Eve Online: Fleet Etiquette and Protocol

Every fleet out there operates with different expectations, rules, and standard operating procedures but there are some things that have become standard among most fleets. I've flown with countless number of fleets and seen hundreds of good and bad habits pop up on a regular basis. I've been playing Eve for one year now and I'd like to think that even though my skillpoints aren't as high as many people in Eve, I don't tend to make the same mistake more than once unless I completely derp the moment (which happens to everyone from time to time)

I would consider the alliance that I belong to be fairly small in comparison to other alliances but 99% of our members are experienced and exhibit strong fleet attributes. Lately though, we've been combining forces with another alliance out there that pretty much has an open door policy on recruitment which in turn forces us to have to fleet up with extremely new toons that either have never been in a fleet, or don't know standard etiquette.  Not knowing proper etiquette in a fleet with not only get you and your fleet members killed, but inevitably you will eventually become the target of the fleet's anger and the FC's hate, something you don't want.

In an effort to try and alleviate some of the frustration out there, I  thought I'd take the time to write up some "Do's and Don'ts" for you to think about when joining a fleet. Please feel free to comment and add your Do's and Don'ts as well :)

DO:

• When your FC says ALIGN to an object like a gate or station, DO just ALIGN yourself, but DO NOT warp or do anything else other than ALIGN to the destination. If 10 minutes go by and your FC still hasn't told you to do anything, you should still be aligned and nothing else. 
• If your FC says "Warp To _____" click "Warp To", DO NOT click "Jump". This is a HUGE no-no, and probably one of the most common mistakes that a fleet member makes. When fleets are moving around the people all to often hear the FC say "warp to ___ gate" but when they go to do it, they click JUMP instead of warp. 
• I never use "Jump" as a command anymore even when I'm moving around by myself, just to break that habit (plus you never know what will change while you're in warp). I always click warp and when I land on the gate, I decide if I still want to jump or not.
• If you don't know if you clicked Warp or Jump, while you're in warp click CTRL-SPACEBAR and it will cancel you jumping just in case.
• Shut up in your TeamSpeak channel unless your FC tells everyone that the "coms are open". The FC will often have multiple teamspeak channels open listening to intel from multiple locations and needs to only hear what he needs to hear. 
• Cut the FC some slack if he gets angry, starts yelling, and humiliates you in front of everyone. It's a very stressful job to be an FC and to be responsible for everyone's ships in fleet. During fleet ops his job is to keep everyone alive, not be your friend or to be nice. He needs everyone to do exactly what he says when he says it, otherwise everyone will die. 
• Learn from your mistakes. 
• Be prepared with doctrine ships if possible. Ask your corporation or alliance if they have doctrine fits that they typically fly so that you can go out and purchase them, and be ready immediately if the situation calls for it. It's extremely annoying when an FC says "Ok, everyone grab your shield cruisers and let's go" and an hour later he's still trying to get everyone into a shield cruiser. 
• Ships and fittings cost ISK, I know. But if you are going to be part of a bigger group and reap the benefits of being with that group, you owe them the courtesy of being prepared. Don't ever say "Oh yeah, I can fly that, but I don't have one". If you can fly it, then get one. 
• Do inform the FC if you have to leave fleet for whatever reason. You don't need to talk in Teamspeak to do it. Just say in fleet chat " -1 Thorax, sorry gotta go" or whatever ship you are flying. This allows the FC to know that he's lost something in his fleet and needs to potentially adjust his tactics. 
• Have a good time. We all play Eve for fun, but if you're not having a good time, then you're doing it wrong. 
• Respond in Teamspeak if the FC asks for you to respond. If he says "Val, how many jumps away are you", you should immediately respond with your answer. He shouldn't have to ask twice, otherwise he will start to think you're not paying attention. 
• DO broadcast for reps when you are being targeted (NOT when you are already being shot). There are exceptions to this, but the point is that the logi ships need time to target you so they can start repping you. If you tell them you are taking damage, they may still have 5-10 seconds before they can lock onto you, and you might already be dead. If you aren't taking any damage for a long while, but the enemy has you yellow boxed, just be ready to broadcast if they start shooting. 

DON'T:

