Stretching old muscles

Khanid Region
Fekhoya Constellation
Tegheon Solar System (0.4) - Far orbit over Planet IX
15:32 EVE Time (Local System)

It had been so long since he'd flown in the deep black. Months stuck in station, his pilot license stuck in limbo between CONCORD's red tape and the multiple arrest orders out on him from Minmatar authorities, several for crimes he'd not actually committed. Or atleast, he felt he was no longer the man who'd committed those crimes. A strange moral compass true, but atleast he had one now.

That being said he was no saint. Not one of the holy men from the stories in his youth, who had led peaceful and philosophical lives for hundreds of years before allowing the technology anchoring them to existence to cease, freeing them to the great beyond. One last great journey. But the life of a saint was not the one he craved. Excitement and adrenaline were the drugs he was addicted to. But today, his first flight into space in months, he wanted to keep things slow and methodical. To reawaken his dulled senses and slowed reaction speeds from too long spent in station, drinking nights away.

As a result, his recently refitted Pilgrim hung in deep space near the ninth planet in the Tegheon system. Beautiful carvings in the gold embossed over thick starship armour plating showed her name to be "Ad Astra". New developments in energy transfer technology and power core management had resulted in huge increases in range for energy neutralizers fitted to Pilgrim class ships, and the capsuleer was looking forward to putting them to use. Reliable intel from his alliance had thrown "Tegheon" up as a potential hunting ground, and he'd been loitering in system for about three or four hours now. Annoyingly, the locals seemed content to sit in their tower, probably chattering over secure comms. Two ships were on scan off towards a nearby moon, but Seraph felt no need to observe them directly. The sophisticated sensors onboard his ship would detect any sudden warps away from the tower. He was content to wait silently, cloaked up, allowing his crew to rest and recover from the long flight here from Jita.

He toyed with the idea of decloaking several hundred kilometres from the tower, just to jolt the motionless capsuleers into some sort of action, but he knew this would be a pointless waste of the ease he was steadily putting his targets at. Experience hunting in wormholes with a past group of mercenaries had taught him that greed and boredom soon outweigh caution. Of course this was easier to come by in unknown space where a lack of CONCORD regulations meant there was no way to track how many ships were in system via the use of gate idents. LowSec was still constrained by these legalities, meaning his name would be showing up bright and clear on all "Local" comm channels. A blessing and a curse from CONCORD, but it was only a matter of time before one of the pilots was sure enough Seraph was no threat, and then they'd be vulnerable. It helped that his months stuck in station had meant his confirmed kill history, publicly available, was severely lacking.


15:48 EVE Time (Local System)
A quiet ping from the bridge sensors was the only sign anything had changed in the silent darkness of space. Lounging in his captain's chair, Seraph suddenly sat up, alert. A surge of energy had just emanated from the space surrounding the tower, an obvious sign of a ship dropping into warp. A mere thought from the now awake capsuleer started the Pilgrim's sensors on active directional scans, invisible fingers streaming through space attempting to locate what the ship was and where it was headed. A minute or so passed. A low tone from the sensor suite, followed by a blinking icon on Seraph's holographic HUD screen showed the ship to be a mining vessel, a "Retriever" class strip miner. Seraph tried not to feel too disappointed. A target was a target after all, but a mining vessel was hardly dangerous prey. Then again, it would serve as good practice for covert operations maneuvers, and perhaps would bring combat ships out in defense. The potential for a good fight perked him up slightly, and he worked quickly to locate the clueless miner. He had no need to wake his crew for a defenseless target, there was very little chance of any danger in this engagement.

Within the minute he had located the barge to an asteroid belt surrounding planet VIII. A little slower than he used to be, but much better than he expected after months away from the complex sensor systems found in all combat ships these days. A slight tug on engine power aligned the Pilgrim towards planet VIII, and the muted sound of low-energy covert engines hummed through the hull. The familiar split-second feeling of falling was the only indication that they were in warp. He nodded to himself in satisfaction. Warp technology had come a long way from throwing anything that wasn't tied down to the deck from sudden acceleration.

