing as I expected him to. Apparently flashy doesn’t exist anymore, so after a little dependent time (baby needed consoling, feeding and burbing) I was back in belt and the same flipper comes along in an Iskur.
He flips the can (belonging to Slay) and Carraig scrams him. He starts shooting Carraig and Slay warps in. He destroys Carraigs cruiser and escapes when Slay runs out of cap to keep the webifier going.
Lessons learnt:
1. Carraig cannot shoot first. If he had been persuaded to shoot Carraig Concord would have arrived.
2. The Brutix needs less blasters and an energy vampire to keep the capacitor from emptying
3. Hammerheads are not as effective against assault frigates as I hoped, next time use Hobgoblins or Warriors.
4. Chasing an AF using MWD uses up Slay’s cap very quickly.
I must say I am looking forwards to doing it again. It isn’t that easy keeping both characters going. So next time I will put a regenerating tank on Carraig’s ship rather than a pure buffer tank.

Time-out from Wormhole Space

I have been a bit busy in RL recently and haven’t been able to endulge in flying space ships round as much. I do have blog pack on my iGoogle though and catch up with various blogs as much as I can.
Today my favorite was http://evewarrior.com/archives/irritation. He started me thinking. At the moment MNEE has just folded up camp in the class 4 that kept us in sleeper loot for the last two months with the intention of moving to a deeper class 5 with a static class 6 connection. As a result we are in high sec with some time on our hands.
The word in Eve Warriors blog that got me thinking was ‘passive targeting’. I wouldn’t mind picking some fights with some can flippers. This is my plan.
Carraig sits in a belt in a retriever kitted out with a warp scrambler, passive targeting and mining strip. She jet mines into a can dropped by Slay who sits in a Brutix off grid. As soon as some one bites Carraig scrambles and Slay warps in. If a flipper shoots Carraig then Concord should arrive to help as Carraig has rights over the flipper but the flipper has no rights over Carraig.
Hmm, this might be a bit of fun. Carriag needs to learn about Propulsion Jamming then it is a matter of fitting out a retriever with warp scrambler and plates or maybe better, an Exequror as it can fit plates, 4 mining lasers, passive targeting, warp scrambler and afterburner for when they try to run away. I think I’ll take some ECM drones with me should the flipper try to shoot me.
Slay’s Brutix will be set up as a glass cannon, what other way would you fly it? Only thing missing now is a border system near some low sec pirate haven with some roids to shoot at.

Another podding, this one a bit special

We went shopping in high-sec tonight though a hole that opened in the system next to Tash-Murkon. While spending all my available cash (on a gas mining myrmidon and my first hulk) I noticed someone in local inviting people to an event.

The deal was, a friend of hers had left Eve and bequeathed her over 3000 ships. Very nobly, she decided to give them away. Her modis operandi was to fill her Hulk with ships, and eject them near the entrance to a space station. The images of capsules all clustering round a big orca were very primal.

Like everyone else I was siting in my capsule hoping for scraps to fall from the table (not fast enough) when the fun really started. The first guy looking to become famous gets 5000m away from the DED space station and lets rip with smartbombs, he lasts less than a second before the sky is decorated with Concord ships and he is space confetti. Someone pods him for good measure. It takes a particular mind set that in Eve is not rare.

Sharing our system in WH space is a corporation called Caldari State, amongst it's pilots is one Rubico1337. As the first guy is making himself the biggest target possible, he is furiously fitting out a Domi for the same reason. A misclick means I miss his glorious explosion as I am sitting in the station, fortunately Drifnir was on hand to printscreen.

Rubico reported that his rating had dropped to -9.6 needless to say, he won't be shipping out of Jita anytime soon!

I get caught as the another person decides that his way to glory is smartbombs, for the record, Rubico managed to pod 7 people, I don't know what success the others had.

