EVE SPACE

This is my VERY late offering to the EVE space blog trend. If you read my blog you might recall that I was renovating my space from a dusty desk off to the side of my basement to a finished office in the same area. Before the space was ever an EVE space it was known to some as "The Tech Ghetto". Here I present it for historical sentiment.

I mean what gaming space is not complete with out a million cables, a saws all, and concrete wall? I know you are all jealous and well you should be but only I will ever know how the dust felt under my toes.

Flash forward to the present day. After some hard work at my own hands I now have a modest 8x8ft office nestled away in the quiet of my basement. Sadly I had only my iPhone available for the pictures. So please forgive the poor image quality. Here is my current EVE space.

The desk wraps around to the left where my work laptop and it's second screen are dormant at this hour. A bottle of Glenfiddich, half empty, is hiding behind my Medusa NX surround headset (Awesome 5.1 surround if your looking for a headset). Not sure why there is a pocket knife and measuring tape on the desk tonight. The Rockstar energy drink is all gone and kept me alive through some more level 3's tonight. The screens are 21" with one each belonging to the two windows 7 systems to the right. They are both controlled by the G11 keyboard and Razer Diamondback mouse (old school awesome) using synergy. The Katana behind it all was a Christmas gift from my wife. Eventually will be displayed in a nice case in the middle of the wall.

As I am very new to EVE there are no fancy wall charts or eve shot glasses to strut with. In fact the room is devoid of art right now. This will change with some Anime posters, geeky trinkets and fantasy critters (dragons and such) once I find the location they are stored in. I have my eye on a megathron model on the EVE store that might just be my first EVE addition.

Like all good hermits I do not share my retreat with other humans often. Yet there is one creature who spends a great deal of time with me late at night playing EVE. His name is Wolfwood (after the trigun character) and below he can be seen pointing out that the 100mm RTP on my Incursus needs to be at least 200mm.

*EDIT* Mandrill asked if all EVE folks were cat people. So I decided to add another crappy iPhone pic of Kiku. He might be a small fox sized Shiba Inu but inside he belives he is a Lion.

Cheers

EVE SOB

2010 Direction...

***CAUTION: BORING POST***

So I talk of focus being the path to rewards and fun in EVE. I recently struck out on my own forming a corp. for my two EVE accounts. Like many new EVE players I have a ton of choices of what I can do. Ultimately I settled to focus on manufacturing and highsec mission running this year. Build my wealth before heading to lowsec/nullsec to blow it all in blue flashes.

So what goals did I set for my corp. and how well am I doing:

Highsec research POS buy Mid 2010. - 11.5%
- Standings - 10% (6.0 with Caldari Space Factions)
- Funds - 20% (500M in corp wallet)
- 6 Months Fuel - 5% (Ice Mining SUCKS!)

Manufacture T1 ships, mods, ammo for sale and corp. - 84%
- Frigates - 100% (2 Caldari and 2 Gallente)
- Destroyers - 100% (Gallente)
- Crusers - 50% (1 Caldari and 1 Gallente)
- Mods - 70% (all basic PvE and PvP fits for above)
- Ammo - 100% (all t1 ammo for above)

Scanning - 74%
- Scan and hack - 80%
- Scan and salvage - 90%
- Scan and get lost in (worm holes) - 50%
- Scan and mine - 100%
- Scan and run from (other ships in case of WAR) - 50%

Pretty standard stuff for a newbie care bear in Highsec. There are at least 10 other corps based in my HQ system alone doing the same thing. I can hear the PvP folks groan while trying to scan down my location to put me out of my misery.

All the above is foundation for my ultimate goals to build PEW PEW to take into LowSec and NullSec to get an education in shooting (both ways) and trying to make the other guy die first.

Recruiting will start once the Death... um.. sorry POS is operational.

Cheers

EVE SOB

Hulkageddon II

So everyone has posted on this thing but to be honest it's a big enough event that you kind of have to blog about it.

What is Hulkageddon II you ask. It's an organized piracy event that brings all those pirates you don't want to encounter in lowsec and sends them into highsec (well anywhere) to target HULKS (well any kind of mining related craft). Said pirates (and anyone who has an alt with ~12 hours of skill training) try to pop mining vessels before concord serves them justice. This year prizes were given out for all kinds of achievement based forms of miner gankage for a week long event.

So how did this fair on a highsec mining newbie? I support the event to be honest and posted such (with a small bit about miners being like fat cows) on the site this year. However you look at it, there is good to come from it.

First good I see revolves around bot miners. Honestly I have toyed with starting an Alt JUST to rid my frequented roid belts of them. They are cheating bastards, provide no in game social value and are lousy at googling good information. Hence they deserve to die!

