Guns Ablaze

I’m not dead yet. I just haven’t had anything interesting to blog about lately. I need to go out and have interesting encounters (and by encounters I mean fights/ransoms/etc.), but some various things are keeping me from playing a whole lot of Eve. I’ll be back shortly with some interesting stuff, I promise. Especially once my super sekrit alt comes up with some interesting…uh…results.

Welcome to the twentieth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by 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!

With the recent completion of the 3rd installment of the Hulkageddon last month, @CyberinEVE, author of Hands Off, My Loots!, asks: ”Griefing is a very big part of EVE.  Ninja Salvaging, Suicide Ganking, Trolling, and Scamming are all a very large part of the game.  What do you think about all these things?  You can talk about one, or all…but just let us know your overall opinion on Griefing, and any recommendations you may have to change it if you think it’s needed.”

(Another short blog banter from me. Not a whole lot needs said.)

This is a subject near and dear to me and my answer should be fairly obvious to most readers. The reason Eve stands out so wonderfully amongst all of the MMO’s out there is the stories of griefing going on. The stories range from those found on C&P of griefing corps that wardec carebears to elaborate scams and corporate infilitration reported on by ISD. These are the acts that keep Eve interesting and we don’t need to change a thing about them.

Obviously, I’ve become a pirate over the past 3 months. I then started participating in Hulk smashing (AKA Suicide ganking). I’ve now started to head deeper into the black. Both of these projects will take some time before paying off, but I want to give them both a try. First up is scamming. I don’t know anything about this and I have a feeling that being stuck in lowsec outside of market hubs and the like will make this incredibly difficult. We’ll see, though. I don’t really expect to pursue this a whole lot, just here and there and hopefully someone somewhere will fall for my tricks.

Secondly, I’ve started up a super sekrit alt for the purpose of corporate theft and espionage. This will take some patience, obviously, but I hope to make this pay off. Also, it will be fun, I think. I was inspired by the recent posts by Captain Charismatic over at My Loot, Your Tears to start doing this. His recent posts on the subject were extremely intriguing and I highly suggest you go check them out.

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On another note, I’m finishing up my last week of work and getting ready to move back to school (\O/), hence why the posting has been slow as of late. Once I get back to school, posting should pick up as I generally have more free time at school than I do here at home.

Warning: Adrenaline fueled, overly-excited writing ahead.

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Tonight I had some free time so I decided to do some solo roaming about to see what was up. I hopped in my Rupture and did a quick lap around 2 of the nearby systems. On my way back through Gulmorogod I noticed a Maelstrom missioning. Only one other guy in corp at the time and neither of us had probes. So I let him be and reshipped to my Hurricane, Orion. After attempting to bait a Cyclone and then a Rupture/Harbinger duo unsuccessfully, I safed up in Gulmo and watched as the Maelstrom finished his mission or whatever he was doing. He left my scan for a bit and I readjusted to see him sitting on a gate. I warped on top of him and we had a good old fashioned standoff before he jumped through the gate. I immediately followed and we both held cloaks. A quick check of local showed he had no (immediately obvious) friendlies around. The moment he decloaked, I set a nice orbit and locked him up.

At this point I knew I wouldn’t be able to finish him and hold off the gate guns DPS, so I was really hoping my flashy status would bait him into attacking. And it worked! He started firing on me right away, so I returned fire.

?[ 2010.08.12 00:13:49 ] Jager Da > /emote facepalms

But wait! I made a huge mistake and forgot to activate my point, so he warped off to a station. Hanging my head in defeat, I followed. I landed right on top of him.

I set an orbit within neut range and then activated my point, guns and neuts, totally expecting him to dock up right away. Completely to my surprise, he didn’t and instead began firing on me. My nano fit kept his damage to a very bare minimum. I started chewing through his shields pretty quickly after my neuts impaired his ability to rep up. He eventually bled through into armor and I thought for sure he would disengage and dock up at any second. My ECM drones had already locked him out twice and my shields were holding strong at 70-75%. His armor bled fairly quickly and he entered structure. My drones got a third good jam and I thought for sure he would throw in the towel. He didn’t though, (or wasn’t able to fast enough) and exploded into a nice shiny fireball. I couldn’t grab his pod for a ransom attempt, though. I’m sure he would’ve docked up anyway…right?