• Unless you are 100% certain, beyond a reasonable doubt, absolutely positive of your action, DON'T DO ANYTHING unless the FC specifically tells you to do it. Sit perfectly still doing absolutely nothing unless told otherwise. PERIOD.
• Don't Undock
• Don't shoot anything
• Don't Talk
• Don't Jump
• Don't Warp
• Don't Align
• You get the point...
• Don't make the same mistake twice, especially in the same night or the same week. Most FC's will be able to tolerate you being stupid once, but don't push your luck by screwing up twice on the same thing. Learn from your mistakes and even if you start off screwing up, just write down what you did wrong, find out what you should have done instead, and do that from now on. 
• Don't drink so much alcohol that you have no clue what's going on (UNLESS THAT IS THE POINT OF THE FLEET). We have drunken roams all the time and they can be tons of fun, will even make drinking games out of it. If anyone accidentally jumps a gate, they have to drink, stuff like that. People make mistakes when they're drunk, and if your part of a fleet with a serious objective, and you are so drunk you start shooting blues, you're going to die quickly or possibly be kicked out of the corporation or alliance.
• If you are dying, don't scream in teamspeak "HELP I'M DYING!!! I NEED REPS NOW! HELP!". The FC is still busy trying to command his fleet and doesn't need you getting everyone else killed because they can't understand. The FC "should" have priority speaker turned on if possible, but it's still really annoying and confusing anyways. Instead, use the fleet window and broadcast for reps instead. If there is no logi in your fleet to heal you, then do what you can to get away, and if you can't then just kiss your ship goodbye. Once you die, let the fleet know in fleet chat and try to get your pod out safely. 
• Don't fly super cheap ships with super expensive implants plugged in and then fly into combat. If you are flying a frigate and have +5 implants plugged in you're asking for trouble. Don't get me wrong, I love killing cheap ships, and then grabbing your pods and finding out your ship was worth 5 million, but your pod was worth a billion isk. Get jump clones, have an empty clone just for cheap combat roams, save that expensive clone for non combat situations or when you're flying ships that it makes sense to have the implants. An FC will look at his fleet and say "I've got 10 cruisers worth about 50 million each. If everyone dies, we only are losing about 500 million ISK worth of stuff" but then he finds out that some people lost their 1 billion isk clones in the process too, it changes everything. 

Eve Online: Next Expansion?

I find myself more and more eager for the next expansion, hoping there is something so profound and awesome delivered that everything we know about Eve is forced to adjust. Large alliances are the backbone of Eve, but they are a thorn for everyone not in them. I'd like for something to happen that weakens the large alliances' strength in numbers to be obsolete.

There have been announcements that players will be able to construct their own stargates at some point in the future, but where those stargates will lead, the conditions for building them, resources needed, etc are still a mystery.

In my dream world these newly constructed stargates will lead to uncharted systems and constellations that are so far away (in terms of light years) that capital ships will won't be able to easily (or completely) jump to and from them.

What I envision (in my perfect world) is that you are out scanning one day and you come across a rare wormhole that is stable enough that when you construct one of the new stargates, you effectively force that wormhole open forever on that location. Now that new location you are connected to would be over 100 light years away and is part of a constellation or group of 5-6 systems that are all within a few light years. Those other systems that are close cannot be immediately accessed, you'll have to scan your new system until you find another rare wormhole that connects to another system in your constellation. Meanwhile someone else may have found another system in that constellation and have already moved in, but you can't jump to each other's systems until the proper wormhole connection is found and secured.

These wormholes are not the same wormholes that appear all over New Eden right now, these newly constructed wormholes won't have Sleepers in them, in fact there won't be ANY NPC faction initially. After X amount of time whichever system you connected from, the NPC's from that system will travel through your gate and start to inhabit it. In the event that your system eventually connects to two different NPC regions, whichever NPC faction inhabits the system first, wins by default.

Back to my point on capital ships though, currently most capital ships are not able to use stargates and that will remain the same, but eventually you may decide to build capital ships in your new constellation but they would be stuck there just like in a wormhole, but now you'd have an 5-6 (your constellation) systems that your capital ship could jump to and from.

This new format would allow smaller groups to control a constellation and be able to hold it easier from invaders because they would be the only ones with capital support. The larger alliances would have to form fleets of battleships to combat smaller but more effective groups with heavier support. Your 50 man corp or alliance all of a sudden can hold it's own against the huge meat sticks of Eve that blob over anyone that gets in their way.

Again this is just something that I think would be a perfect addition to Eve, but I have no clue what is truly coming soon.

Eve Online: Still Alive and Kicking

Wow, it's been a while since I've taken the time to post on how things are going. I'm definitely still active with Eve but I have mellowed out quite a bit over the last few months and don't spend 50+ hours a week gaming anymore. I've been spending around 10-20 on average a week now due to life events but still love playing when time permits. I've been in my current corporation for over 4 months now living out in Stain which is NPC null sec.

When I first moved out to join the corp I belong now we were living at the end of a pipeline down in Stain and life was safer that living in high sec to be honest. There were so many blues around you didn't have to fear much at all. You could fly within 6-8 systems and never see a hostile target. The problem with this living situation though was there were too many blues in one small area. If you wanted to run combat sights, do some belt ratting, hunt for relics, moon mining, etc, then you had to compete against everyone else in the area.

So our alliance decided to take over another pocket in Stain instead, not too far away that we couldn't help our neighbor blues or vice versa, but far enough so we wouldn't be so crowded anymore.  Doing so would increase the PvP opportunities and ISK making for everyone.

That was about two months ago and we have most definitely made a strong footprint into our new pocket and have a good presence in the region. We don't control the entire pocket we moved into yet, but at the rate we're going it should only be another month or two before the other group decides to pack up due to being sick and tired of losing their ships to us.

We typically run small gang fleets, between 10-20 pilots on average but through our alliance and the other alliances we are blue with in the region we have fielded over 100 for a few fights when the situation called for it.  Not long ago we called in a favor with one of the big alliances to help us jack-stomp a few super carriers that got dropped on us.

