Caldari Outcast

I originally started playing in 2006 with a Gallente toon that looked like the bastard love child of Prince, Jamiroquai, and Gary Oldman from The 5th Element. Turned off by the visual aesthetics of the low level Gallente ships, I biomassed him a few months later and rerolled my main, Dresarian from a Caldari Deteis in January of 2007. I had a tendency to avoid social interactions with other players, remembering the dribbling idiots I used to play X-Wing Vs. TIE Fighter, Team Fortress Classic, Counterstrike, Tribes, and all those other great  90’s/early 2000’s shooters, simulators, (if you didn’t know, Dresarian’s a play on a family name from Mechwarrior) and RPG’s with. Too many ganks in Diablo 2 for my taste, which when you’re connecting over a 56k modem, really sucks.

Avoiding other players is what caused quite a few months-long burnouts, as not talking to ANYONE I wasn’t even aware there were things such as missions for making isk, and made cash zipping around Airaken in my Cormorant belt ratting… In Hisec…

Eventually I ran into a Rokh mining in a belt in Aira, and the sight of that ship is what really lit my fuse to become a better Eve player. The pilot invited me to join his corporation, Warrior Nation United, which was a pretty substantial MP clan with a strong out of EVE presence. I signed up, and at the time WNU was part of the SMASH/Roadkill powerbloc in nullsec Geminate, routinely getting into fights with Triumvirate.

RL obligations took a huge chunk of my life and they quite sensibly booted me for inactivity after a while. When I could finally come back, I did, but after losing 2 Drakes and a Kestrel in a matter of hours to Hisec wardecs, I sullenly quit corp and went back to carebearing.

Cut past many months of boring mish grinding, and I got my RL friend to play, and he and I hooked up with some pretty chill folks in Caldari Provisions about the time Apocrypha came out and we set up shop in a wormhole under the banner of New Foundation. After a few months living in WHs, and at least one built Tengu hull the remaining members are certain was built, we got robbed by a corpmate and most of the membership drifted away. However, I still keep in touch with a few of the core group in our own channel, and have my alt in one of their industrial corporations.

Which brings me to my first 2nd account alt, Karl Lang. Pure industry at first, but I started getting bored so I’m skilling him up some combat skills to run missions and the like. Not a whole lot to be said about this character. He mines stuff, builds stuff, and resarches stuff.

After a few months of carebearing, I got restless and decided to try my hand at starting my own corp. The less said about that the better.

The whole time I’ve been playing Eve, I’ve kept tabs on the various Great Wars that have broken out, once I made up my mind to grow some fangs and blow some fools away. I started by looking up the old WNU guys, but their Empire wardecs and merc jobs weren’t really all that interesting to me, so I started taking stock of some of my favorite blogs from Capsuleer, and Kirith Kodachi was making a very strong case for m3 Corp. I contacted them in their public channel, and have been with them since the move into Providence with Paxton Federation. Fought several battles, learned how to kill, how to die (Tip: INSURANCE, foks), and how NOT to die. I was online when someone “accidently’d the whole alliance” to CVA through hacking, and went through the rollercoaster of “We get to stay in Provi!” to “Ah shit, there’s 6,000 pilots with molotovs and eviction notices on their way to 2-TEG.”

And, remarkably, my nullsec experience seems to have come full circle. We’re currently in RAGE alliance out in Vale of the Silent, just a hop skip and a jumpbridge to my old home in Geminate.

If there is ONE thing that should be taken from my experiences, is that if you want to be an effective EVE player, do NOT be afraid to ask for help from other players. EVE gets a lot of flack as the supposed den of scum and villainy of the MMORPG world, but some of the most helpful advice I’ve ever gotten has been from pirates, ninjas, gypsies, tramps, and thieves… I wasted a good portion of time flying without a clue, but once I made the decision to HTFU, EVE cracked open for me. You don’t have to lose 50 ships intentionally, you don’t have to go blindly into the dark. Just ask your fellow players, and your EVE experience will drastically change for the better.

