Well, my luck is holding so far!

I love this Vengeance.

There are no other words to say it. Pew pew.

Yes I know they're semi-fail fits. Yeah neither of the pilots are PvP gods. But my little Assault Frigate took down two battlecruisers without breaking a sweat. That, is why Assault Frigates are awesome. I have no doubt that a Jaguar, or a Wolf, or an Ishkur, or any of the other AFs could have done this too.

But how did this happen?

Well I was bored in Amarr the other night, when I realised that "Messing with Mission Bears" is possible in any system with mission agents. Oh hey look, Amarr has a L3 Mission Agent. So I accepted and declined a few missions to see which systems came up the most. Hedion and Irnin were pretty frequent destinations, so I plumped for Hedion and moved my scanning frigate and salvage destroyer into the station. I got some rage in Local after crashing a few missions, but nobody took any potshots at me until today.

It's a shame because Harbingers are pretty ships...

I had scanned down the two Harbingers to the same mission. I assumed if they needed two battlecruisers to run Level 3's, they were probably quite new to the game, or an older player was guiding a newbie through the basics. Either way, I was confident one of them would take a shot at me.

The mission had several rooms, so I looted one of the wrecks before they even saw me to start my aggression timer ticking down. I was planning on waiting outside the Amarr station just as aggro ran out for them, so I could get a surprise attack in as they undocked. I then warped into the next room, where they were still clearing up rats. I passive scanned both ships, and the fits were workable, but definitely not great mission material. (One of them had a web and scram for christsakes). I was pretty confident I would be able to kill one of them, though the other would likely warp off once his buddy was dead (If I survived the combined DPS of the two of them anyway).

One of them locked me up, but they both ignored me until the mission was complete, and then they just sat next to each other with me locked. I assumed they wouldn't want to aggro without holding me down, so I tried to burn past them with my MWD, just in range to get scrammed, but out of range enough that I could warp off. It didn't work, because they had a web too (which I had forgotten about) but it provided some useful intel before I exploded.

The main thing was I took along time to die, even in an utterly untanked Thrasher. I was trying to burn off at odd angles, and managed to survive for about two minutes under sustained fire from the both of them. Another thing was, these people clearly did not understand optimal ranges, using beam lasers at 10km or less is just... well stupid to be frank. If anything, losing my Thrasher made me more confident I could engage them and win. After I exploded, I warped back to Amarr, docked up and checked out my stable of ships.

And once again, "Project K" just sat there and dared me. Oh I dare.

I undocked in my Vengeance, and warped to Hedion. I popped through the gate, and literally as I warped off back into the mission space, I saw them both land on the gate. Sigh. I landed, turned around and jumped back into Amarr.

Warping to my 300km undock, I loitered underneath the station, and waited for them to accept a new mission. I was planning on letting them jump through the gate into whatever system it was, then tackling one of them on the other side before he could warp off. Hopefully he would aggro me, and therefore block himself from jumping back through the gate due to aggression. After about three or four minutes, one of the Harbingers undocked, and warped towards the Kor Azor gate. Jackpot!

I warped after him and jumped through before he did. I held my cloak on the other side, hoping he would jump in near to me. The gate flashed, and a few seconds later he uncloaked 30km off me. Crap.

I went for the straight up approach and turned on my afterburner while burning right up his ass, not bothering to get fancy with spiraling. I needed speed, and by the looks of it he hadn't noticed me anyway. I guess my timer had run out and I was no longer a conspicuous flashy red to him. That's fine with me, because I  could still open fire. I'm not quite sure what happened because it looked like he started warping, then turned back to the gate. I was certain I was going to lose him, but instead I was suddenly all up in his grill, so I turned on my scram, web and rocket launchers, orbited close and prayed.

And it was easy. Disgustingly easy. His beam lasers didn't have an icecube in hell's chance of hitting me at only 1km off, and he must have clean forgot about drones, or not bothered sending them out. I started recording once I was in a good orbit and wearing down his armour (once again, the video was filmed with a potato). Not much was happening until about halfway through the fight, when his friend jumped in (also in a Harbinger) and aggroed me too. I was expecting it to get a little dicey at this point, but his guns weren't hitting me either.

Eventually the first Harbinger popped and I moved onto the second. He got a few decent shots on me until I was back into a tight orbit, and then the fight was pretty much a carbon copy of the last one. Orbit, fire rockets, make sure I don't lose transversal. Repeat ad infinium. He popped too. Pew pew!

But after the fights I felt almost cheated, not because of the loot or anything, but more because it didn't require any skill on my part. Anybody can sit at 1km from a poorly fit battlecruiser and grind him down. Hell I could have done it in a Rifter. I even felt a little guilty for some reason. But then I saw the killmails and I frankly didn't care anymore, I wasn't going to complain about some more notches in my belt :P

So anyway, Project K is alive and well, with three kills to its name. Maybe I'll get a few more, maybe I'll die in a fire. Either way, this is the most fun I've ever had in a ship :)

Throw money at him! Maybe it'll clog his lasers...

* Warning, lots of text here, I like to describe the build ups to my fights a little. Makes the killmail far more interesting in my opinion :) *

So as I mentioned at the bottom of this post, I have an extremely expensive faction fit Vengeance kicking around my hangar in Amarr which I've only really used for ship spinning. The closest it's got to combat is when I fitted some rocket launchers to it about a week ago. In a mixture of fear, lust and expectation, I've let it gather dust while I try to find a fight that would challenge it (e.g there's no point attacking mining barges in LowSec, even if I could catch the damn things) but not to the point where it would get annihilated if I screwed up a little. Obviously chances like this were few and far between, until yesterday evening.

I was jumping randomly around LowSec in one of my cheaper Vengeances which I don't mind losing, when my corp chat tab started flashing. Bored out of my mind from a total lack of targets (I swear Amarr LowSec is either dead or full of Russian blobs), I docked up in Nebian and started chatting to my corpmates while watching Local for any sign of a potential fight.

Hide yo miners, cos he rapin erryone out here

Not alot was happening until one of our corpies mining out by our LowSec POS reported a Retribution in system with him. At the time I was around sixteen jumps away, and thought nothing of it. By the time I could get there, the Retri pilot would be long gone. I started heading back to Ami to drop off my drugs before jumping back in HighSec, when Jake (the miner near our POS) said the Retribution had warped to the belt he was mining in. (I'd just like to point out to you Jake, yet again, neutrals in Local should make you warp back to the POS right away, not when they appear on top of you). However Jake managed to warp before the Retribution could close the distance and scram him, the lucky *******.

