A Different Direction

My posts have become infrequent, I have excuses - but who needs to hear them.  I'm slowly getting my act together and the posts will start to flow soon, but I would like to take this blog in a different direction.  When I first created this virtual record of my existence I had hopes of it being helpful/informative to any and all eve players interested in getting involved in wormhole space, but flitting back through my posts it seems to have spiraled into the mediocre adventures of a mediocre Eve player!  It is therefor my intention to turn this ship around - and create what I envisaged.  But in order to do that I need help, help from you. 

I would like to extend an invitation (read: semi desperate request/plee) for anybody interested to submit guest pieces, tutorials, or general thoughts here. I will of course be returning to my posts, projects and attempts at writing pieces of some interest to somebody of my own, but I'd really like to turn this place into a series of posts people can learn from!

I'm a huge advocate of hauling new people into wormholes by the scruff of their face, lets face it - judging by a lot of the stuff written on the forums the general consensus is we need help, we need content, and we need people. So anything that makes the intimidating accelerated Eve learning curve easier, in my opinion can't be a bad thing. 

So let me know, if you'd like to contribute great, if you'd like to know something, or have a request for me or another to try and write about something you want to know about get in touch!

To be continued...!

Poking the Big Boys

Running into the wrong neighbourhood of W-Space is never great. 

I don't particularly keep up with the wormhole 'meta' as such. The big groups, the key players - they're all lost on me. So for us to run into two groups I had actually heard of in the same night was something!

We were hunting down a lowsec hole so I could have another bash at FCing, only to be rudely interrupted by a tengu from the fearsome Blood Union. At this point I decided to relinquish FCdom to our glorious leader huei. I'm all up for throwing a fleet of T1 cruisers against a brick wall - but I don't feel upto getting peoples expensive stuff blown up... Yet. 

After some thought we decided to attack the tengu in our home hole and see what happened. As predicted Dscan exploded with tech threes and interdicters so we got the hell out of dodge, losing a stratios in the process. We couldn't take that fight. No way. Nope. After a while we watched Blood Union roll with a Moros - something that they haven't been seen doing in a good while apparently? 

Simultaneously a scout found a group of oracals and nagas bashing a POCO in a C3 down the chain. It's all go! We got into face melting T3s and proceeded to attempt a gank. The fleet was co-ordinated well and we managed to land on them with a bubble and DPS. But due to some bad luck with the bubbles we only managed to drop two of them. Still it was a good gank! 

On the way back we caught a stratios and decided to burn it into the floor. We paniced a little when we noticed it was from NOHO (no holes barred). This worried us. They are big. Really big. The Stratios Popped and we high tailed it out to high security space via the C3s handy static.  

There we waited until we could get some idea of what NOHO were doing. At first it was just a few Lokis zipping around. But we knew there would be more. We managed to jump a scout to where they were staging and he hit D-Scan:

Proteus

Proteus 

Proteus

Legion 

Guardian

Guardian

Legion

Proteus

Sabre

Loki

Loki

Legion

Legion

Guardian

Proteus 

ETC...

We were stuck. We didn't know what they were upto. But we'd just relieved  them of a 1billion ISK stratios so we assumed they were trying to find us. 

As I sat ship spinning in highsec I thought about the wormhole forums. And how the major players are complaining about a lack of content. Is that because everybody has moved out of WSpace? Or everybody does a very, very good job of scuttling away to hiding places when we see you around? I have a really good feeling it's the latter. 

Most people like fights. And ganks happen all the time. But throwing yourself at a group like NOHO or Blood Union, for us at least, is comparable in stupidity to AFK mining in an officer fit hulk with on grid orca boosts in W Space. It just isn't wise and will only end up one way. 

Moros Rescue

Ever shut your door realizing you haven't got your keys? 


It was a quiet morning in the wormhole, Hehulk, Ya Huei, and myself were finding our current chain from the previous night quite stale.  In a quest to provide ourselves with some content we decided to roll.  I must confess to knowing absolutely nothing about the mechanics and nuances of closing a wormhole - but the guys seem to have got it nailed.  Except this morning. Through goes the Moros, down goes the hole. Oh Cock. Silence took over coms. Then nervous laughter took over coms. Then actual laughter took over coms. We assessed the situation and things looked sub-ideal. The Moros was not equipped with probes and it had no jump fuel, it did however have a cloak.

Content generated - OP success.

