“Rags to Spaceriches, and Back Again” A Bittersweet EVE Story…

~or “Loss Really is Real in EVE”

A good friend of mine has left the game… and he gave me his stuff. And I don’t like it.

I logged on a few days ago… did this and that, the whatever it is we all do on login… fire up TS, hit Dscan, check local, whatev… and I was of a mind to see if we had a good lowsec and mebbe go shoppin so I opened my wallet…

Huh... too many zeros… second look, yup, wayyyyy  too many zreos. WTF. <blink><blink>… rub eyes… Yup, still too damn many zeros…. Seriously, WFT? There is NO WAY I have 15 billion ISK… and change. Wait, the ‘and change’ is right… yep, a tad over 83m ISK was what I had expected to see, only how it says 15,083,109,933.67 ISK… OK whatthefuck.

I type in chat “uh....   who the hell is Exxxx Lxxxx??????” then “she gave me....   15 BILLION ISK”. Needless to say chat got interesting after that… some ‘WTF?’ And some ‘wat’ and some ‘dunno’ and, of course, ‘gis me iskus’…

Sov, “well… you don't have to worry about plexing for awhile” and “can't say i'm not a bit jealous of that”… then of course things went… well, it’s my crew and…  =]

Ferri > have they commented on your blog?

Ferri > have you sucked a cock recently?

Sov > or maybe more then one?

Ferri > did you sell your kidneys?

Endy > did you sell your cock?

Ferri > did you sell Boo?  (Boo is my dottir) (LOL)

Chol > was wondering what fuck channel i got into then i remembered Endy is in it......

Then it hit me… “oh wait.... I bet its Lorna Sicling”

Things got real quiet on chat after that… almost everyone there knew Lorna, most of us really well. Lorna was a member of Helix Pulse, the corp we joined that was a renter/Industrial corp in Nullsec. That was my one and only foray into nullsec. Lorna was, well first off one hell of a decent guy and a damn good friend. But he was also a damned serious and incredibly knowledgeable Industrial player. Many of you reading this already know of Lorna, though you may not know him by that name… and many who do, whether as Lorna or as Scientist, respect him. He was the blogger behind “A Scientists Life in EVE” blog.

Lorna’s last post is, “An open letter to CCP”. This is Lorna’s closing post. ASLIE is going, has gone, dark and my friend has sold his toons and all his stuff… and he gave me some of his ISK… and it sucks. It just godsdamned sucks.

This hit all of us hard, but it hit me a bit harder mebbe as I was, for some reason, one of the players Lorna graced with such a gift… and I’ll admit I was having some trouble with it. I sent “AFK” and went and sat in the den… TV was on but I was not watching… I just sat… for 45 minutes just thinking…

Then I got up, and… I gave 1 bil ISK to each of my RL corpmates. 6 billion ISK sent. Now I felt better about the gift. This still left me with plenty, but it was my way of paying it forward… The next day I scanned down the holes and we had a single hop to hi static with only 9 hops to Amarr… So I went and bought 9 PLEX and bought n fitted out a Vargur. Then I did something I have never done in 4 years in EVE and NEVER before in my gaming life… I PLEXed an Alt account I had setup years ago when I needed to create several toons for a blog post… “YC113 An Empyrean Odyssey”… I had created and biomassed all the other characters after I took a bunch of shots of them for the post… but TurAdan I kept. I liked him…

So now I have a real alt… and no I am not worried about posting info about him here, that’s not an issue for me. But that night was the very first time I dual boxed 2 clients and flew 2 toons at the same time. As you can imagine, TurAdan has basically no skills at all having been created and then basically mothballed so he is currently chewing his way through a bunch of books I bought after I created a skill plan in EVEMON… and after I transferred 100m ISK to him… which did leave me with more ISK than I had at the start, but not by a helluvalot…  =]

So there you have it… a very very bittersweet story of how TurAmarth, a lifelong poor Minmatar who barely kept his family fed… went from rags to spaceriches… and back again in just 3 days… and while I will always miss my friend, I hope I have honored his gift by sharing it with those closest to me ingame and doing a few First Ever things with it for myself…

Still… I would quickly give it all back (if I could) to have my friend once more flying the deadly skies of New Eden with us… Fair winds to you Lorna, and clear skies ahead wherever you fare… I thank you for the gift, but I thank you far more for your friendship and camaraderie.

