A Barrel Roll: A Day In The Life Of EVE Online

It's been awhile since the last blogpost from the nether, so I thought it might be time to revive the zombie. Apologies to the blog followers, and to my corporation members - thanks for encouraging me to blog more.

Our wormhole operations continue to grow, as does our member-base. We're now up to 90 members, and quite well set up in our C2. As per usual, we're still asshatting around wherever we end up - and as this blog is mostly about story time, I thought I might keep it simple with a year in review award. (I know, a bit early - but oh well..)

We've attacked many W-Space systems, and had several fun run-ins (and some great fights).. but we've also seen some pretty terribad POS setups, and all-around jackassery (P.S. - Jackassery is now a word).

So I wanted to take an opportunity to thank As Far As The Eye Can See [AFATY] and friends for bringing a 20 capsuleer fleet on us not once, but twice - even when the first fight didn't go their way. Kudos to you guys.

Battle Report [First]

Battle Report [Second]


On the opposite side of the coin, the raspberry of the year goes to Emperor Messina - a player from Global War Weaponry Inc [GWWI] - who not only borrowed a corporation mate's 4 billion ISK ridicufit Abaddon (WTF?) but proceeded to get it stomped into a hole. We also informed them that we'd be back for the Carrier, at which point they decided to sell their wormhole. (cue Sad Trombone.wav)

::Killmail Link::

Blue Sun is over a year old.. We've been in W-Space for nearly a year now, and I just wanted to take a moment to thank all of the pilots that've flown with us, and against us.

We'll see you soon.

Okay, so CK posted a blog challenge to the EVE community, and I haven't blogged in nearly two weeks, so I figured it was time to dust off the keyboard. (Hey, bonus, I don't have to cook tonight!)

Girls in EVE. This is a subject which seems to go to it's extremes.. You have your pewpew girls, your industrialist girls, and your boys who are girls. As one of my favorite quotes ever uttered goes, "BEHOLD! The internet! Where the men are men, the girls are men, and the children are cops!". To be honest, I've not met many women with the patience to attempt to play this game of internet spaceships - much less put up with the raging hormones of the basement dwelling penis-slappers.

Did I mention that I wasn't going to attempt to censor myself this time? No? Sorry. This isn't so much for the contest as it is for something to write about. I'm blessed to have a wife that enjoys video games, that enjoys EVE - that's right, fuckers, I don't get yelled at to get off the computer and watch Oprah with her. We go blow people up together. I can taste your jealousy, and it tastes *gooooood*.

But in all seriousness, I agree with the blog she just started - educate people about the myriad of possibilities in EVE, and you'll draw a bigger player base. In this player base will no doubt be some people who don't possess a penis. I know, amazing stories, right? But in order to create a mass appeal for a game that can take so long to learn to play *properly*, a lot of the problems sure could use a quick wrench or two.

On the short list: Fix lag, fix insurance, and start enforcing policy as if it's policy, not just "Well, it kind of depends on which GM you get...". That's crap. Make the game a bit more inviting without stripping it of the things the vets know and love, and you may just have a winning formula on your hands.

I think that perhaps that which has the biggest possibility of drawing a larger player base is, of course, Ambulation. It has to be right. It just has to be. Please, CCP.. If any of you read my blog.. *cough FALLOUT cough*.. please, get it right. Don't make all the women whores and all the guys Sylvester Stallone with a robo-dick. Don't turn EVE into that. But at the same time, don't turn it in to carebear happy fun tiem.

A bit of advice for those of you with female companions and friends who do enjoy games, however. Encourage your friends and loved ones to give it a try. Stick with them after they've played for a month and think it's all about shooting red crosses and burning space rocks into ore. Encourage them to experience EVE.. In the end, I think you'll find that they love it just as much as we do.

In the end, it's all the same to me. If it's a girl - if it's a boy - if it's in a ship - if it's in a pod.. given the chance, and enough boredom, I'm probably going to shoot at it.

