Undock Vista

Undock Vista

Sisters of Eve - On the Gate

On the Gate
Running errands for the Sisters of Eve

A Busy Week

Work this week was at another level entirely. At least two nights I started the client with the notion that I could at least log in, and then remembered something else I had to do. I had even jump cloned back to Deklein to make sure that my jump timer would be clear if any important fleets came up. And they did, my phone was blasting me with great sounding fleet alerts. I wish I could have been there.

I did get my trade alt moved to Arnon for the quarterly dispensation of faction standing called the Sisters of Eve Epic Arc. Its pretty easy to blow through it, frankly, even though that character has very little combat sp. Like a lot of EVE PVE, its down to knowing how things work and what's going to happen next. It doesn't hurt that I have no interest in loot or salvage, have a fitted ship pre-positioned in Arnon and a cargo expander at that one station where you have to move supplies(1), and have insta-dock bookmarks for every station in the whole circumnavigation.

So that will probably take about six hours of clock time this weekend, if not full attention. Maybe I'll rat on the other screen? If I do, that would pay (net) about fifty times better, assuming a normal rate of neuts wandering by, and I pay 15% tax on ratting and nothing on these missions. Incursions may be the best essentially risk-free ISK in the game, but I'm not complaining at these numbers sitting in a fit that was 100M out the door.

Sometime I should blog about how much time I've spent on this trading alt and how little value it has provided. I am surely missing something basic about trading.

1 edit Agent Immuri Asaka at Hatakani VI - Moon 4 - Hyasyoda Corporation Refinery asks you to move 150 m³ of Farming Supplies.

1-SMEB Station Hellcamp - Bubble Station

1-SMEB Station Hellcamp Bubbles

Hellcamp Day

Yesterday from downtime to about 20:30 UTC, I was in the hellcamp fleet in 1-SMEB. That's a little over nine hours. I was afk for about twenty-five minutes in there to get some food, and of course there were occasions where I was not at the computer for a few minutes at a time.

Several FCs rotated through command, each of whom brought a different personality to the job. So at one point we had a rather active and piratical tone, being warped about as various parties moved through nearby systems. During another, we had long stretches of silence on comms as people attended to whatever else one is doing in such a fleet. For a while we had a division of labor, and I was in a wing that remained on station.

Very little occurred, and I would say nothing of consequence. The sole exception might be the escape of an enemy Archon when we had poor bubble coverage at a weak point. I didn't even see it happen. 

The rest of the time was trying to lock the occasional interceptor or capsule, or an infrequent visitor to a neighboring system. I did happen to be watching when system sovereignty switched over to GSF, so that was cool.

I was attending to other business as well. I had some software work to do, and I've also been trying to learn more about Data Science and R. I've been planning to set up a standing desk, so I spent some time looking at ways to try that out cheaply and researching a new monitor to put on it. (The page I started with is here. I found in the comments that there is a Lack coffee table that's much the same but twice as long, so I made 8:1 scale flat paper cutouts to try different configurations.) My early 2013 rMBP won't drive a 4K display with doubled pixels since it lacks ThunderBolt 2, so I'm thinking the BenQ BL3200PT QHP 32" would be a good compromise to last me until I upgrade the laptop. I can then migrate the monitor over to the gaming PC, where higher resolution is very much a mixed blessing, and go with something 4K in a similar size for the new work machine. 

Overall, it was a good fleet. We accomplished the goal of making it very difficult for the enemy to evac assets from their former staging station. Many things are available at fire-sale prices. As long as we are a coalition of people willing to do this exact sort of thing when needed, we will always defeat groups who stop showing up once the action dies down. 

The PAP thing is pretty funny. In part, it's us gamifying ourselves, hooking into that just-one-more competitive pathway. No one wants to leave a fleet right after a PAP is given out, and then you're a chunk of the way towards the next one and don't want to "waste" the time. But in a real way, tracking participation adds a lot of value even discounting any effects it has on participation. (Which may also be negative, there are real effects where rewarding behavior disincentives it.) Knowing who is doing what, when helps measure morale, the effects of communication, the different types of engagement of different groups, or of the whole group at different times of day or of the year, etc. Having the ability to predict that a AUTZ cap fleet at 04:00 UTC on a Saturday in June will likely be well-attended has to be invaluable. It's helping you understand what your capabilities actually are, at any given moment in time.

Lightning-fast Ship Reimbursement

Quick note, my first experience with GSF SRP, or ship reimbursement. There's a special application for it. You log in, paste your fleet ping and the CREST API link to your loss. I submitted my Harpy and got paid in less than 36 hours.

I'm not even going to tell you about trying to get Atrons reimbursed in Sendaya. Let's just say that this is great. The faster SRP turns over, the fewer doctrine fits I need to float. That's more time I can spend in the war zone and less making up ISK to fund the fighting.

Also, even when we got to Sakht there were already doctrine ships up on contracts. There were more when I lost my first one. So I don't need to grab up a bunch as soon as they come available. Since people don't have to horde, the availability stays good - it's the old vicious cycle that the perception of scarcity causes behavior patterns that amplify scarcity.

Everything is so much better with proper organization. I'm glad to contribute. Thanks to all the players who do things to make this machine run.