The Wormholers Guide to the Regions

As an inhabitant of Sleeper space I occasionally pop into Empire space to renew my clone, buy some tech 2 gear and buy some skill books. Up to my emigration to WH space I lived in Gallente space with occasional forays into other empires and didn’t really know my way round New Eden.When sleeper space connects to New Eden, it connects quite randomly as far as I can figure. Sometimes into high sec, sometimes low sec and other time 00. Last night while trying to find a way back home for some of my corp mates stuck in New Eden I emerged into low sec in Syndicate from a class 5 system. As an aide memoire I am going to record my impressions and anything useful about the regions I connect to.

Wormholers Guide to the Regions - Solitude

I popped out into known space a few nights ago while looking for some way to get some lost sheep home. To my pleasant surprise I found myself in high-sec, but a quite peculiar part of high sec. It is not unusual to have high sec islands, but this is a region-wide high sec island!

High-sec/ low-sec

Part of the Gallente Federation is accessible from the rest of Empire space through Aridia of Syndicate. Now Syndicate isn’t the most friendly place. Aridia I have to yet to explore.

Local market: Octanneve

http://wiki.eveonline.com/wiki/Solitude_(Region)

Interesting looking place, low sec, high sec and immediate access to 0.0 sec. Not to crowded either.

A Wormholers guide to the Regions - Syndicate

‘Wretched hive of scum and villainy’ applies nicely to this place. Historically settled by Intaki exiles from the Federation it is a region of independent powers brought together to form the Syndicate.

0.0 space

The system I popped into had a number of inhabitants of the corporation Clown Punchers [Bonzo], they were most certainly NBSI (not Blue Shoot it). I had wandered into the local Intaki Police Station as the only station in the system and finding nothing interesting to buy I undocked into the cross fire of a crusader and his mate. I was well into structure before I managed to dock again. He got fed up talking crap in local later and on leaving the station I found him gone. The sneaky clown had found the WH entrance and set up a bubble round it. I presume his idea was to catch people coming from the WH as I landed in the bubble, slow boated to the WH and jumped out without any problem.

The region has 1 named system – Piotot.

Eve Wikia page on The Syndicate http://eve.wikia.com/wiki/The_Syndicate
Evelopedia entry http://wiki.eveonline.com/wiki/Poitot_(System) & http://wiki.eveonline.com/wiki/Syndicate_%28Region%29
Someone went to the trouble of setting up a web site http://www.poitot.com/ nothing of note on it though.

Couldn’t find a market of note.
Home page of Clownpunchers, including a very much over 18 podcast.

I saw this theme a few weeks ago where everyone showed where they had been with their character. So here is a potted history of Slay's travels.
The blob in the middle is probably normal for a first Gallente Character, Slay hung round where he started and was familiar with - Essence & Sinq Liaison.
There was the first foray south where we hooked up with a crowd called the Sukanen Alliance where a low sec CVA type of NRDS (Not Red Don't Shoot- Eve shorthand for: I am not a miserable ganker). This place has got level 4 agents that work for Chemal Tech. In order to use these you must get your rep up to high enough which explains a venture into the north of Caldari space where Chemal Tech had a nice level 3 agent.
There is a long wander round AAA and BOB (now GOON) space. This was done in a Tristan called Tourist and if I remember correctly trying to run away from flashing red people. This clone got as far as Serpentis Prime before jumping back to Empire Space.
The long trail of dots round the core worlds comes from doing the epic mission for the storyline.
Lastly there are little lines of dots making there way from no where to local markets. These come from popping into known space from wormhole space randomly.

Drifnir

Drifnir is an Amarr pilot in the corp from Denmark, I enjoy playing Eve with him. Last night he was good enough to send me a pile of images that he has taken in game. I thouht this one should be shared, it looks pretty cool!

When your Eyes are Bigger than your Stomach

I have been busy lately so I was pleasantly surprised on Monday when I logged on to find that I was in a fleet of 12, mainly MNEE pilots with a scattering of Caldari Incorporated. Everyone was 1 system over either shooting sleepers or mining a core deposit.

