Geo 'Arrr' Vent

I had to go a long way back in the archives to find the last time I spoke about Geo on this blog. I couldn't even begin to remember what I've done in the 19 months since that last post. For certain I left Brave Newbies when they went to nullsec. Other than that the only thing I know for sure is painted in this screenshot.

If you recall, dear reader, Geo was created as my PvP character. I was too adverse to lose ships with Oreamnos so needed another character whose killboard I didn't mind destroying. The idea was worthwhile and I lost all the pointless fear of adding ships in red to Oreamnos' killboard. But where does this leave poor Geo? In short, he became my diversion from wormhole life. He was my go to character for mindless violence.

In The Bastards I met a decent bunch of people, some experts in game mechanics others less experienced in EVE but eager to blow stuff up. With them I've invaded wormholes, defended a sacrificial titan, and captured (and lost then recaptured) small parts of nullsec. Enough fun has been had to leak into the wormhole side of life and joint ops between The Bastards and Illusion of Solitude occur from time to time.

Just like as an individual player of EVE it's nice to have friends, as an alliance it's nice to have other alliances to call on as friends. The Bastards are our only contact with full blue standings and IoS call them friends.

Geo Fleets Up

The best part of writing about Geo on Saturday was I got it into my head that I should make an effort to get into a Brave Newbies Fleet. Around 21:00 a ping went out on jabber that a massive fight was going on in Sendaya. This was just the thing I needed so I logged into comms and jumped into EVE. Suddenly everything went slow as the time dilation dial read 11% TiDi. Oh my, over 1000 in local? Crikey! I jumped Geo into a cheap Atron and got into fleet.

From comms I could hear it was a tricky undock with snipers picking off people as they left station. Wanting to get in on the action quickly I thought "what the hell, it's only a million ISK" and hit undock. With the 11% TiDi effect it took forever to actually be spat out into space but once there I immediately warped to an insta undock bookmark. Warping takes forever in major TiDi and it gave me plenty of time to imagine fleets of snipers sitting waiting for me at the bookmark. Landing there none of my fears were founded and I realigned to the staging POS and warped off.

There was now a bit of waiting around while the FC got himself and everyone else organised. Everyone was told to be in Frigates or they'd be kicked from the fleet. This was to make sure we got the full 6 AU/s warp speed. Eventually we started out and I took a fleet warp to somewhere. It didn't matter where I was going, I just needed to be ready to start targeting, tackling and shooting flashy ships. I landed on grid and tackled the thing closest to me, someone else called point on comms so I switched to another ship which someone else also called. This grew old quickly so I concentrated on locking up primary, secondary and tertiary targets. The flood of broadcasts made this both easy and yet confusing. Easy because the names were in the fleet broadcast window, but confusing because sometimes I'd be trying to lock a new target and it wouldn't work. I quickly worked out that this was because the broadcasts were scrolling so fast I was clicking someone I already had locked. Okay, just need to pay more attention to that window then. More warping around the system, each time trying to lock the ships nearest to me. Quite often the target fleet would already be in warp as we landed so locking them was impossible. Our FC sounded a bit overwhelmed at times but did a decent job keeping it (and us) together as we bounced around trying to land on a fleet and pin them down before they fled us.

Eventually we regrouped at the POS. With the numbers we were facing the FC announced that people should ship up into cruisers if they had them.  I stuck with the Atron because I was still finding my feet and didn't want to waste any more ISK than I had to. There was a long flurry of messages and comms chatter on what ships people should take. Eventually everyone seemed to get themselves organised and we all formed up again on the FC.

Throughout the rest of the evening I maintained the same level of confusion as to where I was in space. Each time the FC warped us I kept the same routine of locking up what was nearest and shooting the primary. With the larger ships around now it was often hard to finish locking the enemy before it popped but I kept trying. All through the evening TiDi stayed in the 10% to 40% range. At one point someone uttered the classic line "local is down to 750" which raised a few laughs. The only time I've seen local like that is in Jita. Towards the end of the evening the RvB Ganked roam swung around to come fight us. I've been in a few RvB Ganked roams but never faced up against them. In my head I imagined I could hear Mangala Solaris calmly calling primaries and hoped my name didn't come up. To be fair, in an Atron it would be unlikely. After a short scuffle the Ganked roam fled the field leaving us victorious (or so I was told - I hadn't a clue what was going on).

With midnight coming up I needed to head off to bed but checking my personal killboard I was happy to see I had been blessed with 22 kills worth 2.5 billion ISK.  Somewhat amusingly, during the evening I dropped 0.3 in my sec status, which is more than I did during my failed attempt at being a pirate. This is definitely more what I had in mind for Geo, it's just a shame it took me so long to get to the right place with him.

Geo Update

It has been several months since I last wrote about my pure PvP character, Geo. Back then I had just joined Rixx Javix' new corp Stay Frosty and was looking forward to being a part-time pirate. My biggest contribution to the corp was 150 Million ISK I donated to the corp wallet; nothing offered up by way of kills. Sadly I never really got into gear with Stay Frosty. Finding time to log on Geo, in addition to doing all the CEO stuff for my corp and the bits and pieces I need to do for the alliance just wasn't possible. I was logged on a couple of times with the guys and they all seemed a decent bunch. Sadly I never managed to fleet up with them and the times I was on there was nothing much going on but to solo hunt.

Solo play is something I'm not a massive fan of. When there is nobody else to hunt or run sites with is when I normally take care of buyback schemes and other dull administrivia in Z3R0. Scanning is also a valid preparatory solo activity too and benefits my whole corp. Solo hunting with Geo just didn't appeal massively to me, mainly because I don't have the knowledge of PvP to have a good idea of what I'm doing. This is entirely my failings and does not reflect on Stay Frosty. If you're looking for a good corp to join and have the time and motivation to do the solo hunting as well as occasionally fleet up I whole heartedly recommend Stay Frosty. One day I may go back when I have more time and/or more clue on what I'm doing in solo combat.

