Thursday, May 29, 2014

No Gain, No Time!

My plan was to publish a new post every two days. But things got in the way again!

I am currently at home studying like a mad man (actually procrastinating mostly) for a financial qualification exam... Hopefully it will benefit my career and whatnot... currently all the benefit I got from it is the joy of having a bunch of money removed from my bank account...

On to EVE:
I haven't played much, but have been watching a few streams! SirSqueebles and Hershman the most. Today I watched a bit a CODE dude flying in a fleet ganking +1Bn freighters.
Squeebles is very cool! He hit 4k viewers and bought a Dred so that people can shoot at it... He messed up a bit, and got stranded at his 2nd mid cyno. PL being loving guys, they hot dropped using a spy :) The fleet was open invitation. A Proteus joined the fleet, warped to the cloaked Dred, lit a cyno and like +10 supercaps (including a Revenant!?!?!) showed up and blapped him. Just gotta love the EVE community!

ISK wise I'm actually doing pretty well! Haven't update jEVEassets in like 2 months... so was a bit scared when I updated the API key and looked at the "tracker" graph! I was pretty lazy on my regional trading, but I still made good ISK! My worth is a bit less than 18Bn! Do you really need more ISK than that? Sure, if you want an SC you need a lot more, but even for a Dred or Cap this money is more than enough. I just want to plex my two accounts and have money for what I need. Don't want to "waste" all my EVE time updating orders sitting in station, when there are much coolers things to do!

PC stuff:
My PC crashes all the time! Can't play on two screens at all! Don't really feel like playing under these conditions... After the exam (June 7) I'll take it to the PC doctor :) I'm guessing that the SSD is old and going crap...

Working on a few new projects:
- Tornado suicide ganking
- Incursion Logi
- T1 Rig BPO set finalization


Fly on!

Sunday, May 25, 2014

Lucky Loot!


Just a quick post!

I've had enough of FW for a while. So I quit Minnie Mill and clone jumped to my Tengu. I set course to Dodixie. After 4 jumps I came across an unlooted yellow wreck 56km from the gate. I decided to slowboat!

I choose to risk going flashy yellow, so I docked up, emptied my cargohold and warped back to the wreck which I previously bookmarked.

I had to make two runs!


Didn't want to stay on grid long (even though the gate was very quite) with a yellow timer, so I had to leave the Geckos, hence the two runs :)



60MM for 5mins! Beat that ISK/hour... :)

Take chances and get rewarded! (Maybe don't risk your 1bn Tengu very often though!)

Fly on!

Saturday, May 24, 2014

I'm not a good person

tldr: I was previously in Gall Mil, but because Minmatar is T4 I joined them instead for the money! Even worse, I shot down one of my militia mates!

I needed to start a few research jobs in my POS using Butcher Hentes, so I quite Gall Mil, rejoined my own corp and set up the jobs (have to write my business post!). After my little wormhole adventure (check out the post) I decided to join the Minmatar Militia because they are T4 and can make more ISK!

I got off to a rocky start. Trying to find a novice plex wasn't easy and couldn't really find good fights and sort of got bored of always flying my Condor.

I wanted to wait for T2 Blasters before using a Merlin, but I couldn't wait. I should have! Then the second Merlin was even worse! Ship and pod on the Hek undock... Spammed dock instead of warping off to a distant planet! Bad sh*t!

I had enough of Merlins and had a Tristan in my hangar so I quickly made a fail fit and headed out! Eager to plex and make some LP! I always open the FW window and order the systems by distance and set my destination to the first offensive contested system :)

Finally found a novice plex in Kamela and started orbiting the plex beacon at 500m. (Brawl fit Tristan is what I was going for). After 5 mins a Firetail shows up. I don't bail. He comes into the plex and starts orbiting me at +30km. He is flashing red, so I lock and send drones to engage. Drones are chipping away at him slowly. He then suddenly decides to MWD at me and scram and shoot. I scram/web and overheat my armor repair like crazy! I'm at around 50% structure when he pops! "OMG! Faction frigate kill! Whooot!"

