Crazies on SiSi...

For my Pod and Planet entry I logged on to Singularity for some screenshots. To my great amusement I encountered a rare SiSi hermit. To say the conversation was entertaining doesn't go any way to doing it justice. I'll just paste it here for your reading pleasure.

Oreamnos Amric > hi
Castielec > where u going buddy
Oreamnos Amric > just getting some screenshots
Castielec > be careful this is my space i might gank you
Oreamnos Amric > aha lol
Oreamnos Amric > sure you will
Castielec > you saw i what i wrote
Castielec > now watch yourself
Oreamnos Amric > TQ too hard for you that you need to claim space in SiSi?
Castielec > yes
Oreamnos Amric > fair enough :-p
Castielec > i claimed all this for myself
Castielec > its mines
Castielec > if i cant you you dead
Castielec > alright
Oreamnos Amric > depends if you can translate that to English
Oreamnos Amric > oh, was that meant to be "catch"?
Castielec > keep on playing with me
Castielec > i can show you better than i can tell you buddy
Oreamnos Amric > I'm happy for you
Castielec > stay out of my space
Castielec > or i will gank you
Oreamnos Amric > it's not your space
Castielec > like i said
Oreamnos Amric > I'll get some friends and come visit
Oreamnos Amric > we can play peek'a'boo
Castielec > oh really?
Castielec > like i said i run everything on here dude
Castielec > stay the fuck away
Castielec > or else
Oreamnos Amric > else what?
Castielec > i will watch list you '
Oreamnos Amric > eek
Castielec > and gank you everytime you log on
Oreamnos Amric > :quakes:
Castielec > yea you better be scared
Castielec > now stay out of my space
Oreamnos Amric > I will once I stop giggling
Castielec > or ill kick you out
Castielec > which one you want?
Castielec > take your damn pick buddy
Oreamnos Amric > kick me out...
Oreamnos Amric > ...of sisi
Oreamnos Amric > ...
Castielec > i will
Castielec > stay out my damn space man
Castielec > i claimed this shit for myself
Oreamnos Amric > I am genuinely happy for you. You claimed space on SiSi all by yourself.
Castielec > i sure have
Castielec > and i will take every alliance space in the game
Castielec > and own all of eve
Castielec > i already took catch
Castielec > i will go to the other parts and take them also
Oreamnos Amric > go you
Castielec > by myself
Castielec > buddy
Castielec > and you wont do a damn thing about it
Castielec > but stay out like i told you
Castielec > now watch your mouth
Oreamnos Amric > I'll need a mirror
Castielec > you need to stay away
Castielec > is what you need to do
Oreamnos Amric > stay what now?
Castielec > stay out of my fucking space
Castielec > now!
Castielec > grrrr
Castielec > woof woof
Castielec > grrrr
Castielec > grrrr
Castielec > woof woof grrr
Oreamnos Amric > where's your space?
Castielec > protecting my territory like a dog
Castielec > catch is my space
Oreamnos Amric > I was through it so fast I can't even remember
Oreamnos Amric > I wasn't in catch
Castielec > woof woof
Castielec > im protecting my territory
Oreamnos Amric > if you're growling like a dog I guess Catch is the right place for you
Oreamnos Amric > I can see you are
Castielec > grrrr
Castielec > im a fucking great dame
Castielec > grrr woof grr woof
Oreamnos Amric > you're sure a lovely lady alright
Castielec > now back off
Castielec > dont come back
Castielec > i will be watching you
Oreamnos Amric > how can I not come back if you won't tell me where to avoid?
Castielec > all of catch
Castielec > dont come back
Castielec > grrr whoof
Oreamnos Amric > Okay, got it. Make sure I stay in catch. Gotcha
Castielec > i said stay out dude
Castielec > dont play with me man
Castielec > i done told you
Oreamnos Amric > I'm not. You told me you had claimed the whole of New Eden on SiSi and I should stay in Catch.
Oreamnos Amric > didn't you?
Castielec > i stay the fuck out of catch
Castielec > im not done taking it all
Oreamnos Amric > ah, my mistake
Castielec > yet
Oreamnos Amric > why not? you've had time.
Castielec > after i take catch i will take other regions
Oreamnos Amric > you're in it for the long haul?
Oreamnos Amric > what will you do with the space others claim?
Castielec > yes iam
Castielec > they wont
Castielec > i will have all space
Castielec > and protect it all
Oreamnos Amric > well good luck to you sie
Oreamnos Amric > *sir
Castielec > just stay your ass out
Oreamnos Amric > I'll try. But you never know, we have been known to accidentally sov on sisi in the past
Castielec > you do it
Castielec > if you want to
Oreamnos Amric > Impass isn't close to Catch is it?
Castielec > ill fight whole fleets
Castielec > and win
Oreamnos Amric > I'm sure you will
Oreamnos Amric > and drink the blood of your enemies?
Castielec > yes
Castielec > woof
Castielec > woof grr
Castielec > woof grrr

