EVE SOB

Griefer activities: A carebears perspective...

2012-02-01T17:28:00.000-08:00

TL;DR: Carebears need to be smarter and HTFU. With some "no shit Sherlock" advice on how to avoid greifers from a career 'bear.

So with a recent Blog Banter being about non-concentual PvP and the common perception that all carebears hate to fight and want to hide and cry. I decided not to write a late blog banter post, but rather compile some thoughts on the matter of Highsec Carebear life and some common types of grief attacks that prey upon us. I'd also like to impart some common sense to the issue and some VERY simple things carebears do that make them easy targets and how to reduce the risks. The truth of it all griefing is a part of EvE and supported by a large percentage of the community and the games maker CCP. EvE is a PvP based game, and like it or not most carebears actually spend most of their game time supporting this. By this I mean every rock mined, every item looted, and every ship built in some way or another feeds into the larger world of conflict that is the guts of EvE. That naga locking up your mackinaw was probably built by one of your corp. mates, or perhaps even you funshine bear. It's nothing personal and simply the circle of creation and destruction at play.

OK lets real it back and validate my carebear credentials. Here is my resume towards the profession of carebear in the form of the 2 main pilots I own(I have 4 accounts, all pilot slots filled):

SonOfBraben was born and named as homage to David Braben, the father of my first Space game love Elite, on October 18th 2009. He sits today at 32M SP with 2 alts sharing his account who add another 8M SP in the forms of PI and indy functions. SonOfBrabens skill pie chart is below, you get one guess to what his life in eve is about, bonus points for what PvP ship he flies:

Next up in my resume for the profession of carebear is my second accounts main Pilot Zombinutz. Born of all the ideals as a Caldari PvP (yes yes, chuckle away) pilot with a side task of hauling for SoBs mining on November 11th 2009. He sits at 36M Skill points with 2 alts adding 2M more SP to the account once again in PI and Indy support. The downside to all this is the significant time he spends in an Orca not a PEW PEW boat. Here be his skills as documentation of the shameful failure of his original creation:

I also have 2 other accounts with a fully trained hulk/mack pilots each. One has a Jump freighter alt the other cyno alts, oh and yes more PI and Indy support alts. I spend a LOT of time boxing all 4 accounts destroying asteroid belts and whoring ice. Honestly I am as much of a carebear as freaking bedtime Bear, the original carebear.

OK, so now that I have validated my claim to being able to speak to carebear perspectives and label myself a 100% certified career carebear. Let's get back to this business of greifer activity and how it effects the 'bear life. To do this lets identify a few definitions of major griefer actions against 'bears shall we:

Suicide Ganker: The practice of seeking to blow up a non-hostile target via means of surprise and pure firepower under the understanding that you too will not survive the encounter. High ISK killed vs. low isk spent, lots of tears and easy way to lose sec status if you want to be flashy red. SoBs WTF?! rating 10/10

Can Flipper: Seeking out jet can miners with the intention to bait them into shooting back so you can then blow them up. Not about stealing ore, but easy kills and tear harvesting with no sec status loss. SoBs WTF?! rating 6/10

Ninja Salvager/looter: the salvager looks to steal from and piss off mission runners by salvaging all there wrecks making ISK and harvesting tears. The looter is much like a can flipper looking to insight rageful retaliation garnering agro and the ability to return and gank. Kills and tears being the gain, but no sec status loss. SoBs WTF?! rating 5/10

Greifer war Decs: Declaring war on soft carebear targets with the goal of getting easy kills and stopping their productivity. Kills, tears, and perhaps the least risk of any greifer pursuit. SObs WTF?! rating 1/10

These are some of the more common activities greifers take part in. Some notable EvE events around the above include hulkageddon and the recent blue Ice blitz by the goons. In these cases they are more about market manipulation than tears to be honest. Also IMHO those caught by them are not doing everything they really should be in terms of avoiding them as well.

In all cases these are legal activities within the game and part of the creation and destruction cycle that is the core of EvE economics. People need stuff to blow up, folks pay ISK for things to blow up, 'bears make ISK building or providing the materials to build stuff to blow up. Here a nice lifecycle picture for ya:

Now that we have defined some common actions by greifers. Lets suggest some common sense around not being the victim, and rather being the proud and prosperous 'bear. Ya know the kind the greifers come to when they want 50 Nagas built for a good price, over the one they gank.

Avoiding the Suicide Ganker:

1. DON'T AFK MINE! Seriously if you have to be away from your keyboard, don't leave a mining fleet in space. UM...I might just gank you for the sheer lesson of it.

2. DON'T MINE at 0! The lazy bored greifer loves people who sit at zero. It requires zero work for them to warp to you at optimal.

3. DON'T MINE IN THE SAME SPOT ALL THE TIME! Sure same system and belt, but adjust where you are often through a series of book marks. Mine on the outside of the belts semi-circle one day, the bottom another, the top the next. Chew one end off the belt then warp to the other side. All this makes the suicide ganker have to work harder to land at optimal.

4. ALIGN TO STATION (or GTFO BM)! Yeap, takes 20 seconds, and saves you 20 seconds of "OH shit! OH SHIT!" time.

5. DO NOT BOT MINE! Cheating douche bags deserve to get ganked. If you bot mine in a system I mine in, and I am sure of it, there is a good chance an ALT of mine will land on you in a gank Naga!

6. TANK YA BARGES! A hulk in highsec with orca support should not be fit for max cargo, even then shield tank it. I once tanked a drake in lowsec on a gate for almost 3 mins, concord would have saved my ass in highsec and at least I was a PITA while being dumb.

Avoiding the Can Flipper:

1. DON'T JET CAN MINE! Seriously, if there is nothing to flip there is no can flipper.

2. ABANDON ALL CANS AND WRECKS! Blue is a can flippers least favorite color. It also lets noobs clear the wrecks that honestly most of us litter the belts with.

3. DON'T SHOOT BACK IF FLIPPED! Other than changing to a nice shade of red, they cannot legally shoot you until you flip back. If you do shoot back and you did not follow #2. Log off for the day and go play angry birds. Shooting wrecks extends timers...

4. IF YOU MUST SHOOT BACK! Either be ready for a nice bloody fight or suicide gank them with an alt in a NPC corp, so you can go right on mining afterwards.

Avoiding the Ninja Salvager/looter:

1. BE NICE! Honestly in the endless drudgery of level 4's I've ran. 90% of the times where I've had a ninja and opened a private chat to ask the Ninja how there day was going. The Ninja was pleasant and professional, we had a nice chat, and they went on to other grumpier bears.

2. ABANDON YA WRECKS! LOOT BLUE = no agro. Yet you can still loot and salvage them. Boring for most, but an open buffet for the dude who actually wants to just steal ya stuff. Know thy ninja, before doing this.

3. HAVE FUN WITH IT! Honestly the most fun I've ever had doing a level 4 mission was when I played a "get the damsel first" game with a ninja. Yeap, that mission as a level 4. Pretty cut and try blast them and loot the damsel. In the fun game version. I warped in and out. I waited logged out for 5 mins as the magnate could not DPS down the structure the damsel was in that time. In the end I simply warped in my second account in a sentry domi, and my main in a wolf. Warped out and back in, popped the structure, and raced the ninja to the can. Won by 3KM. Seriously the most fun I've had in the 100's of times I've ran that sodding mission.

4. DON'T BE A GRUMPY BEAR! That shit is what they want.

Avoiding the Greifer war Decs:

OK no bullet points for this one as it's not quite as cut and dry. It's sometimes not a result of what you have or have not done. There are many dynamics to highsec war decs. Ranging from random selection to revenge and just about everything in between. I've been dec'ed to practice PvP. I've been dec'ed my corp. was an "easy target". I've been dec'ed out of spite (Honestly). Even had an alliance dec'ed when out head got mouthy in local after being ganked. DUMBASS!

In all cases wars are a good time to dip your toe into PvP. All be it mostly station games, hide and seek, or the other side not logging in. It's a great chance for us 'bears to work on our fleet skills, have some major laughs on voice coms., and have some good clean fun. I actually keep a stockpile of T1 battle cruisers and meta 4 mission loot in the corp. hangers just for wars. Mostly the fights are one too many and the greater number typically wins the round. I get folks into a "dead heads" (implant less jump clones) and give them a hull to fit and blow up. It's kind of a QA test of the shit we build in the real world application, for you role-playing 'bears. For me it's an excuse to blow shit up, being a closet PvP wanna be 'bear. I firmly believe ALL EvE players should be able to fit and fly at least a BC for PvP.

Now it does not mean you cannot mine, or run missions, or make large amounts of ISK during wars. Having a simple "non mining in open belts" policy during wars still lets you mine mission rocks and scanned grav sites all day and night. If you are smart and follow some of the suggestions above with some added common sense around local. You can mine open belts too. I did for at least 2 of the dec's on my corps. mostly because I spend a lot of time getting to know the regulars and my HQ is in an island of systems separated from the rest of high by a short lowsec pipe. With one way to fly in just put a scout on it. I have extensive bookmarks all ready in place and a limited number of folks in local, most of which I know. If you be smart, a little paranoid, and don't afk mine chances are you will mine just as much as you normally do.

One thing I will add about war decs. It's VERY annoying when your war dec'ed and the other side station spins or sits in space cloaked. I think there should be a clause in all decs where the war is void if:

1. The aggressive party has more than 50% of its members docked 50% of time when actively logged in.

2. The aggressive party has more than 50% of its members cloaked in space for more than 50% of active time logged in.

That would sort a lot of this out.

As will all things I blog here, they are just my take on stuff. I am sure there are other forms of greifing in EVE. I am sure there are prob better ways to counter them. However in over 2 years I've lost 2 mining barges. One to a drake on a lowsec gate where I was being and idiot. The other was me warping a new Hulk to a belt and answering the phone before turning on its active shield talk. Also being an idiot.

Cheers

EVE SOB

Fuel blocks...

2012-01-21T05:31:00.001-08:00

POS owners be ready for Jan 24th and crucible 1.1! The fuel block cutover is coming.(oh an the other stuff)

Sure hope my POSi swap over gracefully to the new fuel and don't all go offline.

In other news, I'm am still carebearing in highsec. Nearing the end of a long Rhea build.

Cheers

EVE SOB

Blockade Runners: A real life use case.

2012-01-11T07:46:00.000-08:00

A while back I posted about the Viator and promised to do a comparison between it and it's Caldari cousin the Crane. Flash forward over a year and I've put quite a few AU on both hulls across mostly high and lowsec uses. I've actually got 3 pilots who can fly one or the other of these two hulls and I use them all almost daily as I ferry stuff about. I can also say that the original Viator that I purchased for the post is still alive and has certainly been placed in harm's way A LOT!

So let's review a little here. Back in November of 2010 my main industry pilot finished training for a super agile Viator fit. I had asked around over blockade runners Vs deep space transports. I got back a solid response "Blockade runners 100%!". Back then I was looking to move goods through lowsec in smaller amounts. In this regard the original fit for "Nothing to see" was perfect and the fit remains the same and unchanged today. It's my go-to cloaky hauler for which I favor more trips in greater safety for those select items one must often truck through hostile space. Here is the fit as it has been for over a year:

FIT: Viator - Nothing to See (Cost ~80M ISK)

HIGHS:
-Covert Ops Cloaking device II
MIDS:
- "Cetus" ECM Shockwave I
- Invulnerability Field II
- Y-T8 Overcharged Hydrocarbon I MWD
LOWS:
-Nanofiber Internal Structure II
-Local Hull Conversion Inertial Stabilizers I
-Expanded Cargohold II
RIGS:
-Medium Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer
-Medium Polycarbon Engine Housing I

The fit is basically a poor man's 0.0 Viator fit. It's 100% agility with a hint of "OH F**K!" insurance and honestly I've used the insurance more than once. The closets I came to loosing this hull was actually in highsec. I was hauling P3 goods from amarr space to caldari space taking advantage of some truly awesome deltas in SO and BO between both. I jumped into a 0.5 mid way right as a Smart Bomb camp went off. The first cycle of the smart bombs took me from full HP to 23 Hull. I was all ready aligning when it went off and I mashed MWD and the INV field and cleared the radius and warped right as the second cycle fired. I've also used the ECM to save a friend from a gate camp in low. I was on my way back empty. Got a "HELP! " in corp. chat and was 1 system out. Jump into system saw my mate pinned down in a drake by a hurricane a nice 7KM away. I aligned to the best celestial that would take me through the fight. Told my corpie to mash warp too, hit the MWD, ECM in range, then warp. I made it out with just enough cap to hit a safe and my corpie made it out as well. The Hurricane pilot dropped a "OMFG WTF!?" in local and we all had a chuckle over me saving a drake with a 100M ISK BR. I have some friends who fly the same fit who tell me the ECM has helped them shake fast tackle and get away before. So I can attest that the above fit is agile, survivable, and sound.

I also played around with deep space transports a bit as well when I needed to move POS parts around before I got access to a jump freighter. Honestly I can see them being a great shallow space run about at best. Basically a Bustard is a badger MK II with a better tank. The increased warp strength might save you from a solo dude with a disruptor, but it will not break a scram without an additional warp core stabilizer. I tested it with a 'ceptor with a scram and a disruptor. Base hull can break the disruptor but not the scram. Even fit out with 1 WCS, that sole 'ceptor can pin it. With two WCS it can get away from a single duel point 'ceptor. Sorry but that be LAME! Add to that that it cannot warp cloaked and has stuff all cargo space if you fit for agility. I agree Deep Space Transports stink and need some love.

OK! Back on track here. Blockade runners mate! The Viator Vs the Crane and such...

THE VIATOR

THE CRANE

Name: Viator

Hull: Iteron Class

Role: Transport

Developer: Duvolle Labs

Blockade runner transports are the fastest type of industrial available. Utilizing sturdy but lightweight construction materials and sacrificing some cargo space, these haulers are able to reach speeds greater than those of a cruiser while withstanding heavy fire - factors which make them ideal for zipping through dangerous territories with valuable cargo.

Gallente Industrial Skill Bonus:

+5% cargo capacity per level

+5% velocity per level

Transport Ships Skill Bonus:

-5% armor repairer duration per level

-98.5% to -99.25% bonus to cpu need of covert ops cloaks

Name: Crane

Hull: Badger Class

Role: Transport

Developer: Kaalakiota

Caldari Industrial Skill Bonus:

+5% cargo capacity per level

+5% velocity per level

Transport Ships Skill Bonus:

+5% shield booster boost amount per level

-98.5% to -99.25% bonus to cpu need of covert ops cloaks

High Slots	1	High Slots	1
Medium Slots	3	Medium Slots	4
Low Slots	3	Low Slots	2
Rig slots	2	Rig slots	2
CPU	250	CPU	285
Power Grid	135	Power Grid	125
Calibration	400	Calibration	400
Capacitor Capacity	875 GJ	Capacitor Capacity	843.75 GJ
Base cargo Capacity	3000 m3	Base cargo Capacity	3500 m3
Inertia Modifier	0.55x	Inertia Modifier	0.48 X
Mass	11,150,000 kg	Mass	11,150,000 kg
Shields	1266	Shields	1758
Armor	1899	Armor	1196
Hull	2602	Hull	1969
Signature Radius	115 m	Signature Radius	125m
Max Velocity	170 m/s	Max Velocity	165m/s
Ship warp Speed	9.0 AU/s	Ship warp Speed	9.00 AU/s

So bonus wise one be armor tanked and the other be shield tanked as one would expect based on race. Respectively they get armor rep or shield boost skill bonus and a -98.5% to -99.25% bonus to cloak CPU needs. Otherwise they get 25% increased cargo and speed as race industrial V is required to fly them. Honestly I don't know anyone who tanks these with active boosters/reppers here. Sure above I fit an invulnerability II, but it really only gives me 650 EHP more. So bonus really does not come into play for the REAL job at hand.

I played around with the Crane and Viator for a more lowsec focused application. No bubbles in lowsec to bust out of means we can get into warp faster. Less fast tackle in low means we can be cloaked a little longer before warping. So we can focus a little more on the max cargo capacity and let the hulls agility get us through.

In this area I mucked around with both hulls with a pair of Medium cargo hold optimization I rigs. The viator had 4,959.4 m3 and the Crane had 5,785.9 m3. Viator was 115m for sig and 0.42x for inertia, while the crane was 125m and 0.36x for inertia. So crane wins round 1 being faster to get moving and more base cargo.

I then went after max cargo capacity. The viator with the extra low slot pretty much topped out at 10,279.2 m3.The crane weighed in a close 2nd at 9,405.8 m3. One might ask what difference 873.4 m3 can make? Well let's consider nanite repair paste at its 0.01 m3 foot print 873.4 m3 means I can fit 87,340 more of them in my viator. If I sold that difference at 24K each, that's 2BN isk more in that cloaky ship. Then again having a full bay of nanite repair paste is not the best way to move around 24.6 BN ISK. So let's look at getting that large tower out to lowsec shall we. Large tower is 8k and it runs 40 blocks of fuel an hour. So the Viator drops the tower and puts 11 hours worth of fuel in it, the crane drops the same tower but only 7 hours worth of fuel. So an extra 4 hours of fuel before I need to bounce out there with a Jump Freighter and fill up the fuel bays and drop the rest of the towers arrays. Viator wins round 2 for giving me 4 more hours for a clear jump window and 2BN more isk worth of nanite repair paste I can cram in it.

I looked at adding a small shield buffer tank to each for those pesky smart bombs. Without getting too silly with SonOFBrabens skills. I can get the Crane to 15.2K EHP, 67/73/69/65, and a sig radius of 135m with 9.4k M3 cargo. The Viator 11.8K EHP, 67/58/79/65, and a sig radius of 120M with 10.2K m3. So the crane wins round 3 being able to use its extra mid slot to punch through those highsec smart bomb gate camps.

Last I tried to blend it all together and come up with a more survivable variant of the 0.0 fit I fly on my original Viator. I did not EFT this or get too silly with faction mods etc. Just named meta 4 and T2 where my alts have skills to fly. They are fit thus:

The Crane: Just Passing By - lowsec/highsec fit.

Highs:
- Covert Ops Cloaking device II
Meds:
- Medium F-S9 Regolith Shield Induction
- Medium F-S9 Regolith Shield Induction
- "Cetus" ECM Shockwave I
-Invulnerability Field II
Lows:
- Expanded Cargohold II
- Expanded Cargohold II
Rigs:
-Medium cargo hold optimization I
-Medium cargo hold optimization I

The above fit is pretty much how I fly the crane with my Freighter alt. I use it to ferry small goods around high and lowsec when a charon/rhea just does not make sense. It's actually cap stable so the ECM can be turned on and left on if you get de-cloaked. It's 7K EHP w/ 1/61/56/51 without the inv II on and 9.1K EHP 30/73/69/65 with it on. So it can take a smart bomb and GTFO (yes not going to tank for long, but that's not the idea). I has a sig radius of 135M which is so-so. Top speed of 203 m/s and a inertia modifier of 0.36x. Cargo is 9.4k m3 so it can still deliver a large tower with 7 hours of fuel to lowsec.

It's not the most awesome fit ever but it does what I want it to do. Gets small goods about empire and low. I've also dropped towers with it flying in through 12 man lowsec entry gate camps...

The Viator: :) o/ - lowsec/highsec fit (yes the name is cheeky)

Highs:
- Covert Ops Cloaking device II
Meds:
- Y-T8 Overcharged Hydrocarbon I MWD
- "Cetus" ECM Shockwave I
- Invulnerability Field II
Lows:
- Expanded Cargohold II
- Expanded Cargohold II
- Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Rigs:
-Medium cargo hold optimization I
-Medium cargo hold optimization I

The above fit is pretty much how I fly the Viator with my lowsec PI/POS/cloaky scout alt. I use this fit for everything from moving small stuff to and from the POS to hauling in PI goods. It's NOT cap stable by any means but she is FAST! It's 5.5K EHP w/ 1/41/71/51 without the inv II on and 6.1K EHP 30/58/79/65 with it on. So it might take a smart bomb and GTFO. I has a sig radius of 115M which is a little harder to lock than a barge ;). Top speed of 229m/s with MWD off and 1293 m/s with it on and a inertia modifier of 0.35x. Cargo is 8.0k m3 so it can still deliver a large tower if needed.

Again, nothing stunning here fit wise. Gets the job done and does not cost an arm and a leg.

So really either hull is a awesome blockade runner. The fits above are not perfect and some might feel the need to flame. However they do what I need them too and my pilots can fly them. In all cases this is just my take on how I fly them and how they rate side by side.

Cheers

EVE SOB

2011: It has been a good year...

2011-12-22T12:47:00.000-08:00

While in 2011 my blogging frequency was greatly reduced. My activity in EvE was actually pretty busy with as many as 30 hours a week being logged. I shifted gears from PvP dreams back to the life of the carebear. More specifically I began to start to build capital ships and acquire the BPOs that go along with it. While I may not have all the BPOs I wanted to at this point, I have enough that Orca and Charon builds are BPC cost free at this point. That's some 14 BN ISK worth of BPOs, which is not insignificant considering I make all that ISK in game while in highsec. I am not a trader and don't really run missions all that much. So the bulk of the ISK was made through mining, ship building, and PI stuffs. So as a whole I am happy with the year.

This year I was fortunate to be able to Ice Mine a lot while working remotely in my RL job. I was clear to make it a semi-afk task that was not disruptive to my RL work schedule. Using a chime timer, 2 PCs connected to a single keyboard and mouse with "synergy", and the layout of my home office. I was able to mine as much as 1500 blocks of Ice in the average work day. This netted me between 100-200M+ ISK a day with the fluctuation of Ice prices and the amount of risk I wanted to place my fleet in. It sparked the addition of a 3rd and 4th account to my EvE addiction. These accounts also opened up a Jump Freighter pilot and a potential to reach 60 PI planets. It also allowed me to start to free up Zombinutz and allow him to once again dream more of PvP.

In the ship building area Sonofbraben is able to build anything from a drone to a Dreadnought this year. Including 3/4 race T2 ships up to Jump Freighters with Amarr being the last hurdle there. I got his Ice refining maxed, his mining maxed, and added a T2 PvP Neut Domi and a PvE rail Mega fit to his "can fly properly" list. I maxed out his R&D agents to 6 jobs and completed standings with Lai Dai for level 4 R&D agents. I got him to 9.6 with Caldari navy and 5.2 with caldari State. Allowing me to anchored POS in 0.5 caldari Highsec systems. I added a whole list of remote rep and drone skills to his docket as well.

Zombinutz spent a good amount of his life in an Orca this year. Which is a pretty sad confession of a 32M SP PvP trained Pilot. I did however boost a lot of gunnery skills this past year, train all Missile types to T2 level IV and a lot of supporting Missile skills to IV. I achieved shield reinforcement elite and armor reinforment improved. I traded my HAM Drake for a 425MM Hurricane for PvP and my raven for a navy Scorp for PvE. I also finally got my first real solo Kill. I also did my first highsec Mackinaw gank as well. LOL!

Healthcare for Space Hermits saw some changes this year. In and out of alliances and coalitions. Members coming and going both from the Corp. and the game. I made some new friends and saw some old ones retire. Now we sit in an alliance again with some folks who like it simple and fun. We have some great members and some fun projects. We remain a Highsec Indy based corp. However we are poking about in LowSec for Industry and some interest in small gang PvP. I logged out one Friday with no plans of WH operations and logged in on a Monday to find one of my directors dropped 1.2BN ISK into a C2. So we are in the WH game I guess. Our Alliance has ins to 0.0 space and we are starting to get requests to build a lot more capital ships. We even had a NYX build request but lacked the 0.0 facilities required. The Alliance had all the mats on hand and a good swag of the BPOs. If anyone is looking for a indy corp. In the lonetrek area look us up.

It's not the most exciting year. I could have made more ISK and branched down a lot of different paths. Yet I am happy with 2011. 2012 has a lot of new ventures in the works and honestly if nothing changes and I do the exact same stuff I did in 2011. I'll be happy and content in my own little EvE life.

Have a safe and happy holidays one and all.

Cheers

EVE SOB

shifting changing EvE, why we love her.

2011-12-10T20:34:00.001-08:00

It's late on a Saturday night around 11:30pm local. Not late by some standards, but late enough that I find it odd to be blogging. Yesterday was a long day in the real world. I was at the work grind fighting technology fires for 26 hours straight. I mined some ice in that time as I do as a back ground task to work. Some listen to music, others surf the web, for me I drag and drop 12 blocks of ice every 211 seconds as my mental stimulus at work. I spend 10+ hours a day actively working for my company and skip lunch breaks most days. I think I can afford an extra drag and drop here and there. At least I am not smoking for 10M every hour, or taking 2 hour lunch breaks, or talking to chuck by the water cooler for half the day.

I've just logged on for a "quick" shuffle of reactions and to check fuel levels etc. Seems like the few weeks initially estimated to cut over to the new fuel blocks is more like 6 weeks. This is cool. It means I go back to running my towers and fueling them based on CPU and Power usage for a bit longer. Less Ice to mine for fuel, more for profit.

I am reacting the materials required for the T2 parts for a Rhea. With a few towers and associated reactors (saving grid for guns and a few moon harvs) It's a slow process but one that requires little time feeding. The new online/offline times have made it SO much better for managing a reaction farm. Removing the fuel costs from the towers through a 30 planet PI farm (ran in 3 day cycles, hauled once a week) and semi afk Ice mining while working. I've gotten it down to about 3BN for the build cost for the Rhea. Give or take. That's 50% of current market and includes all BPCs (I own the T2 BPOs, and a few of the BPOs for the Charon), rare minerals, and moon minerals to react into the compounds to make the Rhea. Mining all the trit to iso my self. It's a 5-6 week process, but hey I can make ~3BN with most of it just being putting stuff in a reactor and letting it churn.

