If You Can Read My Mind... Why am I Bloggin?

~or ...  How to Post Without Typing.

I just spent a day or so collecting my thoughts, making notes and weedin out and narrowing down the links neccessary to make my thoughts clear on the subject of the current TOTM (Topic of the Moment) "Mittens Multiple AssHattery is Real, EVE is a Game" ... just to finally and lastly check in with my friend over at "A Scientists Life In EVE" only to find the post I was working on, was already posted!! just somewhere else,  LOL.

So, to read MY Deepest Personal Thoughts on the topic above, I will save myself the toil of typing it all up (actually I just deleted the word doc I 'almost' had finished) and simply send you here... and add just this.


-1 - Mittens effed up by crossing the OL/RL line.
+1 - Mitten, whether sincerely or not, made public and private apologies.
= 0 - Whether or not he "should" have stepped down was a choice he made and, as he stated, he chose being the GSF CEO over the CSM Chair. In the end it was a political decision to allow him to be a player EVE in the manner to which he is accustomed.

Shows over, move on please...

As for the future... stars will still shine, wormholes will still swirl, gankers will still gank and miners will still mine... with, or without Mittens as CSM Chair.

My real curiosity is not about this flap... but on CCPs involvement with Sony et al. Sony is a Big Old Co. with B.O.C. morals... Just how much nerfing is EVE going to take if Sony gets uppity in the future about our use of 'inapporpriate language' and the 'harsh' hard edge of EVE gameplay? How long before Sony (a major supplier of games to teens and pre-teens) wants to take EVE 'mainstream' and forces CCP to break out the Nerf Titan and rock EVE so that CCP/Sony et al can sell to the 'GP' market that will rake in the ever increasing millions of RL ISK that is the prime reason CCP exists in the first place?

You think CCP dunt listen to us?? Huh, wait till Sony gets a seat at the table... EVE is NOT for 'everyone'... Sony sells to 'everyone'... I see conflict, not PvP, in our future. Gods of EVE please make me wrong.

As I dint get to do the post... I did the cartoon thing instead... enjoy  =]

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

FailFits N WinFits…

or~  No I’m NOT Showing You My Fit.

This is a correctly fitted Battleship

OK, I have been ingame long enough that I dunt consider myself a complete noob anymoar and I have skilled up enough to fly a majority of the ships of my people, Minmawin that is, and I have a good understanding of how mods work together and what abilities various roles call for and how to make a balanced fit based on CPU & CAP … but most importantly, I have learned what is EXPECTED…

Huh? Say what? Expected? Expected by whom?  Answer: Fits as expected by “Them as Know Better”…

As anyone who has been ingame long enough to have made some friends and gotten into the neverending fit discussions has learned, for most of the ships in EVE there are some role dependant cookie cutter fits… The Rifter is a wunderkind as a Tackle Frig and there are a few fits which over time have proved to work as well as can be hoped for in the fast tackle role. This holds true for most of the ships based on specific roles. While there are many, many mods to choose from and then there are of course T2 and faction variations of most of those many, many mods... even with all that there is still a finite number of available mods and therefore a finite number of possible fits and then a far lesser number of fits that work well re CPU/CAP and fulfill a defined role in a workable manner…

OK… so what happens when you try something different? Something unexpected? Something unusual? Well... it has been my experience that you get slammed and trolled is what. I dunt know about you but I dunt like having an incredibly large variety of “X” available to me only to feel I must limit myself to much smaller number of “X” because I will be trolled by my peers… screw that. Hence I no longer share my fits as much as I used to because I want to experiment and try new things… and in several cases I have been proved right, IE the unusual and therefore ‘unacceptable’ fits I sometimes run work beautifully ‘in my experience’ for the roles I am flying them in them but if I posted these fits, I would be LOL’ed right off TS…

Case in Point: the “HDF =Arizona=”, a Tornado Class Minmatar Battlecruiser. I wanted to make a Solo Ratting ‘Nado but I was up against a couple of walls with this ship.

(1) The ‘Nado is an all gank no tank ship very similar to the Battleships class, such as the Thrasher. Huge number of high slots fit up to Large Arty or ACs, but not enough mids, lows and CPU/CAP to support a really ‘decent’ tank, either armor or shield. The ‘Nado is so much like the Thrasher that when I saw its specs my gut reaction was, “That’ll be the new Gankmobile of choice and replace the Thrasher.” …which it promptly did, and…

(B) No droan bay. This means no small ‘support fleet’ to put DPS on fast frigs and cruisers.

