Better Than Nothing...

~or "Whatintheabsolutefuckaretheydoing?"

Some fun was had last weekend and some ISK was made... but before I weigh into the fun, understand first that I am broke... I mean under 10m ISK broke and in EVE that's pauper poor, poorhouse poor, debtors prison poor, "I brought the wrong missiles because I can't afford the right ones!!" kinda poor.

So I have been championing PVE lately, cause ISK you know? You gotta PVE to afford the PVP and we are dealing with a few things that have slowed NOMEX activity in all area's down a bit of late... The Loss That Shall Not Be Named is the first.

That kinda loss, well... it's damned hard on a group. To lose such a staggering amount of ships and assets can be stunning. Especially as we were unable to actually put up any kind of a Good Fight.

I joined NOMEX after Visteen was anchored and while I myself lost a complete, newly purchased, fitted, painted, named and never flown fukkin FLEET, on the whole I lost a lot less than some if not most of the rest of the guys. In my case I had been OOG (out of game) for about 3 years and was making a stab at coming back so I was not as emotionally or immediately impacted by the loss... I actually did not hear about it until quite some time after rad counts were down and the wreckage had cooled. But for those who were actively playing, it was as bad as it gets in EVE.

Understand also that all the guys in NOMEX who were involved in the Keepstar knew, as all who choose to live in Anoikis know-in-their-bones that Visteen was lost the day she was anchored.

"One cannot simply anchor a Keepstar inna C2"

and expect it to live very long. Itsa HUGE SHINEY OBJECT IN SPACE which CAN be killed, and it's EVE so it WILL be killed eventually. But man would the guys have LOVED a chance to really see what manning a Keepstar was like at least, but she went down almost without a fight... and that really sucked.

The aftermath is of course, in its own ways as bad as the loss itself... the blow to moral, loss of incentive and desire to play, all the "Where do we live now?", "What do we do now?" and suchlike have to be duly considered and answered to and Decisions Have To Be Made at the Director level.

All of this was happening while I was rediscovering my desire to fill the dead evening hours of this weird warm winter with some EVE time and then my son rejoined and I found myself actually active on a level I have not been for over 3 years... Cool except for the need to rebuild a new Hole Fleet from almost scratch. I did have a couple hundred mil ISK left but it was woefully inadequate to build a new fleet...

So I broke a rule, one I had kept to for over 9 years... I bought PLEX to buy & fit a new fleet. I played the game with a credit card and I don't like that not one bit. But I promised myself, and Tur really, that this was a one-off case due to the circumstances and I after I had a workable Anoikis Fleet I would reinstate and once again uphold The No PLEX Rule.

So I sold off a shit ton of of old stuff, Gecko's I had been hoarding against just such an occasion for one, a few ships I knew I wasn't going to use for two, that plus some PLEX and I had my fleet... which left me under 100m ISK again but I figured NOMEX was set back up inna C5 so ISk was gonna be easy again... well, not so much really.

Yea it seems that other forces than The Loss are at work here. A core group of the guys in NOMEX have flown together long enough to become a "core group" and they play more than a few other games together so when interest in EVE wanes... no biggie, they are all still on TS so they pop down to one of the other games rooms and that's that.

And here I run face first into one of the unassailable walls I have created for myself in my gaming...
(1) I only play EVE
(2) I don't use alts, so I ONLY have Tur.

This has been an issue before for me. If the group I am in is busy in other games or whatever I am left out in the cold playing solo, but that's on me not them.

But I so prefer flying in a group or a gang. You can simply DO so much more. So I have been trying very very hard not to whine and winge and be a pain to everyone while I whine and winge and am a pain to everyone about running some real sites and MAKING SOME ISK... dammit.

So summa the guys, well a few, well a couple... Ok there's this one guy who seems to give a shit at least as far as communicating with me about this topic goes.

The rest... well, we spent an interesting night this past weekend listening to 2 of the (core group) guys explain how "easy" it is to make ISK and how to go about it. I also heard quite a few times things like, "Yea, you should be able to make a lot of ISK running (Incursions, Abyssals, Conduits, etc.) in hisec.", and "(laughing) Not that I've done anything like that in years." and the inevitable, "I just PLEX, it's easier." meaning, 'buying PLEX with a Credit Card to sell for ISK instead of grinding PVE' which I will not do.

I could setup PI, which can be OK-mostly-passive-income but it is not really all that passive in that a good profitable PI setup requires usually at least a once a day login to at the very least "move shit around" and there are always ways you might improve a bit here and tweak it there... and I will not be able to logon every day after the 2020 Regatta Season starts (this year around April 19th) my available "free time" will decrease drastically as I will be onna yacht every weekend, all weekend.

So last week I was down in Hisuc looking into Ships & Fits to try and solo Abyssals, Conduits, etc. when the idea of "PLEXXING on Sunday" started being mentioned on Slack, in Chat and TS. Turns out the guys in NOMEX call running PVE Sites for ISK, "PLEXXING"... I assume from the old, "PVEing to make the ISK to buy a PLEX for a month of game time"... 