Scratch One Harpy

The day's business concluded, I had some time to spend in EVE. I was already sat in a Harpy one station from our current hellcamp, so naturally I thought I'd try to chip in. Pidgin revealed a ping had gone out for HarpyFleet only a short while before, so I got into the fleet comms and asked if I could still join. Sure! was the word, so I undocked and warped to gate.

As the computer voice told me that the warp drive was engaged, a human voice was telling me that there was a large red fleet now on the gate. Ctrl-space ctrl-space ctrl-space ... warp animation.

Sakht is in lowsec, so there are no bubbles, and I was thus free to fly right through the red camp and jump into 1-S. I couldn't help but notice Elo Knight in my overview.

Elo Knight and BL on 1-SMEB gate in Sakht
BoodaBooda and Capri Sun KraftFoods in local too!

Perhaps understandably, this sequence of events left me slightly flustered. I had watchlisted the FC while still in station, and I just warped to him.

Now, we're hellcamping the station, so it's going be bubbled up if things are going well. And they were, so I immediately found myself in a bubble, one of several, while comms started to light up with the news that BL were now in system. We were directed to align to a couple of different places. I was burning out of the bubble. We were ordered to warp. I was still burning. BL started to land on grid, around 70km off of me. I finally cleared the bubble and warped away to a celestial with shots starting to fall nearby. 

There was some confusion about how best to proceed at this point, involving the consultation with command authority. I'll omit the specifics of that and my own actions, and say that I fell back on techniques I've developed in wormhole and foreign nullsec exploration. Because I had been briefly engaged just as I was escaping the bubble, I had a combat timer, so I couldn't safe log for some time. 

By the time my timer was ending, we had a report that the Sakht gate was clear. It had been bubbled earlier, which cost several fleetmates their ships when they warped to it rather than a perch. I was tempted to safe log anyway. But then, what a pain in the ass to have to log back into to this system in space! It would take some trouble to find out if I could even log in safely. A fleetmate said he was going for it, so I did too.

And, landed directly in a bubble. Not too bad, only a little ways in, only a couple of enemies. Burn away, spam warp... oh, I spammed warp on the main tab of my overview, not the warpout. Where I am I going? It says right by the capacitor. I'm going back to the station. My third time alone on grid with BL in less than 10 minutes. I wonder if they thought I was stupid or trying something new. (Hint: I wasn't trying something new.)

It was quite a party at the station, and I almost got clear of the bubble. I know it was close because I was able to warp off my pod. I must have been pointed before I got clear, all I was looking at was the edge of that bubble, so I don't know. I got to a celestial, then within 100 of the out gate, then to another celestial and through the gate to Sakht and station.

I guess all that's left is to attend to the quotidian nullsec formality of requesting SRP. And it comes to me that I named my ship "Insure Me" to remind myself... to buy insurance before undocking. 

I used to keep a small card under the monitor that listed upgrade your clone, insure your ship, set your deathclone, check your cargo hold, There might have been something else. I lost track of it when I was off of EVE at the end of the year. That's why people like me make cards like that.

Bridging titan in a POS shield on move op

Bridging titan in a POS shield on move op

Why Blog?

I was writing a belated introduction post for the corporate forums today. I wanted to give a sense of how I ended up applying, because I think that's a key factor in understanding what you can expect from me. I am here primarily to do something, in a certain way, with certain kinds of people. I think that's clearer when I explain the draw.

Who cares? I don't know, honestly. If someone is reading that introduction post, though, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that they want to come away knowing a little bit more about their corpmate. Is he a happy-go-lucky guy that just loves flying spaceships around? Is he a dedicated scammer and awoxer who thrives on schadenfreude and just barely missed getting caught up in the Bonus Round bans? Is he a vet who chills on comms and jabber and only logs in to drop supers? It makes a big difference in how you'll play together, if at all.

In the course of writing the introduction, I found myself explaining that it was through writing down what I wanted to do and why that I found some clarity about that. I knew what I loved about flying frigates in low sec as a stone newbie who didn't know what "heat guns!" meant. (For several roams - I thought it was a metaphor for fire and keep firing.) I knew what I liked about grinding Catch. I knew what I really hated about the organizational dysfunction of HERO, the daily dramas and the inability to set and work towards a goal.  What I didn't really understand until I tried to articulate it was what those data points were a part of, what I was looking for in EVE.

So that's why I'm blogging. To keep engaged with myself, with what I am doing and why. I do hope to find a modest readership, to get on a few people's RSS feeds. I would like to know that I attracted a few people to the game by showing them a side of it that they might not have seen. If other, unforeseen things come from this, I'll try to make the best of them. But my underlying purpose is not to waste another six months being unhappy about what I'm doing with my free time in game, to be doing things that I'm glad to do.

The Spin Zone

Wait, so everyone wins? Except, the CFC loses because we're not having fun by winning? We hurt ourselves by flying in big, successful fleets? And NC. are winning by abandoning sov and playing other games altogether?

If this thing spins me any harder, my retinas might detach.

Quoting for the future:

TLDR: Fuck the renters, fuck n3, fuck the sov. They can have their "victory", we'll be having fun somewhere else with 3 years of renter income and a tight community that enjoys playing with each other, with our only narrative being blowing spaceships up and dunking people.