(P.S. - Maybe the overwhelming number of ships that look like GIANT DICKS are a bit intimidating, yeah? <3 you, CCP.)

GIANT SPACE DONGS,
Alathus Christensen

CrazyKinux posted a challenge to the EVE blogosphere this week. With that (and the hope of a free PLEX dancing in my head) I thought I'd take an opportunity to give my outlook on the impact that planetary interaction may have on the universe of EVE. The challenge was issued on the grounds of explaining an industrial impact - and as such, I'll make my primary point with regards to this. Shortly after, I'll go off-topic and ramble on as I always do, while trying to keep my swearing to a minimum.

The impact of planetary interaction probably will not be felt immediately. Everyone will wrap their head around it, and without a doubt, you will see planets bloom into production at an explosive rate. For those of you who've watched the EVE University introduction video or played around with the concept a bit on SiSi, you may have a slight head start over the average bear, but make no mistake - everyone will be in a mad rush to secure valuable sites in the most populated areas.

Over time, as the luster wears off and as people realize that this is truly intended to be a whole new branch of industry, the half-hearted industrialists will slowly go back to doing what they do best (read: cross-training everything) and the PvP pilots/mission runners will realize that perfecting this path would take too much training time away from their four-hundred day skill plans. Once this point is reached, I truly believe we will see a whole new class of industrialist born into EVE. The Planetary Industrialist.

Expanding industry can only bode well for EVE, as it's a subclass which has primarily been delegated to three major paths: the miner, the production specialist, and the researcher. The fact that this "newcomer" to the classes will be responsible for bringing important products that were previously "seeded" to the market should allow it to bolster it's position for the long haul of EVE time, thereby breathing new life into the industrial aspect of EVE itself.

Now, onto the promised ramblings and whatnots. Think of the ramifications that this whole new industrial career will have upon you, the player of EVE. Enjoy the piratings, as so many do? Can-flipping just got a massive upgrade. Enjoy the massive war aspect of EVE? Whole wars will be fought over planets, and the resources they provide. Even the casual player (who may think that planetary interaction will not affect them) may find themselves wondering why they cannot find a particular needed item in a region, due to increased pirate activity - or war.

If this expansion truly lives up to it's potential; if players really can replace the things that "seeding" provided prior, I believe that planetary interaction may truly bring a new and exciting future to EVE: Online.

Poopin' In Your Sandbox,
Alathus Christensen

First off, a little preface - We were War Dec'd roughly a week and a half ago. The corporation, you may ask? Why, I believe they're called "The Swiss Cheese Connection". At the time of them declaring war upon us, they had one member - the venerable (cough) Solo Wulf, or as he we have taken to calling him, Notsosolo Wolf.

So we, as a wormhole corporation, get dec'd by a one man corporation based out of Niyabainen. Coincedence? Probably not, as that's where we keep our HiSec roots. To be honest we had no intention of ever heading outside to pick on him (honest!) but - as things usually go - one of our members got bored and decided to pick himself a fight. We'd done our research. We knew the guy was glued to Niyabainen like a gerbil up Richard Gere's ass, so our lone Drake pilot (God, we fly a lot of Drakes..) knew exactly where to find him. I was content to sit back and let him have his fight - I was fairly confident he'd come out on top - and listen to the goings on, until the following occured:

Lone Drake pilot engages Solo Wulf in a Rupture. Keep in mind that the Drake pilot in question hasn't bothered with fitting a point, as he's only in it for lulz. To my surprise, the Rupture sticks around to fight, almost getting dropped by a T2 fit PvE Drake, before quickly accepting a new application to his corporation. A Tengu, flown by Sia Alexandria, warps in and blows up the Rupture followed shortly by the Drake. I suppose this was to ensure that they kept the killmail out of our grubby little paws, but I took offense.