Local lights up:
Firetail pilot (FP): "Dude wtf?"
Me: "Skill mate!"
FP: "Man, im in your militia! I'm flashy. I know. Fix your overview!"
Me: "FFS!"
Other Amar pilot: "Awoxer with Skill! :)

I quickly log my second main and transfer him 17MM with an apology.
Lame by me :( I don't want to mess with OV settings. But I do have a Militia column, which I didn't play attention to... He didn't respond to my ISK transfer. So I guess we are all cool! :)

Life goes on! I rep up my damage and don't bail from the plex. There is minimal heat damage, but nothing extra... 2 minutes pass and a Condor shows up on short scan! "Oh I really hope I catch him!" He warps in, I scram and blap! Scrammed Condor = Dead Condor! The plex is captured soon after and I head on!

I find another plex and capture it without conflict. I call it a day and start heading home when I jump into a system with 2 hostiles on the gate! One is a Jaguar and I'm not sure if I can warp away in time. So I start burning back to gate... He thinks ahead and crosses the gate so he can catch me on the other side! His mate is left on the gate. "Dude, its only an Atron. It's in scram range. Don't jump just blap him!" And that's how it went! The Jaguar jumped back just after I killed the Atron, but I was able to warp off before he could point me.

Three kills in one night! Even though, the Firetail kill was technically an awox... He still did everything to not loose his ship! He wanted to kill me instead of convoing me, or bailing... So, I'm very proud of that kill! :)

I made a decent amount of LP and cashed out 78K as best as I could... Didn't sell the item yet (some weird implant), still need to contract it to my Jita alt.

I did manage to loose that hero Tristan two days later! Things started going south again, but that's for my next post!

Fly on!


Thursday, May 22, 2014

Do you w-space?

I always want to try out new things! Luckily I trained into a Tengu, so there isn't a lot of PvE content I can not try or at least poke at :) Wormholes were always a mystery to me and I never really attempted to mess around in them. But then I got an inkling!

I while back I read a post from Von Keigai : ISK in Wsapce. Feel free to read the whole post but the tl:dr = 92MM/hour doing small sites in a c4. I left a comment asking Keigai if about the same ISK could be made doing c2 or c3 normal anomalies. His answer was that isk/hour should be about the same, maybe a bit lower...

I had a bit of time this weekend and decided to give the whole thing a try! I trained my second main quickly into a dragoon with salvagers and then headed out to find a wormhole that leads from HS to a c3 or c2.

The Tengu fit is very close to the one I use for exploration. Changed the shield resist to better fit the omni damage that sleepers do, but that's it. So I went to hunt down a hole!

I thought it was going to be much easier! Had to spend a lot of time (waaay too much for my taste) to find a decent hole. Either it was a busy w-space system or the wormhole was just simple a HS-HS or HS-LS connection....

At last I found a C3. One online tower. No ships. Checked on staticmaper that the system had been quite for the past 48h and then moved my salvager to the wormhole in HS (to scout) and got ready to try a c3 site with my Tengu. Read a bit on eve survival what to expect in The Oruze Contruct. "Cool, dps is low and I've got like 1k tank. Neut? Not sure... probably nothing to care about. No scram= Happy days!"

I warped in. They started shooting and neuting... Not really sure what happened but long story short: they neuted me bad and I had to warp out while praying I don't get capped out and loose my Tengu! :) "Ok, so find a c2 instead!"

I again had to look for ages to get a good c2... I ran the site now without problem (the sleepers here were not neuting). Nobody troubled me and everything went fine. Other than the fact that those freakin' sleeper battleships take ages to go down! What the hell are the made of?! (*sleeper loot*) The annoying thing is, that you can't warp in your salvager to start clearing the wrecks, because the battleship switches aggro to it! "Not cool! Warp, warp, warp!"

I cleared two site, got about 35MM loot including salvage (should definitely start taking screenshots for these! Might spice up the blog too). The two sites took about 25-30 minutes Think it could be doable to have ~100MM/hour after a bit more practice.

Conclusion: If you live in a c2, it's doable to make solo (with an alt) 100MM isk/hour ratting. But don't try day tripping. It takes way too much time to find a suitable C2.