OK, so I can fit 8 guns and deal devastating DPM (Damage Per Minute or alpha strike) due to Large gun cycle times the DPS (Damage Per Second) is actually DPM because you are not firing nearly as often as Autocannons plus the tracking speeds for Arty are slower than ACs which means the ‘Nado can be sheer death to Indys, Freighters, Hulks, Battleships and the slower Battlecrusiers but fast cruisers and frigs can pose a very real problem for her.

 Without Droans I can't kill frigs...

OK, so how do you fit one ship that can field 8 guns of almost any size and has NO support fleet of droans? Well, how do the Blue Water Navies of the real world do it? I can tell you this… they dunt fit just one type of gun. Can you imagine a real world Battleship with no other armament except her Large Cannons? You bet yer ass they dunt…

USS Arizona (BB-39) Armaments:

4 × 3 (12) – 14-inch/45 guns

22 × 1 – 5-inch/51 guns

4 × 1 – 3-inch/50 AA guns

2 × 21-inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes

That’s 38 guns and 2 effin torpedo tubes!!!

Why? Uh ‘cause they will be attacked by Bombers and Attack aircraft, small fast craft similar to PT Boats, Frigates, Destroyers, Cruisers, Submarines and possibly even shore based artillery batteries! So they felt it might be a good idea if their Battleships could have the ability to defend themselves against all the above with a VARIETY of weapon systems. Seems reasonable to me…

But in EVE we are limited (in the ‘Nado) to just 8 hi slots (gun turrets) AND, when you talk fits, those “in the know” say you “MUST” fit ALL 8 with the same guns, caliber and meta level. Why??

Well, the answer I get is… to maximize your DPS etc., etc. Uh… really? So if I have 2 ships, me and a buddy… and let’s say his has 6 large hislots and mine fits 2 medium hislots. OK, I have substantially lower DPS but mine can track much faster and have a higher Rate of Fire (RoF), his are larger, give a much bigger Alpha strike but far slower tracking and RoF… OK, he takes on the bigger slower ships and I concentrate on the frigs and cruisers right? So… then if I have only ONE ship, why can’t I fit 6x Dual 650mm Autocannons and 2x 425mm Autocannons?? Why? Why?? Why NOT… So I did… and I do, and the fit works like a BOSS on NPCs! It’s like having droans on a ‘Nado. I run x2 Gyro IIs and x2 Tracking Enhancer IIs in the lows, devote the rigs and all but one mid to shields with the remaining mid running a 10MN AB II. Clean, simple and very, very effective.

She can put 350DPS out to 40Km with the x6 Dual 650s; 62DPS out to 20Km with the 425s and CAP stable... perfect for PvE in Gurista space I concentrate on controlling the transversal on the BSs and BCs and pound them with the Dual 650s and let the Cruisers and Frigs come in close and watch em die to the 425s… when the small stuff is all wrecks I add the 425s DPS to the BSs and BCs same as you would with your droans.

HDF =Arizona=  650s putting the hurtz on a BS

I use this fit in the belts and solo in lower difficulty sites and in group in any site here. Yes, if I get full aggro in the highest difficulty sites I usually have to warp out and back to break aggro and maybe even pop in station to regen shields, but I aint died yet and I add substantially to the overall DPS AND I can KILL those pesky web & scramming Frigs & Cruisers… which, if I was fitted the way “they” say I should… I could not do nearly as effectively. I know, I tried… it’s why she’s fitted this way now.

HDF =Arizona=  425s in the Anti-Frigate role

And so, I will continue to try new things and test and fly the fits I like and that work for me. I will also use the standard ‘cookie cutter’ fits where applicable, but either way I dunt think I’ll be sharing my personal fits… unless it’s in a killmail.  =]

Let the failmail begin...

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

Bourgeois Null…

or~  How to Get Rich While Being Bored

Guristas Sanctum Site

Been in null long enough now to have made some basic adjustments…

1.      No longer a Director (now just a ‘member’ Yuch)

This was hard. I have been a Director in my home corp basically since I entered EVE so getting used to not having ANY real ‘say’ in policies or decisions and not having full access to EVERYTHING has been very disconcerting to say the least. My adjustment has been to;

A.-  just try and ignore a lot of the political and inhouse “issues” that crop up in any corp. This I do not like at all as I am very used to having an equal say in all external and internal corp matters, and while I truly like the CEO and the Corp Directors (and for the most part basically agree with their decisions, aside from the stuff I dunt unnerstand) I do not like being ‘just a member’, no matter how much they like me and want to hear my input…

B.- and to buy 2 to 10 of anything I do buy when I get a chance to make purchases or order stuff to be delivered thereby basically creating my own “warehouse” (several in fact) of mods so I am, to a degree, independent of the Local Lack of Market [equal to Jita 4-4 that is…]

I should note that our corp IS doing an amazing job of trying to be a Null-Jita… but that is, quite simply impossible for one renter corp, no matter how good an Indy corp it may be…

Mining Op

2.      I’m not a miner… period, so I Ratmine.

This is primarily an industrial corp that has a really stunningly amazing industrial ability (though we also have a strong PvE branch and 2 of the best PvP FCs I have flown under since I was a nubbins). But I am not an Industry guy and I am NOT a miner. I went on ONE mining op and that was all I needed to prove to me I really should not do that.