So where is Geo now? Well the above reasons for why I left Stay Frosty pointed me firmly in the direction of a much larger corp with a stream of fleet activities. I don't have a massive attraction to nullsec so looking there didn't even cross my mind. One large, noob-friendly group that has been attracting a lot of attention recently is Brave Newbies. From their initial creation they have made a meteoric rise in numbers to well over 6000 pilots today. Of course, the same demands on my time exist today as did during my time in Stay Frosty. Hopefully there will be more fleets for me to be anonymous in, do as I'm told, and whelp cheap ships hysterically.

CZ FFA

On Saturday my fellow Scots over at the Crossing Zebras podcast hosted a community free for all in the infamous Asakai system. Given the first I knew about this event was the posts on my alliance forum suggesting ship fittings what else could I do but haul a bunch of ships there and prepare to die lots.

Although the suggested ship fits had been on our forums for ages it was still the night before when I finally bought all the ships, mods and (most of the) drones. I decided I wouldn't stage out of Asakai's single station as it would probably be camped to hell and I at least wanted to be able to fly around looking for fights as well as fleet up with my alliance. I looked around and decided to stage my ships in Rakapas as that was the closest, non-hisec system with cloning facilities. I was reminded by someone how hard it should be to get podded in lowsec and, combined with discovering I couldn't reach from Jita to Rakapas in one jump with my jump freighter, decided to stage out of Okkamon. This would conveniently be on my route back to Asakai from Rakapas should I be unlucky enough to get podded. In the more likely situation where I found myself without ship but pod intact I would only have one jump to reship.

With all the hulls and modules bought in Jita and jumped across to Okkamon I left Geo to the repetitive task of fitting the ships up to be combat ready. Thankfully there is now a 'Fit' button on the in-game loadout browser making this task easier. Please CCP, could you make that group and load the guns too? Oh, adding my tobacco, spirits, wine and janitor automatically would be nice too. Once the ships were all ready it was time for Orea to make his nervous sojourn into K-space. I think I've mentioned before that Orea has a real fear of systems  featuring 'local'. That fear (or possibly, "beer") didn't stop him flying his cloaky, scanny loki right into a lowsec system where lots of people were staging for a fight. It's only lowsec though so it all worked out fine.

Dare to fly a Noctis down there?

The clock rolled around to 19:50 on Saturday. I got myself on comms, logged in and fleeted up. Sending Geo in a Hound to scout Asakai I was in and rolling around the safe spots I had already prepared. Once the rest of the alliance was all shipped up we met up and started nosing around for some trouble. Already there was a massive wreck field at the sun and we kept pouncing down to brawl with some of the other fleets adding to the wreck field. We were doing so well until another of the alliance was coming in from hisec. We headed over to the Ikoskio gate and were landed on by an armour HAC fleet from BALKAN and friends. We died.

BALKAN and friends.

I quickly reshipped and got myself back into Asakai. The others were not so well prepared as me and I spent a while bouncing around safes again. I should have went back for one of the disposable frigates I took to Okkamon but by the time I thought of that it was too late. We had a another good run killing some famous names and having a blast. Fighting had largely switched to a small faction warfare complex. These only let frigates use the acceleration gate but the mass of cruisers at the gate were doing their best to stop that happening. After a good run we lost all our ships again to the combined might of, um, everyone. Having learnt my lesson from last time I decided to blow a couple of the Incursus I took with me. The first one landed at the small plex just in time for me to realise I hadn't reordered the modules into a sensible manner. I activated my cap booster instead of my dual reps and died without firing a shot. Reshipping into another Incursus I reorganised the modules en route. Landing again on the small plex gate I was intending to take on Xander Phoena. He turned out to be 45 km away so I picked the nearest target and at least managed to shoot him before dying and getting podded. I have no idea how I got podded, I never yet saw the pod, just went from ship to session change to white screen to floating corpse...

Not my best angle.

The rest of the crew were reshipped and ready as I swung past Okkamon to pick up another cruiser then onwards to join them. The event was in its dying throes and targets were few and far between. We went from plex to plex and down to the sun looking for looters. It really was all over though and just as we were about to call it quits ourself I spied a lone Hurricane sitting at the medium plex. I had barely called it when I found Orea in a fleet warp to pounce on the poor guy. Of course the 'poor guy' had friends who conveniently landed on us when he was half into armour. Try and we might to take the 'cane down with us his logi-bros got him repped up nicely and our fate was sealed.

The 'Scoreboard'

Looking at the 'scoreboard' we killed more than we lost but we spent more ISK doing it. Who cares? I didn't go to Asakai to win any awards (although I did score points most on my alliance killboard for the event), I went there to have fun and fun is exactly what I had. I kicked the crap out of my security status. I can't remember how long ago it was last below 4. It's still pretty healthy at a heady 2.9 now so I won't have to go ratting in nullsec any time soon. The other thing I got other than having fun was adding a raft of notable names to my short list of kills - Bagehi, Mangala Solaris (twice), Sindel Pellion, House2twist, and of course Xander Phoena who joins the vanishingly rare ranks of people I've had a beer with and also exploded in EVE. My thanks go out to Xander and the others at Crossing Zebras for arranging this and I cannot wait for the next bout of pointless violence.

Staying Frosty

A bit over a year ago I created a character called Geo to do more PvP. This was needed because I'd got a bit attached to Orea's lack of deaths and his good sec rating. During this past year with Geo I've participated in 38 kills worth 9 billion ISK and lost 17 ships worth about 250 million ISK. It's not a vast amount and most of that was on RvB Ganked roams. While I may have learned how to take orders and fly in a large fleet, I certainly haven't really learnt anything about how to compose myself in small gangs or solo combat.

A little while ago Rixx Javix over at Eveoganda had reason to split from his old corp, the Tuskers. This led him to form a new pirate corp that flies the way he wants to. A lot of his ideas match well with the ideals I hold for my wormhole alliance so I decided to take the plunge and become a part time ebil piwate.