At this point I was much more interested, as the Retri pilot was likely to want to stick around for a potentially easy kill. Jake started acting like a dumb miner in Local (atleast I think he was acting) while I had a look at the pilot's killboard. It looked promising to my suspicious eyes, and as I flew to Amarr, I was forming vague plan in the back of mind to fly over to our POS and have a go at murdering that Retribution. PvP has been in short supply for me recently. Unfortunately, I had nothing lying around in Amarr that could both kill an AF and cover thirteen jumps before the Retri got bored and left (my current Vengeance fit had pretty low EM/Therm resist, because most people just think "durrr armor tank, fire explosive rounds", so it would die pretty fast to those lasers).

Or so I thought until I saw Project K just chilling at the back of my hangar.

Almost immediately I had a massive self-argument over how insane it was to risk this ship in PvP. Despite my attempts otherwise, my carebear side is alive and well, and it pretty much screams in pain everytime I undock in something even slightly expensive with the intention of losing it in LowSec. Undocking in a frigate worth over a quarter of a billion was not going down well. But it was the only ship I had that close by would have a chance of catching that damn Retribution.

I started heading over to the POS as fast as my little Vengeance could fly me, starting to panic a little as I realised just how insane this was. Jake kept up the idiot act, and the pilot was sticking around system still. After about three or four minutes, I was only a couple of jumps out and Khan (another corpmate) had just signed in. We quickly filled him in, and he grabbed a Merlin for some extra tackle. Luckily he was already in system, so it was just me that needed to get there.

A few minutes later I had jumped in. Jake said the Retri was still in the belt, so I crossed my fingers and warped in. I landed around 15km from him, and remembering the extended range of my faction scram and web, I tried to use both while burning towards him. He started to align out, so I spammed the keys for my tackle even faster. Unfortunately, I had forgotten that my web was in F1, instead of my scram (as it usually is). So he warped much faster than he should have, and I was left sitting in the belt feeling like an idiot. Oops.

Local


Ratoskr Itaka > web me in Warp?
Ratoskr Itaka > realy?
Seraph Minayin > wrong button XD
Seraph Minayin > thought scram was F1

Ratoskr Itaka > :-P

Seraph Minayin > shame, wanted to test my new fit :(

For some reason though, the guy stayed in system. Apparently he had a GCC, because Jake had mentioned he was flashy red when he first saw the Retri. I assume he couldn't risk the jump back into HighSec incase he got nailed by the gate guns. I started to tail him him via D-Scan as he warped around system, hoping to catch him at a planet. Jake decided instead to force the issue and warped back into the belt to get his drones.

Local

Jakee Sabezan > you leave my drones for me?
Ratoskr Itaka > come and get them :-P
Jakee Sabezan > i am
Seraph Minayin > WTF get back in pos ( I was in warp to the belt at this point)
Jakee Sabezan > ohh found you
Ratoskr Itaka > hihi
Jakee Sabezan > no drones tho. i go home
Seraph Minayin > the shit is wrong with you?!


I had landed only a few kilometres off Jake, and about 40/50km from the Retribution. Khan landed a few seconds later in his Merlin. We hovered around Jake until his lumbering Osprey had warped off, then proceeded to try and tackle the Retribution. What then followed was about five or ten minutes of us trying to pull the Retribution close enough to hold him down. He had a MWD, but Khan only had a long point, so if he tackled him at range the Retri would simply burn off and warp away. Instead we tried to coax him towards us so I could scram him down. Without his speed he was dead (or so I hoped).


Either by pure luck or by accident, the Retribution flew a little too close to me, and my faction web caught him at about 15km away. Khan pointed him before he could warp off, and within seconds we were on top of him. We started ripping through his armor, but the Retri had started shooting Khan the moment he got pointed, and Khan's Merlin soon popped :(

The lasers were then turned on me, and I was worried about how my tank would hold up. I shouldn't have even second guessed myself. My resists were high enough ( i.e all 80% or more ) that the little DPS hitting me was easily being repped away. My Mjolnir Rage rockets were cutting through his tank, and after about twelve or thirteen volleys he exploded.

\o/ First blood!

The rush I got from this fight was way more than I usually experienced, probably because of the pure ISK investment, and I shakily typed "gf" in local. That faction web and scram defintely got me the kill, without them, we would never have caught the Retribution :P

Local

Seraph Minayin > gf
Ratoskr Itaka > Jup, was fun :-)
Khan Uitra > gf :)
Seraph Minayin > nice flying though
Ratoskr Itaka > you too :-)
Jakee Sabezan > o/
- Ratoskr leaves system -

So I've finally tested my ISK sink in combat, and it performed even better than I expected. Even so, I don't plan to use it in "true" LowSec until I have some better skills, and with Assault Frigates V being trained and Rocket Specialization V following behind, I should soon have my tank and gank near maxed out! ( The only things to train after that would be missile support skills, capacitor skills and then armour compensations). After my Vengeance is pretty much perfectly skilled, I'm planning to switch to Minmatar Assault Frigates and try those out in PvP too. I've got my eye on the Wolf right now, and if it's anything like the Rifter I'm going to have alot of fun with it :P

But this fight has got me wondering, what's the Retribution like to fly? Maybe I should bring my Small Pulse Laser Specialization forward a little...



And of course, thanks to Korvus for his "Pimp Fit" Vengeance!

Wait, where has all this money come from?

Yesterday I realised that around 60% of my ISK wealth is concentrated in my Incursion boat (with about another 30% invested in Project K. God I'm dreading losing that ship). As someone who wants to eventually make PvP my EVE "career", that's quite an odd situation, as surely you should invest the majority of your money in what you enjoy doing?

So in order to recoup my ISK investment of my SNI, I decided to stop doing Incursions (gasp), and focus instead on occasionally running Level 4 missions with my corpmates to earn some "side ISK", while putting most of my cash into PvP. But that meant I needed a new Level 4 mission boat, and I was tired of the "point and click" aspect of missiles. Which in turn, lead me to this beautiful machine.

The Maelstrom

When people nicknamed Minmatar ships as "Winmatar", they weren't kidding. This thing just melts other ships. Even with my crappy battleship skills, I can throw out around 600DPS up to approximately 45km with 800mm Autocannons, and still get some pretty consistent hits up to around 65km. While that's nowhere near the range of my CNR or SNI (both of which could reach out to +100km), it's still a respectable distance to reach for a "short-ranged" weapon system. Not only that, but it tanks just as well as my SNI, with a 7.5% shield boost bonus per level of the Minmatar Battleship skill.

