The other night I lost two ships. One (a Tristan) was because I failed to check local and was therefore unaware that the two ships I scanned in a plex were not fighting. The second was because of poor communications. At some point the online pilots in my corp formed a fleet and some of us got on comms. Part of the problem is right there. I thought all of us were on comms. To make a long story short, I was fighting a red Slasher and non-criminal rail Catalyst. The Catalyst shot at me on the gate and I jumped through. I was now able to legally engage either target. There were 3 others in fleet with me. I thought that they were on the gate.
When I jumped through, I burned back to the gate and waited to see if the enemy ships were coming this way. They did. When the Catalyst started shooting me again, I shot back. I announced on comms that I was agressing. I assumed I had 3 buddies coming to my rescue. At least one had warped off and had to warp back. Another was not on voice comms, so he was unaware that I was fighting on the other side of the gate.
The Catalyst stayed about 20k away, while I sicced my Algos' drones on him and shot back with my own railguns. The Slasher was about 5-7k away attacking me also. I almost took down the Catalyst, but the combined DPS from the two sealed my fate. My backup never arrived.
Lessons Learned:
1. Make sure you know where everyone is. I thought my backup was seconds away but it was not.
2. Get serious. We were using very informal cooperation, instead of FC to fleetmember type teamwork, so everyone did whatever they felt best.
3. Announce your intentions. If I had said I jumped and reapproached the gate and intended to violence some ships, the likely outcome would have been 2 kills and no losses.
Oh well. We will do better next time.
Friday, June 28, 2013
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Tuesday's Gone
This is a quick post about the value of time and opportunity cost. I am expanding some comments I made on a post by Parasoja about capital ship building.
One of the commenters actually recommended buying components BPOs, in a situation where you have limited funds to startup your capital ship production. One of the reasons given is the usage of manufacturing lines. Particularly their underutilization if you are not able to insert many jobs at once, since 5-copy components BPOs will build quickly. The commenter said that you have to login a lot to keep your manufacturing going.
The point about how often you have to login is well taken, however the flipside is that if you have the manpower you can get your components built really fast using 5-run BPCs. If you have low starting resources your initial number of hulls is primarily limited by your capital. Being able to blaze through the component building phase quickly will mean more runs over time. Which means a quicker growth on your capital.
I would actually recommend the opposite strategy for BPOs. Carrier BPOS cost just over 1B a piece, but some of the component BPOs cost around 1.5B. You need many more component BPs. Therefore the carrier BPO will pay itself off in less runs. About 6-9 times faster if my back-of-an-envelope calculation is accurate.
Besides, I'm pretty sure the point of the article was that is was a bad idea to buy component BPOs if you have a small amount of capital to start.
I would additionally like to point out, in response to some of the comments, yes, it is very much an opportunity cost thing. What Parasoja sort of glossed over is WHY the more inefficient, but lower overhead cost thing works, at least under the current market conditions. You can build many more carriers (and make a smaller profit on each) by forgoing a full set of component BPOs.
For example. Starting capital 13B. You spend 11B on BPOs, because thats pretty much what you can do. The BPOs need to be researched, so you are paying for two months of POS lab time whether you do it or not. You still need to buy a few BPCs but, hey your are a BPO owner you can still save on not buying the BPCs for the components you have a BPO for. You have 2B left to build two carriers. You make 800M isk (2x400M isk) profit.
Alternately, you spend all of you money and minerals on BPCs and build 11 carriers. You just made 3.3B isk profits (11x300M). Even if you limited by the number of build slots (9 per character is achievable in a few weeks), your higher turnover at a lower profit margin will mean a higher monetary velocity for reinvestment. Over time you can buy more BPOs and streamline your operation to maximize profit and minimize gray hairs.
You will probably not be able to build all of the carriers at once, unless you have a very large number of build slots (the number of which I will call n). It would probably be best to queue the jobs such that the components for a ship would all complete at nearly the same time. Then you could put the first carrier build job in the queue and dedicate n-1 jobs to building the next ship's components. Subsequent to that you will n-2 slots to build your components, and so on.
It is critical to evaluate how much of your capital is working for you and how much is waiting around for you to put other pieces of the puzzle together when you are starting up.
This is just my opinion, but your money would be better spend on a Jump Freighter than component BPOs.
If you tie up your money into blueprints that you cant use for 2 or 3 months, you could have just built from BPCs that whole time and made way more money.
TL;DR
Get profits rolling in, then optimize.
One of the commenters actually recommended buying components BPOs, in a situation where you have limited funds to startup your capital ship production. One of the reasons given is the usage of manufacturing lines. Particularly their underutilization if you are not able to insert many jobs at once, since 5-copy components BPOs will build quickly. The commenter said that you have to login a lot to keep your manufacturing going.
The point about how often you have to login is well taken, however the flipside is that if you have the manpower you can get your components built really fast using 5-run BPCs. If you have low starting resources your initial number of hulls is primarily limited by your capital. Being able to blaze through the component building phase quickly will mean more runs over time. Which means a quicker growth on your capital.
