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That escalated, slowly

by In Games, MMO Tagged , ,

It’s been a busy week in Low sec this past one, all while messing with the neighbours.
I lost a few ships, but made it up last night by a nice little operation we planned that same day.

So our neighbours are a bit risk averse. Meaning that they don’t really drop anything unless they know they have the upper hand. Which is normal, seeing that you don’t really want to lose your ships. I get that. I can respect your choice in not wanting to try and beat the odds.
It’s not something we do though.

A few days ago there was a gate camp next door, obvious bait of course. My friend went “Shall we take the bait, see what happens?”

Meaning that we’d take the bait, shoot them, see what they drop and then counter-drop them with something of our own. Now, bare in mind. This little adventure currently consists of me and my mate. With the two of us flying two combat alts at certain point in time. So it’s literally the two of us vs them most of the time. We have another friend of ours in the alliance but he’s a well known AFK’er, he basically uses eve as a chat box and undocks from time to time if he feels up for it.

What we did was get our Mr. AFK to go and see if he could get them to jump into us. Grab an Omen, jump in then basically go “Oh shit” and come back.

That did not work. So what do we do, we both grab our Machariel, go in, and start blapping whatever was there. We figured they’d drop one carrier on us. They dropped a bit more. It hurt.
A few days later I lost a tornado while we were messing around with them again.

Then comes last night. Our neighbours had the last timer on a citadel next door. We figured that they’d bring in some dps, maybe a carrier or two. So what we would do, is drop in two dreads, siege up, and blap them, in the hopes of them bringing something to get back to us. Seeing that we’re basically “solo”.

Well we had our friends from Hole Control on standby, and another friend of ours that was bringing a few guys from the initiative.
Unfortunately they didn’t take the bait at first. Not until we pretended to fuck up.

I warped back to the gate while the other dread was still in siege. As soon as that happened, they rushed in, grabbed point on him and popped in a Revelation and a Ninazu, we knew they had another carrier on the way too but it got a bit too chicken to come drop along with his friends.

The other dread nearly died, we had to warp in an apostle that was on standby to quickly save him. But damn was it worth it.

This was literally the first time I ever dropped a dread to PvP with it. I thought I was going to lose it, it’s insured in order to lose it. But I did not, we survived, killed their capitals. And had a good laugh about it.

And in case you like seeing killboards, here’s the final battle report. This might have been a bit overkill but damn. I had a good laugh.

Can’t wait to see what’ll happen next.

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What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

by In MMO Tagged , , , , , , ,

But what does kill you makes you stronger too. That’s the way it goes in EvE. You’re a clone, you literally have to die in order to become a capsuleer. Everyone died once in the start, even a character that has never undocked, is not the original.

I don’t do PvE anymore, it bores me and I have no idea why I ever did it. Some of you probably know this, but all I ever did in the past was run missions. Don’t ask me why because I don’t know myself.

When you play PvP there’s always lessons to learn. If you die you learn from your mistakes, if you don’t die you learn from your victories.

And sometimes, you just learn that you shouldn’t expect to keep your ship when you fly with a certain FC.
Not always because he’s bad, but because he takes risks. The “We’re going to die in a ball of fire but it’ll be fun” kind of risks. I am the kind of FC that takes the “I have no idea what I’m doing but this will be funny” kind of risks. Although in general I try hard to make sure not to take battles we can’t win.

Wormhole PvP is fun, there’s more to it than just being part of the blob, sure, everyone has their F1 monkeys, you need them because you need numbers. Even in W-space we have them but our F1 monkeys are pilots that (usually) know what they’re doing.
Not every operation goes the way you want it to go though. That’s something you learn too.

A few days ago I was in a fight with part of the alliance.
One of the corporations found a hole with Dreads in it and we were going to try and drop them. They came in our TS channel and went “Guys, can you bring Guardians, we need them now, go to the system in alliance chat”

It was late evening but I figured I could spare an hour or two to kill something so I went along with a few of the guys. Well, I went to Jita with an interceptor, bought a Guardian and then went to where I was asked to go.

Turned out they asked everyone to bring Guardians, due to which we had about 18 of them on the gate, waiting.
This should have been red alarm number one. We had more logi than dps.
Sure, some of the dps was already en route and ready to engage, waiting for their shot.We figured there were plenty of ships around, since we had split channels with the group inside the wormhole and the ones outside. Those outside would just wait for someone to drop down and give us the go signal.

