Sometimes life gives you lemons

And sometimes it showers you with gifts.

Like today, for example, when I had a lucky streak on SOMER Blink. Since they've hit 200trillion in payouts, they were offering the random chance to win double the items you gambled on. E.g if you had ticket 4 on a pirate cruiser, and that ticket won, you would win two of the cruisers, which is pretty awesome. (I can only imagine the orgasms if somebody got this on a capital ship). So I decided to try my luck and see if I could win some ships to pew in.

I started with 20mil I had in my BLINK account from some earlier wins, and through a series of "WTF I WON?!" moments, I steadily worked my way up to about 150mil, at which point I decided to risk going for a Legion, which I then won, like a boss.

Holy fucks were shouted and the ISK payment quickly taken.

Pics or GTFO? Challenge accepted.

Three seemed to be my lucky number, so I ran with it

I'm not sure whether to put this windfall into my PvP, or use it to help buy my alt a shiny new Orca.

My heart says MOAR PEW PEW, and my brain is inclined to agree.

We shall see.

First kill of Inferno!

In honour of my brand spanking new launchers adorning my even sexier Vengeance (If such a thing were possible) I decided to take Project K, the fully pimped version, out into LowSec, and score a kill or two to mark the release of the Inferno expansion. Amazingly, I didn't die.

New launchers - awesome even with terrible graphics settings

And by some miracle, I killed a ship too.

The roam

So I started the roam in Naguton and the surrounding area. I wandered around Gallente LowSec for a while before realising I knew absolutely nothing about the "patterns" of the area so to speak, and plotted a twenty jump trip through LowSec towards the Ami/Chej area. I know, I'm like a broken record when it comes to Ami, but it's the area I feel most comfortable in roaming around, and I know which corps are likely to blob me, and which are likely to have a few new PvPers wandering around looking for experience (much like myself).

The only thing was, all the systems between Naguton and Chej were completely deserted. Like I said in one of my earlier posts, that's pretty weird for the area. I think I found out the reason why though in Nebian. There turned out to be a huge armour T3/Battleship gang camping the gate, and of course, just to really fuck with anyone trying to crash the camp, they had a freaking Thanatos carrier supporting them, no doubt stuffed to the gills with RR.

Like the true PvP all-star I am, I went through the gate after spamming jump about fifty bazillion times then warped to a random planet as fast as my overview would load. Nobody followed me, but I decided it would be too risky to keep flying with massive gangs around, and logged off for the night.

The next day...

Using the Map like a boss to find targets. Thanks Sard!

The next day, looking forward to some pew pew, I undocked and poked around the general area, slowly working my way back to Pananan and Gademam. I hoped to find some ratters before I hopped back into Amdonen and returned to Amarr. There was very little in any of the systems, except for Bridi, where I played a game with an Arty-Hurricane. He tried to alpha my ass off, and I tried to get close enough to utterly screw up his tracking and tackle him.
Sadly the pilot (afHorunge) wasn't dumb enough to let me get into web/scram range, and I wasn't stupid enough to let my transversal drop low enough for him to blow me to smithereens. After dancing around each other at ranges between 30 - 50km (during which he launched drones and I tore them apart before they even broke my shields) he got bored, warped off, and then left system a few minutes later.

Disappointed at my failure to LOLWTFPWN an Arty-Cane (if I was under his guns, he would have been screwed :P), I moved into Daran, scared the shit out of a ratting Omen (he escaped) and then moved on into Pananan. Nope, nothing. I jumped back into Daran and saw a new person in Local. Hopefully he would be ratting too?

I warped to the centre of the system and pinged D-Scan. An Ishkur popped up. Having a total brain-fart moment, I couldn't remember if the Ishkur was the T2 Frigate, or the T2 Cruiser. While racking my brains I scanned him down to a belt only a few AU away. Giving up on my terrible memory, I googled it.

It was the Assault Frigate. We're in business! (The T2 cruiser is the Ishtar incase you're wondering).

I quickly checked the pilot (Hadon Radin) on BattleClinic and found his typical Ishkur fit. No explosive resist whatsoever. Awesome. Blaster fit with a long point, and a tracking disruptor instead of a web. Odd choice but ok. I decided to try and hold him at range with my super-l33t faction web to mitigate his blaster damage and then kick the crap out of him with my rockets before he could escape.

I'm a master tactician I know.