The C5s had 4 connections to nullsec space, and luckily very little activity. So things were looking okay - but we really really really needed to get a scout into the C5s with the Moros. Myself and Huei, now joined by a couple of others started to furiously scan down the new chain in order to look for a way into K space, and Hehulk (the Moros pilot of the moment) set about working out which nullsec connection was more favorable.

Hulk worked out two options - both two cyno jumps away from decent lowsec space, and both through quiet nullsec. He then safe logged the huge ship as we managed to find a way back out into K-Space.  Ya Huei made his way out of our new chain in order to try and enter our old chain and work his way back to the stranded ship, which he managed. We were now in a much better situation; the Moros was safe logged and we had a scout with it in system.

We found that one of the two ideal nullsec systems was still open but EoL, so Huei jumped in, there were a few in local but we didn't have much choice, so safes were made and the Moros was logged back in, jumped into nullsec, and made it into an off-grid safe and safely logged off. Very smoothly done and we all breathed a small sigh of relief. Now to get fuel to the dread and jump it towards the safety of a station. 

Huei scanned for a way in but was defeated by real life, so it was decided a blockade runner of fuel should be run down the pipe to lowsec. A decision that ended.. Well...  And by well I mean a lost blockade runner and a lost 200mil ransom. Pirates just ain't what they used to be. 

Soured by this loss I vented my frustrations by scanning. And a scanning. And scanning. And scanning. And well you get the jist. 

Eventually I found a route that let me jump from highsec, into a c3 and then into nulsec only 7 very quiet jumps away from the stranded dread! 

A sigil was loaded with oxygen isotopes and successfully made it. Wahey! Dread fuelled! And with that we got the big old ship jumped back to a station in lowsec. 

Although it wasn't ideal, in the end it have us something exciting to do! Chew on that highsec...

Learner FC - Welps for all #2

Gather round one and all, for this is a tale of not much significance at all...

It started last night - with a motley fleet of T1 shield cruisers, mainly Vexors and Caracals. We formed up on a lowsec hole and discussed the plan as Khaizim scouted around. He found a Cerberus running an anomaly so we jumped and gave chase. The Cerberus turned out to be faster than Usain Bolt with diarrhea 100 metres from a toilet so we broke off and warped back to the hole, unfortunately we lost a crow in the process.

- 1 to us! 

After some more poking around, and extracting some tears from the local plex farmers by sitting in a large plex for some time it was decided we should light up a cyno bait and see what comes.  Cyno went up - we waited. As our hope of a fight was fading a Stabber, Stabber, Stabber, Belicose and Vexor appeared on scan. Then on short scan. Then on grid.  
Belicose was called primary (I made this decision because of the target painters, I think it was the right call, feel free to disagree but please tell me why!) but it seemed as if their dps was just too much. We started jumping back through the wormhole as we neared death and warped off to reship.  Unfortunately, a Vexor didn't make it.

- 2 to us!

This is where things went tits up. In a big way.  We reshipped into tech IIs and HACs to continue the fight, but the fleet dribbled back to the hole and we got split up and polarized in all the wrong ways. Perhaps I didn't make my instructions clear enough, or I panicked a little and this reflected in the behavior of the fleet - we live and learn and I can work on thinking logically for a couple of seconds before I speak. Either way, an Oneros went down. We did manage to salvage things slightly and managed to catch a Stabber and a Belicose.

-  3

We composed ourselves, reshipped back into T1 cruisers and set off for a highsec detour to console ourselves and try and grab some easy, cheap kills based on 'reddit intel'. Unfortunately nothing was happening so we turned back and dove back into lowsec

Thanks to some great scouting we soon discovered a Proteus and an Ishtar of the same alliance that owned the stabbers so we headed that way.  We jumped into system and were soon joined on grid by an Ishtar. He was sitting 50km away so we aligned towards the gate he had come from and burned towards him.... I decided not to attempt to kill him there, we were strung out and would have difficulty dropping him quickly enough before the inevitable blob of support arrived.

So we entered warp back to the where he came from, but cheekily, on a hunch I decided to land 50km away from the gate.  After a second that juicy Ishtar landed right in the middle of out cruiser blob and was blown up pretty quickly, turns out it was worth 500mil!. We scooped the tasty faction loot and ran for the hills.

- 3
+3  

As we warped off towards home they ishtars support arrived, so getting out of there was a good shout! We returned home for tea a medals with draw on kills and a positive ISK result (not including the cyno ship we used as bait for 'statistical' reasons).