So I must thank Castielec for turning what was going to be a boring wander around New Eden to take some screenshots into a most entertaining half hour. I have absolutely no desire to test sovereignty mechanics on SiSi now. Absolutely none.......

Really, none.....

Damnit.....

A pod with a view

Look at these poor, oblivious fools endlessly orbiting shattered lumps of rock.
There could be anyone watching them perform mass destruction on these harmless shards of stone.
Yet on and on they go, until the bellies of their ships are full to bursting.

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.

Recruiting yet again

It's been a long year and as with any game people online slowly atrophies towards zero. This means it is recruitment time again.

Z3R0 Return Mining Inc., proud founding member of the Illusion of Solitude alliance, is once again recruiting. Formed over five and a half years ago we have a wealth of experience gained from years of living exclusively in wormhole space. Our current home is a class 4 wormhole with class 3 and 5 statics which provide us with many opportunities to take advantage of. Mainly active in EU time with some East US coverage we do not focus exclusively on any one area of wormhole life. We prefer to take advantage of what we find each day, be that people to shoot, sites to run, or just sitting on comms talking nonsense to each other.

If you are interested in joining us you need to be a mature and relaxed player who doesn't take things like killboard efficiency too seriously. You must be able to warp cloaked and should have decent scanning skills. You should have reasonable shield and armour tanking skills and we can help guide you on your training. Whilst we try to avoid dying too often you should be comfortable with ship and pod loss, accepting this is normal for EVE. You should also have Teamspeak available with a mic and headset although you are not expected to use this every time you are online.

We are not generally active enough to PLEX your account each month so players expecting to do so will be disappointed. There is an expectation that you will spend the majority of your time basing out of our home system. You will also be expected to do your fair share of scanning. In return the corp makes it as easy as possible for you to earn ISK with corp buyout of PvE loot and all PI generated in the hole. This removes any necessity for you to haul loot out and sell it in order to be paid. We are not somewhere to park an ISK-making alt whilst you spend all your time on another character elsewhere in EVE.

If you are interested please fill out our recruitment form or contact me in-game for more information. The recruitment process involves an API check and Teamspeak 'interview'. Please do not apply directly to the corp until this process has been followed.

So what are you waiting for? Fill in that recruitment form today or add me to your watch list and ping me when I log in.

Get yer rigs oot

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BB 68 - This is My Rig

What do you play Eve on? I'll show you mine if you show me yours! Are you pew-pewing on a laptop? Plotting universal domination on a 12 monitor set up? Mining away on a 50" TV? Is your set up located where your other half can speak to you or do you lock yourself away for hours in your Eve themed shed? How do you play your important internet spaceships?

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When I bought a complete PC way back when I was at university I swore I would never again buy a pre-built computer. That was the effect PC World had on me. Since then I never have and get a lot of satisfaction from building my own rigs. Even if doing so is pretty damn easy these days.

Odd mouse position, plus sideways mouse, to minimise shoulder pain. Try it, it works.

This is my desk, which lives in my lounge. My wife insists on it being there else she "would never see me". This causes problems for being on comms so I try to minimise that when anyone else is in the house and awake. I have a pair of widescreen monitors and generally have the one directly in front of the keyboard containing a full-screen client. The monitor on the left will have some mix of Teamspeak, web browser and another client or two running. A third monitor would be sweet but my graphics card would likely struggle. In the background you can see my collectors edition rifter as well as a little Airfix Harrier GR3 I've been building whilst on some Black Ops stuff recently (damn they can be boring).

The main tower itself sits on the floor to the left of my desk. The desk has a cupboard which is meant to store the tower but that only serves to cook the PC in its own heat exhaust. The case is some random case I picked up from somewhere on the internet. It has a perspex side so I can see the pretty LEDs inside. This has the less useful side-effect of also showing all the dust that gathers in there. There is no optical drive because this is no longer 2001. On top you see my innuendo-laden Thrustmaster HOTAS X which I bought to play Elite: Dangerous. It's been months since it saw any use.