I loaded my faction Nova Rockets (I found out earlier this week that faction rockets have better explosion velocity vs small targets than T2 rockets apparently. Oops) and warped into the belt. I landed at zero, and found we were about 25-30km from each other. No way I could catch him if he tried to run. "Well damn" I thought "I'm not getting this fight unless he wants to engage". I sat there for a while, deciding there was no point running after him because he could just warp, and maybe my apparent indecision would give him the confidence to come gunning for me.

Whatever his thinking was, he decided to burn at me while flinging Hobgoblin IIs my way. I knew from tests with corpmates that I could easily tank a flight of drones and ignored them, instead focusing on his ship. I webbed him at 14km and proceeded to orbit at 5.5km, so my nosferatu could keep sucking his cap if I needed it. His blasters wiped out my shields with two volleys, and did decent damage to my armour. Luckily he was to far away to land consistent hits, and in between the volleys I was easily repping away his damage. Strategy ftw!

During all of this, my rockets were making a terrible mess of his hull. With pretty much no explosive resist besides his Damage Control, I was tearing huge chunks out of his armour with every volley. His rep kept pulling him back, but I was in his hull fairly fast, and he soon exploded. A valiant fight from a beautiful ship (I have a secret "thing" for Gallente designs).

"Gf" was exchanged in Local, and I moved in to loot his wreck while he warped off in his pod. I didn't bother trying to catch it, I have no urge to slaughter my security status at this point, and ransoms aren't really my style (though I've managed it before). I caught a flash of something shiny, before clicking "loot all" and scooping his drones too. They fetch a decent price, and I'm hoping I might one day live off my PvP loot. (Yeah, fat chance, which is why I have my alt :P).

I waited for my aggression to fade, then docked up and checked out my spoils.

Some faction ammo, meh. (I don't use blasters at the moment)
Meta 4 long point, not bad. (Sell it!)
Some T2 blaster stuff, pretty decent. (Sell it some more!)
A Corpii C-Type Small Nosferatu. - Sweeet. The exact one I have fitted to my ship too :)

New killmails are much prettier than before. Well played CCP

Inferno's sexy new price estimate told me my loot was worth around 16mil. Sounds a bit much to me, I was guessing around 12-13 mil, but it's close enough.

Either way, I'm not complaining about a good fight and good loot.

Fly safe ;)

Keep your grubby fingers off my Vengeance

I know I'm not fantastic at PvP (though I'm attempting to improve :P). Infact, I know I'm pretty sub-par at fitting ships, and generally have to go to websites or other players so I can fly something that won't embarrass me when I die. But when I feel like taking a crack at building my own fit, I like to think I can do it fairly effectively. It won't be groundbreaking, but I'll make a damn decent attempt at fitting the ship.

You know the thing I'm talking about. Build the fit around the advantages and bonuses the ship gets. Put some thought into different permutations and which one will be most effective overall. Finetune the fit after you barely survive/die in a glorious inferno to get the maximum potential out of it and iron out flaws you missed the first time around. That sort of thing.

Or alternatively, you can do what this guy did, and just assume that whatever you fit to a ship will work itself out. Why yes, that is a kiting laser Vengeance. (Didn't you know that's the new thing?). There are two things about this fit that flat out annoy me, because it speaks of ignorance on the part of the pilot (and that really gets on my nerves :P)

For the majority of you who don't fly the Veng, you may be wondering what my problem is with this fit. It's Amarrian right? Amarrian ships use lasers, jeez...

Yeah no.

The Vengeance, as you may have worked out from its shiny black and silver colour scheme, is a Khanid design. Khanid designs use missiles on Amarrian hulls (which is about twenty different kinds of awesome) while looking sexy as hell.

So the Sacrilege, for example, uses Heavy Assault Missiles. The Vengeance, in turn, uses rockets. Maybe you can start to see why this fit makes me a little "Sad Panda" inside. CCP even realised that people may assume that the Vengeance is meant to use lasers (Amarr, duh), and gave it some pretty nice missile bonuses, just to make it abundantly clear that "THIS SHIP USES MISSILES, KAY?"

Vengeance

Amarr Frigate Skill Bonus:
5% bonus to Rocket Damage per level
-5% bonus to Missile Launcher Rate of Fire per level


So I'd like to think it's fairly obvious the Vengeance is a rocket boat. Not only that, but the Vengeance has only three turret slots, but five highslots. Looks a little empty up there with just lasers don't you think?

What makes this even worse, is that if you're dead set on using lasers on a T2 Punisher hull, I have the perfect ship for you. It's called a Retribution. Why use the Vengeance when there is a ship designed for what you're trying to do?!