So wall of text here, just because I feel like giving our POV

Yeah, I guess it depends on your definition of "effective" and "victory". The key difference between a group like NC. or Black Legion and a group like the CFC is that NC. and Black Legion are in it for getting fun brawls/good fights, where as the CFC are in it for making their opponent as miserable as possible. We (NC.) don't mind losing fights; honestly, we lose the isk war most of the time, because we are dumb and like to fly stupid bling fit stuff[1] in fleets of T1 battleships that cost literally 1/10th as much, and 4-5 people will fly things like this. Additionally, we use expensive doctrines that are often a little too blinged for no reason (we use 750m isk lokis, when you could make something 98% as effective for ~550, for example), almost always fight outnumbered (40 vs. 100, 100 vs. 300+ are very common), and try to take any fight we have a chance of winning (vs. most groups in eve that will not take any fight that they have a chance in losing). Yes, this means we'll stay docked if we are outnumbered 5+ to 1; you can't win if your oppenent has more T3s than you have fleet numbers two times over, and another 150 man harpy fleet, and a 150 man celestis fleet, and 80 bombers.

This contrasts the CFC, which, as seen in posts such as these[2] , basically believes that you either completely dominate your opponent, or you blueball them. This is designed to ruin their opponents fun, to the point where frankly (personal opinion) they are solely responsible for the MASSIVE decline in subscription numbers/concurrent players (over 30-40%) in the last two years. Remember, these last 2 years also had the creation of BRAVE newbies, so clearly huge amounts of people are quitting. But the point stands that it's such a shitfest to fight the CFC, it's not really worth it; in fact, the whole "winning eve is not playing" was basically created by people who had to deal with their tactics.

This means that no matter what, it is impossible to beat the CFC, because they specifically choose doctrines (dominix, celestis) that are made to either make you unable to play, or to intentionally cause tidi, and make sure to form so many people that there is 10% tidi for every fight.

So yes, they "win", in the sense that poor Darkeshi is getting dunked on (honestly, they kind of deserve it for siding with the CFC last time anyways), and that N3 as a coalition is basically disbanding. I guess what people who just read reddit all day and have never fought the CFC don't understand is that it is vastly more fun to do literally anything else than log in and sit in 10% tidi for 3-6 hours while the CFC tries their hardest to crash a node.

NC. has been planning on dropping sov and dropping the coalition ever sense fozziesov was announced (allegedly since Phoebe was announced), and the heads of the CFC knew this. Frankly, they could have sent the European Goonion down this week, instead of deploying a month or so ago with literally everyone, and probably done exactly what they are doing right now, since this week has been known as "deblue day". The European Goonion is fully capable of taking out Darkeshi by themselves, and honestly there would be some pretty good brawls, with the CFC eventually winning and the same result happening.

But this didn't happen. And do you know why? The European Goonion alone would have given good fights, and the CFC is against good fights. The European Goonion alone would have probably lost a few battles (I would expect them to win the war), and the CFC cannot lose due to :narrative:. And most importantly, the European Goonion wouldn't tidi every system, making it miserable for anyone but the mouth breathing autists (maybe a bit too harsh, but IMO you have to have some mental disorder to be willing to do 6h 10% tidi ops every day for weeks straight and still feel good about it) in the CFC who are literally willing to spend 6 hours for a single system, in 10% tidi, as long as it ruins their enemies experience too.

So, the takeaway of all of this, and you'll hear this from every single member of NC., is that both sides win here. We are quite happy and excited to be trying out something different than a sov grind, and finally free from the shackles of renters and coalitions. Obviously the CFC is going to spin this as some great victory, but at the end of the day they are the one who are (for the third time vs. N3) giving up multiple regions and getting the joys of 6 hour structure grinds, day in and day out, while we do solo/small gang, play with spectre fleet, play GTA5/DOTA/Sins/leaguescum, or even have real life, because we don't have daily CTAs for MAX DUDES that tidi their own fleet because... reasons? I don't really get it, we ground Period Basis in 3 hours with 80 supers, apparently they feel the need to Tidi their own members? Oh well.

Minister of Love

One more quick note, I just found out I was accepted to Miniluv! Which is awesome. I have a shit ton of reading to do. You may now address me as Minister Chinua.

Now that I know how easy it is to make isk in GSF, I have no hesitation about enabling MCT for my ganker. She's already a bad ass in a T2 catalyst, but there's a lot more she could do with that ship and with some other tools as well. Even if I never turned a dime of profit in the high-sec ganking game, I could easily rat while doing it, and that would pay for a plex in just a few sessions.

I have another alt I trained to sit cloaked on wormholes in an Astero, I've planned for her to be the scanner. She needs just a couple of hours training for level 1 in a few common ships. I have another character who can fly an orca and a dst/br, maybe she will come in handy, too. No one really who would make a good bumper, though.

One thing I have to tell myself is that you don't need to be able to do all these things, especially on day one. Take it one step at time and prioritize. Looks like my priorities need to be getting the scanner in place and equipped, and getting a jump clone or two somehow for my ganker to get around to the hot system of the day with ease.