Besides, the range is hardly a problem when most missions consist of:

- Shoot at enemies to get their attention
- Start flying away when they chase you
- Blap them in the face until everything is dead

So far I've had no problems tanking/murdering every mission that's come my way, and it's about a thousand times more fun to fly than my missile battleships. It's also about 250million ISK cheaper than my Incursion SNI, (which was worth approximately 700 million by the time I stripped it down and sold it o.O) even though I've pimped out the Maelstrom with a few faction mods for the luls. For all those dying to know the secret of my success, here's my current fit:

High slots
- 8 x 800mm Heavy Prototype Repeating Siege Cannon - EMP L 


Mid slots
- 3 x Mission Specific Shield Harderners (Usually 2 x EM and 1x Therm)
- Caldari Navy X-Large Shield Booster 
- Caldari Navy Shield Boost Amplifier
- Heavy Capacitor Booster - Cap booster 800s (Incase I screw up a trigger and need to perma-tank)


Low slots
- 3 x Republic Fleet Gyrostabilisers
- 2 x Tracking Enhancer II


The two Caldari Navy items I've had since I pretty much started missioning, due to a generous donation by a fellow mission runner (who was up to his eyeballs in faction fitted Marauders), though I'm ashamed to admit I've forgotten his name. The three gyrostabilisers were also pretty cheap at around 63mil (after you consider I sold three Caldari Navy Ballistic Controls for 95 mil each) and the hull itself I managed to snag before the mineral price hike made it far more expensive.

All in all, it's cheap, tanky, has good DPS and it's fun as hell to fly. Remind me why I ever flew Caldari again?


Besides my new mission ship, there's a few other things that have been happening recently:

Sadly I lost two of my Autocannon Merlins to a 1 v 1 in Amarr. The second was an extremely close fight, and the only reason I lost was because he had fitted a rocket launcher (his autos were missing for obvious reasons) which slowly wore down my buffer tank... However it was an extremely useful experience, and taught me that an armour Merlin can work under the right conditions (i.e not against missiles).

I've also taken the plunge in terms of PvP, and entered the murky world of combat boosters. Thestarling, from the Black Rebel Rifter Club put me in touch with his "dealers", for which I am extremely thankful. I've purchased ten units of Strong Exile Booster for my Vengeances, which cost me 43mil in all. Hey it sounds like alot, but when it saves your ship worth 60mil, I call it a good deal. Also it was about 7mil less than what I would pay for the boosters on the market, and I got free delivery to a LowSec station of my choice. Can't argue with that!

After all this messing around with my Incursion ship, I've managed to pull about 200million back out of my PvE activites, which has gone straight into two more Vengeances (I really love this ship), a Rupture, a Hurricane, two Arbitrators and a scattering of Rifters.

The fleet is prepared, and hopefully I'll have some good fights in the coming week.

Fly safe!

The problem with frigates in solo PvP

Don't get me wrong, I love my frigates.

They're cheap, fast, fun to fly, and can have an important role in any small gang you care to mention. Fights versus other frigates are short and brutal, requiring quick reflexes and fast decision making to pull through alive. Fights against anything bigger than a destroyer are tests of skill, and demand an in-depth of knowledge of your own ship's capabilities, and the capabilities of the enemy ship. You might not be able to kill it on your own, but my god can you hold it down long enough for your corpmates to turn up and fill the other guy full of holes.

And that right there, is the problem. While pretty much any frigate has some sort of chance against another of it's class, and some truly stellar frigates can even down cruisers if they're flown well (Rifter cough), you have no real options in a fight "above your weight" besides getting under the other guy's guns, blowing up all his drones and then plinking away at his tank. I'm not saying frigates should be able to attack cruisers with impunity, it's just something that's been getting on my nerves recently while solo roaming, my inability to attack anything bigger than another frigate that's fitted and piloted even moderately well. And as for engaging on gates and stations? Yeah, not unless you like sitting next to your own wreck within about ten seconds flat.

Also he looked like bait for a gang

For example, last night I spent about half an hour getting chased around by a Rupture in Fensi while flying my trusty Vengeance. The pilot was only a few months older than me, and if I had been in a cruiser I would have happily engaged. I've fought Ruptures before. But in my little Assault Frigate? I had no chance.
I've fought against Ruptures on Sisi while flying my Vengeance, and it always ended badly. Rupture pilots usually fit a medium and a small neut in the spare high slots, and while my new fit can handle one small neut with some careful timing on my part (Thanks to Korvus for that), there's no way I could hold up to a medium as well. Without cap, my rep and afterburner die. With no tank and no speed to avoid the majority of his weapon fire, I get torn to shreds by autocannons and drones faster than you can say "I need a new ship".

And obviously that's frustrating. I'd like to be able punch above my weight class a little, purely for the fun of it, and to test my own skill, but no frigate I've found so far has been able to do that for me. Admittedly my general skills are still lower than I'd like, and I haven't really flown any other Tech II frigates besides the Amarr ships, but I still have the feeling that I'm always going to be outclassed while flying a frigate against anything bigger. So to this end, I'm thinking of modifying my year plan slightly. Who needs EWAR Frigates anyway...?

While I still have high hopes that the Ishkur and the Wolf will blow me away (AKA the Mini-Carrier and the SUPAH RIFTA), I've decided that the ability to fit and fly cruisers to a decent standard will open up a wealth of new targets roaming the spacelanes for me. Most likely I would start with Minmatar/Gallente ships because they have some truly excellent Tech I cruisers kicking around (e.g Thorax, Vexor, Rupture) and then move to Tech II options, like Heavy Assault Cruisers and Recons. I'm still planning to fly most of the Tech II frigates to an excellent standard, I've just decided to cut out some of the non-PvP skills (like scanning) to make room for medium guns and suchlike.

As of right now, my new long term goal is to fly the Amarrian Sacrilege by some time next year, purely based on the fact it looks like a bigger, badder Vengeance. And that can only be a good thing right?

