BB18: Ch-ch-changes

Welcome to the eighteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by none other than me, CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

"On May 6th 2010, EVE Online celebrated its 7th Anniversary. Quite a milestone in MMO history, especially considering that it is one of the few virtual worlds out there to see its population continually grow year after year. For some of you who’ve been here since the very beginning, EVE has evolved quite a lot since its creation. With the expansion rolling out roughly twice a year, New Eden gets renewed and improved regularly. But, how about you the player? How has you gaming style evolved through the years or months since you’ve started playing? Have you always been a carebear, or roleplayer? Have you only focused on PvP or have you given other aspects of the game a chance – say manufacturing. Let’s hear your story!"

So this is about changes, and really there hasn't been many. Except I'm no longer a newb! What do i mean by that? Well lets go back to the start and have a look how I began my EvE career.

I inherited Mail Lite, the character from a friend when he quit EvE. He had more powerful accounts and this was just a general 4 mil SP character in a random corp called 'Order of the Dragon' and despite the cool name it was a industrial corp. I started out running level one and two missions in a Rifter for my first month and a half, getting bored and logging after a few hours and not really making alot of cash if I'm honest.

However the CEO of the corp wanted a new director and it seemed I was the most active player, even though I had only been around for a few weeks and had no idea what I was ment to be doing in the corp and how I could get involved, I was made a director with full access to everything. Only problem? I was too newb to take advantage of this. I didn't know what a corp hanger was, what the corp wallet was. Apparently I had access to over 5 billion in assets when i was a director for that corp.

I then read Spectre's blog while at work one day. And when I say read, I mean READ EVERY POST HE EVER MADE IN ONE DAY! And that night I went home, Jumped in a Rifter, fitted to Spectre's Rifter post and made my way to Aurohen. Why Aurohen? Cause thats apparently where Spectre had lived at one time or another.

I jumped in and started practising with the D Scanner and on my very first night I killed a Retriever mining in a belt. Adreniline rush or what! I was hooked.

I had my CEO at the time contact me about the killing of the miner in Aurohen and said it wasn't the sort of thing he wanted in his corp and to keep away from neuts, red were fine but not neutral indutrialists.

I had joined the Hellcats Pub and asked a few times in there if anyone knew a corp where I could learn to pirate. Gilgamesh1980 was in the chat at the time and pointed me to TBRA where I found a great number of friends and eventually become a Personell Manager and then Director. I love the people, love the style of flying, love the ops and love being in the corp and flying the TGA banner.

I was then contacted out of game by the same friend who gave me Mail Lite, Aparently he had been following my progress and was now offering me another account for free. Hannibal Vexor, TKK and Gateway1.

Hannibal Vexor was just shy of 19mil and TKK is a miner and hauler alt at 7 mil. Gateway is a Cyno alt and Trader.

Hannibal is now my 'Main' and runs Level 4 missions, Wormholes and basically anything that will make me some extra cash and help out The White Rabbits. TKK is a Miner and is useful when TWR start mining ops, it means I can contribute in most ways. The Frieghter comes in handy too.

So the main changes in me over my EvE Career? Finding where I belonged, responsibility and having the tools to keep me nicely stable in my PVP endeveaurs.

Mail

Other Blog Banters.

1.CrazyKinux’s Musing: The Heroes with a Thousand Faces
2.StarFleet Comms: Life. Evolved.
3.A Carebear’s Journeu: This Carebear Thinks He Is Developing Teeth
4.The Elitist: Our ventures in EVE
5.A Mule in EVE: From a guppy predator
6.Travels of the Ronin: Evolution and Adaptation
7.The Ralpha Dogs: The Past Through Tomorrow
8.Where the frack is my ship: A journey, not a destination
9.I am Keith Neilson: 7 Year Itch?
10.Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah: Evolution Me
11.EVE Opportunist: A long history of a short time
12.Roc’s Ramblings: Things Change
13.Guns Ablaze: Onwards and Upwards
14.EVE On Real Life: Haven’t you grown up yet?

A few small things ;-)

[17:28:31] Hannibal Vexor: Make sure all pilots are on there balls please FC's from now on. Specially Logistics, they really need to be firmly seated on their balls.

Anyone who watched Alliance Tournament 8 today from the start will know what this means. I said this in Alliance Tournament Public and it immediatly got added to a number of poeples BIO's.

Sweet! Lol!

Love you Brianna Tempest!