I took a lot more away from this fleet than the last, and I feel I performed much better as FC. I was sure to keep the ball rolling, never letting coms go quiet to try and keep enthusiasm up and people on the ball. I made some bad calls in getting the fleet split up on the wormhole, so this is something I need to work on and do some thinking about to be better prepared next time we fight on a hole. I also made a couple of good calls and catching that Ishtar so beautifully gave me a warm fuzzy feeling!

I highly recommend stepping up and having ago at FCing, if you have the right bunch of people around you it can be a great experience!

To be continued...!

A Lucky Day?

I mentioned a shopping list in my previous post, and my trip back from highsec with a cargo full of loot turned into a small adventure worth writing about. For reference the chain looked a little like this:

Home > C5S > C5A > C3A > HSA

I hate shopping, both in the real world and in New Eden. So when I finally undocked from Rens I was almost happy about the 22 jumps my hauler would have to perform to get me to the highsec entrance of the moment. I plotted the route and merrily set about jumping from gate to gate. In between clicking warp and jump on my alt I was scouting out the 4 wormhole jumps required to get home in a cloaky proteus on TJ.

The chain appeared calm, nothing much on D-Scan to be aware of so I put my proteus into a lazy 30km orbit around the entrance from highsec, occasionally spamming D-Scan. My hauler was 3 jumps out when things started to warm up a little. I noticed an Astero blipping on and off scan so I docked up my hauler and proceeded to check out the chain again on TJ. As I entered warp one, two and then three Dominixes appeared on the scanner – I narrowed my scan radius and pointed my camera in the direction I was warping to find that they had appeared on the hole I was about to land on.  I was due to drop out of warp 10km from the hole, certain muscles clenched a little as I slowed and landed on grid with the battleships – luckily well away from them.

Flight of the space potatoes

With my cloak still on I turned around and pulled range and proceeded to sit and watch as the Dominixes dropped a range of sentry drones and geckos and proceeded to set up a cap-chain, I hope they weren’t waiting for me! I pulled up the pilots info and discovered they were from Chained Reactions and local to the system. My corp was light on numbers at this time, but Pancocco moved up the chain to sit the other side of the C3a hole and observe.  We put the word out on Jabber but unfortunately most people were still at work or otherwise engaged so we settled into watch.

One of my favorite things about wormholes is the ability to remain 100% un-noticed and just watch other people (I promise I don’t carry this hobby into the real world). After five or so minutes of watching, a Hyperion and fourth Dominix appeared and started to role the hole, which thoroughly irritated me, mainly because I was on the wrong side and also because I’d just done 22 jumps in a hauler! I was debating whether or not to just make a run for it and finally decided what the hell – they’re battleships I’ll be long through the hole before they can even think about locking me!  With that I turned my ship around, bounced off the nearest moon and dove into warp just as Pancocco called the hole had closed.

Oh Cock. 

I was now heading straight towards a fleet of 5 battleships at 0. We both laughed at my predicament on coms as I fell out of warp 2229 metres from the nearest ship, once again my cloak held and my luck was in! I slowly navigated away from the not so gentle giants as Pancocco dropped probes in C5a.

I got my Proteus back to the now end of life (EoL) highsec hole to find an Eos command ship there – I weighed up my options and decided not to fight. It was pointless anyway being on a highsec hole and I’m still a little timid after my last Proteus loss.  As I activated the wormhole so did the Eos and we landed on the other side together, he then proceeded to try and persuade me back in for a fight – I don’t think he realised I’d seen the rest of his buddies in there but we had a lovely chat and I warped off to the nearest station as Pancocco announced he had found a new C3a with a highsec static, once again my luck was in! I opened up my hauler once again and prepared to put in a new destination and when I saw Pancocco appear in local…. I couldn’t believe my luck – we had re rolled straight back into the previous C3a. As I already had the bookmark for the entrance I immiediatly warped my hauler and proteus back and jumped before the guys inside had any chance of figuring out what had happened. Me, my hauler alt and Pan burnt back down the pipe successfully and about two minutes after got a bemused message of a scout form Chained Reaction asking what the hell we had just done and how we had managed to get a hauler un-noticed through there ‘camps’.

What can I say – lucky day, I’m off to buy a lottery ticket! 

Bringing home the bacon

I hope that documenting my ISK making methods does not bore you to death! Heck I hope it's helpful to people starting out in W-Space, there are so many ways to make ISK in eve it's confusing sometimes. 

Since deciding I was going to attempt to save up and buy a new alt I’ve lost and replaced a Proteus, which isn’t an ideal way to start my savings drive! Saying that, I am not going to shy away from PvP at all, if I lose a ship I lose a ship but, I’ll try my best to reduce the amount of ‘gung ho’ I apply to certain situations. My current balance is 469mil, I’d like to get to 1bil by next week – so call that a target. I know this might be a dull read for some people, so I will limit these 'updates' to once a week.

