Close, but not close enough… yet

As you may already be able to tell, I haven’t been playing EVE as much as I originally intended to over the past couple weeks. Unfortunately that was mostly my fault as I, rather foolishly, decided to re-activate my EVE Online account during the last few weeks of the college term. And as a result of that I was way too busy finishing off college work to get into EVE even for a little while. What little time I did have, I spent playing Spore (which I bought only recently).
Luckily though, my Christmas holidays have now started so I’m going to be gifted with hours upon hours of free time.

During the one or two times I was actually able to get into EVE, I didn’t really get anything constructive done (on my part anyway). I got quite a bit done for Heather though, on the other hand.

After making my way to Duripant, where she ended up starting, I bought myself a few EP-S Gaussian I Excavation Pulse mining lasers and fitted them to my old Pirating Brutix as that was the only ship I took there.

Blasphemy, right?

Surprisingly, after about half an hour of mining we got just over 9000m³, so I decided to stop there as that was roughly the capacity of the Iteron Mk I I bought. I wish I’d known how good a Brutix can be at mining back when I’d started out, I would be a lot richer than I am at the moment. I’m sure that there’s countless weeks of Brutix mining I could have done while waiting for my Mining Barge skills to train. I could be quite a rich man, as opposed to my 5ish mil right now.

That little bit of mining got us a hefty (newbie-wise) 330,000ish ISK, which I split 50/50 with Heather to go towards buying her first frigate. I did try to convince her that I didn’t need the money but she insisted that I took at least half since I did most of the mining.
While I will admit I was enjoying the somewhat relaxing mining, I was itching for someone to try and steal our ore so I could lock the bastard and stop him in his tracks. Maybe do a bit of ransoming while I was at it. Ah well, maybe another time.

I’m going to try and see if Heather will write a blog post about her experience on her EVE trial but we’ll see. I’m interested in how she felt about EVE Online itself and her time spent learning how to play.
Time to see if I can figure out the Authors & Users section of the WordPress Dashboard.

Fly safe y’all.

Corp Info & Ship Setup

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to get into EVE as much as I would have liked over the past week. And because of this, I don’t really have anything interesting to write about. So, I’ve decided to use post this to get a bit of help from you lovely lads and ladies.

Firstly, I’ve finally gotten sick of being in an essentially dead corporation. Since I first posted about my corporation leaders leaving their posts to go ratting in 0.0, there’s been no change. So, I’ve decided to leave and find another more active corporation. You can find my character info below or at my Corporation Recruitment Info page.

As you may know, I am currently looking for a corporation.

In regards to the kind of corporation I’d like to join, I don’t have any particular preference. I’m happy in any line of work. I have decent PvP skills and a couple of combat able ships; as well as decent mining skills, a Covetor Mining Barge and an Iteron Mk V (with 29,000 m3 cargo space). So I can really be put to use anywhere.
I’m looking for a corporation preferably with people active around my time zone (GMT) but I’m prone to late nights at times so any time zone will be fine. I’d prefer a corporation located around the Caldari regions (The Forge, etc.) purely for ease of travel but I am willing travel to anywhere I am needed.

So, let’s move onto what I have to offer.

• A little PvP experience from my days as a solo pirate.
• Already in possession of some PvP-ready ships.
• Don’t smack-talk.
• Own a working headset. Headset currently broken but will get another when I can afford it.
  
• Will happily join you in low sec and 0.0 systems, whether it be to mine, haul or take part in combat of any kind (PvP or PvE)
• Can fly frigates, destroyers, cruisers, battlecruisers, and battleships. But I do not own a battleship as of yet.
• Can fly a Covetor Mining Barge and an Iteron Mk V ideal for hauling large amounts of minerals, ore, items, etc. (as mentioned above).
• Can make graphics. See my EVE-GFX gallery for examples.
• Discount prices (50% off) on graphics made for corp members (signatures, etc.) or the corp as a whole (banners, headers, posters, etc.).

You can find my character info (such as skill points, current skills trained and ships I am able to fly) at inEVE.

If you want to know anything that I’ve left out, either leave a comment here, on the post that brought you here or send an EVE-mail to Godlesswanderer.

Secondly, after my failed 0.0 ratting escapade, I’ve realised I may need a new fitting for my precious Myrmidon. I know there are some (well, a lot) of you out there that are a lot better at fitting ships effectively than me, so I’d be eternally grateful if you could suggest a ship fitting that will stop (or at least decrease the likelyhood of) me getting my arse handed to me by NPC pirates.

[Myrmidon, Current Setup]
Medium ‘Accommodation’ Vestment Reconstructer I
Medium ‘Accommodation’ Vestment Reconstructer I
1600mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
N-Type Explosive Hardener I
N-Type Kinetic Hardener I
N-Type Thermic Hardener I

Warp Disruptor II
Fleeting Propulsion Inhibitor I
Sensor Booster II
10MN Afterburner II
Medium F-RX Prototype I Capacitor Boost, Cap Booster 400

Heavy Electron Blaster I, Uranium Charge M
Heavy Electron Blaster I, Uranium Charge M
Heavy Electron Blaster I, Uranium Charge M
Heavy Electron Blaster I, Uranium Charge M
E5 Prototype Energy Vampire
Drone Link Augmentor I

[empty rig slot]
[empty rig slot]
[empty rig slot]

Ogre II x3
Ogre II x2

That’s all from me today. Fly safe.

