New grounds

Yes, I know, I'm starting this post the same way as I've started previous ones.
It's been a while since I wrote a post on here, a little bit more than two months to be accurate. But I guess a person has to have his priorities. So real life went down and pulled me out of space for a while. And to be honest, I haven't got the same time to put into New Eden since then. Of course all of this has had it's reasons. Going back to the beginning of april, I was doing pretty good as I had moved back to my null sec alliance who lived out in Syndicate and I was getting adjusted to my surroundings. But after a few weeks I received the message that we were moving out to Sov. null sec to give BNI a helping hand. As I had just completed the task of moving all my stuff I wasn't that keen on repeating the whole tedious process again. At the same time I wasn't able to be online for a few days, and when I did log in, there was no-one from the alliance to be seen. They all had moved to catch and most ops were going on at nighttime for me as I'm european and our main leaders and fc's are American. So there I was contemplating about what to do, but to me there weren't that many options as I was having less regular time to be online, so I couldn't participate in ops organized by our alliance. And of course when I did have the time, there were no ops planned.

So I left the game for a few weeks, being dissapointed and disillusioned, but soon enough space called out to me again, like it has done for over 2 years now. There I was, sitting in a NPC station deep down in Syndicate, with a large hostile German corporation who took over our home system. Not many options for me but to leave for high sec through a suicide jump.

With all my stuff pretty much locked down in null. I decided to start my own little corp and focus a bit  on the industry side of things combined with trading. I joined up with some old friends from back in early 2012 and hung out being a total care bear. Setting stuff up, looking for trade routes and doing some small ops with the 5 of us was fun but became a bit stale after a few months as you don't have the constant threat of null or the large amount of corporation members ready to join up. I've been struggling with this stalemate for a few weeks now, but as I'm only able to play the game on a casual basis I'm getting the impression, there isn't much else out there. Luckily I know that statement isn't true as you can do plenty of stuff in New eden while being a casual player. I just need to go out and set up a plan, guess that'll be my primary goal in Eve at the moment.

to be continued...

Keep that eye on local!

Having two screens can be a blessing but also a curse sometimes. So there I was ratting in asteroid belts on a very quiet evening in our home system in Syndicate. Everything was going steady and I kept my alt his station trading in check on my second screen.

After an hour or two of keeping both up it was time for some good old entertainment as I kept up ratting. So I started watching a few Conan videos on YouTube. It couldn't hurt that much as it had been quiet in local all this time.

Things went fine and my focus on local started to fade slowly as it was starting to get late and I was getting tired.

A random glimpse on local made me spot a single neutral, but as we are nrds in our system I didn't move to safety directly. He entered grid in what seemed a few seconds after I noticed him and scrambled me in an instant. Luckily I was sporting a heavily armoured Hurricane and my attacker just a crow but still I was stuck. The moment he scrambled me other neuts started popping up in local.

With a pumping heart and suddenly feeling very hot I contacted my alliance mates in our chat channels as I wasn't on comms. After some desperate messages and getting on teamspeak as fast as I could my mates started warping in and fighting my attackers consisting of three crows and another ship I can't remember.

I managed to warp away after they dropped scrams and we killed one of the crows. A mate lost his Algos in the fight but we hit them back when they docked up. They reshipped in destroyers but that wasn't enough to counter our 6 thrashers on the undock.

At the end some went their way in their pod or some woke up in a fresh clone but the important thing was that we had some goodfights and content on a quiet evening. Still the lesson learned for me that day was never go out ratting without being on comms and don't lose sight on local. Simple and obvious things but easily forgotten when feeling safe and cozy!

Updated my CSM 9 list, only 4 to go!

Updated the CSM9 section, with the first 5 candidates I support!

Check it out!

There's no place like...

I can't seem to decide what my main focus is in eve. After almost  2 years of playing I've been carebearing in high sec with mining and doing missions.  I've been active in null sec engaging in  pvp and I focused on exploration a while right after the odyssey expansion. But I can't seem to find a home system. I went back to null sec for a while but the overcrowded systems in providence made me regret that decision pretty soon. So a few days ago I started to move back to high sec to keep my alts company and to help them out doing various things. One of those things is mining gas. I haven't been in many wormholes during my eve career but Ive been scanning them down and exploring them a bit with my alts but as they are mainly industrial characters and have no to little fighting skills its been hard clearing the data and relic sites from the sleepers. So that's what I've been doing with my main lately, clearing sleepers from exploration and gas sites for my alts to move in and mine or to hack some modules. As I said I've never been much in wormholes and the easthetic about them is really appealing to me, but as I stated before in this entry I can't seem to keep my focus on wormholes alone. For instance mining gas was cool for a while and made me some nice isk but I couldn't keep it up for more than 2 hours. When that much time has passed in one play through I need to change up my activity or else I get bored. And that's a bit my curse in this game as every endeavour seems to take ages. Still I keep on flying around and doing my thing, always aching to try new things out.