I would actually recommend the opposite strategy for BPOs. Carrier BPOS cost just over 1B a piece, but some of the component BPOs cost around 1.5B. You need many more component BPs. Therefore the carrier BPO will pay itself off in less runs. About 6-9 times faster if my back-of-an-envelope calculation is accurate.
Besides, I'm pretty sure the point of the article was that is was a bad idea to buy component BPOs if you have a small amount of capital to start.
I would additionally like to point out, in response to some of the comments, yes, it is very much an opportunity cost thing. What Parasoja sort of glossed over is WHY the more inefficient, but lower overhead cost thing works, at least under the current market conditions. You can build many more carriers (and make a smaller profit on each) by forgoing a full set of component BPOs.
For example. Starting capital 13B. You spend 11B on BPOs, because thats pretty much what you can do. The BPOs need to be researched, so you are paying for two months of POS lab time whether you do it or not. You still need to buy a few BPCs but, hey your are a BPO owner you can still save on not buying the BPCs for the components you have a BPO for. You have 2B left to build two carriers. You make 800M isk (2x400M isk) profit.
Alternately, you spend all of you money and minerals on BPCs and build 11 carriers. You just made 3.3B isk profits (11x300M). Even if you limited by the number of build slots (9 per character is achievable in a few weeks), your higher turnover at a lower profit margin will mean a higher monetary velocity for reinvestment. Over time you can buy more BPOs and streamline your operation to maximize profit and minimize gray hairs.
You will probably not be able to build all of the carriers at once, unless you have a very large number of build slots (the number of which I will call n). It would probably be best to queue the jobs such that the components for a ship would all complete at nearly the same time. Then you could put the first carrier build job in the queue and dedicate n-1 jobs to building the next ship's components. Subsequent to that you will n-2 slots to build your components, and so on.
It is critical to evaluate how much of your capital is working for you and how much is waiting around for you to put other pieces of the puzzle together when you are starting up.
This is just my opinion, but your money would be better spend on a Jump Freighter than component BPOs.
If you tie up your money into blueprints that you cant use for 2 or 3 months, you could have just built from BPCs that whole time and made way more money.
TL;DR
Get profits rolling in, then optimize.
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Victim of my own sucess
I have been a long-time reader of Eve Fail. Quite a while ago I participated in the lottery that Parasoja ran. I started playing while he was still testing it and kept playing. Since there was no rake, your chance of winning was your percentage of the overall contribution and your profit if you win is pool divided by your investment. In the fourth round I won. Parasoja (perhaps jokingly) suggested that I try it again. I did, again and again. Luck and good planning meant good results. Unsuprisingly, this meant the end of the lottery.
I'm really sorry that I ran this lottery into the ground. I saw it as an investment opportunity, much like a group in Massachusetts did with a particular lottery their state held. Unfortunately, I should have sat out a few rounds, so I didn't smother the baby in the cradle, but I got greedy. Winning is addictive.
My suggestion to anyone else who trys to run a similar lottery is to take a cut. Seriously. In my real life business dealing I like to know how people are making their money. That gives me an insight into their motivation. Altruism makes people suspicious. Also with no rake in the pot, if you are at 200M from everyone else and you drop 800M in, you now have an 80% chance of winning 1B. Obviously it is a gamble and you would want to vary your exposure, but over then long term it is a winning bet.
I'm really sorry that I ran this lottery into the ground. I saw it as an investment opportunity, much like a group in Massachusetts did with a particular lottery their state held. Unfortunately, I should have sat out a few rounds, so I didn't smother the baby in the cradle, but I got greedy. Winning is addictive.
My suggestion to anyone else who trys to run a similar lottery is to take a cut. Seriously. In my real life business dealing I like to know how people are making their money. That gives me an insight into their motivation. Altruism makes people suspicious. Also with no rake in the pot, if you are at 200M from everyone else and you drop 800M in, you now have an 80% chance of winning 1B. Obviously it is a gamble and you would want to vary your exposure, but over then long term it is a winning bet.
Sometimes you just stumble into greatness
I spent several hour this evening trying really hard to kill some plexers. I fit up a scanning boat as well as refit my trusty tristan several times. No dice. Just when I was about to give up I ran into a Taranis. He was about 30k from me. I warped to a plex at 20 and he was on the other side. His ship name included "rails" in the description. So I figured he might have them but it could also be an attempt to deceive me. At this point I didn't care either way. He did have rails. He begins kiting me. I hit the AB and approach. Shortly thereafter he dips within 10k and I scrammed him. The crying started immediately, with him claiming that I hacked EVE. He probably just ran into the gate. If he had spent less time crying in local he might have killed me. At one point I was down to about 20% armor. If he overheated his railguns and flew to minimize transversal he might have gotten a couple of lucky shots. Here was the local chat.