And, as always,

-Fly Crazy

Still getting my legs back under me, and doing a LOT of moving around.

Seeing how little I’ve used my hisec fleet, I am beginning the process of liquidation on nearly all of them. Keeping a lvl 4 capable Drake on standby will be my only concession to hisec isk whoring, so from now on, I’m a full-time 0.0 dweller. I’ve gone through my possessions and I have substantial assets doing jack all up in Empire, while at the same time, I’m always hurting for isk for my pvp fleet. This ends today.

Had a fun little run down to Vale today, dodging a 20-man camp in Oijannen, which is where I had my first loss ever, and ironically, in the same area as when my former corp Warrior Nation United was in SMASH down in Geminate. I remember when I just had to hop through Oij to BWF and jb through. Memories…

Not a whole lot else to report apart from just trying to get used to life in Vale.

More interesting stuff soon, though.

-FlyCrazy

Quick update:

Wedding was awesome, honeymoon was awesome… -er…

Had to take some time planetside on some shithole dustball called Earth to inspect the damage caused by an errant 425mm Railgun round… locals have started calling it Barringer Crater, or something… pics to follow. Frankly, I was just impressed at what I did while they were trying to guilt-trip me with all those sob stories of the elementary school that got vaporized at point of impact… though an enterprising soul has already started charging admission. Bless New Eden capitalism!

M3 left Paxton, joined R.A.G.E (hereafter referred to as RAGE, Rage, rage, or Ragr, depending on if I feel like hitting the correct keys when typing) and I completed Operation: GTFO Providence.

Will have more in the future!

-Fly Stupid

Place: Ragnar Anchorage: 2-TEG, Providence.

So word comes through Rex, of A Scout’s Domain wants to FC a roam with DUCA TI’WU. I’m game, so I JC down and pull the cover off my instalock, high-alpha Zealot Brick House, (She’s mighty, mighty, just lettin’ it all hang out) and futz around with some fittings.

We go wheels up about a half hour later, and about 20 of us zip about the cosmos spreading death and misery to all the good little girls and boys of Providence. A fun time is had by all.

Last night, same thing. So we form up after a pre-func sniper BS bullshit camp, then get our serious ships out for the roam. Not a lot happening, but I got some new pods added to my kb, so I’m a happy Zealot pilot. Over TS, I’m having a hard time breathing after laughing so hard, as things like “Are where there yet?” “Rex, Duca’s touching meeee!” “Gutless is touching meeeee!” “Now, Duca’s touching hiiiiim!” A heavily-armed family roadtrip from Hell with enough Alpha to ruin anyone without sufficient backup’s day.

Finally, we snap and decide to do a driveby of HED-GP and find a battle already underway between -A- and Brick squad. Union-mandated menage t’rois jokes are exchanegd over TS and we jump into HED. We sit, waiting for a target of opportunity, when we see Paihk, a skilled Dramiel pilot zip in at 312k. We all wave in local, and he just says, basically “I love you guys.” No one engages, and it’s about this time we realize that Brick has left, and there’s about 60 -A- on their way to meet our 20 man gang. “SHIIIIT! NOOOOES! RUN AWAAAAAAY!”

We fall back to the gate and get chased back into Paxton territory. Still bored, we decide to go say Hai! to Noir. in their pocket. Notice at this point, ONE of us, ANYONE of us, should have probably noticed which way our luck was going and spoke up. So we make the call and head in. We zip to S9X and try to hit some Noir. guys on their station. Lucky warp ins saved the only guy to try to dock up, as he hit at the exact spot where our bubble covered the least. About that time, Jade, our rearguard scout announces “uhhhh, guys… we have a heavy BS camp on the I7S gate.” Blocked in, we try to crash, but Noir. Sebo Scorpions are just made of too much steel-reinforced win. I end up crashing twice in my paper-tanked Zealot, and figure they won’t be nice enough to give me a 3rd try. I logffski in S9X and wait an hour, when I hear Rex announce he’s gonna try to get out.