First problem with this fit has been pointed out I think.


The other problem is the fitting of a disruptor. You're really doing yourself no favours here. If you're going to AB fit a frigate, you need a web and scram to keep MWD fitted stuff at a speed you can deal with. Otherwise it's just going to break range and escape before you can do any real damage to it. Therefore, there's little point (pun intended) in fitting a disruptor over a scram on the Vengeance unless you need the extra range (which should never happen, because rockets run out of fuel after about 10km with decent skills).  So this suggests to me that the pilot was trying to kite in a Vengeance using scorch crystals. This would be a great plan on a Retribution. The Vengeance? Not so much.

The main reason why, is that an AB Vengeance is slow. Seriously slow. Amarr has the slowest assault frigates, and that's painfully obvious when you try to break 900m/s in one of them. A MWD would help with this obviously, but fighting in scram range can really bite you in the ass if you do this (though Korvus likes to think he's fixed this problem by using faction scrams/webs for more range. Doesn't sound like it would work to me, but I haven't tried it yet).

So, we have a kiting ship that's stupidly easy to catch and does terrible DPS because it has no bonuses to laser damage and can only fit three of them. Wow. I applaud your bravery, but it's not ever going to work.

Infact, the more I look at this fit, it looks more and more like somebody mixed up the Retribution, and the Vengeance. Maybe the guy was in a rush and fitted the wrong ship? Maybe? (Not that they look totally different or anything...)

Even so, it still makes me feel ill looking at it.



P.S That Megathron pilot should also be embarrassed for using heavy drones on a frigate
P.P.S Thanks to "iwinyoulost" for sending me this killmail :)

Wow, I'm an idiot

This was going to be a post about how I almost lost my Vengeance to an Ishkur and his buddy the other day. Right up until the point where I went AFK while warping to a gate in LowSec.

Yeah that was a really freaking dumb idea.

Of course, with my luck, there was a gatecamp there. And of course, they popped my ship (thankfully not my fully pimped Veng) and then blew my pod to pieces. When I got back with my drink, I was a little confused as to why I was already in Amarr. Then I realised, and had a good laugh about it.

Atleast only the web dropped. They could have gotten MOAR FACTION STUFF ;)

Actually the only thing that made me a little pissed at myself was losing my pod, because having to buy new implants is expensive. (Yes I know the ship was expensive, but frankly I'm used to losing ships by now and it doesn't really faze me. My pod, on the other hand, still gets me annoyed).

So yeah. I screwed up there, my bad. o.O

Well played to that gatecamp, I totally deserved to get nailed for "not taking sensible precautions".

Damn that previous post has bitten me in the ass...

Stop being dumb and you might enjoy the game more

Despite what my killboard would suggest, I've actually been out on solo roams fairly often this week. I just can't seem to find anyone who:

A) Wants to fight

B) Is on their own (i.e I'm not going to get blobbed so hard my ass still feels raw the next day)

C) Is in a ship with a chance of both of us winning (because murdering industrials gets old)

Basically I can't find a "fair" fight for both sides.  Then again, as an old corpmate used to say,

 "If you're in a fair 1 v 1, there's two pilots in that fight doing it wrong"

Wise words no?

However, I had a pretty close "fair" fight with my Vengeance yesterday against an Ishkur that resulted in him suffering some decent hull damage, and me nearly burning out just about all my modules before his buddy turned up. It was scary to say the least, the thought of all that ISK down the drain. Neither of us died though (which I suppose is a good/bad thing depending on your viewpoint).

But before I talk about my near death experience in the next post, I'd like to point out something to the playerbase, because I swear 80% of EVE players are like flocks of dumb sheep. You make yourself an easy target in EVE, people are going to kick your ass from here to next week. You think I'm being dramatic? 

Look at Hulkageddon.  Easy targets. 

Burn Jita? Easy targets.

Like many have said on the internet long before I started playing EVE:

"EVE is a sandbox. A sandbox full of landmines. Deal with it." - A number of posts from 2007/8

Basically, if you make yourself a target, sh*t will happen to you eventually. Those miners not paying attention to those dozens of forums posts about Hulkageddon? Targets. Those hauler and freighter pilots who still undocked with most of Goonswarm posting ASCII penis into Jita Local over the "OMG WE'RE ALL DYING" screams of everyone else? Targets.