[01:53:21] EVE System > Channel changed to Local : Ouelletta
[01:59:53] StevieTopSiders > hacker
[01:59:54] StevieTopSiders > quit hacking
[01:59:57] StevieTopSiders > fucking cheater
[01:59:58] StevieTopSiders > reported
[02:00:00] StevieTopSiders > for hacking
[02:00:02] StevieTopSiders > enjoy your ban
[02:00:03] StevieTopSiders > o6
[02:00:07] Ri'an Tivianne > MAD HAXXXSSSS
[02:00:31] Kelleris > gf
[02:00:36] StevieTopSiders > fucking hacker
[02:00:38] StevieTopSiders > wasn't a good fight
[02:00:40] StevieTopSiders > you hacked
[02:00:44] StevieTopSiders > scrammed me at 20km
[02:00:45] Kelleris > wtf
[02:00:50] Kelleris > no i didnt
[02:00:53] StevieTopSiders > yeah you did
[02:00:55] StevieTopSiders > hacker
[02:00:58] Kelleris > u r a retard and flew w/in 10k
[02:01:01] Ri'an Tivianne > LOL
[02:01:03] StevieTopSiders > not true
[02:01:04] Kelleris > not my fault you fail
[02:01:06] StevieTopSiders > u hacked
[02:01:09] StevieTopSiders > I was manually piloting
[02:01:12] Kelleris > fine, report me then
[02:01:12] StevieTopSiders > no way I got in range
[02:01:14] StevieTopSiders > you hacked
[02:01:16] Ri'an Tivianne > mmm... sweet tears
[02:01:24] StevieTopSiders > sorry that some people use skill
[02:01:26] Kelleris > you prob bumped off the gate like a noob
[02:01:27] StevieTopSiders > instead of client injectino
[02:01:28] StevieTopSiders > to win
[02:01:41] StevieTopSiders > your a noob
[02:01:42] StevieTopSiders > and a hacker
[02:01:46] StevieTopSiders > cus only a noob would hack
[02:01:50] StevieTopSiders > nice try though
[02:01:54] StevieTopSiders > now I'll know never to fight you again
[02:01:56] Kelleris > ok. well put in a petition then
[02:01:57] StevieTopSiders > o6
[02:01:58] Kelleris > ok
[02:02:03] Kelleris > pls report me
[02:02:19] Kelleris > my CEO is Rixx Javix
[02:03:23] Ri'an Tivianne > that was so full of win
[02:03:28] Kelleris > for sure
[02:03:33] Ri'an Tivianne > good job Kelleris
[02:03:45] Kelleris > that retard hit orbit and i bounced him off of the gate
[02:03:50] Kelleris > thank you sir o7
[02:04:17] Ri'an Tivianne > o7
[02:05:15] Kelleris > it happed alot like the great station bumping incident of 2012 Kill: GenAtal (Republic Fleet Firetail)
[02:05:17] Kelleris > LOL
[02:05:40] Kelleris > doesnt matter how fast your ship is if you hit a solid object
[02:05:48] Ri'an Tivianne > lol that will teach him to just slap the orbit button
[02:05:56] Kelleris > no it wont
[02:06:02] Kelleris > apparently i hacked
[02:06:04] Ri'an Tivianne > nice tactic, I wouldn't have thought of that in a million years
[02:06:06] Kelleris > hes blameless
[02:06:18] Ri'an Tivianne > you can bet your ass I am gonna try it when I get a chance though lol
[02:06:30] Kelleris > actually this time is was an accident, but that retard doesnt need to know
[02:06:36] Kelleris > ;-P
[01:59:53] StevieTopSiders > hacker
[01:59:54] StevieTopSiders > quit hacking
[01:59:57] StevieTopSiders > fucking cheater
[01:59:58] StevieTopSiders > reported
[02:00:00] StevieTopSiders > for hacking
[02:00:02] StevieTopSiders > enjoy your ban
[02:00:03] StevieTopSiders > o6
[02:00:07] Ri'an Tivianne > MAD HAXXXSSSS
[02:00:31] Kelleris > gf
[02:00:36] StevieTopSiders > fucking hacker
[02:00:38] StevieTopSiders > wasn't a good fight
[02:00:40] StevieTopSiders > you hacked
[02:00:44] StevieTopSiders > scrammed me at 20km
[02:00:45] Kelleris > wtf
[02:00:50] Kelleris > no i didnt
[02:00:53] StevieTopSiders > yeah you did
[02:00:55] StevieTopSiders > hacker
[02:00:58] Kelleris > u r a retard and flew w/in 10k
[02:01:01] Ri'an Tivianne > LOL
[02:01:03] StevieTopSiders > not true
[02:01:04] Kelleris > not my fault you fail
[02:01:06] StevieTopSiders > u hacked
[02:01:09] StevieTopSiders > I was manually piloting
[02:01:12] Kelleris > fine, report me then
[02:01:12] StevieTopSiders > no way I got in range
[02:01:14] StevieTopSiders > you hacked
[02:01:16] Ri'an Tivianne > mmm... sweet tears
[02:01:24] StevieTopSiders > sorry that some people use skill
[02:01:26] Kelleris > you prob bumped off the gate like a noob
[02:01:27] StevieTopSiders > instead of client injectino
[02:01:28] StevieTopSiders > to win
[02:01:41] StevieTopSiders > your a noob