Bubbled up in 1-SMEB

Staging redux

Well, I certainly chose an eventful time to join GSF. Before I could even get on a fleet in Delve, our foes variously chose to flee, disband, and/or abandon sov and reset everyone. Having defended the invasion, we're leaving Fountain and, unless this is a gigantic troll, changing the coalition name and rearranging who is in it.

Meanwhile I was lazy ratting during conference calls and so on, and found myself a billion isk up, even after buying a couple of taxi-ceptors, my ratting ship, and some doctrine fleet fits. It's funny, all I wanted to do was get engaged in activity and I more-or-less accidentally made a lot of money, much more than I made in over a year in BNI. It's down to great true-sec and amazing intel channels, to which I am happy to contribute.

But this morning the ping went out to fleet up in 4-EP12 at 19:00 to move for the next phase of curb-stomping. And even though it was an awkward time, and I almost didn't make it because of a problem at work,  I decided to :getin:. One nice thing about flying a Harpy, or any frigate, is it's not too painful to move the thing around. 

So I logged in, left my ship, opened my character sheet to the jump clone section, paused my training, and jumped. Normally that's when I resume my training. This time, nothing. Nothing. Hover over jump again... hit it. Session change already in progress... oh. TiDi. 

Lots of TiDi, we were getting 10-25% of normal cycles. The harpy fleet I wanted to fly with was also out of station, and was actually staging for departure in the next system on the way, via jump bridge. After a minute or two of undocking, I trudged across the system and jumped through the bridge, feeling that twinge of guilt for not having any fuel to drop in. I aligned out with everyone and we soon got underway, the inevitable stragglers catching up. I had a chance to take some great shots of some of the larger ships in the game, which I'll probably save for a reasonable time. This one isn't mine, it was posted on the subreddit:

Imperium Army Relocate! by demonsmaycry

We chased some interceptors around, I gather they were looking to tackle a titan and maybe get a drop going, who knows though.

Finally, we resumed the trip and learned our destination: Sakht! The same station BRAVE evacced to from Catch before they realized that living there would be stupid. Happily, we're not living here, and being one jump from 1-SMEB in Delve is perfect. We can hell-camp the station there and then return to the luxury of an unassailable station to stage from.

I went out on a Harpy station camp tonight as well. We spent about three hours bubbling things up and popping people who stuck their heads out. Station services are already taking a beating, fitting and repair are down. I'm sure they didn't want that station anyway.

Feeling the Luv

GSF is really large, and it might be difficult to make connections with a group of like-minded players in such a crowd. Happily this issue has long been addressed by having subgroups - squads and special interest groups (SIGs). If you have an interest in a certain area, whether it be market and industry, flying capitals, small gang PVP, or flying specialized roles like links or bombers, there's probably a group doing it in GSF. Not only that, but they have been doing it for quite some time. Corp members in the alliance can all apply to join them, but it's not open admission - you do have to meet their requirements. For example, the capital group requires certain skills be present and that you have a cap fitted to one of their specifications. 

Tonight I applied to the Ministry of Love, or Miniluv as it also known. Miniluv are the high-sec ganking group of GSF. It's a chance to fly in a focused squad with well-defined roles, which I really like. It's something I can easily do an on alt, freeing my main to stay in null and do fleet ops as needed or whatever. And it has strategic benefits for the alliance. It doesn't hurt that there's isk in it as well :) 

When CCP gave us a free 20 day multiple character training for the holidays, I trained a ganker alt on my main account, and joined the CODE. I ended up giving that pilot a few extra days of training, and got to a full T2 Catalyst doing over 500 dps. If I'm accepted into Miniluv and actually find it makes significant money for me, I'll happily fund more training with it. I'd really like to get up over 700 with the Catalyst, and move on to the insta-lock Thrasher or the really scary Brutix ganking fits I've seen. I'm sure that Miniluv have their own, as well.

To apply, I had to link a solo gank, which I didn't have. So my neutral scout roamed the Caldari space-lanes in search of a violator. I can't describe too closely the target I settled on, because his obnoxious behavior in local was quite distinctive. Suffice it to say that there was general applause at his fate.

Strat ops, pilot down

Well, as I said in my last post, I was sitting in a deployment station in a doctrine Harpy, ready to undock. However, I had just missed a huge engagement earlier in the day, and things went quiet in Delve for a bit. With no fleets running, I decided to jump clone back to Deklein. For one thing, I don't normally have a block of time early in the work week that I could give to a fleet op. But I might make a special effort to do it, because I really want to fly in a CFC op, and the sooner I jump, the sooner I can jump back.

My EVE time has been constrained by having houseguests as well. I've managed to distracted-rat for a couple of hours. I had some other tasks to take care of some alts, as well. Sorry to be vague, but it's probably best not to go into too much detail about that for now.

We had a report on the KarmaFleet subreddit that one of our pilots had a stroke this week. He and I had actually been chatting a good bit that day, talking about VNI fits, damage types, etc. He was trying to rat in a Naga and getting only 249 dps, which makes for a pretty poor isk/hour. We're told that he has some impairments right now, but I've known stroke victims before to recover a lot in the immediate aftermath of their treatment, and then have to really work for improvements after that. It's a hard road. As I said in the thread, all my best to him and his family in this difficult time.