Alarm bell number two was the way we got the bookmarks. The person that was supposed to give them to us was complaining about his own corporation’s lack of clarity in bookmarking. He dropped them in a can for us but.. Well, when we needed to go in, they weren’t the correct ones so we had to use warpins regardless.

No biggy, it happens, we’re used to using warpins.
Two Dreads on field, the go was given. Time to have some fun.

I forgot to make screenshots, so here’s one our CEO made yesterday in another fight

We jumped into the target k-space and warped on to the first wormhole. The target system was two further from where the k-space entry was. The opposite party knew we were there, and tried to roll us out before we could do anything.

Four battleships had gone through before the FC decided to take the fight (another red flag) Still, no worries. We had logi, and dps (I wasn’t paying attention)

Let’s just say that in the end, we didn’t have enough DPS. Plenty of logi but the other party had 6 dreads on field and a FAX machine. With the dps we brought we were never going to be able to take that down.

Once more it took a while before the FC decided to call it and have us bail. The hole we were fighting was gone, they rolled it while we were fighting, which happens when you fight on a wormhole. But we bailed, bouncing off of pings while a new exit was being scanned.

Once we got on it, we went through with a bunch of us only to have it collapse behind us (woops)

Luckily we had scanners. Guardians that had depots with them and could refit to probes. It took a while, but we were able to get out and back to high-sec. Once more dropping off my guardian in Jita. At the time it was almost 1 am, and I get up at 5:40, so I was dead tired but happy to be in kspace.

I was salty the day after. Really salty. I didn’t even die but I was calling the whole operation a total clusterfuck.
Too much logi, not enough dps. The FC’s orders being contradicted by another FC (their CEO I think) etc etc. But in the end, there’s always lessons learned.

This one, being that next time, when telling my guys to go somewhere. I’ll make sure that I know we actually need the ships that were asked.

We’ll just bring DPS next time. At least then I can shoot things too.

Stay tuned o7

 

Meet Steve.

by In MMO Tagged , , , , , ,

Steve is the name of the drifter battleships that can sometimes make wormhole space a bigger pain than it already is. Not only does he put out about 2k DPS, he also neuts like crazy. And that’s the most annoying part of him really. The DPS is something most people are able to handle fairly well, but the neuts, my god the neuts.

Steve is here

I’m not sure where the name Steve came from. I just know that we’ve been using it for a while now, and supposedly the guys in corp that started using it had it from someone else they flew with. But his name is Steve now and I shall always know him as such.

Making ISK in wormholes can be done in multiple ways. There’s PI which is obviously the easiest one, there’s relic/data site hacking, there’s evicting people and stealing their stuff. And then there’s doing sites.

Which is what I’ve been trying to do in the past week or so. Sites can be done in multiple ways. You can do it with multiple people, or solo it (if you have two tinker rattlesnakes) Mostly when doing it with subcaps you’ll get roughly 300m per site. Without taking into account the fact that you need to close down incoming connections you’ll earn about 400m/hour, give or take a few.

At the end of the site, a structure will uncloak, and if you shoot it, Steve will spawn and he will try to fuck you up.

Luckily you can also use dreads for sites like this (if you are in a bear hole or if you have them in your own hole). Warping in a dread will “escalate” the site, spawning a few more battleships that are just a little bit harder to kill and drop a little bit more ISK in the end. But killing Steve with a dread is so easy. In the end you can make roughly 700 to 1b/hour per character doing it, IF you have this thing down. And that’s with just two dreadnaughts doing it.

I tend to forget about my speed from time to time. And bump things

I tend to forget about my speed from time to time. And bump things

I can’t even imagine what the income from this used to be. Supposedly it was a LOT better. Which kind of makes sense, most of the veteran wormholers don’t really have to worry about ISK at all.

With PI and doing sites. I might just make the ISK back that I put in this dread pilot. That makes me happy. I just hope I earn it back before the Naglfar dies. And it will die, I’m sure of it, I’ll probably do something stupid with it. That’s what normally happens when I let things die.

We’ll see

Stay tuned o7

 

I did a thing

by In MMO Tagged , , , ,

Actually, we did a thing.

In the last 7 days a few things were done within the corporation that made us, a little less active PvP wise.
We moved, going from C2 space into a C5 wormhole. Not only did we move but we also put up a Fortizar.