Typically our opposition tries to hot drop us but when they do they always drop in overkill ships (like carriers dropping on our cruiser fleets) so they almost always lost their ships because we can call in backup if needed. So over the course of the last two months we've killed over a dozen carriers and about a half dozen dreadnoughts. They were stupid enough to drop dreads on our remote repping domi fleet one night and that ended badly and fast for them. We chewed up all six of their dreads in just a few minutes, it was glorious. The only one in their fleet that was able to get away was their CEO in his black ops Redeemer. Local lit up with their own corp members yelling and screaming at their CEO for being so stupid and abandoning them.

All in all I'm very happy with my new home and the pilots I fly with. There isn't a lot of patience for people making the same mistakes over and over again, which I like. It's all good to be stupid once, but don't be stupid over and over again, otherwise you'll just get booted from fleet, then from Corp entirely if it continues. We trimmed a bunch of fat a few weeks ago and our fleet compositions are much tighter now.

I've probably got ten billion in assets spread across a few stations in our region and the best part about NPC null sec is that nobody can take over the system and lock my stuff out so I can't get it anymore. If a hostile fleet comes in that we just can't take, we don't have to worry about losing all our stuff which is nice. Plus we never have to worry about TiDi.

Anyways, I've rambled on enough for now. I'll try to remember to keep writing when I get time.

Fly safe.

Eve Online: Something Fishy with the Stratios

So I just saw an article about NASA could someday achieve warp speeds and I noticed something a little strange.

http://io9.com/5963263/how-nasa-will-build-its-very-first-warp-drive

I probably don't even need to add a link to what I'm referencing, but just in case here you go.

http://cdn1.eveonline.com/www/newssystem/media/65341/1/SOE_both.png

The Stratios looks scarily like the image used in the first article. I googled Vulcan Command Ship and sure enough, there is was staring me straight in the eye.



I'm not outright saying anyone copied anyone else, but there are a few similarities that are hard to ignore.

Any thoughts on this?

Eve Online: Rubicon First Week

So it's been almost a week since Rubicon was released and I've really only had a chance to play with a small percentage of the new features since last Tuesday due to focusing on one specific aspect of it.

We all knew that ghost sites, new deployable modules, new ships, etc were going to add a bunch to everyone's game play and that everyone would be busy trying to make as much ISK as possible in the early days, but we decided to spend out time laying down POCO's.

Our group spent almost a whole week bashing both Interbus and player owned POCO's in the .5 and .6 systems and then setting our own up. The first day was chaos with people constantly ninja dropping POCO's right after another group finished bashing the Interbus POCO. This only happened to us once and we immediately declared war on the 3 man corp that stole a planet from us. The following day we found their very poorly defended POS in high sec and put it in reinforced. They agreed to turn over the POCO they stole from us if we promised not to destroy their POS. We agreed and in the end made three new good friends that will probably join our alliance.

Another aspect to day one is that we noticed everyone flying around in tech 1 hauling ships carrying POCO's to be dropped. We protected our own POCO's by keeping them off grid and in freighters until necessary. In addition we put together a small gank squad and every time one of these ships showed up on grid ready to try and steal another planet we were about to take, we would suicide gank them to secure our resources. We popped three different ninja haulers on day one of Rubicon, each killmail valuing around 150-200 million.

After one day of dropping POCO's I heard the FC's say they were earning about 20-30 million a day so far, and we've dropped about fives times as many throughout the week. I would estimate we're earning about 100 million a day with as many POCO's as we put out there but I can't be sure since I'm not privy to that information. Obviously it cost us a huge investment up front to be able to secure that many but they should pay for themselves fairly quick and they don't require us to do any maintenance at all, other than defend them if a group tries to steal it, which they would have to declare war on us first.

Now that all that's done, I've jump cloned back to my home in null sec and plan to start playing with some of the other new features such as how frequent the ghost sites spawn and how easy they are to find. I'm hearing they are extremely rare, so I doubt it'll be one of those sites people go hunting for specifically, it'll probably more like one of those sites that when you happen to notice them you take advantage of it. I got to play with them on the test server so I already know how to run them, just need to see how it goes on Tranquility now.

This week I think we plan to drop a bunch of small mobile siphon units on our enemy's moons to start draining their income.  I trained interceptors to IV prior to the Rubicon launch, but since I'm not an experienced interceptor pilot I don't plan to use them for combat just yet. I only plan to use them for the nullified aspect that is new with Rubicon. I've got a Cloaky Nulli Proteus that I use a lot already, but Interceptors are much faster to go scouting with, so it will likely be my new exploring ship when checking out nearby systems.

Stay tuned for more updates. Cheers!

Eve Online: Logistic Pilots on Killmails

I know that this has been brought up to CCP attention already and I'm not the first person bringing this up, but I'd like to also jump on the bandwagon and say that logistic pilots need to be added on killmails. They are the unsung, unremembered heroes of New Eden. Although every fleet is extremely grateful to always have that logi pilots there, in a day or two when people are looking back to see who contributed to the kill,who was involved in the fight, the logi pilot is always left off that war story.

My initial thoughts are that if a logistics pilot actively helps a member of the fleet that does get on the killmail, then they should as well. For example, if a Thorax and Exequror are fighting a Vexor, and the Thorax kills the Vexor, as long as the Exequror repaired the Thorax (during the combat and before the Vexor was destroyed) then the Exequror should be present on the killmail as well.