It's like a Maller had babies with a Drake! Plus it looks sexy

Anyway, besides my moaning about frigates, I'm now allowed back into Amarr, and have given myself some standings buffer to PvP with. I've also fitted up four Autocannon Merlins (two with utterly idiotic fits that I just want to try out to see how far you can push it) and two Vengeances; one dual-rep, and one stupidly expensive faction fit one (AKA Project K). Now I have my faction Vengeance, I'm actually a little afraid to fly it. Not because I can't replace it (Because I've got to the point where I just seem to have ISK no matter what) but because I don't really want to shit all over my corp's ISK efficiency on our killboard when I lose it, no matter how maimed it is right now anyway (as side effect of training new players to PvP). And also I was threatened death from our PvP director if I lost it... o.O

But anyway, I'm going to go lose these Merlins in some utterly idiotic way, and hopefully work up the guts to fly Project K into live combat. Next post will either be "over-the-moon happy" or "crap-I-just-ruined-my-ISK-efficiency-for-the-next-year".

Fly safe!

Adding my voice to the chorus

Dear god please. Support this project. As I write this, it's already got 7,588 supports, but it needs more.

A Lego Rifter? That's a hundred different kinds of awesome all at the same time. It needs 10,000 supports to be considered by LEGO, and frankly they'd be insane not to get this set on the shelves. I bet my subscription half of the playerbase (at the very least) is going to want one. Hell I'll buy one for sure.


My childhood, (while not that far behind me) was full of Lego sets. I probably spent hundreds of pounds of birthday and christmas cash on the Starwars series alone, and I've no doubt that many of you were the same. Think of how many people will see this Rifter. Can you say "Free publicity" ?

I'm certain this will bring in hundreds of new subscribers to EVE. Imagine the scenario.

Maybe there's an adult strolling through the Lego section in a toyshop, looking for a set for his/her child, when he/she spies this gracing the shelves.

Admit it. You want it already

"AS SEEN IN THE AWARD WINNING MMORPG - EVE ONLINE" screams the tagline

"Oooooh" They think, "What's EVE Online?". Regardless they buy the set for their child's birthday (because it looks freaking awesome anyway), and then when they get home they check out EVE on the good old interwebs. Maybe they're intrigued. Maybe they download the trial. Then like many of us, they get hooked. And bam, another subscriber. Repeat ad infinium.

Let's face it, far more people have played with Lego sets than EVE Online. That's a huge audience CCP have a chance to flog their product to. Even if you don't particularly care for the set yourself, you have to see the logic in supporting it. It helps CCP, and in turn, you. PvPers have more new guys (and girls) to shoot at. Industry players have more people to build stuff for and make iskies from. It's a win, win, win. A win for CCP, a win for the players, and a win for Lego. Hell it's even a win for the designer because he gets a cut of the profits.


CCP have already all but confirmed they will work with the designer and Lego on this. AKA they're onboard, and there'll be no stupid copyright issues to hold it up for decades. And not only that, CCP have started a poll to see what frigates we want designed next.

So. Much. Epic.

DOO EEET

And this could go even further. What's to stop them having Lego Megathrons? Lego Hurricanes? Lego Freighters? (I'd love a Lego Providence). Hell why not Lego Capitals, and SuperCaps?

Come on people. Let's get this ball rolling. Yes you have to sign up. Yes it's slightly annoying. But it'll take you all of two minutes to add your voice to the chorus, and maybe one day soon, because of this, you'll have a shiny new Lego Rifter to admire while you play EVE.

Seriously. Just a few minutes of your time could create a world of awesome!

Turns out wrecks have rights too. Who knew?

Since a wreck and I had some strong words that resulted me shooting it to prove a point, my security status remains low enough to keep me out of Amarr (I'm not even kidding, I went from -2.15 to -2.23 for blowing up a random wreck that was annoying my OCD side). So of course, I've been spending alot of time in the Ami area and I'm getting to know it quite well. Here's a little rundown of my random adventures in LowSec to keep you entertained while I rat my security back up some more.

Seraph's Awesome LowSec Funtimes Diary

- After a few run-ins with gate camps over the last few days, I think it's fairly obvious why I'm starting to dread jumping into new systems, or ones I don't know very well. So when I saw about fifteen assorted cruisers (Mostly Thoraxes with a few Ruptures) and battlecruisers (Almost all Myrmidons and Brutixes)  on the gate after I jumped into Pananan, it was safe to say I was resigned to losing my Hurricane. Even so I aligned out and started spamming the "Warp to" button on the local station as though I actually had a chance.

Within seconds of uncloaking, I had been yellowboxed by most of the cruisers, and several of which were MWD'ing straight at me to knock my ship out of alignment. Well crap, it looks like they know what they're doing. Half the boxes turn red, and I sigh expecting to meet a fiery demise within the next few nanoseconds. Instead I'm flung into warp about five seconds early. Whaaaat? Then I realise, in their excitement at murdering a helpless battlecruiser, the Thoraxes trying to knock me out of alignment were only in range to web me, not scram too. That dropped my speed to the point where I was pretty much instawarped out. Cheers for not understanding game mechanics guys! I felt bad for escaping, so I gave them some friendly advice:


Local Chat
Seraph Minayin > it's called warp disruptors
Seraph Minayin > idiots
Seraph Minayin > dont web first

They ignore me :(


- The next day I spent ten or fifteen minutes being followed around Gademan (Gademam? Can't remember the name exactly) by a Jaguar who seemed determined to fight my Hurricane. Killboard history showed no awesome solo BC kills while in frigates, so I smelt a trap. Even so, I eventually gave in and let him tackle me at a planet 60AU from all the gates. I neuted the crap out of him then watched Local for a while. It instantly spiked to about ten or eleven people from only four. Yeah I'm not falling for that. I aligned out, overheated my neuts and warped off when his scram died. Never even saw the guys who tried to tarp me.
As always I comment on it...


Local Chat
Seraph Minayin > dat shit's a tarp
Ketplunk > yah its a tarp :)

Atleast he's honest.

- Ratting while semi-afk almost lead to me getting jumped by a small roaming gang. Luckily I was pew pewing the rats about 90km away from the tackler's warp in, and actually managed to notice him steaming towards me at over 2km/s (In an Incursus, odd choice?) before I met an embarrassing end. I warp out and get called a coward by eight people. I suppose explaining irony to them would be a waste of time.

- Spent about half an hour chatting to a small gatecamp in Local (seriously, Ami is full of the damn things) while sitting at a safespot, and found out that people still like to try and cyno Jump Freighters into LowSec despite the fact there are almost thirty people in system.