“Looks good, gate’s clear…. and fuck… they’re on the other side. Well, later guys.” He lost his ‘Cane and I decide it would be a better idea to get a fitful night’s sleep and try to get out in the morning…. ’specially in a paper Zealot that was at that moment ON FIRE.

Log, engage sleep module, cue many dreams of jumping a Zealot into into monster Noir. gatecamp and Diaf’ing.

Woke up a few hours later, local’s empty, check I7s status, it’s clear, I zip out, head to station, and rep up.

This is the same ship that was primary bait a few days ago and I took out of a pretty even hot gang on gang action with 10% structure left, btw =)

Thinking of renaming the Zealot… Fate’s Cruel Temptress, anyone?

-Fly Crazy

RL has been curbstomping me pretty hard lately, and has given me time to think over some very basic guidelines I recommend for if you find yourself AFK from your corporaton/alliance for an extended period:

1. Keep up with the forums.

You’re going to have to know the situation when you eventually do come back, so keep up to date. If you miss something, don’t be afraid to ask questions. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself scanning forums for hours before you can undock when you are available to spread hate, misery and miscontent again.

2. At the same time, keep your mouth shut on the overarching political machinations.

I was AFK for much of the CVA/LFA drama/-A- war. There were times I wanted to open my yap and make some pity comment, I held my fire, and once the situation became clearer later, I was glad I did. It would have made me look like an ill-informed dick. I’m not saying HAVING those thoughts is wrong, you’re entitled to your opinions, but when you post it, and later get corrected, or someone checks ure kb and sees ure last kill was a long time before you started sniping them, ure going to look and feel like an ass.

3. Get on voice every now and again, even just to bullshit.

I’ve done much of my homework this semester to the dulcet tones of Mr. Lumenarious Rex lighting up poor sods across Providence, laughing my ass off the whole time.

4. If you have advanced warning, make sure you announce it beforehand.

It helps people understand you’re up in hisec because while ure afk your implanted JC is cranking skills faster.

5. Make sure YOU know WHY you’re not logging in.

Is it burnout? Is it REALLY heavy RL commitments? If you feel burnt out, don’t make the RL excuse, not for the corp or alliance, but for you. If you’re not having fun where you are, YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG. Find a place where you can have fun, and don’t look back.

Obviously, these are just very general guidelines. Hopefully noone’s in a corp that will kick you for not logging in every day. I’m blessed to be in M3, because the #1 rule is to have fun. They are a PVP focused corp with a target goal of 15 kills per member per month, but they are extremely laid back and understand if the only thing RL is letting you do is log in, adjust skills, and pay taxes.

So it seems whenever I get a good roll going on my blogging, RL throws me a curveball and it all gets fucked up.

This time, however, I don’t think I would have known what to say, and it took a few days to clear my head. Shortly after making my last post, I got word from a member of my alt corp that on March 4th, a  friend and corpmate of ours, Pritu, passed away from complications following breast cancer treatment. She was a wonderful corpmate, she and her grown son had both been playing EVE together to keep in touch, and they joined up with me and my alt corp last summer. I haven’t been able to really process that information enough to make a blog post until now, and even still, I feel anything else I would have to say on the matter would come off sounding trite and unnecessary. Death sucks. Period. End of Line.

At the same time, this week, a woman in my fiancee’s belly-dance troupe who had gotten married in December had a heart attack Easter Sunday, and passed away on life support last night. I had personally never met her, but when the persone you love grieves, you do, too. At least, if you’re not dead from the neck down. Between consoling my fiancee’ and trying to convert a spare bedroom at my dad’s home into suitable temporary lodgings for me and her while she continues her job search and I keep chipping away at my majors, I haven’t really been capable of logging in, much less, blog.

I will say, her job search is coming along very well, and we will most likely have a new place by June or July.