I know this is probably way easier said than done, but it'd be nice to recognize the members of our fleets that keep the fleet alive long enough to make the kills.

All that being said, where do you draw the line? If I'm in a command ship and giving active boosts to the fleet, but don't contribute any DPS, does that mean that I should get on the killmail as well? I'm not sure. I guess I would be ok with it as long as the booster was on grid and actually risking their ship, and not remote boosting  from a safe location somewhere in the system. (I know that you can't boost from inside a POS anymore, but you can still boost from a safe spot in system). Fleet boosts can be very powerful tools in a fleet, and most definitely influence the results of a battle.  If command ships did show up on a killmail somehow, but never engaged during the fight, then the pilot blown up would know all the factors that contributed to their loss. I'm not set on this though since command ship pilots can easily get on a killmail if they want to, by just engaging during a fight. They are strong and capable ships that can handle themselves just fine in a fight.

Ultimately I'd like to see the logi pilots start to get some recognition. I think more pilots would be willing to learn to fly logistics if they had the ability to be recognized. Early on in my training I loved flying logistics for my corporation. I enjoy being the supporting character in a fleet and helping everyone else do their jobs. When I used to play D&D I enjoyed playing a Cleric so that I could help everyone else. I stopped flying logistics in Eve, because when the fights were over, and everyone was linking killmails and talking about who did what, nobody ever said "Oh and Val did an awesome job at keeping us alive" or anything like that. In the end there wasn't any proof at all that I was even involved in the fight, unless I loss my ship in the process.

So, I changed over to flying other types of support instead. I learned the art of EWAR and now if I remote sensor dampen a bunch of the enemy ships, my actions are noticed and remembered.

Eve Online: World Peace

I may be completely naive to how the world really thinks but in my ideological mind I believe that the majority of the people on Earth would welcome world peace if it could somehow be magically obtained. Obviously this will never happen because we all have different ideas of what "World Peace" means, but ultimately I believe that most people want the killing to stop at some point. Maybe that means they successfully exterminate an entire group of people to obtain their peace, but I think the end goal is that there would be no more fighting. "If I could accomplish XYZ, then I could live in peace" kind of theory. Again, this might mean XYZ equals killing millions of people, which entirely goes against "Peace" but that's just how it is. There are exceptions to everything, and I know that there will also always be people that do not want peace.

That being said, I do NOT think that peace is the end goal of Eve and New Eden, nor should it be. People want to blow each other up, conquer each other's territory, steal their ISK, and ultimately find new and creative ways to kill.

There is also an industrial and economic group of people in Eve that don't care first hand about blowing someone else up, but they do indeed embrace (even if they don't know it) people blowing each other up, otherwise their craft and contributions to Eve would fail.

This goes both ways. Without the industry and marketing people in Eve, the PvP aspect of the game would fail.  If nobody was around to build ships and ammo, and sell them to us, we'd have to figure out how to all live with fighting in our noob ships that get provided every time you dock with just your pod. That or we'd all be running the tutorial missions for some free tech 1 frigates and destroyers.

Throughout time in life and in Eve countries (solar systems) and groups (corporations) would ally together to strengthen their standing in their regions and then combine forces when an outside evil threatens to disrupt their way of life. Ultimately though these alliances always fail because someone offended someone else, someone gets greedy, the love of a woman, or a multitude of other reasons. People like their safety net though and like to know that someone else out there can't just destroy everything they've worked for with little to no effort. If I was a lone corporation that owned one system in null sec, but I refused to be part of any alliance, I would have to always fear someone bigger and stronger just taking what is mine and not being able to do anything to stop it. Hence why we form alliances.

Too many allies is also a bad thing in Eve because then there isn't as many people shooting at each other. No pew pew =  no ships blowing up = no industry needed = no marketing needed. It's a long negative domino effect when there is peace in New Eden.  It's a very sensitive balancing act that is controlled by the players and nothing else.

On that note, a big war just broke out again in Eve, and you can read more about it on Stabs blog, but stuff like this is very good for Eve in my opinion. Even if you have no stake in the war at all, thousands of ships blowing up is a good thing (well, unless they are your ships being blown up). We're only two weeks away from Rubicon being deployed which will add a bunch of new elements that will also shake things up, so if this war continues longer than 2-3 weeks expect drastic changes in the market prices of a bunch of items on top of what was already expected.

I'm interested in seeing how many of the mobile deploy units such as the new tractor and cyno jammer are going to be carried into battle after the Rubicon release, and how much more TiDi (time dilation) occurs because a 1000 vs 1000 battle just dropped a few hundred modules not currently used in battle into an already slow fight. CCP better step up their ability to handle large scale fights or prepare yourself for tons of rage when the server crashes during a fight.

Eve Online: Pod Jumping

Lately I've become very accustomed to a game mechanic that can be utilized to jump all over New Eden without having to make the long journey one jump at a time. The term is called "Pod Jumping" and the short version is that you destroy your own pod by self destructing just so you can awaken someplace far away. I live in deep null sec, many  many jumps away from high sec and the major trade hubs. This tactic is very useful for me when I need to quickly inject a new skill, run some errands, etc, before I head back to null.