Anyway, going to watch England Vs USA now, then will catch up with AT8 and F1. Busy busy.

Lets hope England are firmly on thier balls tonight too! =P

Oh and by the way Erebus Alliance fail, they just do, watch the AT8 match if you don't belive me.

Star Fraction, two words... 'Oh dear!' 2 matches and 0 points. Not a single ship destroyed? Epic lulzs, thanks!

Fly dangerous! o/

Mail

Oh dear...

Hi all,

I'm having a problem with blogging at the moment because everything that The Guristas Alliance are currently undertaking needs to be kept classified. I'm sure you all understand.

So what to talk about? Mail is now less than a week from being able to fly the Phobos. I had to take a small 5 day break from training for it as I decided it was time to get T2 AC's for the Rifter. I used to fly this ship alot in the early days and got my first solo kills in this ship.

I then switched focus to Gallente and never bothered with T2 AC's. Happily that oversight is now rectified and i can field a T2 fitted Rifter for when the occasion arises.

Hannibal has been on a long skill for the last month. Trajectory Analysis 5. Why? Dunno really it was just something that may be useful in the future.

I said at the beginning of the year about getting a legion for Hannibal... Well that is on hold as i train for Amarr Battleship LvL 5. I'm sure you can see where this is going...

Well thats pretty much all I can say... Alot of logistics to sort out for one thing or another so,

Mail Signing out!

Fly dangerous o/

Back and Blogging

Hello all,

First of let me appologise for my absence on the blogging scene. A number of things have been happening in RL that has stopped me from blogging.

Now to business. Whats been happening in EvE?

Well first of lets revisit Hannibal Vexor, my high sec brother in arms. You might remember a few months ago I got very excited at being able to fly the Drake Battlecruiser in Lvl 3 missions for CPF. Well I have now traded up and am currently running Lvl 4 missions in an Abaddon.

This marked a milestone for me personally as it was my first character to ever fly a Battleship. And let me tell you... I love it. The immense firepower of the Abbadon, the cap stable tank and the beauty of the ship itself is magnificent. The ISK from the LvL 4 missions will be going to fund a few more pirate ships for Mail.

Moving on to Mail, well first off TBRA is doing well, recruitment is still open and we are getting some new and enthusiastic pilots joining up.

The Alliance has moved and is currently basing out of Jan and we are trying to rebrand our alliance away from 'piracy' and towards a more 'terrorist' movement. What this means? Not totaly clear yet. Stay tuned.

Back in January I made a list of things that I want to achieve for each character. Mail Lite was meant to be heading towards a Megatron and maybe the Phobos. Well Gallente Cruiser 5 is complete, Signiture Analysis 5 is complete and I am now finishing up Propulsion Jamming 5 too. Bring on the expensive shiney of the Phobos Heavy Interdictor!

Hannibal now has most of the support skills needed for the Legion. I just haven't taken the plunge and bought the books yet. It's still on the list but is on the back burner for the moment.

The live events of CCP have been going down all around us in low sec and we have been able to help out the Sansha by terrorising the enemies of the Nation. IT's been fun and has managed to bring some people into Low Sec who wouldn't have been there otheriwse. If CCP could keep this going on some scale it might revitalise Low Sec to some extent and open Piracy up as a career choice for new EvE subscribers.

Other than that it's been business as normal for the last onth or so. Gatecamps, Roams and such. Only 2 operations to mention.

The first was a destroyer roam. Thrashers, Comorants and Catalysts running from Ishomliken and up towards Heydieles with a stop over in Tama. It was good fun, we got a Blackbird kill in Tama but didn't find much else. We even tried to get a fight in Old Man Star but alas noone wanted to play =(

We then suicided our fleet into a 0.5 system and ganked a poor Hulk pilot.

Another op of mention was a RR Osprey op. 3 of us were in high DPS gank cruisers and another was in a Blackbird. The rest of the fleet were in Shield RR Osprey's.

We managed to take out a Harbinger but again, couldn't find mush else. It did however give the newer TBRA members good oportunity to learn how to use RR and the broadcast system.

Both ops were good fun, we just need to get lucky and find some real fights.

I'm now back to blogging and will try to update once a week if not twice.

Fly Dangerous o/

Mail

No real EvE time...

I have to admit that over this weekend I really wanted to get out, get some kills and make some ISK either doing plexes with both Hannibal and Mail or just general belt ratting.