Getting the idea? (And yes, that Burn Jita example actually happened. I was there on my trade alt)

A much less dramatic example is this:

I found this guy ratting in a Maller in Pananan. For those of you not that familiar with the area, Pananan is either fairly busy (10-12 in Local) or totally dead, depending on when you go there. And when it's dead, the ratters come out to play. Obviously this is a great time to run in there and scare the chickens, though last time I tried this, it ended fairly badly.

But anyway, I'm kicking around the system. It's fairly busy right now with eight people in Local including me, and I'm not really expecting to find anyone doing dumb stuff, like mining or ratting. A Maller pops up on D-Scan. "Hmpf" I think. "Probably at a POS". Even so I narrow him down fairly quickly to a belt. (I think I've got the hang of this D-Scanning crap now). "That's weird" I think, and I change filters to check for wrecks. Two frigate wrecks.

I'm convinced at this point that I've found one of dumb people who stumble into LowSec by accident, and warp into the belt. I land not 5km from him while he's playing "bump the asteroids". He's scrambled and murdered within about twenty seconds. I loot his wreck and then warp off. Purely by instinct, I type "gf" into Local. Admittedly from his position, this probably seemed like a dick move from me, but I didn't realise quite how he'd take it.

Pananan Local

Seraph Minayin > gf

AmarrianScu Semah > no not good fight

AmarrianScu Semah > fucked fight

AmarrianScu Semah > cyclone on a maller

Seraph Minayin > not my fault you were ratting in lowsec man

Seraph Minayin > apologies for your explosion

AmarrianScu Semah > apologize for shit

AmarrianScu Semah > you wanted an easy target

AmarrianScu Semah > so you came and got it

AmarrianScu Semah > idgaf  ( I had to look this up, it means "I don't give a fuck" if you didn't know)

Seraph Minayin > well yeah

Seraph Minayin > you made yourself an easy target

AmarrianScu Semah > lmao

Seraph Minayin > glad you agree :)

AmarrianScu Semah > I don't agree on anything

AmarrianScu Semah > there's four belts

AmarrianScu Semah > you're bored

Seraph Minayin > "If you rat in a system with only four belts your asking to get podded. "

Seraph Minayin > from your own bio

Yes that actually was in his bio. Word for word. Dear god the irony is strong in this one.

AmarrianScu Semah > yeah but did you pod me  (Not the point I was trying to make...)

AmarrianScu Semah > fuck no

Seraph Minayin > you're just lucky i cant lock fast ;)

AmarrianScu Semah > lol

Seraph Minayin > :)

AmarrianScu Semah > i'm not lucky about anything, the moment the cyclone showed up i knew there was fucked

AmarrianScu Semah > but did I get podded?

AmarrianScu Semah > no cause you suck ass

AmarrianScu Semah > LMAO

AmarrianScu Semah > a two months skilled maller with therm/em tank

AmarrianScu Semah > look bro you got my ship all good

Seraph Minayin > fair enough?  (I have no idea where he's going with this)

AmarrianScu Semah > you didn't get what you wanted though  (Kinda did, just wanted a killmail :P)

Seraph Minayin > i'm just saying, you made yourself an easy target

Seraph Minayin > if hadnt killed you someone else would

SavageKaan > ^^  ( <- Local Piwats have noticed our convo)

AmarrianScu Semah > seraph i was warping out, you came in just at the right time

Seraph Minayin > you shoulda warped the moment i entered system

AmarrianScu Semah > if I would have been out a second earlier

AmarrianScu Semah > id been in station

AmarrianScu Semah > plain and simple

I gave up on him at this point. My point was, if you're going to rat in LowSec, take sensible precautions. Do it at quiet points in the day. Stay aligned to something. Spam D-Scan whenever someone enters system. If it's something even vaguely dangerous, GTFO and dock up. (Obviously you don't have to worry about someone passing through in a pod). He did none of these things and he died. Like I said, If I hadn't got him, one of the six other people in Local would have found him and exploded him.

If you don't take precautions against known threats (e.g Burn Jita, Hulkageddon, people in LowSec looking for a fight), you're an easy target. And what happens to easy targets?

You get shat on by the rest of the playerbase ;)

Fly safe.

So what's in your hangar?

Since this seems to become a bit of a theme recently, I thought I'd hop onto the bandwagon (a little late admittedly) and talk about my ships in my hangar.

Most of these are based in Amarr, with a few scattered in other systems I tend to visit (like Jita). Anyway, on with the show...

Ships (Seraph)

- 3 x Vengeances: "Project K" and "LOOK FREE PLEX!" Both are faction fit because I love these frigates :P The other is called "Ohai" a half-fit buffer Veng I've been thinking of trying out, but haven't gotten around to dealing with yet.