Slayfoe’s job was to take the catalyst and clean up after the shooters while Carraig shot away at a Jaspet rock, 2 full cans of Jaspet later and the hauler announced a teeny problem, the WH was on it’s last legs.

At this point there are 3 Hulks, a Retriever, an Iteron V, Slay in a Catalyst and a pile of battleships. It is patently clear that not everyone is going to get home. Naturally it happened at the end of the evening when everyone on this side of the pond wants to get to bed.

In a very disciplined manner the miners were packed off home leaving combat pilots sitting in their BS waiting for rescue. Drifnir, being an active guy headed off through a low sec WH (that was too small for the BS to pass through) to get himself a scanning ship. While in known space fitting this out he gets an Evemail announcing the death of his ship. Amazing how good the post office is at finding it’s way out of WH space...

Lessons learnt: never leave a shiny ship alone, someone will take advantage. What we couldn’t understand is why someone blew it up rather then steal it, it was about 300million worth of ship.

MNEE as of June 2009

I thought it would be good to record the names of our growing band. Some of the members of the corporation have been on sabbatical to MNEI, WOW or other pursuits (becoming a father in my case) but slowly the band grows and we get to do more each week. I logged on last night to find 10 people in the corporation channel and 11 in the Nomadic Intel channel.

What is really nice is that many of the arrivals are serious miners (read: can fly a hulk) that are busy pillaging grav sites. As Mono said last night, it is only a matter of time before the Roidhugger environmentalists turn up. It turns out that a mixed operation of anomaly running and mining in adjacent systems burns wormhole mass quite fast, this is because we use battleships for the class 4 anomalies.

Active MNEE pilots as of 14 June 2009
Monomorium and his alt Washelg
MCHammered
Slayfoe and his alt Caraig NaTairbhe
Drifnir
Draconica
Peany
Go Shek
Fakie and his alt
Waitin4Chips

Took this shot last night while warping with the fleet to another sleeper anomoly. Looks like Rubico's Raven got tired and hitched a lift! It was a large system and the jump was over 200AU so with him being a squid face and all it probably is understandable.

The limits of blogger

I had written out 2 more articles on gunnery in which I had spent time making out nice tables. Unfortunately, it appears that Blogger is unable to present tabulated information. If anyone finds a way of presenting tables do let me know.

Gunnery: An Introduction to the Hybrid Turret

As a Gallente pilot my first love has always been my drones. In the last year I started to see my high slots as something more than drone targeting suggestions. Anyone who has used drones will understand that drones have minds of their own that occasionally give the impression that the pilot is in charge. Guns, however, shoot the person you ask them to shoot.

The different hybrid turret options
Gallente pilots start of with a basic skill set in hybrid turrets. These turrets come in 2 varieties, railguns (medium to long distance, slower recharge, slower tracking) and blasters (short range high damage dealers, faster tracking and higher rate of fire). The turrets come in 3 varieties in each size bracket each using more powergrid and CPU than the previous one but also shooting further and causing more damage.

Small blasters
Small electron blaster (least powergrid, cpu and damage)
Small ion blaster
Small neutron blaster (most powergrid, cpu and damage)
Small railgun
75mm railgun
125mm railgun
150mm railgun
Medium blasters and railguns
…The pattern repeats as the turrets get larger

Though it might look like sense to load up with the biggest guns you quickly reach limits. These limits are usually lack of cpu and powergrid on your ship. However, with improved skills you can improve these limits (electronics and weapon upgrades either improve the cpu of your ship or reduce the turret requirement, engineering and advanced weapon upgrades improves the powergrid output or reduces the turret powergrid requirement).
To further complicate matters improved tech 1 versions of these guns can drop as loot from NPCs or be bought on the market. The basic turrets are rated meta level 0 or 1. Improved versions have meta level 2, 3 and 4. The Meta level 4 turrets are generally more expensive than tech 2 turrets because of their lower skill requirements, rarity and being almost as good as their tech 2 equivilent!