Fly Fearless and I hope to see you in the Sky  =/|)=

Aim High…

~or “Living the C3 Life on C5 ISK…”

My dad always told me, “Aim high, always set your goals higher than you believe you can achieve… and you will always surprise yourself.” IMHO we have done just that.

Now this is not a PvP story… this is a PvE story. But, ya gotta do some kinda PvE, market, industry, missions, mining or sites, to afford to PvP, so it is part and parcel of life in EVE…

As any who visit here know I am a wormholer at heart, I found wormholes early in my evelife and I found my place, my space and my happy and home in this great game. Wormholes, W-space or Anoikis as ‘tis properly named for them as are learned in such matters, have 6 classes; C1, easiest through C6 hardest. Now keep in mind the sites in a C1, the ‘easiest’ class of holes, are considered on par with some L3 missions, even some L4s… so set your subjective hardness scale accordingly.

I have lived in a C1, C2, two C3’s and a C6. I have flown PvP ops, run sites, mined ores, sucked gas and PI’ed in all classes for almost 4 years now. We currently live inna C3/Lo/BlackHole system. This means a Class 3 wormhole, with a Static Losec entry, tagged as U210, and it is a Black Hole system so we have "weather”… IE the Black Hole in our system has the following effects on ship systems;

Which mean fast ships go OMGDAMN fast and Missiles Rule…  =]

Anyway we have, of course, the standard C3 sites… Combat sites (Cosmic Anomalies), Data site (Radar), Relic sites (Magnetometric), Ore sites (Gravimetric) and Gas sites (Ladar) as detailed here. And as always, we raid any holes we connect to or scan down in Empire, from C1 thru C4. But lately, as we are all getting higher skilled and more experienced, Sov has been crunching numbers and decided we should try the lower DPS C5 sites.

Well, we did and we did fine as I wroten about here. We even had a new bro with us inna Hurricane and we ran the site fine. So we are actively seeking C5s with the right ‘conditions’. Preferably an unoccupied hole, of course, but an ‘inactive’ hole works too, and, of course, lots of sites in the sky… which is always a strong indicator of inactive or AFK owners, and good connectivity to our home, so the haul out will be as safe as we can make it… such as right next door or 1 or 2 inactive connecting holes, or similarly inactiveish connecting lows… But mostly lots of sites… lots of sites means low activity, and of course, lot of ISK to be made.

So, last night Sov found us a C5 via 1 connecting C4, J130037 a C5/C5. Active POSes but no one home and something over 15 sites ripe for the picking. Sov’s only worry was that in the highest DPS spawns we would possibly need 3 logi which for a small gang like us, significantly reduced our DPS. So we started with x2 Basi’s and 1 Scimi and for DPS we had our std x2 Ishtars… then Sov added a new bro from a noob corp (that he had kilt and befriended in his usual style) so once again we had a T1 Hurricane flow by a newbro join us inna C5, LOL.

Anyhoo, we got in and started on the lower DPS sites and ran them all. Took a break, Scooped-n-Looted all the MTUs and Noctised up all the slavage and dropped it all safely back in our POS… very near 2 bil ISK for a few hours of fun flying with friends… and we weren’t done yet, not bad, not bad at all.

Then Zaxx, our guest newbro had to split and we went back and tried the harder sites this time… sorta as a test. Sovs mathing said we could do it with just the 2 Basis, but in one wave in particular, 5 BSes (plus cruisers and frigs) the alpha numbers had the potential to break one of us, and if it was one of the logi, well, things would get shall we say, ‘interesting’, from there on for the rest. Tsra, in the Scimi, was going to try and hold off on reps unless absolutely needed to see if the dual Basi’s can support our gang.

So we get to the spawn point and… we did fine. The thing most in our favor for using just the dual Basi setup is the whole spawn is at range and there are no initial webs or scrams so all ships, especially logi, were able to keep their transversal up, which of course mitigates some of the incoming DPS. This allowed us tank the BSes until the DPS guys took down 1 or 2 which put us back at a safe level of manageable DPS.