I grabbed loot and drones and warped off, exchanging a few words in local with the unfortunate pilot. He apparently forgot or used up all of his cap booster charges, thus making my neuts that much more effective. After I got back I realized that my loot drop was actually quite nice. A Republic Fleet Gyrostabilizer dropped, which should be able to net me ~60mil in the region. A few other odds and ends dropped that will certainly help pad the wallet a few million. I decided to log after that and write this blog post, fearing that my now inflated ego would cause me to do something stupid.

Tonight’s lessons:

1. Being a pirate and flashy has very distinct advantages. Namely people shooting you on gates/stations and being able to fire back without gate gun interference. But! This can be a disadvantage as well.

2. Dual neut Nano Hurricanes make me happy. You should try one.

3. Patience is a virtue.

4. Activate point first!

We’ve opened up recruitment in Advocates of Sin, looking for some lowsec piratey types that want to pew pew. It’s a super-relaxed environment. No empty promises like ship replacement (no one really does that, anyway). We do have several corp members for moving crap from Rens (which is only 4 jumps away from home base). We operate in the Amamake area so there is always pew pew around. I’ve personally found plenty of chances to do some solo PvP in the area without getting blobbed right away. You just have to be careful. Fleets in [A-O-S] are always fun and exciting. Blah blah blah… More information can be found in Max’s forum post here: http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1364405

Join AoS – Pub for more info as well.

“You wont regret making this choice.”

–You really won’t. I haven’t.

Approximately 2 weeks ago I was roaming the high skies in search of some kills in my Rupture. I was safed up while scanning out a pair of Rifters (or something.. the details are sketchy). Suddenly, without warning, my entire screen turned black and froze up. I quickly alt+tabbed out, but was unable to. After a while, my computer simply turned itself off. When I was able to finally get my computer online, I tried to bring Eve up, but again it froze and my entire screen turned black. Rinse and repeat. Every program that used significant resources such as Eve or Photoshop or iTunes would cause my screen to freeze/go black and restart my computer. No idea why it did that, but it was the catalyst to do something I’ve been wanting and meaning to for a while – buy a new computer. So I did, and after an excruciatingly long wait, it has arrived. I am currently typing from that very machine while EVE downloads in the background. I’m hoping to get into Eve tonight, but with work in the wee hours of the morning, I doubt it will happen. Anyways, I look forward to getting back into Eve after an unintended absence. Let the pew pew commence!

This is my entry to the Inspired By Images Of Eve Competition 2. More details and links to all entrants can be found at Starfleet Comms.

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Jakob had been waiting for this day for many years. To finally captain his own starship to battle in defense of the Federation. He’d never been the most intelligent, barely making it out of the Academy, but he was hard working. He earned his right to pilot this vessel over years of serving aboard similar starships. Some of them were even piloted by Capsuleers. Those were the posts that taught Jakob the most and the ones he reflected on know as his Taranis was traveling through warp to the battle. But his thoughts were interrupted.

“Attention all captains. This is your squad commander. When we drop out of warp, it is our job to fend off the Caldari frigates until the Arazu pilot can light his cyno. If he can do that, our carriers can join the fight and send these scum back to where they belong. Steel yourselves.”

Jakob quickly relayed this message to his crew as well as asking for a run down on all systems. One by one, all systems were confirmed green. Moments later alarms rang, warning the crew that the ship was about to drop out of warp. The ship came out of warp seconds later. The sudden drop of speed made Jakob slightly queasy, like it always has. But the sight before him made it worse. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of Caldari frigates, cruisers, battleships and battlecruisers surrounding a massive ship that Jakob had never seen before. His ship’s systems informed him it was a Leviathan titan. Along side this massive ship floated two Wyvern supercarriers and four Chimera carriers.