Last night was the first time in a while I made a real effort to make ISK (sounds lazy I know). My usual routine when logging in is to: check coms, check the mapper to see what the chain is like and get into space in a scanning ship to have a look around. Instead of doing that, I decided to take stock of what I had in space; I trawled through my junk and ships and made a short ‘to get’ list for my ISK making mission. This list looks something like this:

• Mining Mods for Prospect (Don’t judge me)
• A dedicated PvE ship or 2 (You have to spend money to make money eh..)
• Salvage destroyer
• A bunch of specific hardeners/ammo/drones to suit the rats in various regions of nullsec
• Exotic dancers

As I was making this list a member of the corp (very kindly!) donated a fully fitted RR dominix to me for isk making purposes, which was amazing! I have promised to pay back the isk when I am 'space rich'

After my domestic duties were done I jumped into a scanning ship and took stock of the chain. Ignoring the call to hop into j - space and look for people doing silly things I instead jumped into the first of two direct nullsec connections we had. Nobody in local and 6 signatures greeted me, an awesome start! I set about scanning and soon resolved two gas sites hidden amongst an EoL nullsec wormhole and a couple of combat sites. Now, I’ve spent the sum total of 2 hours in nullsec, so I had to google the sites and soon discovered they held a combined 200 million ISK worth of Golden Cytoserocin!

I gleefully skipped (in a very manly fashion) back to the SMA and reshipped into a very poorly fit prospect and headed back out to start sucking all that juicy gas. Whilsed in nullsec I found myself wrapped in the lovely security blankie of the local channel, the gasing was all going very well and I was only half paying attention like any good miner. Then, all of a sudden my shield alarms went off and I panicked and warped off to a random moon (much to the amusement of the people listening to me on coms thinking I was about to enter PvP with an invisible gas cloud…). Assessing the damage, it turns out this stuff hits you for 800 – and it does this repeatedly. Without a shield extender that’s quite a lot!

Tail between my legs I set off back to the SMA so I could actually put some effort into fitting my prospect only to find I hadn’t got a Medium Shield Extender (MSE) ‘in stock’. I went back to my shopping list and made a small addition of more utility mods, and rigs and stole a MSE from my Enyo.  Back I went, feeling confident that no puny gas cloud could harm me! I spent the rest of the evening bouncing between the two gas sites filling my boots with evaporated ISK. I spent the final 20 minutes of my playtime scanning down a relic and data in the system next door and netted some more loot. I then thought it’d be amusing to steal from a siphon unit but I only managed to grab 440,000 isk worth, hardly master theft of the century. All in all I netted an estimated 186 million ISK, a figure I am very pleased with!

I know that stacking items is a thing - I just feel like I have more stuff this way...

It’s certainly not the most exciting evening on eve, but there is something about setting yourself a task and completing it that I enjoy.  My next mission is to make sure I am properly supplied to earn ISK! Wormhole logistics can be the worst sometimes.

Proteus Down

A lot of people fish the regular way, with rod and reel – other people fish with a net, or harpoons. And then there are those fantastic people that fish with explosives. Well I’ve found out how those poor fish feel, I nibbled on some bait and then got my whole life exploded by overwhelming force. It was fantastic, I would do it again.

My first T3 loss happened during a fairly short session on eve last week.  I hadn’t been able to get on much in the week so I was itching to get into space and do something. There were three of us online and we were on coms having a laugh at each other’s expense when a potential target was spotted in the static. A tengu was poking about so we set about trying to catch him. Suddenly one of the guys called point on a legion on the entrance to our home; I turned around and warped back to the action.  At that time it was the legion vs my proteus, a loki and an Ishtar, we were chewing threw his armor when he jumped back into retreat.

Before I continue I’d like to do a small ‘hindsight’ assessment: We knew there was a tengu with the same tag in space. It was far too easy to catch the legion and he was tanked well. We had no eyes in our home and hadn’t scanned down the chain properly, oh and we had no back up. But what the hell do those things matter when you could get into a sweet fight……. right?!

So, of course, I followed him through. As I dropped my session cloak he targeted me and scrambled me – this is where I knew things were about to go very, very wrong; he was smart, I was not. I burned into a close orbit and light up my blasters. Just as I did that my overview filled up, a bubble went up and the colour and moisture content of my pants changed significantly. In all there were many t3s, 3 guardians and a HIC versus our three ships. 

