Eve Online: Decision Made

After a lot of thought and a few annoying conversations, I left my corp. I resigned as CEO and turned control over to one of the other directors in the corp. There were only two directors left, one of which never liked being a leader so that left me with one option. I decided I didn't want to try and fix a group that doesn't have any interest in being fixed.

One of the members that left our corp a few months ago has been living in NPC null sec the entire time and invited me to join his group in their region they "control". I say "control" but the difference between NPC null sec and other areas of null sec, is that you can't claim sovereignty over a system when it's owned by one of the NPC factions such as Serpentis, Sansha, Rogue Drones, etc.

Technically, nobody can fly in with a fleet, take control of your station and force you to leave. They can still fly in, harass you, and make you WANT to leave, but you will always be able to dock in at the NPC station, even if the resident NPC faction hates you.

The group I've joined lives in a secluded area that has a long pipeline. Unless someone comes in through a wormhole, we will get plenty of warning that someone is hanging around our space. I did a bunch of research on the region, the systems, their alliance, their killboards, and decided that this group definitely knows how to thrive and how to fight. They excel in small gang warfare, have a strong killboard, and are on their way to being a strong enough group to confidently win fights when they are outnumbered 2-1 or even 3-1.

I want to now focus on making some ISK, perfectly my EWAR skills, and just be a pilot in a corporation with no leadership responsibilities. Being a leader in eve was fun and all, but I don't see myself trying to be a leader again any time soon. It'll be nice to just focus on the game and myself for a while.

I haven't moved out to my new home yet since I'm still gathering up everything I will need to live in deep null sec for a while. I got spoiled last time I live in Null, and with the awesome jump bridge network was only 3 jumps from high sec to stock up on anything I needed.

Hopefully this new path doesn't backfire, but I feel good about my decision to leave and blaze my own path away from the pilots I've known since I started Eve. I'm excited to find out if other groups out there can be as fun to fly with as the guys I flew with when we were all active and focused on a mutual goal.

Eve Online: No Lack of Options

This has been an interesting week for sure. I have decided to not give up on Eve, but I still haven't decided where my future lies. That being said, there hasn't been any shortage of options which is really nice.

Some of you have reached out to me through my blog to let me know that I'd be welcome shooting stuff with you, and one of you was even able to track me down in game and extend an offer which I thought was pretty cool.

In my seven months of playing Eve and writing this blog, I've only ever publicly said who I was once, and I deleted that comment after I got in touch with the person I needed to. I'm not sure why I am still trying to hold on to anonymity, but I think it helps me feel free to fully express what's going on with my Eve experience. I've vented from time to time, expressed frustration, even outright insulted some people in a few of my posts, and rather than create a diplomatic incident with various alliances I've decided to just keep my identity semi-secret, for now.

The happiest I've been in Eve was when we rented a system out in Catch, had access to an extensive jump bridge network, got plenty of PvE within our system, very close to a null sec trade hub, and there was no shortage of PvP when we wanted it. Truly we were spoiled with our location, logistics, and ability to make mountains of ISK.

I still haven't made up my mind what I'm going to do, but I'm leaning towards moving back out to null to be a renter somewhere. My only dilemma is whether or not to join someone else's corporation or to stay in my corporation and join an alliance. There are currently around 45 members left in my corporation, but we've only got 4-5 active members now. 15 of those 45 members are the alts of the 4-5 active members, and the rest we haven't seen in a month or two.

I'm leaning toward kicking everyone that hasn't been active in the last 30 days, and joining an alliance that holds an area that I'm interested in moving to. I'd rather run a corporation of 5-10 active core members than having 100 members but only ever see 5% of them.

I currently have ZERO loyalty or hatred to any alliance out there. I've had negative experiences with one or two alliances, but overall I don't have an opinion formed. If I bothered asking opinions about alliances out there, I'd find people loving and hating each one for different reasons.

My goal will be to most likely live in Null, do some ratting to make ISK, join up in PvP and Call to Arms when needed, and lay low for a while.

Currently I specialize in covert ops, recon, remote sensor dampening ships including the electronic attack frigate, and in a week I'll be flying a Heavy Interdictor. I can fly a multitude of other ships, but these are the ones I've spent extra time specializing in. I enjoy flying support ships and not so much the front line DPS ships. My alt is an awesome Talwar pilot, and currently training for command ships to give boosts to me and others in our fleet.

