Moving On

I've been struggling to find time to enjoy EVE recently. I still hang out with my alliance in our Jabber server and I've still been making the regular fleet night I run each week. Beyond that I just haven't been motivated to log in much. This obviously carries over to the posts I make here which have dwindled down to less than one a week. Obviously with less time to play EVE there is less stuff to write about. If you add to that the little I do play is trying to recoup the two billion ISK I've lost in the past six weeks then I really do have little to blog about just now. Site running doesn't make for interesting reading.

In my alliance I always maintain that real life is more important than EVE (usually stated as "RL>EVE"). This is true and is the underlying problem for my EVE malaise. In 'RL:Work Edition' I am really busy pulling a new and rather large project under the wings of my department. In 'RL:Home Edition' I am in the process of buying a new house. I seem to be drowning under a tidal wave of paperwork with each new day bring something new to sign and send money away for. Some times I can't help but wonder if the whole thing is a long Jita scam, possibly a bonus room type of thing where they'll keep sending me more and more things to sign until I finally crack.

Not relevant to this blog post

But wait, did I say I'd lost about two billion ISK in six weeks? How did I manage that? The biggest single loss was my alt's Orca. This was lost due to drunken impatience after a hole-rolling incident which saw me stuck in a busy Molden Heath system. Instead of being patient I tried to flee to a quieter nullsec system to scan myself from. That was a mistake as the locals had the wormhole bookmarked, followed me through and popped me. Just over two weeks later, whilst running sites to recoup the cost of buying a new Orca I was caught by pilots from ArB Llc. This particularly stung as they used to be in my alliance. I'm sure they got a buzz out of killing my Gila but my wallet didn't. The final loss in this litany is also the first PvP fit ship to die. One of my corp mates had a Vexor sitting at the sun as obvious bait. Our plan was to get in, kill it, and flee before their cavalry landed. We managed parts one and two easily enough but the cavalry landed and killed my Proteus before I could leave. Swapping a Proteus for a Vexor seems fair enough to me. Did I mention I'm crap at Chess?

All is not lost, however. At least some of the RL woes are coming to an end. Pretty soon I'll be in a shiny new house (if the developer gets their finger our and stops sliding the date back). This should give back a lot of my evening time as well as take all the related things I need to remember out of my head. In the meantime I've taken some alts on a deployment to nullsec for some fun. Of course, I couldn't possibly say what that is as nullsec is all about the Opsex. Well, something like that anyway....

Been Busy

I mentioned recently that post-Fanfest was a really busy time for me in EVE but I never went back to say why. Now would probably be a good time to cover that. For some time the activity levels in Zero have been lower than I would like. Despite our best efforts at recruitment it was proving difficult to get new people into the corp and those we did recruit were largely failing to stick around. Living in W-space with Zero does require a healthy dose of self-sufficiency which many people seem to underestimate regardless of how that point is pressed home. For anyone living in W-space you have to go out and make things happen; nothing comes to those who float in a POS, except maybe eviction. Our home hole was a class 4 wormhole with a static class 4. This meant we always had a minimum of three jumps to K-space, and often more. This remoteness grew harder to live with as activity levels declined. Somewhat ironically it was the remoteness that was causing the drop in activity as potential recruits were put off by being cut off from K-space so. I don't know, kids these days want it all too easy.

Some time before Fanfest we had a corp meeting to discuss the situation and decided on a stay or move vote. The move would be to merge with another of the alliance corps in their C4 with a static C3. If we voted to stay then all was good. If we voted to move then we would move after Fanfest. The result was not as decisive as I had hoped and as I watched the results roll in I changed my mind several times. In the end, not counting my vote, the result was a 50:50 split. That left the decision down to me. I decided to go with my initial instinct which was to move. Where we were going was easy. How we were leaving was less easy. The very reason we were moving was the problem. We had been in our home system for about 18 months and the scale of the problem measured as 325 ships and 12 million m3 of 'stuff'. This all had to be safely moved to hisec via routes we scanned ourselves. Level four distribution missions can kiss my arse.