However, to turn toward less serious topics, I do have material for some posts I feel will be some of my best, and now that I’ve finally been able to put my thoughts in order, I can start doling them out every few days or so.

I was able to complete the transfer of my Zealot and my Sniperthron, getting them out of the LFA pocket that has been heavily camped on Wednesday. That took a load off my mind, and even pulled back the rest of my assets into deeper friendly territory. Unfortunately, one of my exploration Drakes was not so fortunate and was trapped back behind enemy lines. Since I have a few more to spare, and the insurance was expired anyway, I just put it up on a cheap contract. Rigged, T2 launcher and tank fit, it sold within 20 minutes. I didn’t worry too much about it, and hope whomever bought it gets a lot of good use out of it.

My neural remap became available a few days ago, and with my most focused training out of the way, I remapped to a more balanced distribution of points, and had the welcome surprise of finding my advanced learning skills were not at V yet. Just need to finish those up, at 18 days each in my implanted clone, and then I can write off that part of my character development entirely.

As far as RL goes, yesterday I was driving my ‘98 Trans Am with the T-tops off, and when my fiancee came out for a drive, since she didn’t have anything to tie her hair back, I put the tops on, and we had to turn on the A/C. Later, we put on shorts and took the Malamute for a walk. Today, I have 4 inches of snow on the ground, and more will be coming down until sometime tomorrow.

Everything you’ve ever heard about Oklahoma weather is true.

-Fly Crazy

My Pod:

Left to Right:

Dell XPS 720C liquid-cooled 3.2GHz GHz Quad Core with twin Nvidia 8800GTXs with 4G of RAM, 22″ Dell LCD

Dell Studio 1735 armed with 6G of RAM and an ATi Mobility Radeon 3650

Dell XPS Gen V with 3.2GHz Dual Core Hyperthread processor, 2G RAM, and some Nvidia chip I’m too effing lazy to remember, 24″ Dell LCD

2 Cans Pepsi, to piss off Black Claw , recently finished frozen dinner (w /napkin), and Chuck, Season 1 DVD. Note the Lava Lamp sitting on top of one of the PC cases, to class up the joint a little/give my fiancee something to scream at me for.

It’s kind of an old pic. Since this was taken, the 720C ate a mobo, and Dell’s been telling me though it IS still under warranty, they no longer carry the mobo, but would be happy to give me an Alienware for what I paid for this… except I got this thing like 40% off due to coupon hunting awesomeness, and can’t get an Alienware NEARLY as capable for what I paid for the 720… And the little problem of having to send this thing back with 2yrs/$6,000 worth of paid 3DS Max work still on the hard drive, which has a proprietary Dell connector… sad… sad…

On the plus side, I have the PS3 hooked up to the monitor and my stereo now.

Also, the Shmuck in the Bantam is now rolling a Hulk, can fly an ORCA, and can perfect invent/build Zealots now. =)

Welcome to the sixteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or extensive, funny or serious, but they are always great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com.

The third Blog Banter of 2010 comes to us from ChainTrap of the Into the unknown with gun and camera EVE Blog. He asks us: “Eve University turns six years old on March 15th; six years spent helping the new pilots of New Eden gain experience and understanding in a supportive environment. Eve is clearly a complicated game where you never stop learning. What do you wish that someone had taken the time to tell you when you were first starting out? Or what have you learned in the interim that you’d like to share with the wider Eve community?”

Things I’ve learned in EVE?