To the right you see what the perspex side lets me look in on (I may have dusted it for the photo). The mainboard is from MSI. The CPU is a quad-core Intel i5 running it 3.4 GHz. The CPU should be good for 4.3 GHz but if you look at the bottom you'll see a 600 watt PSU which is my guess at why that speed is unstable. To facilitate said overclocking I cool the CPU with a Corsair H20i water cooling unit. The GPU is an ageing Radeon HD 5770 which came pre-overclocked (I like things running overclocked you can see). The 8 Gig of RAM is Teamgroup Vulcan running at 2133 Mhz, and has pretty red anodising. Space is left in case I felt the need to go to 16 Gig, which I haven't yet. Finally the OS lives on a 240 Gig Crucial mSATA drive which you can see just below the Corsair CPU block.

So there you have my rig. With the exception of the old graphics card and PSU it is plenty of PC for me just now. It can reasonably run three EVE clients on the rare occasion I need to do so. I can just about get away with running two on full detail but three is a no no. I'm going to need to fit out a computer for my kids to share soon so it may just be more cost effective for them to get my old graphics card and I get a new one. That's what I'll be telling my wife anyway!

Mission Complete

I better write about this quickly before CCP make changes to undo my achievement. A long time ago CCP took the wise decision to split the generic destroyer and battlecruiser skills into racial equivalents. This brought those two skills in line with all other T1 class ship skills. Of course panic erupted in the forums with people concerned they would become unable to fly their favourite ships once the changes came into play. CCP addressed this by announcing people who could already fly a given race's destroyer or battlecruiser would be gifted the appropriate racial skills at the old generic skill level. We were given specific details of the skill prerequisites which would ensure this happened. This triggered a race to train all the prerequisites and both destroyer and battlecruiser to V.

I succumbed to that on all three accounts. I almost didn't with my industrial character but at the very last possible moment I changed my mind and finished training battlecruiser to V mere days before the change happened. Post-release I logged in to find all my main characters with an extra six million skill points. Shiny!

Unfortunately, or possibly fortunately depending on your point of view, this sent me on a completionist mission with Oreamnos. I decided I wanted to be able to fly each and every subcapital ship in EVE - from the smallest frigate to the blingy black ops battleships. There were a few distractions on the way. Someone pointed out that sitting in the ships wasn't really being able to fly them. This got me training all the weapons systems to decent T2 level (Specialisation IV). At one point I also needed to get myself trained into Archons. CCP added a few new ship types, namely mining frigates and tech three destroyers.

Last week I got notification that Gallente Tactical Destroyer had trained its first level thus ending my epic training voyage. Many of the ships I have never flown. A few I possibly never will. I'm just happy that I completed this quest. The question is, what do I train now? Many of the cap ships are only three days training now but have you seen the price of those skill books?! I might have to think hard about that.

Slack Jawed

Man, sometimes time just flies past and I realise I haven't posted anything for two full weeks. It's not that nothing has been happening, I just haven't had the time to sit down and write about it. I guess it's one of those things where my time to blog and my time to play EVE are shared and playing more EVE means less time to blog. Oh well, I'll try and write up the comedy successful failure to evict someone soon.

Channels galore!

One thing I have managed to find time to do is set myself up a Slack account. I've been aware for a while that tweetfleet had expanded on to Slack but I'd never found a reason to sign up an account. In the past week someone in my corp mentioned Slack and extolled its virtues to me. Easy to set up, better app support on mobile devices, reliable pings. It sounded pretty good. We've been using a jabber server for the three years the alliance has existed. While a group of us hang out and chat on that plenty we've rarely used it for pings and stuff. Mobile app support is pretty flaky too with a choice of Talkonaut on the iPhone or Xabber on Android, neither of which work particularly well with conference rooms. Other apps are on offer for both platforms but they were even worse!

We are now testing Slack to see if this works at least as good or better than jabber and this removed my excuse for not signing up to tweetfleet Slack. Having spent most of today in there (not talking much) it seems to be relatively chilled out, just like tweetfleet tends to be. Certainly it's miles less rage-y than the horrible EVE forums are. So come along to tweetfleet Slack and join the fun. You can find me there as @orea. Just be aware that the email address you use is visible to all so disposable addresses may be advisable.