Jump Clones are great for pod jumping, but if you only use jump clones then you need to wait 19-24 hours to use a jump clone again (depending on skill level). This tactic has no time constraints, but what it lacks in time constraints it makes up for with a bunch of other ones.

There is a laundry list of steps and details you should know about before you just undock and blow yourself up though.

UPDATE YOUR CLONE, UPDATE YOUR CLONE, UPDATE YOUR CLONE!!

If I knew how to make that flash red and jump out of the page to get your attention more I would, but alas I'm not that smart. If you accidentally forget any other steps, do not forget to update your clone before doing this. If you don't know about updating your clone here's what you need to do.

Dock at a station with a medical facility, it'll have a red cross and medical looking icon as one of the services offered at the station. Click on that icon and select "Update Clone". You'll see a series of options such as "Alpha, Beta, Theta, etc", and they each have an associated price and skillpoint associated with them. Select the SP/ISK combination that is slightly above your skill point level, luckily it will gray out any options that are too low for your skillpoint total, so at least you can't choose one that doesn't meet the minimum requirements. Don't spend too much on a clone though, you're just going to blow it up.

What this means if for XXX,XXX ISK you can upgrade your clone/pod so that if you are destroyed you don't lose any skill points, otherwise you'll be penalized and lose a few weeks of training (trust me it really sucks to find out you lost a few of your level V skills).

If you are a regular PvP player you already know religiously about updating your clone. If PvP is not your thing that's OK and pod jumping can still be very useful for you too. If you simply want to travel to the other side of New Eden, this will come in handy.

When your pod is destroyed, either by someone else or self destructing, you lose any implants that you have plugged into your pretty little head, so either change to a jump clone that doesn't have any implants installed or accept the fact that you're about to lose them. If you use this tactic a lot or participate in PvP a lot, you don't really want to be flying around in a super expensive pod anyways. Why fly a ship worth maybe 5 million isk, but have implants worth 500 million isk? It makes no sense at all, and don't do it.

Alright, back to pod jumping. Your next step after you've ensured that your CLONE IS UPDATED, and that you don't have any implants in that you aren't going to miss is to set your clone to the destination you want to wake up from.  As long as you have access to the station and have items in the hangar, you can set your pod to that station. If your corporation has an office at a station, and you don't have any items, you can still set your clone to that station.

To do so you once again click on the medical facilities icon at a station, and click "Change Location". You'll see a list of "Stations with Medical Facilities" and "Stations with NO Medical Facilities". The reason why they separate these two types is that once you blow up, you will be instantly transported to that station and if they don't have a medical facility at that station you will have no way to upgrade your clone again.

THE FIRST THING YOU DO ONCE YOU WAKE UP AT A STATION AFTER BEING PODDED IS UPDATE YOUR CLONE, UPDATE YOUR CLONE, UPDATE YOUR CLONE. 

Otherwise, you might undock, get shot by someone and now you've lost a few weeks of skillpoints that you now need to retrain.

Now that you've made sure your clone is updated, you've set the destination you want, you've made sure you don't have any implants in, is to now leave your ship. Right click on your ship and select leave ship. There is no point in blowing up a perfectly good ship, when all you're looking to do is blow up your pod anyways. Next, go ahead and undock.

The preferred way to pod jump is to utilize the self destruct option on your pod instead of having someone else blow you up. If you don't care, then I don't either, but I prefer to handle the deed myself. If you self destruct then there won't be any record of you doing it, no killmail, no trace of it at all. I typically warp to a location in system that is not a gate or a station and push the big red button, but you can do it wherever you want. If you are in high sec, be prepared to have a bunch of people challenge you to a duel if you are on a station, especially one of the trade hubs.

To self destruct either right click on your capacitor or your pod in space and select "Self Destruct". Now you've got a 2 minute warning that you're about to blow up. If you do nothing else, you'll blow up in 2 minutes. If you change your mind and decide that suicide just isn't your thing, you can always click the "Self Destruct" button again, and it will cancel it.

Now that you've blown up your pod, you will awaken wherever you set your clone to be, and as I'm sure you know by now, UPDATE YOUR CLONE.

Congratulations, you've just pod jumped.

Eve Online: Why do I play Eve?

6 more days till I've been playing Eve for 8 months. 

It's crazy to think that it's actually been that long already. I think I initially started this blog (my first one ever), with the purpose to hopefully share my newbie experiences with anyone else that may be new so they could learn from my mistakes and hopefully make the transition easier from a mistake ridden noob that is ready to rage quit, to a stable pilot that isn't completely lost and is able to be a productive member of New Eden.

I still hope that my posts add value to capsuleers out there, but I think I write these post more for me now than for anyone else. I'm thirty-four years old and for most of my life I've been an outgoing extrovert that thrives on social activity and being the center of attention. Over the course of the last five to six years I have transitioned to be more reserved and much more selective with the people I choose to share my life with. I think some people call this "growing up". The bi-product of all this is that I've spent years pushing out all the superficial friendships I have in my life, leaving me with only specific people around that I value. The result is also that I am becoming more and more introverted, which isn't a bad thing.