W-space PvE was a let down for me... Low ISK and a lot of added risk! Sleepers are a pain and you can easily get blobbed or hunted or something! (W-space is dangerous...)
I'm happy I tried this out though! I can now say that "I have done w-space PvE!"
FW frigate PvP is much more entertaining (and can possible make more money) with less downside potential (loosing my Tengu would hurt bigtime).
I will just stick to regional trading for my money and FW frigate pewpew for my adrenaline dose :)

I encourage everyone to try out new stuff! Don't just stick to one role of play!

Fly on!

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Nullsec wannabe

This is not going to be major news to anyone who has looked at the My EVE history page recently, but there is a new piece added!

I wrote about the first part of my "adventure" in sov nullsec. For veterans and general nullsec people the info/story might not hold that much interest, but I remember being a noob and hearing about Asakai (and now B-R) and envisioning nullsec but now knowing any details!

Well the following short piece is just my small bit in nullsec. Basically every blog (or even CCP) wants capsuleers to leave highsec and go to null or lowsec. I strongly recommend it to anyone who hasn't lived in nullsec to try it for just a couple of months (you can always move back!).

Think I was pretty lucky with the Hungarian alliance accepting me. Even if you can't join you own nation's null bloc, you can always join Brave Newbies. From what I have read in the media, they would be definetly the bloc I join! :)

Anyway, here is the piece:

Moving down (written:5/17/2014):
So my colleague left my firm and then left EVE shortly after... But I had big plans! I was going to apply to HUN Reloaded (RAX ticker) and move down to nullsec. I filled out and application form and sent it to their recruiter. A few days later I had a "job" interview via TS3. The recruiter was really helpful and explained that I will be joining their training corp and after 3 months I can apply into one of their main corps. I have to attend classes to be eligible for "passing" the training corp.
I accepted the conditions, but I really doubted that I would have time to attend all those mandatory trainings (don't want to spoil the story, but I only attended like 2 classes during my time with RAX).
I was to move down to their pocket in Immensea and the recruited explained that they have JF service from a specific system (I'm not gonna name it!). All you have to do is set up a private contract to a given char and they will move your ships (repacked) and other stuff down to GXK free of charge.
So, I sold all my stuff, repacked a few of my ships and moved down! The recruiter said that I could either death clone down to their system or can try getting down there on my own.
I was young and brave! Fitted up an Atron and set the shortest route from Dodixie to GXK. This was the outcome: Atron and Pod (Dat Atron :O !) Was a "typical" bubble gate camp by -A-. Blapped me easily, but I woke up in a new clone down in GXK!
The rules of living with RAX:
- When online you always have to be logged into TS3 (I usually just logged in, joined TS and set myself AFK)
- When undocking you have to join the RAX Home Def fleet! (I always joined, was no big deal)
- Don't mine are rat when there's a neut in the system (we were pissing of some alliance and they occasionally placed cloaked neuts in our ratting system. Sucks!)
- Report anything you see to the intel channel (that channel was pretty cool! Renters always wrote intel and you could track ships move in and out of our space.)
I got to attend an alliance meeting once and learned a bunch of interesting stuff about RAX. This is the summary:
HUN Reloaded is an Hungarian sov holding alliance living in Immensea. They are blue with N3 and have access to N3 coms and whatnot. They actually receive renter income because RAX is part of the N3 coalition and gets a slice of the renter money. RAX is pretty active and is present in almost all the big coalition fights! (next time you see a battle report where its n3/pl vs CFC, check if RAX is there! They are great guys and were always loyal to N3)
I got some info about jump bridges and POSes.I didn't really know (have still never used one) what a jumpbridge is, and have never seen a POS before (at the time of writing I own one in HS) :P

Was thrilled to be part of this and was looking forward to doing stuff in Nullsec! Hungarian people, cool stories, huge losses, huge kills and the thrill of ("They could be camping our station any time, any day!")