Deceleration was felt only as a slight pressure pushing him back into the seat. Viewscreens from tiny camera drones launched on landing flickered to life, displaying the surrounding environment, next to distance and speed indicators on surrounding monitors. Automated collision prevention fired microthrusters to float smoothly past gigantic spinning asteroids. In the distance, almost a hundred and seventy kilometres away, the Retriever was visible on the centre screen. Seraph flicked his eyes over at sensor readouts while plotting a short warp that would put his ship within a few kilometres of his target. A few last minute checks confirmed everything was ready.

Power rerouted to sublight warp engines, powerful ion thrusts flaring into visibility as the Pilgrim shimmered back into the visible spectrum halfway through the hundred and sixty or so kilometre warp towards her prey. Seraph had disabled his cloaking device, knowing the few seconds he'd save recalibrating the targeting sensors might make the difference in the barge being caught or slipping away. 

Ad astra had landed perfectly between the barge and her intended warp-out alignment, causing the barge to attempt emergency maneuvers, giving Seraph the dual advantage of surprise and time to act. Not that he needed much time. In one flowing action, energy neutralizers slammed into the Retriever's hull, Hammerhead combat drones launched from the Pilgrim's drone bay, and the warp disruptor pinned her down. He had her dead to rights. With no power for her shield arrays and no avenue of escape, the brutal hybrid rounds from the Hammerheads had torn holes through the lightly armoured barge in mere seconds. The light armour plating was designed to protect the crew from small asteroid impacts or a short fight with ill-equipped pirates. However it was about as effective as plastic against the military-grade ammo used by Seraph's drones. A slight flicker, then a blue flash washed over the camera drones as the Retriever exploded. An escape pod was blown from the wreckage and warped out before it could be locked onto by the Hammerheads.

Salvage drones quickly stripped the wreck of anything that could be sold on the open market while Seraph kept an eye on directional scans. No sign of retaliation just yet, but his comms system had already began decrypting a short burst of static from the Retriever before it had met its demise.

" - Miner Three to Home One, we are under attack from a Recon Class Cruiser
 // Roger Miner Three, we are sending reinforcements
 - Far too late for that, he's downed my shields 
... ... CONNECTION FAILURE ... SIGNAL TERMINATED... ..."

Seraph smirked slightly. Despite the calm tones attempted by both pilots, he could hear their voices shake and hesitate. Clearly they were not expecting combat. His scanner beeped a warning, picking up two cruisers enroute. A Vexor and a Vexor Navy Issue were barreling towards his position. Time to move. A shimmer in space, a short warp, and he was gone. 


But he wasn't done picking off these pilots yet.

The beauty returns (finally)

So after much anxious waiting, my PC was finally returned to me in perfect health. Needless to say I've been trying not to cry with joy everytime I play. On a semi related note, I've also bought a second screen so I can dualbox properly. When it arrives this week I'll stick a photo up of my setup so I can bash my E-peen.

I spent the afternoon that I got my PC back doing MORE Jump Freighter runs, back and forth about five or six times. Luckily it didn't take more than an hour or so, and we didn't run into any problems with two freighters doing the heavy lifting and corpmates to help with cynos. Now we just need to ship our things across HighSec to our jump point, and from there unload everything in our new home. I can already tell what I'm going to be doing this weekend...

I'll be going out for PvP asap when we move in, so stay tuned guys, and fly safe.

Just take out two ribs at this rate (More skillplan talk)

So last time I talked about Seraph, but what's Zendrak been doing?

Boringly he's been maxing out skills for capitals. I've got some seriously long skills under my belt on him, like Amarr Carrier V, Tactical Logistics Reconfiguration V, and all of the jump drive skills to V too. I'm only a little smug about those skills being done.

 But now I'm not sure what I want to do.

Currently Zen is just chugging along with capital shield support skills, since I'm hoping when CCP eventually get around to balancing capitals, the Chimera will become a shield Archon. Hell, even if the Chimera doesn't get buffed, I can just get Caldari Cruiser V for the Basilisk so I can fly in Incursion fleets when I feel like some easy ISK. Also the Chimera is sexy as hell, so flying one would make my e-peen grow a few more inches. Essentially I'm trying to "future-proof" Zendrak from nerfs and buffs, but besides this I don't really know. I have a few ideas but it's tough to decide, so I'll lay them out.