So I kept faith and held hope that it might come together and lo and behold it did. Come Sunday early evening we had a nice fleet together. I could have flown a Nestor, as they use a Nestor/Leshak comp, but I no has Nestor and can't fly Leshak to corp spec (yet)... so I was the Noctis pilot. And that was absolutely good with me. I love the Noctis, salvaging was one of my fav roles back in the day.

So I was pretty happy sittin' outside MOB, our Fortizar chillin' and listenin' as the guys learned all about the new unannounced and potentially deadly changes the Chaos Era is bringing us. It seems Drifters now change targets faster and a lot more for one. On the whole the guys did well, only had one ship got into structure before they got him repped back up.

And me? I'd wait til the BM for the MTU at the center of the wreck ball dropped and the site is called "clear" then I'd warp in grab the loots from the MTU and start the music of the 8 Salvagers on all the dead burnt up things... ahhhhhh... just like the old days.

Plus on Saturday 2 of the guys cleared a few Vitals and we nom nommed all the gas, each guy keeping what he huffed. There is talk of chem reactions and facs being setup in our Citadels, but for now I will sell in Jita until we're setup then I'll look into how profitable that looks.

(Nope not even one pic... too busy doin' the ol' hurry up an' wait, all keyed up for that 3 Minutes of Terror & Adrenaline).

And now, The Great Hole Roll Gank... A scout jumped a new hole in KT ("KT" is for some legacy/historical in-corp reason, the name NOMEX always uses for our Static, which in "Ira", our home C5, is also a C5), so he jumps this hole and "Ventures on scan"... We all perk up, Hmmm, jumping Ventures is fun cause they are fast and slippery.

So pings go out and people log on and we all listen for about a 1/2 hour or so as the people in that hole seem to just be taking out and flying around in every ship they have, to what appears to be no clear purpose that we can ascertain. We form up a fleet, a few more scouts jump in and things go as they do, the ol' "hurry up and wait" thing.

Things warp here, things warp there, the scouts and FC's are working the angles, trying to come up with a winnable fight or something at least worth Leroying in and dying gloriously taking down a few shineys for the effort. Eventually the guys we're watching catch wind of us and react... and the FC's call a Hole Roll Logoff Gank, everyone on the Ira side of the Ira/KT hole logs off and gets right back on the login screen and keeps ready to log in and kill whatever they decide to roll with...

I was inna Sabre initially, but decide to swap over to DPS as we now had 2 HICs, so bubbles were covered and DPS was needed more. I swap over to my Cloaky HAM Loki, warp out and cloak up 10km off the KT hole... annnnnnnnnd

Megathron 1
POD 1
Megathron 2
POD 2
Megathron 3
POD 3
Megathron 4
POD4

Oh and in case you were wondering about the title, "Better than Nothing..." that refers to the fact that we had hoped for Rolling Caps and only got Megas... Oh well, better than nothing... right?

Like I said, some fun was had. =]


And one last tidbit that kept me VERY busy lately... I moved. Since I was about 5 months old (in game) I have been a full time permanent resident of Anoikis (Wormhole Space, Negative Sec) and to me Empire Space (Known Space, Hi, Lo & Null) are where I go to sell my goods and go shopping. Unless of course my home go boom (see "The Loss That Shall Not Be Named") then I "refugee" in Empire until a new home is built and my rooms are ready in our new hole.

Empire is also where I store my Ship replacements, Tur's Shadow Fleet (which also needs to be rebuilt) and any Empire specific ships I own. I have refugee'd in Amarr over the years of my cloistering, but now that I am walking the world again, I decided I was just too tired of (1) Amarr prices being just a tad higher than Jita, it adds up over the years, and (2) being shit out the ass of that Great Gold Egg of a station every time I undocked.

I so prefer a nice, reasonable "door" that lets one enter space in style and grace and without vertigo... so I moved to Jita. Not in 4-4, gods I'd HATE that worse than Amarr... can't stand the station design (never could) and the sheer number of A-holes in space, especially at the 4-4 undock... just gives me hives it does.

So I tootled around on Sat and took a good look at the other real estate available in Jita and I found a nice place, a quiet place off the main trade lanes, not a lot of neighbors, good schools, day care, really good restaurants and I like the look of it I really do.

So I spent an evening or 3 carefully packing every square m3 of "Canterbury", my Oracabago Floaty Home of Ineptitude, with everything I own and fast warping from Amarr through Perimeter to my new home in the Jita VII - Moon 2 (Jita 7-2) Caldari Business Tribunal Law School.

It was actually kinda fun. I am finding new things to be interesting and interested in and I am very much liking this new foray into EVE... I truly am.

Fly safe or not, I'll still be cloaked up watching you.
=/|)=