Home Crap Home…

~or, “Back Inna Hole… and Happy as a Pig in Shite!”

I’ve had a few rough months lately… Last October SYJ left Anoikis and hence, so did HBHI, and then our little band kinda diaspora’ed and… since then I have been in either limbo or dead… IE stuck in Hisec, the same thing really for a wormhole dweller. I spent the last 6 or so months mostly missioning for SOE in Osmon… even did a longish stint of ‘real’ mining for a while just for a change. Now, understand when I say ‘real’ mining I don’t mean-max-yield-no-tank mining…

I even saw a few of the all but forgotten about New Order asshats in local trying to pander their Mining Permit Protection Racket… Imma digress a sec here, I believe we should call a spade a spade ‘cause no matter what the rhetoric, New Order “Mining Permits” are a racket because they are…

(1) not issued or recognized by CCP, CONCORD or any NPC corp;

(2) not an official or even sanctioned ‘ingame item’ IE cannot be bought or sold on the Market;

(3) lastly not even ‘real’ protection… The protection the purchaser receives is ONLY from attack by the seller and/or his agents.

Therefore these false ‘Mining Permits’ do NOT convey any protection from any other player, corp or Alliance from attacking the purchaser…  Even La Cosa Nostra protection rackets actually provided real protection from rival gangs… The New Order offers no such protection… they aren’t even decent at being mobsters… sheesh. So Mining Permits are nothing more than a de facto ‘protection racket’ and I take no truck in any such tom-foolery. I believe I got scouted a time or two but no one tried to coerce me into buying any damn fool fake ‘permit’ nor did anyone fleetwarp in on me to “try” and break my tank. Anyhoo, back to my irregularly unscheduled musings…

I personally have never believed in fitting any ship as “no-tank”, (except the 2 gank ‘Nados I once fitted and never used) hell even not even my bait ships are no-tank cause obvious bait is obvious you know. But I also don’t buy into leaving yourself open to a gank just for a few more ISK just seems silly to me, so my barge was max tank fitted and whatever I mined up was whatever I mined up… meh. 

 So I missioned… I mined… and in due course I wanted to kill myself (strangely difficult when yer immortal)... I wrote fewer and fewer posts and found less and less I even wanted even to write about… and that scared me. No matter what happened to Tur ingame, my meta interest in the game and goings on had never once waned in my 3+ years… now, I found myself starting a post only to lose interest halfway through, or I’d get fired up about something at first glance, start a post, do some research and find myself losing interest as I read more and more on a given subject. The few posts I finished got harder and harder to complete and I felt less and less satisfaction on hitting the “Post” buhtan.

I started logging on less and less… I stopped looking for corpmates and friends in chat… and sometimes, I even pretended to be AFK when I did see them online. I wasn’t ‘bitter’ so much as just quite simply bored to death. During this time I did get some wonderful offers from good friends, other bloggers and even strangers to join this corp or that… For a while, as CEO, I opened talks with other Anoikis Alliances to see if there was another Alliance where HBHI could fit in, re-anchor Serenity Station and get back to the life we love best… I received several ideas for solo gameplay I had never heard or thought of, some of which did sound quite interesting… but just not quite interesting enough to shake me out of my malaise…

This has finally changed.

A short while ago two things happened…  a few of our oldest friends in the game left nullsec and moved back to Anoikis… and one of my corpmates left HBHI and joined them in their new C3. These guys are the same guys we used to share a C2 with back when we first moved out of the old Alliance C1 to setup a POS of our own and take up living fulltime in Anoikis.

Back in January I wrote about Waiting For I Know Not What… turns out, personally, it had nothing to do with CCP… This was what I had been waiting for. So, having been asked if I want to join up, last week I made the decision to join them in their new C3… Tur would resign as CEO of HBHI, drop corp and join HELPeR.

The idea of leaving HBHI has always been hard for me. HBHI is home in so many ways… my sons and I founded it together; we founded it after I had joined EvE and completed my noobhood. I have corp hopped a few times in my EvE career and each time, though I did learn some things and have some fun, it always carried a feeling of not really belonging… not being where I was supposed to be.

I TRUST my sons. That is so frakkin important in EvE it is impossible over emphasis it. We trust each other implicitly and for good reason. We are family and we are the Directors of HBHI. We are fully aware of the level and sheer pervasiveness of scammers, spais and safaris in EvE. The value or cost of real trust is beyond ISK or Titans or corps or Alliances… it is everything. And we have the real thing in HBHI in spades.

However, I find the idea of leaving HBHI to join HELPeR far, far easier on my conscience than any other corp hop I have ever done or even considered. We have known these guys since we first joined EvE, we shared their C2 for a year, we have flown with them in good fights and we have been waffle stomped with them. Now I know that just having known someone a long time in this game does not preclude corp thefting of spying… we have a mutual friend, a guy we have all known for as long if not longer than the guys in HELPeR, who pulled a major theft on the corp we had all been in (HELPeRs guys had also been corpmates) when we tried out (and HBHI validated that we really do HATE) nullsec.

But… while all that is true, and trust in EvE is not easily given or earned, there are, shall we say, extenuating circumstances with these guys… A person’s quality is best measured in his actions, and the guys I trust in HELPeR, well… their actions have always spoken nothing but well of them as far as this pilot is concerned. I do not trust them exactly as I do my sons, but I have good reason to trust them in this great game, as I believe they do I.

And so, Tur is back inna hole and happy once again. For now, until I get things settled in HBHI, I remain a guest… as such I do not have POS access and so I must trust my ships to my hosts, and trust that someone who can access them is online when I am or I will be stuck in my trusty Astero. I will probably live in my ‘Stero most of the time anyway. I have come to like and trust the ‘Stero over the Cheetah CovOps that used to be my mainstay for scanning and scouting.

One nice thing, some of the new changes to POS living have made guesting inna POS far easier and more comfortable than ever before. The new deployables such as the MD (Mobile Depot) are a godsend for campers and guests. I have a GSC (Giant Secure Can) anchored inside the POS as the age old poor man’s PHA (Personal Hangar Array)…  and I have an MD anchored just at warp range so I can trundle out and make whatever fitting changes I need on my own.

Obviously this isn’t ‘optimal’ as my MD is outside of the FF and can be attacked etc. but I don’t leave anything in it, it is well within the defensive activation range of the POS guns and MDs are cheap in W-space terms. The major upside is it gives me one more of the capabilities, ship fitting, one expects when living out of a POS… only now you can do so as a guest.

[IMHO If CCP is smart they will change (or write new) POS code so a POS can be set to allow PHAs to be anchored by Alliance or ‘allowed’ corps. They should also consider changing the POS to allow anchoring MDs INSIDE the POS by Alliance/corp while they are being so very very smart…]

Anyhoo, last week I brought in a number of ships… Scanner, DPS, Logi and a Venture for cause you know, Venture. The second night I joined in as Logi on a few sites… the feelings I had were indescribable, so I’ll try…

You are alone… alone as you can only be in Wormhole Space… 
You have scanned all-the-things, you know where all the holes are and whence they lead…
Local is clear (LOL)…
Your mates are the ONLY ships on scan…
You are running sites and you are IMPORTANT to the ongoing op… ‘cause Sleepers are effin DEADLY…
You are making ISK like people in Hisec can only WISH… and yet…

it’s Anoikis… a fleet of cloaked ships could be sitting 2600m off your port quarter and you won’t know it until they drop cloak and start targeting you...

Ahhhhhh…    I’m home.   =]


Fly Wreckless and see you in the Sky  =/|)=