Cloud Ring passage

Cloud Ring on the way from Pure Blind to Fountain

Arrival on station

Landing at zero on station in Fountain

Arrival in Fountain

After being stuck before due to real life, I took the opportunity to pseudo-afk rat this afternoon and in the evening. I was able to help a very new newbee with access to my wrecks and loot, and spent some time with another helping with VNI fits. His buddy had given him a fit with a Pithum C-Type MSB that goes for almost 70M in Jita! I am using the NewBee Baby Ishtar fit and haven't been below 50% shields barely looking at the screen, including when I got jumped. So being able to tank another 100 dps isn't necessary to get started making some basic ship money. Hopefully he'll be able to get out of his 250 dps Naga and into something that clears anoms faster so he can become a fleet effective.

I then created a new, empty jump clone, jumped to it, and fitted it with a 1% powergrid implant. That's needed to eke out another 0.3 pg on our taxiceptor fit for a prototype cloak. I wasn't sure if I would jump all the way or use some of the jump bridge network, and I like to wait out some of the fatigue when I do that. Cloaking is a pretty comfortable way to spend ten minutes afk while your Phoebes shake out.

But only one jump into Fade I found Small Hyperspatial IIs on the market and stopped to fit them. Going over 12 AUs/sec, the whole trip takes but a few minutes. And I got to see some amazing scenery - Cloud Ring and Fountain especially are amazingly beautiful. Sometime I need to wander off the beaten path in these regions and take in the sights.

I captured some nice shots, actually, and will try to make posting such things a regular feature here.

In the end I made it to our staging system and got myself set up with a doctrine ship, grouped, loaded, scripted, so I am literally ready to undock on 3. Next time I'm on and have some time, I can just wait for a ping. If I know I won't have time for fleets for at least 20 hours, often at the start of the week for example, I can jump back to Dek and replenish my coffers.

Feeling good, I'm really pumped that I can help accomplish something meaningful and important out here.

Tackled in Dek

My departure to the war zone having been delayed for reasons, I was ratting in an anom today while doing working on another monitor and my laptop. I saw a neutral in local, and gave it my attention for a minute or two. No report in intel so I made one. No discussion in standing fleet of any significance. Nothing on dscan. So I let it go, but it was on my mind.

Every minute or so, I flicked the mouse over to EVE and hit the dscan. Then I started seeing an Imperial Navy Slicer. I'm wasn't too worried about that, sitting in a pretty heavily tanked VNI and confident that my fit would let me win, survive until reinforcements came, or break tackle. 

A few minutes later, he comes on grid with me. I start to lock him up, and get scrammed. Then I put heavies on him, and put the info in standing fleet. I got him into structure and he warped off. 

(I would really like a scram drone, by the way. Is it OP? Maybe, but it would cost 20% DPS to field it, so maybe not.)

While this is happening, I am being told not to rat with neutrals in system. Which is good advice, and I knew it was a risk. I just wasn't very worried about losing my relatively inexpensive ship. I've docked a couple of times when a gang came through, but one guy? A VNI isn't exactly a glamorous kill, and that ship tanks a lot of smaller stuff.

I told standing fleet that it looked like he warped off, but in a few minutes, he came back on grid and we re-engaged. When I informed standing fleet of this news, it was not well received. I believe "you kept fucking ratting?" and "you stupid pubbie fuck" were among my responses. 

It was explained to me that even if I don't care about the loss, giving an enemy an easy kill makes them happy and rewards their behavior. Goons don't do that.

And guess what? I am totally fine with that. I like that. Goons have a system that makes things work. In BNI, no one would ever have given one iota of a shit about someone losing a ratting ship to a roamer. It's so far from my experience that this could be a concern, it never entered my mind. But BNI isn't the example of a well-run, efficient, and effective null sec empire. GSF is. A lot of things work because small changes in individual behavior add up to a huge effect in the aggregate, things like herd immunity or clean sidewalks. Now I know that ratting with neutrals in local is like littering - just don't do it, and we're all better off.

If you're reading this and think I'm nuts, I understand, but don't apply. This is not a place for special snowflake pilots who think their preferences are more important than the hard-learned lessons encoded in these rules.

Oh, the neutral? Standing fleet goons blew him up (Imperial Navy Slicer, Capsule). I didn't even get 15% damage. And I docked it up. 

ISKed up

Lots of work today, but I was able to semi-afk rat anoms for a good portion of the afternoon and evening while doing some things that kept me at my desk. I've found that the NewBee VNI simply doesn't require any hand-holding. It's not a bad idea to manually target frigates if you happen to have a moment, and I did that for most of the waves that scram and web just on principle. But unless local spikes with neutrals, there's no real reason to be concerned.

I've continued to drop an MTU and orbit that, then I approach and grab everything with a unit price >= 50k and all the tiny things. That means a trip back to station after every anom, which you would think would hurt ISK/hour. And it might, but so far I've managed about 520M ISK net (20% tax) in bounties, and another 175M in loot, almost exactly a third of the bounties. That's a huge hit to walk away from for literally two minutes lapse between anoms, and being in station on a regular cycle encourages one to take a bathroom break or what have you while docked instead of truly AFK. Even one ship loss due to being out of the room is another third of my bounties to date, although I can't assess the likelihood of that in this new space. Walking away from the pc was a bad idea in Catch.