The corp. ticks along with a few new folks joining. Another 4 account mining nut like myself joined up and his mate who is a new eve player seeking PvP. Alliance members split off to form a 0.0 PvP corp. Have a 60 day trial that's going well. Giving us all the opportunity to break off and go play in Null. I've got too much respect for those trying to make a go of it to bounce in and out. At least until they are vetted with the alliance they joined.

Some plans to expand our operations to lowsec in 2012. A Rorqual is in the works and should be built in about 15 days. Opens a lot of doors like our first Rhea did as we have fully trained pilots for both now. So some more time poking around lowsec for quiet backwater systems that the piwates don;t visit much is on the docket as well.

We are pondering some WH fun with the new exciting PI taxes. One of the lowsec systems I have a POS in, the locals ripped out all the customs offices and set the tax to 10% to match highsec. So that's nice and there are some good planets out that way. I might drop a PI alt out there.

I''ve almost closed the blog a few times because of inactivity, but I am starting to dig deeper into industry and seeking rarer minerals. It might prove for some more posts of interest. Also VERY happy with crucible and all the goodies. Been playing with gank Naga with zomb. Fun stuff.

Cheers

EVE SOB

Updates and such...

2011-11-17T17:19:00.001-08:00

Hello again! It's been a long time since my last post. Seems to be a trend but I do have some news.

Project rhea is still on going, but a new and wealthy Corp. Member purchased one to help with the building of 2. I've been using it move stuff about and I have to tell you. It's a blast to right click and select jump and be on the other side of a region. Truly opens up new possibilities for me as a player, let alone for the corp and alliance.

HCSH has also set up some small moon mining endeavors to which the rhea helps no end in fueling and getting goods back to manufacturing and market. The moon mining and associated other activities have halved the build cost of all T2 ships. On the 2 rhea builds it will save us 6 BN alone. Worth a few large towers, some ice mining and a few extra PI alts.

PvP wise I am rapidly growing irate at myself for making ZombiNutz a Orca Pilot. I've been refining my gunnery skills and 'cane fit since my 8:1 encounter in lowsec. November 28th- December 3rd I plan to put the tweaks and training to the test. More to come here.

Like wise I have an in to go back out to Null sec. This time I have better logistics and a lot more capital behind me. It's a deviation to the master plan, but frankly I need a change.

Cheers

EVE SOB

Blowing off some steam.

2011-11-04T23:56:00.000-07:00

Over the few years I've played EvE. I've blogged about PvP and getting my carebear paws bloody. A tale of 5 dead rifters etc. Other than some basic 0.0 gate gamps (both ends of the stick) and some highsec 1 Vs 1s my PvP experience has been limited.

Anyhow, I built Zombinutz 20 Hurricanes one day a month or so back. I sold off 10, fit 5 in a classic 425mm AC armor buffer fit for war time fun, and have another 5 waiting for arty specks when I get some more skills baked.Sadly the last 2 wars have been mega lame so tonight I decided it was time to burn a hull and go into lowsec.

I started in a specific part of LowSec that I ferry goods through often. There are a group of pirates that camp the gates praying on haulers and such that try to slip through. They have nabbed a few of my corp mates so I was looking to return the favor. I had a cloak in the highs as I was parked of one there favorite kill gates. Hoping to catch them in the act and jump them.Sadly none were about.

The alliance were talking smack about me floating in a 0.4 pipe hunting folks who were not online. One of the PvP focused dude was laying smack about coming down to shoot me himself. So I decide to head over to TAMA and take a walk though blackrise. Where there was a good chance I was going to die, or at least see some one to fight.

Jumped into Tama and local was 7. Not too exciting honestly, it tends to get busy at 20+ so I headed over to Kedama to start my planned run through blackrise. I jump through the gate into a nice 8 man Red Federation camp. Well the fight was on like it or not! I re-approached the gate at the first yellow box and they jumped folks through so I had two choices. A: Try to cut and run for another out gate or stick to plan B: and face the music back in tama.

I chose B and jumped through. I tried to warp through the gate to a planet but got pointed and webbed. I was 9k out full burn and locked onto a thorax as it was the one who aggressed and was nice and close. So it got the Neut and the ACs, the warrior II went after a rifter, but I pulled them back to finish off the thorax once it hit half armor. I was about 4K from the gate when the following happened. The thorax went down giving my first real solo kill. Hitting half structure I aligned to the out gate to high and mashed warp too. Irene ended her term of service and my pod was clear and in warp to the gate. Seems the stiletto, rifter and two jaguar were not fast enough on the pod so those implants live another day.

GFs exchanged in local and I'd taken my first step into solo lowsec PvP with a 1:1 kill:death and also getting the pod clear. It's 3 hours later and past 3 am local time. I am calm but some what excited. I remembered that I cooked my guns way too late when the thorax was half into armor. I should have went for the thresher and rifter first to get some webs off me and perhaps made the gate. Then again it's easy to look back and shouda-wouda-couda.

Next time I might take some friends with me, then again there is some satisfaction in going solo. Either way I really should do this more.

Cheers

EVE SOB

Fizzle pop

2011-11-04T18:58:00.001-07:00

Well the war is over. A rather disappointing end to a rather dull 2 weeks. Seems like while we got a few kills most of the time it was station camping or chasing jump clones about.

The end was the disbanding of the opposing alliance and hence the forfeit of the wardec against us. Makes the mind boggle a little, but who am I to try and get into the minds of out assailants?!

In other news Rhea production progresses and mining resumes. Looking forward to the jump freighter and all it unlocks for the little Corp.

We added a few new members during the war. A couple of fine blokes from South Africa. I met them in local one day and started a wager over the SA VS AUST world rugby match. I ended up 50m isk and 2 new friends better off. So it was a good day.

The war has left a few of the ranks restless and hungry for pew pew that did not come with the war. As such I think it might be time for a little skirmish with a small pirate Corp that hunts the lowsec pipe between out offices. Hope to post some more on that soon.

Well back to it.

Cheers

EVE SOB

War time activities

2011-10-26T15:57:00.001-07:00

Well it has been a dull few days in the war. At first I was all keen and spent most of my time with mains logged off in the last known location of my enemies with an alt logged in. Watching and waiting. However after 24 hours of them not logging in. Not 1. I decided it was time to be more productive.

So I peeled off one of my pilots and set out into lowsec. See I have this need for moon goo. I have some large T2 ships to build and well having a supply of moon goo would save me a small fortune. This means going to 0.1-0.3 systems and scanning moons.

I will say the process for scanning moons is a little dry with a cov ops frigate, expanded probe launcher, and discovery probes. You point the ship at the moon, fire probe, cloak, and wait 10 mins for results.

Those results are either a pop-up saying "tough luck" or a flashy tab and entry on you moon analysis tab under you scanning menu. I found out that if you log out this tab clears. So spreadsheets are a must.

I also took the time to note the moons that were occupied as well. What kind of POS, was it online, who owned it, what arrays it had anchored, and that sort of thing. Know thy neighbours and all that.

I spent a day and surveyed over 80 moons across a few select systems. It was more fun than waiting for the other team to show up for the war and I found several moons with the mineral types I was looking for. Cost me about 30M with the ship, fit and probes. Not bad and cheaper than loosing a 'cane.

Today I just blatantly mined all day. The other team had one pilot log in to scamper about for around half an hour before logging off. Seriously they declared war against our alliance...I swear it.

Honestly I think a war dec should auto retract if the decking CEO does not log in for longer than an hour every 24 hours. Oh and the decking Corp/alliance should be forced to pay the other side 10x the dec fee if this default happens.

Cheers

EVE SOB

Another war...

2011-10-23T15:15:00.001-07:00

Another week of sitting in a PvP ship trying to start a fight.

Seriously why wardec and then jump clone 32 jumps away!?

I mean shit I offered 2 ponies, a stripper pole, girl scout cookies with a troop of naked tween girl scouts, my ship, my pod with a 200m isk bounty, and my sister. All the other dude had to do was un-dock or leave the alliance that has decked us. One of my alliance mates said he was going to roll and alt, join the other side and cash that deal out.

We are sadly reduced to gang raping known ice mining Alts of the decing corps leader in destroyers for kicks.

My security status be falling, soon I'll not be able to return to my carebear ways and then what am I to do with 10 pre-fit 425mm 'canes?!

I also most tagged a orca last night I was at 12km full burn with scram cooked when it warped :( I'll get it, even if I I've to dec this ass clown myself for a week or two.

Cheers

EVE SOB

Ship spinning is back

2011-10-18T07:11:00.001-07:00

Well more so I am not forced to load CQ anymore. The simple things in life just returned. Oh happy Indy pilot I am.

Cheers

EVE SOB

Project Rhea

2011-10-13T20:25:00.001-07:00

Quick little update on current doings in EvE.

First of all the dev blog on balancing for Capital ships appears to be a step towards a happier EvE. Yeah sure I am not much in the know about supercapital battles. However I like the fact that super carriers can no longer carry all kinds of drones. I like that Titan super weapons can not target sub caps. I also like no logiffski as well. Seems to me like a step in the right direction. I mean more use for sub-caps. Supercaps bought in for killing other supercaps and not some dude in a drake. No more "oh snap! My titan is pointed with a failing tank. I'll just log off and play an alt for a day then log back in to my ship later!" bull. You put it on the field you darn well be ready to loose it.

So one of the things that a Titan super weapon can shoot still post patch are jump freighters. Oddly enough this is some thing I am learning about.

See I have this fully trained freighter alt now. All ready to fly his Rhea. The down side is I don't own a Rhea...

What to do!? Why build one of course. 5.6 bn for a Charon with so so cargo capacity that can jump 5ly us silly talk. So I am busy building all the little bits that I can.

Anyhow this be an iPhone post. So not too much detail, but I will post a full report on the ins and outs and savings in building my own Rhea!

Cheers

EVE SOB

Negativity - My shame

2011-09-09T06:52:00.000-07:00

OK! Every once and a while I read back through my posts to get a feel for my writing moods. While I might be a self labeled grumpy old space hermit. Honestly this year I've been a major downer in reading my blog back. I have a lot of outward angst towards EvE here.

The funny thing is I log 40+ hours a week of EvE time. I get pissy when the servers are down and have 1 and 2 year skills plans for all 4 of my accounts. I secretly love EvE! Heck my alliance mates firmly believe EvE is my real job and RL is what I do for kicks.

Apparently outwardly in my blogging I've become this little blue fellow in the middle of the picture. Honestly I do this every year or so with EvE. It comes when I find myself in a rut and some what bored with my current adventures. The schedule of my 40+ hours of EvE time is mostly balanced around RL work. I have a lot of time where EvE is process based as a secondary task to that RL work (which comes first). I am also a father of 2 boys in RL, who come before my 12 alter egos in EvE. So most of my play time is very much a semi afk affair and this leads well into the industrial side of EvE. Mining belts dry, taking that resource and stacking it into build jobs. Research and invention tasks also bolt well into this available time. P.I. as well. I am very busy in EvE.

The downside of all this would be the level of monotony associated with these tasks. Honestly I can see why people bot a lot of these tasks. I however cannot bot, just rubs me the wrong way. Seems like cheating, and according to the EULA it is. So for now at least this is my EvE experience. The process driven and cyclic task based life of the industrialist. Honestly it's not a bad life and I can make 1BN isk a week with out breaking a sweat. Not too shabby at all.

So what's missing? Honestly I am not sure but I have some theories:

The first is PvP and my truly lame attempts at experiencing it. Nobody to blame here but myself. I just have not really given it a solid go. So this needs to change one way or another. Less talk more action even if I just undock and die. It's still a break in the routine and a new experience. Not going to talk about PvP anymore until I have a killmail to post.

The second is highsec. It's nature alone is very safe and static for those that want to be left alone to do there own thing. It's a great place for small groups of PvE folks and the small bands of PvP folks who harass them. In the same light it's also a very quickly experienced part of the game and then you're just in limbo. Same subset of missions and same subset of rocks to mine. I believe this is CCPs way to move folks out of the lobby and into the sandbox. It's time for me to go play in the sand more. So a change of sec space for some of my pilots would help mix things up. More about lowsec plans when they happen.

The third is walking in stations. I truly want this to be a great feature around which the community side of EvE can take more form and expression. I am not against vanity items to be honest. I don't care for the pricing and it's not some thing that interests me too much. Then again in RL I am a $20 jeans and EvE t-shirt kind of bloke. I cannot wait to see what's beyond station hanger door. I just have to be careful to not let my imagination over play the implementation. More to come on this when the station doors open.

I promise to be happier, as much as a grumpy old hermit can ;)

Cheers

EVE SOB

little nothings...

2011-09-02T14:11:00.000-07:00

Hello again dear reader(s). I trust you're doing well and content in your virtual life? Does this post find you at peace or filled with emo rage over our beloved EvE?

I am for once some what contented with in the realm of my multi faceted EvE existences.Contented being a fancy word for accepting the boredom. I have some 12 different people I assume the role of now with in the game. Each at different stages of development with in that given role or roles about new Eden. Those roles range from a grumpy old indy space hermit, through a lost PvP pilot in an orca, to a band of Caldari girls named after fine Scotch who lay waiting for training queues. There is another who might prove to be better known some day, but for now he remains in the shadows.

So really this post has not real purpose. It's a bunch of sweet nothings. I continue to mine Ice and make ISK. I build stuff (20 hurricanes, 100 Hammer Head IIs and 90 Hobgoblin IIs this week), and research BPOs. I train characters, buy ships, and see good blogs die day in and day out.

But well LOWsec is where it is at apparently. Shame even that brings me no excitement. Of late I could haul my goods through lowsec in a charon at 5% hull and not see another soul for the most part.

Perhaps it's time for me to go griefer...or try lowsec mining to give some badass a cheap kill...or start wardecking other indy corps for grins...IDK...Nothing changes. ISK and SKILLPOINTS go up, but its the same damn game it was 6 months ago.

this about sums it:

My 8 year old son "hey what can you do now you can walk?"

I showed him ALL the features of CQ to which he replied "Wow, pretty boring. You cannot even jump or run! Where are all the other people?"

I say "I know Son, it's VERY lame and that is the BIG summer expansion. Want to play some Lego batman with me on the PS3?"

I log and we go play a game where you can run and jump and interact with stuff that is not $15 a month.

Cheers

EVE SOB

Standardized Monotony...

2011-08-23T13:00:00.000-07:00

I was reading this DEV BLOG the other day. All keen about the prospect of 0.0 getting some love. Yet one line hit me like a ton of bricks smack in the face:

"Making something tedious will not stop players doing it if it's very clearly the best option. They'll do it, and they'll hate it"

OK so the dev blog itself has a lot more too it, but this line made me stop and think of the mindless repetitive stuff I do daily in EVE. That was the slapin the face. He are the things I do day in and day out:

1: Restart the processors on 25 planets
2: Mine 500-1000 blocks of Ice. drag and drop ice every 3.8M. Haul it to station every 1.2 hours.
3: Run the same 10 courier missions over and over to raise CreoDron standings for R&D
4: type "o/" in every chat channel
5: travel through lowsec but clicking warp too -> MWD -> Cov ops cloak.
6: add people to a fleet by selecting invite to fleet -> wing -> squad -> Squad member
7: Buy stuff low, haul, sell high
8: Click on Mail -> mark all as read on 90% of it.

I am sure there are more, but that's a pretty monotonous at least once a day routine. The sad thing is when I break from schedule and do something different. I warp to encounter -> ctrl+click all the + and then click on the missile spam death button. Then I salvage it all until I cannot keep my eyes open.

Seriously the carebear life is a whole mess of Standardized Monotony!

Cheers

EVE SOB

P.S. I hope they fix 0.0 and lowsec so I can GTFO out of Highsec.

Disturbance in the blog force...

2011-08-17T07:20:00.000-07:00

Things change they say. Those changes can be good and bad. I'd like to believe good things can last forever and through change the longevity of said good thing can be achieved. This assumes the the good core of it is not drastically altered to where it becomes a brand new good thing.

One might consider EvE to have changed drastically this year with Incrana and micro transactions. Others might consider it did not change enough where it needed too. This flux in the good thing that is "EVE" has changed one thing for sure. The face of the blogging community and while it's not the only factor at play. There is a unmistakable disturbance in the blog force here.

Perhaps the biggest news is that of the "blog father" CrazyKinux announcing his retirement from the EvE blogging world. Shutting down his famous EvE blog with this last Post. While it was not so much the game that created this action. It is still a blow to the community, as well, he bought popularity to EvE blogging and did tremendous things for EvE and those that play it. The blogPack and the blog Banter being 2 very notable children of his influence. It was these that compelled me to blog about EvE because it was just what people did when they played EvE. He will be missed but will he be replaced? Perhaps in small parts yes, but not as one individual IMO.

Outside this there are a few other ones to note. Helecity Bosson got banned. Mansai hung up the harness. Arukemos and keith Neilson got all RL on us. Mynxee's blog http://lifeinlowsec.blogspot.com/ is now a private blog. While I cannot fault any of these people for there actions and convictions. They are blogs I read daily and many of them were instrumental in the community. They are missed.

My own blogging has become a slow trickle as well. It's not through lack of interest in the game but rather a drastic change in focus in my in game activities. I am currently 100% carebear mode and as a result I have blogged about 100% of what I am doing in the past. So aside from some updates, the annual war with a griefer, and new toys there is not much to blog about. Does this mean I don't play EvE anymore? Nope! Does this mean I am going to close the blog? Nope!

I am hoping the changes continue to happen to EvE. I hope those changes don't drive away players and entertaining bloggers. However for the PvP folks there seems to be very little love from CCP. Kind of scary in a self proclaimed PvP sandbox game that exists on the need for PEW PEW to blow shit up to drive the game economy along. Incarna was a MAJOR flop IMHO and should not have been released until it was fully baked. Microtransactions are 100% tied to Incarna today and created a Vast rift in the community. I hope CCP reads the signs and listens to the players, but hope is often that of people who are not wanting to face the truth. Space barbies and dress up seem to be the new direction of EvE for CCP. They all ready make all the money they can from PEW PEW. With dust coming, they need to add full body avitars to the game. I am kind of curious what they will do with Incarna past CQ. I'd love to be able to board ships with an assault team. I'd love to be able to land on my PI colonies and defend them. I'd love to have a bar as my corps. Public channel. I'd like the choice to find the station huggers in said bars and pop a cap in there dome. Will it happen? who knows. Yet if it does, what will that do the the community and the face of the EvE blog sphere?

Cheers

EVE SOB

Updates and such...

2011-08-15T15:35:00.000-07:00

Hello again Mom and the few others that read about my EVE life. It's been a while since I posted. Yes yes, it's always a while these days between posts. The thing is, well not much is happening. I've also kind of stopped posting thing I might do. Like cage fights or 5 dead rifters.

OK so with all that what has happened? I continue to buy and research BPOs. So much so that I recently upgraded my highsec POS from a small to medium tower. Added some fun stuff for R&D, Manufacturing and war time stuffs.

I've also added a 4th account to my ranks finding now that I get exponential gains from each mining pilot in my fleet. I also had more R&D and manufacturing slots than I had people to use them, and well the ability to fund accounts with Plex. It kind of just happened. Anyhow the new "guy" is chewing through exhumer/science/manufacturing school. He can fly a T2 fit Caracal for both PvE and PvP as well. His alt slots have some interesting plans, but that's one of those I might do things.

HCSH and HCRND are now part of an Alliance again. Former alliance mates formed up a new one and we are now part of Forged in Fire (FORG). It's an industrialist based highsec/lowsec Alliance which pretty much builds capital ships and such. So another alliance ticker at the end, but old folks I've known in game for a bit now.

My Rhea alt is slugging away at the requirements and optimals for the flight of the jump freighter. The most exciting part is that his PI side project is paying for the skill books along the way. The next big hurdle here is the RHEA itself. 5+ BN ISK for a hauler seems daunting, but with all things one must ponder the cost of building. Then it's just hours in a belt and stuff to buy in Jita. So with 50 days left on the train clock I am also looking at Rhea Build skills with SOB :)

Lets see what else. Oh yeas, SOBs personal "Monday" project is called "Project 20 'canes". This is exactly what it sounds like. After I mine POS ICE on Mondays I then go out and mine rocks towards a "project". This project is simply to build 20 hurricanes and the T2 fit I have chosen for it. Corp and Alliance folks asked me why I would want 20 fit 'canes and who pissed me off or needs to be kilt. I am not commenting on the future of these 20 'canes past the fit having a point and no desire to sell them. May or may not do anything with them at all. Right now 5/20 are built and this Monday is shaping up for a few more.

ICE mining for ISK continues to consume most of my time after this. I make 150M+ a day sitting in a belt while I RL work. Yes yes, I am bad working and playing video games. However my work gets done, and my company still gets 10+ hours a day out of my hide. I might surf the web a little (LOT) less, but well ice mining is a drag and drop every 4 mins and a dock and unload every hour and 20 mins. Either way ICE still provides me with the funding for new BPOs and toys like my Navy Scorp.

SOB is nearing the end of a long set of Science skill training for T2 anything building. I've been pondering a carrier for him next as a break from indy focus. Just as I have my eyes on a HAC and a new BS hull. SO I'll be training some new toys for him soon before T3 production skills etc. carrier is kind of cool and as I like to be able to build what I fly, it's another BPO set and potential buid to sell item for me. Oh and all those drones and such too :)

Anyhow, for now I am out of stuff to waffle about. Zomb is T2 HAC ready and training medium AC gun skillz at the moment just in case he stops being my ORCA bitch.

Cheers

EVE SOB

Grand Master Plan...

2011-07-29T11:45:00.000-07:00

We all have one. A Grand Master Plan that we strive towards. Some are simple like "I will kill EVERYONE in lowsec today!" and other more Grand "I will convince everyone in Providence I am the ONE true Ruler!". Yet most of us really just need ISK to pay for our plans. So one could consider making ISK and lot of it the common Grand Master Plan for most EVE players.

There are many ways to make ISK in EVE. From modest belt ratting and salvaging to multi faceted 0.0 mega conglomerates. I've been making 140-150M ISK a day mining ice 4 days a week of late. It's tedious work best suited for bots, but I can do it while engaged in other life tasks. So for me it's a pretty damn fine way to make isk requiring two drag and drops every 4 mins and a dock and unload every hour or so. Pretty much like watching any other of the processes I monitor daily.

Anyhow I have a few other passive income slots as well through P.I. and research. I also have this wonderful little highsec POS tucked away with lots of copy slots available. See the plan is not a new one, nor is it really that cunning. In fact a number of other bloggers are currently vacationing from there WH or 0.0 lives to do it. It's really just the BPC market and building anything from an Orca to a Dred. See today if I want to build an Orca, I have to shovel out 100M in BPCs to some one else or a Charon it's 200M for BPCs. NOT COOL!

Yet the cunning plan is not to do that anymore, but BUY my OWN capital ships and capital component BPOs and be the dude getting that 200M. Well that and adding 100-200M on top of the Orcas and Charons I build. Cunning plan yes YES it is.

BUT WAIT! Those Pesky ME and PE thingies are not there with new BPOs. Yeaps, this is true so this plan requires some nurturing and time to flourish. See an orca BPO takes about 8 months of stewing in a POS ME/PE lab before it can be really considered useful. Charon about the same. Capital components 1-2 months to simmer before serving. So really this is a 6-12 month plan of which I am well behind many other EvE players.

I am cool with this as, well I have my 5 day schedule where one day I do PI, feed the POS and stockpile rocks. Then the other 4 days I either mine rocks for corp projects, or suck in 1000+ blocks of white glaze to sell in the 138,000-154,000 per block markets we are seeing these days. So time and ISK I have on my side.

Anyhows, that's the Grand Master Plan as of today...

Cheers

EVE SOB

New Toy: Scorpion Navy Issue.

2011-07-28T10:01:00.000-07:00

So it's no secret that I've been mining a LOT these days. Like 150M ISK a day worth of ice kind of mining, or all the rocks to build an orca in 4 days kind of mining. Silly amounts of time in a belt sucking in stuff. I've sworn off mining before and promised to never do it again. However honestly it's one of those past times in EVE that fits my 80% semi afk play time. So well I mine a lot...

Anyhow, I've put all that mining ISK into new mining fleets ships and BPOs for a good while now. My highsec POS has been invaluable and I get it's fuel for free through PI and 1 hours Ice mining a week. So it was time to invest in some fun ships for that 20% of my game time where I can actually focus on the game 100%

Last weeks war saw me spend about 100M ISK in new PvP fit ships that ultimately floated in space around a gate or station. Those are now stowed and ready for when I might need them again with a LOT of ammo and spare parts/hulls. So I decided it was time to spend some ISK on my Mission boats. The raven is long in the tooth now and a change was needed.

So I had two paths I could go down the Missile loving caldari path. The CNR or the Scorpion Navy Issue. More gank and more tank essentially. I tend to duel box missions in a pair of battle ships and constantly found myself adding RR from my second BS to the raven. This essentially meant I had a dominix in space with sentries out and the highs shield boosting the raven. I could have a T2 fit megathron instead of that Domi if the damn raven could tank. So ultimately I went for less gank and a more self sufficient tank. Hence the Navy Scorpion.