These are some very common misconceptions about introverts that I'd like to make sure I point out before you start drawing your own conclusions about what that means. I used to associate introvert to a negative personality trait but I no longer see it that way. 

Why am I rambling about all these things on a Eve Blog? Well, I'm glad you asked.

Eve is full of every personality you can possibly imagine. You will find every nationality, stereotype, and social class in the vast number of solar systems across Eve. Eve is more than just a video game for me, it fills a gap I have in my real life with the social interaction it provides. I have no problem making friends in real life and have plenty that I spend my weekends with when time permits, but most of my friends don't have kids and all they do is party like there is no tomorrow on a daily basis. In the end, Eve is still a game and I will shut it off in an instant if something in real life gets in the way.

I wake up around 5:00 am every day, get ready for work, help my son get ready for school, have breakfast and I'm out the door by 6:30. I get off work around 4:00 pm, pick up my son, head home by 5:00 pm (traffic sucks), help the wife make dinner, help the son with homework, watch a little TV and at 8:00 pm my son goes to bed and I either hang out with my wife or log into Eve for 1-2 hours. On weekends I'll stay up late and play but I've still got to wake up early with my son so we can head to hockey practice/games.

I love my family but if it wasn't for Eve, the only social interaction I would really get is with my family every day, since I don't have time to go out and be crazy with my friends. There are days that I find myself not undocking and just hanging out on teamspeak, drinking red wine or sipping whiskey (not together it just depends on my mood what I'm drinking), and catching up with what's going on in the Eve Universe. And sometimes when the conversation gets petty and boring I find myself just sitting quiet for hours, enjoying the silence. People will say "Hey Val, you haven't said anything in a while you still there?", and I usually respond that I'm just hanging out and I'll jump in as soon as the topic changes direction to something I have input on.

The time I do have to socialize with people I don't want to waste it talking about the weather, which celebrity cheated on their significant other, who is in rehab again, or other things that I have no interest in. I don't care about your cat or what you had for breakfast or how you post pictures of yourself daily on facebook so that all your friends will tell you how pretty you are. I like outer space, space ships, politics, economy, subterfuge, and overall I like the feeling of camaraderie that the right group in Eve can provide.

I like that there are consequences for your actions in Eve, and that you don't just respawn and try it again and again with no fear of loss. People react differently and make very different choices when there are potential negative consequences for their actions. You can be a F1 monkey in Eve and have plenty of fun I'm sure, but for intellectual and analytical people, Eve can be so much more.

Anyways, I've rambled on long enough. If you've taken the time to read this long winded blog entry, feel free to share your thoughts on why you play Eve.

Eve Online: Fleet Makeup

It's been a week or so while since I've posted, but mostly because things have been moving forward at a standard pace, with nothing truly exceptional to report on. I'm all settled in my new home now in NPC Null Sec, flying with a good group of pilots, making ISK, killing ships, and bashing POS' on occasion.

I think one of the best moves I could have made for my experience in Eve was to leave my old life and corp and fly with a new group. Not only because I got lucky and landed with a good group, but it allowed me to gain some perspective on how things are done around other corporations. Since I had flown with the same pilots and leaders since the beginning of my career all I knew was what they had taught me.

Many months ago I talked about training to various tech 2 ships and being excited about flying in a Tech 2 Cruiser fleet. Sugar Kyle commented on one of my posts a while back and told me that T2 ships aren't necessarily better, just more specialized. I took her advice to heart but since my old CEO was a HUGE advocate of getting everyone to fly tech 2 cruisers so that we could do T2 cruiser roams I still had to learn the lesson the hard way. We were so new to fighting and PvP that we almost always lost our shiny new toys, costing us tons of ISK.

The greatest thing I've learned from this new group I fly with is that a tech 1 ship can be just as effective, and sometimes more effective that it's T2 counterpart. One of the reasons is that when you are the most expensive ship on the field, you very commonly are called primary and die first, thus negating the benefit you could have brought to your fleet.

Before when I'd lose a ship, it would cost me around 150 million for the ship and all the fittings, now when I lose a ship it typically costs me between 5-20 million depending on what I'm flying. I still have all my shiny expensive ships, but they only undock when we have a very solid fleet composition and they are flying with everyone else's nice shiny toys, and typically in those fleets we know exactly what we are going up against and rarely lose more than a ship or two.

Having a plan and choosing specifically what types of ships will be in your fleet, and how they are fit is also extremely advantageous. We used to throw kitchen sink fleets at people and I can't tell you how ineffective those were in most fights. Everyone would fit different range weapons, different speed ships, and everyone would be buffer tanked but we'd only bring one logi, so when he died, so did everyone else. Now days when a fleet is organized for a specific purpose, everyone needs to fly a specific doctrine not only so that the Fleet commander knows exactly how to command his fleet, but also so we can be more effective in every other way.

There are good fleet doctrines and  bad fleet doctrines, but even a bad fleet doctrine can be more effective than a kitchen sink fleet. If you're reading this and trying to learn more about what type of ships to fly, there isn't a right or wrong answer, because every ship in the game is useful in it's own way. You just need to know how to fit it, and how to fly it, and when to fly it.