Oh there were a few times when either Endy or I got hit pretty hard… and once in an earlier site we had to put the Armor Rep drones on Zaxx, our intrepid noob Hurricane pilot… but we were never really at a great risk of losing a ship or the fleet as long as (1) everyone kept his head in the game and (2) we dint get hot dropped… and  we all are good at the first and there’s fuk all we can do about the second… it’s Anoikis , no local.

We did however catch sight of a Manticore on dscan in the C5 at one point, and I am pleased as hell with our, can I say, professional response… Everyone reacted well, the fleet was moved out and safed up back home quickly and on the bounce, we reshipped up to PvP ships while our cloaky scouts did their thing, put people at key positions and were able to confirm the ID and exit hole of the intruder.

After a little research and deliberation, it was jointly agreed with a high degree of confidence that he was probably a solo bomber pilot looking for a bit of fun and not an advance scout for anything moar serious. So we went back to running the rest of the sites and completed them all.

Tsra was designated hacker and started on the hacking sites… which were according to him a blue balled bich… and at the levels of ISK we were pulling in L&S the sites, not worth the effort an time… and we were leaving something like 50ish million ISK behind. I have never heard ‘50m ISK’ described as ‘not worth this effort’… but it really wasn’t.

Last I remember I was sittin at 50km cloaked inna Falcon on overwatch on Tsra while his OCD forced him to try and finish what he started… then I woke up to Sov saying “Tur, go to bed.” Which I promptly and happily did…

Woke this morn and out of curiosity, and with my OCD whispering “You dint do PI last night…” in my ear I logged on and… well, looks like my next 30 days in EVE are paid for… once I get out to hisec and buy that PLEX I can now afford…   =]


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

Tur Gets His Groove on at Last…

~or “From Noob to Vet in Only 4 Years.”

I did it right last night. I did everything right, and I knew it, I felt it.

You know that feeling, like when you are in the groove playing pool and you ‘see’ the next 3 shots as you shoot, or on the 400 yard line and you know exactly where your shot will strike as you squeeze the trigger, or that perfect sound and feel in the bat when you KNOW, in your bones, as the bat swings, that it’s going to be perfect… and it is.

The evening started as it usually does… the usual suspects were on and in TS. We had a connection to a C6 that had just had a successful POS bash go down, and these are not guys we want taking too close a notice of us… I mean, they just lost a POS… roflstomping ANYONE would feel good after that you know? So we decided to risk rolling the hole to, yes, risk adversely ‘get away’ from them. You see in Anoikis if you dunt like yer neighbors, you can change them.  =]

Anyhoo, thankfully we rolled the hole without incident and got down to the boring yet mind numbing business of POCO bashing. We have 2 POCO’s in th hole, not ours, which recently started taxing us when they hadn’t afore. So die they must… and NOW. Anyway we went a bashing and put them both into reinforced. Later back at the POS I was puttering with PI when Sov told me, “Tur, get in a DPS ship and get to the new static, now.” He had some potential fun for us in the new lowsec. Some guys running sites in Tengus… hmmm, what to wear, what to wear…

I jumped into my trusty armor 1600plate/buffer/short point/cap boosted Maller and warped to the static. Sov got tackle on one of the Tengus and called me and NC1M in. Sov was in his Ishtar and NC1M was in a Geddon. I warped to, landed, burned and got point [06:03:31] on my primary, the Tengu of OleIvar and started my Lazors on ‘im… then Sov ordered me to switch point to kraken1111 jensen’s Tengu, I manually flew to switch point while keeping my DPS on OleIvars. As I worked to managed range and transversal to hold point, losing and regaining it a few times, and keep in Lazor range, I got primaried and started to go into armor… 90%, 80%, 70%... I advised and Sov said to align and warp out if needed and possible…  I was not pointed so I aligned and then… [06:05:33] BOOM.

I immediately broke alignment, turned, burned, maintained point on kraken1111 jensen’s Tengu and put my DPS on him. After that first Tengu had gone down I felt I was not going to break unless we got hot dropped… then… [06:05:58] BOOM second Tengu gone. Now we turned all our attention on kraken111 jensen’s Tengu and in very short order… [06:06:24] BOOM… 3 Tengus down, no losses.