Let’s just say that putting up a Fortizar in wormhole space was an extremely boring EvE experience. But luckily we were able to keep ourselves entertained in other ways (Mostly by playing Rocket League).

When setting up a Fortizar you don’t want people to see something anchoring. You don’t want some random person seeing it and telling his friends so that they can come shoot it when it’s vulnerable and doesn’t have defences yet. Which meant that during the setup phase, you roll all incoming holes. Every single one, during the whole anchoring stage, the whole 24 hours it takes for you to set this thing up.

It’s as boring as it sounds, we didn’t get too much sleep.

But it was worth it, we have a Fortizar now, we can park capitals in there.

Ready for action

Which brings us to the other thing we did.
I have spent, way, but I mean way too much ISK on a new dread pilot.
Somewhere in September I created a pilot who’s only purpose in life is to fly a Rattlesnake and a Naglfar. I had injected about 10 injectors in him at the start so he could fly the Rattlesnake we used to run C5 with. After that I just started training slowly a dread. Unfortunately when the Rattlesnake fit changed, I wasn’t able to use it anymore due to cruise missiles and such. So that SP went to waste.

Cue us moving to higher class wormhole space. Living in a C5 means that the incoming static can have “Very Large” ships moving through it. In general that just means that from now on we can start using capitals and even Jump Freighters to move our stuff in. So I did a thing, bought about 40-50 more injectors, and now have a Naglfar pilot ready to go.

Never did a cyno either

Never did a cyno either

Unfortunately, this also means that at this moment, my ISK worth is half of what it was a few weeks ago. I’ve been doing a bit of trading but I need to step up my game if I want to start earning ISK again.

Soon I’ll be able to use a Naglfar to run sites with. Or at least, I hope I will be able to make back the cost and then some before losing it.

We’ll see, sooner or later.

At least I’m doing a few things and that’s what matters.

Stay tuned o7

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Bad at EVE

by In MMO Tagged , , , , , , ,

I can freely admit that I’m not the best player when it comes to EvE as a whole. I am at best “ok” in PvP, and when I do my trading I am well aware that I’m making stupid decisions from time to time.

There are times when I feel like I am better than some of the people I come across in the game. And times when I feel like the biggest noob out there. I’m sure that a lot of people have that same issue when they’re trying out something new.

This game can make you laugh and make you want to strangle whoever fucked something up in your fleet as you throw your headset down in frustration because it was once more the same person doing that to you.

That’s what’s so great about this game. I used to play other MMO’s, I still play World of Warcraft occasionally, and I have never felt the same string of emotions in any of them like I do in EVE.

And that’s because what you do in this game matters. Whether you’re the first tackle on a titan, or the person stocking a market (or crashing it) whatever you do, will have an effect on tens, if not hundreds of other players.
This is not something that happens in many other games. In general when playing another MMO it doesn’t really matter whether you’re there or not. They might care personally, but the game itself doesn’t get better or worse without you there.

 

I need to get myself a Naglfar

I need to get myself a Naglfar

The past few weeks has been spent trying to help some fellow wormholers defend their home against HardKnocks, scanning for new places to hunt in, doing some PvP both market PvP and otherwise. And trying to make ISK.

We failed saving them, but I have a few nice screenshots

We failed saving them, but I have a few nice screenshots

A few days ago while scanning I was in a C2, there were a lot of signatures to scan down and I saw an Astero pop up on d-scan every few minutes. I didn’t really bother myself with him, figuring that he was going through all the wormholes, I was in an Astero myself so he was spending is time not much unlike I was spending mine.

I had one more sig to scan, a relic site, when it disappeared from my overview. This Astero was hacking relics. That was my cue to try and kill him at last, I already had everything bookmarked and it was time for some other kind of content. I warped to a relic at range, lo and behold, only half a minute after getting there the guy popped up on grid. Now, keep in mind, I had been scanning this wormhole for the past 10 minutes, he must have seen my probes. But I guess he thought he was safe, going to the cans slowly. I was on coms with two of my corpmates and asked them if they could bring in fast tackle. I had a scram on my astero but no point. So they brought sabres. I made them hold on the wormhole into the C2 while I figured out the best spot for them to warp to.

Turns out there was a small asteroid I could bookmark right next to one of the last three cans he’d go to. So I did. After having them jump the hole and hold cloak I told them to wait, right up until the guy started hacking the can. As soon as that happened I had them warp to the bookmark I had just made.