I fit it with an nice active tank and some T@ cruise launchers. Getting 80+% across all resists with my current skills and about 47M cap time before it bleeds dry with it all on. Here is the fit:

HIGH:

6 x Cruise Missile Launcher IIs
1 x Drone Link Augmentor

MED:
1 x meta 4 target painter (too lazy to type the full name)
2 x Invulnerability Field II
1 x Large Shield Booster
2 x Shield Boost Amplifier II
1 x Photon Scattering Field
1 x Head Dissipation Field II

LOW:
2 x Capacitor Flux Coil II
2 x Ballistic Control System II

RIGS:
3 x Large Capacitor Control Circuit I

Drones:
5 x Hobgoblin II
5 X Hammerhead II

Pretty standard stuff honestly for a PvE boat IMO, but some might disagree (post a fit if you do).

So I dropped by my local caldari Navy lvl 4 agent, pulled Guristas Extravaganza and set about the task of shooting red crosses dead. Dude I am not excited easy by level 4 after over 2 years as mostly a carebear. However I was very excited that this thing could aggro all the spawns in the last room (I triggered on purpose) andtank them all while I burned them down with cruise missile spam death and drones. If that was my old Active raven, I'd be out of cap boosters and dead or running about half way through it.

So this leaves me with a dilemma now. See I have this Gellante Battlle ship that really I don't need now and I have to find something for SOB to fly in missions to bring more gank to the party. PvE fit rail mega perhaps...

Cheers

EVE SOB

War report: Um...it's over?!?!

2011-07-24T13:16:00.000-07:00

In the end I think our oppressors found the war to be equally lacking in stimulus as we did. We all spent time in local together. I tried to chat parley, they shunned. In the end the only shots fired were friendly shield tests.

In the end it did allow us to fit up some PvP ships, figure out what holes we wanted to fill, work on our fleet communications and well be able to stand and fight. I was able to share with some the techniques I learned for setting up camps etc in my short stay in 0.0. Also some folks got some free Jump Clones as a result of joining HCRND and it has Wicked good standings with Caldari State and navy.

So in short the war was not that exciting PvP wise. Honestly there was none. It was a good exercise in shutting the doors and putting the pointy end in space. So for that I can thank the corp. that dec'd us.

For now it's back to amassing large amounts of ISK and wondering if that HAM drake fit really would have worked :)

Cheers

EVE SOB

War report Day 2

2011-07-21T16:48:00.000-07:00

Well the picture should give you a clue. Our sole antagonist logs in for a bit. Accepts my private conversation but does not respond to my "Good Day. How are you today?" civilities. Yes I know, no comms blah blah, but as CEO I have to try to parlay. I add "Still not talking? Pity. Have a nice day." before closing the chat.

We sit on gates in battleships alone with juicy KILL mails written on the side. Scorpions of all things too with lousy tanks. Just waiting for this 5 year old pilot to reap us with her Manticore called "Jaws". Yet she simply sits there cloaked and chews gum. Ah well we try to be tasty snacks for our oppressors. We truly do.

I've been mining during the war. Put a raven in the cooker today after knocking out the last of the mats. Not really that hard solo mining bouncing belts staying aligned and watching local. Add some watch list contacts and a little healthy dSCAN now and then. Honestly it's a damn sight more exciting than mining during peace.

Logging for the day. ISK has been made and attempts to fight have been had. Lets hope tomorrow has a Kill mail eh?

Cheers

EVE SOB

On the go SOB: special WAR eddition

2011-07-20T16:49:00.001-07:00

HCSH and HCRND have both been war decked by a 2 man Corp.

Pilots are 2 and 5 year pilots. One no kills the other 46.

All none combative crew removed from Corps. The rest are rallied and ready to play.

More to come...

Cheers

EVE SOB

On the go sob #6

2011-07-15T18:00:00.001-07:00

Some members of HCSH joined with some former alliance folks to bash a POS. Not really huge news but there is a little back story.

See the POS belonged to our former alliance leader. Who through his own actions alienated most of us. The story would have ended there but said fellow accused certain folks of hiring a merc Corp to dec him. Claiming former Alliance members were plotting to explode his POS.

I cannot say if any one hired a copy or not. However those accused of the crime decided to be guilty. Boom one less POS on lowsec.

Cheers

EVE SOB

Random Stuff

2011-07-08T13:51:00.000-07:00

There is no particular topic for this post. No real reason to write it honestly. It truly will be/is random stuff that popped into my head this Friday while I mined ice.

The first is that my net worth after a few years at this game is only about 6 BN ISK. Factoring in current wallet and assets. Not too much for 2 years of game play, but I guess we have all blown up ships and fired ammo. Still I need MORE net value. Taking a mental note to fix this, greed is good.

The next is the funny way old "associates" come out of the wood work from time to time. Not going to dive too deep in this pool, but I've had more than a few folks ask me to come shoot people in Null again of late. Not yet, the bear is still growing fat.

I like RJs twitter hats over at EVEOGANDA. They truly are THE vanity Item to have. I might ask him for a pony hat for Zombinutz as my new "about me" picture. Then again, I might leave him be.

Seems like some folks really have quit EVE over the last patch. Sad times but well folks are allowed to act as they will. I'll miss some blogs for sure. :(

I enjoyed this post over at eve's parity bit. I totally like the ideals of there needing to be a separate process for de-podding for those that want to walk. Just as I agree it's a bit much to go from the nervous system and brain of a ship and suddenly be a humanoid with perfect hair and an itchy head. Excellent suggestion of a middle ground stage. Solving many current ISSUES folks might have with CQ and the lack of the hanger/ship spinning state we all loved.

I have three accounts and yet I crave a 4th. WHY!?!

Will future releases of Incarna let me turn my corps public channel "HCSH-Tavern" into an Actual tavern? How much will it cost to have a bar? Will I need to hire bouncers? Will those be EVE players or Dust players? Does anyone want to hang out in my public corp. Bar and drink fictional drinks while sipping real ones alone in your office? Can I shoot those I don;t like when In my bar, can they shoot me. Will exotic dancers be PG-13 or M for mature if allowed. Can you get drunk in Incarna in my bar, and crash your ship into the docking bays? Who knows....Does anyone care?

All right, real world Mrs SOB birthday day. Off to make Chicken Piccata and eat some cake.

Cheers

EVE SOB

On the go SOB #6

2011-07-02T06:07:00.001-07:00

Sitting here watching my kids slice and dice objects on a Wii speed cutting game. I find my self pondering what next to do in EVE.

I've been mining like a crazed fool over the last few months. I've mined ice and rocks. Built charon and orca and ravens. I've made and spent and made back a few billion as well through inflated ice prices.

I should run more missions to raise standings with R&D corps. I should invent more T2 stuff. I should finish that Corp project. Yet I need more ISK for my goals, like all of us. So perhaps I might give trading a go.

I have some basic trading skills on sonofbraben, but will most likely split off an alt and train a dedicated trading pilot. The plan right now is to peel off 500M and see what my trading alt can do with it once trained.

Any advice from others is welcomed, even if I know another trader is competition.

And yes yes, buy low sell high! Check on that advice. :)

Cheers

EVE SOB

On the go sob #5

2011-07-01T18:20:00.001-07:00

Hello EvE addicts. It has been a few days since incarna launched. While I am still ho hum about CQ. I have come terms with it and no longer fear the tyranny of micro transactions.

It is a little early to truly judge either feature just yet honestly. Not to mention since the launch I've mined enough rocks to bake an Orca and added half a billion ISK to my wallet.

So really the world has not imploded for me and I am not near emo rage quitting.

Cheers

EVE SOB

Incarna - how many folks will it turn away?!

2011-06-23T08:02:00.001-07:00

I am a huge fan of change and game progressions. I really truly am to the point of spending cash to buy additional content etc. For the most part added content and features are happy times for the players of a game and a sign of a game developers longevity. I just don't get how captain's quarters and this silly vanity item shop gives any EVE player a chubby!?

Lets review the patch shall we:

1: So we get to strut about in a small dimly lit room, forced to wear cloths, and experience buggy shading and horrendous video card requirements for it. Um yeah, nice job. Certainly worth a day of downtime, client disconnects, and loosing half my active corp members while they figure out if they need to buy a new PC, or just turn that shit off.

2: Animated turrets and stuff. This is actually pretty damn cool for the first 2-3 times you undock a ship and shoot some thing with it. Sadly the animations require you to be zoomed in to really see them. Great for the EVE movie makers, a meh for the folks who actually want to fight.

3: "micro" transaction Vanity items. OK it seems like micro in Iceland has been miss translated to MASSIVE. I mean OH MY F##KING GOD a plex =3500 AUR. Seriously spending $15 for some boots that suck!? Looking at the VAST selection of available cloths, that all look like some messed up, bad porn spoof of a WW2 Uniform. Folks missed the mark, and I mean shooting at jita and hitting SKG-PY kind of off the mark. FAIL!!!!

4: Agent finder: GREAT, it's pretty much a built in version of http://eve-agents.com. So for us agent based carebear PvE types, it's one less bookmark in the in game browser. It does mean we can start conversations with that agent with one less copy and paste. So hey, Nice job, really I like it.

5: other crap. Some one told me salvages have a longer range now. That's nice. I now have this feature where my clients randomly disconnect. great I guess. My undock button comes and goes, as does local/corp chat channels. Awesome, those are dull anyways. I need to dig in an extra layer when trying to move stuff from my ship to the corp hangers now. Steller.

I know at least 5 people in my VERY small list of close associates in EVE who are pretty much unable to play the game at the moment. Either through needing a hardware upgrade, or horrendous issues with the game. I know at least 3 of those will probably walk away. So lets see how that might scale. 300k subscribers. If in 1 in every 50 players rage quits because of this patch, that's what 6000 people out the door. That's US$90,000 a month in lost subscriptions... Ah well DUST 514 will save CCP...

All grumbling aside, I hope the game does not suffer for this. I hope CCP gets a clue about the definition of micro, and stabilizes incarna. Makes it worth the time to be the cyber punk full body avatar with out COMPLETELY forgetting what EVE is, an Internet SPACESHIP game. I mean one real rival game, and New Eden will be dust and dried up pod fluid. I mean really if BioWare made a MMO Masseffect with more space combat....Ponder that a sec CCP.

Fly safe, or sit blandly in your dark cell.

Cheers

EVE SOB

EVE gets DDoS hacked

2011-06-14T15:04:00.001-07:00

I was just logging in today when boom, all three of my accounts disconnect. Sockets close, corrupt sessions and no love trying to log in.

Hit http://eve-offline.net/ and watched as everything but Serenity turned to a red circle with a big X in the middle. Then I hit the EVE Online facebook page and read the news about the attack and the measures taken.

So a lot of $5 fools were on facebook complaining about the game being down and demanding it be bought back or free ISK/Skillpoints/ponies be given out. The older wiser $150 fools were glad that they set long skills to train. The $1000 fools like myself were hoping that this day would end with out some 14 year old ordering porn with my creditcard information. /emote prays his card is not being entered into -censored-.com

Seems like the world of the 14 year old pimply geeks with a love for basement air and mothers fine microwave cooking is a buzz these days. I mean playstation network, nintendo, and now EVE Online. Seems like gamers are targets and one can only wounder how long it will be before blizzard is in the news for a hack attempt on WoW. Gasp the 14 year olds are attacking each other...Old farts like me best go back to simple games like pong if we want to be safe.

Well I am off to see what is outside of the basement. Perhaps I'll watch a movie with my kids, mow the lawn, take a walk, or grill a tasty steak. I am sure CCP will get the firewall rules fixed and the environment back online soon enough.

Cheers

EVE SOB

P.S. lets really hope no private User information was gained.

On the go sob #4

2011-06-12T07:26:00.001-07:00

Sunday here in the real world. I've started to grind another R&D agent Corp standings. Having got all Lai Dai level 4 agents unlocked. It is now time for CreoDron. Doing distribution agents as couriers take me about 3 mins each and I can churn out those and storyline missions quick.

Ice prices in lonetrek have started to fall and frankly if I see another ice field in June I'll hurl. It had been a good run paying for a Charon, bustard, vexor, and hulk. With some extra healthy padding to the wallet.

This week it is off to remote mining systems to massacre rocks for a second orca, 5 ravens, and another Charon. I can almost solo mine (with three accounts) a Charon in 8 days. So with the Corp now with 5+ active hulk pilots. We should knock it out pretty quick.

Well off to the pool with the family.

Cheers

EVE SOB

Where in the universe is EVE SOB – June 2010

2011-06-08T09:50:00.000-07:00

It is time for this month’s “Where in the Universe is EVE SOB” post where every month I summarize where I am at in EVE. I also throw in some real world stuff and the top CNN headline of the day for a historical WTF was the world doing back then element.

Time keeps on slipping into the future. DAMN IT ALL!

So records indicate the last WUES was in DECEMBER 2010! Um yeah, sorry about that. What can I say, been lacking in the blog inspiration fund for a while. However with the new folks in the corp. and some interest in PvP and well the current ice prices in lonetrek. Activity has been enough that I find myself with that itching burning sensation to blog. (TMI?! OK noted)

Warning issued that it's still going to be highsec carebear stuff for the most part. It might well cause a few comas in the readers, but well why have a blog if you don't post eh? Hold on I am about to turn this thing up to MAX and get it spinning at a blistering 2 RPM.

So what am I doing:

hmm... Let's see. I/we the executive committee responsible for healthcare for Space Hermits corporation are seeking young and eager pilots to join our organization. As such ranks are growing and the potential to inflict some serious harm on asteroids and frigate belts rats has grown. This in turn means we can build it. Well most stuff that is and slowly find our little crew entering the capital ship market. WOOT!

With Ice as high as 190,000ISK a block in and around Jita. I also find myself spending mind numbing amounts of time in an Ice belt these days. I mine 112 blocks an hour which nets me about 20 Million ISK and I do this semi afk while I chat and work for 6-8 hours. So sitting about I make about 120-160 Million ISK 5 days a week. Yes I could make that easier in Null sec ratting sure, or moon mining in Low. I could sure, but I drag and drop 2 items every 4 minutes and stack and sort and haul about once every hour. really 120-160M ISK a day for that kind of focus is pretty darn cool. Sure I could trade and make more with less effort. I agree, once I have the trade skills and the capital.

So why do I need ISK? Who does not need it right!? Well I am building a capital BPO set which falls into the "NOT FREE" bucket of stuff in EVE. Short term goals will cost me about 5.8 Billion in BPOs.

Things I am training:

SonOfBraben: Ice processing V, because I hate waste and the POS is hungry. After that more manufacturing skills, and perhaps a thanatos skill set for fun.

ZombiNutz: getting all missile skills to T2 IV from rockets-torps. Then I got my eye on a HAC build and a nice hurricane build. Should keep me busy for a bit.

Sister jayde: Meet sister jayde, the third accounts main. She is finishing her exhumers V training. Then she will hand the queue over to an alt to grind down the requirements for a RHEA. Said alt can pilot and has a Charon. this third account is proving very handy.

Real Life Stuffs:

In short. Kids are growing and doing great. Mrs. SOB still loves me. The summer in the USA is oddly hot for this time of year. tornadoes where they should not be. I got a new grill, and some nice grass fed beef. So life is good.

Work is busier than ever and my EVE time limited as a result. Hence the semi afk ice mining :) If work wants me 14 hours a day, they can deal with me dragging and dropping ice every 4 mins and hauling once an hour.

CNN Headline for Today:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/06/08/weiner.risk.behavior/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

Cheers

EVE SOB

Carbon Copy out of toner?

2011-05-31T09:56:00.000-07:00

Down time today is running longer and longer. Seems like every time I check in (about once every 30 mins) the extended time goes out by 1 hour. Some where around 18:30 GMT now.

I am a huge fan of new features and UIs and sexy avatars and walking about etc. I truly like evolution of games and how software developers strive to add that fresh car smell back to the games they write. EvE is a super cool game and while we could all argue that other improvements are more important. At the end of the day, it would be cool to strut about now that we have sexy space barbies to play with.

I can also sympathize with the deployment dudes. The world of IT never goes to schedule and often it takes a lot of massage to get things to work. Especially during major upgrades where there are so many dependencies. So I get the extensions and actually appreciate the diligence.

However I can pout and stomp my foot about the extended down times. Make silly puns on the release all I like. I pay for this service and frankly it is typically considered un-cool to go over or extend a window for paying customers. It typically has a associated penalty with it. So every time a down time goes long, as a consumer I feel jipped. I feel the need to cry foul and want a pony from CCP for being put out.

This pouting can be fixed via:

A: Communicate the window better. If it's HUGE. Tell us it will be 5 hours and I'll go do some thing else.
B: Man up CCP and admit you made a mistake. Give us all some love. Perhaps a free plex for all if CCP over runs 3 deployments in a year. Some Skill points or ISK. Some thine that acknowledges that CCP through error took away time we have paid for, so here is a small compensation.
C: We all go play the next awesome space MMO that gets released (Braben Bring on the ELITE for the 2010's).

Anyhow. Client is updating. Perhaps soon I can see the new sparklies....OH how lame would it be if this was just a pre-release and we get now sparklies.

Cheers

EVE SOB

P.S. The API is DOWN, the GAME is DOWN but the BILLING SYSTEM still tells me one of my accounts needs US$15 in 1D 19H 28m and 35s for another month of time...

On the go SOB #3

2011-05-28T13:53:00.001-07:00

Today I am out and about with my family and I had a though about the current state of HCSH.

I recently appointed 2 good friends as directors, The Sarj and Raknore. I then gave them the directive to grow the Corp and organize events and goals.

They freaked a bit thinking I was going to disappear. I assured them I am not. Explained that I simply wanted some folks who can help move the Corp forward and act in it's best interests when I am off line.

With this we are geared extremely well to help new players get started with EvE. We are also geared to give organized structure to more seasoned carebears.

Current Corp projects include building charons to sell for profit. (we build about 1 every 2 weeks).Restocking our frigate replacement pool for new pilots. Growing active members in UK and US time zones.

We are very laid back and tend to focus on helping our members become self sustaining. We encourage folks to set there own paths and are always open to suggestions for Corp projects.

Anyhow. I am very happy with the work of the directors as well as the steady Corp growth.

Cheers

EVE SOB

I need a swift kick in the blog!

2011-05-25T16:26:00.000-07:00

I actually posted some thing. In the comments of said post Rixx Javix recently threatened to go Bruce Banner on me. So finally about a week or so after this I find myself actually here posting. I've been here a few times actually. Started to post some thing and just froze up and never finished. Anyhow...

It's been a long long time and the following are true statements:

1. I am not dead
2. I have not EMO RAGE quit EvE
3. Highsec has no corroded away my brain
4. I have not gone back to WoW
5. I was not the ONLY person taken out by the zombie Apocalypse!

SO what have I been doing!? Honestly a metric crap ton of mining with a side of mining and mining ice cream a la mode. Why have I been mining!?!! To build an Orca and a Charon and now another charon. Then perhaps a thanatos and who knows what. Oh and I've been mining with the new members in my rag tag little highsec corp. Well actually I have 2 of those now, but anyhow.

Let's see what else. Zombinutz can now fly a manticore fit that's pretty badass. He's got maxed Orca Leader ship skillz. He is working towards a nice fancy HAC. SonOfBraben can pretty much build anything except T3 stuff. Has his eyes on a thanatos for the winter. Sister Jayde can pretty much consider herself a expert Mining barge pilot and has a fully trained Charon Alt.

Outside of that I log in 5 days a week. each day I play 2-8 hours in a number of capacities across my three accounts. I am yet to try Worm Holes, LOW sec (except for flying through it), Moon mining, trading (real trading), faction warfare, or half a dozen other things I cannot name.

Well running out of material. Finding it forced at this point. SO long for now. I'll TRY to post more, but well "I built a really big ship today!" or "Holly crap my BPOs have a ME of X and a PE of Y!" are not always great points of interest.

Cheers

EVE SOB

P.S. DEATH RACE BATH OF BLOOD!!!!!...check it here

What next!?

2011-04-27T12:22:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy week or three about the lives I live. Both those inside and outside of EvE have been a busy bustle of activity.

Real life is the life of a IT geek in a lean staffed expanding company. Always doing some thing, or being asked to go some place, be that physically or virtually, to do some thing else. I hear we have a bad economy yet I am fortunate to be doing well for now.

Inside the game HCSH has hired 2 new pilots both with a keen sense of mining. So I decided to re-light the Corp. goal of building a Orca which will be finished by the end of the week. My 3rd account is maturing well with a baked Hulk pilot, a charon pilot, and a third slot for future plans.

SOB has recently gone on a pilgrimage to max out his mining, refining, lab and manufacturing skills. After which he will most likely finish out the last science skills to build anything sub cap Caldari T2.

ZombiNutz finished his manticore training and added Amarr frigates to his list rounding out all races for frigates. He is doing a little leadership skill training and then will work on his Lazorz of doom. Perhaps booster his armor tanking a bit.

However right now I am with out an alliance, running 2 small but happy corps., and a little bit lost again for what to do next. Sure I could build capital ships and T2 ships and sell them for ISK. I have a solid mining crew now who can churn out the materials for such. I could work on my miserable standings with the gallente but well grinding missions makes me want to barf. Perhaps some kind of lowsec venture. One that I can fit into my RL schedule. Who knows what comes next. I've even been given opportunity to venture back to NULL in both PvP and indy sense.

All I know is there are many tings left to do and if I change nothing. My EvE life and RL fit well together right now. I have good people who I consider friends in my corps. and we are generally happy doing what we are. Some times change is not the answer I guess. Am I really needing one?

Cheers

EVE SOB

Wardecs, Politics, and all that crap!

2011-04-16T06:08:00.000-07:00

It’s been a while since I’ve sat down and given some attention to my blog. Far too long to show any respect for the few that read it or my own sense of recording my EVE life. Regrets aside for the long break I do have some things to post and update.

First big news is that HCSH and HCRND are no longer part of the PIES alliance. Sadly a wardec was the catalyst to cause an internal crumbling and well the leader of the Alliance decided to attack key members for plotting against him and pretty much told everyone to get out. Well sitting back in my humble little corps. It was not too hard to see that the leader had lost the plot and the few that I flew with often were out the door. Kind of sad but oddly not shocking.

I am maintaining a relationship with a number of former alliance member corps and continue to work with them I did inside the alliance. Many potential future paths we all could take but for now I am content to research the living snot of out BPOs, mine rocks, and run missions with my corpies.

Growing the corp. has been pretty much non-existent with folks joining then leaving because we don’t have enough members. I am VERY honest with folks applying that we are growing slowly but hey folks get lonely I guess. A hint, might not want to join a corp. called Healthcare for Space Hermits if you’re the lonely type…. :)

As for the wardec it was apparently on account of former alliance members throwing disrespectful smack talk around. Unfortunate and unnecessary way to incur a war, but one that I guess is common. I spent some time shooting the breeze with the CEO of the declaring carp. Nice enough fellow just looking for some fun and a little pay back for the slanderous comments. I had fit some manticore and wolf boats up to fight in the war. It seems they fielded a small gang of T3 ships and got a few cheap kills here and there at gates and stations. They managed to get one of my corp members who flew with an outdated clone. It was a harsh lesson to learn as 3M SP just went pop along with his pod. We replaced his ship and I bought him a set of +3 implants (offered +4’s but he could not use them) to help get him back under way. Saved him a day towards flying his lost hulls.

So I am not dead, nor have I emo rage quit or moved on to other games. I am still out here in space at the helm of 2 small corporations. Still doing the Highsec carebear thing for now.

Cheers

EVE SOB

Real life - Japan

2011-03-15T12:07:00.001-07:00

I normally keep this blog firmly focused on EvE but this past weeks events have not made that so easy.

I have 2 very close and dear friends who are living in Japan as part of the JET program. So every news story of earthquakes, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown threats hit a little harder home.

So far they are only suffering the same shock at the tragic events and sadness we are and remain safe and glad to be alive.

I also had the pleasure to attend a taiko drumming performance by Kodo over the weekend. It was that much more powerful to see Japanese drummers giving there all knowing how much devastation had taken place in Japan.

If any of you can spare $10 please donate it to a Japanese aid fund. The red cross has one going via text. Simply text REDCROSS to 90999 to Give $10. Buy one less round of coffee/beer this week and help the hundreds of thousands of misplaced Japanese eat and stay warm.

Cheers

EVE SOB

Arm chair special!

2011-03-09T17:13:00.001-08:00

Some days it astounds me the depth alone in the indy side of EvE. I mean one can spend literally years training and focusing in just building stuff.

Having recently got access to a research POS I am busy researching BPOs to make those sparkling ships that much cheaper. I am also pondering BPOs for copy jobs to sell as yet another passive income. So much to do and ISK to make and spend.

I've been building T2 stuff for a bit now and as time ticks along bigger ships are crossing my inventing slots. With these come a greater demand for moon products and still more BPOs. So I find my self keenly looking at moon mining as well. This means lowsec or 0.0 space.

So with zombie rounding out torp skills for his manticore the need to go out into more dangerous systems in search of a nice place to live is on the near horizons. Sure more risk and more PvP over PvE for me soon.

A jump freighter alt is training. Sob will prob add some more PvP skills. Jayde can even fly a t2 fit tackle t1 frigate. I've always thought every pilot should have some PvP ability. I mean EvE is a PvP game right!?