- 2 x Wolves: (Despite the fact I can't actually fly these yet I have two ready to go, with fits in their cargoholds) "Sexy and I know it" set up as a Mini-Vagabond fit, and "Vandal", an in-your-face brawler fit. Excited to use both when Minmatar Frigate V finishes!

- 1 x Cyclone: "Drop teh cyno!" fitted with an X-L shield booster, a fit I enjoy flying, except I'm not very good with bigger ships right now so these tend to die alot.

- 1 x Arbitrator: "Y-Wing" full neut fitted with tracking disruptors and such. Used it to kill a Rupture ages back and haven't touched it since, which is a shame because it's a pretty cool fit.

- 1 x Bellicose: "You look like a fish" Anti-Frigate lolfit I've been wanting to take out for a while. I fully expect it to die in the first engagement I use it in...

- 3 x Ruptures: "I touch roids", "Not bait, I promise" and "Ruppy" because I'm damn original like that. The first two are armour fit, and the third is shield fit. I'm planning to take them out once I have medium T2 Autos.

- 1 x Stabber: Unfit, not even assembled. Was planning to make it like a cheaper Vagabond but I need T2 guns first so I can use Barrage.

- 4 x Thrashers: Only one fully fitted up "Hail", a gank fit with autos/neut. The other three are replacements.

- 1 x Heron: "Trololol" fitted with ship/cargo scanner for when I get bored. (Sometimes I sit outside Amarr and scan people just for the hell of it. I'm weird I know).

- 2 x Merlins: "Cyno" and "Ur doin it wrong" One is a standard MSE fit and the other is an armour lolfit. Guess which is which ;)

- 1 x Incursus: "Joust me bitches" Tried using it once in a practise fight, found my blaster skills sucked. When they get better I guess I'll fly it more, but until then, it's gathering dust.

- 1 x Kestrel: "Speed Demon" Ironic because it's dual web/scram fit. Not used it in combat yet but looks fun.

- 1 x Probe: "Poor Man's Rifter" I use it as a fast shuttle for when I want to quickly visit places. Inertia stabs for fast aligns, with a cloak incase I need to go AFK with expensive cargo :P

- 6 x Rifters: Who doesn't have some of these kicking around? Only two are fitted at the moment, "Banana Phone" with a plate/rep fit and "Pod Racer", MSE fit.

- 1 x Mammoth: "Chunky" For moving stuff around. That's about it.

- 1 x Noctis: "Minemineminemine" Finding Nemo reference. A relic from my days of "run ALL the missions!!!1!!"

- 2 x Maledictions: One is fit for gang tackle "Come back here", and the other is solo fit, "WAIT WHAT". Haven't used either much, which is a shame because it's quite a pretty hull.

- 1 x Taranis: "Facemelting" I can't fly this yet either, but I picked it up cheap on contracts (fitted and rigged about 3 mil under market price) so it's just sitting there until I train for Gallente frigates/blasters.

- 1 x Maelstrom: "Lawnmower" My mission ship. Pretty standard missioning Maelstrom with 800mm Autos. Not much to say really.

- 1 x Velator: "CARRYIN PLEXES LOL" I have no idea when or where I got this, considering I'm an Amarrian pilot (so I would always get Impariors when I dock in empty stations). I've only ever used it as a shuttle.

Also, I have:
Zendrak's ships - Mainly Industrial ships (e.g Bestower, a Sigil and some fast frigates for transporting stuff), a Covetor mining barge (I can fly a Hulk but I sold my last one when prices skyrocketed), and of course the pride of my Industrial "fleet", the Providence I have sitting in Jita 4 - 4 right now. I decided to name it the "People's Republic". (I thought it was a nice nod to the fact that it was paid for through donations)

 Soon I'll hopefully have an Orca included in this too, since market trading seems to be making me some decent money recently ( also market PvP is a bitch XD )


Looking at this list, I'm actually quite surprised at the number of ships I own. I better work on losing them before they build even higher, though several need more skills trained before I would be prepared to fly (and lose them) in PvP.

So, what's in your hangar?

Thank you, you're all awesome!

I'm not kidding.