Back and ready for action!

So, here I am. Back from my month or so of only going online at my girlfriend’s house for about 10 or so minutes a week, and all settled in my new home. I originally intended to only be gone for about a week but unfortunately we couldn’t get into the new house as soon as we moved. After having moved in, I had to wait for the phone line to be activated and then for Demon to get us connected to the internet. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that easy and we had problems with the router and the phone line sockets in the house; and so only managed to get connected a couple days ago.
As a result of all this, I haven’t really been able to keep up with as much EVE related news as I promised I would as unfortunately time and my lack of internet didn’t permit it.

I’ve only really managed to get into EVE once over the past couple days and that was largely uneventful. It seems that something strange might have happened in the month I’ve been gone. Whereas my home system (Tasti) used to have somewhere between 5 and 10 PvPers roaming around, now everyone coming in seems to only be passing through or logging off in one of the systems stations.
I had to go two jumps away to the fringes of empire space to find any significant groups of people and even then, they were mostly in stations.

While I was there, I decided to go into 0.0 (first time in 0.0 on my own) to take a quick look at whether there was anything going on there. Unfortunately, like low sec, there was absolutely nothing going on. So, I thought I’d go and check out the rats (NPC Pirates) that hang out in 0.0. Having a strangely high amount of faith in my Myrmidon that has never had it’s fitting tested on anything other than a battlecruiser rat, I set off to see how my lovely little (well it’s not really that little at all) ship would fare against battleship rats.

Just in case I found myself suddenly in the hands of actual player pirates, I kept an eye out while I picked an asteroid belt to warp to. After a random click in the list, I warped off and found myself in an asteroid belt with two battleships and two battlecruisers (all rats) and with only 13km separating us. Realising I didn’t have much time to think of a plan, I locked onto the nearest battleship, released my drones and set my afterburner going do I could close the distance. Unfortunately for me, I hadn’t taken into account that I’d also have the other ships firing at me as I made my way towards them and I quickly started to lose my shields. About 20 seconds later, I started losing my armour and even with both armour reps running, I only just managed to keep my armour going down.
What I didn’t realise was that I was losing capacitor energy very quickly and my cap booster, while helping a little, wasn’t helping enough and I had to make a decision. Either I warp out of there and get back to the nearest repair station, or I stick around and try to destroy at least one of the ships.

Of course, I decided somewhat foolishly to stick around. I didn’t realise the full extent of the stupidity of this choice until seconds later when I realised that my capacitor was down to about one fifth of it’s full capacity and I’d run our of cap booster charges. By the time I realised this, had just about lost all of my armour and I had missiles shooting huge chunks off of my structure. This was when I decided to turn back, and warp away with my tail between my legs.

As I was sitting there, waiting for my warp drive to kick in, I was sure I would be leaving in a pod. My structure was at 85% when I clicked warp and it was very quickly diminishing. For every rocket that hit, I was losing 10 to 20% of my structure. It wasn’t until my structure hit 10% that my warp drives kicked in and I was safely (well as safe as you can be in 0.0) on my way to the stargate. Unfortunately I couldn’t get out of the system as quickly as I’d liked as I didn’t have enough capacitor to make the whole jump but at least I was safe from the moment I left the asteroid belt.
The trip back was mostly uneventful, I just spent the three jump trip repairing my armour as I gradually got enough capacitor to sustain my armour reps and warp drive.

That was the last thing to happen to me of any interest today. I ferried some items across the galaxy for my younger brother as I wrote this entry but 23 jump-long trips in an Iteron Mk V are hardly interesting on the best of days so you’ll have to make do with screenshots until my next post.

Fly safe.

Drone Bandwidth & Looking For A Change Of Scenery

Still not much going on in EVE. The last few days have just been spent flying back and forth between asteroid belts in Tasti, destroying rats* with my new Ogre II heavy attack drones.
While we’re on the subject of drones, I’m not liking the new drone bandwidth addition. Before Trinity I would have been able to launch five Ogre II drones in my Myrmidon, which to be honest I was excited about. But now, I can only launch a maximum of three. Now, I’m not saying that I’m annoyed or that I want the change removed, just that I am a little disappointed that I am now limited to launching three drones at a time. Although, with that said, three Ogre II drones can do a lot of damage so it’s not like I’ve now been severely gimped by the changes.

I’ve been thinking about leaving my current corporation as the CEO and director have left Hells Angels Inc. to join a non-pirate, PvP corporation in SMASH alliance. When they left, the CEO made an alt and appointed his alt the position of new CEO. Because of that, the corporation has been left with no direction and the members tend to want to do their own thing, rather than try and organise a hunt.

So, if anyone reading this is a member of a PvP (preferably pirate but if not, I don’t mind) corporation that is recruiting, leave me a message and if I end up leaving Hells Angels Inc, I’ll get back to you. See my recruitment page for my recruitment info.

*Rats = NPC pirate ships often found in asteroid belts