We did have some neuts come through when I wasn't paying attention, though. Happily it was of no consequence. But it does prompt me to wish for a little more control over the audio alerts. For example, I cannot tell the client not to inform me if I choose the same waypoint twice, or that the autopilot is disabling itself because a waypoint was reached, and those are long, spoken word messages. But I can't even get it to make a sound when a target is destroyed or gets away/stops being targeted, or when someone outside alliance is added to local, or when a drone goes into low shield or armor, and so on. There are a bunch of audio alerts that, if set, would enable me to rely on the client to call for my attention as events occurred, rather than depending on me to poll several windows for updates. We all use workarounds like selecting all on local so we can see what changed since last we looked, but really it's absurd to think that the screen can update the list with the name and status of the new entrant, but that gameplay is harmed by a chirp if their colortag or state isn't found in a certain set.

I even question the reasonableness of having drones that auto-aggress but with a fixed algorithm. I would prefer to set them to smaller ships first in my current circumstance. I'd prefer even more to be able to tell them to get anything scramming me, followed by webbers, followed by whomever did the most dps in the last 60 seconds. This calculation would only be performed while changing targets, of course - can't have them flitting around the field letting the enemies all rep.

I appreciate that this would mean more AFK or inattentive players, but when your position is that simple automation like an audio alert in the client will allow players too little attention, the problem isn't with the alerts, but rather the mechanistic scenario. Forcing the player to act in a scripted way to perform well is actually demoralizing for the player, who feels a sense of relief when he realizes something of that kind can be omitted.

Anyway, with my earnings I can afford some doctrine ships, enough to lose a few while waiting for SRP. So I'm soon off to Fountain to play in the last great war under Dominion sov.

Warping in Deklein

Null taxi - travelling in Deklein

Null Anomalies

Never was much for PVE in this game, but I thought I'd try some anomalies. I'm down on ISK since my former living space was a thunderdome, and then of course came the great deployment turned evac.

It turns out that it's easy money, if not great money. I pulled about 100M ISK, with fully engaged ticks running just over 18M, and was still able to check out a video and read some reddit. On each wave, I just made sure to get the frigates cleared, and then let the heavies do what they thought best. Probably I could have let the whole thing go on automatic, but clearing the frigates means clearing scrams and webs, and I'm still not used to this space. Local is easy to keep on eye on, and intel channels are fantastic.

Once I pay off my ratting ship and my taxi-ceptor, I'm going to see about getting stocked with at least one Celestis and a Harpy, and join a fleet. Not sure where I need those ships to be, even. One step at a time.

Group commitment

I was talking to someone I know who used to play EVE, mostly in low sec with some high sec activity on alts. I mentioned how I had to add all my alts APIs to the GSF auth page. He thought I was nuts to do that and that I shouldn't even have mentioned them in recruitment.

Maybe. My main has had virtually no interaction with any of my alts. The few he has had, such as buying something from a contract, are just a sprinkling among the many other interactions he's had with characters that I don't play. So I probably could have "gotten away with it" by not mentioning them and never using them in connection with a GSF activity. No neutral scout, no neutral hauler, or warp-in, or bumper, or buying things in Jita on the trader and shipping them down.

But here's the thing. Forget about min-maxing whether or not I'm better off with them hidden or known. Look at the big picture.

GSF (and CFC) are comprised of thousands of people and the assets, reputations, and processes they and their predecessors have created. To each individual, tremendous value is imparted by being in the group. That value tends to increase when one's own alignment is to the group, and diminish when one structures one's behavior towards selfishness.

Once I had learned enough about GSF to want to join, my focus shifted to considering how to do the things I enjoy - flying in fleets and gangs, making ISK, scouting, ganking - in the ways that are most effective, useful, and in alignment with the alliance. Rather than even considering micro-optimizations such as revealing my alts, I'm trying to put the limited energy I have to give to EVE entirely in the direction my group needs to it do.

This other perspective seems to me like being on a rowing crew, or tug-of-war team, or anything of that sort, and trying to figure out what's the least amount of pulling you can get away with doing. Not only will everyone soon sort out what kind of teammate you are, but if you care about the overall result, you're hurting yourself along with everyone on the team who thought they could count on you.

It's tempting to think this is a difference between low-sec and null-sec, in that the demands of null reward the kind of group play that I am describing, and perhaps low is more tolerant of inefficient groups. But when I read about the energy a lot of people put into their low sec corps, I think it tells the same story. Sugar Kyle had nothing to gain from her efforts in low, and Chance Ravinne had nothing to gain with all his hard work making videos of himself as a newbie. Both of them focused on what they could give to the subset of EVE they could reach, and in return they are space-famous, influential, and have access to things in EVE that you can't buy with ISK or money. In the end, it's not even selfish to act selfishly, it's just short-sighted.

Busy day, too many choices

I didn't really get into EVE today, some work and family obligations kept me away. I got some study time in on goonfleet forums while stuck waiting in the car. It's an incredible amount of information and resources, and I know I've barely scratched the surface.