An Osprey had landed towards the end of the fight and Sov ordered me to break off and see if I could catch and point it… of course no. I was too far out and he had time to make good his exit-stage-left… We looted the field and warped back to the hole… It was THEN that the shakes started in earnest!!!!

OMG! OMG! O M G !!!  I did it right! I kept my head in the game, I was doing all the defense and cap and fight & flight management stuff you are supposed to do. I was keeping track of who was on the field, where they were, ranges and transversals and speed… and I was thinking and making decisions. To say I was stoked when I got back to the hole is putting it very very mildly indeed! Like Leathal said, it was a good night to be in H.E.L.P.e.R.

Add to that a little ISK was also to be made… the Faction drops were;

Pithum A-Type EM Ward Amplifier,

Caldari Navy Large Shield Extender,

Caldari Navy Heavy Assault Missile Launcher and a,

Gistum C-Type 10MN Afterburner…

Which adds up to approx 450,000,000.00 ISK… nice! And to top it off, shortly after Sov caught an Astero solo. The ‘stero pilot was a noob and so Sov convo’ed him, and we all pulled up a chair and talked space ships for a while…

Yes, all in all a good night to be in H.E.L.P.e.R. …   =]

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

An Intrepid Little Band…

~or “Hurricane FTW!!!”

Runnin Sleepers, Class 5 Sleepers, inna Hurricane… flown by a 3 month old Newbie.   =]

Yup, a Hurricane inna C5… and the 3 month old player flying it is our newbro, Vlad. And he is a true noobie… shiny new, mums milk on his lips new, just a nubbins and EVERYTHING is like OMG to him new. Vlad joined us just last week. He is a 07/26/14 char and a REAL New Player in EVE, not some older player’s alt.

We brought him into our C3 and started teaching him the Tao of Holes, scanning, how to live by the cloak and how to run C3 Sleepers and how to raid C4’s sites in Fleet w/ logi. But last night, Sov decided we were ready and took us into a C5… and Vlad was in his top ship, a T1 Hurricane. And he lived to tell the tale and to wonder at the ISK in his wallet. Just a week or so ago he was thrilled to make like 1 or 2 mil ISK… and now, in an hour give or take, he had made several hundred million ISK… and DAMN near lost his ship. Welcome to EVE.  =]

Flying with Vlad really takes me back to my noobhood. I had a really good new player experience in EVE, I have told of it afore. But I realized something last night… EVE is, for many, an orphanage. It wasn’t for me, and now, not for Vlad… but for many, CCP Rise’s 50/40% who leave after subbing for 1 month… EVE is an Orphanage and a damn rough one, Fagin and the Artful Dodger would be right at home here.

By this I mean that so many who come to EVE do so without people already ingame. One of the strengths of the Goons et al is that they are not orphans… they come to the game already en famille as twere… already part of a group. I too came to the game not as an orphan, but with actual family ingame, my sons had been playing almost a year and even when I was out there all on my own, I knew I really wasn’t. I knew they were there for me if needed. And this colors my perceptions and experiences. While my noobhood was a wonderful time for me, maybe it would not have been quite so if I hadn’t had them there in the background… I just don’t know.

Vlad met Sov out one day just boofing about learning the game. He was trying out scanning down :stuff: and Sov was scanning as usual and Sov, and well, Sov was Sov… Patient, interested, casually easy to talk to, extremely knowledgeable about a vast array of game mechanics and gameplay, and always ready to help and teach without making a new bro feel looked down on at all.

So I had logged on and was facedown in PI screens as usual (you have to tend to your PI daily or it just goes to straight to hell) when Sov said, “Sounds like you need some.... c5 sites” my reply was “LOL sure I do... last night was fun...” “Wait... C5??” He didn’t respond so I settled back down and finished up PI thinking it was just a troll. We live inna C3, and we feel quite confident in running anything C1 to C4… but we are not a big group and C5 and 6 sites are the next step up and are significantly harder than C1 thru 4 sites. Then Sov brings up running some sites again and we fleet up and head out and it’s then that I find out he was serious. We transit the lowsec and jump into a C5 wormhole Sov has found. Oh… shit.