Local Chat
Seraph Minayin > holy shit a Rhea?!
Roth Udan > o yeah he comes in alot

Wut.
***************************

Anyway that's a few of the more memorable moments I've had while spending time in LowSec so far. There was also a hilarious hour that I spent hiding in a station from a roaring drunk Talos pilot who was intent on exploding me, but it involves far too much swearing for me to morally be able to post it... (Also I've managed to lose the chat logs from Local, but that has nothing to do with it, promise!)


Also I'd like to mention that "EVE Is Easy" is a surprisingly good source for tutorials on PvP, and their videos are well put together and explained. I'd recommend it for anyone interested on starting in PvP, it's full of great stuff. The only downside is Link-Alts are used seemingly at random, which is frankly beyond the grasp of many "casual" PvPers (like yours truly), so it's possible that the videos aren't perfect representations of what you can go out and do. Even so, the tactics described and explained are still applicable, and the video on scouting was an excellent crash course in using the D-Scan.

So that's all I've got for now. Maybe in a few days I can actually get back into Amarr and start to fit out my new Vengeance (which I've nicknamed "Project K", mainly because the fit is based heavily on Korvus' Vengeance that I've modified for my lesser skills and cheap bastard budget). It looks fun as hell to fly, and I've decided I might aswell splash out this Incursion ISK on something (BLINKing has lost me about 300mil of it anyway, derp).

In the meantime, fly safe!

Wait, we have an intelligent playerbase?

This post on the EVE Forums (i.e the proposed Titan nerf) is starting to get quite far into the actual mechanics of signature size and tracking, and less about everyone complaining. It's a pretty interesting read, and a lot of good ideas are being thrown around (which is incredible in itself) and the Devs appear to be paying attention to what the playerbase has to say. Well done to CCP :)

But this post in particular stood out for me:

Scaling damage makes 0 sense. Can you honestly tell me a battleship in the real world will aim it's guns at a suicide bombing speed boat and magically hit it for less damage simply because it's small. NO. It's gonna hurt like hell, it's just going to have a rough time hitting it, especially if it's moving at all  
(Posted by "I'm Down" - Pandemic Legion)

Yes!

And then this reply:

That's always been my take on it. A shell bigger than your ship should obliterate you if it hits. The problem should be hitting to begin with.

(Posted by "Kerensky White" - Goonswarm)

YES!

As a frigate pilot, you need to be aware all the time of your transversal against larger ships, because if it drops you're going to know about it. As in blap blap, boom, ship is exploded. I understand that, and honestly it makes the game much more fun. Sitting under someone's guns while cutting through their drones as they desperately try to swat you is hilarious fun, and exciting as hell, because you know that if you screw up for one second you're dead. Ask any Inty pilot, the skill required is much more than you would expect (It isn't as simple as "point, orbit, call in friends to the party"). I won't claim to possess that skill, but I like to think I'm starting to understand it.

But the one thing that's always annoyed me about tracking? The fact you can get shots that "lightly hit" you while you orbit a battleship. I'm sorry what? That battleship just winged me with a shell the size of a house, fired from a gun bigger than my ship, at near enough the speed of light, and you're telling me it only "lightly hit" for a few hundred armor damage?

Are you out of your mind?

Here's an example. Let's take a frigate that pretty much everyone has flown, like the Rifter. In real life, a Rifter is about the size of a Boeing 747 (which is weird when you think about it, because that makes battleships huge, not to mention capitals. Here's a picture I particularly like that conveys the pure scale of a Titan).
So imagine that 747 flying through the sky quite happily. Awwh look at the fluffy clouds and the morning sunlight. It's so beautiful...

Now imagine it gets hit by a house traveling over 200,000,000m/s. BANG.

Not a pretty picture for the Boeing is it? No doubt you can already see the comparison with EVE. In reality, anything that size hitting an interceptor that fast should result in instant obliteration for the Inty pilot. No "light hits", more like bang, hit, gone. Yeah it's not exactly as "fair" for the interceptor, but when a battleship fires at you, it should be all or nothing. Either he hits you and that's that, or he misses and you get to shake your ass at him a while longer. That makes far more logical sense than the shot just knocking off your wing mirror.

The fact that the current formula allows this sort of thing is incredible when you think about it. It needs working on, and this I think, will solve the whole root of the problem with the Titans. Fixing this (from what I understand) will mean it won't be a super-blap machine anymore. I can't say that I fully understand how the formulas work, because maths isn't my strong suit. But obviously CCP understands it, and so do many of the players, between the two, surely we can fix the current tracking system. It's totally unrealistic, and while you could say that for quite a few EVE mechanics, this one is causing alot of problems.

There is a huge pitfall to avoid here however. Tracking massively affects every fight in EVE, and a screw up here is going to have momentous repercussions on EVE's very foundations. This won't have a quick, overnight fix, and it deserves a good hard look at to pull the best possible solution from it.
Judging from the conversation between the players and the Devs though, it appears both sides realise this is a difficult problem, and not one to be dealt with lightly. Hopefully by Inferno, we'll have a much better system for shooting at each other, and that's something we can all be happy with!



(Also a quick note)

Part of this nerf doesn't sound like a good idea to me personally:

- Stop people from refitting their ships while they're being targeted

(CCP Greyscale)

If you've seen the most recent Rooks and Kings video, you'll know why. I won't go into it now, because Jester has already made a far better post on it than I ever could, and many people have already made good points against it in that forum post linked. :)

Dafuq is this

Oh my god.

Vindicator

Oh. My. GOD. I just don't even...

(What makes it even funnier/more tragic is that it could be outperformed by a T2 fit in terms of damage. Officer when it's not needed? Check.)

Some of my favourites from the comments section:

- "I don't want to live on this planet anymore"

- "HOLY MOTHER SWEET SHIT"

- "I didn't spend that much fitting my titan"

- "MOAR OFFICER"

- "Could have bought Zydrine" <- If you don't get this one you've been living under a rock recently

- "This kill has now been api verified, what a fucktard"

- "You should probably just quit EVE"

Oh and then they got his pod.

I'm going to go cry for a while. 

The importance of Intel in Solo PvP

While I'm grinding my security back up I decided to finally finish editing this post and get it out, because my Merlins are languishing in Amarr out of my reach right now, so the "battle reports" will be a little late :( Also I apologise for the text heavy post, I couldn't find many pictures that would "fit in"

In solo PvP, every kill can be attributed to your decisions, as can every loss. If you lose a ship, 99.99% of the time, it was because of a mess up or minor mistake you made. Not the person you're fighting, just you. (That other 0.01% is for really extraordinary circumstances, like the internet deciding to stop working just to spite you) It's brutal, but I honestly prefer it because it makes you take full responsibility for what you did wrong, or right, and hopefully makes you a better player at the end of it all. This means you need to take every advantage you can get in a fight, because you're not doing yourself any favours otherwise. Enter intelligence...