Second good I see revolves around raising awareness of new miners (and old complacent ones) to the fact that there is no safe place in EVE. At any time (other than in a station) you can be blown to shreds and loose your ship. Now there are things you can do to help yourself survive. Fit a tank to the mining barge. Sure a T1 barge is not going to offer much options, but there are plenty of examples on how to fit a hulk with a decent tank while still being able to vaporize veldspar and make tons of cash. Some even boast 300+ DPS. Oh yeah, and align to your warp out point please. Some might argue it's folly, but to be honest every second counts when some one with blasters is trying to shoot you. If they had rubber chickens, bah who needs to align.

Third good I see revoles around the market. How so you might ask. So ore prices for starters. Before the event I was selling tritanium at 4% under market (unless I wanted to haul it 10 hops), now I sell it for 2% over market. WOOT 6% gain baby! I also made a ton (well 40) destroyers out of mined goods and reprocessed goods that made me ~28M ISK while I did some thing else for a week. (TIP: Don't gouge the crap out of the gankers by doubling the price of destroyers. Price them well for a modest profit and make a ton of 'em. They will all sell that week.)

Fourth good I see revolves around me actually taking a break from mining and doing some thing fun. That week I got my mining account into a battle cruiser and up to level 4 missions. That week I scanned down 20+ hacking and 20+ salvage sites and made ~20M ISK worth in sold rigs. That week I took a walk (well I flew a ship...) into W space and killed my first sleepers and started a T3 (long way off for me) salvage stockpile. I could have mined and made more ISK perhaps, but man the energy drinks I would have needed to mine for the play time I logged that week (actually I played more that week than normal.).

So take a moment to take off your blinders and look around you. Look past the system you are in, the bookmarked secure cans, and the industrial jobs you have running. Look past your rage when you get ganked by 4 destroyers in your "safe" 0.5-1.0 system. Look beyond the ISK you could have made. Look to the horizons (all be them filled with folks with your ill fortune at hand) and step into the unknown for a week. Most of all, send Helicity Boson a little thank you. If 1% of us EVE players took the time to organize some thing of this scale. Oh how much more fun we would all have.

Oh and if you are still filled with rage from that hulk you lost or clutching your chest with stress over the Orca that is no more. I suggest you pour a bucket of water into the power supply of your computer and take up yoga or something. It be a game and games are supposed to be FUN people, mkaaay!

Cheers

EVE SOB

let's see how this goes...

For many years I have been involved with online activities. I've done everything from late 90's chat rooms to MMOGs. I am yet to BLOG and while I have spent a good number of hours reading blogs for both work and play. This is my first venture into what today is a increasingly common web past time.

This blog for the most part will follow the fun and games inside of EVE online. I recently set aside almost half a decade of WoW to join the pirates, carebears, scammers, shipbuilders, and salvage Ninjas in EVE (and many other flavors of capsuleers).

I bought into the game 26 hours into my first trial. I was amazed that you could mine rocks AND shoot things in the same ship. The tutorials had me do things that gave me free STUFF. Skills were trained in minutes to allow me to fly a different ship, or have a module that repaired my ships hull FOR FREE!!! I was hooked and this game was the best.

Reality hit about a week later when I realized that one ship could not really do everything. Skills took hours and then days and then weeks to roll by. At this point I ditched my NPC corp for a player corp. I was focusing on mining more as it seemed like a good way to make cash. I mined in a fleet with a hauler taking our rocks back to be refined. Life seemed good and ISK started to roll. I tried an alt in the same account. This led to frustration in only one active training queue at a time per account. That frustration led to a second account focused on combat skills and such.

I got a lesson in EVE principals when a mole inside the player corp locked up both my retriever and my hauler one day. Sent both my accounts to their pods and made off with all my T2 strip miners, cargo expanders, and all. At first I was shocked. Then I was angry. Then I was calm and actually found the event some what cleansing. Shortly after this I left the corp to find my own corner of space in highsec and found my own corp. I've also donated about 20M ISK to scammers to educate myself in how NOT to trade in EVE. Ah the life of a noob.

Today my two accounts sit in highsec in a corp. by them self. I mine and manufacture t1 ships and mods. I run level 4 missions and I salvage. I scan for hacking, salvage, and grav sites. I've found myself poking my little T1 scanning frig. into W space. I plan to start taking jump clones and t1 frigates into lowsec to start my schooling in PvP.

What remains in place the most after 3 months in EVE is that I still have a "kid in a candy store" like enthusiasm towards the game.

I know many folks blog about EVE, and all of what I am typing has been laid into text many times before. However, if you find interest in what I write leave a comment. I plan to blog for a while for my own records of what I do in EVE, but it's always nice to share.

Cheers

EVE SOB