Please understand, we (my sons, Mabrick, Mikey and I in our home corp, HBHI) used to live inna C6 when we were in SYJ Alliance (at the time a 500 man wormhole Alliance) with all the Dreads, Caps and faction fit T3’s one could possibly need to not only run the C6 sites but to force and run the Escalations (scroll down to Sleeper Site Escalations and Sleeper Capitol Escalations) with some impunity.

EVE Survival has this to say ‘bout Escalations, which I feel sums it up quite nicely…

“Alice warps her Thanatos into an anomaly, which causes 6 Sleeper Guardian battleships to spawn. Bob then warps his Thanatos into the same anomaly, which causes another 8 Sleeper Guardian battleships to spawn. Alice then starts yelling at Bob as the 14 Sleeper Guardians and the rest of the anomaly NPCs reduce their capitals to wrecks over the next two minutes.”

Sooo… let’s see that’s 9 Frigs, 7 Cruisers & 4 BSes in just the FIRST wave PLUS the escalations for a total of 18 Sleeper Battleships… Eighteen… This is the Anoikis version of CONCORDOKKEN… SLEEPERDOKKEN.

Hell, even the standard un-escalated C5 and 6 sites are still a blue balled bich… for example, in the C6 Core Citadel site the initial group is 9 Frigs, 7 Cruisers & 4 BSes, second wave is 8 Frigs, 5 BSes, third wave is 6 Frigs & 6 BSes… add to this if you warp in Capitols, Carriers ect., the Sleepers respond with reinforcements and you get… Escalation 1, 6 BSes dealing out 4164 DPS and … Escalation 2, 8 BSes at 5552 DPS… yup, five THOUSAND five hundred and fifty two DPS…  ouch.

Now C5s are not C6s… but they are still a damn unhealthy step up from the C3 sites in our home hole and the C4 sites we often raid. For instance… in the C5 Core Garrison site, initial group is 3 sentries, 5 Frigs & 5 Cruisers for 802 DPS, second wave is 6 Frigs & 3 BSes putting out 1542 DPS and wave three is 8 Cruisers & 3 BSes at a painful 1920 DPS and the last reinforcement wave is 3 Frigs, 2 Cruisers & 2 BSes at 1402 DPS… This is without forcing the escalations as we have no Capitols.

So our fleet is, 1 Nighthawk running links, a Gila, 2 Ishtars, and a Hurricane for DPS and myself and Endy in 2 Basilisks as Logi. Now I’m not nearly as good with the ‘numbers’, EHP, Resists, Active shield HP, etc., etc. as Sov is… but I can tell you that running Logi inna C5 for a 7 man fleet, even in two cap chained T2 Basilisks with L5 Logi pilots, is really pushing the safety margin a bit especially with a T1 BC on the field.

The Gila and Nighthawk were very capable of tanking standard agro levels, but on getting focus fire before we can burn down a BS or 2 from a new spawned wave, well, even they would occasionally call for cap or even shield reps… the Ishtars were basically OK as long both Endy and I kept at least one repper always on them. We also kept one repper on each other, (Logi is VITAL bro… if everyone else dies… we at least must live to warp away and tell the tale!!!) and we both kept a repper (often 2) on Vlad… and more than once we both had to put all 4 (from both ships) on him to keep him alive… and he still went deep into armor once. But I carry 2 Med Armor Droans so while it took some time, I was able to buff him back up to 100% across the board between sites. I carry the Armor Droans to fix burnt up attack droans…  =]

So we ran the sites and never once saw a sign of anything in the sky… and never saw a POS or a Force Field either… an uninhabited C5 full of that good old red gold… I know there are them out there who feel Anoikis should have a greater population density… that more people living in holes is better for us all… I say nope. Anoikis is the Wild West… and I like just that way.