Jakob snapped out of his awe in time to notice a Caldari hookbill bearing down on him. With a jolt, Jakob pushed the Taranis forward and to starboard while firing all gun batteries. The Hookbill had been on a straight approach, so every shot landed a direct hit and the Hookbill exploded. Jakob turned the ship towards the all-important Arazu as two Hookbills started firing on the Cyno ship. Jakob targeted the ship closest to him and fired a salvo as he passed. The first ship exploded and Jakob turned towards the second, only to see it explode as the rest of Jakob’s squad came into position alongside the Arazu. Sirens continued to blare as more Hookbills made their way towards the Arazu. Jakob led the charge against these ships. Jakob placed a glancing blow on his first target in this group. The Hookbill pivoted around and fired a salvo of missiles at Jakob, which placed a hit on his engines, completely disabling them. Jakob felt hopelessness as he drifted aimlessly. He continued to fire at the passing Hookbills. One of them noticed him drifting and fired a salvo of missiles at Jakob. Just before the missiles hit, Jakob saw the Arazu light the cyno. Instantly, a group of five Thanatos Carriers and four Nyx Supercarriers jumped in, followed by an Erebus titan. The last thing Jakob thought before the missiles hit was that the Federation would win this battle. His death meant the freedom for other Gallente men and women. He was happy.

A few seconds later, the missiles hit Jakob’s Taranis and it exploded in a flash.

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Go check out some of the other awesome stories in this competition that are linked in Max’s original post at Starfleet Comms.

Holy crap! An update on the Kairos Syndicate? But I thought you left? Well, I did, but I still sit in the public channel and occasionally talk to some of the new recruits as well as the guys I left in charge. Since I’ve still been getting some search hits leading to the blog and stats show some of you are still looking at the old posts on the Kairos Syndicate, I decided to see if Kastorey (the CEO of Kairos) would be willing to write a blog post for me on an update. Instead, he gave me a pretty thorough summary of Kairos’s growth over the last couple of months. So, I’m going to turn his summary into an update blog post.

Membership and Activity

The Kairos Syndicate has grown to 86 total members with a 96% activity rate (meaning regular log ons and no long unexcused absences). At any given time there are about 10-20 online running a fleet of some kind. Fleets are run regularly in the static C4 that is connected. These fleets are anything from wormhole collapsing fleets, to plex fleets, or home defense fleets. Fleets consist of RR setups with logistics support and dedicated salvaging and scouting roles. There are, on average, about two C4 fleets a day. These usually cover prime times for most time zones with good overlap of FC’s. When there isn’t a fleet up, pilots have the option of taking the highsec to get some supplies or running the C2 sites solo. All loot and salvage from these ops are sold every week and the profit is split using a highly secretive formula.

While the majority of Kairos is geared towards the combat side of wormholes (plexes and PvP), the leadership is looking into starting some industry and production. There is also the Planetary Interaction team that creates the fuel for the POS as well as other marketable items. The team is headed by the co-CEO, Thaeden. The requirements to join the team are fairly strict as Thaeden is attempting to get the most efficient corp setup as possible. Pilots in this team are paid from the corp wallet for their efforts.

Alliance with Selectus Pravus Lupus [SPLU]

Ashimat, CEO of SPLU, and Kastorey are working very hard to create an alliance between Kairos and SPLU. They’re very close to realizing this goal. Upon completion of this goal, Kastorey has the goal of having a smaller POS set up in SPLU’s home system so that “near graduates” of Kairos can live with and run with SPLU on a regular basis. There is also discussion to bring in a mining and industrial corp to round out the alliance. Those talks have yet to finalized to any degree.

Summary

TL;DR: Over the last several months both Ashimat and Kastorey have worked extremely hard to get Kairos going full steam. They have done an excellent job and the future looks bright. ISK, knowledge, and fun is found left and right.

If you have any questions, evemail Kastorey or join the KAIR_PUB channel.

So I’m not actually taking part in this blog banter because I really don’t want to get into the CSM/CCP debate/discussion/argument. And, frankly, I’m tired of it. I am going to point you to Casiella‘s post on this blog banter. It’s a great read and has some valid points. I agree a lot with what he says there. So, head over there (or for you Capsuleer users, go find the article in the feeds) and have a read. I suggest hitting up the site as well and reading the comments. There’s some good comments in there.

Blog Banter Bias: http://rift.chromebits.net/2010/07/21/2482/

Today is the last day of Hulkageddon. Before Hulkageddon started, I brought in 30 Thrashers with suicide gank fittings for the festivities. How many are left? 30. That’s right.. I didn’t gank a single Hulk, Retriever, Covetor, Orca, or anything at all. I totally failed at Hulkageddon. I’m a bit peeved I didn’t get to participate more, but this week turned out pretty crazy. Oh well, there’s always next time.

Now I just have to figure out what to do with these Thrashers…