The hybrid turret stats
For those that are new to how damage is dealt with in Eve, check out the following article in eve-wiki (http://www.eve-wiki.net/index.php?title=Damage_System).

Each hybrid turret comes with a fixed optimal and falloff range, tracking speed, damage modifier and capacitor requirement.

Optimal and fall-off
Optimal range is the range within which you have the standard chance of hitting. Beyond optimal range is the fall-off range. As you move away from the ship your chance of hitting diminishes. At optimal + fall-off range you have about 50% chance of hitting. Hybrid blaster turrets have short optimal and fall off ranges, railgun turrets have longer optimal and fall-off ranges. Generally the larger the gun the longer the optimal and fall-off ranges are.

Tracking speed
This is how fast your guns can turn to keep up with enemy ships – remember the x-wing fighters attacking the Death Star? Well, it turns out that the Death Star had poor tracking skills. The tracking on a blaster is superior to that on a railgun. If you want to get up close and orbit fast you need blasters. If you are happy to stand off and be a sniper then railguns would be the better choice.

Damage modifier
The blaster hybrid turret is designed as a short range high damage dealer, whereas the railgun is designed to hit from further out and consequently has a lower damage modifier. For beginning players that learn to play through running missions, railguns are the preferred approach. Warp in, stand off and shoot them as they try to close on your position.
PVP gives the option of getting up close and dirty, orbiting fast with short range blasters and chewing up your opponent.

Capacitor requirement
This has never affected me much while playing. Train up capacitor skills early on and ensure that you always have some capacitor left to warp out when the going gets nasty. At the beginning of your career you will be more concerned about using your capacitor to maintain your tank and using your drones to do damage. For completeness, know that railguns use more capacitor than blasters to shoot but that ammunition that you might load into your turrets change the capacitor required.

The inherent disadvantage of hybrid turrets
Hybrid weapons cause mixed thermal/ kinetic damage only. If you know you’re going to be facing a Gallente pilot stack the thermal/ kinetic hardeners!

Hybrid ammo
The turrets can be loaded up with different types of ammo that allow tactical flexibility in range selection (antimatter ammo for short range up to iron ammo for long range). Each ammo type causes a fixed amount of thermal and kinetic damage. Each type of ammo also has a range and capacitor usage modifier. The short range ammo (antimatter) causes more damage and uses most cap whereas the long range ammo (iron) causes the least damage and uses less cap.
As well as the standard ammo there is faction ammo (expensive tech 1 sold by NPCs) and tech 2 ammo which only fits into tech 2 guns.

The skills required
The following basic gunnery skills improve whatever weapon system you choose to use (hybrid, lasers or projectile guns):
Gunnery (2% increase to rate of fire)
Controlled bursts (5% decease to capacitor use)
Motion prediction (5% bonus to weapon tracking speed)
Rapid firing (4% bonus to rate of fire)
Sharpshooter (5% to weapon turret optimal range)
Surgical Strike (3% bonus to turret damage)
Trajectory Analysis (5% bonus fall-off range)
Weapon upgrades (5% reduction in CPU requirement)
Advanced weapon upgrades (5% reduction in power grid requirement)

Other skills are required to use specific weapon systems, in our case, hybrid turrets. Note that railguns and blasters are both forms of hybrid turrets:
Small hybrid turret (5% damage to small hybrid turret damage)
Medium hybrid turret, large hybrid turrets and I presume larger for capital ships.

Highly specialised skills required to use tech 2 weapon systems. At this level you must choose to improve either railguns or blasters:
Small railgun specialisation (2% increase in damage to tech 2 small railgun turrets)
Small blaster specialisation (2% increase in damage to tech 2 small blaster turrets)

Conclusion
At the start of your career as a Gallente pilot you could do worse than train up your railgun skills as a bonus to your main damage source (drones) on missions. As you progress and perhaps get into shooting other players there is a good chance that you will end up in a Thorax loaded up with blasters. Note that you are not fixed to going down the route of hybrid guns, these are just the turrets for which Gallente players have starting skills and the type of turrets that Gallente ships have bonuses for.Also note that some skills are hybrid turret specific but others give bonuses to all weapon systems. Naturally these skills are good time investments as they will transfer if you take a liking to projectile guns for your Myrmidon J

Wormhole collapsing

For the protection of our assets we collapsed a wormhole tonight.