Something to listen to

Well, I guess I am not your most typical eve player. For one, I dont like to be talking about fittings all day. I know my way around the modules to make a decent fit. But I'm not really interested in getting a bonus of 5% dps or getting the max out of my capacitor by trying out stuff on Eft. I also am very interested in the back story and lore about new eden unlike a lot of other players. It seems to me that most people dont even care or notice all the rich lore. I just finished reading the first book and I think it was an awesome story. It truly expands the experience you get when flying around new eden. Not only the books but also the free chronicles give you an awesome inside look on the culture and habits of the four main races. You can even combine it with your playstyle, for example reading them while mining or while you sit cloaked at a gate looking for reds. And even when that takes up to much for your attention you can listen to the audio version available through various kinds of podcasts. Like eve reader etc. I listen to podcast or audiobooks most of the time while playing eve because I get a bit worn out on the ingame music. Especially when you are stationed in null sec or in a wormhole.  So instead listen to the massive amount of eve online podcasts out there and learn a lot about the game and the players within it. This way you can also combine both worlds,  the player created one and the lore one. By the way, there are many podcasts like "legacy of a capsuleer" or "cap stable" who do interviews with the new candidates for thr ninth CSM. Check em out and don't forget to vote!

The B-R5RB Conspiracy

Huge ships have been blown up, tears have been harvested and Eve Online made the news headlines again. The B-R5RB battle happened exactly one year after the Asakai event, and if I put on my tinfoil hat for a second I’m starting to sense some strange coincidences around this event.

Let me explain. First of all, this battle at B-R5RB happened at the exact same day as that other huge battle in Asakai in 2013. This was a huge battle, the biggest battle ever in the history of Eve Online but the server did not crash and everything with the Tidi went fine. This is remarkable because of the problems the server had during the fight in HED-GP which was a less large battle by a long shot. Both fights weren’t planned but the huge one did not have any problems server wise. Of course the battle at B-R5RB lasted for a long while so that the ccp employees could reinforce the node and keep up with all the data but still… the difference between the two events is striking.

Then there is the subscription topic that has been heavily talked about in podcasts and in all kinds of articles and blogposts with the most prominent one on TM.com (http://themittani.com/features/falling-subscription-numbers-what-can-be-done). The subscription numbers have been dropping a while after the release of Retribution which was a huge success for CCP but Odyssey plus Rubicon were not as successful and there's been a little subscription drop instead of gain. This has been a topic for the first two weeks of January and lot's of people were thinking about how to get more people to join the game. Two or one week later, a huge battle occurs out of the blue and lot's of new players are pouring in at this moment.

Also there's the update on Rubicon released the 29th of january. Just at the same time Eve was getting headlines everywhere. This was just great for CCP as they could do a live event for the release. But they focused heavily on the new influx of players by explaining the player interaction like the CSM. The people from the CSM also just left CCP HQ because of the winter summit, right before the huge battle. So interviews with them were made so they could explain to the new players what CSM is all about. So a lot of focus on the new players, who are pouring in at the same time, what a coincidence!

And to finish the conspiracy theories, PL just made a deal with the CFC to evacuate their stuff out of the BR station that's estimated to be in the hundreds of billions of isk. My only guess the goons would do this is so they could do another great promotional battle in the future. It wouldn't shock me if the news came out later that CCP made a deal with CFC and PL to engage in a huge battle for promotional reasons. As all kinds of weird deals have been going on between CCP and player based stuff (SomerBlink anyone?).

Just to make something clear here, I'm not convinced this is the truth, but I've been thinking about these events and it's noteworthy to say the least. I just said to myself "That's some nice tinfoil hattery you got there, why not write it up?!" so I did!

From right under their noses

If I have to admit one thing about my current Eve career, it's the fact that I'm not making much progress aside from the daily PI income and adjusting my skills from time to time. I've been hopping between a few different corporations but not really finding a true home. Ah we'll see, at least I'm back in null which feels good. But sometimes, most of the time when you least expect it, something truly amazing and exciting happens in Eve.

But let's start at the beginning, I was still in my previous RP corp in high sec. bumming around, returning from a short exploration trip to Syndicate. It was a fruitless venture with only a few sites found and they turned up to be bait (only one or two containers left with at least one capsuleer in system, probably with an eye on the site).

So I went back home to safe Tourier ready to collect my daily PI spoils and log off as I was tired from work. It was on my way back with only one jump to go that I noticed a Yellow battleship wreck floating about 20km from gate with no one to be found on grid. I was awake and sitting straight in an instant, putting the pedal to the metal in my Mammoth to reship and return. Maybe I was able to loot the stuff before the owners returned or maybe it was already too late, who knows. I reshipped in my cheetah and made my way back as fast as I could. As soon as I entered system, I noticed a domi and cane from the same corp as the owner of the wreck who also just jumped in. I raced to my bookmark with a pounding heartbeat and arrived first as I seemed to be alone. Without wasting a second I looted the wreck which gave me a suspect standing, so everyone was free to engage me but most importantly it had a 35mill loot. Still I felt quite confident on surviving as I only had to make one jump to get to my home system and I had a cloak. It was only a matter to get out of the spot before the others arrived. And that's just what happened, halfway into my warp acceleration the cane entered grid with the domi close behind. Just in time to give them a quick wave in local and to haul ass back home.

With 35mil extra loot in my container and a feeling of excitement and tension I logged out with a smile. Stealing loot from right under their noses felt amazing and more importantly for once I didn't feel as a total noob playing this game.