[02:01:42] StevieTopSiders > and a hacker
[02:01:46] StevieTopSiders > cus only a noob would hack
[02:01:50] StevieTopSiders > nice try though
[02:01:54] StevieTopSiders > now I'll know never to fight you again
[02:01:56] Kelleris > ok. well put in a petition then
[02:01:57] StevieTopSiders > o6
[02:01:58] Kelleris > ok
[02:02:03] Kelleris > pls report me
[02:02:19] Kelleris > my CEO is Rixx Javix
[02:03:23] Ri'an Tivianne > that was so full of win
[02:03:28] Kelleris > for sure
[02:03:33] Ri'an Tivianne > good job Kelleris
[02:03:45] Kelleris > that retard hit orbit and i bounced him off of the gate
[02:03:50] Kelleris > thank you sir o7
[02:04:17] Ri'an Tivianne > o7
[02:05:15] Kelleris > it happed alot like the great station bumping incident of 2012 Kill: GenAtal (Republic Fleet Firetail)
[02:05:17] Kelleris > LOL
[02:05:40] Kelleris > doesnt matter how fast your ship is if you hit a solid object
[02:05:48] Ri'an Tivianne > lol that will teach him to just slap the orbit button
[02:05:56] Kelleris > no it wont
[02:06:02] Kelleris > apparently i hacked
[02:06:04] Ri'an Tivianne > nice tactic, I wouldn't have thought of that in a million years
[02:06:06] Kelleris > hes blameless
[02:06:18] Ri'an Tivianne > you can bet your ass I am gonna try it when I get a chance though lol
[02:06:30] Kelleris > actually this time is was an accident, but that retard doesnt need to know
[02:06:36] Kelleris > ;-P
I thought my fun was over. I went and did some laundry. When I get back I see there is chatter in corp about an Orca in Hevrice. I grabbed the Vexor and warped to the belt. We were all kind of in shock. I saw a writer from a well known eve news site in local, so I assumed it was some kind of live stream trap/prank, but hey, it's just a Vexor loss if it goes wrong. It wasn't a setup. We were all kind of in shock. As near as I can tell it was a ratting Orca. Got the pod too. I'm still scratching my head.
EFT on the Orca fit. I'm being generous on the drones because I don't remember what he was using.
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Merchant of Venice... err.. Jita
Arbitrage
I would like to make a brief post about arbitrage trading on the EVE Online regional markets. It differs from traditional station trading in that your goal is to sell at another trade hub than the one you buy your items at. I have been following croda at his blog, marketsforISK and I ran across the following post.
It describes his initial arbitrage setup between Jita and Dodixie. It sounds like he is already refining his methods but I just wanted to put my method out there because it will save a ton of time and effort for anyone wanting to try something similar.
Here is what I do.
Your Very Own Corporation
Step one is to form your own corporation. There are guides out there, read them. Train the skill and start your own corp. I think it costs 1.5M isk. Then decide how much money you want to invest in this project and transfer it to the corp's Master Wallet, set that wallet as primary and forget it (for now, you might want to refine your wallet division strategy later).
Me, Myself, and I
Create some alts and invite them. Make them all Directors or at least give them access to the corp wallet. Get some basic trade skills. For the love of God, whatever you do, make sure you eventually train Margin Trading on every character you want to trade with. Do not invite anyone else to your corp. If you want to play with others (and you should this is a muli-player game), do it on a non-trade character.
Depending on how many hubs you want to cover you may need more than one account. If you want to do this right, you need to have a character that sits in the trade hub and doesn't need to go anywhere else. If you get into covering multiple hubs with jump-clones you will rapidly grow frustrated.
What Do?
Ok so park your minions in the trade hubs you have decided on (I would start with some combination of Jita (for sure), Dodixie (solid hub), Amarr (should still be the #2 trade hub), and Hek (fast growing hub with good sell prices). Rens is the other major hub, but it is not one of my favorites.
Decide what you will trade. Go read Gevlon Goblin's newbie guide.