Reminds me I need to follow up with the BBW and schedule a lesson in t1 frigate ass whoppin' (mine for sure)

Cheers

EVE SOB

On the go SOB #2

2011-03-03T16:41:00.001-08:00

Well it seems like quick mobile blogage are how I post these days. It has been a busy time in the carebear life.

Hulkageddon IV was about since I last posted. Rather than complain I used the week to raise my standings with Caldari state. Now I have a Highsec research POS. Thank you hulkageddon. I also like the crazy ice and mineral prices.

Sonofbraben ticked over 20m skill points and Zombinutz is deep into torpedoes V getting his manticore on for grins. Sob also trained research project management to IV so I have datacores coming out my implant slots.

I had a few 1 v 1 with zomb. Won one against our alliance leaders PvP toon. Had a very dull stalemate with Astral Dominix and the BBW issued a challenge I plan to honor. It is nice to burn a hull and have some fun. I need to follow up with a few other Ritter duels that have slipped away as well. Time to stop being a freaking carebear.

Not sure what's next. My 3rd account is ticking along with a second hulk pilot near done. Then a jump freighter pilot. I have some other alt ideas as well to get a little more out of my 3 subs.

There is a lot of chatter around me at the moment for a return to 0.0 in a number of angles. I still face a time crunch dilemma. I don't want to feel like I miss the party every time in do get to log in. Nor do I want to be that guy who is never around. We shall see.

Cheers

EVE SOB

On the go SOB #1

2011-02-19T07:05:00.001-08:00

I've been home a week from my work trip to Seattle and I am yet to see my kids for more than 30 mins at a time. So this weekend is all about my two little men and some man time.

Inside my busy work schedule I've found moments to keep PI running and get some level 4 missions in. I am getting into a grove now with the RR Domi and Raven combo. I am writing a full post on the setup.

Hulkageddon 4 is in full swing. My highsec alliance is all bent out of shape about it. I am spending the time challenging folks to frigate 1 v 1 with zombinutz and squeezing in more missions for standings gain.

Ok back to the man time. Fly safe!

Cheers

EVE SOB

The blur

2011-02-12T13:52:00.001-08:00

Ever had one of those weeks? The kind of week where it all blurs together? This past week was one such for me.

It started with a flight across the US from east coast to west coast. It ended with a red eye flight from west to east coasts. In between were long days of meetings and long nights of drinking. Many jägerbombs and Scotch mixed in with some pool and after work chats about work.

In the middle of all this got a new work laptop that needed some love to get EVE to play. Oh and all three of my accounts ran out of training. So some where in the blur at around 3am while suffering the effects of booze. I some how was able to get EVE to run and set my queues, start the PI farms and reply to a few mails.

So to those in my alliance please do not take it personal when I opt to not join that mining op for a bit. This week I plan to run missions until I can finish the standings grind I need for a Highsec POS. Should be worth a few ISK too. :)

Cheers

EVE SOB

On the go blogage

2011-02-05T16:28:00.001-08:00

There are many times where I think of some stellar thing to blog about and I am no where near a PC. Yet there are very few times in my life that I do not have my iPhone with me. So I finally loaded up blogpress on the phone.

The idea here is that I'll be able to post quick updates and on the go EVE thoughts.

Cheers

EVE SOB

ISK Milestone: 1 Billion

2011-02-04T08:41:00.000-08:00

It's funny how things play out in EVE. How some days you are just content to drift around carefree without any real plans. Then the next your driven to do something or chase another avenue of the game.

Late in 2010 somewhere in the last week of December I was hosting an Alliance Ice mining OP. They are riveting events that rank up there with paint drying. The saving grace is the fleet chatter typically has some hilarious banter. Anyhow during this ICE op my wallet hit under 100M (41M to be more exact) as I shelled out 80M for a pilot who wanted a Mackinaw to park in our Ice system. As he was a good friend and someone who would mine a lot I gladly gave up the ISK. I'd recently bought an orca, new hulk, mackinaw and a raven. So my wallet went from a healthy 800M ISK to 41M ISK rather fast in December.

So a goal was set during that very same day to have 2B ISK in my wallet come Feb. Which for a dude with limited playtime living in empire space is no cake walk. Well at least not in my books and it makes me wonder how many folks could start at 40M after having a lot of ISK and rebuild the wealth. Lets also be clear I have never sold PLEX and do not plan to in the future. I may reach a point where one of my accounts is sustained by buying them, but I do not believe simply buying ISK is the way to prosper.

Well it's February 4th today and last night as I logged out of EVE my wallet looked like this:

While only half of my goal it still feels good to have 1 Billion ISK in my wallet. More so it's feel good because most of it has been through passive methods of income. A lot of it came via P.I. and R&D agents with a little more coming from trade. The rest from Missions and mining while I tend to RL tasks. meaning I've not given away my life to the game for this ISK.

I also still bought stuff during this time and while only a few hundred Million worth of stuffz. It's was still good to be able to enjoy ISK during this time of saving. I've bought over 100MISK worth of skill books, fitted a RR mission Dominix worth ~80M ISK and 2 "throw away" 50M ISK PvE drakes for Incursion work. Likewise I've spent entire days mining ICE or Rocks for the alliance at little or no ISK gain during this time. So really this 1B ISK a month gain could be something I can potentially sustain. Kind of cool eh?

So what are the plans for the ISK? Right now honestly nothing as I still have 1B ISK to go to reach the target I set. However I'll do with it what I always do with my ISK. I'll invest it back into myself and my corporations. Adding some more BPOs to the inventory and perhaps buy a faction battleship for ZombiNutz to mission in. We are building a corporate Orca as well which will limit the need for people to use their personal orca for Alliance ops. I plan to add the BPO and all Sub part BPOs to the library ASAP thus adding the orca to the regular corporate charter.

All the same it's VERY easy to make ISK in EVE. It's even possible to add 1B ISK to your wallet in highsec working around the responsibilities of real life. You can also still have fun and buy toys whilst doing it. :)

May you all find a nice fat happy chunk of ISK.

Cheers

EVE SOB

It's Wednesday - And that means...

2011-01-26T13:15:00.001-08:00

Nothing in particular really but to the left is Wednesday from the adams family. I just like the it's xxx day of the week title these days. Life ticks on inside and outside of EVE. As I near my 37th birthday in the real world and 20M SP for both Zombie and SOB inside EVE. I am starting to feel old in many ways. Now don't get me wrong in thinking OLD is used here in a detrimental way. Age to me is am sign of wisdom and having a chance to developed some common sense. So getting OLD to me is not a bad thing, rather a good thing. Inside EVE older players are usually something to treat with a little respect.

The corp grows slowly with me just booting some 2 month inactive members and replacing them with some 4 year old 40M+ SP indy pilots. We are building some fun stuff too with ORCA BPOs now in the crop. and 4/7 sub BPOs in the alliance. Makes for some more profit from mining which is now done in a small fleet of hulks and an orca. So it takes less time to get the ore we need. Zombienutz is witling away at some leadership skills to make not only the Orca's mining bonus maxed, but also laying down the foundation of a solid fleet booster. Likewise SOB is now able to build capital bits and capital ships. he is also dangerously close to being able to dock a small highsec R&D POS to finally get free of the shackles of public labs. The Sisters are doing their thing and I am digging the new PI system.

The alliance goes well also with BTEK joining us reacently bringing me back into a circle of an alliance again with TheSarj, Samthefurious, and Astral Dominix once more. There are also plenty of solid indy type pilots in the other member corps. who I am starting to form good friendships with making those mining fleets ops more fun. It's easy to find a fleet to blitz level 4's and folks are always on doing something inside the alliance. It's hard to be lonely inside EVE these days. One of our member corps. is filled with really good people who have just had a horrid run of things. This week a new hire stole 4.5B ISK worth of POS and stuff from them in one night. I feel for them and the loss but it reminds me why I keep a tight lid on the HCSH cookie jar. Far too many folks inside EVE want to steal you stuff.

Onward we go making ISK and having fun.

Cheers

EVE SOB

Well shoot – I missed my own blog birthday

2011-01-20T19:56:00.000-08:00

In reading that it was EVOGANDAs birthday just now. It dawned on me that I’ve been blogging for over a year here at EVE SOB. I cannot boast some of the post numbers of those out there in the EVE blogging community but I am happy with my 124 posts to date.

How it all began:

Some time ago not long after I started to play EVE and I’d say right about when I created my second account. I also discovered the EVE blogging community. I was instantly drawn into this diverse group of people who devote a portion of their life to committing records of their EVE lives to text (and art). It was clear to me that I would enjoy EVE more and feel more part of the community if I blogged as well. As a result EVE SOB was born January 15th 2010.

What I had in mind when starting the blog:

It was simple at first being a classic blog that served as a journal of my time in EVE. I wanted to write down all my discoveries as they happened in EVE. I wanted to document the good and bad times as well as tie in some of my plans for the future inside EVE online.

Where we are today:

For the most part the blog is still just that: A journal of my life as ZombiNutz and Sonofbraben as they experience stuff in EVE. It also has some cross chatter inside the community via “me me” and the odd stab at the blog banter. I’ve also written a few informal beginners guide type posts. It has a semi monthly recap section as well that folks have seemed to enjoy.

Where it will go from here:

Well it will continue to be a journal and follow my exploits. Today those are not that thrilling with my return to carebearing for the while. I did just fly a jump clone out of provi in a pod without incident. I cannot tell you how lame it was to see the gate into lowsec from R3 so poorly camped. Not one bubble. Yeah I guess deep down there is a PvP player and a 0.0 dweller in me still. Who knows what this next year will bring? I hope you all keep reading and discover it as I do.

Cheers

EVE SOB

New Looks all around!

2011-01-18T17:04:00.000-08:00

The title kind of says it all so...

ZombieNutz Old and New:

SonofBraben Old and New:

And last but not least the Sisters Julliette, Jayde, and Janice:

In a few days I'll post what I think of the new PI system. Still trying to figure out if I love or hate it yet.

Cheers

EVE SOB

Any other Tuesday.

2011-01-18T07:37:00.000-08:00

It's snowing outside and the kids are home from school. Another 5-10 inches of snow expected with 1/4 inch of ice on top. Excellent! It is on these days I am most glad to work from my home and not have to drive into the "office" an hour away. Like most Tuesdays to day begins with coffee and time with my wife and kids before I head down to my basement office. It's a chilly 54F as per usual and I flip on my trusty electric oil heater and soon the room is filled with warm air and will peek out around 75F. The cat is all ready camping the heater with his nose as far between the radiator sections as he can get without burning himself. The gently purring has become a familiar sound.

Next I press power buttons around the room bringing to life 4 LCD monitors, 3 computers, 2 keys boards, 2 mice, and a webcam. The work day begins with checking of the overnight emails to see what broke and how it was fixed. Then I pull up my task list and calendar to see what meetings are approaching and what I need to focus on today in the never ending swirl of corporate Information technology. It's right about now that EVE online is fired up and I start to go through similar activities. Check my mail, scan calendars, a quick o/ in a few chat channels, and then next comes the task list.

I typically start the day with a starting my 20 PI planets back up. Many clicks are involved in the process and I typically try not to talk to folks in game while it's done. At work in the real world I am checking daily reports have run, manually running and troubleshooting the data mining scripts for those who don't.

On this Tuesday however my day starts a little differently. See today is patch day and the release of Incursion 1.1.0 inside EVE. So rather than sitting down to click on extractors I am anxiously watching download and install bars. I am excited to see the new character creation systems and aware that it might impact my days work. So I get as many tasks done as I can while I watch the bars. I also know that PI changes in a big way with this patch and am excited to see how the new system can reduce the many thousand clicks a day I have endured. There are new pretty explosions and some new nav bar and contract system. Eve gate gets an over haul too.

I finish fixing a troublesome script as the last installer checks and replaces .dlls and other chunks of the game on my second client. I fire up the first client that is all downloaded and ready. I all ready know that I am not yet going to see the new goodies. As I accept the EULA I see the all too familiar "STATUS: NOT ACCEPTING CONNECTIONS" and thus begins the waiting for the CCP worker bee's to get the system checked out and ready for us to play. Some days this wait is short, other days it's the training length of Caldari frigate IV. So I go back to work and start into the structure and content of a technical document designed to teach internal IT staff how to navigate and administer Virtual Servers for off shore developers. All ready I am yearning for a break from this remedial but important task.

Today at the time of posting my two mains have portraits that look like this ZombiNutz on the left SonofBraben to the right:

Once the CCP bee's have buzzed there lot, we shall see what new faces and names we all have amongst the stars of New Eden. I am looking forward to rediscovering old friends with new faces.

Cheers

EVE SOB

Today is Friday. This means that...

2011-01-14T13:21:00.000-08:00

It has been almost 2 weeks since I have been compelled to post. This makes me sad because I like to waffle on here as record of my life in EVE. I like to provide some thing for those brave few to visit here to read. However things are a steady stream of busy un-interesting things inside EVE of late and hence there are only so many ways you can write about this.

I am carebearing on the carebear ranch. Looking to hire more carebears to help with the carebear tasks. Hence my last post.

OK so what exactly am I doing on the ranch. I am building an Orca is what I am doing at the moment. Yes I all ready have an Orca that I bought all ready built. It's a lovely ship for organized carebear type events. However this Orca is for me to understand what it means to build an Orca and what profits can be made in the Orca building business. In short adding the Orca to the products that HCSH builds.

What this means is I bought a BPC for cheap and am buying all the sub component BPOs and forming a materials list and build time for Orcas. Then I am rating all this next to what they sell for on the open market. If the time invested makes for a worthy profit then woot we are building Orca.

This is actually the first time I am doing this at HCSH. Historically I've built ships to use them not sell them. This time with the Orca I am building them exclusively to sell at this point. I feel all grown up as a indy corp. all of a sudden.

I am also trying to pad my wallet at the same time. It's hard to hit a ISK goal when you need to spend small badgers full of it. Historically I've lived boke always investing all my capital back into the corps assets. This is still true but I've reduced the amount of investment and increased the ISK in the bank floor quite a bit. Means I am working hard at making ISK and not spending ISK until the floor has been first reached and then sufficient funds are raised to pay for the investments. It's about as fun as it sounds too. :(

Alliance life goes well. Lots of shared mining ops and good chatter about the channels. I host a weekly Alliance ICE op to fuel the shared POS farm. We have Alliance goals that we all contribute too. I like all the sister corporations and their members.

We actually have an alliance T1 frigate tourney coming up here at the end of the month. Should be fun to shoot each other and have some chuckles. I'll be entering ZombiNutz to the tourney in either a rifter, Tristan, or Merlin. Still monkeying with fits and such. Will post about the tourney after it happens.

Well that's about it for now. I have some ideas in the works for post series. I hope to be here more often with updates that are interesting. Until then fly safe. o/

Cheers

EVE SOB

Healthcare for Space Hermits is recruiting.

2011-01-03T10:37:00.000-08:00

The title pretty much sums up what this post is about. I have my doors open for new pilots, young or old, to come join the crew of select folks who carry the HCSH banner.

What is Healthcare for Space Hermits?

We are a small corporation by design with a firm value placed on having fun and taking care of our own. We are primarily industry based and as such we mine stuff, refine stuff, and build stuff to sell to people for profit put VERY simply. We run missions, explore sites, poke out noses into worm holes, and even take vacations into LowSec for much needed PvP breaks to blow off steam.

HCSH is growing because our goals are growing. We are building bigger stuff these days, more high-tech stuff, and are part of an Alliance who can and will be building the BIGGEST stuff of all. This means we need pilots looking to become part of something bigger. The good news is that something bigger is also very aware of the need to take care of all its members.

We have an inactivity policy in place to promote an active corporation. We only require that you log into EVE and play the game to remain active. If you know you’re going to be away for some time a quick in game email is all it takes to be placed in “inactive” status and not removed from the corporation after 1 month of inactivity.

We have a 5% tax rate to pay the bills. We expect our members to treat each other and the alliance members with respect and courtesy. We are not pirates or grifers and tend to discourage such acts. We don’t like wars, but fight them should they be unavoidable.

What kind of CEO am I?

I really hate this question. I don’t care for titles and politics that much. I like to log in and have fun while getting stuff done. Anyhow here goes:

I tend to direct people towards opportunities inside EVE and the corporation rather than demand or order folks around. I don’t like to be told how it is and assume most mature gamers are the same. I encourage and reward people who move themselves and the corporation forward choosing to foster a pilots own drive not provide “work” for them. I take care of my own like they are family. I’ll negotiate discounts\free replacements of lost ships with in our Alliance. I’ll split the cost of the next tier of ship with pilots who reach the next level in their fields. I’ve been known to drop PvP ships into hangers of industrial pilots with a note like “Let’s go trash some of what we build for fun!”

I have 4 pilots across 2 accounts with in the corporation ranging from PI/R&D mules to PvP focused pilots. Most days I’ll be logged in doing some manner of things in Empire or lowsec these days. I am always happy to lend a hand to folks in the corporation or alliance. I’ve been known to make 50 jump round trips to help folks with a Mission or help them mine\haul ore from a grav site. I spin up adhoc operations for ISK and host weekly alliance operations towards it’s goals. I play starting at 14:00 server time most days and can be on and off around the clock depending on what is going on.

Above all else I like to have fun and share my EVE time with friends. If EVE becomes too much like work then it’s time to mix it up and find new fun things to do. I do have goals inside the game and like to get them done. I believe to be able to help others you first need to have a sound grip on your own space within the game.

HCSH and the PIES alliance:

HCSH is a member of the PIES alliance of industrial minded corporations that covers Lonetrek and Sinq Laison regions today. It’s always expanding and is currently seeking new corporations to join our ranks with short term goals of member corporations is all 4 racial regions and a small foot hold in 0.0 space.

As CEO of HCSH I am a stake holder in this alliance and responsible for fostering it’s growth and prosperity. This means HCSH remains active with in the Alliance often hosting and driving operations that compliment the goals of the Alliance as a whole.

The alliance itself is formed to promote friendship and mutual growth. Its member corporations are mature EVE players who have a wealth of knowledge combined with excellent senses of humor. We all play for fun but know what needs to be done to keep the Alliance moving forward.

Interested?!?!

If yes, shoot an in game email to Sonofbraben or ZombiNutz to arrange for a meeting. Likewise drop into HCSH – Tavern in game chat channel and give us an o/.

Cheers

EVE SOB

2010 - an EVE year in reflection

2010-12-31T17:36:00.000-08:00

The blogger in me has been lazy this month. So lazy that this will be my 4th post in December which is a far cry from the 8-12 I normally produce. It's been a busy time and a sick time for me. I've had strep and bronchitis in the real world. Work has been uncharacteristically busy and family life has been the usual whirlwind that Christmas time whips up. My EVE time has been just as busy with my return to the carebear life from a small stay in 0.0. I've added members to my corporation, I've joined a new Alliance, and I've stepped up in the role as CEO and stake holder of both. I've got goals again that require action and planning. I am flying with some truly awesome people and having a lot of fun doing indy stuff.

Yet what really has 2010 meant for me in the EVE sense? In asking myself this question my brain kind of goes fuzzy at first. There is no solid answer as to what it's done for me and what I have done with my time. The easy answer is what 2010 in EVE has cost me financially which amounts to US$359.76 for the year. Compare this to buying my lunch each day I work at US$2080 for the year it's not that expensive. My cell phone costs me US$1200 ish a year as well. So financially EVE is a good thing for me.

However what good has it done for me in the grand scheme of it all? Back in January 15th of this year 2010 I started to blog about my EVE life. Back then I was a pimply noob with 2 accounts and a whole bunch of nothing else. I was handing out advice to noobs while barley having made it past the trials myself. I thought that traveling between Lonetrek and Sinq Laison was a long trip. I make this trip weekly now as if it were going for milk.

In February I started to think about PvP in EVE. I posted some comical Tristan and Incursus fits that make me chuckle today. I realized that while tanking skills were awesome they need weapons skills to be of any use. I also lost my first drake when I got it stuck in a structure and did not know about CTRL-Q and E-Warp. I was so pissed at loosing 50M and now I make that every other day organically.

March-July I bitched about real Life getting in the way of my EVE time. I lost direction in EVE and ended up joining a new corp. to focus on PvP with ZombiNutz. This lead to Null and sometime in the lawless space. I learned a lot about gate camps and how to safe up. I spent a lot of time station spinning and shooting POS and SBU. I lost ISK faster than I could make it and soon decided that I was not pulling my weight in Null and the right thing to do was pull out.

The rest of the year I spent bitching further about my real life getting in the way of EVE. I talked about PvP and some ideas I had for some fun things to do with T1 frigates. I roamed solo in Lowsec and could not get a Fair fight for the life of me. I realized that one man alone could not pull of my ideas and this is when the first sparks of my current EVE life began.

For the last few months of 2010 and even now as I finish this post. I've been seeking out people to share my EVE time with. I've added some select nice folks to Healthcare for Space Hermits and will continue to do so. In turn I have joined the PIES alliance which is comprised of some very talented and fun to fly with corporations. I log into hellos now and what are you doing today? I have fun flying with these people even on mind numbing ICE ops. We joke and help each other out.

So really what I have done in 2010 is realize that EVE is a very lame solo game. It is by finding the right people to play with that this game really starts to shine and take flight. I am driven again and can find so much to do and enjoy in EVE now. It even fits in with my Real life schedule allowing a little less time bitching about it.

So to all a happy and safe New Years Eve. See you in 2011 for some more blogging and internet space ships. Fly safe in New Eden and rip it up and have a safe AWESOME time in the real world.

Cheers

EVE SOB

OLD TOM - The Orca comes to play on the carebear ranch.

2010-12-20T09:11:00.000-08:00

In my childhood as a blond haired lad growing up on coastal rural Australia. The ocean was always there as a place of play and financial success for many. I spent a good amount of my life in or around a small coastal fishing town Called Eden. It's situated on the southern east coast of Australia in the state of New South Whales and the town itself is smack bang in the middle of Two Fold bay. Said to be the southern hemispheres 3rd deepest natural harbor. I've spent hours of my life sailing, swimming, surfing, scuba diving, and snorkeling in this bay and the surrounding coat. Eden is known historically as a whaling town in the late 1800's and has a good amount of documentation around cooperation of whalers and orca during this time. Hunting whales when that sort of thing was considered cool. AS a result there is a local ledged and set of bones associated to an Orca called "Old Tom" who was the last orca to work with whalers before the decline of whaling. You can read about him here

So when I finally got around to adding an ORCA Industrial Command ship to my hanger recently it was a no brainer to name it after the legendary whale from my towns history.

Undocking in "OLD TOM" is like flying a small base around. It's got all the creature comforts a mining fleet or a worm hole crew might need. Sure it may not have a clone bay but that's what it's big brother the roquel is for. Given its size it aligns and warps fast enough that I don't feel the need to make coffee. It's got enough mids for a fair shield tank. The highs are there for gang links and the lows are perfect for utility mods. 3 large rigs and it's a pretty fun boat if you are mining rocks or supporting a small fleet. I'd not recommend you take it for a stroll into lowsec or Null sec alone but if you had a small force with you I can see how this boat would also be handy.

I've fitted Mine with a typical Highsec mining fit as such:

Highs:

Mining Foreman Link - Laser Optimization
Mining Foreman Link - Mining Laser Field Enhancement
Small Tractor Beam I

Mediums:

Invulnerability Field II
2 x Large Shield Extender II
TDB (Survey Scanner or second INV II)

Lows:

2 x Expanded Cargohold II

Rigs:

3 X Large Cargohold Optimization I

It's nice to sit in a belt now and rip stuff apart not having to hall rocks away constantly. More time getting the rocks done means less time mining. This makes me happy.

Cheers

EVE SOB

Where in the universe is EVE SOB –December 2010 – late Edition

2010-12-09T07:19:00.000-08:00

It is time for this month’s “Where in the Universe is EVE SOB” post where every month I summarize where I am at in EVE. I also throw in some real world stuff and the top CNN headline of the day for a historical WTF was the world doing back then element.

The new normal?

Here I am on the 9th getting to my monthly "first" of the month every month post out. While EVE time remains busy and productive. The same is also true with RL (cry me a river SOB) and such it seems that my blogging is the first thing to get skipped.

Added to that the dry and repetitive nature of carebearing there are only so many ways I can say "Made another 375M ISK this month from PI!" or "Training to build ship type X or mod type y this today!" This leaves me with an odd sense of not wanting to bore the crap out of the folks who do read this blog. So I post when I have something "exciting" like a new hull to shoot rats with or when I find a new way to make ISK.

So what am I doing:

Actually this past month has been busy! HCSH has joined a new alliance of super nice carebear types and we are doing collaborative carebear things together. The carebear ranch is now sharing ops with all the farms around it and the social aspect of the game has brought rewards. Perhaps I just joined a dropkick NULL sec alliance, but if I had this level of peer interaction out there. I'd would probably have found more time for gate camps and CTAs. Ah well water under the bridge. Right now I am thrilled with my new Sister corps and there pilots. Having a blast ripping up rats.

I have a dirty dark secret to share. See a while back I swore off mining and claimed it would be a long cold day in hell before I flew a mining ship in and asteroid belt. Well not only did I recently buy another Hulk. I also bought a Mackinaw as well. and have been doing weekly mining ops for both rocks and Ice. So all you wicked evil sinners out there better pack warm when you pass over. I still cannot say I enjoy mining but I do like making stuff which requires mined stuff.