So what do I do? I run the Combat Sites with the other guys who make up the PvE branch of this corp… that is I do when others are doing so and dunt mind sharing the bounty cycle. I still love running my Noctis, to generate Lewts and Slavage as the corp now buys all L&S. They melt the Loot down for the minerals and use the Salvage for T1 Rig production which has turned out to be a highly profitable item to market down here, plus it produces a nice additional income for the salvager too. I run my Noctis every chance I get, when (a) I run a site solo or rat the belts solo or (b) if some of the other guys drop BMs in corp so I can salvage sites they are running and dunt wanna L&S themselves or when running sites with others and we agree on who salvages which sites etc.

I never had even 500M ISK, in my wallet, that I earned, the whole year we lived in W-space. I broke 1Billion ISK, that I MADE, for the very first time after I had been in null only 26 days…

Now here’s the interesting thing… I was very, very rarely bored in the hole… Everyday was an adventure, everyday was exciting… In the hole we lived in -1.0 sec space without “local”, without CONCORD even knowing what happens there. You can have someone pop in and jump you any time and never know they were there until you are targeted… You had to scan down the holes in and out of your space and then determine if you could use them for access to empire. Wormholes are the venue of small gang warfare… and that was nuthing less than a sack full of win for me.

Makin ISKies thru Better DPS

The Sleeper sites were much moar limited in number and they do not spawn at a high rate, hence we spent quite a bit of effort scanning down the static holes in hope of a good hole to raid. The ISK you made was solely dependent on Loot and Salvage, salvage especially. There were usually only 2, 3 or 4 of us online most nights and we always had moar to do that just run sites and grind out ISK. We scanned down the holes and what we found would often determine the course of the night… running sites on a raid, engage in a bit of pew pew, explore a part of Empire we had never seen afore... excitement lurked behind every new hole we scanned down.

In null, every day seems the same… logon, guys are chatting and usually a mining op is underway or forming up… blech… ask if anyone is rattin, see if they mind company. Most often I ship spin until I get bored with that and then undock in my Missile Loki or Rattin ‘Nado and start by runnin the belts… eventually I will run a Hub, or a Port or some of the middling difficulty sites, as I am most often runnin solo and I am not yet comfortable my fits are up to tanking the highest difficulty sites just yet..

Then we get the inevitable, “Neut in system! Neut in system!” alarum on TS and we all dock up as fast as possible. I usually warp directly to station risking the possibility of a dictor bubbling the undock so I can give a sit rep on the station, clear or no, and if clear I reship to a cloaky and undock and warp to an overwatch BM and wait to watch the station and assist IF any pew pew is undertaken… most often not. We usually wait out the neut until he leaves or logs then we go back to business as usual.

Guristas Sanctum II

And that’s about it. As stated this is not a big PvP corp and our rental agreement keeps us out of CTAs and such so we dunt do a lot in the way of roams or do an any other PvP ops other than a bit of system defense or the occasional pewage of opportunity. As I am still  learning the ropes, I am not comfortable leaving our system solo into the wilds of null… been killed moar n once doing that already so, to a degree, I feel sorta ‘trapped’ down here and while I am making moar ISK than ever before, I am startin to get  a wee bit bored too… swapping the excitement of living in W-space for the sheer grind of site running, no matter how profitable… so far, it’s a lot like missioning and it’s simply not as much fun for me as life in W-space was.

But, I am still new to null as ‘twere so I will keep on looking for my fun in null… and it aint too bad getting rich while doin it… it’s not like I can just warp off to Jita and blow it all on hookers and Quafe.

I know this, and my posts since moving to null have been... well, a tad bit negateev... but it's not all bad newz, it's just that the down sides are very much in-my-face ATM... however please know that there have been many good times and many wonderful moments I have experienced in null and I look forward still to each day when I log on.

I have continued to increase my skillz and have even come up with a 'Nado fit that is very effective and can even solo tank the low and mid difficulty sites and rat the belts very well which is also a joy to fly. I have bought all the susbsystems for my Loki and have been experimenting with fits, which in a T3 can be very, very interesting indeed.

Loki Missile Ratter

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

PS - For them as what dunt know…

“The Bourgeoisie (in EVE) are a social class "characterized by their ownership of capitalships, and their related culture" (Italics mine)