Thanks to the generosity of a number of players after my shameless internet begging, I can now afford a Freighter for my alt. It only took a few days, and if I'm honest I'm surprised it worked at all! But now, I have a sexy new Providence sitting in my alt's hangar, just waiting to be flown for the first time. I've already bought all the needed skillbooks, and within two weeks, it'll be gracing the spacelanes between trade hubs, and I'm incredibly thankful to everyone who donated. And without further ado, here are those players:


Korvus Falek - 1.1billion ISK (Wow)
Isis Tavore - 50 million ISK
Ranger Gama - 50 million ISK
Staxed - 25 million ISK
Jake Sabezan - 15 million ISK
Truen1ght - 10 million ISK
Spjoortian - 3 million ISK

Total: 1.253 Billion ISK

And of course, the comedian corpmates who got their "donation" in before I restricted the mention to those who donated two million or more...

Myopic Thyne - 590 thousand ISK (Great to see my CEO support me so much)
Razorfang Doomhammer - 0.10 ISK (Sadly, I'm not even joking)


I owe all of you (even the two jokers) for this new ship. So thank you for your help :P

(Also I still need a name for this ship. Any ideas? Drop them in the comments!)


P.S Before everyone feels a little overshadowed by Korvus, he did win a Rorqual, Revelation, Legion, a PLEX and a load of other expensive crap not ten minutes before on SOMER Blink. You lucky bastard Korvus...

"Give me all you got, I want your money not your life"

"Oh there aint no rest for the wicked,
Money don't grow on trees.
I got bills to pay, 
I got mouths to feed.
There ain't nothing in this world for free"
- Cage the Elephant, "Ain't No Rest For The Wicked"

Remember a while back when I discussed training my alt for a freighter within six months or so?

Due to a reshuffle of my skillplan, and some educated risks with the bare minimums of what I need, I've suddenly found that I could be flying one within a month or so. It seems crazy how fast I've got here, I expected it to take much longer. And that, in essence, is the problem.

No not that sort of problem...

I didn't expect to have to pay for it so soon, and as a result, my wallet is a little light at the moment (to say the least). Paying for a freighter is going to gut my resources. I would literally have to sell everything I owned, and even then I'll be a little short. Clearly that's not a position anyone wants to be in, so I was stumped. With my Incursion ship gone (and the recent Incursion nerfs), fast ISK is difficult to come by. The best I had would be Level 4 missions, and that would take months of grinding, which I feared would turn me into a zombie.

And then I hit upon an idea. Why not turn into a dirty beggar, on the streets of the Internet, and pitifully ask those better off than me financially, for their spare change? A part of me felt terrible for even considering it, but then again, if fifty people donated just five million each, I'm already two hundred and fifty million ISK closer than I was before. And though I'm ashamed to say it, that sounded much better than months of grinding missions.

Am I a bad person for using this photo? o.O

So, in order to fund my purchase of this beautiful hull, I started the Providence Fund. I estimated in order to pay for the hull and skillbooks at current prices, I would need around 1.42 billion ISK. Ouch. (I blame the mineral spike) I asked my CEO if I could use a corp wallet division to hold the funds, and he graciously agreed. Thanks to some early donators, I already have a few hundred million, but I'm still a way off that magic number. :(

So to you, the internet, I extend this plea for your spare ISK. Any amount, however great or small will be hugely appreciated. And as a small show of my appreciation, all donators who send more than two million ISK will be named alongside the amount they donated in a future blog post. I know it's not much, but I hope it atleast repays you somewhat for your time and effort in this :)

No doubt of course, you have some questions about this whole thing. Here's what I can think of off the top of my head:

Why should I give you my cold hard ISK?

The big question. My only real reason is that for a relatively small amount of ISK, you could help me immeasurably in EVE. That's really all I've got besides the "Thank you so much, to these people" blog post that will follow shortly after I hopefully purchase it :)

Why don't you just grind up the ISK anyway you lazy *******?

Because I'd rather spend the majority of my time doing interesting PvP that I can write about for you guys, rather than spend dozens, if not hundreds of hours working my way up missions to buy this ship. It might make me understand the value of it so to speak, but I think I'll burn out long before I break a billion :\

What are you going to use it for ?

Honest answer, hauling. (Shocked?) :P

More specifically, hauling large amounts of materials/ships/etc to and from trade hubs for both my corp and my corpmates. So infact, you'll be helping them too with a small donation.

If instead you mean the money, have no fear that it will all be spent on the Providence and related skillbooks. That's why I've asked to borrow a division of the corp wallet, so that there is no chance of me "accidentally" spending it :)

Wait, so you're putting nothing into this yourself?