Things I am training:

SonOfBraben: A whole lot of Science skills mostly. I did take a detour to sure up my RR drones and some of the base skills for a Gallente BS hulls. Kind of makes sense with a good chunk of my skills all ready invested in Drones and hybrids. Even if this guy is supposed to be pure Indy, I believe we all need to be able to shoot back to some level.

ZombiNutz: With the Raven fit done and the time I am in a fleet increasing a lot. I've actually taken a break from training hulls and guns in favor of leadership skills. So I am training leadership type stuff for both bearing and Pew Pew. Loving the extra boosts for very little time invested.

The Sisters: No change here. The Nuns are going about the daily duties at the P.I. convent with diligent devotion to the faith of making me ISK.

Real Life Stuffs:

The squirrels have abated and the bird feeders have the last few brave winter birds pecking away at the seeds in 13 F weather. We have had some snow all ready but nothing you can take a sled out on. My boys were sledding on frost this week full of eager extreme sledding mojo. My 5yo actually got a 2 foot jump off frost and you gotta love that little man. One second he is a quiet soft spoken lad who still sucks his thumb and snuggles with his mommy. The next he is in Thor mode yelling and smiting down foes while sliding down a rail.

Christmas is getting near and Santa is going broke accommodating the lists but knows the joys of the day will wash away the worry of the expense. My boys 5 and 7 both wanted iPADS and well Daddy does not have an iPAD so Santa is going to be a jerk this year and bring legos and Wii games and bikes and TOYS that are for 5 and 7 year old boys. Sheesh! lag gods all mighty why is it that kids want to be 21 the day they are born and drive an ariel atom to school? It takes all the combined efforts of Mrs. SOB and I to slow these boys DOWN and make them be KIDS! Yes I love them all the same and would not really want to change the drive them both have. These two will go far.

CNN Headline for Today:

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/12/09/assange.profile/index.html?hpt=C1

Cheers

EVE SOB

MIA EVE SOB

2010-12-02T16:49:00.001-08:00

This week my duties as a professional geek have me hotel bound and working through the early hours. I am cutting over Fiber Channel fabrics replacing 5 year old director switches while not letting the customer facing services fall over. It’s tedious attention hungry work at 2am. As you might imagine this leaves me no time for EVE.

It’s funny though right before I hit the road for this current real life work adventure. Some pretty cool things happened in EVE. My corp. became a member of a brand new Alliance. The alliance founder and my sister corps are super nice people and the few times I was able to join them on ops. It was a riot.

I also had just hired a few new folks and owe them some of my time to get them moving down a path of interest to them.

I was putting some wear on my new raven as well and getting ready for some Alliance Level 5’s in the near future. I added some skills to make the drake perform a little better too. So the carebear PvE life was busy and actually fun. We are also getting ready to see what the Sansha folks have to offer when they are unleashed. Knowing my life and its timing they have all ready over run highsec and all the fights are done. :)

Anyhow, this week is almost done and I’ll be on my way home soon. In another week work pretty much grinds to a halt. SO a little more time for EVE is coming and I’ll be back soon. When I get settled a fresh"where in the universe is EVE SOB?" and some more info on the alliance. Perhaps some ravings about my next big plans.

Until then my beloved EVE and all those I share it with. I miss you.

Cheers

EVE SOB

EVE Thanksgiving!

2010-11-23T08:23:00.000-08:00

It's that time of year where most Americans be they resident or citizen of all religions (for the most part) prepare for the annual Thanksgiving day feast. I was not born here and hence not educated via the US schools. So at first this holiday appeared to me as a practice run for Christmas dinner with some elements of "Boxing day" thrown in. I still joke with my family back in Australia about it being a dressed rehearsal for Christmas dinner.

I've lived in the US now for over a decade and even sadly speak Bostralian now over pure Australian. Over the years my views on thanksgiving have altered slightly. I've come to understand the holiday more as a time to lay aside our differences and give thanks for all the things in our life that defines it. Thanking the good people for loving us and sharing their life with us in happiness. Thanking the Jerks in our life for defining what we dislike in others (someone has to do it). Thanking the dog for being a brainless stomach and chewing up our socks. Thanking our co-workers for various things both good and bad they do throughout the year. It's a time of settling our differences and being grateful for being above ground. The rest of the year we can stomp around miserably and curse it all, but this day everyone should get over them self and give thanks. Kind of a cool idea I think even if we should aspire to do this more than once a year. Oh and we get to eat Silly amounts of roast turkey , veggies, and 2-3 different kinds of pie!

So thanksgiving week on this blog I'd like to thank a few folks in the EVE community:

1: I'd like to thank HellGodofWar for reminding me that Hulks explode when you do stupid things with them. Like flying the through lowsec entry systems without a scout. Thanks Buddy. However trade the drake in for some DPS, that was painfully long. Cudos on the pro-bump when I tried to reproach. Kill mail here

2: I'd like to thank the 5 new pilots who have joined HCSH. Wish I saw you all on more and did not have to think you were ALL waiting to steal my stuff. If you need anything let me know (except all my stuff).

3: I'd like to thank all pirates, ninjas, suicide gankers, and colorful local smack talkers for the entertainment value they bring to EVE every single damn day.

4: I'd like to thank Logan, Kirth, Rixx, and all the other bloggers who have always given me good advice. Hope your RL lets you get your PvP one more. Special thanks to Astral Domnix for being a himself and recommending I join his corp. moments before he left it. I've had some fun and made some great friends as a result.

5: I'd like to thank "The Sarj" for being himself. He may never read this but thanks all the same you Twat!

6: I'd like to sincerely thank Paul a real life friend who convinced me to play EVE. He emo rage quit the game 3 months later over Ninjas in his missions, but with out his suggestion. I'd be out there some palce else finding reasons to quit WoW. That is truly something to be thankful for.

7: I'd like to thank Mom and the other souls who choose to read this blog. I truly don't understand why you read about my EVE life. It's not THAT awesome compared to the high rollers who shoot people in the face. Thanks all the same as it gives me something other than myself to write for. Love you Mom!

What are you thankful for in the EVE sense?

Cheers

EVE SOB

Nevermore #1

2010-11-22T13:19:00.000-08:00

Well after flying both passive and active shield tanked ravens solo in Caldari navy Level 4's. The verdict is pretty easy to deliver. See there are a lot of Active Shield tanked ravens for a reason. Why!? because they kick the snot out of passive shield tanked ravens when it comes to incoming RAT DPS. They also deliver more outbound DPS as well because all the low slots are not jammed with shield mods to get the thing enough buffer to have a sustainable passive regen.

In the end I fit my PvE Raven thus:

Name: Nevermore #1

HIGHS

6 x 'Arbalest' Cruise Launcher I, Paradise Cruise Missile w\ Mission specific Cruise missiles
1 x Drone Link Augmenter I
Empty Slot (my skills don't leave enough CPU for a NOS)

MEDS

1 x XL-Shield Booster II
1 x Shield boost amplifier II
1 x Heavy Electrochemical capacitor Booster I
2 x Invulnerability Field IIs
1 x Cap recharger II (or a mission specific hardener if I am not being lazy)

LOWS

3 x Ballistic Control System II
2 x Power Diagnostic System II

RIGS

3 x Large Capacitor Control Circuit I

Drones

5 x hobgoblin II
5 x Hammerhead II

So far it's not too much of an adjustment over the Drake. Does more damage and tanks well enough that I can slow boat my way around most level 4's solo. So all in all my very first Battleship hull is doing what I wanted it to do. Of course now I am looking for a cheap Navy issue Scorpion ;P

Cheers

EVE SOB

The Raven: the next evolution of the Caldari carebear ships

2010-11-19T13:10:00.000-08:00

“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door
Only this, and nothing more."
-Edger Allen Poe: The raven

I was going to substitute some EVE like meaning to the first paragraph of this classic poem, but as I did so it just felt wrong. So I decided to go with the original text. AS really this post is about my new Battleship hull for ZombiNutz and the fit I’ll be putting to the test in Caldari navy level 4 and 5 missions here shortly.

Yes before all you die hard PvP people start into me about training my fits Battle ship hull on my PvP pilot as the classic Carebear battleship stepping block. There is an ulterior motive here in longer terms a sniper Rokh is all ready sitting in my hanger. While sniper BS fleets are all but a thing of the past, I still think it’s good to be able to field one someday. However for now we are here to talk Raven and more specifically PvE mission boat Raven.

Question one: Passive or Active shield tank?

OK so I’ve flown a drake for most of my mission running career with the Caldari navy. That Drake has ALWAYS been a passive shield tank. As such and due to the somewhat limited variety and script like nature of missions. I have a very good understanding of when the Drake will hold and when I need to pop the scramming rats and bail. Yet I see and read a lot of thought about the Raven being better as an Active shield tank. Active shield tanks typically have more challenges in cap stability and hence become reliant on cap boosters. Honestly the less I need to remember to have in my cargo hold when I undock them better. So I’ll be heading out in a passive shield tank raven for now. I might die a flaming death sitting in my pod with a huge “WTF!?!” surrounded by mocking scram frigate rats and battleships. Yet this is my choice of preference and I need to go with it. (Yes more like a PvP extender fit :) )

Question Two: Torps or Cruise pointy bits?

Easy enough to answer for me, Cruise all the way. More range is NEVER a bad thing in PvE. I’ve all ready bought and researched the 4 Cruise BPOs. Making one’s own ammo is a good thing, but it’s very cost effective with Cruise missiles. I also have decent drone skills, so range is good and the drones pick off the stuff that gets too close.

Question three: target painters, salvages, drone link augmenters?

All right, you might be guessing I’ll be flying a hacked up twisted buffer PvP ish fit for my PvE raven. Right or wrong that’s what I plan to do for at least the first one. Screw salvagers as any chump worth his ISK has a dedicated salvage boat/alt to do that kind of work. Target painters = bigger sig radius = the whole fleet hits more (simple, not factoring in every last chunk of math). Drone link augmenters = drones can fly out where the missiles are hitting. I said it before; Range is NEVER a bad thing in PvE.

OK So the fit:

Honestly at this point I have ideas, and well I don’t like to post “dream” fits until I’ve actually fit them and flown them and can comment on how they do. Sure I could pull an EFT fit out with my skills and post it here, but there are enough EFT gurus out there that do this. I’ll stick to posting what I fly after I bolt it all together over the weekend and get some dents on the paint. Chances are come next week I’ll be fitting an active tank, with Cruise missiles, and salvages. ;)

What do you think?

So this is my take on fitting a raven based on flying a drake in Level 4’s and flying smaller stuff about. I like the ease of use of Passive tanks, I like more range when fighting rats, and I prefer fits for the job at hand and hence bring a second boat along for the cleanup.

However I am speaking as a pure pedant at the moment and well tend to try my ideas either way. Yet only a fool does not listen to the man who has lived the adventure and survived because of a fit. So chances are what I end up flying will will change a few times. Must like when I clued in that an Inv II was a good thing to have on a passive drake over a single resistance mod.

Cheers

EVE SOB

P.S. If you have a PvE OR PvP fit you like for the Raven. Feel free to drop it in the comments.

Milestones and an idea.

2010-11-15T12:29:00.000-08:00

I was sitting here just now reflecting on where my blog is at. It seems some folks read it other than Mum and I which is a good thing. It also seems that 50 posts and 100 posts have come and gone quietly. I have 19 followers registered with the site and a few folks comment now and then. My indy pilot ticked past 15M SP sometime last week and I did not raise a fuss as I did when it was 10M. My combat pilot will hit the same mark this week.

My point here is milestones and the amount of fuss one might give them tends to change. I dedicated a whole post to each of my pilots who hit 10M SP milestones. I would have though my centennial post would have sparked some sort of event or something. Honestly it was another post in the life of me in EVE. Nothing extraordinary about it or special, it was just another entry not a celebration of achievement. Why? I am not sure to be honest. I enjoy reading others when they do special things for milestone posts. I guess in the regard of mile stone posts I am not that inwardly focused. I certainly am focused on me and can be a downright prissy jerk at times. Yet my 100th and 50th posts did not register. Such is life I guess.

In other news I had this idea of doing a frigate cage match. Where I’d have all the folks show up into a system in T1 frigates and fight it out for the cash prizes. It had limits to fits and all that and this required me to spend a lot of the time I don’t have to make it work. It’s not dead but in part of the “being a man” about it mentality. It’s not going to happen this year. What will happen is an organized frigate event called “T1 Frigate 11s”. I’ll be posting about it but the slant of it is something like this:

-20 Pilots buy in at 5M ISK each and choose a T1 frigate type.
-HCSH provides them with 5 of that frigate type to fit as they like.
-HCSH then sends the list of all 20 pilots to each other and sets a 2 week END date.
-First pilot to post kill mails for 11 valid 1v1 victories against unique pilots from the list of 20 with the ships involved being just the frigate types purchased on both sides (and not a blob) gets 100M ISK

The fits are up to the pilots with no restrictions. I don’t care if you want to fly high grade implants and boosters. I don’t care if you pod each other. All I care about is 11 unique 1v1 kills in the frigate type you purchased against other pilots from the list of competitors in the frigate they chose. Simple, easy, and it promotes solo PvP and well because you get 5 frigates for the 5M ISK. Even a new player can dive in, fit it with T1 stuff and have 5 good fights to learn from.

That’s the idea. I might add a best video contest to it. I might add a bonus prize for the pilot who dies the most and another for the one who dies the least. Either way it’s something I can run and perhaps fly in for grins. I’ll officially pitch it in its own post shortly.

Cheers
EVE SOB

Where in the universe is EVE SOB –November 2010 – late Edition

2010-11-12T10:46:00.000-08:00

It is time for this month’s “Where in the Universe is EVE SOB” post where every month I summarize where I am at in EVE. I also throw in some real world stuff and the top CNN headline of the day for a historical WTF was the world doing back then element.

Standards change:

So it seems like I am a little late in my first of the month, every month segment on what I am up too. Honestly EVE right now is in a kind of auto pilot. Once I pulled back from Null and folded all my pilots back into healthcare for Space hermits. It all slowed down and making ISK became organic not active. Even in recruiting new pilots for my actions are passive and semi automated. This all leaves me in a state of normality and regularity that does not change all that much. So as a result the blog has slowed as well I don’t have much riveting news. I’ve never been one to write for the sake of making a post.

Likewise the format of this segment has evolved into less of a split personality between Indy and PvP. Merging more into a carebear like blog even if it was never really the battle report hardcore PvP type log. This does not mean that I have no interest in PvP and that I will not continue training ZombiNutz down that path. It just means I am not going to focus some much on the division between one area and another. It should keep it more together and well my readers (I think there might be my Mum and five more by now) should hopefully find it flows a little better we shall see.

So what am I doing:

These days I have settled into a routine where I spend 30-45 mins a day (depending on hauling) keeping 20 P.I. planets chugging away which in turn drop about 350-375M ISK into my wallet a month. Sometimes I do this while I am chatting with old former corp. mates to set up some social mission running for fun. Other times this is while sitting in an Ice belt in a Mackinaw. It might be while I am fixing a real life work issue while a script is running or a log is parsing. I could be doing it while spamming a recruitment channel or yabbering on about nothing with folks in HCSH-Tavern. The bottom line is restarting my planets takes about 30-45 mins of time mixed in with other things I am doing making it a very care free source of ISK. It’s paid for itself, my R&D, Blockade runner, T2 production, PvE, and PvE skill book costs. Likewise it’s paid for a Mackinaw, Viator, Raven, Imicus, and soon an ORCA. So there is some merit in this new feature that arrived with the last expansion at least for me.

Things I am training:

Honestly if you were to look at Octobers section you might get a feel for where this is about to go.

SonOfBraben: Well the viator is trained and the Crane is inside of 18 days but I am taking a few detours back to T2 construction skills. Specifically the skills needed to invent T2 BPCs build Viator and Crane class blockade runners. This also includes the sub components as well and the Data cores required inventing. Long term goals are to continue funding the data cores via R&D agents over ISK for said data cores. All of this takes time and ISK. In turn it means I can build what I can fly and more so sell them for profits

ZombiNutz: So back up here in Highsec there is no immediate need for a ‘dictor as well you cannot warp bubble in these parts. So I did take a breather from that road of dedicated tackle skills to train my first Battleship hulls. So a PvE fit Raven with cruise missiles is where I am training for. In about 10 days with the completion of Caldari BS IV and Cruise Missiles IV I’ll be done with that. After that I am not sure if I’ll go back to ‘dictors or work on T2 launchers for the raven. I have been looking at a hurricane too and a few HACs with stars in my eyes. I really should sure up my drake fit fits, as I am still shooting Named HM launchers.

The Sisters: With the main toons on both accounts pretty busy skill wise and these two filling the spots they were created to do. They both remain paused and dormant. As corp. Standings with R&D agents expand the next area I see them being trained is in research project management to run multiple R&D agent tasks for the ever growing variety of data cores needed for SOBs work.

Real Life Stuffs:

It is the start of winter in my parts. I’ve all ready woken to show on the ground and had our trusty pellet stove running. Temperatures are below freezing at night and critters are super busy stocking up on food for the winter. This leads to squirrels raiding the bird feeders, raccoons in the trash, foxes digging at the bunny hutch, and field mice trying to invade my basement (and a happy cat). My dog has shot nerves from all the action and has barked himself horse. I grew up on a farm in Australia before we lost most of our guns. So for me there is a clear solution to all these problems. The down side is my wife grew up in burbs of Boston and while hates the critters does not have the stomach for dirty work. Also small town Massachusetts is not fond of gun shots in town and I cannot legally own a gun all the same. Furthermore it appears that it’s not legal to trap and relocate certain animals as it’s stressful for the little darlings. Either way this annual loot rioting from Mother Nature will be over soon. So my famer’s way urges to cull the need will soon subdue. I still am not sure why I have not moved the family to the more rural and open minded state of New Hampshire or down to the warmer Carolinas or Texas.

CNN Headline for Today:

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/Music/11/12/iconic.photographer.mick.rock/index.html

Cheers

EVE SOB

Trust and Recruiting.

2010-11-05T10:53:00.001-07:00

So after coming back to highsec my focus shifted hard towards growing my indy corp. I cannot say I am out there blitzing the recruitment channels but I've pulled in a few new members who are easy going and fit the bill. I've also turned a few folks away and hired some folks who left in very short order.

One such individual who I will not name because that is just cheap. Joined the corp. and then bailed 5 minutes later. I thought to myself he was fishing for member information for a war dec so I sent him the following in game mail:

"Safe travels then
From: SonOfBraben
Sent: 2010.11.03 20:45
To: Corp. Spy type

Guess we are not for you.

Cheers

SOB"

Simple and to the point way to fish a little. Some time passed and this came back:

"Re: Safe travels then
From: Corp. spy type
Sent: 2010.11.03 20:49
To: SonOfBraben,

Sorry, I lied.
I'm a pure indy alt and was curious how hard it would be to scam a corp. I don't have the heart nor the effort prorbably required. Thanks for letting me in and sory that I deceived you.

Fly safe -"

Nice that the dude was man enough to realize espionage was not for him and fess up. I took a moment to send the following reply:

"Re: Re: Safe travels then
From: SonOfBraben
Sent: 2010.11.03 20:54
To: Corp. Spy Type,

No worries! It's part of the game. I am an easy target as I don't require API keys. The other side is I don't grant access to any corp. members and keep most of the assets buried elsewhere. SO worst you can do is get a member list for a war dec or gank a pilot before you get booted.
We all have to try the dark side now and then...

Fly safe.

Cheers

EVE SOB"

It's not hard for my current efforts to fall victim to corp. infiltrators as I don't ask for API keys AND I am actively looking for brand new pilots. Heck half the guys I have recruited might be trying to infiltrate my corp. and take all my stuff. That's fine with me as I have NO intentions of giving any of them access to my hangers or wallets. I'll give them free stuff like a ship in the hanger now and then. I'll fly with them until they shoot at me and I tell them all I'll shoot back if they do.

The bottom line is if you want to grow a corp. you need to give folks the benefit of the doubt. EVE tends to make you paranoid and untrusting and with all the current media and power of two marketing being around exploring your dark side. It's not hard to want to shut the doors and chain a starved Fenris by the locks.

I have chosen to grow my corp. and well if every last one of the new recruits are there with a long term goal of robbing me blind. I wish them luck and will fly with 'em and offer answers to their questions until they try to drive the shank in my spine. Then I'll wish them well, boot them from the corp. and replace them with the next new recruit.

I do however hope that the benefit of the doubt pays off and I end up with a solid core of people who all have fun flying together.

A Toast: Here is hoping it all pans out for the best.

Cheers

EVE SOB

Cloaky Hauling goodness Part 1: The Viator

2010-11-02T08:15:00.001-07:00

A little while back I asked the smart people who read my blog to post up their opinions between the transport ships. I asked what was better the blockade runner or the deep space transport and got a solid answer back that blockade runners were the way to go. So I trained me up a Viator with SonOfBraben to get my good to market through LowSec and supply stuff to pilots in less favorable places.

SKILLS:

So first of all let's talk about skill plans for these handy and sneaky little haulers. Since we are talking about the Viator this means Gallente Industrial V, industry V, and Transport ships I(at least). To fit it worth a damn I'd add at least Cloaking IV. Tactical shield manipulation IV, High Speed Maneuvering IV, and Astronautics rigging IV. You might want to throw some EWAR on there are well but that's up to you. It's a hefty plan for a new pilot and not that trivial for a 12 month old pilot but for hauling stuff in harm's way it's time well spent.

FITTING:

There are a few ways to fit the Viator. Skill bonus are:
Gallente Industrial Skill Bonus:
+5% cargo capacity per level
+5% velocity per level
Transport Ships Skill Bonus:
-5% armor repairer duration per level.
-98.5% to -99.25% bonus to cpu need of covert ops cloaks

The odd thing about it though is not many folks seem fit this one for bonus. Rather most fit it for agility and speed for the most past with a splattering of "OH shit" EWAR and shield resistance to get them free if they get bumped from cloak. I'll be honest I cannot see a Viator armor tanking it's way through a gate camp. So it's along the speed and agility lines that I have fit the Viator for the LowSec hauling work I use it for. Here is how mine is bolted together.

FIT: Viator - Nothing to See (Cost ~80M ISK)

HIGHS:
-Covert Ops Cloaking device II
MIDS:
-ECM Burst II
-Invulnerability Field II
-Y-T8 Overcharged Hydrocarbon I MWD
LOWS:
-Nanofiber Internal Structure II
-Local Hull Conversion Inertial Stabilizers I
-Expanded Cargohold II
RIGS:
-Medium Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer I
-Medium Polycarbon Engine Housing I

It aligns and warps at near frigate speed and is similar to fly through LowSec camps to my Helios without the top speed and probes. It's got tons of cap for the MWD, INV II, and MWD but is a 50 second wonder if you turn on the ECM (set to not auto cycle) but we only use that if we are locked to try and break point and GTFO. If you fly it right in LowSec you should not get a lock on you. I've flown it through a number of camps all ready without so much as a yellow box (knocks on wood). I'd imagine bubbles might be a bit of fun in this guy if they have supporting fast tackle or insta-lock ships. In Null I'd recommend dropping the expanded cargohold II for another stabilizer and ponying for the T2 rigs for a little more speed and agility. THE best tank for a blockade runner is not being seen and being somewhere else fast if you are.

Either way I enjoy this ship a ton and it's allowed me many hassle free trips to market through Lowsec that have all ready paid for it many times over. It really is like flying a Helios with a ~4500m3 cargo hold!

I am training for the Crane at the moment and have some BPO's in for ME research before I start to build both the Viator and the Crane. I plan to do a comparison to the Viator to the Crane in terms of fit, flying, and cost. Then I'll most likely compare how they are to build as well.

Cheers

EVE SOB

I got called out…

2010-10-29T12:29:00.000-07:00

So I get an email today that someone left a comment on one of my posts as I do when anyone takes a much appreciated moment of their time to comment. It was on my last post Odds and ends Friday and read:

“Rixx Javix said...
Man almost a whole week, I'm getting serious withdrawl symptoms here.”

It reminded me of a post I did back in may titled Disgruntled EVE blog reader! Post GOD DAMNIT! Where I had the shakes bad because all my favorite blogs had not posted in a few days, so I appreciate the poke from Rixx on my own moment of sloth. It’s humbling to see such interest from a great blogger and artist such as Rixx. More so a director of an awesome corp. like DION. So I better get postin’ ;)

OK so blah blah my real life is busy. Good that’s done and I can move on.

Honestly not too much has happened since last Friday in EVE. I am spending ISK as fast as I make it investing back into my pilots and the corporation. I’ve just added a nice spiffy Viator to SonOfBraben hanger which dramatically helps me getting my goods to market now that my P.I. farm lives a few hops into lowsec. ZombiNutz is nearing completion of a PvE raven to flag ship bearing missions with new recruits of which there are now 3 new accounts this week. It’s a steady uptick of new members as I draw nearer my recruitment goals.

I’ve been asked to join a mining op with a potential alliance and invited to a coalition of highsec corps who shares a common intelligence channel in the interest of helping each other when wardecs come in. So it seems there are some good doing in my current run as a new carebear/lowsec small gang PvP Corporation CEO. It moves slowly and it’s not exciting news for most PvP battle report junkie types. Not that my blog was ever for battle report junkie types...