There was nothing to do, no point in even trying to panic, I thought for a second about trying to escape but it was useless, they had dangled a juicy worm in front of us and we bit. Then we were harpooned and exploded in glorious style, props to the ‘bad guys’ they had a very well set up and executed gank.

As I was going down I figured I should use this experience to my advantage, I overheated everything and tried to survive for as long as possible. I was pleasantly surprised with my proteus’ ability to tank, I managed to stay alive long enough to burn out all of my mods and kiss my exotic dancers goodbye. In the end the inevitable happened and I exploded and was podded, a long with my corp mates loki.

It was refreshing to be ganked in a way. I had gotten complacent; we dove into that fight without a moment’s thought and got our just reward! Sometimes wormhole space seems to feel safe, and we should be grateful that Bob sends the big bad wolf from time to time – it keeps wspace fresh, at least for me!

Learner FC - Welps for all

So my alliance are asking for people to step forward and have ago at FCing, so I thought I would give it a crack, and document my fleets as and when they happen. After all, what’s so bad about losing a few internet spaceships?

My first fleet went out last Friday, the ships were t1 cruiser and the fits were armour tanked brawlers, my favourite. A few people moaned about the choice of armour as shields have more speed but I have poor shield skills and I love blasters! After forming up and some bullying encouragement on coms we set off down the chain into low-sec of the Aridia region. After consulting DOTLAN I decided to head for Onanam, it had seen the most kills in the last 24 hours so away we went, it took me a fair while (and a gentle reminder) to remind me that fleet boosts were a thing, and I could warp the squad! (My advice to any new prospective FC is to ask somebody to explain fleet/squad/wing boosts and how to control them, it’s confusing to say the least!).

We had a very lucky encounter with a retriever on the way, the unfortunate soul jumped into our impromptu gate-camp and promptly exploded. Why ever they thought that was a smart idea I don’t know?

We reached our destination without much fuss but there was nobody around to kill or be killed by. After further DOTLAN consultation it seemed as if it wasn't worth going anywhere else, so we started to slowly head home. I noticed a few of the gates were fairly active so we set up another gatecamp. After a while a Viator blockade runner jumped through, somebody got tackle and we started chewing away on it.  Now, alarm bells should have been going off here for several reasons:

1.      This guy shouldn't have got caught.
2.       He was tanking our combined DPS way too well.
3.       He wasn't really making an attempt to get back to the gate or align to a celestial

My inexperience lead me to ignore all of the signs hindsight has provided with me and a few seconds later a thanatos, appeared on grid along with a harbinger and proteus, it was hot drop o’ clock!. I was primaried and blasted off the field but the rest of the fleet managed to get out. We lost one further cruiser to the thanatos’ fighters but with the help of that retriever we won the isk war for the evening. And now I have a kill mail with a carrier killing me on it - bonus!  

As a learning experience it was good, I wish we would have got into a proper fight – or at least tried to put some bait out for a better challenge but that will come in time.  I learnt that scouts are always good, bait is always to be taken, and hot drops are not fair.

Buying a new me?

I am contemplating attempting to buy a replacement for my alt. TJ is my second attempt at a character and thanks to the guidance of others he has very well placed skill points – and hence has become my main.  My alt (while having more SP than TJ) has a more eclectic mix of skill points, most of which don’t suit my needs any more. I have always browsed the character bazaar, watching fantastic characters come and go but I have resisted buying one in the past. A small part of my being able to resist the temptation of an all singing, all dancing character is due to me wanting to learn to play the game properly, but largely due to my tremendous ability not to make any isk – what so ever. 

So, why the change of mindset? Why do I want to try and replace my faithful alt? Well I feel as if I have gotten to the point where I have learnt enough about the game, and would like some more flexibility to try my hand a new things.  TJ needs his core skills boosting a little – which will take the next few months of training, core skills are important – but so is having fun! I get a little frustrated watching my alliance mates hop from HICs into Carriers, into fast tackles then a range of t3s, ECM ships, the list goes on. It also sets me a new goal in game, it’s easy to burn out on eve but having and achieving goals keeps people subbed and playing.  My last goal was getting into a proteus and flying it well.  Now I have the proteus, it’s fantastic! But I won’t be able to set myself another ‘ship’ goal until my months of core skills are done.

So, how to raise the ISK? There is a wealth (pun intended) of material a simple google search away on market trading, incursions, ratting blah blah blah – basically get rich guides.  I seem to have real problems making ISK – I’m lazy! But equally it’s something I’ve never really set my mind to. I’ve maintained a wallet balance of around a billion for the last month or two, soaking up losses, making small amounts of ISK here and there, but that’s not going to get me the new character! 