Sunday, May 18, 2014

Almost there

I have written up two new segments of the My EVE History page! 
Nothing really fancy but had  a bit of time and want to finally catch up to current day :)

The new sections: 

Trading for my riches!
I have been trading alongside the whole PI project. Was making about the same amount as with PI (around 300-400MM per month). Nothing fancy just basic station trading in Dodixie. Grew slowly up to trading basic implants (10MM price). At the end of the project I also had a trader in Amarr and one in Jita. Was trying to make some profit at those stations too, but Jita was horrible for me in terms of station trading. Amarr was better in terms of profit but couldn't actually dedicate time to the Amarr trader to make serious ISK :(
If you were wondering, I did only have one account and the Jita trader was also the secondary PI character :)
Didn't use any spreadsheets nor any third party tools. Looked at the price chart (didn't even know there was a table view to see historic prices and volumes) and if it looked good to me, I would set up a buy order.
I didn't train trading really that much. On Butcher Hentes I had (and still have) 53 orders. That was all I needed, didn't even use all of them most of the time. I didn't train Margin trading (the skill that allows you to reduce the collateral you need to post for a buy order). Don't really "believe" in that skill :)
I would rather want to have a clear picture all the time of the ISK I have, rather than always checking my escrow...
Updated orders in the morning and once in the afternoon. I work so can't really compete with no lifers or Bots. I'll update orders and maybe cut of 10% from the market orders and its done. I made pretty good money with relatively low effort. Much less effort than PI and way less than with missions or mining! :)
Was making good money, could have afforded cooler ships, but didn't have the skills :( It got boring quick :(

Just flying with no reason!:
One of my colleagues at work was tired of GW2 and wanted something new. Think it was around the time that Asakai hit the news. So he went ahead and tried EVE! After installing the game he texted me "How do I make the ship go somewhere? I can only warp and dock!" (He was a gamer all his life and knows perfect English! This is why people quit EVE! Things like this!
Anyway, he played around a bit, but we didn't really fleet up or anything. He was big on exploration in lowsec. No combat sites, only relic and data. Once I went along with him, to help "protect" him as he was constantly being shot down by locals. Nothing happened though. No one came and exploration was quite boring for my taste plus the loot spew mechanic is awful and I had no idea which cans to go for.
I suggested to him, that we should leave living in high sec and go to LS and do some PVP. I knew nothing about PvP and he didn't either so we scratched that plan :)
Then, I wanted to try joining the Hungarian 0.0 alliance: HUN Reloaded. But my colleague had enough of EVE and didn't extend his subscription after the 20+30 days (trial + 30 days).
I was alone again!

Saturday, May 17, 2014

Shout out!

Pilgrim in Exile a couple of weeks ago posted this!

I have contacted him, and he was kind enough the give me a shout out!

As a results my blog has been getting a significant amount of hits! (well at least a lot more than before :P )
Left a comment on the shout out post to thank Pilgrim in Exile (not sure what his in game or blogger name is).

Just wanted to make a quick post, thanking him again and welcoming all the new readers!

Have a few new posts planned... Not much has happened in EVE to be honest, but I have made a few changes to my current projects!

Fly on!


Wednesday, May 14, 2014

My Tengu and Eve-Uni

So, after getting my first kill in FW, I decided that I will go do some exploration as a change!
Didn't want to leave Gall Mill so I decided on going to Serpentis Lowsec. Tweaked my fit a bit and decided on this for combat:

[Tengu, combat]
Caldari Navy Ballistic Control System
Caldari Navy Ballistic Control System
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II

Cap Recharger II
Cap Recharger II
Federation Navy 10MN Afterburner
'Stalwart' Particle Field Magnifier
Pith C-Type Large Shield Booster
Kinetic Deflection Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II

Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Rage Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Rage Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Rage Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Rage Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Rage Heavy Assault Missile

Medium Capacitor Control Circuit II
Medium Hydraulic Bay Thrusters I
Medium Rocket Fuel Cache Partition I

Tengu Defensive - Amplification Node
Tengu Electronics - Emergent Locus Analyzer
Tengu Offensive - Accelerated Ejection Bay
Tengu Engineering - Capacitor Regeneration Matrix
Tengu Propulsion - Gravitational Capacitor