No not that intelligence stupid ;) Intelligence as in information.

Useful, relevant intelligence on the guy you're about to fight can have a huge impact on the outcome of your little scuffle. Prior knowledge of your opponent's ability, fitting and likely tactics can swing the battle hugely in your favour, and sometimes all but assure you winning.

For me, there are three main forms of "intelligence" available to the solo PvP pilot, and they are Experience, D-Scan and what I call "Public data". I'll write a little about each one individually.

Experience

- Plain old "done this before" experience. This can cover anything from knowledge of how a certain ship is usually fitted or even having fought the said pilot before and knowing a little of his tactics/personal fit. It can even include intel from your corpmates and how they've seen him fight if you all tend to roam in the same area. This accumulates with time invested in PvP, and therefore you shouldn't worry massively about learning EVERY possible ship fit, or the general tactics surrounding them. It'll become ingrained after a while, and that's when you can start working on instinct (and it actually paying off instead of leaving you in a burning wreck).

D-Scan

- If you don't know how to use D-Scan and want to get into PvP in any capacity, stop reading this right now and go practice scanning with a friend. I cannot begin to explain how useful this tool is in PvP. Have it open all the goddam time while you're in LowSec, refresh it every ten seconds at a minimum, and refresh it again everytime you exit warp or enter a new system. Situational awareness can save your ship, and help you blow up other people. Knowing where the other guy is, what's near him, and who could come running to help him is all hugely useful in planning your attack.

- Have several filters set up on your overview to take advantage of D-Scan, and practise with it until you can scan someone to 15 degrees before your gate cloak runs out. If you can do that and be in warp before your target has a clue he's being hunted, you'll have a surprise advantage at the start of the fight while he scrambles to target you, get into range, load decent ammo etc etc. 

- Even the name of the ship can provide intel on the pilot. For example, unless ships are renamed, they are given a "base name", like "Seraph Minayin's Bestower". Most experienced players find this annoying and rename it, (plus it gives away what they're flying). Newer players sometimes don't realise they can rename their ships (or forget to), and as a result they can be glaringly obvious on your D-Scan.

Public data

- "Public data" as I call it is pretty much anything you can find out about the other player that's been recorded in a public accessible area (obviously). In basic terms, this means killboards, corporation history, age of the player, forum posts, even Local chat. Most of this is easiest to find with an out-of-game browser, which is why I play EVE in windowed mode. It means I can keep a link to Battleclinic's killboards open, aswell as EVE-Who and a general Google page (you'd be surprised how useful some of Google's results are)

- There are a myriad of advantages to doing this, mainly in that you can quickly take a look a player's potential experience/ability/SP in comparison to your own, and make a guesstimate at your chances of winning. This might sound a little over the top to those of you who like to rush into a fight and PRESS ALL TEH BUTTANS, but in reality it's just like fitting a faction module, or training that particular skill for a few percent more damage. It all adds up.

So what?

For an example, let's say we see a ship on D-Scan called "Dr Awesomez's Drake". There is someone in Local called Dr Awesomez (important step here, the ship could be empty in a POS)  A quick check of his corp history/age shows he's been in and out of several corps, most of which he's been in for only a few days, a week at the most. He's approximately two months old. Battleclinic shows three kills and eight losses. The kills are all with random corp-mates from the corps he's been in, and he appears to be frigate tackle for all of them. His losses are a few frigates, presumably from the same fights, but also two Drakes. A detailed look at the killmails shows both to be failfits (armour reps, for example) and they were both fairly recent. That's the important part. Yes he might have crap-fit a Drake a year ago, but if he hasn't lost one recently, don't assume he's still an idiot at fitting ships. Intel has to be relevant and recent. (Relevant as in, he might crap fit Drakes, but that doesn't automatically make his Hurricane terrible, though it makes it more likely. Be careful when using intel like this and be logical).

Judging from this minute or so looking at available intel, it appears this Drake is going to be an easy kill. D-Scan shows him to be in a nearby belt oblivious to your presence, and a flip through filters suggests he's ratting. You warp in, pew pew, kill him and get out. Pretty easy huh? But , if it was easy why bother with all the secret agent crap? Because it can save your ass before you even start a fight, that's why.

How?

In another example, let's take everything to be the same as the first, except this time, his killboard shows he's been on thirty or so killmails with a large group of corpmates, and both his Drake lossmails were heavily tanked with multiple points. This just screams bait, and therefore you shouldn't engage unless you like the idea of your ship getting filled with holes. That minute spent checking facts has just saved you an annoying death, and has left you alive to fight another day. Obviously you can't do this for every fight, sometimes they drop in on you, (literally) but for the ones that you have the time to look, it can give you that tiny advantage you need to walk away victorious, despite perhaps bleeding into hull.

So you can see why a small amount of time spent checking killboards and suchlike can be extremely useful. Another example would be all of his recent Drake fits are exactly the same, and therefore you can make a fairly safe assumption that this one is the same, and from that, you can build a plan of attack on how to kill him and gun for his lowest resist. Basically you make the fight easier for you, and more frustrating for the guy you're trying to pew to death.

I haven't covered everything you can find out about your opponent, and how it can be interpreted in this mini-guide, because frankly there are a hundred things you can find out and apply to fights to give you an advantage and I'm not going to insult your intelligence by explaining every little one. Always use your brain, and eventually you'll start winning more than you lose :P

Tl;dr Intel is a powerful tool, so take advantage of it!

Damn you CONCORD and your petty morality

Tired of the fact I couldn't engage anything bigger than a cruiser in my Vengeance and Merlin, I took my old ratting Hurricane out for a little solo roam (refitted of course). I had some fun dodging an EVE Uni gang, but anything smaller than me ran for the hills, and I wasn't confident enough in my ship (or my experience in it) to attack the few battleships I saw. I roamed in circles for awhile before getting bored and chatting in Local to some guy. One thing lead to another and...

Well basically, I ended up sitting on the HighSec gate into Ami with the random guy and a pretty terrible plan we'd worked out between us. He was in a Thrasher. We'd seen a couple of haulers jump in and out recently and wanted to get some LOLNOOB kills on them. So we agreed that he would bump them before they could warp off, and I would pew pew them. We would then split the loot (if any) and run happily into the sunset.