I like it when we find C3s and 4s and 5’s that are echoey empty holes with only the burned out remains of the settlers who came before, and didn’t make it… The sites spawn and spawn and spawn until the sky is bleeding full of ISK just waiting to be harvested. You see, the more people living full time IN holes, the more people you face who are holesmart… who have POSes up, who know how to defend and how to fight Anoikis style…

No, I prefer chains of ISK rich emptiness… the more daytrippers and new (to holes) players we get poking around looking for quick easy riches (cause they heard we all moved out), the more kills we have opportunities for, instead of the std;

Scout jumps in and…

“Loki, Loki, Retriever, Retriever, Astero… OH HELLS YES Orca! on scan!!” … then …

“Oh, never mind the Indys all warped to a POS.”

“The ‘stero and Loki’s popped Combat and Core probes and cloaked up…”

“The Indy pilots are reshipping to DPS ships.”

“Sorry boys, jumpin’ back out, no joy here.”

“crap… mumble mumble crap…”

“Oh by the way, can someone drop a bubble or two on this hole, or are we gonna try and roll it?”   =\

No thanx… give me a nice fat gang of PvE fit Hiseccers who (1) don’t have a POS to warp to and who (b) THINK they know how to PvP in holes… ohhh yea!

One other small thing we all noticed that was pretty cool… it seems the Sleepers now actually remote rep. They are “supposed” to have been doing that all along, but CCP Fozzie fessed up and said that NPC repping has never really worked so they recently fixed it. So now you can actually SEE the remote reps landing and which rats are getting the love… schweet! Except NOT!!! Like they weren’t hard enough to kill afore dammnit! LOL!

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

PS - Sov informed me tonight that I had missed only one salient point...  He did run into Vlad one night when Vlad was learning about scanning... but what I dint know was Vlad scanned our static down and jumped in and Sov kilt him.

THEN Sov convo'ed Vlad and the Gunboat Recruitment Program went into full swing...  =]

It’s OK, You Can Stop Shooting Now… Really.

~or “A Good Troll, If Troll It Was.”



Last night we went hunting in our (then) current static lowsec in Tirbam (0.2) in Tash-Murkon. Sov was scouting and found 2 Retrievers placidly mining a belt… There was a few minutes of the possibility of :Orca:, but that never transpired and we had a fleetmate who could not stay long so…  a hunting we did go.

Sov, our indomitable FC was inna Cheetah, Tsra was inna Prophecy, Endy inna Britux, NC1M inna Tengu and I was in my short point/sebo/missile Maladiction. Once we were all on the hole and after waiting a little bit more to see if anything better transpired, Sov decided we’d just take the targets that presented themselves. He had made a Close-In BM and as I was inna fast lock Inty he called me in first,

“Tur, jump, warp to the Close-In BM and get point on Herb Gunnison, Retriever… your target is  ‘HER’.” he ordered in that calm cool James T. style of his…

“Roger, jump, warp, get point on Retriever ‘HER’.” I jumped and warped as quickly as I could…

I landed just outside of the 10km short points range, turned, burned and targeted, got point called it and held point orbiting at 7k. Then I went ahead and started the missiles on ’im… just, you know, ‘cause…  :missiles:   =]

The moment I called point Sov called the rest of our gang in. They landed and point was called on Feng Yotosashi, then back up point on Herb… and as the DPS started landing, backup point on Feng was called… we had them cold…

[Caveat:  Anyone who has read my stuff knows I do not consider myself a ganker and I don’t like players whose primary motivation is ‘tears’ or players who are noob greifers, scammers and suchlike… at the same time please understand I am a wormholer and this was lowsec. All these guys had to do was warp off. That’s it. Dock up and we would have ignored them, not might have, would have. But they didn’t and, well… we decide to go for it in the hope they had continued mining because they had friends nearby who might or would jump in and give us a fight. The point of attacking the Retrievers was the hope of getting a better fight… not to gank miners… they were just the bait… ok? ok. On with the story and the weird reason why they actually didn’t warp off…]

Then, one of the stranger things that has happened to me out of a mass of very strange things that has happen to me in EVE… we see this in local…

Feng Yotosashi > hey guys we are not kos

Feng Yotosashi > =/

KOS?? Ohhhhh… What? Oh, Kill On Sight… ahh, I see… wait, what?? Are we in Provi?? Uh… nope… we are definitely in Tirbam, a 0.2 lowsec system... I actually had to dubble check. Yup, Tirbam, 0.2, lowsec… OK… that’s weird.