And this is what I usually use for travel and data/relic sites:

[Tengu, travel]
Warp Core Stabilizer I
Warp Core Stabilizer I
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II

Data Analyzer I
Relic Analyzer I
Federation Navy 10MN Afterburner
'Stalwart' Particle Field Magnifier
Pith C-Type Large Shield Booster
Explosive Deflection Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II

Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Rage Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Rage Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Rage Heavy Assault Missile
Sisters Expanded Probe Launcher, Sisters Core Scanner Probe
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II

Medium Capacitor Control Circuit II
Medium Hydraulic Bay Thrusters I
Medium Rocket Fuel Cache Partition I

Tengu Defensive - Supplemental Screening
Tengu Electronics - Obfuscation Manifold
Tengu Offensive - Covert Reconfiguration
Tengu Engineering - Capacitor Regeneration Matrix
Tengu Propulsion - Intercalated Nanofibers

I headed out from Dodixie and got to the non FW lowsec part of Placid. After a couple of empty (sig wise) or busy systems (pilot wise) I found one with only me in local and 3 sigs. Warped to a planet at distance and started scanning. Don't remember what two sigs were, but the last one was a Gas site. I decided to fully scan it down, and it turned out to be a Gas/Combat site, with some potential nice loot. I refit, using the mobil depot I carry around and started clearing the site.
(I have since run a similar site and got a few reactions and a drug manufacturing skillbook. Total loot was about 60MM for about 30mins. Happy days!)

After a couple if minutes, a second pilot enters local and warps straight into my site. Instantly approaches and points me in his Maulus! "Oh crap, what is he doing!" I act quick: Lock, and shoot him with Rage missiles. Didn't want to waste time loading Javelins. He is dropping waaaay too slowly... Then suddenly 8-9 EVE-Uni pilots enter the system. I realize the issue and tell my girlfriend that I'm going to loose the Tengu! (she knows its my most expensive ship). I align toward a stargate just in case.

At this point I'm totally panicking and thinking of ways I can escape. During these 3-4 seconds other EVE-Uni ships start entering the site (I remember seeing a Hawk) I don't realize but the Maulus is dieing pretty steadily and then to my surprise he explodes! I act quick and initiate warp! I'm outta there! I was raised on WoW so I always troll when I get the chance "EVE uni fail!" goes into local by me :) No reply though :(

As a land on gate the message comes up that I can't jump because I was just recently killing someone :) There is also an EVE-Uni Thorax on the gate! "Oh common! Don't mess it up now!" I decide to initiate warp across the system toward the other gate. The Thorax luckily doesn't act so I get into the long warp. The timer expires and I happily jump to the next system (no idea which one). There are again a couple of EVE Uni ships on the grid! "You gotta be kiddin me!" I spam warp to dock into a station and manage to get away! I log off and tell my GF the story and that I'll need to go back to my mobile depot!

My situational awareness is getting much better now. Shooting the Maulus asap and aligning instantly was a huge move! Without the align I would have got tackled by the Hawk (but who know, maybe this would have happened: Sick s***!. Was happy to get my second solo kill. Even though it was just a Tengu vs Maulus :)

Fly on!

Sunday, May 11, 2014

More pew pew, less failing!

I had my first solo kill!

If that was all I posted, it would still be my best post yet :P
Anyway, a few things have happened since my last update, so here is one!

Let's go in chronological order:

May 2nd:
Up till April 27th I have been failing hard in FW and didn't have a single solo kill. Then this happened:
AFK on the gate. Poor dude left his ship in space on the gate. At first I zapped past him. Then after 5 mins I came back again through the gate and noticed him still there! I locked, TP, point and LML away!
Got the Sentinel and his pretty expensive pod! It was a free kill but I was totally stocked after it.
I later lost my Condor due to being careless... Warped in to a Jaguar and he killed me easily... no big story here.