Everyone knows rule # 1 in Eve, which is don't fly what you can't afford to lose. I'd also like to add that even if you can afford to lose something expensive, doesn't mean you should be flying it and I don't mean based on your skillpoints. For example, if you have a fleet of T1 frigates, don't bring a T2 logistics ship to support 10 frigates, or a battleship just because it has more HP. Grab something more practical, because you'll just end up dying first if you don't mesh with the rest of your fleet properly.

Eve Online: Killboards

Killboards...

A huge source of arguments, intelligence gathering, stress, gloating, and smack talking. In my old corporation they didn't matter at all to us. The CEO and directors didn't monitor them to make sure that everyone maintained a certain ISK efficiency or anything like that. People still looked at them and asked questions about kills and losses, but nobody was yelling at you for losing ships. Maybe if you lost a billion worth of loot in an Iteron V in high sec, you might get a few extra jabs for being stupid, but we didn't even take those too seriously because the person that lost the ship already has to deal with the loss as well.  Apparently that isn't the norm though, because I've been in a few alliances in my eight months of playing Eve and most of them are pretty serious about their killboards and try to make sure people don't die too much.

This is a strange catch-22 in my opinion. They want you get out there and fight and blow up other ships, but to do so you have to risk your ship, which means that you are going to lose ships too. Since I moved back out to null sec, I have killed around 2-3 billion in ships, and I've only lost one Talwar for about 13 million ISK. I think that's pretty damn good if you ask my opinion, but for some reason people always focus on the negative.

A few days ago a corp mate in his Thorax and me in my Talwar took on a Stabber Fleet Issue (SFI) and we both lost our ships in an EPIC fight. We had the SFI down to about 25% hull before we died, and it was glorious. I was not upset in the slightest from losing my ship, neither was the Thorax. The SFI had 90% overheat damage by the end and thanked us for an awesome fight. He scooped up both of our wrecks, and contracted them back to us for free because he had so much fun with the fight. Nobody was upset at all in the end except the CEO that we lost. Why was he upset? Not so much that we didn't win, but because with the Thorax and Talwar deaths, we had now dropped to 89.9% ISK efficiency on our killboard.

He didn't yell or get angry or anything, but you could hear the heavy sighs and disappointment. I felt like saying "Sorry Dad, I'll try harder next time", but I didn't. I just let it go. When I was a kid I remember always feeling like I was being told what I was doing wrong, and never told when I did something good. Reason is, if you're doing your job right and not making mistakes, then people in authority positions (Parents, Bosses, Teachers), will typically leave you be and you never hear from them. The moment you do something wrong though they become "Johnny on the Spot"  and are there to remind you that you're doing it wrong. This is why I make an active effort to acknowledge the successes my 10 year old son has as well as his mistakes.

So why do killboards matter? Whether you use Battle Clinic or Eve Kill or some other board, why do they matter in the end? I know that some groups won't allow you to join if you don't have a certain number of kills a month or aren't operating at a certain efficiency level, and I'm sure that's because they don't want someone joining their group that can't hold their own. Other than that though, who cares if you die? Ships are meant to be blown up in Eve. You're going to have good days and bad days, good months and bad months, Eve is a game of give and take.  An ex corp mate used to fly sniper fit Cormorants and he'd lose about three or four a day, but he also killed about 40-50 other ships a day. That's a solid trade off in my opinion.

I try not to take Eve too seriously. I enjoy it, it's a lot of fun, but in the end it's still a game. I could shut it off tomorrow, walk away, and New Eden wouldn't even notice I was gone.

Eve Online: Patience

Whether you are setting a trap, camping a gate, or assembling a fleet there is one skill that you must posses that is more necessary that any skill you can train in Eve, and that is patience.

Question: "Do you know the reward for being patient?"
Answer: "Patience"

Two days ago I was in the process of moving some of my stuff from high sec through a wormhole to my new home in null sec. Right when I docked with my first load of stuff, assembled a Talwar just in case of emergencies, the alliance intel channel spotted a Tengu a few systems away. A general call out for extra ships to help bring it down was relayed, although if it was cloaked and nullified, we knew the odds that we wouldn't likely be able to catch it. Someone checked out the guys corporation and his corp used to live in the area about 6 months ago but left a long time ago. Odds are this guy logged off for a few months, and logged back in and was just trying to get the hell out of dodge.

The FC relays over comms that he had eyes on the Tengu was going to check to see if he was nullified by using his Sabre to catch him on a gate. The rest of the gang are still 1-2 jumps away but if the guy is nullified then there is no point in really trying to catch up to him. A few seconds later he announces that the Tengu is NOT nullified and he has the Tengu in his bubble and pointed, but he's trying to run and getting away slowly. The fleet jumps in right as the Tengu gets out of range of his point and we see him warp off and cloak. We figured at this point that he's gone and if he's smart he'll log off for a while and try again later once we've all forgotten about him. There are only two gates out of this system so we split our fleet in half, and jump through the only two exits this system has. We place a Sabre and 2-3 DPS ships in each of the adjacent systems, so no matter which way he goes, he'll have a hard time getting away.