..As did a few other combat pilots online at that point in time. We don't mind losing, you see, as we live in W-Space. Losing there is pretty much a given, at some point. However, I do mind losing to some little no-talent hoser who has to exploit game mechanics to get a kill for his killboard. Before long, we're headed in their direction.

I'm flying in a Ferox, which should tell you exactly how much I think of these two chuckleheads. Along with the Ferox we have a Manticore, a bait-fit Maller, and the Drake pilot's refit. As I was coming into system, the Tengu engaged. I did a rough estimate of the damage involved, docked up, and bided my time. Eventually Solo must have decided he needed a different ship, so he leaves system. The Tengu pilot swaps to a Deimos, an Orca shows up, and somewhere in there I get a case of the fuckits.

I undock, engage the Deimos, followed shortly by the Manticore engaging. Before long the Drake and the Maller join in, and we're going to town. I guess the Deimos pilot panics, and decides to attempt the Orca trick. You know the one - the pilot ejects, the Orca drops another ship and scoops the original, and the pilot is on his/her way in a new ship, or at least with greatly improved combat odds. She ejects from her Deimos, and boards a Legion, just in time to watch her Deimos go pop.

Yep, you heard me. I guess the Orca pilot-alt had sticky keys, or got distracted by a porn site - but without fail (or perhaps with fail), she ejected from the Deimos and the Manticore promptly blew it up.

A little sparring with the Legion and it's going down. I de-agress, and dock up - it switches to the Maller. I repair, undock, and get back to work - and believe it or not, the Legion is going down. It pops the Maller and manages to dock into the Orca at roughly 6% armor - also having taken a fair bit of structure damage.

They did manage to score a kill on the Maller, but in the grand scheme of things, the tally looks like this..

Us:
-1 Maller (Went down in combat, the pilot fighting for the whole time..)
Total Value: Just over 12 million ISK
Total monetary damages taken by the pilot: 4 million ISK.


Them:
-1 Deimos (Went down after being ejected from, victim of FAIL and/or internet porn..)
Total Value: Just over 143 million ISK
Total monetary damages taken by the pilot: A fuckton more than 4 million ISK.

So let me end this with a message. If you're stupid - or think you might be stupid - keep playing EVE! You make my time here SO enjoyable.

Durr Hurr Hurr,
Alathus Christensen

During the week, as my play time is reduced, I've taken up that old mistress of missioning during the week as a gainful means of increasing personal assets. Returning to High Security space has been - to say the least - a shellshock. I find myself directional scanning mission hubs instinctively, only to cringe when my scan sheet is nearly ten pages of drones and wrecks. I wonder if I need to clear a corporate hangar so I can store my valuables. I still can't get used to these things they call "gates".

Living in null security space - be it actual nullsec or k-space - changes the way you see the game. It's a slow progression, but once complete the change is immediate and startling. I find myself missing the antics of k-space.

No doubt a lot of you have seen the old Penny Arcade cartoon explaining anonymity and the internet in one neat little package, but for those who haven't, I'll post it here:



Living in k-space, minus the audience of course, is a lot like getting to be the "Shitcock" guy all the time! Now, to some of you, this may not sound like fun. Maybe it even sounds like a bad thing. Some of you may even be saying, "Well, yeah! But I can be the 'Shitcock' guy in Jita, and then I even have an AUDIENCE!". True enough - but you don't get to have the fun we do.

In the interest of proving an argument, let me provide you - the objective reader - with an example. Earlier this week, we had a fairly profitable class 3 wormhole open in our space. As any corporation would do, we decided to take it for all it was worth - despite knowing there were a few people 'home' as it were. We'd previously scouted the inhabitants, and besides a Covetor (used to place warp disruption bubbles.. WTF?!) we'd seen nothing bigger than a frigate. Surely, no obstacle for the Drakefleet.