May 4th:
Just a typical loss here. But I want to add, that the fight was extremely close! I was plexing, orbiting with MWD the beacon at 18km. I see him on D-scan, I get ready. He warps in, I lock, LML, TP and orbit. At first the fight seemed to go great. He was in armor pretty quick and he didn't really manage to get close and web/scram. But then he suddenly he started to close distance and was applying damage. I popped when he was at around 40% structure! One more fire with the LML would have done it :S 
I have no idea if he had links or used boosters or just simply overheated his MWD, but he was chasing me at +4k m/s while I was running trying to keep distance going around 3.5k m/s.
I should have overheated my LML sooner and also should have overheated my MWD! With those changes I believe I could have gotten him. Anyway, was a prick Goon (Yes, I do hate Goons! N3 FTW!) but he did "gf" in local, so was all cool :)


May 5th:
Here it is! How it happened: I was bored with plexing and nobody coming to fight me... True, it might be kinda hard to get a fight with a Condor while plexing. Guess nobody would really want to engage a kiter with him having the home field advantage i.e.: range! :)
So I decided I will go to Stay Frosty's (SF) new home: Ishomilken. The previous day I have happily offensive plexed a novice complex while like 13 SF was in the system. So wanted to try again and then troll SF for being pussies and not killing easy targets in their home system :D
I got into a novice plex. Local was around 15, with 1-2 squids and the rest SF. 5 minutes passed and I almost accepted my fate of not finding a fight, but then an Atron pops up of short D-scan. I was like "Oh man! This is going to be sweet! Just don't f*** up!". He comes into the plex, I orbit, lock, LML, TP and point. He is in SF!This is going to be interesting!
Range is good, point is good, and LMLs are eating up his shield. No rep mods, so he was steadily going down. But he wasn't going easy! He was wobbling like a hooked fish! He was desperately trying to overheat his AB and get out of point range. But I was controlling him. I overheated my point when he was nearing 24k range and also hit approach instead of orbit. After a bit of time he went down! Was totally shocked and could barely think :) Gfs in local were exchanged and then I wanted to get close and loot his wreck. At that point one of his corp mates came into the plex, so I bailed instantly!
Did he call out on coms that he is getting raped and called in his mate? SF blobbing again I see :D
First true solo kill! (Bare in mind, that I don't fleet with anyone, so all kills are going to be solo!)

These were the highlights of the week! Have an other great exploration story coming up! I decided to take out my Tengu. Because "I am an absolute beast now in PVP!" :D

Fly on!

Thursday, May 8, 2014

Drink and Fly

Just a quick post!
It's a tough week at work so not much EVE going on.
But today one of my mates came over and we started drinking...

As natural I was logged in to EVE and went into Ishomilken to "just look around" and when my mate came back from the toilet I went outside with him to the balcony. After 5 mins I realized I had been in FW space AFK!

This is the outcome: Condor and then Pod .
Rixx is on the KM! Trying to blob me I see :)
No idea what happened on the pod kill... Think he called in one of his mates so that he can get the KM... Lame, if true!

Out to the pub!

Morale of the story: don't drink and fly! :)

ps: last time my mate was over: Feeling brave and taking the shortcut through LS.

Fly on!

Thursday, May 1, 2014

Hard times in FW

Sorry for the late update but it has been a really busy week.
On FW I sorta got burned out, given that I lost 200M ISK on ships while not getting a single kill... True on my KB I got two kills but they weren't actual solo PvP kills as they were kills on targets on which I inflicted but someone else killed a bit after.
So I didn't really feel the urge to log in, loose money and get my ship exploded.
Naturally I have become more and more careless and lost my pod 3 times... Those were the most expensive losses.

On my main (Butcher Hentes) I trained into T2 rockets and LML, now training weapon upgrades lvl5 to make fitting easier. Wanna learn hybrid weapon skills next! Not giving up on FW! :)

On my second account I've got a invention alt (that I still haven't written about) and my secondary main which is getting trained into capitals! No idea if I'll get there but would be cool to fly an Archon. First want to train her into an Orca. Might eventually become useful!

Just a few words on my training!

Definitely want to write about the industry changes/blogs! tl dr: Horrible S***!

Heads up: Each first week of a new month is a nightmare at work... I won't go into details but I don't really get to log in much during the first week. But have the weekend to maybe squeeze some gametime :)

Fly on!