If I do decide to leave my corp and join up with another one out there, I think I'll have a lot to offer. Stay tuned for more details.

Eve Online: Is this the end?

Our corporation has finally hit that major crossroad that will determine our fate going forward. Most of our directors have left to join other groups, or just left Eve altogether. The CEO resigned yesterday and appointed me the new CEO. We're falling apart at the seams.

No real drama happened to bring us to this point. No fighting within the corporation, nothing crazy and controversial. The biggest thing that happened was inactivity in my opinion. Now I'm left standing alone staring at a corporation of 48 members, most of them inactive, plus probably a few billion in corp assets scattered all across New Eden.

This week I plan to fly around and start gathering up all my personal assets and corp assets and put them in one location to see what I've got. I may even create a bunch of courier contracts and hope that someone picks them up and relocates all my stuff for me rather than spend an entire day flying around.

(Do people even do courier contracts?) 

I am going to be tearing down the POS in the wormhole this week as well. I've already told everyone to grab their stuff and get it out. I'm not going to pay for the fuel on a POS when nobody ever logs in, and when they do, they don't even go into the wormhole. A lot of our members keep saying "Lets do some PvP", but all they ever do is whine, complain, or do some PvE. When they do PvP, they fly out in very expensive ships, get them blown up, and then rage quit for a few days.

It's a shame to waste a C3 with a high sec exit, but I don't have a choice. I'll probably put the wormhole back up for sale at www.wormholesales.com in the next few days. Let me know if you're interested, if you ask here on my blog, I'll give you a discount over what I'll be asking for on the sale forum.

I don't know where to go from here, or even if I want to carry on with Eve. Real life keeps finding a way of taking more and more of my time, and I find myself logging in less and less often.

Stay tuned for more details...

Eve Online: Winter 2013 Expansion Wish List

CCP recently announced they will be giving us a taste of things to come in a live stream on September 26th, at 20:00 Eve Time on Twitch TV.

I've been trying to think about a wish list or if I could have it my way list of items that I would love to see, and it's hard for me to wrap my brain around all of New Eden at the same time.

Most of these ideas have NOT been well thought through, I'm just throwing them out there. 

• Saved Ship Fittings / Auto Buy in Station
• Basically if you save a fitting, you could have an option to "Buy Fitting" from any outpost. All the modules available in the station will be bought at the same time and placed in your inventory.
• A pop up window could open and say "Fitting will cost XXXX from this station" , and show how much above or below market price % you will be paying for the fit. 

• Too early to ask for Advanced Infomorph Synchronizing? 
• If you've training Infomorph Synchronizing to level V, you can then train the advanced version, and knock off an additional hour per skill level to jump clone times.

• Drones being capable of targeting yourself?
• I know this one could have too big of impacts to allow. But if Logistic Drones (or any other drones for that matter) could be set to target yourself, it could be interesting. They are my drones after all, I should be able to tell them to target whoever I want. 

• Allow Null Sec Infrastructure Upgrades be allowed to be captured
• If I've spent 3 billion ISK to upgrade a system I live in, and someone comes and takes that system away from me, all those upgrades are gone. I recently read a good analogy why this doesn't make sense. Throughout history (and in modern times) , an invading army would often invade to gain the resources of that land. They had the option to just destroy the existing resources, but they could also just take them and keep them as well. 
• Maybe you have to bring the shields or armor down on the I-Hub to a certain level, and a percentage of the upgrades get destroyed in the process once you assume control, but not all of them. 

• Change out strategic cruiser subsystems at a POS
• I know this has been on the books for a while, but it'd be nice to find a way to swap out subsystems from a POS. 

• Increase the % that killing someone with a bounty pays out
• Currently there is a formula for how much of a bounty a person collects when they kill someone that has an active bounty on their heads. I'd like to see the % increased by 5-10% if possible. 

• Allow Bombs in High Sec and Low Sec, but have it be a Concord offense?
• What would happen if stealth bombers "could" launch bombs in high sec and low sec, although doing so would be punishable by Concord? Would anyone actual launch a bomb knowing full well that they would be popped by Concord in high sec or have a security hit in Low Sec, even if they didn't hit anything?