I’ve also been catching up with “The Sarj” on old corp. mate from TGV and a real life friend of one Astral “MY laptop caught fire” Dominx. The Sarj and I are on first name basis and he might just be the first EVE player (aside from the bugger who got me addicted then quit) that I will meet outside the game. The down side is the Sarj lives in the UK and I live in north eastern US. However he plans to visit NYC sometime soon and I made a promise if he took a detour to Boston for a night I’d find the time to buy him a steak. So that might prove to be a good story for the future, we shall see.

So there my dedicated and hungering reader(s) is an update on the life of one EVE SOB. I do plan to do a little post on my views of the viator some time in the coming week. Which I’ll follow up with a comparison of the Viator Vs Crane when I can fly one here in about 20 days.

Cheers

EVE SOB

Odds and Ends Friday.

2010-10-22T13:02:00.001-07:00

The week has been a steady week of laid back bearish activities for me. I’ve been chatting with potential new recruits. Some of them true new players and some of them just a little too savvy for a real noob. Either way the chats are fun and social interaction is a key part of the MMO. I’ve only hired one new pilot to date, but I am in no rush to build numbers.

With Capsuleer officially gone now I find my iPhone addiction has reduced greatly. I’ve loaded and removed iClone 5 times now in the last year or so. I just cannot learn to love it, and well when it tells me my characters are not training even when I manually re-enter the API code and sit through a 5 min update. Especially when I am looking at my pilot in game training, and EVEMON tells me they are training. IClone is not a bad app, we just don’t gel. At least this extra iPhone time has let me improve on my Angry Birds scores and unlock a few more cars in need for speed. Sorry blog pack, you are going to miss a ton of readers. :(

I’ve come to a new mindset around ISK in EVE these days. I basically don’t set it as the focus of an activity and rather focus on the activity itself to be the reason I am online playing. The really awesome side of that is I tend to enjoy the tasks more and my wallet is the healthiest it’s been for a while. So if you’re sitting about wondering how to make ISK. I suggest do fun stuff and welcome some organic growth in wealth as a result.

Dev blog flowage is up and well it seems that CSM have at the very least (and by no means the end of the good) inspired a lot more dev blogs. Almost daily we have a new blog post on the many things the dev teams are doing to make our new Eden a better place. I find them all a good read for the most part. However if you don’t have time to read them all, I’ve become addicted to Mandrill’s dev blog break downs via RSS feed on my phone while out and about.

New toys in the hanger this month include a nasty little Ishkur for SonOfBraben and a Viator as well following on nicely from the Helios. This was a good distraction to the endless science skills required for T2 invention and production. ZombiNutz has ‘ceptors and Assault Ships for Minmatar, Caldari and Gallente. I’ve got a wolf and a Jag fitted out and ready to play thanks to HCSH production runs.

Cheers

EVE SOB

ME ME: Newbie Mistakes.

2010-10-18T14:20:00.000-07:00

So Dense Veldspar linked a great TenTon Hammer post on Top Ten Mistakes that Newbies make which in turn inspired Eveoganda posted some thoughts.

As my current focus in EVE is to hire Newbie pilots and help they make lass mistakes. I figured it was a good time to list some of my own views on the matter.

Ø Battlecruisers are not invincible.

Flash back 8 months and my single goal in EVE was to be able to fly a drake to run missions with. It was that ship a corp. mate had that we just could not kill with a mess of frigates. The Brutix was death by drone and blasters as well. I put myself in the poor house so many times replacing battle cruisers as a result of the silly losses that taking fire will teach you. I’ve since gone back and ran level 2’s in rifters and run level 3’s and some level 4’s in an Assault frigate now. I took one of the new corp. members out with me on some level 2’s in rifters. Showed him that he can speed tank and take down the frigates faster in a 2M ISK rifter better than a 40M ISK drake. I also dropped 5 fit rifters in his bay and said I’d rather see him loose all 5 of them trying stuff than any other ship for now.

Ø Really don’t fly anything that will ruin you if lost.

I recently lost 2 T2 fit hulks in one day through stupid actions on my behalf. While it was a solid slap in the face I had the ISK to absorb those losses. I could replace the ship many times over with my current passive ISK income. Six months ago, I would have been majorly emo rage log if I lost a retriever. Loss happens, learn it with something you can buy 10 of at a time.

Ø Join a corporation that is dedicated to new players, not run by them.

The concept of learning something together is great for cub scouts and kindergarten. In EVE it is like a mob of sheep learning survival skills in a den of really big bad hungry wolves. While I’ve done my share of trail blazing with my trusty Google search engine. I’ve also done a fair share of blundering around under the guide of noob CEOs. Even more so I’ve been in corps where the CEO is too busy to help, and the rest of the corporation is figuring it out together. If the CEO is 3 months old, chances are he is also figuring stuff out. Ask lots of questions during the interview as well. HCSH is recruiting and I hear the CEO is very involved and has a clue about what he is trying to do. ;)

Ø Really try something before you move on.

While it’s true that you can do anything in EVE it’s far too easy to spread yourself thin and not fully understand the whole picture of a given profession. I hated scanning when I first tried it because I went in with really bad skills and equipment and tried to find high end sites. Now with the right skills and ship I can hit pretty much anything site wise quickly and enjoy the rewards of finding something tasty. When I first tried ICE mining I had the wrong ship, crappy fitting on it, and poor skills. Now with the right ship, great skills and a correctly implanted Jump Clone. I can mine enough ICE semi AFK while I tinker about with P.I., trading, and Industry jobs.

Ø Do what is FUN.

Big huge rule mistake. If you don’t like to mine don’t join a corporation looking for miners. If you hate getting your ship popped and being ransomed don’t do PvP. If spreadsheets, price margins, and profit analysis put you in an insta-coma chances are trading is not for you. Yes this contradicts the really try something ideal, honestly you kind of know early on if you hate mining or if you don’t like to die.

Ø ISK is like Money, it comes in time.

In life most of us are not born with a billion ISK to spend. In fact most of us spend 7-10 years of our life not really understanding what money is. The same is true in EVE. If you spend every moment online making ISK, when are you going to spend it and have some fun? ISK is important but well having a trillion ISK in the bank is not going to fly your ships for you. The day I stopped worrying about making ISK, and started enjoying the ISK I had was the day my wallet started to organically grow on its own. I’ve invested over a billion ISK back into my characters and Corporation and reached a point where I don’t so much worry about ISK. I am not wealthy by EVE standards, but I am not broke either. Invest in yourself and enjoy what you are doing and ISK will come.

There are many more mistakes we all make and so many different areas of knowledge in EVE that no one list can truly cover them all. There was a debate over at eveoganda about solo PvP and flying alone. Honestly I’ve not killed a think flying solo, but I’ve learned a heck of a lot about how to survive while moving through LowSec. I fly through LowSec daily now and unless I am flying a mining fit hulk without scouting most days I never even see a yellow box. So sure get your clone updated and jump into a T1 frigate and go fly alone in lowsec spaces. You will die for sure, but man you will learn a ton about not getting killed while you do. That reminds me, time to teach one of the new guys about books marks and warping about in LowSec.

Cheers

EVE SOB

New Pilots break free from the Empires chains!

2010-10-18T08:16:00.001-07:00

So after moving back to empire I have a crazy notion going on. I am recruiting for Healthcare for Space Hermits specifically seeking those fresh from the academy (or still in it). The idea here is to give back to the new people some of the knowledge that has been granted to me over the last year or so.

I want people with less than 2M skill points looking to take the next step out of the NPC starter corps to try a few of the many careers EVE has to offer. Specifically HCSH offers direction in Industry based Highsec professions (mining, building, R&D, P.I.) and PvE stuff (Blowing up rats for cash and standings). We also offer a foot into the PvP door with Lowsec roams, standard frigs fit suggestions and limited free fitted T1 frigates for new PvP pilots looking to swap more than smack talk in local.

So if you’re new to EVE and still flying around with your eyes wide open and a million questions buzzing around in your head. More so still paying 10% to a NPC corp. that will never be invested back into you. Then break free from the Empires chains and come visit me in game channel “HCSH-tavern” or send an eve mail to ZombiNutz or SonOfBraben.

We are small and relaxed and have no plans to be anything else for a while. We will join a highsec Industry Alliance before the year is out. All races welcome. We are based in Lonetrek and can offer relocation assistance.

Cheers

EVE SOB

Well crap! I am not that angry anymore I guess…

2010-10-15T15:23:00.001-07:00

Its funny how disconnected you can become over a span of time. It tends to leave you out in the blissful dark alone and unaware of what might be going on back there at home. Having recently pulled myself from 0.0 it was kind of funny to read a note from my former CEO that the corp. was moving back out also and would become the highsec Indy corp. again. I had no clue about the move, but then again I had been afk for a month solid. Either way I made the right choice in moving on.

Anyhow it seems that my vacation in EVE has cured some of my anger around managing people. I now find myself slowly looking to grow my own Indy corp. seeking to help new players find their place in the harsh cold savage parts of New Eden. I’ve turned a few folks away who came to my door wanting to know how many hulk pilots I have for their ORCA to support. I turned another away who was asking too many questions about the corporation’s assets. Yet I did hire one new pilot with a lot of questions that even I can answer correctly. I hope to hire many more over the next few weeks.

See that’s exactly the type of player I am looking for to join the corp. Those brand new pilots who are full of questions and looking for some soft direction without any demands. My goal is to help them with whatever career they choose with the interest of making some new friends along the way. Perhaps sharing some of the limited knowledge I’ve stumbled over in my time about the gates.

Yes I’ve gone mad and decided to become a CEO of a carebear corp. Slight change in direction from 0.0 and PvP I know. Then again I never really got a good solid bite into that life either.

Cheers

EVE SOB.

Be a MAN about it!

2010-10-13T13:27:00.000-07:00

All right let's get this straight, I am a man and hence I can say "Be a man about it!" If you find this offensive, then tough shit. Go read a bloody politically correct blog. This post is actually about 0.0 life and knowing when it's time to be honest and do the right thing. I reached this point today.

See when I made the choice to leave carebear life behind and move into PvP with ZombiNutz I had time. When Top Gear Ventures moved out to 0.0 I was eager and able. I had time to spend on the gates and in the fleets. Learning and doing what I should be doing to be a valuable pilot, the cog in the machine so to speak. I helped move assets with my alts. I trucked out ships, mods , and ammo to 0.0. I trained to fly better tackle and bought interceptors with every intention to use them in 0.0. However real life happened and I found myself with less hours for dedicated focused play. At that point right there I should have pulled my hat from the ring. I did not and chose to stick it out for a month to see if time opened up again. It did not and over time I went from a cog in the machine to become rust. I was there in the ranks but not there when it was my turn to pass the load.

Long story short I was not pulling my weight and living in the premise that someday I would. Well 0.0 does not need part time pilots who fit it in when they can. They need people who can and will fight when needed. My life just does not fit that model these days. So today I manned up and admitted it by turning in my roles to my corporation in 0.0. I moved all my crap back out of 0.0 and said my farewells to 0.0 for now. I all ready feel better than I am not letting people down by not attending CTAs or defending the space.

So if you're out in 0.0 and not really doing much of anything. Do what's right and move out. The people out there need people who want to fight and be part of the machine. If you're not doing either you are just rust and need to be removed.

Cheers

EVE SOB

Making Free ISK VOL 3: Trading in very simple forms.

2010-10-08T08:23:00.001-07:00

We all like ISK because well it empowers us to expand our EVE worlds. While ISK is not the only thing standing between us and that titan (thankfully). It's a pretty darn important item for most of what we do in EVE. There are many ways to make ISK but today we will talk about one method to make ISK with little to no time invested. Making Free ISK is a new series of articles focusing on passive incomes. None of it is new information. I am just filtering out the smack talk and trolling for all to read.

Trading in very simple forms.

Let’s just start this one with saying I am NOT a seasoned trader! I do have an account with some basic training skills but I am not in the league of the trillionair of EVE. I do however typically find a 30% return on the few things I trade in. I typically have to truck it about any where up to 20 jumps to sell it. Sometimes I even need to stick my nose into LowSec as well.

With this in mind and following the Making Free ISK motto of less work for our ISK here is how I make an average ~30% return on investment with trade in EVE. The “buy low sell high” concept is a good “NO SH!T Sherlock” rule. However buying the right stuff low knowing you need to truck it about is the true value of small time low work trading for the beginner. By this I mean pick things that folks can make that have a pretty small cargo foot print. Like EMP S for example.

OK so you have a list of items that are player made and have a small cargo foot print per unit. Next go to a major trade hub and look up the market details of those items. What you are looking for is a small margin between the buy orders and the sell orders. To me this tells me the supply and demand of that item right now is pretty good and the items being actively traded. I might be wrong but it works for me. Identify all the items on your list that have this trait and then go 5 hops out and look at the local buy orders. Chances are they will be between 30-50% lower than those in the trade hub for at least one of those items. If not go a few more hops out or even better hit the nearest LowSec jump in system with a station and see what the buy orders are there. OK so you have your items and you have found a local market where the buyers are right jerks and have buy orders 50% or more below the trade hub value of the item. Ring the bell; you have a chance to make free ISK.

OK now we get to the downer of trading in EVE. You need ISK to make ISK and there is no way around it. Fortunately this is VOL 3 in the series so you should have made some ISK off R&D agents and P.I. by now. So what you are going to do is set an amount of ISK you can live without for up to 3 months. Take that ISK and create a buy order for your items that is 30% less than the difference between the trade hub buy and sell orders. Hopefully it will also be 20% higher than the local buy orders as well. This makes it tasty to local sellers and a PITA to match for local buyer. Extend the range of the buy order as far as you can with on your skills. Now go wait for people to sell you items.

This tactic is really good if you don’t create really large buy orders. The idea is you create an order that a local seller can make some quick cash off or a local buyer might just cash out to get rid of the competition. The best is LowSec folks who might not have an awesome security rating to move stuff to the trade hubs, or have not clued in on a highsec mule alt to move it for them. They build stuff on the side down in LowSec then after a bad day at the office need liquid cash. To them being able to sell something in there backyard for 30% below that long PITA trade hub price is a win. Instant cash and easy access is the mother of all discount.

OK so your buy orders get taken up, you get a nice red negative transaction in your wallet, and now you have all these little pockets of small items about the place. Time to cash in the piggy bank and make that 30% profit. Now you might be jumping into a trusty hauler about now thinking you have all this stuff to haul and hence you need a hauler. WRONG! See I suggested small cargo items for a reason. See haulers move slowly, they align slowly, and they warp SLOW. Sure they carry a crap ton of stuff, but we chose items with small cargo foot print. I personally go as far as selecting a few items with a 0.0x or 0.00x M3 per unit foot print. Hence I can cram a lot of them in a frigate or in my case a covert ops frigate. What this allows me to do is rip through the warps faster, align and warp faster (hence less chance of getting ganked – except smart bomb camps suck), and slip into those lowsec systems to get the goods without a huge amount of risk. See lumbering around in a hauler in certain trade hubs and especially a LowSec gate system is like painting “I HAZ STUFF FOR YOUZ!” on the side of a big fat gift bag of a ship. Slippery frigate is in and out before most know it. Also you stand the chance of losing less should you get ganked as well.

OK the last part is trucking all the stuff to a trade hub to sell it. If fast cash is your need and the profits are worth wile sell the items at the best buy order. Wallet flash 30% cash increase thank you very much Mr. 0.01 ISK trader. If you want to make a little more put up a sell order that is respectable and tasty for a big fish trader. Not so instant but slightly bigger wallet flash thank you very much again Mr. EVE billionaire trader. If you really really have spare ISK stockpile a certain item and watch the market. Wait for the big boys to start a bidding war and drive up the price of an item. At this point timing comes in and you throw in a quick and dirty sell order for the “HOT” item and make a small killing off the wars between the big fish. In all cases the little guy with a frigate and some extra ISK to invest wins. Sure you might have to truck some stuff about, but hey when don’t you have to truck some stuff about in EVE. Might as well make some ISK at it.

Now if this little bit gets you going there are plenty of resources out there on trading. Like all Free ISK bits, this one is intended for the little guy. I started out making small gains of small projectile ammo investing just 2M ISK at a time. Now it’s not uncommon for me to have 100-200M ISK about the place in select buy orders. Making ~30% back on those small chunks adds up over time thus allowing for a bigger chunk to invest. Happy trading.

Cheers

EVE SOB

When you are right it’s not always awesome.

2010-10-08T06:56:00.001-07:00

So at the end of this post I surmised that with new eye candy comes new client side requirements. I went a little far suggesting we need an APEX card but the latest dev blog tells us we need a card that can handle shader 3.0.

What this means folks with 5 year old PCs need to shell out for a new card/PC. Folks who play on laptops need to start considering buying a REAL gaming PC and quit playing EVE while they watch TV. For me this means my laptop will no longer be able to scrape by on business trips or quick lunch break logins after the summer expansion. Kind of makes sense to me that for EVE to move into modern graphics engines and support 3rd person bipeds (incarna) it needs to up the requirements.

I just hope the eye candy is worth it for an all ready discontent gaming base. Let’s hope the new shader and backend improvements are not JUST to deliver incarna but to improve the game as a whole including large fleet lag and not just more pretty stuff you cannot see while the node is loading.

Cheers

EVE SOB

Carebear Ranch goes Planet Side v2.0

2010-10-06T09:38:00.000-07:00

A while back I posted about my 5 original planetary colonies here. At that time I was trying to get a little of each of the 15 basic P1 products from those 5 planets. The goal was to putz around to see what I could build and learn a few things about this new feature. Flash forward ~ 4 months and my goals for P.I. have changed a might bit. Today I make ~ 320M ISK a month of P.I. maintaining 15 HighSec planets across 2 accounts and 3 characters. I shoot for 30 minutes a day where I ritualistically click my extractors back into life and collect all my P1 goods. I drop the P1 stuff onto a manufacturing plant to make P2-3 items. The colonies have changed MANY times but the following is how they look today.

The Manufacturing Planet:

Let's start at the top. with the manufacturing planet. It has 18 Advanced processors, 3 Storage nodes, and 2 Launch Pads. It produces 7 P2/3 products of which on the Jita market on buy orders alone make me 8.2M ISK a day or ~246.5M ISK a month. The biggest drag is getting all the P1 products from 3 different pilots to the appropriate launch pad to start the production run. Here is what it looks like:

The Extractor Planets:

So for my 7 P2/3 products I need 14 of the 15 base items. In some cases I need just 1 extractors worth, or 920 units of P1 X. In others I need 3 extractors or 2760 units of P1 Y. It's all tracked in a handy dandy spreadsheet that tells me what I need to extract and where I need to dump it to make ISK! The extra ~70M ISK comes from surplus P1 products that I truck over to market one day a month. P1 products like Water and Toxic metals are very easy to maintain 4 extractors for a 23H cycle with HighSec Planets. Here are some of my extractor planets. I'd post them all but there are a few like the lava and gas planets that are identical:

Conclusions:

It's possible to almost pay for a 30 day PLEX with HighSec P.I. if you run 3 pilots with 5 colonies each manufacturing P2/3 products. It takes me about 30 Minutes a day to log in and keep it all running, and another 30 minutes a week to get it all to market for payday. The training required for each pilot is ~10 days and includes remote sensing III, Interplanetary Consolidation IV, and Command Center Upgrades IV. Oh and what you choose to do with the rest of your time is up to you, but you CAN make ISK at P.I. even in Highsec.

My next steps are to compare all this to LowSec planets. I'll be sure to post about with the risks and what I do to get around them. With the Winter Expansion claiming "a more dynamic and simplified system for Planetary Interaction." perhaps it will be 5 minutes a day for 600M ISK a Month. We shall see.

Cheers

EVE SOB

Well that news was a douche chill.

2010-10-05T07:23:00.001-07:00

Let’s set the scene a little. It’s late and I cannot sleep so I am up wandering the house at midnight on the eastern seaboard of continental America. I had perched myself in a large over stuffed comfy chair by the fire with my iPhone in hand. Unlocking the device I scanned email as I typically do then went to the #1 application I have on my phone, capsuleer. I hit refresh on the news and was surprised to see a new article under “capsuleer” news. Could this be the eagerly awaited announcement the 2.1 release? I was giddy for a second, until I read the title “The End of Capsuleer”! It took a while for the blood to come back to my face before I read the article. It was sad news, unexpected news, downright horrible news not just for me but for the EVE community.

Its morning now and I am still in disbelief that come October 17th 2010 the #1 App on my iPhone will be gone. I re-read the article just to be sure it was not some sick dream. I tend to agree with Evoganda and the take that something else is a foot here. My corporate spidey senses tell me that there are other issues under the covers and we are reading the public announcement not the truth. Either way the EVE community is about to lose a leg. A leg on which the effectiveness of the blog pack rests. A leg on which so many iPhone EVE junkies have stood. A leg that could easily be mended if CCP would grant the authors license to monetize the app. A sad blow to what some might consider an all ready strained community.

Nashh is leading a petition to save Capsuleer. I don’t care if you have to sell your body on a corner to buy some computer time to sign this. iPhone user or not! EVE player or not! Sign it mKaay!

Cheers

EVE SOB

Where in the universe is EVE SOB –October 2010

2010-10-01T08:52:00.000-07:00

It is time for this month’s “Where in the Universe is EVE SOB” post where every month I summarize where I am at in EVE. I also throw in some real world stuff and the top CNN headline of the day for a historical WTF was the world doing back then element.

Where am I?

Holly Heck it's October ALL READY?!?!? It just seems like I was posting Septembers monthly bit. Honestly not much has changed for me in EVE over the last month. Perhaps LESS time than ever trying to PvP and a little more time working over P.I. for profits.

I did throw out an Idea for a frigate Cage fight that got a ton of interest. I'll be gearing up to run this even before the year is out of RL gives me a chance. I'll also be announcing some changes in the way I do business in EVE this month as well.

How’s building stuff doing?

The ranch has moved its P.I operations to a 3 system pocket of 0.5 and 0.6 planets on the other side of 2 0.4 LowSec systems. I have all the planet types in this pocket and the yields from my 14 extractor planets are proving to be a little better than my previous farm that was spread from 0.6-0.8 planets.

We are have some other things in the pipeline that are being kept close to the chest for now. The details are still super fuzzy and the locations need to be kept secret.

How’s shooting stuff doing?

Honestly again it's NOT doing. I just cannot get the time to focus on the world of PvP without other things wanting my time. See carebearing is a sport that can be done whist distracted. PvP on the other hand requires full attention. It's not right to give a half assed effort to PvP. It's not fair on your fleet, and frankly lame for your opponents as well. So PvP and I are not meant to happen.

What Skills am I training?

SonOfBraben: The need for claoky haulers has appeared. So I am training towards one as this guy can fly one the fastest.

Zombinutz: While PvP itself might be dormant. I am still training this guy for the sport. A crap ton of gunnery skills and then onto 'dictors is the path. I might take a detour and get a battleship fit trained for this guy.

Sister Janice (Nun Alt): dormant right now as she shares a queue with SonOfBraben. Not sure what is next here.

Sister Juliette (Nun Alt): Dormant as well sharing a queue with ZombiNutz. Again the future is unplanned right now.

In the pesky real world:

A whole lot of busy fall activities and a active work schedule is the main focus here. The boys are in school and doing good. Mrs. SOB is at home wondering what to do with her time. I have a few house projects to finish before the snow hits. I also want to log some more hammock time before the sad day when I take it down for the winter. Also this month the misses and I celebrate 11 years of blissful marriage.

CNN headline for Today:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/10/01/yemen.child.brides/index.html?hpt=C1

(creepy)

Cheers

EVE SOB

Status Report Type Post!

2010-09-28T18:50:00.000-07:00

Some days I feel like the two office monkeys in the picture too busy checking progress to make any actual progress. All the training plans and ISK making plans and plans for how to fly through dangerous space and plans on what to buy/sell for trading. I swear some days the status of each plan and making sure that the project is on track is why EVE has corporations as groups of players. It’s seriously more work than my real life job tracking each and every project. Spreadsheets in Space might be a mocking term used to describe EVE but well with all the moving parts to track. A lot of the time I feel the need to create spreadsheets to track aspects of my EVE time. As such I have many spreadsheets on one of my gaming rigs at home.

To make matters worse this week my RL job has me in Atlanta Georgia whipping a remote data center into shape. I am away from my comfortable gaming sanctuary with all its raw power and vast screen resolutions playing on a laptop. While I have at night more free time to play EVE this laptop can just render the pilot portraits. That’s on the highest performance settings, plugged into an over sized power brick, with a gun held to its CPU. So let’s just say PvP is not happening, in fact the letters P v P lag out when I type them in MS Word on this pocket calculator. Anyhow I have all this time on my hands and about the only things I can do with it are trade, mine, or finish moving my P.I. colonies.

OK so I am not at home where I have all my spreadsheets that I use to calculate this, that, or the other. So as I redesign my P.I. colonies and hunt about for things to trade I find that I am missing the little table I have at home that I update from market feeds from Jita etc. I am missing the exact daily inputs for my production colony. THEN zombienutz announces that he has room in his training queue via capsuleer on my iPhone. I don’t have EVEMON installed and begin to hyperventilate trying to remember what skill is next in the plan. Traveling and playing EVE without your army of external EVE resources is a right royal pain in the balls.