Yeah that didn't happen

Instead, while we were dicking around in Local chat (like shouting PEW PEW and humming the Jaws theme tune because we found it hilarious) a pod jumped to the gate. He landed 20KM off. I have no idea what he was doing warping to 20KM either, but I wasn't complaining about a free kill. Weirdly, he made the decision of making a run for HighSec rather than warp off in my twelve second lock time. He was 14KM away from safety when I finally got a lock and blew him into a new clone. Laughing as I warped off to avoid gate fire, I opened the killmail hoping to see lots of expensive implants. Erm nope, totally bare pod. What a waste of time. Then I noticed my new security status.

-2.71.  Balls


I could no longer enter 0.9 and above systems. That meant Amarr, Penirgman, Jita, etc. Basically all of the systems where I keep my stuff and make my money. While I know I can gain this security status back by ratting, I wasn't expecting to be forced into doing it quite so soon. I was planning on slowly letting my security drop as soon as Zendrak made me a steady enough income stream to fund my PvP.

Then I realised it wasn't quite as bad as it seemed. I could feasibly live in LowSec right now if I wanted to, selling off my Incursion boat would give me a decent fund of ISK to PvP from. Plus I was planning on getting into full mass production on Zendrak soon anyway, and the corp's pet calculator (aka our CEO) had estimated I could make 3 billion a month if I kept 10 slots running 24/7. The only thing stopping me was that my corp was still based in HighSec, and that was a little restricting in terms of what I could do "as a team" so to speak. While we're planning into moving to LowSec soon, we're not in an optimal position to do so right now and that would leave me all on my own until the move happened.

Not fun.

So it looks like it's security grinding time for me, but it's nice to know I could move into LowSec pretty easily if circumstances demanded it. I was expecting it to be a big thing, but when you have an alt with no security problems, it's much easier to move than I expected. Infact, I'm almost looking foward to the day my main gives up HighSec forever.

It's going to be an interesting journey in the next few months...

"Trading is a bad career with terrible returns"

Yes that title is meant to be sarcastic, I'm perfectly aware people make billions each day on the markets :P

Over the last few days I had noticed a steadily decreasing supply of Cynosural Field Generators in Amarr. Generally the buy orders were around 1.5mil and the cynos were selling for approximately 2mil. Not greatest of margins I guess, but it was a steady income stream due to the constant demand for more generators. (Cyno frigates are popped almost constantly in LowSec, that's alot of generators to replace).

But the supply in Amarr was getting low, and the demand was still steady. I saw my chance to make a bit of extra ISK, and bought out all the other guys flogging cyno generators. I then relisted them (approx 20 of them, plus a few of mine from buy orders) at 2.5 million. Not a huge increase, but I didn't want to scare off potential buyers with a sudden price hike. Despite the half a mil increase, the cynos were still flying off the shelves. I saw the potential to drive the price higher and fleece even more ISK off these players, but I had barely any stock left and my buy orders seemed to be running dry. Profit was slipping through my hands like sand...

Think about how often these things are used per hour o.O

It was then I realised that I was only nine jumps from Jita, the trade hub of EVE. It's not like I needed to source my supply purely from buy orders. I quickly signed in my Jita price check alt while sending Zendrak off in his Bestower towards the Forge. If the price was higher in Jita (unlikely to be honest), I could just turn him back. My alt signed in, and I loaded up the market details for cyno generators as fast as I could type. Buy orders were pretty much identical to Amarr at 1.5 million, but the lowest sell order was only 1.9mil.

Freaking jackpot.


Zendrak was already halfway to Jita, and I prayed all the way there that nobody would notice the gap on the Amarr market until I had taken advantage of it. I bought 90 cyno field generators in Jita for about 170 mil  and hot-footed it back to Amarr. (I could have brought back more, but I wasn't expecting to shift more than a hundred units before somebody else noticed and jumped in too. Also I didn't want to make myself a gank target for all those Tornados chilling in Perimeter) By this point, my personal supplies back home had run out entirely, but another enterprising trader had put up thirty or so generators for 3mil each.

0.01 ISK wars go?

Apparently not. I assume he didn't check his orders often enough, because by the same time tonight, I've already sold 87 units at about 2.99 mil each (literally 0.01 ISK under his 3mil price). Other people have noticed the gap now, and I'm having to update my orders much more frequently to sell these last few, but it's too late. I've already made a fairly impressive profit :P

*******************

For those who like numbers, here's the exact figures (not including taxes because I'm lazy):

90 units bought in Jita for 173,636,712.53 ISK (1,929,296.80 ISK per unit)

Sell order set up in Amarr for 2,999,999.99 ISK per unit (269,999,999.00 ISK in total if all of them sell)

Predicted profit is therefore in the region of 269,999,999.00 - 173,636,712.53 

=  96,363286.47 ISK (Minus buy/sell taxes)

*******************

I haven't got all of this profit yet, (three cynos are still on the market) but frankly I've still made atleast ninety million in the course of 24 hours. And all it needed was about twenty minutes work before I went to bed (flying to Jita and back) and then checking my order occasionally the next day, (not that it needed updating much). And it's made me about the same as three Incursion HQ sites with a far smaller inital investment (173 million vs billion ISK faction battleships is hardly a close thing) and far less effort.

So whats the moral of this story?


- When trading, jump on any opportunity that comes your way and drain as much ISK as you can from it while it lasts


Miniumum effort, maximum returns. I think I'll spend my 90 million on some more PvP ships :)

My half-assed attempts at Station Trading

* As this only a short guide, I'm going to assume you understand the basics of trading already, e.g what buy orders are, what margins are, etc *

I'll say this right now, when it comes to trading there are much better players than me that you can learn from. Frankly, my turnovers per day are much lower than they could be. If I actually put in some effort into researching what sells well/what's in demand and all that jazz, I could probably make ten times my current profits with ease.

But that's not what this is about, because all of that requires time that you could be spending doing something fun, like PvP . Instead this is my handy guide to lazy trading. It might not make billions of ISK an hour, but so far I'm averaging about 20-30 mil a day with minimal effort on my part. In PvP terms, that means I can afford fit out a new Vengeance every 1.5 days! (Sadly I tend to lose them much faster than that).