That should get you started. Now, here comes the important part. Use courier contracts. Make them corporate contracts (not personal ones from your character). This means you need to buy your stuff and leave it in the Delivery Hangar until you ship it. If you take it out of the delivery hangar you will not be able to use corporate funds to create the contract and won't be able to make it a corporate contract period unless you have an corporate office in that station. if you can get and pay for an office in one of the major hubs then you probably don't need my advice. PushX and Red Frog both have highly regarded courier services. Personally I'm a cheapskate and I use public contracts. I put the collateral at my desired sell price or a bit above, set the reward at 1% of the collateral, the contract expiration for 3 days, and length at 1 day. Make sure you keep your contracts' value below 1B ISK and less space than a freighter (approx 900k m3). If you don't, your contracts will probably not be accepted. In fact, you should try to keep most contracts below 38k m3, because this is what can be hauled on a fully skilled, fully cargo expanded Iteron Mk V. In fact if you keep to 30k m3, pretty much anyone can make the delivery. When the contract is complete the items will magically appear in your corporate delivery hangar in the destination station. Doing all of your hauling by contract moves all of the risk to the courier. If he gets popped with your cargo you should make out like a bandit if you followed my contract guidelines (you basically just sold your item for your desired sell price and didn't have to pay any market fees and all contract fees, including the collateral will be refunded).
Daily Routine
Here is very bare bones look at the daily routine. I am totally glossing over how I decide what to trade, where it goes, and how much to sell it for. Open up your trade character and check your delivery hangar. You are looking for stuff that was delivered or bought (you should be using buy orders to maximize profits) since you last logged on. Ship out the stuff you are sending to another hub. Sell everything that is left on a corporate Sell Order (another reason to leave everything in the delivery hangar). Then check your buy and sell orders and update as necessary (or cancel if your margins get to small or go negative). You can do this once per day per character and make a lot of ISK. In my opinion, if you undock your trade character, you are doing it wrong.
Summary
Creating your own corporation with dedicated trading character and using corporate contracts and market order should greatly streamline arbitrage. You should never have to transfer items or ISK between characters. I might go into more detail on certain aspects of this operation in the future, but this is it for now.
Good luck!
Disposable Heroes (History Part 2)
This is part 2 of my history in EVE Online.
My last recorded kill with Mostly Harmless was this one in February 2011. It's kinda cool that is was the e-celebrity (or at least EVE-celebrity) Shadoo. I moved my stuffs out to highsec that March and just kind of relaxed. I did some solo roaming, which often ended badly. I also carebeared it up and worked on my standings.
At least I was fitting T2 guns on the hurricane by this point. I did apply to Rixx Javix's corporation, Lucifer's Hammer, somewhere around this time-frame and was rejected. One of the reason that was given was that for the sample fit you supposed to provide in the application, I submitted a meta-level gunned Hurricane and was informed that 2 year old player should damned well be fitting T2 guns on everything. At the time I had T2 medium hybrids and lasers but not T2 medium projectiles. Derp! Darn that Rixx guy! (insert foreshadowing here)
Around this time I was starting to read EVE related blogs a lot and learning about some of the different groups there were. I was a big fan of Wensley's Rifter Drifter (sadly now defunct). It was from reading this blog and similar ones that I learned about Miura Bull and his newly formed Black Rebel Rifter Club (R1FTA). I applied and was accepted. I started to finally learn to pvp and not be quite as terrified when the guns start to go off (my heart still pounds when I lock up my targets, but not like then). I solo'd a lot, since R1FTA is pretty much a solo pvp club, with some small-gang shenanigans thrown in. The Rebels were highly resistant (at the time at least) to getting on to voice comms so fleets were fun, disorganized comedy-of-errors. Especially the ones with DARKSTAR POWNYOUALL and n00bpwner4000 Pounder. Those guys would tackle literally anything with their Firetails or Rifters. No shits were given. They died a lot, but more often than not killed their targets. This was a good time. MB kept the wardecs coming and jumping into Teon for the occasional gank meant there was fun to be had without even flying into the pvp thunderdome that was Heild and its 2/10 plex. Ok maybe I'm exaggerating a bit on that last part about the thunderdome, but memories always seem better than than the reality. I really did have a blast terrorizing hisec carebears with awesome scary names like EvillMoon Akademiya, as well as Xujar, Flight Academy, Lazy Worms Academy and many others.
And then there was The Bull. Miura Bull. Truly awesome guy. Great pilot. It is unfortunate that he was Euro TZ and I was USTZ, because I didn't get to fly with him very much. This is a guy that has skill AND luck. Because, reading some of his blog posts, there are tons of mouthbreathers that throw themselves in his way to get slaughters. I'm not taking away from his skill, because he is awesome, I'm just saying he runs into a lot of people that seem to fervently want to explode in front of him. I would provide links, but really, just go read his blog, especially some of the earlier posts.
Also, any discussion of R1FTA would not be complete without a mention of Lhorenzo. Who spent time between between his often off the wall (dare I say, batshit-crazy) rants continuing his cyno-killing crusade. Grandpa by day, ruthless killer by nights. The Pol Pot of cyno alts and a genuine all around nice guy to his friends.
Eventually I got tired of pell mell fleets that went down like a Keystone Kops episode because people would not get on comms and started to look for something a bit more organized. I left R1FTA in March 2012 (before MB's addiction to creating new alliances and corporations surfaced) and joined Ars Ex Discordia (ARSED), which was part of TEST Alliance Please Ignore (TEST).
But that is a story for next time.