I intend to have a dabble in the market – but I feel I will have limited success here, sitting looking at numbers/items/profit margins does not interest me, being in space does. I will try my best to suck gas, find combat sites, rat, scan, hack; the list goes on but I’ll be taking full advantage of my C5 home! I won’t have any of the ‘classic’ PvE ships at my disposal, I don’t have many shield skills and I mainly use blasters. But I’m sure there are work arounds! 

My aim is somewhere around 10 – 15 bil, I’d like to do it inside of 3 months, but the way I make ISK the new character might turn out to be a late Christmas present to myself! Only time will tell, and if I change my mind about spending it on an alt that’s a hell of a lot of care free PvP I can enjoy!

Wormholes and 'New bros'

I havn't posted for a while, so I'll make up for it with a wall of text exploring my thoughts on new players and wormholes. Also I hate the term 'Newbros', but it made a nice title.

TL;DR I am a new(er) player, I wish there were more new(er) players in W-space. Why don't you see more new guy corps in lower class wormholes??

Despite the whole 'Eve is dying' attitude on the forums and in space there are a lot of newer players entering and exploring New Eden, and some of them find an interest in wormholes.  I like wormholes - always have done. I like the idea behind them, the mechanics and the community. And so do a fair amount of newer players I have spoken too, sometimes however wormholes (and the people that live in them) become very intimidating.  

Before I go on I want to make three points - hopefully which will become clearer as this post develops.

1. Eve is a multi-player game
2. The 'progression' built into eve is rarely used 'properly'
3. Eve is a multi-player game

I first jumped into wormholes to live and play with just over 3million SP and now having 14mil SP I am part of a C5 PvP alliance. Luckily for me I have been supported by fantastic and very experienced players. I, and many others like me are living proof that you don't need 50mil SP and a carrier alt to thrive and have a blast in w-space, sure life would be easier with those things but I am supported buy a great group of people - which brings be very nicely to point 1; Eve is multi-player.

Wormhole (J) space is hostile, very hostile, in fact I've never entered a more hostile feeling place in any game I've ever played (although there were some pretty brutal levels in Spyro the Dragon). For this reason new players need help and lots of it, Eve has a steep learning curve and wormholes have a learning overhang - but properly supported anybody can succeed.  

Stating the obvious here, but there are 6 classes of w-space, C1 - C6. I often only see PI alts in c1 - c2, and hear remarks such as 'c1 - c2 just ain't worth the time' etc., which brings me to point 2. There are wormholes where groups of supported new players could live, grow and learn in an environment that can allow them to PvE to support losses. Of course at this level you are not going to earn a fortune, but if you if you see wormholes as a place to enable to you swim in isk, in my opinion you are doing it wrong. If you catch these enthusiastic newbies early, you can help shape their SP and get them into more enjoyable stuff faster, both enhancing their eve experience, your eve experience and adding a new pilot to pewpew with/against into the wormhole community.

Of course there is a minumum level of SP to fly in wormholes - but you don't have to always assume that is a c5/6 hole with a leet PvP corp. I see a depressing amount of new players that jump to that conclusion and give up on wormhole dreams and end up in highsec, or worse as nulbears. 

The problem with this c1 - c2 'cresh' for learner corps are more often that not the big boys. I have semi contemplated starting up a beginner friendly wormhole PvP (PvE funded) corp that can act as a starting ground for those interested. Given the small community that live in wormholes it would be fairly easy to spread the word about this with the big corps and attempt to get them to down ship a bit to take us on. Because if 1 thing puts newer players off wormholes it's getting destroyed by 50 t3s. (Disclaimer: I know eve Uni have a wormhole campus, but in my experience they keep themselves to themselves in the wormhole scene.). 

I'll finish with point 3) Eve is a multiplayer game, if the wormhole community want to bring new players in we need to accept they need help and new players need to be aware they can get help - I would have biomassed my beautiful dreadlocks long ago if it wasn't for a few players that have helped me learn to survive and have fun in wormholes.

I am open to opinions on this post - but I feel that new players bring a level of passion, excitement and enthusiasm into a corp that can snap bittervets out of their 'eve is dying' attitude and maybe even provoke them into having a little fun.

Please discuss, 

TJ

P.S My opinion on the whole 'Eve is dying' thing is: Eve is not dying, it's stagnating due to a large portion of the community ignoring newer players.