Stay Frosty t-shirt: One size fits all

So far my ebil piwating has involved moving all my stuff to the vicinity of Hevrice and keeping up with goings on in the forums. I've been hanging out in the corp channel during the day but being at work means I can't exactly undock and shoot stuff. I've learned two things so far. Firstly, all the guys in corp seem to be a pretty cool bunch. There's no ego stuff going on, just a load of pilots enjoying their 'craft'. Secondly, all my ships are fit terribly and need a bunch of work before I undock. I also realised I haven't got a bloody clue how to go about roaming in lowsec.

Yesterday I was sure I was finally going to make it out with the corp for a little roam. The timing was a little early but I figured I could swing something with the wife to get on EVE for an hour or two. Unfortunately it was work that stuffed that plan up badly. I didn't get home until well after the roam started. Bah. Next time...

Death Race - The Video

Death Race

I actually managed to take part in Rixx Javix and The Tuskers' Death Race today. I wasn't 100% certain I was going to be able to, but thanks to a forgiving wife I managed to make it happen. I even managed to record my whole event.

Over the last few days I set up a ship based on a Stabber hull I had lying around. I fitted an 100MN Afterburner expecting to have to burn out of bubbles in nullsec mid-race. I also fitted a large Ancillary Shield Booster expecting to take some damage en route. Sadly, neither of these fittings were particularly useful. To them I added a trio of Warp Core stabs, some shield resists and buffer and some pretty pointless guns. Yesterday I spent some time pouring over a map working out that the first ten systems were covered by only one route through lowsec. The only thing to do was to make tactical bookmarks on each gate so I could approach the inevitable smartbomb gate camps from an unexpected angle. This turned out to be a superfluous activity.

Come race day I was all set up in system. People were x-ing up in local from at least 15:00 even though the rules clearly stated 16:00 was the earliest time to join a race fleet. I hung around for a while and joined fleet around 16:30 - didn't want to be too early nor too late to this party. Thirty minutes later, and with my wife delivering food to my pod, I was ready to race.

I suffered a little confusion to begin with when the first destination was announced. EVE being EVE meant people were announcing in fleet that the notified destination wasn't real and that the fleet we were in was fake. I had planned on giving people a minute or so head start to avoid the initial gate camps somewhat so I used this time to figure out if my fleet was genuine. A Tusker was the Fleet Commander and was the one announcing the destination so I took it as read that this was genuine and set off. This led to another point of confusion. My autopilot showed a route via hisec. We were told the route would be through lowsec. Would taking the hisec route be cheating? I decided not to find out, adjusted the AP to stick to lowsec and headed off.

It turned out my first ten systems were spot on and I safely traversed them using the tactical bookmarks set up the night before. In retrospect this was probably not required as most of the gates were empty. I quickly fell behind. Being behind became a theme of the evening. When I was many jumps from each waypoint the interim games would be announced to allow stragglers to catch up. As I approached each waypoint the next destination was announced. This was my third point of confusion - should I continue to the current waypoint or switch routes to the new one? From what I read from Rixx there were going to be people taking screenshots to ensure everyone fully completed the course. To me this meant I should continue to the checkpoint before resetting my autopilot. I'm fairly sure this was not sensible as I continued to drop behind during the next two checkpoints. Sometimes I would have TiDi chasing me, sometimes there would even be ships on grid with me. In general I pretty much felt like I was roaming lowsec alone. Not really the Death Race I expected. A bit boring really.

The final system, Y9G-KS, was announced as being a paltry single jump into nullsec. I had expected a passage of nullsec somewhere in the middle, hence my AB fit, so this was a little disappointing. Nevermind, I was sort of having fun taking part in the community event, even if it wasn't that exciting. Laying in my course I found there were over 20 jumps between me and the goal... and I still had to visit P1@0 in New Eden. *sigh*

Again I subjected myself to a boring set of jumps which can be abbreviated as... suddenly I arrived in Y9G-KS. Oh look, bubbles on the gate. Almost like someone was expecting us or I'm crazily late to the party. I suspect the latter. I decided to burn directly upwards before heading away from the gate to get my bearings. Sadly, just as I get to the edge of the bubble Rote Kappele decided my Stabber had lived too long and made it die. Oh well, I'm in a pod and have had time to reconfigure my overview to show the finish line - a GSC. Not expecting a hope in hell of slowboating over to the finish line I started. On comms with some corpmates I counted down... 30... 25... 20... 10... 5... I'm here. Holy shit, I finished the course. To be honest that was more unexpected than making it through the first system.

Kudos to The Tuskers for running the event. I would have liked it to be more eventful but my opinion is from only one single point of view. Whether this race was a success will require many others to put their views across. Regardless, I think this was great and maybe one day my alliance can assist The Tuskers in running a future death race.

Click to watch the video

Death Race: YC115

I'm sure you don't need me to tell you about it, but just in case you've somehow missed the news here is something you should take part in. The Tuskers are hosting a Death Race this weekend. The basic premise is simple: pilots get in ships; pilots race from point a to point b to point c; first pilot there wins. With a death race there is of course a twist. This being EVE there will be people trying to kill the participants. This being EVE there will be participants trying to kill the participants. All in all it should be a whole barrel of fun.

The prize list currently looks like:
1st Place - 600m ISK, a Machariel and a 50 day TimeCard
2nd Place - 400m ISK and a 50 day TC
3rd Place - 300m ISK and a 50 day TC
4th Place - 100m ISK
5th Place - 75m ISK

In addition there are more prizes for 'interesting' methods of crossing the route. The full prize list can be seen on Rixx Javix's blog.

I have no idea if I will actually be able to take part but I'm going to be fitting a ship up for Geo to fly. Come 17:00 on Saturday if I can swing an hour of EVE time I'll be there. Where will you be?

Neglect and Dying

I've been neglecting my blog for the last two weeks. The odd thing is I've had things to write about but I've not had the time to do the writing. By way of apology here's the conclusion on Geo's circuitous nullsec journey.

To quickly recap, I had noticed from my visited systems map that not one of my toons had been to the east side of New Eden and this needed rectified. In my last post about this I had gone about a seventh of the way around the map. It is from there I resume the tale.