Earlier that evening Draconica had been mining in a hulk and got jumped and blown up by Max Leadfoot of Explorers Corp Directive. Hoping that he would make a break for it we hung round the wormhole waiting for him to make a run for it. The wormhole collapsed and he escaped through the new one that appeared.

He appeared quite eager to return and visit more misery on us so we collapsed the wormhole by shuttling battleships backwards and forwards through it. For the record, X877 wormholes take 1,849.28 million mass before collapsing.

Tourney

When watching our holds fill with gas got a bit much we decided that shooting each other in tech 1 ships might more interesting. MNEE are industrialists at heart, we mine, explore, manufacture, invent and mission when we need money. PVP has never really caught on, at least voluntary PVP, the other kind we have had plenty of. War declarations seem to follow us as we migrate from alliance to alliance.

So it is not unfair to categorise most of us as pvp noobs. With this in mind we started with a free for all, all of warped to a planet with a view to see who would be the last man standing. That quickly was shown to be rather chaotic and my ship had flames emerging from it for the rest of the night.

Next we tried to more structured 1 on 1. Rubico in his Caracal played cat and mouse with the Thoraxes and was declared winner. Then MCHammered logged on, took one of the Thorax and showed us how it is supposed to be done. By the time I logged off for the night he had beaten the Caracal 3 times.

It was fun. Next time we need to set some base rules:

Warp in time. The first to arrive has an advantage over the second to arrive.
Distance. Ships are either designed to get up close and dirty (Gallente) or keep their range (Caldari).
No blowing people up. Rubico came to the first engagement in frigate hoping that he could orbit faster than my guns could keep up. Most of the time he was right but when he got 5xlight neutron blasters in the face he found himself in his POD.
We need to fit out an ambulance with shield, armour and hull repairers.

Gas mining

So the proverbial goldmine turned up twice over the weekend. Class 5 systems produced ladar sites full of C320 (going for ISK160k/ unit in Jita that night) and C540 (going for rather less). The spawns are battleship size supported by frigates. Needless to say the gas mining ships are not really enough to take these out so we bring in remote repairing Dominix to take down the spawns. This has the unfortunate effect of putting a serious dent into the home system wormhole.

You need a hauler, my hold can hold 40 units or 6minutes of mining. One Iteron III can keep up with 3 maxed out gas miners across 4 wormholes.

I mine in a Myrmidon, with a co-processor it can fit 5 tech2 gas miners and a tank, just (499.75/ 500 teraflops). Each cycle take 1.5minutes and pulls in 10 units. That is ISK1.6m/ 90 seconds or about ISK60m/hour. Not much compares to that.

It isn’t the most exciting of Eve time but with voice communications, the thrill of unknowns entering the system, the corporation wallet expanding it is acceptable.

The second night we mined for a bit then had a tourney. If mining is watching paint dry, then gas mining is watching dry paint fade…

Hillbilly fighting

Last night MNEE and friendly neighbours found a WH into an adjacent class 2 system. A fleet was formed, a scout sent in and a hulk located. The hulk was pointed (an Eve term: 1 point of warp scrambling was applied to the hulk preventing him from warping out) and a ransom demanded. The hulk pilot prevaricated and called in reinforcements in the form of a Domi. The fleet jumped in, blew the Hulk and the Domi up and assaulted the small gunless POS in system.

I am of two minds about the whole thing. I don't like piracy. Attacking the other corp (SPQR) and their base wasn't going to net the corp anything substantial. The bits and pieces looted from the ships are a prize but not a very serious one. It looks like the corp went out to ruin someone's day. It isn't as though we were going to claim their system as when the WH closes we'll never see it again.