Then, while I am going through the above, and as these things go…  !BOOM!

[06:29:00] (notify) Warp Scrambler II deactivates as “Kiretsu Mk.1” begins to explode.

“Point the pod, point the pod.” Sov calls, I get lock, set and call point… Sov tells us to hold fire on the pod, annnnd… Endy pops the pod. Awww… he “says” he tried to stop the firing cycle… and that he ‘only’ fired once, “I swear.”… Uh huh. Pod thief.  =]

I then added my point and missiles to the second quickly dying Retriever and…

[06:29:19] (notify) Caldari Navy Scourge Light Missile deactivates as the item it was targeted at is no longer present.

Now during all of this our comms chatter was… well, we were first spamming scan and watching local hoping for a spike… and also trying to figure out just whatinthehell Feng and Herb were talking about… (logs lightly edited for spelling etc.)

Sovereign Meari > gf
TurAmarth ElRandir > uh... what?  GD 

Bruce Wangchow > gd?
Sovereign Meari > "good death" 
Bruce Wangchow > hm
Sovereign Meari > well if someone doesn't fight back...
Sovereign Meari > >.<

All in good fun but then this… 

Bruce Wangchow > well you guys are not kos to cva, I even set you to neutral 
Bruce Wangchow > that's why I was not worried mining there, what happened? 
Bruce Wangchow > why did you attack us?

WhatTheFuk?? 

Tsra > ...
Tsra > do you know where you are? 
Sovereign Meari > I think he does.
Bruce Wangchow > yes I do
Sovereign Meari > I think he realizes he's in lowsec.
Tsra > ok phew 
Bruce Wangchow > well, people who are not kos don’t attack each other here, it's the first time I see this happening 

TurAmarth ElRandir > here??? in EVE??? what??? 
Sovereign Meari > well, unless I see CVA Sovereignty here 
Sovereign Meari > well
Bruce Wangchow > so you guys only follow that in providence?

Sovereign Meari > yeaaaaaa

Sovereign Meari > that’s right

TurAmarth ElRandir > are you serious??

Sovereign Meari > we follow that in provi

TurAmarth ElRandir > this is lowsec bro...

TurAmarth ElRandir > not Provi Null

Bruce Wangchow > I know man

Endymi Typhirr > Do you know where you are?  (for the second time…)

Endymi Typhirr > You're in the jungle, baby! You're gonna diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiie!

Bruce Wangchow > but we have lots of cva not kos corps around, and they just won’t attack each other

TurAmarth ElRandir > well... we aren't them... so... KOS allatime!!

Bruce Wangchow > hm well ok then I guess, but that was a bummer =[

Bruce Wangchow > thought you guys were cool



Now that cuts… I am cool, just ask my bros.  =\

Tsra > nope

Sovereign Meari > er

Tsra > we’re nerds

TurAmarth ElRandir > this is just weird...

Sovereign Meari > well, I thought you guys were cool too

Bruce Wangchow > me too =/

Endymi Typhirr > why can't we be cool and shewt stuff? D:

Endymi Typhirr > :'(

Sovereign Meari > I thought you'd fight back

Tsra > but like those mean jock nerds

Tsra > who beat up lesser nerds

Sovereign Meari > bring 3-5 bc's from around system and jump us when we jumped you

Bruce Wangchow > haha yeah

Endymi Typhirr > I'm gonna admit I didn't intend to kill the pod…

We were by now back on the hole and jumped back home. We did come back a bit later and run a site… but that was that for the night.

We checked and neither Feng nor Bruce are in CVA either…

Feng is the CEO of Blackdrill Inc. [BLKDRL] corp, no Alliance, and Bruce is a member of same corp. BLKDRL is a 06/14 corp and both toons are new, Feng, 04/14 and Bruce 05/14… Feng does not have a bio, but Bruce does… this;

Not KOS: http://kos.cva-eve.org/?q=Bruce+Wangchow this is the CVA KOS site…

Sov was wondering if these guys had been fed a load of BS… or if it was a troll… ‘cause I gotta tell you, for a minute or two there we were somewhat confused… however, our DPS wasn’t.