Maybe all these ideas are crap, and none of them should take place. They are merely the ramblings of a noob and should be treated as such. 

Do you have any items on your wishlist that you would love to see CCP add or change?

Eve Online: Suicide Ganking

Ok, now that I'm living in a wormhole again I remember that there are times when you can get very bored. And boredom causes me to do stupid stuff. I'll admit I now have a guilty pleasure in suicide ganking people when I get bored. I know that it's a horrible thing and everyone hates a suicide ganker, but it's a natural part of Eve, and there are very easy steps you can take to prevent someone else from suicide ganking you.

One of the biggest things you should do if you're carrying any loot you don't want to lose, avoid using autopilot. There is also a ISK to Gank ratio that you should to take into consideration. If you're flying a tech 1 hauler, and you're carrying more than 100 million in loot, you're a target juicy target. You might even get ganked for carrying 50 million because tech 1 haulers blow up so easy. If you're in a freighter and you're carrying more than 1 billion in loot you "might" be a target but maybe not a juicy one. It takes a LOT of DPS to bring down a freighter so autopiloting is typically safe as long as you stay below the 1 billion isk benchmark. If you start carrying 1.5 - 2.0 billion in loot in a freighter, you just became something everyone wants to shoot. If you've got the extra low slots, think about using some warp core stabs as well, they've saved my life on more than one occasion.

As a ganker, you have to accept that half the loot will drop, the other half will vaporize into space dust. So if you blow up something carrying 100 million in loot, only expect 50 million of loot to drop. If anything more than that drops, count yourself lucky. Using this basic formula you shouldn't risk more than probably 20-30 million in ships to gank someone carrying 100 million in loot.

This morning me and my CEO decided that we wanted to try and make some easy ISK and go suicide gank someone. We headed out to a nearby .5 system, him with a catalyst, me with my alt in a Talwar. I used two of my mid slots to equip a passive targeting system and a cargo scanner so he had to equip the tackle mods. People can tell you're still scanning them even with a passive targeting mod, but they have to be looking for the long yellow scanning beam coming from your ship to theirs. If you're hauling something you don't want to lose, and you think it's likely you might be ganked, fly to a safespot immediately and wait out the storm.

Our target was just going to be one of the tech 1 haulers out there, like the Iteron Mark V or a Badger II or something like that. If we attack on gate the sentry guns will instapop my Talwar, so I'm only good for one volley, but luckily that volley will get me up to 1500 damage. The catalyst will get a few more shots off than me, but we'll end up with very similar total damage in the end. We've also got a third person in a hauler ready to scoop any loot we may be lucky enough to have drop.

Twenty minutes go by and I've been scanning ships left and right and not seeing anything really worth it. All of a sudden a Cheetah arrives at the gate and he's autopiloting. You can tell someone is autopiloting when they land about 15km from the gate and start slowing approaching it. I decide to go ahead and give the cheetah a scan.

I about shit myself when I see that he's loaded up with faction mods. I inform my CEO that we need to pop the Cheetah now. I'm already in range so I light him up, one volley and I'm dead, but I've knocked him down to about 50% armor. The catalyst joins in and the cheetah pops like zit. Our cargo hauler swoops in and scoops the loot as we warp away in our pods.

My CEO posts the killmail and the cheetah was worth almost 800 million and he ended up dropping almost 600 million of it, well above the 50% expected drop. Not a bad exchange for the 20 million in destroyers we lost.

I don't feel sorry for suicide ganking him and taking his stuff. I do feel a little sorry him because now he has to go explain to his corp/alliance how he got ganked in a covert ops frigate in high sec. It's very hard to catch a covert ops frigate in null sec when you've got bubbles and cans to help you. It's near impossible to catch a covert ops frigate in high sec unless he's autopiloting, and if you're autopiloting, you shouldn't be carrying 700-800 million in loot on you. Period.

Last week a member of our corp was flying an Iteron V with over a billion worth of loot in it. He had a T3 cruiser with all the fittings and a deimos with all the fittings in his cargo. As you may suspect, he got ganked and lost it all. He rage quit that night pissed off at suicide gankers. I understand his anger, but you're asking for it if you're carrying that much loot in a very soft, slow, and easy to catch ship.