A serious attempt was made on to kill the pods (not by me though). In wormhole space this has a perverted sense to it. Whereas getting from your WH system to kspace is easy, getting from kspace to a specific WH system is not. By podding someone it removes them from the WH space and the battle in a rather more permenent manner than would happen in kspace.

Unless someone attacks us first I don't think I'll be taking part in these operations again.

Podded!

Podded for the first time ever!

On Sunday morning a wormhole opened into a clean type 4 system when most of the corporation was online. So we promptly went about harvesting the goodies. Just before downtime I asked for someone to sit on the wormhole so Carraig could warp to them and then home. Mono volunteered but went to the outbound wormhole not the wormhole heading home. We both jumped through, realised the mistake, jumped back and downtime hit. Carraig was stranded.
When the server went back up Slay went to rescue her before Aileen and myself went into town for lunch. He jumped to the wormhole connecting to the home system, jumped through with the intention of giving Carraig a target and promptly got hit by an Azaru who shredded the Iteron III that Slay was flying.
Carraig in the Retriever warped to the dying Slay and straight through the wormhole without any trouble and then home. When I realised Slay was under attack, I must have given up on the Iteron and prepared myself to warp through in the capsule. Unfortunately I kept getting ‘Session Change in progress’ and in surprisingly short time, found myself back in Duripant thinking that only that morning I had commented on how safe the home system felt.
Drifnir was good enough to find me a connection to high-sec for Slayfoe to get back to the POS system in a PVP Thorax.
Lesson learnt? Well if you can’t get through the wormhole then warp elsewhere instead. He probably had a point on me (preventing me warping out) but I’ll never know.

Fueling a POS

To keep a POS up and runnign you need to provide it with various fuels that are supplied by NPCs in known space.

The fixed amount of the following items are required per day/ week/ month:

Enriched uranium
Helium isotopes
Robotics
Collant
Mechanical parts
Oxygen

The amount of these items required depends on the CPU and Power requirements of what you run at the POS:

Liquid ozone (power)
Heavy water (CPU)

Then a last item, Strontium Clathrade, is required to fuel the POS when it is put into reinforced mode, this happens when it is attacked.

The amount of the various items can be calculated at the following useful place:
http://eve-online.itemdrop.net/eve_db/calculator/pos_fuel/
It also shows you how much volume yuo will need to haul on a weekly basis - looks like an IttyV will do the job each week, also looks like the corp/I will need to find about 21m per week to keep it operational.

Setting up a POS

Last night the chief of our little corp decided to set up a second POS in the system to cater for the miners among us (2 at the last count). It is a medium amarr tower with corporate hangar array and medium intensity refining array with a slew of guns to deter the casual looter.

Notes to self: it takes AGES to set up a pos as the tower can only handle 1 thing at a time and each addition to the pos needs anchored (5 minutes) and onlined (another 5 mins). So apart from the tower, the 16 odd items should take 160 minutes to work, or about 3 hours. Each gun then needs ammo loaded, first time I have ever loaded a laser into a turret but it obviously makes sense to use guns that dont require ammo - hence lasers with crystals.

Now all I need to do is find some rocks to mine.

The whole operation requires various types of fuel to keep running, this needs to be fetched from empire space, so I can see some runs to high sec soon. This naturally will cost money so I need to establish how the money side of the operation is to happen and how to pay for the fuel. Mono says that there is a fuel dump in Amarr space ready for picking up as soon as we get a suitable WH.

So we'll have a POS tower with a refining array to refine the materials we already have mined, this might take a few days, it isn't like at stations where it happens immediately. The question will be what to do with the minerals. Sell or manufacture.

1. Selling: will require hauling the minerals to high sec when a suitable WH appears.
2. Manufacturing: either for use by the corp or alliance in WH space or for selling. Selling means dragging the products to high sec when appropriate WH appears.