PS. If anyone from R1FTA by any chance has access to the battle report I wrote on the forums on this kill, please send it to me. I assume it has probably expired or lost in the transition from corporation to alliance forums, but I thought I would ask. There was a good story behind this, but my report back then would be a lot more accurate and interesting than my memory of the fight.
My last recorded kill with Mostly Harmless was this one in February 2011. It's kinda cool that is was the e-celebrity (or at least EVE-celebrity) Shadoo. I moved my stuffs out to highsec that March and just kind of relaxed. I did some solo roaming, which often ended badly. I also carebeared it up and worked on my standings.
Running L4 missions for Ministry of War (7/15/2011)
At least I was fitting T2 guns on the hurricane by this point. I did apply to Rixx Javix's corporation, Lucifer's Hammer, somewhere around this time-frame and was rejected. One of the reason that was given was that for the sample fit you supposed to provide in the application, I submitted a meta-level gunned Hurricane and was informed that 2 year old player should damned well be fitting T2 guns on everything. At the time I had T2 medium hybrids and lasers but not T2 medium projectiles. Derp! Darn that Rixx guy! (insert foreshadowing here)
Around this time I was starting to read EVE related blogs a lot and learning about some of the different groups there were. I was a big fan of Wensley's Rifter Drifter (sadly now defunct). It was from reading this blog and similar ones that I learned about Miura Bull and his newly formed Black Rebel Rifter Club (R1FTA). I applied and was accepted. I started to finally learn to pvp and not be quite as terrified when the guns start to go off (my heart still pounds when I lock up my targets, but not like then). I solo'd a lot, since R1FTA is pretty much a solo pvp club, with some small-gang shenanigans thrown in. The Rebels were highly resistant (at the time at least) to getting on to voice comms so fleets were fun, disorganized comedy-of-errors. Especially the ones with DARKSTAR POWNYOUALL and n00bpwner4000 Pounder. Those guys would tackle literally anything with their Firetails or Rifters. No shits were given. They died a lot, but more often than not killed their targets. This was a good time. MB kept the wardecs coming and jumping into Teon for the occasional gank meant there was fun to be had without even flying into the pvp thunderdome that was Heild and its 2/10 plex. Ok maybe I'm exaggerating a bit on that last part about the thunderdome, but memories always seem better than than the reality. I really did have a blast terrorizing hisec carebears with awesome scary names like EvillMoon Akademiya, as well as Xujar, Flight Academy, Lazy Worms Academy and many others.
And then there was The Bull. Miura Bull. Truly awesome guy. Great pilot. It is unfortunate that he was Euro TZ and I was USTZ, because I didn't get to fly with him very much. This is a guy that has skill AND luck. Because, reading some of his blog posts, there are tons of mouthbreathers that throw themselves in his way to get slaughters. I'm not taking away from his skill, because he is awesome, I'm just saying he runs into a lot of people that seem to fervently want to explode in front of him. I would provide links, but really, just go read his blog, especially some of the earlier posts.
Also, any discussion of R1FTA would not be complete without a mention of Lhorenzo. Who spent time between between his often off the wall (dare I say, batshit-crazy) rants continuing his cyno-killing crusade. Grandpa by day, ruthless killer by nights. The Pol Pot of cyno alts and a genuine all around nice guy to his friends.
Me trying to set shit straight with DARKSTAR (01/13/2012)
Eventually I got tired of pell mell fleets that went down like a Keystone Kops episode because people would not get on comms and started to look for something a bit more organized. I left R1FTA in March 2012 (before MB's addiction to creating new alliances and corporations surfaced) and joined Ars Ex Discordia (ARSED), which was part of TEST Alliance Please Ignore (TEST).
But that is a story for next time.
Hulkageddon (5/14/2012)
PS. If anyone from R1FTA by any chance has access to the battle report I wrote on the forums on this kill, please send it to me. I assume it has probably expired or lost in the transition from corporation to alliance forums, but I thought I would ask. There was a good story behind this, but my report back then would be a lot more accurate and interesting than my memory of the fight.
Friday, June 7, 2013
Dead Pool
Recently, a group has become a lot more active in my timezone in the lowsec system that I have been using for Industry. The system is a dead end lowsec system in Lonetrek. In fact it is the closest lowsec system to Jita, Pakkonen. It does not connect to any other lowsec systems. It almost seems that CCP wanted to make it easy for resident of northern nullsec regions to move goods to and from Jita, so they plunked down a lowsec system so that cynos could be lit. The Scandinavian Dirtbags have made this system their home. I saw them on a few occassions in the past, but I felt then that it was just a quick hunt as they were roaming, and they didnt stay in system long.
Examining their killboard is illuminating. They are pretty sucessful at PVP. They have a very high efficiency. They are, however, bottom feeders. They pick off cyno ships, industrials, and solo miners or other brave souls that come to lowsec seeking their fortune. If you look at the month recently where they sustained a signficant number of losses (February 2013) you will see that most of those losses happened outside of Pakkonen. So it could have been either due to expanding the alliance to include groups that were not living in Pakkonen or else a not very sucessful attempt to branch out. In either case, almost all of their killboard activity is now confined to Pakkonen.