What if EVE had some capacity to build training plans and store them much like EVEMON? What if also P.I. had some sense of flow charts (there is a nice picture on the schematic) that could be used to track colony input and output ratios then tie them to profits. Why must I maintain a spreadsheet of all the markets I choose to trade in (yeah I know there are community web sites) in an environment where conscience can be captured and dumped into another body. To me EVE and the concept of corporations scream better corporate like tracking tools. Not going to talk about the horrid corporation management tools because really there are NONE to talk about.

Anyhow! I have all the time in the world for the next few nights to play EVE. Sadly PvP is out on this 1990’s cell phone of a laptop. So it’s ISK making activities for me. I just wish there was more integrated tools to manage it all.

Cheers

EVE SOB

SOB, you are NOT supposed to mine anymore!

2010-09-24T07:21:00.000-07:00

So yesterday I lost not just one but two hulks. Even at today's reduced markets that's 280M ISK that is now at best some tangled wires and perhaps a armor plate. So what exactly was I doing to loose 2 hulks?!

See I am moving my P.I. farm to a nice little pocket of 0.5 space that is tucked away behind a few 0.4 systems. So far I've moved 50% of my P.I. farm and I and making 25% more stuff. Happy times. The only downer is I need to fly all my badger MK1's through there. Sounds like a pain in the ass. I know why not just move my un-loved hulk and some BPO's over there and mine me up some rocks to make a small fleet of badgers. The first light bulb should have went off right here. Lets risk a 150M ISK ship that takes 20 second to align and warp so I can use it to build a fleet of ships worth 2-3M ISK. Back story done. /facepalm

OK so I grabbed a retriever fitted for ice mining. I scouted in a shuttle with my alt and made it through the 2 LowSec systems with no other pilots in local. Time was short so I shuttled back with my main and started on my way through with my hulk. First gate into LowSec I JUST get pointed by a drake. When I say JUST, he must have been sitting there for about 15 seconds before he decided to lock me. Literally as I aligned and built speed and was at 1/2 speed he started to lock and just got the scram on literally as the speed bar was hitting 3/4. Nuff said. All right so I have a tank on the hulk and some T2 drones. Might as well try and get back to the gate and see how my drones do (yeah I was done, but hey might as well make them work for it). So I reproach the gate, activate the tank and launch my 5 Hobgoblin IIs. So lets just say this I lasted 12 volleys from said Drake before I was liberated to my fast pod. He did good bumping me off the gate and my drones did get him down to half Shields. I typed a ":)" in local as I warped out and my wallet flashed for a HUGE 32M ISK insurance. Yeap SOB, you are dumb! Moving on.

So I warped back over to my new pocket and for grins looked to see if there were any hulks for sale. Yeap, 1 hop in highsec from where I was trying to get there was a hulk for sale for 138M ISK. After banging my head on the desk for about 5 mins it was time to start work. I bought the hulk and logged off.

OK flash forward a work day. It's 5:30PM and the last few hours of work have been slow. So I close down the work stuff and log in to EVE for a bit. I grab my Covert Ops (Yeah I know, Scout first you ass) and fly out to my main corp. Office and then Jita to get the replacement fit for the new Hulk. Out there and back no incident. Click warp too, MWD, Cloak. Happy times. I get to my new pocket office. Jump in the pod, get the hulk. OK back at the new office ready to fit. I fit from saved and add a nice new flight of hobgoblin II's. Spiffy and clean. I un-dock to go survey the local rock belts for stuff to mine. Mid warp the cell goes off. It's work and on answering there is a server fire that needs me. At this point I was lost in the situation and forgot about my 150M ISK hulks landing in belt whatever planet who the f**k cares. Anyhow, flash forward 45 mins and I wiggle the mouse on my gaming rig to see my pod floating next to a wreck with the name of my new hulk. It took a while to register what had happened, but 0.5 belt rats with thorn rockets had killed my hulk, which landed with it's active tank off. I was not mad at this point in time. It was just a stellar reminder why EVE is not an AFK sport and requires some focus. It also set a firm message that I should NOT be mining. I had not turned on a mining laser in the last 3 months why should I start now to build 2 badgers.

Anyhow after 260M ISK lost in exhumers in a day. I bought 5 badger MK1's and 2 Iteron I's and flew them through the short LowSec pipe with out a single sight of another ship. I even flew one filled with Advanced Command centers while I scouted with my Covert Ops with out incident.

It will be a long cold day in hell before I see another asteroid belt in a mining ship.

Cheers

EVE SOB

P.S. I welcome all the flames and dumbass comments.

Winter Expansion: Incursion - Early thoughts.

2010-09-21T14:10:00.000-07:00

So if you have not read it yet check out the announcement for Incursion the 2010 EVE winter expansion here http://www.eveonline.com/incursion/

Some highlights:
· Sansha attacks are back for some more PvE fun – Hints of motherships and LP rewards
· CSM suggested improvements – Well \o/ rock on CSM!
· Hardware upgrades – JITA nodes for all please (aka the ‘double wide’ IBM blade)
· Software upgrades – Does this mean client min specs upgrades?
· Game and fleet performance – AMEN!
· CCP’s Carbon Character technology – we all just got a lot sexier (incarna is coming)
· Noctis – salvage ship saving the prime hull
· Amazing New visuals – more sparkle on our sparklies!
· Dynamic and simplified system for P.I. – NO MORE BILLION CLICKS A DAY!!!

Not much else in there at this point in time. Sounds like another PvE focused expansion with some tweaks to the big boy PvP stuff. The carebear in me is happy, and well my PvP side is sleepy and unloved. So I guess it’s a win. Be interesting to see how much carbon we get. How much less lag there is. If we suddenly need a PC with an APEX card to get decent eye candy at performance.

You excited yet kiddies?

Cheers

EVE SOB

Blood Sugar Tea.

2010-09-20T13:29:00.000-07:00

Streams of hot water flowed across her body washing away the sins of the night before. The heat and steam of the shower acting as her absolution as she allowed it to erode away her thoughts. She smiled as the fluids swirled at her feet before gurgling down the drain taking with them the last evidence of her crimes. The thought of him still on her mind and his smell was still clear even now as his blood was completely washed away. Perhaps it was time to shed this clone and all its subtle memories for something fresh. Perhaps this time she would have blond hair not the dirty red she had become bored with. The soft chime of temple bells interrupted, someone was paging her. She strode from the shower, wrapped herself in a towel and heading for her office. The shower shut off and began the first of several sanitizing cycles thus ending any links from her back to “him”.

“Good Morning my child!” greeted the old Gallente man as his image came into focus before her.
“Good Morning Sir!” she returned bowing slightly allowing her towel to slip a little knowing it always caused him some discomfort. Yet today his misshapen eyes took on sharp gaze sending an uneasy feeling to her core. She repositioned her towel and crossed her arms across her chest. There was an uneasy pause in time before he spoke.
“Juliette I need you to check on Janice before 21:00 hours. I feel her duties are weighing heavily upon her.” He said softening his gaze and smiling softly before adding. “The company of your guiltless soul is needed to help her release her fears.”
A curt smile formed as Juliette replied “So my “sister” needs to lighten up. Did you ask her to haul your Exotic Dancers again?”
He chuckled softly for a moment if only to be polite. “No, I’ve asked her to fuel Station-1. So please be kind to your sister.” The image snapped shut and he was gone.
“Shit!” cursed Juliette as she turned to her wardrobe. Today she would wear that damn uniform she hated and go prepare Janice to die.

-

Station-1 quietly reported having 20 days of fuel left to its owners. It then ran a self auto check. Ammunition levels in all turrets were at 98%. All warp scram and web arrays were online and undamaged. Moon extraction cycles were operational and silo capacity was at 50%. The manticore was fueled and loaded in its hanger array. The last dock was 8 days, 12 hours, 7 minutes, and 47 seconds ago. Last hostile contact had been 8 days, 12 hours, 8 minutes, and 15 seconds ago. The aggressing ship, a rifter, was eliminated by array #3. A date was added to the report and Station-1 returned to passive mode as it monitored the 300KM bubble of space it called home. An incoming transmission flickered across the empty control deck indicating the ETA of 22:00 for a refueling craft. With a hiss the stations life support systems prepared for living inhabitants. An old antique bubbled and gurgled as it brewed coffee the way it was made 300 years ago. Then Station-1 returned to passive state and resumed scanning its bubble.

Nine astral units away another machine scanned its surroundings. Yet this machine was not compiled of circuits and power grids like stations-1. It was sinew and blood suspended in an amber fluid deep within the bowels of a Hurricane Battle cruiser. It was posed 15KM from the jump gate flashing and shimmering radiantly as the sensor boosters probed for the next kill. The machine watched and waited for the flash of a gate to fire. It’s persona far colder than any POS.

-

With her usual long powerful strides Janice arrived outside the entrance to the Prime Cadet. It was an officer’s bar in the upper levels of the station that was frequented with capsuleers with strong moral standards and clean records. Janice came here often during her down time, but today she was not looking forward to her visit. The last time she met Juliette for lunch it involved a seedy nameless tavern in the stations underbelly with lunch ending to the sounds of blaster fire. The fact that Juliette had chosen the ‘Cadet was like a Brutor asking for a napkin. With a sigh she pushed on the door.

“Welcome back Janice!” bubbled the perky hostess “Juliette is waiting for you in room #7 and asked we direct you to her on arrival!”
“Great, thanks!” replied Janice as she brushed past and headed to room #7. “Time to get this over with.” She muttered under her breath.
“Enjoy your lunch captain!” the hostess called after her in a chirpy voice.

As Janice entered room #7 Juliette stood and greeted her with a Caldari officers salute. She was dressed in a Caldari Captains uniform that was neat but only adequately prepared. Janice was uneasy now as she knew Juliette hated to wear uniform and the whole situation smelt all wrong.
“OK! I am really freaked out Juliette. First this bar and now you in uniform saluting me!”Janice barked
“Well Hello to you too Janice.” Juliette replied with a coy smile.”What did you expect dirty coveralls or a skin tight cat suit?”
“Sister if I was wearing a blaster right now, I’d have shot you for an imposter!” Janice looked Juliette right in the eye as said it. Her cold eyes showing no sign she was joking.
“Look! The boss chased me out of the shower this morning and told me to check in on you. Then he told me he is sending you up to refuel station-1” shot back Juliette “Oh and if you want to talk about freaked out, he did not look away when I slipped with my towel today.” Juliette shivered a little as the words left her lips.
“He look at you with that creepy stare?” Janice softened a little with the question.
“Oh yeah! Still feel like I have a hole in me. Christ I need a drink.” Juliette rolled her eyes and made a vomiting motion as she replied. Janice chuckled and gave Juliette a big hug.
“The boss is one creepy old bastard but he pays us well!” Janice smiled as she said it but as she held onto Juliette her gaze turned cold. She tightened her hug on Juliette as a tears fell down her cheeks.
“Sis, your cracking my ribs!” gasped Juliette as she struggled free, and then saw the tears. “Oh shit, stop that sis. We all have to say goodbye to a clone now and then. We are immortal remember.” As she said it she brushed the tears from one of Janice’s cheeks.
“You know this is not a clone Juliette, this is my real body. What about the crew!? They don’t have clones.” Janice looked through Juliette as she said it.
“I lost my real body 5 days after I left POD school. The clone was just like my “real” body but it did not have any of the old scares. No twisted right leg from where I broke it when I was 5. No knife scars from my teen adventures. I have to say I don’t miss that body at all now.” Juliette said softly. “As for the crew they chose to sign up and I am sure each one of them has paid their insurance. Folks don’t come to space to live forever.”
“I think I need that Drink now!” Janice said as she tapped on the menu. She ordered a round of Caldari ale, a strong brewed beverage with a kick like a mule. The sisters spent the next hour or so washing away any fears Janice had. As they parted ways Janice had her uniform unbuttoned and Juliette was missing her jacket and her shirt was unbuttoned to her navel. They sang rowdy Caldari cadet drinking songs down the corridors without a care in the world. The time was 19:00 hours.

The soft whistling of the kettle pulled him away from the screen he was watching. He shuffled across the worn wooden floors to the black stove and lifted the kettle from the flame. He let his gaze shift out the window across the wheat fields as they swayed in the soft breeze. Pouring the hot water over the strong bitter tea leaves nestled in the fine porcelain pot he returned his focus to his screen. Two young Caldari women stumbled from a bar singing rowdy songs.
“Good work my child!” the old man muttered as he poured tea into 3 ornate iron cups. He put a knife to his finger tip making a small cut. He allowed his blood to drip into a small bowel of sugar before wrapping the wound with a clean patch of cotton. He stirred the blood into the sugar until it stained it all a deep crimson. Then he place equal amounts of the blood sugar into each cup of tea ritualistically stirring it in. He placed two of the cups in special shipping containers and placed them in a small orbital launch system. As he sent them on their way, he sipped from the third cup.

The unique taste of the bitter tea combined with the salty sweetness of the blood and sugar sent him back to his childhood. Before him his mother was preparing the blood tea a ritual. I was customary in his culture when family members left for war thus sending them away with a piece of you. His father sat at the table in full battle gear his face painted grey and black. His mother wept silently as she served the tea and took the first sip. He and his father drank next draining the cup. His father rose silently, as was custom, turned and walked out the door. He next saw his father dead and lifeless as his body was burned in a ceremony for the honored dead.

He drifted back to the present with soft tears falling down his face as he finished the cup. At least with this goodbye his family would only loose a body and not the soul as well.
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Well this is part 2 of my little fiction writing experiment. If you like it post a comment, if you hate it post a comment. Heck if you read it and don't care either way let me know.

Cheers

EVE SOB

BLINK there goes a week…

2010-09-17T12:08:00.000-07:00

So my last post on Monday was a little update on P.I. and how P1 products are all the rage in the market. While I’d still maintain this is true for the most part. Certain activities this week has lead me to believe that the RIGHT P2-3 products are more profitable. I am not going to bore you to death with details, but after hauling ISK300M worth of stockpiled P1 products to Jita one day this week. I spent a great deal of time on the market looking at what my little manufacturing planet can do to help me make less trips to Jita and more ISK. This lead to a complete re-work of several of my colonies, and a brand new spreadsheet. RIVITING STUFF, but I now make ~320M ISK a month for 30 minutes a day. Once I can stockpile some capital, time to start funding my second account with plex. WOOT!

Datacores are good things and while I am currently funding all invention jobs with farmed passive datacores on the ranch. I could be doing a lot better if I had some increased standings with the R&D corps. I need to go out there and just do it to unlock level 4 R&D agents. This means more missions running and perhaps taking a vacation in other regions with better agents. One might consider this a grind, but well I don’t HAVE to do it.

I bumped into wamphyrri for a quick convo this week as well. We were discussing ratting Battleships and trying to find a date to shoot each in the face with EMP S in rifters. I was online trying to get hold of my 0.0 corp. CEO to get the low down on some cheap drakes down those parts. So at least I spent some time online talking about PvP I guess. Sadly no time this week fling anything as ZombiNutz. Actually this week my carebear main fired more rounds at other players (well ECM drones) than my PvP pilot. Sad SOB!

If you took a moment to read the short chunk of fiction I wrote and then the recent post of smart peoples help for T2 haulers. You might click that my fleet of badgers are not in line with my current hauling needs. This is not just for supply in 0.0 but goes a little deeper in my general EVE life. I am not going to let too many cats out of the bag at the moment. Let’s just say my operations for carebearing are no longer bound to highsec and leave it at that. Oh and before you start camping LowSec entry gates, I’ve got some days of training left.

Either way this week was a blur both in EVE and mostly in RL. Colder weather and shorter days still don’t have the mini-clones settling to bed any sooner and Mrs. SOB has been lonely of late and demanding more of my time (not a bad thing *wink*). Makes the 30 mins a day of ISK making easy to sustain, but I want more time to shoot stuff one way or another.

Cheers

EVE SOB

P.S. Seems like people read my making free ISK articles as well. I might have to write another once I find a nice easy way to make ISK with little effort. I tried some trading and made 20% back on my investments, but ended up hauling stuff more than I would like. Damn skills!

P.I. Update

2010-09-13T11:12:00.000-07:00

All right the official word right now according to me is P1 products are worth about 15% more than P2-P4 products based on JITA 4-4 buy orders. I net about 170M ISK a month from 14 Highsec making some select P2-P3 products. If I take the same base P1 products and sell them for the current buy orders I’d make 200M ISK a month.

Having said that, hauling vast volumes of P1 products into JITA has a fair amount of RISK and TIME associated to it. So for me the extra 15% is not so much worth the chance to lose a small chunk of it hauling it into Jita, or the extra hours a week it takes to do so.

On a side note I’ve found that I can build all of the products I am currently building on one planet. So I have 13 extracting planets now and 1 very busy manufacturing planet. This allowed me to set up a Highsec Oceanic planet that nets me 2M ISK a day for about 28 double clicks.

If the winter expansion beings the “master” extractor to the UI allowing folks to restart an entire planets extractors with just a few clicks. Then I might have to see how managing 20 planets goes. Right now I am at my daily click quota. So far for the time invested I am happy with the ISK it returns.

Cheers

EVE SOB

P.S. If you are set up to run 23 hour extractor cycles, but can find 1 day a week to run 5 hour cycles. It adds a ton of potential to P1 product harvesting. Just be sure to boost any links as 5 hour cycles push a lot more stuff. I can pretty much not log in for a few days on most of my planets now and know they will be producing P1 products. Happy times.

All right smart people: Help me with lowsec/nullsec hauling!

2010-09-13T08:05:00.000-07:00

So one of the biggest things that bug me about 0.0 is supply, yeah shock and horror I know. Having a stack of interceptors 4 hops from Jita, with all the fittings and rigs ready to bolt together does not help me much in southern providence. While we do have Jump Freighters available war tends to limit their movement. As attrition starts to set in local builders get taxed and start to build what command wants built. Meaning variety of ships decrease and my interceptors are hard to find and more so fit.

So the solution is for me to start flying T2 haulers in the forms of cloaky or fast/tanked/+2 warp strength. The issue I have is not wanting to burn too many of these on gate camps and etc while I figure out which one works best. I am leaning towards the Bustard as ¾ of my pilots are Caldari and the idea of being able to bust through the bubbles and one tackle (assuming a single point each) while taking some pain sounds best. I’ve gate camped stealth bombers and know how fast they die if you decloak them. Just as I’ve lost a few ravens fitted with warp core stabs (jerks).

So what I need from all you smart people is your preference/opinions when it comes to the T2 haulers. Cloaky or warp core strength/Speed/tank?

Cheers

EVE SOB

Ebb and Flow

2010-09-10T14:16:00.001-07:00

The general label of EVE as a SANDBOX based MMOG is something I feel is a little too flat. To me EVE is more like a shoreline with beaches, estuaries, and cliffs that are subject to effects of the water that is its players.

When I first started to play EVE if found myself like waves crashing against a cliff face. Each action returned little to no gain but every once and a while a chunk of the cliff fell off. I was relentless yet futile in my plight to beat down those cliffs.

In time the flow of the game took me to the beach. I still crashed onto the shore with fury but with every return came a little of the beach too. Every time I pushed forward a little of the beach also came back with me and together we shaped the beach. The force of my waves collided with other waves and the layout of the sands changed and churned.

I’ve moved past the beach now to the estuaries where things move in great swirls. Actions take longer and it’s much harder to influence things alone. With the steady filling and draining that is the combined movement of so many as a single body of water. The estuaries change slowly but dramatically as one body of water is pushed out, surges back, and then drains allowing another to flow in. It’s an easy place to feel cramped yet alone, but when returns come they are staggering.

Sometimes I simply enjoy the ocean and the lack of any shore to interact with. The objective is more about how my movements change the ebb and flow of other volumes of water in a much smaller scale. In times like this the shore has no meaning and there are no gains other than the knowledge of movement.

Cheers

EVE SOB

The Grind: A MEME of sorts

2010-09-10T09:07:00.000-07:00

Tobold, Ecliptic Rift, and Morphisat have all posted a bit about “The Grind” as it relates to EVE. Reading a few recent blogs about plateaus and reformed pirates rebuilding security Status there are some aspects of EVE that can be considered a Grind I guess.

Having spent 4 long years in WoW grinding not only one of each class of character to max level, but also grinding out gold for this, standings for that, and Tier gear sets. I look at EVE and the many measures in a slightly different light. You see in EVE there is no path to follow. No ultimate NPC bad guy of the month to slay for your sparklies. If you don’t have faction with a corporation the world does not end. Even if you are so hard of luck (or brain dead) that you end up with NO ISK and NO SHIP. EVE gives you both as many times as you choose to bounce your head of the bottom of the barrel.

Progression in EVE is pretty much based on self created goals. That’s right you fail at EVE because YOU decide to do something that you are not ready to do. Did the game tell you that you HAD to fly out to that gate camp in providence where you lost your ship? Was the pirate who is now ransoming your pod required to do it by EVE? Did EVE make you mine veldspar for 3945678 Hours of your life? The answer to all is a resounding NO!

What EVE does demand is patience and a might bit of imagination. The patience is so you can build skills which in this game are accrued via real life hours spent training for them realized as Skill Points. They tick away indefinitely so long as you have a skill set to train in your skill queue. Sure you can speed up the rate at which they tick, but at some point all skill training requires patience. This is not so much what we can call a grind; as well you personally are not being forced to repeat a process over and over. The imagination part comes into play when deciding what to do while you wait for the skills to tick. Sure you might want to be the next pirate or 0.0 evangelists but you cannot fly for a damn and you surly will die. Finding things to do with what you can fly that make ISK is where imagination shines.

OK now let’s talk of ISK shall we in the realm of grinds. Yes it is true that in EVE ISK is the catalyst for greater things when mixed with skills. I’d also say it takes some ISK to make some ISK and by this I mean the more ISK you have to invest into your EVE pilots. The more earning potential these pilots have. An example of this might be trading. Where with limited skills and ISK you can make money buying goods on one side of the universe and trucking them to better markets to sell them for profit. As skills and ISK increase you truck less and manipulate the market more to gain profits. The bottom line is making ISK can become passive in that you don’t need to do much more than buy and sell, or harvest and sell items to acquire ISK. I recently posted some very low level ideas on making free ISK that are just the tip of the iceberg in each area.

So really there is no grind in EVE. The game is about using ones imagination to create cause and effect with the twist of how other player’s actions impact you. SANDBOX BABY, there is no bad guy you must kill to reach the next level. You decide what the next level is…

Cheers

EVE SOB

I feel a wind a blowin'

2010-09-09T07:08:00.000-07:00

Every once and a while in EVE waters need to be tested and positions on the beach re-evaluated. real life can be a bear to us all and stomp on our EVE time. PvP takes dedicated time and I am not one to commit to anything that I know will only get 50% of my effort. I type this at 10am having all ready worked 11 hours before taking a cat nap to go back to the grinding wheel for 6+ more hours. Oh and my kids will surly want me to be awake and a dad when they get home from school. Not complaining I have a good life, but I cannot be a jump on at any moment for a 4 hour fleet op person.

Either way changes might be coming to my PvP life, or my PvP life might give way to some carebear vacation time while I get things scheduled and find the right fit in a corp. Then again I might just stay right where I am and figure it out. That's the thing with change, it's not always by the books.

I am working on some more detail around the P.I. farm I run and what it does and/or does not do well. I am still venturing out now and then in a rifter and I do have some 1v1's I need to get too. Be patient with me please. In good time I will get to it all.

Cheers

EVE SOB

Cutting a lily

2010-09-07T15:05:00.000-07:00

The soft golden light of the artificial sun rose across the biosphere filtering into the small yet lavish apartment windows. It overlooked private well kept gardens with many species of flowering plants which had been grafted from terrestrial planets from one end of the universe to the other. It was a sight not often seen in the cold calculated stations about the Caldari Empire and one often only enjoyed by the wealthy. The apartment itself was above the standings of the industrial pilot who lived there. It had been a gift from the CEO for graduating with such high marks from the capsuleer academy. Standing at the window sipping a cup of coffee Janice gazed a moment at a white lily as it opened to meet the morning rays. It was one of the few times in her day she would be allowed to simply enjoy what she saw without having to make a decision that could cost the lives of her crew. Today she allowed herself a few extra moments of peace with the lily before she dressed and set about her duties.

The hangers were buzzing along at their normal frequency. A small army of workers dressed in coveralls smeared with coolant and nanite paste scurried about their tasks preparing ships for various capsuleers and crews. While technology ruled every inch of the hangers. It was living flesh that seemed to be the most common moving thing. One might have expected robots to be doing all the work while a few fat supervisors checked schematics and tweaked work flows. I guess there was something to be said for the quality of workmanship and ability to improvise that only meat could deliver. This morning there seemed to be an extra detail of workers attending one of the badger class industrials. Sparks flew from multiple points about its hull as the crew went about stripping back structure to boost the agility of the lumbering craft. One of the crew chiefs whistled as a new propulsion device was craned into place. Inside the flight crew was getting used to the tighter corridors and extra equipment. Grumbling as they cracked their heads on new protrusions about the craft. To the trained eye this badger was being prepared for speed and agility both qualities for which the badger class industrial was not renowned.

A tall Caldari woman stepped out into the midst of the hanger and instantly all activity stopped. Her uniform was immaculate down to the last button and crease. Her dark straight hair framed her pale face in a way that amplified the cold gaze her eyes held. Sister Janice’s image could have been one from a holomanual in the hands of a cadet at the Caldari capusleer academy. The way she conducted herself in the presence of the crew and the hanger staff was like watching an instructor demonstrate the task. Yet each and every chunk of meat in that bay looked at her with respect and an unusual fondness that came from service over time with a great captain. Quite unusual considering this badger pilot was just three months out of POD school.

