Minmatar Armada in Yulai?!

As I’ve been quite busy over the last week or so (bar a couple days), I haven’t really been able to get into EVE for any great amount of time. But fortunately, I’ve been able to keep updated through my feeds on Google Reader; and from the looks of it, tensions are rising to huge levels these days.

Higher resolution video can be found here.

It seems that a huge (and I mean HUGE) Minmatar fleet, made up of ships from the Republic fleet and the Thukker Tribe jumped into Yulai and surrounded the CONCORD Bureau Station. As could be expected this resulted in a stand off between the Minmatar and CONCORD forces.
Fortunately, that’s all it was. No shots were fired and the Minmatar fleet left without incident. Although, that wasn’t quite the end of it all.

The sudden appearance of such a large fleet, and their ability to jump so many capital ships into secure space has baffled the CONCORD “higher ups” and has left them scrambling for answers. Also, the fact that the Thukker Tribe and the Republic fleet have never worked together before has left people confused.

While it seems that the armada’s appearance may have been intended to act as a show of force, a spokesman for the Minmatar Republic Prime Minister firmly denied any involvement with the mystery fleet. He also stated that the claims against the Minmatar Ambassador have “very serious implications for Mr. Yun which are yet to be verified”. The CONCORD Chief of Staff has stated that Keitan Yun has become a person of interest but as of yet his current whereabouts are unknown.

I can’t wait to see what kind of responses the other races will give to this incident. The only one I can really predict is the Amarr response, which will (as always) be pretty much calling the Minmatar savages. But I guess we’ll see. Fly safe, people.

Singularity… Testing… Testing… – Empyrean Age

Earlier this week, I decided to check out the Empyrean Age patch on the EVE Test Server (Singularity). I was originally going to have a quick look the day after but as I couldn’t sleep at the time, I thought I may as well do it sooner rather than later. The first, most obvious change was the login screen. I have to say, I was hoping they wouldn’t change it much. I prefer the Trinity login screen with the camera zooming over and out from the EVE logo but that’s not to say that the Empyrean Age version isn’t cool looking.

The first thing I noticed upon logging in, was the colour scheme change, which is a now a creamy brown but as always if you don’t like it, you can change it to something you’re more partial to.

Eager to try out the militia feature, I clicked the Militia button in the Caldari station I logged into to see if I could pick which Militia I wanted to join. Much to my initial disappointment, you can only join the Militia of the race of the station you’re in when you click the button. It was only after thinking about this for a minute that I realised that it made perfect sense. After all, I’m sure a Gallente Militia recruiter would find it exceptionally hard recruiting capsuleers to fight the Caldari and Amarr while in a Caldari station.
So, I then had to find my way to a Gallente station in the fringes of the Caldari State’s section of Empire space. Which, surprisingly, wasn’t that hard. I eventually found one in Otosela, only a couple jumps away from Tasti.

After clicking the Militia button, I was presented with the window you can see in the screenshot below. In this window, you can see a short few paragraphs that seems to essentially be a call to war. Which, given the circumstances, is probably what it is.
Under that, you can find a short (very short) list of consequences of your decision to join the Militia. These consequences being;

• You will be at war with our enemy’s militia.
• Entering enemy-controlled high-security space will result in your being attacked by the powerful navies of that faction.

You also get some recent news on the right, relating to your chosen race. So far it only consists of an RP news post and a test post, but I would expect that territory capture summaries will also be posted. But don’t quote me on that, just a guess.

Fortunately for me, I had enough good standing with the Gallente Federation to join their Militia. This was quite surprising, as I don’t remember ever doing very many missions. So, I’m not entirely sure how I got high enough standing to join the militia. That said, I’m also not entirely sure what standing you need to be able to join the militia. For all I know, it could be quite a small amount.

Anyway, after clicking the “Enlist Me” button, you’re taken out of your corporation (if you joined while in an NPC corporation, I assume) and put into the Federal Defence Union corporation. You are also able to see your rank (Federation Minuteman being the lowest) and your time in the militia. There are also a small selection of statistics, covering the total number of militia members in the different militias, kills, victory points and systems controlled. As well as all of these statistics for you personally, and your corporation.
And finally, below that, there are three lists. These being: nearby systems, dangerous systems and conquered systems.

I didn’t have time to have a look around anything else as by the time I’d gotten this far I was feeling extremely tired and my bed seemed too inviting.

A last note before retreat to my bed, I noticed something while looking at the Federal Defence Union information page. In the description, it states that the Gallente were provoked by the “destructive Caldari”. Now, unless I’ve missed something quite important, as far as everyone knows the Gallente are supposed to be the only empire to commit a destructive act. Does this mean that there’s more to come? Maybe the Caldari destroy a Gallente station, or bomb a Gallente inhabited planet?

I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Fly safe.

Trinity Screenshot Post

So, I’ve been playing EVE for a bit today under the new premium client and I have to say I’m very impressed at the quality of the graphics. I’ve only managed to grab screenshots of my Myrmidon so far as my other ships are in a different system and there’s a gate-camp* somewhere along the 6 jump route. I could chance it but while I could put up a hell of a fight, I’d rather keep my Myrmidon in one piece. And keeping it in one piece won’t be very likely if I come across a gate-camp with more than two people.

I’ll most likely upload more screenshots when I get the chance to see more ships and/or objects in general.

*A gate-camp is a group of ships hanging around one end of a stargate, with the intention of either destroying or ransoming (usually destroying) any ships going in or out of said stargate.