Additionally, they have been bashing POSs. Mostly small ones. Their numbers (4-6 active at a time, typically) do not support protracted shoots. They claim they are being paid to shoot the POSs. I'm not sure how that could be true. I don't think the moons they are shooting POSs on are that great in the first place (not worth mining) and there are dozens of empty moons in the system.
Is the allure of killing cyno ships that great? It has to be fantastic for killboard padding, but can't be very satisfying. They commonly camp the only gate in the system, the Isikano gate, in cloaked ships, with a scout on the other side to let them know to decloak and warm up those warp disruptors. The ships that do not have a cloak fitted will often warp to a perch or off-grid. Often their logistics ship will hang out on the highsec side of the gate, serving as a really obvious scout. Most of the time it seems they use an out-of-corp cloaked scout on the gate.
In conclusion, if you are looking for a small gang or solo fight, come to Pakkonen and get it. They have a nice bounty. They may even have a capital or two. Send in some bait and go fishing.
PS. If you bring an Orca or Freighter as bait, all sort of interesting things undock in Pakkonen!
Examining their killboard is illuminating. They are pretty sucessful at PVP. They have a very high efficiency. They are, however, bottom feeders. They pick off cyno ships, industrials, and solo miners or other brave souls that come to lowsec seeking their fortune. If you look at the month recently where they sustained a signficant number of losses (February 2013) you will see that most of those losses happened outside of Pakkonen. So it could have been either due to expanding the alliance to include groups that were not living in Pakkonen or else a not very sucessful attempt to branch out. In either case, almost all of their killboard activity is now confined to Pakkonen.
Additionally, they have been bashing POSs. Mostly small ones. Their numbers (4-6 active at a time, typically) do not support protracted shoots. They claim they are being paid to shoot the POSs. I'm not sure how that could be true. I don't think the moons they are shooting POSs on are that great in the first place (not worth mining) and there are dozens of empty moons in the system.
Is the allure of killing cyno ships that great? It has to be fantastic for killboard padding, but can't be very satisfying. They commonly camp the only gate in the system, the Isikano gate, in cloaked ships, with a scout on the other side to let them know to decloak and warm up those warp disruptors. The ships that do not have a cloak fitted will often warp to a perch or off-grid. Often their logistics ship will hang out on the highsec side of the gate, serving as a really obvious scout. Most of the time it seems they use an out-of-corp cloaked scout on the gate.
In conclusion, if you are looking for a small gang or solo fight, come to Pakkonen and get it. They have a nice bounty. They may even have a capital or two. Send in some bait and go fishing.
PS. If you bring an Orca or Freighter as bait, all sort of interesting things undock in Pakkonen!
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
PSA: No More 51 Day Trials for "Free" in CCP's Buddy Program
I got a nasty surprise a few days ago. While working on a "sekrit" project I tried to extend a trial account by 30 days for free, like I have done in the past. Basically how this worked was to send a trial invite to someone (or yourself), buy them a PLEX from the market, they use the PLEX to subscribe their account, and you get a PLEX back, which you can sell on the market. Well, CCP changed the terms and conditions about six months ago. Now you can choose a reward between 30 days of game time, a PLEX, or a Catalyst Pack (which includes all 6 variations of the Catalyst, valued at about 230 Million ISK when I checked the price). What has changed is that you cannot choose the PLEX reward unless the buddy subscribes with a credit card or some other form of real-money payment. As far as I can tell, they didn't really publicize this. I petitioned this and was very politely, but firmly refused by two GMs. In my petition I asked that they at least publicly mention this since people do not commonly read T&Cs on programs that they have already used. They should, but they don't. It was a lesson learned for me and I just unintentionally PLEX-ed my account. I hope anyone who is planning on participating in the buddy program will see this post.
Hello World! A (not so) brief history of my time in New Eden. (Part 1)
"Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long year"
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long year"
- "Sympathy For The Devil", Rolling Stones
Hello World!
This blog is about my adventures in the computer game, EVE Online. I will do my best to confine my posts to more or less related topics, but if you know me, you know I like to ramble on about various things and that I am very distract-able.
My character name is Kelleris. He is a Gallente pilot, who became a capsuleer in April 2009. If all goes as planned, after the Odyssey expansion, he should have about 73 Million Skill Points. Due to several changes in focus, the skillpoints are all over the map, but it could be a lot worse. At this point I can pretty much do what I want in game. I will be writing most of my posts as the player of this character and not "roleplaying".
I have several other characters, referred to as "alts". I don't plan to out them just yet, but it's not a state secret or anything.