We brought in the Drakefleet, and began running their sites. Shortly after we began, the aforementioned CombatCovetor decided to place bubbles at all of the exits. We took a break, destroying the mobile warp disruptor on the wormhole back home, and continued. Moments after returning to site running, our scout reports that the pilots from the native POS have swapped ships to CovOps frigates. They both leave the POS forcefield, and cloak. The rest of us continue blasting Sleepers into oblivion, eagerly awaiting the inevitable scan probes appearing on directional.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, there's twelve combat scan probes on our screens, and we debate returning home and swapping ships to harass the scanners. Before we can do so, however, the scout reports that the two CovOps have returned to their POS. One pilot swaps to the Covetor again, and presumably safespots. The other pilot ejects from his ship, and decides to have a siesta inside the POS forcefield.

We continue cleaning up sites, and eventually our scout reports that the brave pod pilot must have become a bit paranoid. He's just changed the name of his pod to simply "Capsule", rather than "Arthur 231's Capsule". Lacking anything better to do, we decide to have a bit of fun with him, and the following is the result:



..Yes, we all renamed our ships to his name. Why? Because it was funny. He logged shortly after - like a heartbroken Superman who's just had his identity revealed. There are times when I hate k-space, when I hate the boredom that often comes along with it. Other times, I wouldn't trade it for anything in the universe.

Because Fuck Highsec,
Alathus Christensen

Few things in EVE make me laugh quite like a bomber pilot who has NO idea how to use the ship he's flying. A brief recap of today's events is in order, and as such, I'll try to be as brief as possible.

The wormhole in which we've decided to make our home has a Static C3, which makes things quite nice for running sites, and carebearing it up. It also makes it quite nice for running into stupid people. At the risk of defamation of character, I'll leave the names out of it here to protect the involved people, however "special" he may have been.

Today's C3 opened to a nice quiet system with eight public sites and a few radar sites. A perfect opportunity to make some weekend ISK, says I. Most everyone agreed with me, and we began to assemble the usual participants. Now, at times, this can be a bit of a trial, as everyone has to do their hair, get the right ship, brush their teeth, floss their toes, and whatnot - and by the time we had assembled the Drakefleet, we were in for a shock. Not so much a shock as a moment of awe. Our first drake jumped through to begin bookmarking public sites, and through usage of her directional saw two Helios' and an Imicus. Three scanning ships. Prolific over-use of probes. Perhaps this should have been the point when I realized just how the day would go.

We placed a Falcon inside the system to practice his voyeurism and ran a few sites in an adjoining wormhole. While everyone else was returning home, I decided to do a bit of fishing. Our Falcon pilot had reported a Megathron (possibly failfit), as well as a Maelstrom at their POS. To be honest, I'd hit somewhat of a dry spell for kills, so I was itching for some kind of engagement.

Fast-forward roughly twenty minutes later and a few cruiserbait jumps in and out of their system, and the Falcon pilot reports that they've switched to a Scorpion, Maelstrom, and a Taranis. We also now know that these three ships are one main and two alts. I run back to the hangar, grab the trusty Tempest, and set off to play some "Antagonistic Sumbitch II".

After setting up just inside their wormhole, it takes a fair bit for any of them to make a move. At first, it's simply the Scorpion, uncloaking(?!?) and tossing a few volleys of cruise missiles.. I take it in stride, hop out, and hop back in. The Scorpion uncloaks(?!?) again as well as a Taranis dropping cloak(?!?) and staying a fair distance away. Eventually the Taranis pilot warps out, heads back to their POS, and switches out to a Nemesis.

And this is where things get a little.. well, to be honest, fucking retarded. The Nemesis pilot dissapears from D-Scan, I brace for the coming bomb...

...and he uncloaks ten kilometres off me, bomb flying off into the middle of nowhere, and he's on a collision course with the Tempest. I begin locking him up. He's still flying straight towards me. I lock him up just as he passes by the wormhole, and proceed to two-shot him into space-dust. I then spent a good five minutes laughing.

Ya see, kids, bombing should normally go something like this:

Are you approaching your target? Y/N> Y
Are you roughly thirty kilometers away from your target? Y/N> Y
Uncloak.. launch bomb when ready.