As much as I would like that ( :P ), I am putting in some money myself, at around three hundred million. So when I (hopefully) reach around 1.1 billion, I'll add in my own cash and buy the Providence. Don't worry, I'm not funding this purely through laziness ;)

Why do I have to donate two million to get mentioned?

Because, dear reader, I know what internet trolls are like. They'll donate as little ISK as possible just to get a mention, along the lines of 0.10ISK (hell some of my corpmates already tried this). While you're perfectly welcome to donate this much, it would take a huge amount of time to find everybody who thought they were hilarious by donating such tiny amounts. So instead, I've put a small "effort" barrier (so to speak). Like I said, you're perfectly welcome to donate less than this. No hard feelings :)

Those are all the questions I can think of right now. If you have any more questions, feel free to leave a comment here or mail me in game, I'll reply as soon as possible!

And yes I realise this entire post sounds like one of those scam websites. Ergh I feel dirty...

Out like a light

Well my Cyclone is dead.

It was a close fight, and I mean close. We were both shield tanked, and by the end (when I died) the Hurricane was in around 70% hull. If I had managed to keep my booster going for a few more cycles, I reckon I could have won. Or if I had T2 autos, I think I could have killed him before I died due to the higher ROF (and damage, because I only have Medium Projectile IV). Once again, more skills could have saved my bacon, but the major reason I lost was because I screwed up, not because the ship was badly fit or some other "derp ur doin it wrong" reason

I've been using a medium standard container in my cargo, so I can carry extra cap boosters in it. I reasoned more cap boosters = more shield boosting = survival. The only problem was, you have to move them from the container into your cargo to keep the boosters reloading, otherwise they just sit pretty in the container, and you run out of cap while looking like an idiot. And that's exactly what I did (which you can see in the killmail, as I still had 10 x 800 Cap Booster charges left).

This ship is seriously fun to fly

I rarely use cap-boosters, and when I do they're just in my cargo (I've never needed to load them manually). So I clean forgot halfway through the fight that I would need to keep moving them over, which meant I ran out of cap, lost my tank, and died stupidly close to getting a Hurricane killmail. You can watch my terrible memory here.

Even so, I really enjoyed flying it, and I've already fitted up another. Hopefully this time, I'll remember to keep my boosters topped up :P

Trying out some bigger guns

A while back, I saw a live feed from Sard Caid (who is quickly becoming my new idol :P) flying a Cyclone with an X-L shield booster, and doing surprisingly well with what I assumed was a terrible ship. To be fair to myself though, that's only because seemingly everyone I asked said, "LOL CYCLONE R BAD, FLY HURRICANE TROLOLOL"

So instead I was intrigued, and decided to try it myself. Due to my fast fading Caldari carebear ways, I have pretty strong shield tanking skills, and after my brief fling with Minmatar cruisers, I can use Medium Autocannons with some effectiveness. Obviously my DPS was not going to make anyone fall over in terror, but I assumed I could outank and wear people down instead (quite alot like my Vengeance actually). I could fit pretty much everything besides the Medium T2 Autos (which I really need to get around to doing) and EFT was showing a pretty decent tank. Of course the only downside was the huge amount of cap that X-L booster guzzled. In order to feed it, Sard had had to fit two cap boosters, which limited my other mids to a scram and a MWD. I wasn't going to kill anything small or fast in this, they could just break range and escape. And obviously the faster I burned through the boosters, the less time I would have to kill anything.


So I needed a slow, easy to catch target. And amazingly I found one.

It's actually a quite cool looking ship...

I was sitting on the gate in Pananan, trading some banter with the locals, when a Prophecy landed on gate next to me. I knew Prophecies had a reputation for being massively tanked bait ships, so I wasn't going to GCC for a target that could end up holding me down for fifty of his friends to jump in and asskick me. Instead I locked him up, hoped he had an itchy trigger finger and went back to Local chat. Here's a taste of some of our hugely intellectual conversations:


vukzii > btw, comments on what movie i should see tonight?
vukzii > im thinking about the fighter
Seraph Minayin > hm


After a minute or so, the Prophecy burned off gate and sat out at 20km. I ignored him and tabbed out to change my music.

Of course he chose that point to start shooting at me. My shield alarms blaring away scared the crap out of me and I quickly tabbed back to see him sitting 35km ish off the gate and slowboating away. My shields were fine, at about 60% (damn you overly loud audio), and the gate guns were already starting to tickle his armour. I reckoned I could hold him down for an easy kill, and burned straight for him. I orbited at about 5km and turned on my warp scram. All I had to do now was apply my DPS and wait for the gate guns to melt his face off. (Stupidly I didn't deploy my drones for a another hundred DPS until pretty late in the fight, I'm used to frigates where I don't have that luxury). I was tanking him pretty comfortably, and was expecting this to be a pretty simple kill steal (from the NPCs that is).