Hmm, might be better to make stuff that can be sold to the corp or the alliance in WH space.

Wormhole Space

Well, gaming has slowed down since the little bundle of joy entered out life. Baby Alannah is 7 weeks old last Tuesday and has learnt to smile at people. Generally not at the 2 milk providing pillows that she will come to know as her parents but at new faces that come to visit.

On the work front I am back where I was before Christmas working away in RKD Cork on contract basis. Once you get used ot the idea of not having secure employment it is quite liberating. Getting good experience on hospital design which is good for the CV.

In the meantime gaming has reverted to Eve. I simply got bored with WOW again. I drop in to say hi to Dougal and the rest of the gang from time to time but most of the little gaming time I spend is trying to avoid getting blown up in Eve.

I had kept the two accounts going through out the WOTLK expansion working my way though core skills on both accounts. This has given both characters a nice base from which to specialise. Slaybull is a combat pilot and Carraig naTaribhe is a science character turned miner. After a few weeks of having my cans flipped in Empire space I moved both characters to join Monomorium at his POS in Wormhole space.

First things first. I flew my lovely Dominix full to the brim with drones and other tech II goodies though low-sec space and got jumped by a gang that blew me to bits (capsule managed to escape, so I haven't been podded yet).

So I arrived at the Monomorium's pos in a capsule with nothing to my name. The POS is in a L4 wormhole system that has been cleaned out so all action generally happens in adjoining systems through whatever WHs have opened that day. The combat missions have been done using a fleet of Dominix BSs fitted to spider tank. Very first mission I got mine blown up by forgetting to turn on the damage control module.

So far I have enjoyed the experience. Mono has been very generous and easy about mistakes made to far. I help out where I can and have yet to get bored. Because of the whole need to probe for asteroid belts things can be a bit slow, there is no such thing as going out to shoot at rocks for 20 mins. In the next blog entry I'll figure out some goals.

Eirebull's exploration techniques

WotLK introduced achievements in a blatant rip-off the Warhammer idea but without the integrated and involved Book of Grudges. Nevertheless, they have proven to be of interest to people and, unsurprisingly, it becomes a goal in a zone to finish all the quests there. The advantage of trying all the quests is that you get a good idea of the story-line which is stronger than that in the Burning Crusade.

I finished Dragonblight yesterday while helping Dougal out. I had missed a quest chain in the Walrus village on the coast and you can't miss much if you want the achievement.

Eirebull is working her way through the troll city atm, she got to ride on the back of a Stormgiant the other day in a novel quest, the fact that the same storm giant king was running round the place several times was a bit surreal.

So Eirebull is half way to level 78 and has 47 out of 70 quests complete in Zul'whatever.

Applied for a new job today

Well, today is the first day of my new life, I have just emailed my first job application to Blizzard. The idea of working for the company that has made World of Warcraft is exciting and more than a little adrenaline is flowing.

It also gives me a great excuse to get a bit serious about my playing for the next few weeks as:

1. I'll need to bring myself up to date with the new instances in WotLK;
2. Playing the game might become a bit of a busman's holiday if I am working on it during the day;

They say that if you have got no response within 4 weeks then consider your application unsucessful. I only hope that my skillset will translate and not be a barrier to getting a position. Blizzard are quite a large outfit and if the first job becomes stale then their should be opportunities to branch out.

Fingers crossed :)

Goodbye Celtic Tiger, hello joblessness

Well, my job was made non-existant yesterday. Johan called me into his office on the morning of the first day back and told myself and the other architect that RKD no longer had any work for me, that I had 30 days notice.

My wife has taken it well, and is being supportive, but I don't feel well. I am about to become a father and don't have the means of supporting my family. The chance of another architectural job in Cork or even Ireland is non-existant at the moment. I will have to find employment in some other field.

Possibility 1: ask Blizzard for a game master position
Possibility 2: no idea, will ask the recruitment agencies