I did buy a VNI on contract. I've never really ratted much, but it seems like something you can do with people in null and line your pockets a bit. That would be helpful, since I've never had a reasonable income stream at any point.

With my skills, I'm looking at about 650 dps at 77 km and 28k ehp with ~75% resist to kinetic and 65% to thermal. Since we're in Guristas space, 84/16 kin/therm, that seems ok. The fit didn't have a prop mod, which I expected from having read about people using 100mn VNIs to speed tank Sansha anomalies, but I honestly have no idea what I'm doing, so I'm really in no position to judge the fit.

Hopefully, I can find some time to get out and rat with some other pilots this weekend and learn the ropes a bit.

There are so many things you can do in GSF, I can't do them all at once, but they are all so tempting. I'd love to get out to Delve as well and start flying some Celestis ewar or maybe an Exequror - Gal Cruiser V is my longest train to date I think. I'd also like to start checking out some of the squads and sigs, and get circled up with some of my Karma corpmates.

New Home

I made it out to YA0-XJ and got docked. Haven't had a chance to look around too much, but the market is pretty amazing and there are a shit ton of ships on contract.

I literally had to beg off from going ratting with a super nice guy while simultaneously being pinged for a newbee frigate roam. I hadn't even gotten docked yet. I would have liked to do either, really, I love roams and I could really use the ratting money

But, I probably spent twice my allotted time on EVE today, between setting up auth and services, reading the forums about SIGs, figuring out the jump bridge network and getting moved, etc. I get the feeling that there's going to be plenty of amazing things to do out here and wherever we rest our heads. So I hung it up, don't have to try to do it all the first day.

Pure Blind sky

Warping in Pure Blind en route to YA0-XJ

Accepted - Enter the Swarm

My application to KarmaFleet was accepted!

I thought there was supposed to be an email with time-sensitive info, but I had misunderstood. The email comes after you accept the acceptance and thus become a corp member. Once I spoke to my recruiter and got that straightened out, I hit the magic button and became a newbee.

The aforementioned email is pretty stuffed with info. Luckily, I already had pidgin and mumble set up and just needed to configure them for the new GSF accounts. Since I have a lot of different EVE tools (and have tried still more), each given its own API key, registering my accounts in the management page was also pretty straightforward. Getting into goonfleet.com was a real eye-opener though.

I'll bet a lot of goons would laugh to read that, but the GoonFleet forums are... unique. I say this as someone who has been using the internet since well before the world wide web existed. I can already tell that becoming proficient in the style and tradition of posting is going to be a challenge on its own.

Now I need to get back into null, so if you'll excuse me, I know I left that stealth bomber around here somewhere...

Bee Curious

The following is an adaptation of an essay I wrote Wednesday night. I wrote it to clarify my own thoughts about why I used to be happy in Brave Newbies, and why I haven't been for some time, and why I thought I wanted to be a goon. In fact, I ended up showing it to a GSF recruiter, so it turned out to be both useful and practical - that would be a lot of typing in a chat window, especially when its harder to take your time with what you want to say.

It captures how I feel right now about my time in EVE, which is pretty much my time in Brave Newbies from Barleguet to abandoning Catch.

My few edits are mainly intended to remove unnecessary details.

I have been in EVE for a pretty short time, a little over thirteen months. I had been reading /r/eve over the holidays, and got pretty excited reading about all the excitement and exuberance to do with Brave Newbies giving no fucks in lowsec. Every day it seemed like some new and awesome thing was happening. Even though I had decided long ago not to get involved in another MMO, trapped in a time-consuming grind with little to show for it, I couldn't resist. I signed up for EVE. 

At that time there were conflicting skill plans so I started "Cribbit's" - doctrine Talwar in 9 days! - and did the tutorials. Then I did the SoE epic arc as advised. I got into Estel Arador and made a couple of clones, flew to Stacmon, put Ostingele on avoid, and accepted the invite. I headed "down the pipe" for Barleguet. 

That evening, surrounded by chaos, I decided to get on fleet comms just to hear what a fleet sounded like and get used to it. They were still pinging. I asked in fleet chat if I could fly my atron. Of course the answer was yes. It was a Xenos FAF fleet. We roamed Black Rise and I got on some kills and died having no idea how I was killed. 

That period was the best time I had in Brave. I was buying parts, fitting doctrine Atrons, and putting them on contract for pocket money. I didn't know there was a "fit" button til much later. We did FAF roams, I learned about right-clicking in space to get a list of things to align or warp to, about heating modules, having them armed before targeting and how that can go wrong (double click the FC when the last target died before you could lock him - oh, sorry about that). I even got to fly that Talwar I trained for one time, whoring on an Archon when we got "invaded". 

Then one evening I logged in and the anthill was in an uproar. "Deploying" to Sendaya, a staging system for our contact to burn Catch. I flew my Talwar to Sendaya that night with some of my more expensive meta modules for Atrons.

Sendaya market was absurd. Couldn't buy anything, couldn't afford what was there. How can you roam? And fleets were now for a reason, srs bzns out in Catch. I got in some of those fleets, and also flew to grind weird structures with Catalysts and Coercers. I took a Titan bridge - all super opsec, no idea that we even had access to a Titan until we landed on the pos. So we put lots of things on timers and laughed about being in these dingy ships and fighting -A-. 