Whatta weird and wonderful game EVE is…  =]

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

Scanning For Blood in the Ether…

~or “100 Mil ISK for Just One of Them Huh? Hmmmm…”

I love exploration… just not in Empire space is all. You see grew up and I live in a space where 'exploration' really did used to be an absolute daily necessity of life. I say used-to-be ‘cause CCP in their infinitely (un?)wiseish ways felt it was for the Good of Th' Game to remove almost ALL o’ the Mystery of Space by forcing on us… umm, I mean gifting us with… the Discovery Scanner. IE very little is left that one has to actually work to FIND in space… All the Sekret and Misstearious Places out in the black now show up with Huge Flashing Multicolored Signs for all to see… and in most cases, warp directly to… what crap…   =\

Anyhoo… Scanning used to be necessary for all kinds of :stuff:. Locating the daily holes, your static and all of the up to 5 random holes that can spawn in any Anoikis system… and pinpointing your Combat sites, Ore sites, Gas Sites… ALL of them used to need to be meticulously scanned down to 100%, bookmarked and then, oh the horror, manually copied as physical ‘items’ to your cargo bay then dropped inna can or a POS mod in order to be shared with yer corpmates via even moar manual copying then re-deposited in cans or POS mods for the next guy… ah the good ol days huh?  =]

I know I know, the Discovery Scanner 'supposedly' made it easier for noobs to ‘see’ what all the fuss was about over Exploration… cause if you dunt know it could out there, how would you know to go look for it Hmm? Uh… I thought that was what the tutorials were for… to TEACH that there’s good stuff 'hidden' out there that you really should learn how to SEARCH for… I mean what a world it would be IRL if every deposit of gold or silver or OIL in the earth had had a big ol holographic burning bush of a SIGN rotating over it… just how fast would ALL of it been dug up? EONS ago?

OK rant over…  for now.

Anyhoo, so I never really got into Exploration in Empire Space because of the aforesaid moving into Anoikis early in my Evelife and washed my hands of the unwashed masses who inhabit the crowed noisy spaces outside of our mostly quiet, often hellishly dangerous, but always highly lucrative wormhole star systems… I did all my scanning there, and still do…

But I saw this Dev Blog, All That Is Gold Does Not Glitter - Data Sites, Expeditions and more by CCP RedDawn. In it he details some moar (!!!) of the coming changes in Phoebe… changes that affect Exploration and Expeditions (AKA Escalations).

Some nice stuff here too, one thing I really really like… all of the Agents have been taken out back and given a stern talking to about their talkative habits… IE they are much less chatty now… good. And stuff like lowering the amount of the most common (lowest value it is assumed) drops in sites in Hisec. The frequency of Faction POS BP and ‘Optimized’ items drops is increased and Faction Materials and Industrial Goods drops have been added… Hmm? Wait, what? New Drops have been added you say? What New Drops? Oh you mean these New Drops… here;

(click to embiggen)

Now, being the lets-get-down-to-brass-nanoribbins kinda guy I am I said to myself, “Self, I wonder what these New Drops are worth… you know, ISKwise.” So, I googled on over to EVE Central and did a quick chart, yes, the Excel Spreadsheet you see above (go figure).

So, what I determined was (1) that the Blood Raiders are the faction to scan for because, (2) three of the highest ISK value items are Blood Red… and even at a quick sell of potentially 66m/15m/13m ISK for these items it might just really worth the effort and time… remember this is in 1.0 to 0.5 space FFS!

Now add to this that CCP RedDawn says… 
“What this means is that the percentage chance of finding some lovely shimmery-like-things will be slightly higher.
Moreover, the volume decrease of the most commonly dropped items means that you’ll be making fewer return trips to offload your wares.” 

And, most intriguing of all for me... 
“We’ve also added all of the Data and Relic exploration sites found in Null Security space to Wormhole Class 1, 2 and 3 systems.”

So… beside the increased scanning I am sure we are going to be doing in any connecting C1,C2 & C3s we find… I might, I just might actually INTENTIONALLY spend some time in Hisec after Nov 4th, or at least pop out occasionally and if I perhaps to find myself in Blood Space, I just might pop a probe or 8… Yup, I just might at that.   =]

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