Unfortunately RL.exe decided to knock in the form of doing favours for friends. This included waiting at a friends place (with no internet access) for a Sky T.V engineer to arrive for most of Sunday, going shopping with a mate who wanted to buy a new motorbike and then having to focus on doing my own house work and shopping!

Needless to say that EvE was a no-no for me this weekend. The few hours I did manage to grab was mostly getting Mail Lite out of 0.0 and back to Ishomilken and then messing around in a newly fit Vexor Gallente Cruiser.

We have had to postpone moving the alliance out to FD for a few weeks so I already have a new op in planning for the academy to keep their skills nice and sharp. Watch this space.

Hannibal is staying out in 0.0 for the moment to see if ratting in 0.0 will bring some rewards. I will admit the first couple of times I have tried doing some solo ratting in the Nemesis I have had to turn tail and run from the frigate rats in the belt! How does one counter this? Should I grab a cruiser, blow them to smithereens and then go get the Nemesis for the bigger targets that I can outrun? I need some help here!

Tonight I will have to grab at least an hour to help run some logistics for the alliance but I have a feeling that my other half will want some of my game time!

Luckily, at the moment, my other half is going away this weekend to her parents (Sat – Mon) so this weekend should see some great EvE time!

I’m hoping to get online for a few hours Wednesday and get a fleet together. I have invited Astral Dominix to come join a TBRA frigate fleet as he has expressed an interest in PVP. We will have to see if we can find some reds for him to shoot at as he doesn’t want to take a sec hit! (Looks at Mails’ -10 and smiles) He will have to watch from the sidelines if we find some nice mission runners or ratters to go splat!

Mail has finally finished Energy Upgrades level 5 and is now working on Cloaking level 4. He should then be ready for his own Nemesis!

Hannibal is only a few days from T2 Heavy missiles which should make the missioning go a bit quicker. Next for Hannibal will either be maxing some other shield skills to make the Drake even more formidable or thinking about starting the training for the Raven Battleship. Either way… it’s going to take a while.

I haven’t forgotten about the list of goals I had for each character. I am still going for the T3 cruiser on Hannibal but with the new found interest in Caldari ships I am tempted by the Tengu but think I will fold and run back to the Proteus when it actually comes to deciding which one to train for in earnest.

Mail's training for T2 large blasters starts as soon as the Nemesis training has been completed. It will take a while but I won't set foot on the Megathron till I have T2 blasters ready to go.

Fly dangerous o/

Mail

Jumping on the band wagon yet again.

Ok so an interview was done at ten ton hammer about the new Tyrannis expansion coming out in the summer of 2010. I just wanted to give my very grief thoughts on this.

Planets that are in empire will be so east to get to will be very much over industralised by the empire carebears.

Null Sec planets will be taken over by the large alliances and thier pets in alot of cases as far as i can see.

WH planets will be taken over by the people who live in each. Unoccupied WH's are quite rare these days and if you want a planet in one of these I would say you will have to fight for it every time you want to bring produce out to sell in K-Space.

The most interesting bit of this from my, and anyone living an outlaw existence in Low-Sec will be the planets of our so-called home systems and regular hunting grounds.

I hope, pray and dance naked around my comuter chanting, that they buff the planets in Low-Sec so that they have a distinct advantage over empire planets, unlike the rats they put in low-sec which aren't worth a bucket of spit.

Low-sec is a dead area, fact, the only people you find out there are other pirates or lost newbies. I have no issues with this but a new influx of meat, coming to play with thier planets and export thier goods out will make things alot more interesting.

In other news, Hannibal took his Nemesis out with the wrong torpedoes and nearly got popped by a Battleship rat =/ Now I have the right torps I am planning another field test this evening, as soon as a station camping git in a Drake fucks off. (Sitting in undock, you bump of him as you undock and keep bumping when you try to warp. Fail for me but legitimate game play for him..,)
Anyway, dinner is burning.

Fly dangerous! o/

Hannibal is useful

In my last EvE related post I said I had Mail training for the Nemesis and I was about a week away from being able to fly some cloaky cloaky goodness. I then logged on to Hannibal and realised I was sitting in a Helios and that Hannibal could ALREADY fly a Nemesis if I wanted to buy one for him.

So guess what, I have a lovely little Nemesis stealth bomber sitting in FD pretty much fully fitted at a reasonable cost. Hannibal already has some lovely missile skills for the Drake so that’s not a worry. I only need to get the Torpedo and Bomb Deployment skill books and I can go cause some mayhem in 0.0.