Option 1 - Capital Pilot Perfection
Basically I keep on the track I'm currently on, finishing off basic skills to sit in all the carriers (Expensive skillbooks though, ouch), getting JF V and the ability to fly all of them since I can already fly the Anshar and the Ark. Then I can start getting gunnery skills together and look towards a Revelation or Naglfar. I don't want to have the ability to fly all the dreads since that would be overkill. Honestly one would be enough, or even one armour dread and one shield dread. After all that's done (which is obviously alot) I could perhaps look towards a Supercarrier. The problem is that the only super I'd be willing to fly is the Nyx because the Aeon hull looks so ugly. If I'm lucky though, by the time I reach this stage CCP will have redone the Aeon hull so it's actually fully built.

SERIOUSLY IT'S SO UGLY
(Screenshot credit to Fen Zavda)

Another problem is that I'd need a holding toon for whenever Zendrak wasn't flying the Nyx, which is a bit of a pain in the ass, plus it'd pretty much require me to have a third account which I don't particularly want to deal with. So there's limits to how far I'd want to skill for capitals, especially seeing as I'd never be able to use my super unless I joined Null-Sec again, or some big LowSec hotdropping alliance like Shadow Cartel.

Option 2 - Utility
This is the simpler, cheaper and potentially more interesting option than training pure capitals. In this plan I'd start grabbing useful secondary skills for Zendrak so I can fly him alongside Seraph.

For example, I could max out scanning skills and use Zen to scan down NullSec exploration sites and scout, while Seraph completes the sites and carries the loot around, which sounds pretty fun in my book (well okay, making shit tons of ISK sounds like fun). Plus if Seraph is in something like a Pilgrim, I can use Zendrak to scan down people running anomalies before warping in and murdering them. Alternatively Zen could train for a Noctis or even a Rattlesnake and help me blitz missions so I can pay for more PvP stuff with dat mad ISK. Hell I could go balls to the wall crazy and duo box marauders with the two of them. But I think that's probably a bit much. I could also max out leadership skills and be a massive elitesololinkfaggotwarrior or "ESLFW" but I don't really like the idea of that (if you couldn't tell). So there's lots of potential here, but I don't know if I want an alt that covers areas my main already does to a decent degree.

Option 3 - Industrial Revolution
I've never really got into the manufacturing/industry side of EVE but I could quite easily train Zendrak so I can dabble with it and see where it goes. I've always loved the idea of starting a capital production chain and churning out Archons and such, but the startup costs of the blueprints etc is enough to put me off. However with the Crius expansion now released, maybe all that has changed, since the industry UI is apparently a thousand times easier to use and understand. With a small investment or two in BPCs, maybe I can start my dream of building for the constant war machine that is New Eden.

Corax under construction! :D

Even if capital production is a little out of my reach, I could look into building subcapitals, perhaps even selling them to my corp so they don't have to get them from Jita and ship them over to our home system. It's a nice little dream, and something I'd definitely like to try, but is Zendrak the character to do it with? I'm not sure currently.


So I've got alot of places I could go with my characters, especially when you consider the three "minor" alts I have that aren't doing anything currently except taking up my character slots, but I don't know what I want to do with them right now so they'll have to wait. But that's enough talking about skillplans for this year, I'm sure you're sick of reading about them too!

But fear not, my desktop should be back either tomorrow or the day after, and I plan to go out and die gloriously. Then I'll tell you about it and probably complain about how rusty I am at PvP.

Fly safe!


Also if you got the joke in the title of this post, I'm impressed.

Skill Queue Online

This is one of those boring self-fellatio type posts where the blogger shows off all the nice skills they have trained to V and then talks a load of waffle about where they want their character to go next. In all honestly I'm only writing this crap out to get things straight in my head, and see where I could/want to go with my characters in the future. I'm also putting it out publicly because I have nothing else really to write about with my desktop PC currently having surgery (turns out my motherboard fucked up, so it wasn't something I could have fixed easily myself) so I need something to fill space. Deal with it.