Continuing south with Geo I encountered very little activity in any of the edge systems. Solar Fleet owned a large chunk of the next section of space I went through and other than the occasional comment about me in 'local' I saw nobody, not even any fleets passing through. There are some rather big jumps as you head south so it felt like real progress was being made. I was still making a tactical gate bookmark and safe spot for every system so this meant progress was slow. Generally I would only do five or so jumps at a time before doing something different. I continued down through Insmother before arriving victorious in FMH-OV in Detorid.

Courtesy of evemaps.dotlan.net

That was it. I was about a third of the way around the map and I had cleared Solar Fleet's space. Now it was time to head, um, further around?! I had made it this far and found the edge of New Eden largely empty. How hard could it be? The new plan looked like this:

Courtesy of evemaps.dotlan.net

The route shown above is 181 jumps. I was only 47 jumps around so if I wanted to finish in a timely manner I would need to speed up. This meant no longer making tacticals at every gate unless I actually needed one. The next few systems flew by under this new process. I should have been doing that from the start but lack of nullsec experience seemed to have made me over cautious. Things were going great until I encountered something hitherto unseen on my journey, people actually living in the systems they held sovereignty over.

I had been making good use of the 'pilots in space' map statistic during my travels. Rarely did I see even one pilot in space. Down in Feythabolis the alliance Unclaimed. seemed to have at least 6 pilots in space in all the border systems they owned. This held up no matter what time I checked. What's more they seemed to be actively hunting me whenever I logged in. Once again my progress crawled to a halt. I sat watching each out gate for some time observing all the comings and goings which prevented my progress. I was around this time I decided to pare back my cyclic ambition. Going half circle now would be sufficient and I would resume the other half at a later date. The new destination was C-PEWN which looked like the exact opposite system from where I started in OE-4HB.

Back in overly-cautious mode it took me a few days to get the last few jumps towards my new destination. It was already thinking about scanning myself a nice wormhole to hisec and going on a Bombers Bar roam. Finally I was one jump away. As usual for Unclaimed.'s space the next system showed six pilots in space. It was my last jump so I went for it. Loading grid on the other side showed a lone Sabre. Oh crap, bubbles. It was down to me escaping the bubble under the cover of cloak. I held the session cloak as long as I dared then made a break for it. Heading directly away from the Sabre I gained covops cloak then switched direction. Holy hell can that Sabre move! He decloaked me with ease and the result was inevitable. A pod express trip to hisec was requested and granted. Well at least I wouldn't have to scan my way home.

On the plus side, I completed the revised 50% circuit of New Eden. This was way more than originally intended so I'm happy. Now for something new to do.

Wandering With Geo

Style was never
a priority

It has been a while since I mentioned my PvP alt, Geo. To be honest I've just been spinning my wheels with him. From time to time I head out and have fun on RvB Ganked roams. Indeed that is where 99% of Geo's kills have happened. Unfortunately these roams only happen once a week, at the weekend, and I'm rarely able to take advantage so I had to find something else to do.

Something else would be Bombers Bar, but for a lack of skills. Thus, I have been getting Geo trained up for the recommended Bombers Bar Hound fit. At the time of writing this it will be only another 14 days and I'll be flying a pretty mean bomber. But two weeks is two weeks so what could I do with Geo in the mean time.

Back in November I wrote a post about where I'd visited in New Eden. One thing that really stood out to me from all my maps was the big empty section that cut a swathe down the east side. As I had never visited anywhere over there I thought it would be a good idea to do so now.

Starting in the spiritual centre of EVE, Jita, I plotted a route for OE-4HB. This took me up through Lonetrek and popped me into Goon space via Taisy. I wish I'd taken a picture of the Taisy gate in M-OEE8. Bubbled just doesn't convey how covered this gate was in warp disruption bubbles of all sizes. Thankfully for me there was only a couple of ships sitting on the gate so I easily managed to get my Stealth Bomber cloaked up and safely away. The rest of the route through Tribute, Venal and Tenal was quiet with only a couple of warp bubbles on gates and almost nobody in space. In fact the only thing that slowed me down was gate rats as I'm also making myself a useful set of tactical bookmarks on the gates I travel through. Rats on gates meant I couldn't make use of my Microwarpdrive to burn to a warpable range, instead having to slowboat whilst cloaked.

Courtesy of evemaps.dotlan.net

The second leg of my journey took me out of Tenal and all the way through Cobalt Edge. I guess Razor Alliance are fighting with Intrepid Crossing right now as there were a large number of Territory Claim Units and Sovereignty Blocking Units across the systems I visited. I don't know anything about Nullsec sovereignty mechanics but systems listed as 'Vulnerable' or 'Contested' hints strongly at what is going on. I hung around for a while hoping to see some massive battle but the only action I saw was a 16 ship -RZR- fleet jump past me on their way into IRC space. I never saw them again.

Eventually I found myself in Outer Passage and in Solar Citizens space which is where I still am. I'm really tempted to hang out and see if I can bag me some miners down here. I'd love to know if the stories of bots abound are true. I'm also starting to think I could go right the way around the outer edge of New Eden. I've done about one eighth already so it shouldn't take that long...

Interestingly, in Outer Passage I found my first unclaimed system, and then another and another. I didn't think there would be any of these just lying around. Maybe someone could fill me in on why these don't have owners? Awaiting new rental agreements maybe?

Nashh Kadavr's Leaving Party

Nashh Kadavr of the many coloured Kadavr corporations decided to call it quits in New Eden and hang up his pod. To ensure no easy return from retirement Nashh decided to go out with a bang, inviting everyone to come shoot his Thanatos and even providing frigates to help if you wanted. I've been reading Nashh's blog for a while now so it would have been remiss of me to not help send off a fellow blogger in style. I also couldn't turn down the offer of shooting at a carrier.

I should have joined a fleet

Typically, I almost forgot about the whole thing and at 20:00 I only just remembered to move some ships. I figured I would need more than one ship, so moved five of my pre-fitter rifters across  to Assiettes. I remembered to change my medi-clone location and even insured the ships. Just after 21:00 I jumped into Goinard half expecting to die on the gate. To my surprise the gate was empty so I made some safe spots and started jumping around while watching local to see what was what.