A minute and one dead Astero later I could go on my merry way into finding a highsec in our little chain.

Despite this being a fairly standard procedure, it still gave me the so called “PvP-shakes” not because I would die or anything, but because I didn’t want this guy to figure out I was stalking him. To suddenly warp off and leave us with no kill.

I have literally never had any of those feelings in another game. When you PvP in EVE, there’s a kind of adrenaline rush, whether you win or lose, there’s always the thrill of the hunt.

Stay tuned o7

Skill queue fun!

by In Games, MMO Tagged , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

It’s been a week now since I started the new character. This character was created with two goals in mind. Having a third character to fly a Rattlesnake with for when I finally decide to do C5 sites. And flying a Dread.

In order to make it a little easier on myself I bought 10 skill injectors and injected them in the character. Giving him 5 million unallocated skill points. I have only used part of them right now to get his cybernetics to lvl 4. This so I could put +4’s in him. I am still unsure if getting +5’s would be worth the cost. Seeing that they cost about 80-90m more per implant than a +4, so for now I’m leaving it at that.

I did the new opportunities on this character and also did two of the advanced career agents. Namely the military and advanced military one. I actually liked it. But I used to run level 4 missions all the time so I guess this is partly nostalgia for me. After finishing them he was brought in Jita, due to my general laziness I tend to buy everything I need in Jita.

Having an actual plan for my skills on one of my character is fun. I don’t really do much planning, both my other combat alts and my indy alt have no plan. I randomly put skills in their queue and hope they’ll be useful in the future. E’dyn is currently training JDC V aftering having finally finishing logistic cruisers V. Unfortunately Jump Drive Calibration is a skill that takes about 40 days to get it from IV to V. So this will take a while.

With the skill plan I have for the new character his first goal is to fly a rattlesnake asap with the fit I use. In theory this will finishing in about 30 days. After that he will start training into a Naglfar. It’s not that I have a Naglfar right now, or have an actual plan to put one somewhere, it’s just nice to have the option. Due to living in a C2 the only way to fly one in the wormhole is to build one in it. Which I might do eventually, we’ll see.

My other alt is also training a few more skills for the Rattlesnake, after that I had Astrometric Rangefinding and other scanning skills ready in her queue. I might decide on changing that. She’s my go to scanner for the chain but I’m not sure if it’s that much better to have those skills at lvl V.

I’ll need to check that out.

Stay tuned o7

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Death by glorious explosions.. Or not?

by In MMO Tagged , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

A few weeks ago it was decided that on the second of September we would be doing a capital roam through null sec. The idea was to fly around until we get a fight.

So that day was yesterday and I’m a bit disappointed. Once more null sec did not deliver what I expected it would. This time I expected it to deliver a quick and sudden death. But unfortunately this was not the case.

We had a fleet of around 30 people. Of which 20ish were in subcaps, 3 cynos and 7 dreads.

We figured that if we went gate to gate, we’d have at least someone who would light a cyno on our ass and give us a fight. We were wrong, dead wrong.

We went to the TEST staging system, talked in local, showed our caps and all they did was tell us that we probably had PL waiting somewhere to jump in as soon as TEST fought.

A strange reasoning but ok. All in all the fleet was pretty boring. Where’s the fun in going out with capitals if everyone stays docked up.

Now, TEST did use Delve as an excuse, since supposedly they’re deployed there. I guess that’s possible, I wouldn’t know really, I don’t care for null sec politics and have no idea what goes on where. The joy/curse? Of living in wormhole space.

At least I got a few nice screenshots out of it. If I didn’t screw it up you should be able to see them in a gallery below.

I also started a third account again the other day. I want to fly a capital. My dream ship is a Nyxx but I can’t afford that. On second place capital wise I would put a Naglfar. Due to the fact that I am already training my main into so many things, I decided that it would probably be easier to have a new toon just for that.

And thus E’dynn was born. Basically number two. I will be training him towards Naglfar, and also as a rattlesnake pilot. This way when clearing sites in the C5 I will have 3 rattlers I can count on. Making the site clearing so much faster. It will take a bit of training, but I’ve got time. At least with this character I actually have a plan.

If there’s one thing I suck at it’s making skill plans and sticking to them. I’m currently training E’dyn for JDC V but I have no idea what I’ll do next with him. Feel free to drop me a few hints on what might be usefull 😉

Enjoy o7