The last time I did one of these posts was when I talked about my year plan to super specialise into frigates, and later cruisers on Seraph. Did that happen?

FRIGATE SWAG OP

Damn right it did. Cruisers are less finished at the moment (I'm dreading Caldari Cruiser V even though the Tengu is tempting me) but I'm currently working on large blasters so it'll have to wait.

Thank god for the old Battlecruisers skill to V

But I also trained loads of other useful things in that time, and now I'm not quite sure what I want to do next. From what I've done so far, I think I have three real options for Seraph, my primary main.

Option 1 - Skill Cleanup
This is the OCD part of my brain that hates the random level II and III skills I have trained, and wants to get all of them to IV at a minimum before I start training anything else. Obviously this is the least glamorous option, and includes thrilling skills such as Survey and Frequency Modulation.

Oh be still my beating heart!

Now while I'd secretly love (and be aroused by) doing this, it's all a little pointless besides making my skill list look pretty. I imagine this is something an eight year old character does, not a three year old one. It's an option but it feels like a waste. Spending literally half a year to make numbers look pretty is probably not the best plan.

Option 2 - Subcap focus

Despite my huge fetish for the Megathron hull, I've never
flown a variant of the damn thing

Much as the title suggests, I finish rounding out my subcap skills, such as all cruisers/strategic cruisers trained, all battleships to V, perfect fitting skills (except rigs to V because screw that). Possibly even train for Heavy Interdictors and the like, though I'll probably not need those unless we get dropped by supers on a regular basis in our new home. I'm leaning towards this skillplan because the idea of being near perfectly skilled for all subcaps is pretty alluring, and I've always wanted an excuse to train things like Marauders V and Black Ops V. Max skilled carebearing OP yo'.

However this will be a long road, especially since most of the skills I don't have are big skills. Like Caldari Battleship V or Warhead Upgrades V. The good news is that most of these skills mean I can stick with my current Per/Will remap and save my current remap for something else in the future.

Option 3 - YOLO Dreadnought
I really want to fly a dreadnought. You guys don't even understand. But the thought of training all those jump skills again on another character is almost too painful to bear. I have max jump drive skills on Zendrak and it's a nice, smug feeling to have them. But I hated every dragging minute of training them, and that's not something I want to experience again. Plus will I really use my dread that often? Could I bear losing one or would I just sadly spin it in station? Plus when I've got Zendrak already so heavily focused into Carriers and Jump Freighters, wouldn't it be simpler if he just trained the gunnery skills for a Dreadnought and became a dedicated capital pilot? But Seraph already has Advanced Weapon Upgrades V, so he can start training for Siege Modules pretty much straight off...

Dem lasers... Hnnnngh

It's a hard decision for me if I'm honest. However the more I think about it, the more I'm tempted to combine all of the above into one huge "No I want everything" skillplan. 

Only time will tell I guess. Anyway, what of Zendrak's skillplan? Well that'll be the next post I start working on while my desktop is fixed. So if you give a shit about my other main account then head on to the next post (if it's done when you read this). If you don't care, then just skip ahead to the post after that, hopefully by which time I'll have my desktop back and I can make sweet PvP love in my new home and tell you all about it

In any case, fly safe!

Technology sucks

I bought a brand new gaming desktop a few weeks back, because I've never actually owned a good PC in my life. I used to play EVE on my laptop for christ sakes, and frankly it's a miracle that EVE is so compatible even with old machines, else I would have been reduced to playing games like Snake or Tetris.

Things were going so perfectly with my new machine, it was a huge step up from where I used to be. Games would automatically switch all settings to "Ultra" or "High", gameplay was always smooth and I felt I could wave my dick around with the rest of the PC Gaming Master Race. Or atleast I could until I killed the damn thing.

One morning she just wouldn't wake up. I pressed the power button, the fans started, she beeped softly as usual, then... Nothing. Black screen, keyboard wouldn't react, mouse was dark. My PC just sat there, blank, silent and judging except for the low hum of fans trying to cool components that were no longer working. Tearfully I rang the company who built it for me (I'm lazy shut up) and they tried to help me save her but it was too late. I didn't know what the fuck I was doing.