But it always amazes me how for some people, it goes more like this:

Are you approaching your target? Y/N> FUCKBEANS BANANASLIPPERS FIRE FIRE FIRE

When I was new to EVE, I always wondered how it was possible that so many people had so many kills. I wondered how it was possible for people to lose battleships to a single pilot in a T1 frigate. It's startling, but I don't wonder about these things anymore. It seems that stupidity from the real world has found it's way into our sandbox, and this is a most distressing time indeed.

Fuckbeans Bananaslippers,
Alathus Christensen

Including EVE servers, evidently, which seem to begin and end whenever they wish. In high security space, this really is not a terrible inconvenience - aside from a few lost drones, and the occasional failfit mission runner which manages to pop in the short moment before the server realizes that it should have worn it's brown trousers and preemptively shuts down.
However, for those who make their lives in 0.0, and more so in W-Space, a poorly timed disconnect can be possibly the worst thing to happen on a given day - and the best thing to happen to the person who gets to smack your face. Just jumped through a wormhole? Have fun logging in to the middle of space with no bookmarks. Just jumped through a gate in 0.0, only to find yourself in stasis inside of a bubble? I really hope you can log in before your captors.
But the point of this blog isn't to complain. I like EVE Online. Hell, if I didn't I probably wouldn't play it near so much. However, on the list of things to open with, server stability could definately use a bit of a boost.

With that rant out of the way, let me tell you a little bit about who I am inside the Matrix, as it were. I'm the CEO of a 45-man corporation which currently resides in W-Space. It's not without it's trials and tribulations, but in general it's much more interesting than grinding missions, or busting space rocks.
Being a CEO was never really something I particularly wanted to do, in EVE. The added responsibility can - at times - be a headache. I much prefer the freelance approach to EVE, flying around space like the star of a futuristic space opera (Flash!! Ooooo!). However it does have it's merits, as well, and it's something I've grown used to.
W-Space is not exactly the "place" to be if you want constant action 24/7. In fact, if W-Space were to have a recipe, I'd break it down a bit like this:

1 part waiting game
1 part strategy
1 part exploration
1 part OMGWTFBBQ

With that said, it should be noted that going from a life in HiSec to a life in W-Space can change people. It has a habit of nudging you in the direction of that familiar friend, "blowing shit up". Of course, you can't win 'em all. Sometimes you're the worm, and sometimes you're the hook. In the interest of being the hook, I've taken it upon myself to lay down some ground rules - should you decide to go exploring the land of the Sleepers.

1.) Please, please, don't jump into a wormhole solo in a T3 cruiser and assume that you're just fine. Assuming that you jump into one of the few wormholes inhabited by solely industrial corporations, you'll be fine - but to the rest of the wormhole populace, you're a flying killboard trophy. On that same coin, if you plan to fly T3, and you spend the ISK for a strategic cruiser, spend the ISK to fit it like a strategic cruiser.

2.) Use your directional scan. This is penultimate. I cannot tell you how important this is. However, if you'd like a friendly in-game mail from the Secure Commerce Commission, feel free to ignore this.

3.) Bookmark EVERYTHING. The wormhole you came in, the wormhole you go out of, the wormhole on the floor, the wormhole in your hamper, and the wormhole in that two day old pizza you're considering the edibility of.

4.) Don't sit on a wormhole and scan a system. Some people will tell you this will allow you to jump out should trouble come your way. I'll tell you that those people are stupid, and should be kicked in the nuts. Not only do the inhabitants have an easy way to find you, but they probably have an easy way to make sure you don't make it back through that wormhole. Fit a cloak, safespot your ship, deploy probes, engage cloak, and scan to your heart's content.

5.) Live a little, have some fun. After all, it's just a game. EVE is not SRS BSNS.

And with those five little rules, you'll be at least a little more survivable - and hopefully have a little more fun in W-Space.

Sniffly and Tired,
Alathus Christensen