We wait....and we wait... and we wait. We added him to our watchlist so we know he didn't log off. Finally after about twenty minutes, local spikes by one and the gate flashes and he jumps into the system I'm in. Sabre pops his bubble, and the Tengu starts to run for it as he engages his cloak. We rush his location and are able to successfully decloak him. The other 3 guys that were camping the other exit from that system jump into system just as we melt his shields away. If you know anything about shield tanked ships, you know that once you push past the shields, the fight is just about over. We pause for 3-4 seconds for our friends that joined late to get a lock and start attacking so they can get on the killmail, and almost instantly the Tengu is reduced to space dust. With the Sabre's bubble still up grab the pod, lock it up and give him a proper "Welcome back to Eve" greeting.

After we see the killmail we notice the Tengu was PvE fit, and worth about 650 million, the pod however was worth even more than his ship at around 820 million. Also it turns out that one of our corp members has a spy in the guy's alliance intel channel (apparently they know he's a spy but don't kick him from the channel), and decided to post the killmail there just to be funny.

They respond by saying "Yeah, he logged into teamspeak and started screaming like a baby demanding that everyone come and help him, to which we responded "Sure, we're only about 70 jumps away, we'll be right there."". They also then kick him out of their own teamspeak because he won't stop screaming and they are on a fleet op of their own at the moment. We check the Tengu's character sheet five minutes later and he rage quit his corp and logged off. Classic.

So far I like the new guys I'm flying with. The fleet commander appears to know how to do his job, people respect him when he talks, but don't kiss his ass. I think I made a good choice moving to my new home and deciding to leave my old life behind. I can feel the "Eve Spark" returning which is good. It was definitely fading there for a bit.

Topping it off with 1.5 billion in kills on my first day isn't too bad either :)

Eve Online: Dotlan

I use this site so much that I thought I'd spend some time writing about some of it's uses and how it can be used for a multitude of functions. Handy for the veteran planner or the newbie looking to learn a few new tricks.

http://evemaps.dotlan.net/

DOTLAN is it's name, and if you ever wanted to know some extra details about systems, alliances, and corporations, this is a site that you need to familiarize yourself with.

On the initial page you've got a series of regional maps and faction warfare maps that you can check out, each of which will take you to a fully interactive overview of that region. Go ahead and click on the regional map Catch and once inside you'll notice all the system names, which alliance owns it (if any), the sov level of that system (1-5), if there are any outposts in that system and what type of services that outpost offers. You can also find Ice Belts, whether or not a system is contested, and which other regions connect to that region.

In the top right corner of the map is a drop down that allows you to change what type of information you want to view on all the systems such as; Sovereignty (which alliance controls the system), Corporation (which specific corporation owns that systems), Security Level, how many belts, planets, moons, if there are any permanent DED complexes in that system, jumps in the last hour/day, ship and pod kills in the last hour/day, NPC kills in the last hour/day.

Let's say for example that you're trying to plan a roam through null sec to go pick a fight (or avoid a fight). I'm going to look at the regional map for Catch and I'm interested in entering Null Sec through HED-GP, and heading down towards Stain. I'm going to check to see which systems in my path have had recent activity lately so that you can steer your roam in that direction, or away from that direction if you think a large gate camp may be present. I'm going to filter by jumps, then by kills, then by NPC kills to gather some initial intelligence on the system.

After filtering by ship/pod kills, I notice that there have been 16/9 kills in WD-VTV in the last hour. That tells me that 16 ships and 9 pods have died in WD-VTV so there is most likely a gate camp there. If I change it to in the last 24 hours I see 227 ships and 93 pods have died in the last 24 hours. Either a large fleet battle took place, or one hell of a gate camp. Now I'm going to click on the WD-VTV system and drill down and get some more specific information on what's been going on.

By clicking on a system you are now presented with tons more information for your viewing pleasure.  Let's focus on kills by clicking on Kills next to the pretty pink heart.  This will now tell me all the ships that have been killed in the last 48 hours in this system, who died, how many were involved, what time they blew up, etc. If you want you can also click on a specific kill that will take you to the actual killmail, showing you specifically who was involved, as well as everything else that comes along with a killmail.

Pretty handy stuff right?! 

Let's head back to the home page and take a look at some of the other elements that Dotlan has to offer. On the right side of your screen you can see the Most Violent Systems for null sec and low sec in the last 3 hours, Top Sovereignty Changes in the last 7 days (who has gained the most or lost the most systems), Alliance Movement showing who has lost or gained the most members in the last 7 days, and the last 5 shiny New Outposts that have been constructed. Each of these stats can be clicked on to bring you to a more complete list if you're interested.

In additional to all of the above, Dotlan also offers a navigational tool, that can help you plan a trip, including ships capable of using jump drives. Simply click on the Navigation tab, input your systems into the jump planner, including any waypoints or systems to avoid and BAM! You're all set.

Last but not least the Faction War tab will take you to a list of all the systems out there involved with faction warfare, who owns it, if it's contested or not, and where you can find it.

Anyways, that sums up my synopsis of Dotlan's EveMaps. Check it out, use it, abuse it, and fly smarter (or more stupid if you prefer). Either way you can plan it better now.

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.