First Capital Kill

I know I said I wouldn't return until I got blown up... but kills....

This story starts with two Bestower industrial ships being spotted leaving our static and heading down the chain to the highsec, at the time the chain looked like this:

Home > C5s > C5a > C3a > HSa 

                             |

                                        |_ C5c

After a morning of huffing gas and bringing in supplies this sounded like fun. We tracked the pilots to Jita, formed up in cloakies and then we sat and waited, and waited... and waited.. and waited...

During the wait people went poking around our other connections and noted a loki, chimera and orca online in another C5 connected to the static, we largely ignored them though - not much chance of killing anything with that Chimera about eh.

After much waiting, we saw the two Bestower pilots leave Jita, and this is where things started getting interesting, and a little bit weird. Scouts local to C5a started jumping around, we figured to scout out for their returning industrial, a pod and a Covops belonging to the C5c corp jumped past our cloaky hole camp and continued on their way to highsec. Then nothing. So we waited... and waited...

Finally the scout inside C3a reported an Absoultion command ship on scan, this must be that pod returning - screw the Bestowers we have waited long enough! "Hole fire", bubbles went up and the party started!

The Absolution started to drop, he was tanked well but the fleets DPS was slowly grinding him down. As he headed back to the hole to try and jump out of our trap a few of us jumped through to catch him, his desperate attempts to jump free of our trap left him in the loving arms of two proteus', who proceeded to finish him off. As the Absolution was going down an Orca arrived on field... was this our birthday?!

Bubbles were reapplied and we went to town on the Orca, all the while scouts feeding us information about the Chimera heading our way. Now we needed to drop this orca before the carrier got here to rescue it - which we achieved just in time.

Now for the capital - he was in trouble and none of us really understood the series of events that lead us to this part of the story, but who care fireworks to be had.  Pings went out on Jabber and afk members were poked in the face, a cap destroying fleet was assembled in a matter of minutes. 

Guardians were scrambled to give the neuting ships cap and offer some protection against the fighters from the carrier. The only real moment of panic came when a mobile depot was deployed, but we quickly dispatched it before he carrier could refit to escape. After about 5 minutes of shooting, excitement and prayers to Bob the carrier went down. Champagne was opened and loot was pillaged.

First Blood

Before I tell you this tale I want to apologize for the lack of blogging, I've been in the process of moving house and real life logistics are worse than eve wormhole logistics! But now I have my new house and internet up and running. So, lets continue...

I've been missing eve and logged on for the first time in a while to do something other than update skills, I had an hour or so to play so thought wahey lets get stuck back in. I'd left myself docked up in Amarr so I got off the comfy station sofa, and jumped into my Proteus - it felt great to be back in space!

I jumped a few systems away from the hustle and bustle of Amarr and started scanning, I found a Z971 connection into C1 space.  I'm starting to learn that whenever you discover a wormhole that is not a K162, it often means that there is nobody active inside to have scanned out, or they have closed the wormhole down and will be watching the scanner - either way it's no good! I decided to jump in non the less and as soon as I refreshed D-Scan I was rewarded with a Drake and wrecks on scan. I perked up immediately, this could be my first kill! 

I tried to calm down a little bit and do some quick research, he could have come from highsec or be a resident, I narrowed down the tower quickly and linked the two corps - he was a resident. I have developed a small routine when I jump into a wormhole now, but all of this went out the window entirely - I was experiencing a rush that was made from a blend of panic, excitement and the need to get a kill under my belt! 

As I floated outside their PoS I turned on my sensor overlay to reveal the green diamonds in space that could contain my prey. Using a 15 degree Dscan I rapidly span my camera around pointing at every green anomaly  I could see, I finally found him in an ore site and warped in to 100km to make sure I wasn't de-cloaked:

I see you...!

I could see him, and he couldn't see me - it was really exciting and I challenge any other game to give this kind of thrill! I watched him for a second as he started to tractor wrecks towards his ship, I waited until a wreck got within 10km of him and bookmarked it.  I warped out to a near by celestial and then span my ship around - it was now or never. The possibility of a trap only entered my mind as I entered warp, but it was too late now trap or not I wanted this drake dead.

I landed, decloaked, activated my MWD and pointed straight at him to bump him. As I did all this I targeted him and breathed a sigh of relief as I got a positive lock and my scram pinned him down. I calmed down a little bit now as I was committed, I overheated my guns and set to chewing away on his shields. 

For the first 10 seconds it was all going really well, I was feeling confident... until he dropped ECM drones. I have read about how these little fun spoilers can ruin anybody's day so I thought he was going to escape - I did my best to keep bumping him out of alignment expecting to be jammed any second.. But the Jam never came! 