Whether you hate gankers or not, they are a reality in Eve so you have to take precautions so as to not fall victim to one, and as long as people are willing to fly around in very soft ships carrying way too much loot, I'll be happy to shoot them and take it from them.

Eve Online: Moon Mining Question

Currently moon mining is not allowed in wormholes, and the only reason that I've heard given why is that you have to control sovereignty of a system to be able to moon mine, and since you can't own SOV in low sec, wormholes, or high sec, then it's not allowed.

Eve does a decent job, IMO, at explaining why some things are allowed and why other things are forbidden within the mechanics of the game, but I have yet to hear any logical reason why moon mining can't be done in wormhole space, high sec, or even parts of low sec.

I truly understand that if moon mining was allowed throughout New Eden, including w-space, that it would drastically change a lot of the game, which I'm not necessarily pushing for. I'm mostly looking for a reason that makes sense.

I could understand if High Sec's excuse is "The Gallente Federation owns this system and they don't allow it, because they harvest it themselves", and that excuse would be sufficient for me.

I am at a loss for why moon mining isn't allowed in W-Space though. They "could" use the reason of "sleepers will destroy any moon mining" or something like that, but if you use that reason then it would only make sense that other NPC rats would/could attack POS towers all over the galaxy.

Ultimately I think any POS in ANY system is vulnerable so nobody should feel safe, even in high sec. I think if it's able to be anchored to a moon, then moon mining should be allowed (unless forbidden by who owns the system). Or maybe moon mining could be allowed in High sec, but the whoever owns the system will take X% of whatever is mined. Also the moon goo in high sec could be horrible or sparse, and not even worth mining, kind of like the planetary interaction in high sec, but at least it's allowed.

Have you heard any good reasons why it isn't allowed?

Do you think it should be allowed, but moderated like ore values or planet resources so as to not flood the market?

Eve Online: 170,120,431 Jumps To Your Destination

Ever been in a wormhole and set your destination to somewhere in known space? As you may guess it doesn't work. There are no star gates or jump bridges that can help you get back to your home, only wormholes. The act of doing so confuses your intergalactic GPS navigation telling you that you have a few million jumps to go.

After a week of shopping for a wormhole we finally found one worth moving into. We ended up settling on a C3 with a static high sec. We initially wanted a C2 with a static high and another wormhole static so we could regularly go raid other people's wormholes, but we couldn't find one that fit most of our corps needs for the right price. We wanted to make sure that it was difficult enough for most of our members to run sites solo, but not impossible.  The system needed to have decent PI available for people to make extra income on the side.

A few of our members have been scanning for the last week to try and find us a new home without any luck. Most of the wormholes we found that we liked were already occupied and we didn't want to have to evict anyone (although that would have been fun). I had also been monitoring www.wormholesales.com  for any deals out there being offered. Wormhole sales is a site that people can buy and sell wormholes in Eve Online with. "Wormhole Sales" also has a chat channel in Eve that I joined to inquire and negotiate about potential wormholes I was interested in. For the first days I wasn't making a lot of headway to securing myself a wormhole, but I was committed to finding our corporation a wormhole, otherwise I feared our core membership was going to start logging off, and not come back.

Wormhole Sales offers a 3rd party service to buyers and sellers of wormholes. The general idea is that someone "Seller" has the location of an empty wormhole and they want to sell it, they advertise their wormhole, the on their site, and people can inquire about it. A buyer then contacts one of the "brokers" who will then charge 10% of the sale price of the wormhole to make sure that neither the buyer or the seller gets screwed on the deal. Once I was able to get in touch with a broker, I was very pleased with the service. A quick shout out to Redslay for the solid service he provided. I would definitely use these services again if I go shopping for a wormhole.

We've got our Large Amarr Tower set up now, plenty of guns, EWAR, and a few shield hardeners to hopefully be able to put up a good fight. Only one member of our corp has Starbase Defense Management, so if someone came and attacked us right now, we'd have to hope that the random target selection by the POS would be sufficient (not likely). I've got another week to train Anchoring V to be able to help with the POS defenses, until then I just hope we don't get attacked.

Since we've moved into the wormhole a few of our members that left our corp have returned, our core members are logging on more often, and there seems to be a renewed sense of cooperation and teamwork. For now I think our corporation will survive, as long as we keep having fun and earning ISK in the wormhole and other means, I think we'll be alright.