1. You will lose your ship. For me, it was the very first time I ever jumped into lowsec

2. Only fly what you can afford to lose.

3. ONLY FLY WHAT YOU CAN AFFORD TO LOSE, YOU DAFT BASTARD.

4. Friends are good, mmmkay?

5. If you give a friend a Brutix for his birthday, the cheap fucker will turn around and SELL IT.

As far as learning game mechanics, I try to involve myself in EVERYTHING. I’ve ratted, mined, manufactured, pew-pewed, killed, died, missioned, lived in W-space, can-baited can-flippers in a bomber, tried zapping Ninjas with pew shipps and just about everything else the game has to offer. I won’t “play Goon” and act like the game doesn’t interest me, ‘cuz hell, I’m paying for two accounts here. I’ve gotten active on SiSi where the losses are cheap and we’re encouraged to try and break the game for research feedback, and I can say I enjoy every single thing I’ve tried. Now, there’s definitely a sliding scale here, but I spent 3 hours just this morning sucking down rocks and relaxing to the in-game music which I’ve had turned off for about 4 months now.

6. Eve gets under your skin.

-Fly Crazy

(it seems Battleclinic glitched how it displays the fits on my old losses. Rest assure, they were fail fits, but they were NOT 3/15 slots filled failfits )

Whew. So I was waiting for my SiSi client to update while I made that last post, and with that complete, I poked my head in, bought a new Scorpion (WOOTNESS IS THIS THING HOTT NOW, erm) a Planetary Command Center, and made straight for Ikao IX. I popped the PCC and went about dropping extractors and production facilities per the Training Video and picked up my first load of goods. So far so good. Obviously, extractors, production facilities, etc, will become priced items, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were transit costs, motivating players to minimize the distance traveled to get their goods to the PCC.

However, my main interest, and the one I’m going to talk about most here, is launch facilities and cost. They’ve stated in the dev blog that they intend to have vehicular (think: rockets) and space elevators (<– YES I DO have that book, as well as about 50lbs. of others, including a detailed NASA feasibility study on the subject, and picked my double major so I can one day be one of the people that makes that thing happen). Now, they were talking about not being sure whether people should be able to build their own SE systems, and I can’t find a reason why not.

The stated advantages of the space elevator, is that while initial start up costs are high (and we have yet to perfect a ribbon material, though C60 carbon nanotubes are EXTREMELY promising) once complete, launch cost are only the costs of electricity to run the power climber vehicles. Today, it’s about $80,000 PER POUND of launch payload weight. Potentially, the space elevator could reduce that to as little as $100 per pound. I think EVERYONE should be able to build one, but I think it can be perfectly accurate to modern day projections, AND have fun gameplay repercussions.

1. The main limiting factor in construction of an SE system today is lack of a strong enough material to build the tether from. Obviously, since SE’s exist in universe in EVE, they’ve overcome that limitation. The second hurdle is deployment complexity. A vehicle has to be designed that can carry the pilot tether into High Earth Orbit, and still be able to maneuver and deploy the ribbon. Obviously, getting into space is no problem for the folks in New Eden, so deployment is a matter of “how much does it cost?” and then getting it done. Otherwise, CCP’s going to have to hand-wave an explanation that will be the Applied Phlebotinum version of “‘Cuz a Wizard did it” to explain WHY we can’t. (At the same time, some smaller planets are going to have such low escape velocities, it will NEVER be cost-effective to build an SE, since rockets will need less fuel to get into orbit.)

2. The primary danger for a real life SE is orbital debris. So while you may have the start up capital to get one rolling, the penny-pinching jerk-ass in the hex next to you is still flinging his payloads up with multistage rockets, because he plans to hit that planet and run. He doesn’t invest in a way to safely de-orbit his debris, so a chunk of rocket takes your fancy space elevator and whatever cargo it was lugging at the time out. You, understandably, find this slightly off-pissing. A quick search, boom, you just hired Noir. to pop his ass in game, and a few more clicks and a quick convo later, and you’ve got DUST MERCS HEADING IN TO BLOW THE FUCK OUT OF HIS FACILITIES.  Alternatively, you could hire some Dust mercs to sabotage a neighboring SE for a little economic warfare.

So, hard science geeky awesomeness? Check.

Opportunities for ISKage? Check Check.

More incentive for shit to get blowed up but good AND cause further mayhem, murder, and destruction? You bet your ass!

-Fly Crazy