After a while Nashh announced in local that we should get to the customs office at planet three, so I did and landed in mayhem. There were already Archons on the field repping Nashh. Oh well, I was only here for the fun so I burned the 20 km at Nashh, locked him up and started shooting long before I could actually hit. Much to my surprise I was within optimal range, orbitting Nashh, and taking teeny tiny pieces of armour off him before my first death. Time Dilation was around 10% at this point so I easily got my pod out and went back for another ship - TiDi meaning I could both grab a beer from the fridge and drink it during the warp out.

Strike Two

On warping back to the scene of the fight I finally remembered to start taking screenshots for this post. I got in range again and started shooting at Nashh. I didn't last long. Also, Nashh didn't seem to be taking much, if any, damage from the fight. Again I got my pod out, reshipped and came back. This time the field seemed to have split up, I started to approach Nashh but decided something odd was up and warped off to assess from local chatter.

Scary d-scan analysis looks scary

Local yielded nothing useful so I warped back to the fight. Trying to be clever I warped to 20 km thinking that would place me nearer the fight. I was wrong. As I burned toward the battle a former corp mate locked me up and put a disrupter on me. Not sure if he knows my alt but I'll be asking him later. It was taking forever to get to Nashh and I was taking incoming fire. To try and whore on another killmail I locked a nearby Ashimuu and started firing. That guaranteed a rapid death for ship number three with ship number four following suit rapidly afterward.

One, two, many, lots

For my last ship I had a slightly different tactic. I warped to 100 from the POCO in the hope their would be a wreck I could use to warp into the heart of the battle. This worked in so much as I was away from the snipers picking off ships burning between the POCO and the fight, but I was still 40 km away and had to burn back.

Rifter: Engage many cap ships

I've never seen a sight like the above screenshot. Something seemed inherently wrong with me burning a frigate into that mess of cap ships. But burn I did, just in time to see Nashh's Thanatos explode right in front of me. Where's the pod? There it is. Lock it!!! I managed to gain lock and squeeze off a few rounds in its direction before it exploded too. Yay, I got on both killmails. At this point I warped out figuring there was no point dying to the caps on field. I then remembered that I wasn't taking this ship home, warped to the top belt and died to a Thrasher.

Goodbye Nashh and congratulations on hosting such a memorable departure.

Nashh Kadavr - Farewell Party 2012
(he's in there somewhere)

Where I've Been

Mabrick over at Mabrick's Mumblings posted a snapshot of his visited systems as recorded by the EVE server. At the end he invited others to post their maps so I decided to take up that invitation.

Orea's Wanderings

You can see from this I spent the vast majority of my time hanging around in Gallente space. This betrays my first two year of EVE as a carebear missioneer. I can see a single route south into nullsec but I can't for the life of me remember what that was for. Other than that, the occasional dot shows where I've jumped out from a wormhole.

Dhal's Travels

It's really easy to see Dhal hasn't moved around much in New Eden. For a toon born in 2005 this map gives and idea of how long it took between my first trying EVE and actually subscribing to the game. Only notable thing I pick from this map is my time spent around Solitude.

Geo's Journey

Geo has only been around for this year but already his spread of travel covers a lot more of the right side of the map. Now he can fly a reasonable stealth bomber I should take him for a wander around the far right of the map and light some systems up there also.

There we go, my main characters' travels up in lights as suggested by Mabrick. So, dear reader, how about yours?

What to do with Geo?

It has been a while since I last mentioned the toon I created specifically for PvP. My intention with Geo was to have someone I could jump to when W-space was quiet and/or I just wanted to shoot someone in the face. To be fair, my time as CEO is taken up a lot with various administrivia and actually shooting at sleepers. This generally doesn't leave much time for playing with Geo, but it does happen.

I've taken Geo on a couple of RvB Ganked roams and had great fun. If you want to experience flying in a relaxed atmosphere and landing on gates as a giant ball of purple death then you should try it. No matter what the theme is, make sure you fit your ship to lock fast otherwise you'll miss out on most kills. Even with that in mind I've still managed to get on 4.7 Billion ISK worth of destruction and, more imporantly, I've had a blast doing it. Shame I can't get out on those roams more often. I particularly enjoy that nothing is expected of me. Nobody even cares if I screw up and die early.

I tried doing some solo PvP but I don't seem to have the killer instinct to get involved with that. I think it has a lot to do with not really knowing what my ship is actually capable of, but there is also a lack of the social aspect to it. Flying around solo looking for people to explode doesn't feel like my style, I'd rather have someone there to discuss what to do and where to go. When I do go out on my own I just seem to fly around lowsec and not see anyone. Maybe this is something I'll shake with some combat experience, or maybe solo just isn't for me. Time will tell on that front.

I think what I need to do is find a casual PvP styled corp. I'm not in it for some nullsec powerplay, I just want to fly around in a group who have an idea what they are doing and shoot at people. While the Ganked roams are fun I think fleets of 150+ would get boring if that was all I did with Geo. At the same time, I don't feel like I would be any good in a fleet of only two or three. I guess I need to start trawling though the recruitment forums.

My plan right now is to polish up some more skills for flying Stealth Bombers and see if I can hang out with the Bombers Bar folks. Beyond that, who knows. Sometimes it's good to just be a grunt and fly 'somewhere' to shoot 'something'.

Thukk You, Frill Me! - Aftermath

I've just found my way back to Jita after the 'Thukk You, Frill Me!' Protest run and subsequent RvB Ganked roam. This turned out to be a somewhat slow-burning event with a successful, die-in-a-fire ending. So, on that basis, I am quite happy. The fleet peaked out at almost 200 members which is apparently not a record for a Ganked night, but was up there quite high.

The fun began in Jita with a flashy Armageddon undocking and redocking as he was shot and ran out of shields. We decided this wasn't acceptable and headed over to unleash 100+ Stabbers on him. He died and we set off for Akora, the first lowsec system where we met up with our fellow fleet members with poor sec status. From there we headed to the Thukker head office of M-MD3B via N-RAEL. There were a few potential fights on the way but the only thing that actually materialised was a poor Thrasher that wandered into our path. Funnily enough when local spikes but something close to 200 people the tendency of the locals is to dock up.