This was when I started feeling that sense of accomplishment that comes from being on a team and doing something that's not that fun, but that makes everyone better off. We were achieving something hard for us to do, doing it our own way. 

Since that time, I've been a lot less active. Part of that is down to real life - busy at work here, lost a job there, etc. Part of it, too, was down to some disenchantment about what was going in on BNI. There were doctrines marked as official that were long expired, or announced and never used, that sucked up a lot of my training time. There were fleets that welped just because when we didn't find a good matchup. I don't care to be too specific because, especially with Brave conducting its business in public, it becomes too much like finger pointing. 

There were other areas of confusion, disarray, and disorganization, as is well known to all. I was willing to put up with all of it, even though it sucked, because I was on the team and we were all trying in the best way we knew how. I started thinking about joining a sister corp, maybe go live in a wormhole. Those people have to work together. 

The last 30-60 days though - the disjointed and confusing leadership recording with talk of multiple coup attempts and little communication - the terminal bitterness about being farmed - the surprise  deploying / abandoning catch that was done almost as badly as you could set out to do it - people I respect quitting - it's just been over the top bad. As I said in a reddit post, I enjoy pew pew, the short-term gratification kind of fun. I also enjoy the accomplishment kind of fun, the kind where you make something good as a team. By bailing on Catch, I feel I am being told that there's no place for that kind of goal in BNI. You can grind a system, you can establish system upgrades and industrial corps and jump bridge networks and endless bookmarks, but if fun-per-hour isn't being served then see ya, we out.

(And, edit here, that might not be fair, but that's not my problem anymore. The abysmal herky-jerky communication about something like an evac or "deployment" is as important as the thing itself. If you make it impossible to guess why decisions are made or if there is even a process for making them, you get to have other people infer their own ideas about it.) 

So, I quit Brave. No announcements, corp mails, or shit posts. I dropped corp, killed my API, and deleted my core auth entry. I'll say it now - I'm glad to have flown with many of you, but as you see it's not the right place for me anymore.

During my skill queueing with Brave, I used my holiday skill training gift to make a ganker and joined CODE. I had a blast. I got to fly with some miniluv guys in Uedama and you know what, no grrr. Fleets jumped through their paces like clockwork. Battle comms were quiet and clear. Scout reports were concise and standardized. After the engagement, people were friendly and fun. When I had read about goons before, it was never with an idea to join because I barely knew the SA name before EVE. I would be as j4g as it gets. Then Porkbutte broke off and it was open season to join if you could take a deep breath. I thought about it a lot. But so many good memories in Brave held me back. 

The other day there was a leak - deliberate or not, I don't know - in which goons were explaining to another goon the facts of warfare in the CFC. The goal of warfare, by their lights, is to deny the enemy his goals and to achieve your own. If you give him fun fights and that's his goal, you'll be doing that as long as he can push your buttons. Dunk him or dodge him. 

I love that. I understand that. We can all go have fun in Uedama and put some isk in our pockets as well. We can day trip a wormhole and maybe find a fight or some sleeper sites. There are a million things we can do in EVE for fun. Then there are the things you do to keep your group healthy and happy. That includes putting it down on people who try to take your shit. 

So now I think I understand something about being a goon that I didn't before, and that thing makes sense and shows me something I was missing in Brave. It's part of the organization's DNA to need to not care, which makes it very hard to build things. I know fozziesov is supposed to be a big win because there are a lot of asses in seats, but I guess we'll see whether a group that can act in its own long-term interest is better equipped to achieve things that one that can't. 

Following CFC guys like Endie and Wilhelm Arcturus on reddit and their blogs makes the picture clearer, too. Like when Endie says this:  it pushes my buttons. 

I'm not sure what I want to do in the GSF. I know I like to gank. I like to roam in a gang and I imagine it's fun to BLOPS bridge in with a bomber wing, too. I think I would make a good fleet scout with some guidance, I'm very patient and I always enjoy sneaking around in games. I'd like to have a pile of isk. I guess I'd like to talk to people in different SIGs and see if I could do a ride-along or what have you, see where I fit in. It's probably a good idea for me to assume I don't know anything about EVE and just ask for a mentor bee.

Obligatory First Post

I hope this blog will serve as a gazetteer of sorts to my continuing journey in EVE Online. It's not very likely to feature the space-famous or influence the events of the day. I'll be happy if I can entertain some people with stories and thoughts about EVE, in the same way that a lot of really talented people have shared their experiences with me in their blogs.

I'm prompted to write by a change, as is so often the case. I recently left my original corp, Brave Newbies, Inc., and applied to join KarmaFleet in the Goonswarm Federation. At the end of my time in Brave, having become critically unhappy about certain events, I knew I had to leave. And I had just read some things about GSF/CFC that I didn't know, things that were presented as negatives but that I found not just positive, but compelling. I took some time to collect my thoughts in the form of a letter to an imaginary recruiter, which I will post next, and it was really helpful to me.

So I'd like to try this experiment in blogging about a game that I often don't play as much as plan to play. Maybe wanting to have something to write about can create a virtuous loop of its own kind, getting me into different locales and activities. We'll see. I hope you enjoy.