Teh Lazy Guide to Station Trading


"Trading is the art of making money out of other people's laziness" - Some guy in Amarr

- First of all, I should point out the slight differences between the two main "types" of trading that I know of, "Station trading" and what I call "Hauler trading".

- "Station trading" is where you sit on your ass in a station (surprisingly) and spam buy and sell orders like there's no tomorrow. It means you have to look at margins alot, and fight 0.01 ISK wars, but it's pretty easy to get started in (and it's what this guide is focusing on)

- "Hauler trading" requires much more effort on your part. The general idea is that you exploit the price differences between regions to make a profit. E.g, Cap booster 800s are selling in Amarr for one mil, but the Jita buy price is at 2.3 mil (not that this would ever happen). So you buy all the boosters in Amarr, fly them over to Jita and sell them for profit.

I don't have enough experience to tell you which is better, though you could feasibly do both quite effectively. Obviously though, "Hauler trading" is going to need something to haul with, and therefore some industrial skills. However the main draw for me towards Station trading (as an income source) is that you don't need any particular skills to do it with some effectiveness. Obviously if your aim is to make this your EVE career, then there are many skills to increase the number of orders you can have, decrease the taxes you pay and suchlike.

But for the occasional trader, what are your first steps?

Well first of all, you're going to need something to buy and sell. Unfortunately you'll have to use your brain a little here. Think of items that are in high demand. The obvious choices will be ones that are used in PvP, and therefore blown up alot. Things like tanking modules, weapon upgrades, GUNZ etc... (Mostly T2 modules, because the T1 stuff is barely worth trading unless you've only got a few mil to spare). These are all good investments, but often require quite a bit of a start-up fund to trade effectively. (I gave my alt 100mil to begin with a month or so ago, and his total value is now over 700 million :P) If you're a little strapped for cash, trading Meta 3 and 4 items can often make some decent profit, but the best profit is usually in the T2 products.

But wait! Don't just slap down a load of buy orders on those modules and walk off expecting to find heaps of ISK when you get back to your computer. You've still got work to do yet.

Now you've got yourself a little list of items that are likely to be in high demand (maybe fifteen or twenty is a good start), open up your market and look at the buy and sell orders in your region. You want to find margins that are decently sized, but not too large (for reasons that will become clear in a minute). Most of the modules I trade make me about 200 - 800k per module, with a couple worth 1 mil per module. Generally any margins higher than this are likely to crash or are heavily contested.

Once you've cut out all the items with razor thin margins, you need to head back to Market Details (sorry) and click the "Price History" tab. Yes, graphs are pretty but that's not what we're interested in. Instead, go to the bottom left corner and click "Show Table". Ignore all the columns except "Quantity". This shows you the number of units bought and sold per day, for as far back as you set the table (I usually stick with a month). Anything around 50+ per day isn't bad, 150+ is pretty good, and 250+ is excellent. Anything less than 30 per day (even if it has really good margins) isn't really worth trading because it'll take so long for it to be bought and sold on. Incase you don't realise why this is bad, that's cutting into your potential profit per day. (Even though we're being lazy, that's still not a good thing)

Obviously you'll want to try and set yourself up in a Trade Hub (e.g Jita, Amarr, Rens, Dodixie) if at all possible, purely because of the higher volumes of items traded, although you will have to compete with other traders trying to do the same thing you are. If you've got less time to spend messing with orders, it can be useful to set yourself a few jumps out from a hub, and supply that area instead. However, I only update my orders a couple of times a day, and I'm making decent profit out of it. It's all down to preference and how much effort (if any) you're willing to spend on this.

So, you've got your items, a start-up fund and a general grasp of what to do. Now all you have to do is get down in the trenches and fight the 0.01 ISK wars with all the other traders trying to make their fortunes. It may seem like speadsheets in space, but passive ISK is not to be sniffed at :P

Good luck!

Quick update

I'm painfully aware I haven't posted in a few days and I apologise for my inactivity. My problem arises from the fact that it's quite difficult to write about things when there's nothing happening :P I spent about five or six hours solo-roaming in the last two days, and the closest I got to a kill was a ratting Coercer who I stumbled into by accident. In the ten or so seconds we spent staring at each other, he realised I hadn't even locked him and warped off. Derp.

So instead this post will be about a few things should hopefully be occurring/written about in the coming week.

PvP
- I've realised that my PvP style is starting to get predictable in the Vengeance. If anyone checks my killboard, then they can easily see my Vengeance fits are almost exact clones of each other. This lets them find a workable strategy to wipe me out, and obviously this is bad for me. So instead, I've found a new ship to test out in PvP.

Teh Autocannon Merlin

I've never really flown a Merlin before now, so killboard intel will be short on the ground, and it's much cheaper for me to fit out a set of Merlins than one Vengeance. That means I can lose several of them with little real impact on my wallet. So in the next week I should have some fun posts to write regarding my solo roams in this cool little frigate.

- I still have lots of little ideas regarding PvP to write about (think mini-guides) and one that's been forming pretty well in my head so far is the importance of using all available intel on your opponent to your advantage. I'm planning to have this one written and edited within about three or four days, so look out for that!

- I'm also considering writing a "mini-guide" on the Vengeance in PvP, similar to my post about the Punisher a while back. Things like strengths/weaknesses, ships you can ususally kill, things you should avoid, a few example fits and suchlike. However I don't feel that I have enough experience flying it yet, so this idea might remain on the backburner for a while until I feel truly comfortable throwing it around in a fight.

Economics
- Adamas Anima (my corp incase I haven't really mentioned it before) has been having a drive for more ISK independence from it's members recently (we all know that without ISK, corporations starve), which has made me look at ways of making ISK semi-passively ( because effort is for tools). I'll therefore be writing a little about my industrial/trader alt's recent activity as a sort of mini-guide for budding manufacturers/traders. I'd like to point out now that I am by no means an expert in either of these professions, so this will be a sort of "first look" thing :)

In general

- I also have a guide on scanning kicking around (that one of my corp members wrote a few days back) that introduces the basics pretty well. I just need to get his permission to reproduce it on my blog, and then I'll get that up on here along with some pretty pictures. Of course I will fully credit it to him, I'm not harsh enough to steal someone else's work :P

- And finally, I have my own opinion on the recently (ish) announced plans to change skill training for many ships, and the (comparably small)  rage that this has induced from some players. So there'll possibly a short little post on that within the week aswell.


Anyway, that's all I've got right now. My next post (fingers crossed) should have much more substance than this...