Of course at that point his buddies jumped in. Well crap.

I started recording, just so I could see what I did wrong/right with this ship afterwards (I expected to die), not realising what was about to happen. (Actually, this is a really good habit to get into. Record your fights so you can watch them back later. It's a great learning tool, plus you can show off awesome fights to your corpmates :P).

So anyway, a Hurricane and a Legion had landed on gate, and I was certain I was going to die. I may have been able to tank the Hurricane for long enough to de-aggro and jump out, but that Legion was just going to burn through my shields. I decided to atleast get the Prophecy kill, and then most likely die in a glorious ball of fire.  Luckily the Prophecy was having serious trouble tanking those gate guns, and soon exploded. I then decided to act like a Pro-PvPer and managed to screwed up my cap boosters, which meant I was left without tank for about 10-15 seconds (Clearly I was bait tanking and stuff...). Thankfully the Legion was too far off to apply decent DPS, and the Hurricane seemed to overshoot me. I eventually rectified my mess and clawed some shields back. Ready to die horrendously to lasers, I eyed up my options, have a go at the T3 (yeah that wouldn't end well), or gun for the Cane and hope he had a terribad tank?

Then I realised I wasn't actually pointed. Erm, cheers?


The Hurricane must have screwed up his approach, because he got seriously close to me, then zoomed off to about 28km, so he dropped his point. I expected the Legion to have a faction point (Fed Navy Disruptor can reach 30km, and he was at about this distance) but apparently he had decided to avoid teh shinies, which meant I had a few seconds before that Hurricane pilot turned his ship around and pointed me again. Of course I chose the coward's way out and warped my ass the hell away while having a good laugh to myself. They had pretty much just given me a free kill, and I wasn't going to complain about it.

Local

vukzii > don't die plix
vukzii > Nsephiroth you popped too?
Seraph Minayin > he died
Seraph Minayin > i warped
Seraph Minayin > screw you guys and your blobs
Seraph Minayin > :P
rezilliant > lol.. three people isnt a blob
Seraph Minayin > you know what i mean :P -> (I meant, stop trying to kill me all the time XD)
vukzii > yeah seraph lolololol
Seraph Minayin > SHUT UP VUK YOU TOUCH KIDS -> (Classic LowSec banter with Vuk)
vukzii > i love myself


Thanks to an utter lack of GCC, I warped back to the Daran gate and got my battle-scarred Cyclone back to HighSec. So long, and thanks for all the fish!


It's been a pretty profitable evening (though I didn't get to loot the Prophecy wreck), and I'm looking forward to flying this Cyclone some more (once I get T2 guns anyway). It's nice to be able to engage on gates and stations if I want to, just a little annoying that gate guns are going to have something to say about it :P





P.s vukzii is awesome and way better at PvP than Garmon. (I promised to say it)

WHO TOUCHED SASHA?

+1 Internets to anyone who guesses what the title is quoted from.

But seriously, look at her !

New launcher models! 

This of course, is from the test server Sisi, which already has the new Amarr V3 skins (which are all sexy as hell) and the new launcher models before the official Inferno release. Suffice to say, there were alot of Caldari ships zooming around outside station. And the new missile effects themselves look awesome. Here's some terribly timed screenshots I took:

Shooting at evil cans

These models and effects are a  huge  improvement (in my opinion) over the old "puff of smoke, see explosion on enemy ship" approach of the old missiles. They have a wierd twisty effect too, that makes you go "Ooooh" everytime they fire. Cool stuff!
The only problems so far are some weird clipping issues, but hopefully CCP will have resolved those by the time Inferno launches


Also, the new Vengeance skin is freaking amazing. Black and silver is way cooler than just plain black. And it's really shiny.

Not only that, but the other Amarr ships I want to fly after my frigate plan (e.g Sacrilege, Pilgrim, Curse, Zealot) have also been sexified. The Sacrilege and Curse just seem to have had some silver highlights done, along with a general texture improvement, but the ships with the gold/red theme going on have had a slight colour change (e.g Retribution, Pilgrim, Paladin). The red is now much darker, and the gold stands out much more sharply against it.

With Overview off

Basically, all the Amarr ships now look amazing. Can't wait to see the Minmatar V3 skins, because that Vagabond is calling me :P