Mail will continue training for the SB as well and will also get a Nemesis on station in FD sometime next week.

My list of ships now available for flight in 0.0 is a Brutix, Caracal and Merlin for Mail Lite and a Nemesis, Helios and Drake for Hannibal. This gives me some nice options for roaming and I should be able to field a ship for whatever fleet is called for.

I took Hannibal’s Helios out for a spin last night to check my scanning skills were still at an acceptable level. Got a couple of nice Screen shots from the plexes I scanned down:

So tonight I am out, having dinner at friends, but I’m going to try and get 30 minutes of EvE before we go so I can get those skills into Hannibals head. By Friday evening I should be able to take my Nemesis ‘TARP!’ out for a spin.

My fitting at the moment for the Nemesis is;

‘TARP!’ – Nemesis

3 x Siege Missile Launchers I > (Mix of Torpedoes)

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II

Bomb Launcher I > Concussion Bomb

Parallel Target Painter I

Parallel Target Painter I

Sensor Booster I > Targeting Range

1MN Microwarpdrive I

Ballistic Control System II

Ballistic Control System II

Small Hydraulic Bay Thrusters I

Small Hydraulic Bay Thrusters I

Not bad and I will soon have two characters fielding these ships. That’s nice.

Fly Dangerous o/

Alot to live up to...

Ok so, first things first.

CK has added me to his esteemed blog pack! Unbelievable really as I have only been blogging for just over 2 months! A big thank you to CK for the opportunity and I will not let you down sir!

A quick congrats out to the other new and returning CK blog packers, especially the Python, Hellfleet, and Tusker bloggers out there who insired me to first become a low-sec pirate, and now to blog about it! (To Pythons: PENISSSS!)

Also congrats to Astral, I'm a follower and regular commenter to his blog and it's nice to see him in the blog pack too!

Now i've stroked some ego's and made me sound like a fanboi (I am) on to other news.

Mail Lite is still undecided on where to go after finishing Medium Blasters T2 but is filling time by training for a stealth bomber. Only a few day away now!

Having a stealth bomber will be a big BIG plus in the next few months as alot of TGA have gone on a little holiday over to 0.0! (Or should that be o.0)

Never been in null sec before and have so far lost a shuttle, 3 reapers and 4 pods. And i only got there sunday morning. I hate Sabre's!

It was a general cause for giggles on voice chat yesterday though, me laughing everytime I got podded, laughing when my corp mates got podded trying to get back to their other ships.

Scouting through what looked like an unoccupied gate, only to linger a bit to long and not notice the 10 stealthbombers uncloaking 50km from me.

Basically it was hilarious and I have loved every minute of it so far. It will be even nicer when i get a few Merlins, Rifters and Caracals in to go pew pew with immunity!

Hannibal is also coming along. He has his Helios and his Drake so will be ratting like a bitch for the next few weeks. ISK ISK ISK.

And I wouldn't be suprised if he got in on a little PVP action either.

TKK is still around and is currently mining when the occasion arises. I've never been big on the mining side so I normally only go out with the Coverter (Or borrowed Hulk) when TWR has a mining op planned (Every sunday from 12:45 ish ET)

What else? Hmm not alot really. Been involved in a few vannila kills but nothing solo recently. Lost a Caracal to a Rupture who has a bitch of a tank but thats about it.

I will endeavour to keep you updated about the op in null and how many little fuckers in sabre's we can kill. A couple of TGA carriers were jumped through last night so at least we will have some ships to go shoot shit now! Malacii Lee's Sabre is mine!

Fly dangerous o/

Mail

I feel dirty...

Hi all,

Just wanted to share with you my absoloute disgust in myself.

I decided about a week ago that I would get Hannibal, my PVE mission runner out of his Harby and into a Drake, I had a fit from a collegue and trained up specificly for that fit. I had heard that Drakes can easily do level 3 missions and even some of the level 4's with good skills.

So i thought I would give it a go.

I finally got round to flying the Drake yesterday, a level 3 mission for Corporate Police Force in Oipo. And, this is why I feel dirty, I loved it!

Yes I have very basic skills for the ship, yes my missile skills suck and yes I have trained the bare minimum for the fittings... But I STILL kicked a hard level 3 mission in the nuts!

I even forgot to bring my drones for the Frigs, no worries, missiles will work, and they did!

Problem is I am now even more determined to get Mail Lite into a PVP H.A.M Drake!

Missiles? FTW! (Though I still love my Brutix =D)

Fly dangerous o/