A Brief History
This was not my first character. I started playing in 2004, on a Caldari pilot. I was so clueless when I began. I did the introductory missions and started running level 1 missions and mining in my bantam. For some reason, cruise missiles really appealed to me. That character has that skill trained. Probably because I had a real-life (RL) job where I could actually launch cruise missiles. However, he only had Caldari Cruiser level II (or III) trained, so I'm pretty sure he never launched a cruise missile. I joined a corp named Shattered Star Confederation at the invitation of Ronyo Dae Loki. It was a part of the Fountain Alliance. All I can say that I really remember was chasing people around Fountain while being on voice comms. I don't really remember what people flew back then. It was probably before T2 ships, but I can't say for sure. I have a bunch of really random, crappy modules and some ammo spread out all over NPC Fountain. I also have pods. I believe at the time when you boarded a ship you left a pod in your hangar. I can't say for sure.
Unfortunately, I didn't take notes and record keeping was not as good back then. I am pretty sure I must have shot at something that died, but I can't find any kill-mails from that era. I really liked the concept of a character that trains (earns skill points) in real-time, regardless of whether you are playing or not. I liked the atmospheric music. What I did not like was the necessity of setting an alarm clock for 3 AM to start another skill training when the one you were working on finishes. Between that and work commitments, I quit. I started playing again in 2007, after a two and a half year break, but quit soon after. I can't remember why. After another two and a half years, I came back.
A New Beginning
Fast forward to 2009. I re-subscribed to EVE and I was overwhelmed at the mess my character had. Junk all over Caldari hisec space and NPC Fountain. Skill points everywhere. Since the character didn't have too many SPs, I decided to create a new one. I read on the forums that Gallente was the way to go (wow, was that ever wrong, at the time), I created a new Gallente character and named him Kelleris. I complete the much improved (from 2004) tutorial and struggled through the Sisters of Eve Epic Arc.
My oldest screenshot (7/29/2009). I am shooting an NPC with a horribly fit catalyst.
Shortly thereafter, I met FreakishDude. He introduced me to SpaceMonkey's Alliance (SMA). We started out in Minmatar hisec, moving to lowsec there, and eventually, Black Rise lowsec. Here we had regular scraps with Balkan Express (BALEX) and ran some level 5 missions as a group (with me contributing minimally in a catalyst). Eventually, the siren song of null-sec lured us in. We moved into Pure Blind as a pet of Mostly Harmless (-42-), which was a part of the old NC. We were given the K-QUVW constellation. I could probably write a whole blog post about this time period, but I can't say my memory of it is clear enough to tell an interesting story. Due to an alliance reorganization (the alliance leader didnt want non-directors in the holding corp), I moved to B0AE corp. After a few months, B0AE moved from SMA to -42- and I moved with them. After a few months -42- split and formed LAWN. Then I got frustrated with 2 things. One was the crappy ship replacement program and the other (related gripe) was that the alliance leaders wanted foot soldiers to do all of their work for them, but didn't want to give them anything (plus there was a 10% refine tax, which pretty much killed my aspiration to manufacture stuff in null-sec, since this made mineral compression not very viable). Plus the dreaded Drone Russian Federation was marching towards us and everyone seemed to be in denial. My fondest memory of this time was the EC-P8R gate camps and other fleets where we regularly had to :commisar: Alphastarpilot for being an idiot. I left prior to the hammer falling because I thought the -42- leadership had their heads up their asses. Turns out I was right. All good things must come to an end.
(to be continued...)
Freighter Escort with SMA (10/28/2009)
SMA Out to start some trouble (10/28/2009)
(to be continued...)
Some Notes
I hope this was interesting for you to read. This post has definitely sparked a lot of memories. In fact, it has grown so long that I'm cutting it off right now and I will continue it later. I was originally planning a brief rundown of my EVE experience to date, but I have had more to say about that than I thought.
EVE looks pretty similar today to how it looked in 2004. Yes, a lot has changed, but I still have the same icons down the left side of the screen. I still right click to do most things and EVE still looks like some weird windows desktop with a spreadsheet (the overview) and pretty view of space as the backdrop.
Under the old API system, I was very proud of my 5 digit account number. Sadly, that was kind of lost when we transitioned to the new API.
I have kept at least 1 of every EVE anniversary presents I've received.
I presented the story here as best I can recall. I did some fact checking, but this is my personal blog and not a serious journalistic endeavor so I reserve the right to bullshit. If any sees any errors, let me know and I will consider fixing it. I look forward to any comments or recollections anyone would like to post.
EVE looks pretty similar today to how it looked in 2004. Yes, a lot has changed, but I still have the same icons down the left side of the screen. I still right click to do most things and EVE still looks like some weird windows desktop with a spreadsheet (the overview) and pretty view of space as the backdrop.
Under the old API system, I was very proud of my 5 digit account number. Sadly, that was kind of lost when we transitioned to the new API.
I have kept at least 1 of every EVE anniversary presents I've received.
I presented the story here as best I can recall. I did some fact checking, but this is my personal blog and not a serious journalistic endeavor so I reserve the right to bullshit. If any sees any errors, let me know and I will consider fixing it. I look forward to any comments or recollections anyone would like to post.
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