Breaking down I begged the nice man on the phone to take her to the PC Hospital. He agreed, and yesterday I boxed her up with loving hands, trying not to sob as the concerned looking courier carried her from my doorstep. She's probably sitting on a cold operating table as I write this, opened up so she can have life saving surgery. It makes my heart ache to think of but it was the only thing I could do. I hope my baby will be back soon :'(

Until then, EVE updates will be short on the ground because, well, I refuse to play on my laptop since I've experienced the beauty of EVE at maximum settings. It would be a betrayal :(

Fly safe!

Moving Pains (Jump Freighter Woes)

So ages back when I wanted to buy a Jump Freighter, namely an Ark, I never actually put any thought into what I'd use it for beyond supplying Seraph with bulky ships in deep LowSec and ship spinning occasionally.

It's almost cute now how naive I was.

So when I finally had the ability to fly one, I told pretty much everyone about it. For me it was just a big a milestone as getting into my Archon. And stupidly I told my CEO. You know what ships are useful for moving large amounts of people's crap from one end of the universe to another? Jump Freighters. What is my alliance doing at the moment? Yeah you guessed it. And I'm one of a rare breed in my corp who fit the two requirements of being able to fly a JF, and actually own one. To make it worse I'm the only EU timezone JF pilot that I know of. If there are others they're keeping quiet about it, the bastards.

You can probably guess what my bitching is leading up to so I'll put it out in the open now.

I have a moral duty to move millions of m3 of people's crap out of the kindness of my own heart. That means calculating jump fuel amounts, setting up cyno alts, preparing safe station jumps, checking for potential threats to my 6 billion ISK ship and it's cargo everytime I undock, using dusty market alts as scouts in far flung systems and making frequent note of individuals and corps known to kill JFs in every system I need to use as a cyno point. Oh and I'm also paying for the fuel at the moment, but I think the corp will cover my costs.

Basically it's exhausting and boring work, made frequently stressful by Local spikes, random roaming gangs and members of dangerous hotdropping alliances meandering through. Trust me, you've not felt real fear until you've jumped your JF in system just as a Shadow Cartel member comes into Local. I thought I was about to scream, cry and shit myself all at the same time.

He just kept flying though.

So yeah, I'm being an absolute crybaby at the moment and frankly people from my alliance might read this and get the wrong idea. I really have nothing against doing this, because I know I'm one of the few people we have that can do it. I also know I should be setting an example as an "experienced" player to our new recruits. So I'll suck it up and deal with it, and I still love you all :D

But I swear if one more of you little *********s puts like 50km3 of stuff into a container that's 250km3 in volume and contracts the whole thing to me to move (not naming any names), I'm going to awox you halfway through our next fleet. That's a promise.

Have a nice day!

This time I'll stick around

So yeah I've not written a blog post since December 2013.

That's a pretty long time, and since then I've not done much in EVE besides join a wormhole corp, decide I didn't really enjoy it and take some shit as I ran out the door. The first time I've ever stolen from a corp and it was fun.

I'm talking sweaty palms and raised heart-rate fun, wondering if I'd be discovered while pulling ships out of the SMA into my carrier. But nobody seemed to notice the sudden lack of about 2billion ISK in ships and modules (the fuck?), so I left for an old corp and older friends, Shattered Paradigm.

As it is at the moment, my old CEO Myopic Thyne is rebuilding the corp and getting the alliance, Eon.Apocalypse on its feet. Currently we're moving homes out of Minmatar FW Space due to the pure number of larger entities able to crush our noob fleets without a chance of us fighting back. To this end we're moving to a quieter LowSec area, looking for somewhere we can build and learn to fight. Maybe one day we'll return to Ualkin, but for now we're heading to greener pastures.

Since my real life has calmed down somewhat from the hectic last year I've had, I'll be back to chronicling my time with SHAPA and watching this new alliance develop. Maybe we'll flourish, maybe we'll crash and burn, either way it's sure to be entertaining for all involved! Why not follow along? I promise I won't take another year long break from writing anytime soon ;)

And to my old readers, if there ever were any of you, welcome back.

Fly safe!