Purple Stabber ball

Just before M-MD3B we had a sniff of a battle. Due to some cunning randomness on the EVE autopilot's behalf our fleet had split into two groups and was about to land on a gatecamp in a fantastic pincer movement. As I was in the smaller fleet we were ordered in first. We jumped in to find, well, nothing. Disappointed by this turn of events we headed to the Thukker Mix station to protest. It appears the Thukker Mix CEO had heard of Seismic Stan as the protest organiser as, when Stan and a few others opened fire on the station, it was only Stan who got popped.

Now the protest was out of the way, I stuck with the RvB Ganked fleet for the journey down to find some more fights. We headed down to Utopia in Curse and ran around a little trying to find someone to fight. People were getting a bit frustrated at this point and ended up chasing some non-flashy ships into Sendaya. As Sendaya is lowsec, the gate-guns took offence at this and started shooting. Eventually the offending Megathron died, but by then I was with the main body of the fleet heading for Catch.

Planet ahoy

We were told to set our destination for GE-8JV and we were never to make it past there. A couple of jumps out we received word of an Against ALL Authorities fleet in GE-8JV. We had been on the go for five hours or so and it was time to die. We jumped into the system and immediately re-approached the gate to see what the -A- guys would do. Obligingly they came to us at zero and we all jumped back into V-3YG7. I don't believe I've ever seen so many battleships in one place, nevermind ones that would like to blow me up. We aligned away from the gate to see what was going to happen and as -A- came through they bubbled up and the fight was on. Our FC started calling primaries and I actually managed to get myself sorted and shooting at the right things. First we took down a Phobos before switching to a Navy Armageddon. We couldn't break through the reps on the 'geddon so we switched targets and killed a Curse and then a 1.2 billion ISK Loki.

By this point the twenty or so Armageddons' smart bombs were taking their toll and I found myself in my pod. After a worrying minute where I thought nobody was going to pod me back to hisec I found myself in Hek. Hmm, why is my clone in Hek? Oh well, home to Jita. I had great fun. I went out to die and I managed that quite successfully. I also managed to help destroy almost 2 billion ISK worth of stuff so I died happy.


Oh, yeah, and bring back the Frill.

Fitting Ships

As anyone who knows me can tell you I am about as far away from being an EFT-warrior as is possible. I don't know if there is an official term for it, but I am a 100% fitting leach. Given access to a new ship I am more likely to wander around Battleclinic or FHC looking at the suggestions for ships there than actually fire up EFT to see what I can design for myself.

With the Thukk You, Frill Me! protest coming up I have been training Geo with the appropriate skills to fit and fly a Stabber. My first instinct was to disappear onto the web to find a suitable fit to guide his training and I came up with something on FHC. I plugged this into EFT and then EVEMon and, lo and behold, I had a skill plan.

Today I decided I wasn't satisfied with this approach and that it's maybe about time I learned how to fit my own damn ships. Given I can't for the life me remember the Stabber fit I found on FHC I decided that would be a good place to start. Firing up EFT and importing Geo's skills was the easy part. Loading up a new fit for the Stabber was also easy. From there I was presented with a blank canvas with the words "fit it to its bonuses".

Stabber: 5% bonus to Medium Projectile Turret firing speed per level and 5% bonux to max. velocity per level.

"Well, at least that's the guns picked for me" I think fitting four 425mm Medium 'Scout' Autocannon I's. This leaves me two high slots to either fit missile launchers or some utility modules which I'll come back to later when I know what powergrid and CPU I have left. So, shield or armour tanked? This being a Minmatar ship I have an equal number of mid and low slots so there is no obvious hint

which way to go first. As I'll be in a fleet I might as well try a shield fit first with some damage mods in the lows. In my mids I put a Large Shield Extender, a scram and a web. In the lows I put two Gyrostabilizers and a Shield Power Relay. Still having plenty of PG, CPU and Cap available I revisit the remaining high slots and stick in more damage dealing in the form of a couple of Assault Launchers. At this point I realise my resists are pretty terrible so I stick in two EM and one thermal shield rigs.

I'm not over the moon with this fitting. Although I'm not used to actually working out my own fittings so have no idea if my feelings are justified. My thought are that the resists and EHP are too low. So, let's try an armour version. After ripping out the Large Shield Extender, the rigs and the lows I add a 400mm plate, an armour repairer and an explosive resist mod. To give me back some speed I put a 10MN afterburner in my now spare mid slot. My resists are again a bit poor so I put a kinetic and thermic rig in and then add a trimark pump to give me a bit more buffer.

This looks more like I've read to expect a PvP fit ship to look like. I'm almost maxed out on powergrid and I am not cap stable. What about the rest of the stats? First off I notice I've lost about 1000 EHP and 70 DPS. Not a great start. I have gone up about 10% in my resists though which should help with the armour rep but I have no idea how to judge the effectiveness of this.

To my unskilled eyes I get the general impression my shield fit is the better of the pair, but how does this compare with what I found on FHC? The first thing I noticed from the two fits on FHC is they are both shield fit, which is what I figured was best. The second thing I notice is I totally forgot that Damage Control modules exist. While tempted to go back and rework the above fits to include a DCII I decided to go through with this little experiment.

I noticed that both FHC fits have about 25% more EFT than I do, but almost all of that is from the forgotten DCII so I don't feel too bad. Other than that, my resists are better, my DPS is better, but I'm going a hell of a lot slower and my falloff is shorter. This probably is a major oversight on my part as I need to be up close and personal for such short range guns. I suspect if I took my fit out to battle I'd never get a change to actually hit anything. Going back to my original fit, I swap a Gyrostab for a DCII and swap the web for a MWD. As a result of fitting the MWD I also have to go down a size in missile launchers.

After these changes I find myself with an extra 1800 EHP compared with the FHC fit with almost 40 more DPS. I go a little slower but still pushing 2000 m/s which isn't too shabby. I have no idea how this would do in a fight though.