One of my directors turned in a project plan for the move out. He set the timing at three months to do the move out. I thought that would kill the corp dead and said we do it in six weeks. A little bit of bargaining fixed the plan at eight weeks and then we got started. People were expected to move their own stuff out and mostly this happened. One Rorqual pilot spent a night catching up on all the ore compression we hadn't done and that made a massive dent in the volume of stuff to move out. Another couple of pilots who were planning to leave the corp soon put in heroic efforts to move as many ships out as possible. There may have been self-destruct sequences set, but largely all the ships made it out intact. With all this happening it was great to see the first tower come down exactly on schedule

The second tower came down a week ahead of schedule and I had to think about the dreaded process of selling the hole. Best case, worst case and abandonment prices were worked out and just when I was about to advertise the hole for sale a random conversation on jabber essentially sold the hole without trying. Unbeknown to me, one of the alliance corps was going to be upgrading from their C3 to a C4 fairly soon. Being able to buy from another alliance member got them to ramp their plans up. Oh wow, how easy was this. In the end it was two weeks ahead of schedule when I handed over the keys to the new owner of our hole. The final score was all ships and junk made it out alive with no known losses to stupidity. Much better than last time we moved holes. We have had a few months to settle in our new home and having a guaranteed route to K-space each day is heavenly. Maybe I'm getting old but I just like the simplicity. Maybe those 'kids' have the right idea after all.

Lost In Hisec

In partnership with one of the other wormhole corps in my alliance we have something of a wormhole academy on the go. As part of the fun of this academy we are organising regular trips from their C2 wormhole system to our C4 wormhole system.

The first such trip was not so successful as we didn't achieve a critical mass of people. The plan had been for a minimum of five people to come from the C2 so they could function as a coherent unit. Unfortunately, as is often the case in W-space, the route in wasn't as fortuitous as it could have been. Actually, there was no route in for the duration of the time frame people were online to enter. Of course, wormholes being a cruel mistress, the moment everyone coming to visit gave up and went home we acquired a route. Two people came.

During their stay those two guys had a blast. Made lots of ISK shooting sleepers and one of them has even applied to move up from the academy corp to my corp. This pretty much was the point of the operation so it could be deemed a success. An important lesson learned was POS mechanics suck for entertaining alliance guests. More about that some other time.

So having learned various lessons from last time, the new away trip for the C2 guys was much more thoroughly planned. Primarily, an Orca has been assigned to serve as a mobile CHA/SMA for our alliance buddies. So last night was time to escort them in.

The route was less than ideal with four wormholes to jump through, three of which were end of life. Intel indicated we should have about two hours remaining on the shortest wormhole so we decided to take a calculated risk. Running the most secure operation we've ever done we had eyes on both sides of every wormhole. There was no chance anyone would get the drop on us, and if they did we all would drop on their head and have a good fight.

Slow Orca was slow and seemed it would never ever get to our entry system. In the meantime we were keeping good eyes watching all the wormholes. Intel was so good that there was almost no delay between the static wormhole from our home system collapsing and it being announced on comms. Blast! Either that was an hour early or someone didn't keep good notes. C'est la vie.

Thus the away mission for the C2 guys came to an abrupt halt. About six of our guys, including me, had no way home. There was only one thing to do - we all headed to our office station and partied the night away.

New Beginnings

I completed the move into our new class 4 wormhole system last night. Having spent the last week or so hanging out near Jita left me feeling slightly shell-shocked. Wormhole life has left me more accustomed to an empty local communication channel than the constant spew of vomit that flows from the den of inequity that is Jita 4-4. Visiting Jita is essential as it is the definitive one-stop-shop for all one will need when in New Eden.

Last night presented an excellent route into the C4 and I took full advantage. I always feel nervous piloting an uncloaked ship through wormhole systems. The first two ships through were Drakes which would allow me to fight back a little should any unfriendly pilots decide to engage me. In a wormhole it is important to remember all pilots are unfriendly unless they are in your corp. It is even worth checking your blues will honor the blue status 'just in case'.

Third in was a Covetor which made me a little more nervous. If anyone caught me in that I would be receiving a fiery express delivery back to my medical clone. I mean, who could possibly avoid popping a defenceless mining ship? I know I couldn't. Happily this transited the connecting route from hisec to home perfectly safely and I made the final journey out to collect my scanning Tengu - the ship I call home.

All went well and I now have a full complement of ships in our new system. This will allow me to take part in any corp ops which present themselves. More importantly, as I am now home I can get down to the serious business of making ISK from planetary interaction. The enforced vacation to hisec has left my wallet a little light.