“Sister, your craft has been refit per your request.” Reported Tiny a 240cm tall tower of a man who carried his 150kg well. His coveralls those of a hanger boss with slightly less grime covering the name patch on his chest and a high end datapad in his hands.

“So I take it this old crate will be a little livelier then?”She replied eyeing him over with her cold trade mark gaze.

Tiny let out a bellowing laugh. “Even with your horrible Nav skills Janice, this tub will turn and warp like a frigate today!” he said with a huge grin. A few of the newer crew physically winced at the remark anticipating a sudden flash of temper to erupt from the Captain. Janice took a quick step at the big crew chief and socked him playfully on the arm before nodding towards the crew.

“I sure hope so for their sake.” She shot back with the smallest hint of a smile.

The reaction once again had everybody looking at her, but this time a puzzled stupefied look fell across each face. Janice never joked with anyone about anything, and she most certainly never smiled. The awkward moment was short lived.

“I want this boat hot and ready to depart when I get back at 21:00 hours or I’ll trade you all to the service ZombiNutz!” Erupted Janice as the cold composed captain’s demur returned unpausing the bustle of activity as she strode with long strides off the deck. With the slightest pause she looked over her shoulder at a long scar across the badgers’ hull. Then she breached the door into the corridors beyond and was gone.

Tiny glanced at the first mate and barked “You heard her get this tub fueled and warm or you’ll be loading Barrage S into a rifters autocannons by the end of tomorrow! “ As Tiny turned to his datapad the big man paused, a look of concern settling on his mug. The captain had never smiled and more so she had not looked at the “scar” in months. Where was she headed at 21:00 hours that had her so nervous? A loud hiss from the ship snapped him back to his tasks and the thought was gone.

An old Gallente man in simple robes of white cotton reached into the flowerbed clipping the white lily with a perfect CLIP from his antique metal sheers. He lifted the flower to his face and regarded it with his deformed misshapen eyes before gently touching it to his nose. The sweet smell reminded his of his childhood as a common boy in the jungles of his home world. He gently placed the flower into an ornate glass case that emitted a small hiss as it closed and preserved the blossom for the next 200 years.

“Let us hope you return today my child so I might give you this gift!” he said peering at the young pilots’ empty quarters. “The task I have given you will test everything you have learned and perhaps the quality of your clone as well.”Chuckling softly to himself, like a grandfather might to his grandchildren, he limped from the garden.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am not a writer by any stretch of the imagination. Yet fiction seems to go with blogging about EVE. So please humbly accept my first attempt at EVE fiction. Be kind but honest with any comments, as through critique one can improve.

Cheers

EVE SOB

Frigate Cage Fight: UPDATE!

2010-09-07T06:19:00.001-07:00

Thanks to all the people who took a moment to comment or tag me in game about the Frigate Cage Fight. Based on the interest I'll be doing the event some time in October/November this year. Right now I am getting my Drakes lined up before launching the event.

With that a new blog has been created for the event EVE CAGE FIGHT. Check it out for future updates to the event. Like wise folks with ideas, prize donation, and such can contact ZombiNutz in game via EVE Mail or email eve DOT cage DOT fight AT gmail DOT com.

Cheers

EVE SOB

New Banner

2010-09-03T19:02:00.000-07:00

Well all this awesome banner artwork by Rixx javix at Eveoganda left me hating my old banner and picture. I hit up Mrs. SOB for some art and got told that she would do me some thing in the future. This translates into some time in the next decade.

So I broke out photoshop and spent about 30 mins hacking together the new temporary banner. While my lack of skill is apparent, it will have to do until a real artist can do the work. I think it's a step up from crappy text and a incursus BPO drawing... Even if I do say so myself!

***EDIT*** All right FINE, I messed with the whole site a bit!

Cheers

EVE SOB

Where in the universe is EVE SOB – September 2010

2010-09-03T10:11:00.000-07:00

It is time for this month’s “Where in the Universe is EVE SOB” post where every month I summarize where I am at in EVE. I also throw in some real world stuff and the top CNN headline of the day for a historical WTF was the world doing back then element.

Where am I?

The month of August was a busy month in many ways. Real life moves along at the blur that has become the norm. I’ve seen some more hours for EVE as well and changed a lot of what we do on the “ranch”. I also have changed where I try and find my PvP.

Perhaps the biggest thing that comes to mind from August EVE wise is the EVENTS. The Death Race ran and all that took place screamed of a fun time with many thanks for Rixx javix of EVEOGANDA. I was unable to make the race this time but it’s added some new life to an old idea of mine. Hence my post about a Frigate Cage Match went out to the folks for a sanity check. The response I got was VERY positive and I still have to follow up with a few folks here and there. It’s is clear that the Cage Match will happen, but it might be a few months out while I get it organized. So for now I’ll just thank all those that took the time to plug, comment, or contact me about the event.

How’s building stuff doing?

The ranch has shifted gears a bit from T2 Assault Frigate and Interceptor production. We are starting to focus more on passive income. The Planetary side of the ranch now manages 14 planets in Highsec and has the ability to make pretty much any P1-4 product. Right now though the focus is what makes us the most cash for 30 minutes of clicking a day. The addition of 2 Alts, who I refer to as the Nuns, has enabled a lot more passive income and depth to the P.I. farm. I’ve also been training them in select science skills such that all invention jobs on the T2 side are entirely supported by R&D Agent provided datacores.

There are some other short term plans for the ranch, but for now those will remain news for next month.

How’s shooting stuff doing?

I might be in the market for a new corp. soon here. While Top Gear ventures are great people and delivered the promise of heading out to null. I have become a stranger to the corp. through a combination of time constraints and discontent with NULL life. It’s nothing to reflect on the corp. but gate camping and Sov structure bashing in terms of PvP is not my idea of thrilling.

So I’ve been trying my hand at LowSec solo PvP and for those that read this blog you know that this is going slow for me. I have received some in game mails from folks about hooking up to roam or 1 v 1 that I plan to honor as time allows. Just as I plan to do no more 0.0 PvP until I have lost 5 rifters (completing a tale of 5 dead rifters) in LowSec space.

What Skills am I training?

SonOfBraben: The drone skills have grown and I am mixing my skill time between finishing those out and furthering my science skills. There might be a few other skills in the mix for “other” things as well. :)

Zombinutz: The supporting ‘captor skills are getting done. I might be taking a deviation here shortly to return to Battle cruisers and perhaps some battle ship skills depending on what I find myself drifting towards for PvP.

Sister Janice (Nun Alt): Rocket Science to level 4, then it’s a cloaky hauler for her.

Sister Juliette (Nun Alt): Undecided right now. She has P.I. and Science for datacores now. Might add cloaky scout/scanning to her list.

In the pesky real world:

The mini-clones are back in school and the summer air in North Eastern USA is starting to take on a cooler mood at night. Some leaves are turning and we are entering one of my favorite times of year – FALL! Fall to me is my most productive outdoor month where I tend to do more nature oriented thinks like hiking and fishing. It’s also Halloween which is a blast with the mini-clones. Apple picking season always brings out some great home baked pies from Mrs. SOB. Also the days get shorter and as a result my gaming time tends to open up, meaning more time for EVE.

CNN headline for Today:

http://us.cnn.com/2010/US/09/03/tropical.weather/index.html?hpt=T1

(this one is close to home)

Cheers

EVE SOB

LowSec Frigate Cage fight: Good idea or BORING?!?

2010-08-31T12:51:00.001-07:00

My own ranting has left me considering a more positive reaction to apparent dwindling of solo PvP action. The idea in my head is simple and revolves around organizing a last pilot standing fight to the death for as many brave and/or crazy frigate pilots who choose to sign up and enter the “CAGE” system to fight.

Of course there will be an entry fee, rules, and prizes for the participants all wrapped into a semi regular event where frigate junkies can get there solo PvP on. Sure you could bring a group, but in the end only one pilot gets the gravy.

The draft rules are simple (and open to suggestion):

- 5M to enter with all ISK going to the Last Frigate flying in fleet (minus fleet referee)
- T1 non faction frigates only with any fittings.
- All entrants join a single fleet and fighting begins when they enter the “CAGE” system
- If you leave the “CAGE” system you are removed from the fleet.
- If you dock in anything in the “CAGE” system you are removed from the fleet.
- If you are in your pod you are removed from the fleet.
- Once removed from the fleet you are out of the fight and no ISK for you.
- Gate crashing the system is allowed and expected.
- No restrictions on implants or boosters.
- Faction/T2 frigates or above are not allowed unless a gate crasher. :)

Fittings are unlimited as warping to fleet member will be allowed and should take care of the cloakers and folks who safe up. The “CAGE” system region will be in LowSec and easy to reach from Null or Empire space. The region will be announced to entrants a week before and the CAGE system 1 hour before the bell.

It’s a simple idea, might have been done before. I think it would be a fun event and I am looking for feedback from the community and bloggers. Perhaps some donated promo art if the graphically inclined a like the idea **hint hint*. Some linkage to the idea and comments if fellow bloggers wish to offer some support **hint hint**. A pilot date and time will be published based on feed back and interest.

Just an Idea, but let me know if you think it’s a good one or just plain BORING!

Cheers

EVE SOB

Who painted the big “RUN AWAY” on my rifter!?!?

2010-08-31T10:11:00.000-07:00

It’s funny but as I write this I am a very VERY frustrated PvP pilot. Sure I have not had/dedicated a lot of time of late to PEW PEW. That is just RL being a jerk as it can be. However I find it annoying that I have a dedicated PvP character that is now well schooled in Frigate death skills. Said pilot is also a member of a providence based alliance with several active wars and daily operations in 0.0. Said pilot also has been spending all his time meandering around various LowSec spaces of late with hardly a lock attempt in many hours of trying to pick a fight.

Some say solo PvP is dead and while I try not to feel this way. I cannot for the life of me find a fight in LowSec right now. Sure I might be looking in the wrong places or just have bad timing. I will admit that I am no seasoned pirate/hunter by a long shot. However I am disheartened that even a gang of 5 noobs in a fleet of rifters fail to have a crack at me flying solo in a rifter. I mean WHAT THE F**K kind of kittens are these people?!?!? Do I need to fit a mining laser to my bloody rifter before you will take me on in a 5:1 fight!?! I mean it’s not like I am a 6 year old character flying a bloody Dramiel!!!

Last night was another great example of my options as a PvP pilot. I could have easily jump cloned back down to 0.0 and joined a gate camp and been on 5 kill mails as the fleet snagged nosy stealth bombers on the gates in our pocket. The thing is gate camping bores the shit out of me and frankly makes cry a little every time 10 of us melt a stealth bomber on a gate. I mean the lame 7 kills I have on Battleclinic could easily be 30 by now if I just took part in the daily gate camps in the pocket. However this also is Anti solo PvP, even if it is important to defend space. I have spent many hours camping gates locking down systems while the big guns do their work. Long hours orbiting a gate praying for a gate fire that is not friendly. Sure important work, but as dull as mining and frankly pretty damn dull PvP.

Perhaps I need to find a small gang PvP Corp. and dedicate at least one night a week for 4+ hours to the cause. A few of my kills are fleet based while moving from point A to point B in the Corp. Those few kills were by far the most fun for me. The thrill of the chase or being chased culminating in a fight where there are staggered odds but a fighting chance for either side to win. Not I got the point on the Stealth Bomber this time before it gets melted in 10 seconds or less. Whoopi, I get to post the KM.

Anyhow, just frustrated at solo PvP right now and while some days I am the problem being too hesitant to engage. Other times like last night I cannot even get a gang of 5 rifters to attack me. Come help me out if you in the Hasama pocket of The Citadel. I typically head in through Mara from Lonetrek. Come fight me in a T1 frigate. Shit bring a blob if you are too big of a sissy to try and solo a wet behind the ears rifter pilot. If you want to fleet up and roam, great. If you want to fleet up and then warp to me for an easy kill at this point I’d almost thank you for the fight. In game mail ZombiNutz if you cannot find me online. I am typically on post 10pm US Eastern, but a few days a week I can pretty much be on any time of day.

Cheers

EVE SOB

Whole bunch of cat and mouse…

2010-08-31T06:42:00.001-07:00

I was out again last night for a bit in “Dead Rifter #1” flittering about some 0.4 systems looking for people to shoot. There were 12 in local with an average pilot age of 6 months so I liked my chances. I created some safes and started hopping around the belts and planets looking for one of the 5 other rifters in system. It soon became apparent that the five other rifters were a gang of young pilots trying to snag miners. Smack talk in local gave that away when they failed to tackle a 1 month old account mining in an Osprey.

I warped in at 30 on two of them a few times and expected a fight. Sadly they turned tail and ran to a nearby planet. I followed and took a gamble at landing at 0. They landed at 50 and warped off to the sun, I followed at 40 with them at 100. I headed to a nearby asteroid belt at 0 and waited for them to get brave and land on me in a group. They must have been spooked as all 5 hit the gate to high with me landing and locking the last one moments before he jumped. /sigh

Next a gang of 8 HACs rolled into the system and started camping one of the stations. Smack in local seemed they were camping a former corp. ember that had moved on. Was a bit of fun to read the smack, but their presence in system scattered whoever else was in local. So I bounced a few systems into low looking for the next chance to turn my guns on.

Unfortunately for me local was barren and the time was getting late. I was frustrated to the point of ratting for the sake of shooting something, but decided to dock up for the night and give it another run tomorrow. I either really suck at solo PvP or simply am hunting crappy systems. Might be time for a suicide run into War target land but even the last time I did that I saw one WT who ran.:(

Either way I am trying hard to log as much time in Low hunting as I am clicking extractors. Hoping to appear on a Kill Mail real soon.

Cheers

EVE SOB

Datacore snippit...

2010-08-30T08:35:00.000-07:00

A little bit of extra info on datacores and R&D agents and skillz. Basically even with a level 1 agent training the relevent skill to higher levels results in more Reasearch Points a day.

An example of this is with a crappy lvl 1 -15 agent I got 10RP a day for Skill I and 60RP a day for Skill IV in Caldari starship Engineering. As LVL IV is only 3 ish days. It's worth while training any account doing R&D to LVL 4 in the science skill associated with the datacore research.

So spend an extra few days in training and get way more RP a day for free. It also makes those daily "Ferry this report 2 systems to the left" missions worth quite a bit more.

Cheers

EVE SOB

Back to work…

2010-08-30T07:23:00.000-07:00

I’ve been off work the last week spending time with my mini-clones before they return to school. It was a great week spent at the beach or on a bike. Kind of blows to be back at my desk fixing virtual servers and missing the family but at least it gives me time to blog. Lord knows this place needs some fresh material.

Sadly there was little EVE time this week save my daily impersonation of a click macro as I restarted my P.I. extractors. I’ve got about 14 planets running now in highsec, and they make me about 150M ISK a month. I am working on a post on that as a follow up to my bit on making free ISK via P.I. so enough of that for now.

I actually logged a few hours on ZombiNutz hunting in lowsec. I went from lonetrek down into Manjonakko and flew about for a while looking tasty in my rifter. Sadly no bites and not much of anyone about the belts to fight and the gates were clear. On my way out I happened across a moa and a Hawk on a belt in Aurohuen. The Moa pilot was only 6 months old, but the Hawk pilot was 4 years. I warped in at 70KM and was about 40 off the pair who appeared to be ratting. The Hawk started after me and I held distance while I did a little research on the pilot etc. In the end I decided to hit a safe and look for some footage of rifter vs. hawk fights. I found a few, formed a strategy and then realized that local had spiked by 6 and there was a small gang flittering about. It was late so I parked it for the night. Sadly I am becoming a PvP pedant and still have a hard time just diving in. Frustrated at myself still as fleet wise I have no problem diving in 100%, solo I hesitate to do my homework and miss the whole event. SAD SOB!

The death race went very well it seems. Once again I logged in 10 minutes too late with Persephone Astrid winning the event. I knew I was not able to make the race itself this time without some major wife agro and skipping a family event. If I had of had the free time a stiletto was my ship of choice. Manasi posted his fit for the race here which was similar to what I had in mind. I’ll admit with my skills and budget I was looking to spend a good deal less. The good news is it seems as Rixx will be doing another Death Race in the future. Here is hoping I can make this one.

Now that the summer is winding down and the kids are heading back to school. I hope my EVE time picks up again. The training schedules have unlocked some fun toys across the board for all 4 of my characters. My passive income has completely replaced any need to turn on a mining laser. Such my hulk has not undocked in 2 months and I’ve slowly been churning out small batches of stiletto, hawks, jaguars, and Manticore. All the invention datacores are provided via R&D now as well. So life on the ranch goes well. I just need to get my PvP on.

Cheers

EVE SOB

Dream Ships - Me Me

2010-08-18T12:48:00.000-07:00

So Astral posted this MeMe over on his blog. So I thought I would take a moment to reply what each of my avatars would dream about if they could have any ship based on their place in the grand scheme of it all. So here goes:

SonOfBraben:

As a self respected carebear and space hermit. The ultimate ship would be the roquel. It's a home away from home where this grumpy old bugger can be at peace. I can also fit clones vat bays meaning he would NEVER have to set foot in another crowded station again.

Sister Janice:

One of the nuns that work on the carebear ranch she is a proud woman who considers her work above anything else. As a result a Rhea is her dream ship as it represents the ultimate in all she does as a hauler pilot.

Sister Juliette:

The second nun employed by the carebear ranch. This girl is a nun only in name and likes all things to be cheap and disposable. When it comes to men she likes them drunk, easy, and never at her place. The less she has to do with the after the "job" is done the better. So her dream ship is am IBIS. They are free and get whatever job done that she needs.

ZombiNutz:

The fine young Caldari pilot of war has a thrill for blowing stuff up. He has many passions on the battle field from extreme speed to pretty big explosions. Hence his dream ship is the Ragnarok as it's the fastest of the biggest and packs a mighty large explosion. It HAS to be the one for ZombiNutz.

Of course all this could be taken as a bit of fun, or I might be serious.

Cheers

EVE SOB

Making Free ISK VOL 2: Planetary Interaction - ISK for Clicks

2010-08-17T14:04:00.000-07:00

Making free ISK Vol 1: Datacores - EVEs free lunch.

2010-08-13T12:29:00.000-07:00

We all like ISK because well it empowers us to expand our EVE worlds. While ISK is not the only thing standing between us and that titan (thankfully). It's a pretty darn important item for most of what we do in EVE. There are many ways to make ISK but today we will talk about one method to make ISK with little to no time invested. Making Free ISK is a new series of articles focusing on passive incomes. None of it is new information. I am just filtering out the smack talk and trolling for all to read.

Datacores - The true free lunch in EVE.

Datacores are valuable items to inventors trying to make that T2 BPC as part of the process of building T2 ships. As a result there is a fairly stable market out there for datacores that for the most part is not too affected by the market traders. The awesome part of datacores is you get them through research projects with R&D agents.

The basic idea is to find yourself a NPC corporation that has R&D agents. There are quite a few out there and I recommend http://eve-agents.com/ for finding them. I'd add that finding a NPC corp. that also has a good number of other mission agents is a good idea. It's a good idea as the only way to unlock higher grade R&D agents is via missions and standing.

Ok you have found a R&D agent that will talk to you now it's time to look at the agents info for the "Research Services" section. Under here it has the types of datacores you can have a research project for with that agent. Now not all datacores are equal and typically each one sells for between 100-300K ISK each. So select one that sells for a decent price and hit the market. What you are looking for is the science skill that matches the datacore type. Example. Caldari Starship Engineering Skill = Datacore - Caldari Starship Engineering that sell for 100-120K ISK each.

OK buy the skill book and train it to the same level as the agents "Research Services" listing for that skill. Once this is done go talk to the agent and start research. In your journal under the research tab, you will now have an entry. It will tell you how many RP/DAY and how many you have. WAIT A SECOND EVE SOB. THOSE SCIENCE SKILLS ARE 10M ISK EACH!!! Yeap, they are but with even the crappiest level 1 R&D agent and the least valued datacore can net you about 2-3M ISK a month for sitting on your ass. Meaning 10M gets paid for quickly.

So your now racking up RP every day and soon enough you will want to cash them in. Simply head over to the system where the agent is at. Start a conversation and choose "Buy datacores". Enter the number you want to buy (The max number will be in the pop-up). Now you have datacores to sell. Simple and easy right? The best part the research goes on forever until you choose to stop.

OK! So your all hopped up on free ISK and you want more. You might remember a few paragraphs ago I suggested finding a Corp. with both R&D and mission agents. To get more of the pie the first step is to grind standings and unlock high level R&D agents. The higher the agent the more RP you get a day, and hence the more datacores to sell for free ISK. So make some active income grinding missions to increase the passive income potential of you research projects. Once you have unlocked a higher agent. You need to cancel research with the old agent (and loose any RP with them) and start research with the new agent. Simple stuff, well you will also need to train the relevant science skill to the level of the agent but hey that's easy stuff that can be done while running the missions.

SO Mr. SOB, why can I not just have 2 research projects going? Well you can but it takes skill, the Research Project Management skill to be exact. Each level trained adds a research project slot per level to a max of 6 slots. It's got some steep requirements and the skill alone costs 40M ISK. However with level 4 R&D agents unlocked and 6 potential projects. You can net some major ISK a month if you invest.

All right here is an example of how a VERY basic ALT can be making you 2.5-7M ISK a month.

I recently took a P.I alt of mine who is basically trained in some planetary skills and can fly a badger, but otherwise brand new. I added 9 days worth of training in learning and science skills to her queue. These skills cost me ~14.5M ISK from my Indy corps wallet. She now brings in about 24 Datacores a month with a level 1 Q15 agent. The net value of those datacores is only 2.5M ISK. However she feeds them back into the corps. invention jobs. She ground no standings and only trained these skills past her base Skill set:

Instant Recall I-III
Analytical Mind I-IV
Learning I- III
Logic I-III
Science III-V
Mechanic III-V
Caldari Starship Engineering I

You can save 4.5M ISK at the cost of 1 extra days training by dropping Logic I-III. But for a brand new Caldari Alt this is pretty short work for 2.5M a month, which could have easily been 7M a month is I choose a different datacore type to research.

Cheers

EVE SOB

QUIZ

2010-08-13T06:37:00.001-07:00

Well damn. I guess I am a loyal pony. I took the quiz over at Leady in Red. My results are below.

EVE SOB's Result: Loyal Pony

on quiz: EVE Online - Are you an emo rage quitter?

You most likely have been playing EVE for quite some time.
You have stuck by this game despite all the lag, bugs, imbalances and other
crap CCP never get around to fixing. You may not always be happy with the way
CCP prioritizes things, but you still think EVE is best MMO out there and there
is nothing quite like it. You consist of the majority of players in EVE,
somewhat unhappy with many things, yet you are committed to stay and hope
things get better.

Quiz School

Take this quiz & get your result

EVE Online - Are you an emo rage quitter? » exam maker

Cheers

EVE SOB

EVE SOB

Griefer activities: A carebears perspective...

Fuel blocks...

Blockade Runners: A real life use case.

2011: It has been a good year...

shifting changing EvE, why we love her.

Updates and such...

Blowing off some steam.

Fizzle pop

War time activities

Another war...

Ship spinning is back

Project Rhea

Negativity - My shame

little nothings...

Standardized Monotony...

Disturbance in the blog force...

Updates and such...

Grand Master Plan...

New Toy: Scorpion Navy Issue.

War report: Um...it's over?!?!

War report Day 2

On the go SOB: special WAR eddition

On the go sob #6

Random Stuff

On the go SOB #6

On the go sob #5

Incarna - how many folks will it turn away?!

EVE gets DDoS hacked

On the go sob #4

Where in the universe is EVE SOB – June 2010

Carbon Copy out of toner?

On the go SOB #3

I need a swift kick in the blog!

What next!?

Wardecs, Politics, and all that crap!

Real life - Japan

Arm chair special!

On the go SOB #2

On the go SOB #1

The blur

On the go blogage

ISK Milestone: 1 Billion

It's Wednesday - And that means...

Well shoot – I missed my own blog birthday

New Looks all around!

Any other Tuesday.

Today is Friday. This means that...

Healthcare for Space Hermits is recruiting.

2010 - an EVE year in reflection

OLD TOM - The Orca comes to play on the carebear ranch.

Where in the universe is EVE SOB –December 2010 – late Edition

MIA EVE SOB

EVE Thanksgiving!

Nevermore #1

The Raven: the next evolution of the Caldari carebear ships

Milestones and an idea.

Where in the universe is EVE SOB –November 2010 – late Edition

Trust and Recruiting.

Cloaky Hauling goodness Part 1: The Viator

I got called out…

Odds and Ends Friday.

ME ME: Newbie Mistakes.

New Pilots break free from the Empires chains!

Well crap! I am not that angry anymore I guess…

Be a MAN about it!

Making Free ISK VOL 3: Trading in very simple forms.

When you are right it’s not always awesome.

Carebear Ranch goes Planet Side v2.0

Well that news was a douche chill.

Where in the universe is EVE SOB –October 2010

Status Report Type Post!

SOB, you are NOT supposed to mine anymore!

Winter Expansion: Incursion - Early thoughts.

Blood Sugar Tea.

*BLINK* there goes a week…

P.I. Update

All right smart people: Help me with lowsec/nullsec hauling!

Ebb and Flow

The Grind: A MEME of sorts

BLINK there goes a week…