This has been an interesting little experiment but I'm not sure I could spend a vast amount of my time EFT warrioring. Does anyone care to comment on my though process throughout this? I realise my mistake in missing out the DCII was pretty silly and one I know I shouldn't have made. Getting speed to fight at my range is probably an experience thing and one that will only be rectified by flying in fights. So I guess that's what I'll just have to do.

Should I fly this on the 15th?

Thukk You, Frill Me! July 15th Protest March

As highlighted by Rixx Javix over at Evoganda, there has been an unfortunate fate visited on the Vagabond. The terrible fate in this case is the loss of its distinguishing neck frill. The net result of losing the frill for this ship is to take something special away from its Minmatar identity. What is a Minmatar ship without some form of paper-thin wingy bits? Sure, rust is essential but wingy bits are almost as important.

More concerning is the apparent disregard for personal ownership and privacy by the ship's manufacturer, Thukker Mix. Not satisfied with simply redesigning new Vagabonds, Thukker Mix actively infiltrated numerous hangers around New Eden and retrospectively applied these unwanted changes to privately owned and beloved capsuleer Vagabonds.

Now to be honest I can't remember ever actually seeing a Vagabond in space. I'm sure I must have but I'm not the most observant pilot. However, should a Vagabond be bearing down on me in space it would be much more terrifying with its cobra-like appearance. I would try to flee from it, screaming in fear, rather than spending a few moments trying to work out whether or not I'm being engaged by a battle Iteron.

To fix this injustice, Seismic Stan over at Freebooted has organised a protest march for Sunday, July 15th. The intention is to meet up in the, becoming traditional, location of the Jita memorial before heading in the general direction of the Thukker Mix HQ of M-MD3B. Additionally, Khalia at My Loot, Your Tears is organsing a suicide-gank raffle in nearby Jatate prior to the main event. This means you'll need at least two Stabber or Vagabonds to fully enjoy the day.

Protest Itinerary - Sunday, July 15th 2012

18:00 - Jatate - Suicide Raffle
19:00 - Jita Memorial - Meet up and general comedy
19:29 - Jita Memorial - Outlaw fly-by.
19:30 - Jita Memorial - Departure
20:00 - Rendez-vous with remaining outlaws in low-sec
21:00 - M-MD3B - Protest arrives at Thukker Mix Head Office (hopefully)
21:30 - Surviving Protesters will head to Delve via Curse and Catch.

After some modification to his skillqueue, Geo will be there in a reasonably fit Stabber, will you?

Jita burns us, nasty Hobbitses

Did everyone have fun during the Jita burns weekend event? Did you avoid Jita completely to avoid it? Did you join in on either side and bag a freighter or a Goon? I know I did.

I decided it would be remiss of me if I didn't at least wander along to look at the wondrous sight of Jita in flames at the hands of the CFC et al. I had absolutely no intention of taking part in any way shape or form. Fly in, take some pictures, fly out. To that end I took a completely untrained pilot in a noobship, set his medical clone next door to Jita and warped to the Jita gate.

Perimeter congestion

Arriving on the Jita gate I found it, unsurprisingly, to be rather congested. Being in a noobship I was fairly confident that I would be safe, but then again this was meant to be a 'with us or die' event so I couldn't be sure. After several attempts to convince Jita traffic control to let me through I was able to jump.

Where's the fire?

Arriving in Jita, it was amusing to note that the gate here was quieter. Had just missed an 'event' and everyone was in station waiting out their GCC timer? Who knows, but now I had made it to Jita I decided that I should set my medical clone here too.

Once I was happy that any clone loss would keep me in the system I wanted to be in I set off to survey the gates. On every gate except the Jita → Perimeter gate there was at most ten ships. That made my voyeurism easier; I only needed to sit at the Perimeter gate to watch the fun.

Sitting around watching was a little boring if truth be told. I watched a handful of freighters come and go without anyone taking a bite. On one occasion a large group jumped into Perimeter behind a freighter. It took a couple of minutes before traffic control let me follow and when I got through there was nothing to see. I've no idea if I missed the kill or they got away. Sticking around for a while more and finally there was a flash of criminal notifications across my screen. Looks like someone's going to die.

I'm pretty sure Concord started dishing out punishment at the same time as the Rhea finally appeared in front of me. The pretty light show was so mesmerising that I forgot to grab some pictures. Almost without thinking I started to lock up the Rhea. Still without thinking I found myself hovering over the trigger for my Civilian Light Electron Blaster, clicking it and accepting the warning about the legality of what I was about to do.

I was surprised by the length of time it took for my ship to be removed from under me by Concord. I flew directly towards the Rhea in the hope I could actually get in range to score at least one point of damage. Sadly it wasn't to be. Equally annoying was watching the Rhea warp off rather than explode.

It wasn't until some time later when I was talking to someone that I found out the Rhea had actually died. It appeared to everyone that the Rhea escaped but apparently as a side effect of Time Dilation it was the pilots on the destination station who got to watch it explode. I guess the stresses of warp can be trying on a hull so riddled with holes. Poor Jeann must have been so happy to get her Rhea away from the gate. I can only imagine how she felt as that elation crashed to despair as her ship collapsed around her.

My only regret is I didn't take Geo into Jita for that kill. A six billion ISK kill would've looked good on his wall. He might even have been able to hit the thing.

Roaming Thoughts

So with my first proper lowsec roam taken care of, and four kills under my belt. What are my thoughts? Well, for one I had a fun time even if it was quieter than I had hoped. I have spent enough time flying through lowsec in the last year to realise that it is pretty empty and not the scary wasteland I once thought it was. When looking for a fight this isn't really what you want though. It was also fun to be in a fleet actively hunting for targets in an organised manner.

I had one realisation for the minute or two we would have sitting on each gate while our scout was a system over checking for targets. Anyone jumping through would think we were camping the gate which was definitely not the case. We would already be aware of the security status of someone jumping through and whether we wanted to try and catch them or not. On more than one occasion someone with positive sec status would see us and burn back to the gate rapidly. As we were all in Frigates or Destroyers there would be no way we'd survive the gate guns for long so had no intention of engaging those ships. It was amusing to watch through as I'm more used to being on the wrong side of such surprises.

Finally, do I want to go on another roam? Hell yes, it was lots of fun and I've already been out with the same guys for a second roam with two more kills, and my first loss. It'll be even more fun when I've got more of the essential skills - I can't even use a MWD yet. Pretty soon I'll need to find a suitable corp for Geo as well. Any suggestions? I've nearly one million skill points now!

On The Roam

With the ships all set up and our fleet all ready we undocked and headed into lowsec. We spent the first few jumps doing a mini circuit of Derelik but pickings were slim to none. As I mentioned on Monday the real destination was a big loop of Molden Heath so we headed there next.

Just into Molden Heath we ran into a Jaguar taunting us around the system. We engaged him on the sun but he just burned away and warped off. The merry dance continued on a couple of sites as he jumped around trying to split us into multiple groups. This tactic worked to a certain extent and on a jump gate into a complex he landed on grid with a group of four of us. One of our number was pretty close to him so tackled him while the rest of us tried to get in range. This was about 70 km from where the rest of us were. Now 70 km is about the worst distance to cover as burning towards the destination is just as bad as burning away to 150 km and warping back. Needless to say the tackle died before we could get in range. With this unfortunate start behind us we regrouped and headed deeper leaving the Jaguar to his own devices.

It wasn't long before we had another target twitching under our noses. Our FC had found a Stabber worthy of our attention. Tackle was called in and got a successful hold on the ship. The rest of us jumped in and warped to the FC. With eight in our gang the Stabber didn't have much chance. First blood for Geo and third highest damage. - not bad for a thirteen day old character.

Two systems later and we had a Drake seeking our attentions. Exactly the same setup as before with the FC scouting the location and then calling tackle in. Tackle calls point and we all warp in. Strike two. It appeared this kill wasn't well received as we all had to scatter pretty quick when the Drake's friends arrived on grid advertising a fight we couldn't win. Thankfully we all got away and kept on the move for a few systems until they got bored.

It took another half hour before we got word of a Rupture on d-scan. By this time my beers were in full effect and the details of the kill are a bit fuzzy. It was just after this that two members of The Bastards met up with us. Thankfully they were on our side and arrived to a touch of awe from a couple of folk in fleet. The highlight comment on comms was "Oh, you're in The Bastards. I love your work".

With two Bastards in tow we went hunting for more kills, but they were elusive. It took the best part of an hour, and a few missed opportunities, before we acquired our final target of the evening. This target was the weirdest of the night. We were all parked on a gate when the Drake jumped into us. We all got lock but I was expecting him to burn back to the gate and jump through. I held off on aggression and got ready to follow him through while the rest of the fleet tore through his shields. About half into armour I decided not to miss the killmail and started shooting as well. He died seconds later.

It wasn't until afterwards I realised I wasn't showing drones on my overview and the Drake had actually aggressed us. Oh well, I could've hit him harded but at least I got on my fourth killmail of the evening. And with that we decided to call it a night. There were no further targets as we headed back to Derelik and off to sleep.

More Pew Please

Recently I've become increasingly interested in getting involved with some lowsec roams or general small scale PvP. I'm not particularly interested in 'honourable' one on one duelling as I believe in the whole "don't fight unless you've already won" philosophy. That's not so say I'm adverse to fighting in uncertain circumstances, but I would rather be in a group of people than relying solely on my own skills and the honour of my opponent.

I've become a little protective of my existing characters' security status, and over-protective of my low number of ship losses. This means I don't want to take either Orea or Dhal out on such roams. Plus, getting Orea out of his wormhole can be a pain without prior planning. Anyway, Orea gets to do his own solo hunting for soft targets and I'm happy with that. The solution to this problem is obviously to create a character exclusively for roaming around to find some pew pew, thus Geo was born.

During the week an invite went out for an Alliance roam. Even though Geo was only thirteen days old how could I pass up the opportunity? It takes very little skill to fit a half-decent Rifter and not much more for a half-decent Thrasher. I rearranged the skill queue accordingly and flew two Rifters and two Thrashers to the form-up system. With my ships in place all I had left to do was wait for the fleet advert.

[Rifter, Geo's Rifter]¹
Small Inefficient Armor Repair Unit
Damage Control I
200mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I

X5 Prototype Engine Enervator
Initiated Harmonic Warp Scrambler I
Limited 1MN Afterburner I

150mm Light 'Scout' Autocannon I, Republic Fleet EMP S
150mm Light 'Scout' Autocannon I, Republic Fleet EMP S
150mm Light 'Scout' Autocannon I, Republic Fleet EMP S
[empty high slot]

Small Trimark Armor Pump I
Small Trimark Armor Pump I
Small Projectile Collision Accelerator I

[Thrasher, Geo's Thrasher]²
Micro Auxiliary Power Core I
Damage Control I

Limited 1MN Afterburner I
Medium Subordinate Screen Stabilizer I
Fleeting Warp Disruptor I

250mm Light 'Scout' Artillery I, Republic Fleet EMP S
250mm Light 'Scout' Artillery I, Republic Fleet EMP S
250mm Light 'Scout' Artillery I, Republic Fleet EMP S
250mm Light 'Scout' Artillery I, Republic Fleet EMP S
250mm Light 'Scout' Artillery I, Republic Fleet EMP S
250mm Light 'Scout' Artillery I, Republic Fleet EMP S
250mm Light 'Scout' Artillery I, Republic Fleet EMP S
[empty high slot]

Small Core Defense Field Extender I
Small Core Defense Field Extender I
Small Ancillary Current Router I

I joined fleet and we spent the next hour forming up in Derelik. We were informed the route would be taking us around Molden Heath. This isn't a region of New Eden I've spent any time in so none of the system names were familiar. With my copy of Eve Tactical Maps open in front of me I could see a nice little cluster of interconnected lowsec systems in Derelik. This lead to a very convenient loop of lowsec systems which, I correctly guessed, would define the roam.

Finally we were all set in our fleet of nine and off we went.
¹ Heavily influenced by Kirith Kodachi's recently published fit for his Rifter.².
² Suggestions for improvements are welcome, just remember this is a character with only 600,000 SP.