No jam please... (worst pun ever)

His missiles dented my armor a little and ruined the wax job I had gotten which was annoying, but other than that he did no damage before he eventually popped - I just wish I had grabbed a screenshot of that.

I felt great, I warped back to 70km or so off their PoS to see a tempest sat there... crap I had totally forgotten to pay any attention to D-Scan... Oh well I survived and have learn many lessons from this first kill! I saw his pod land and he reshipped into a Proteus and decided I'd leave their system and move on.

A good day was had and I am now hooked!

Don't stare at the sun!

My first day out on my own was full of lessons, for me at least. I jumped from highsec into a C2 and poked around the system, seeing nothing on D-Scan I dropped my probes and looked for another wormhole. I found another C2, and jumped in.  Refreshing D-scan I saw an Armageddon Battleship, a Helios and a Buzzard Covert Ops along with a tower. Activity! Hurrah, the first active wormhole I have been the ‘badguy’ in!

I set about locating the PoS, I’m still really slow at doing this, but I hope with practice I will get better.  During the time I spent D-Scanning for the PoS I saw the Geddon disappear and reappear a couple of time, I assumed it could be rolling a hole.  I finally found the PoS and entered warp, landing about 70km away.  Just as I landed the Helios swapped for an Epithal, an industrial specialized in hauling planetary interaction products – game on!

I switched my view to the Epithal so I could use the tracking camera and saw it aligning, but as it did it aligned straight for the bright blue sun in the centre of the system – and I couldn’t make out the planet it went towards, there were 4 planets in near the sun so I took a wild guess he went to the plasma planet (I assumed plasma because it is a rarer planet). I came out of warp 10 km away from the POCO to see no ship, I was disappointed so I turned around and warped back to the POS sitting and waiting. The Epithal was already back and aligning to another planet, in the sun again! I tried to follow him again but guessed wrong and landed at another abandoned POCO, I sighed and thought I’d wait. I pinged D-Scan constantly and saw the Epithal disappear and the Helios reappear, I had been foiled by a lack of sunglasses. I was a little annoyed but something I’m learning quickly is that this game revolved around patience.  I warped around the system a trying to see if I could find the Geddon, but he had gone as well.

After this frustrating disappointment I decided to move on, I dropped probes and found an EoL C1. When my proteus materialized on the other side I hit D-Scan and saw a Thanatos and a Nidhoggur, I checked the system again to make sure it was a C1 and it was – talk about overkill!  Now there isn’t much I can do to these ships a lone, but I have never actually seen a carrier in space before – so I thought I’d find the POS and do some sightseeing!

Some might consider this a wasted evening, no ISK was earnt, no pew was had. I don’t think that’s the case, I learnt that I need to be quicker with my decisions but practice makes perfect! I also saw something shiny for the first time! Hopefully tomorrow will bring a kill!

TJ

The Long Ranger

Imagine passing your driving test, and then deciding to go out on a solo 4x4 tour of the Sahara. Translate that into internet spaceships and you have the challenge I have set for myself.  Inspired by Baby Dady’s blog ‘Bob’s Disciple’ I am going off on my own into W-Space in search of targets. I am taking my cloaky Proteus out into the wilderness of W-Space; I am very excited but also a little apprehensive.

I set out yesterday, jumping down our chain into a very convenient highsec three jumps from Jita.  I stocked up on supplies and as I write this my Proteus is being polished and waxed in Jita 4-4 waiting to go. I plan on jumping around highsec until I can find a decent wormhole and branch off away from people and towards glory! I don’t plan to return until my Proteus is destroyed, I have accepted its loss already and moments before its death I will offer it to Bob and ask him to bestow greatness on my next one.

I want to use my trip as a learning experience, luckily my new corp is very supportive and I’m sure I will be bombarding them with questions. I am sure this will be a fantastic learning opportunity and hope to take several things from it:

1. Learn to stalk and not be discovered.
2. Learn about chains, and how to navigate wormhole space in the most effective manner.
3. Improve my scanning.
4. Learn to scout.

I think my trip will help me with all of these things (providing I don’t explode too soon!). I will keep this blog updated with every day’s activities, but perhaps I will keep it vague if I am actively hunting people.

TJ 

Home Sweet Home

The solution to solving any problem is diving headfirst into it.

Perhaps this advice isn’t so sound if your problem is physically solid in nature but in Eve at least, what’s the worst that can happen? 

It is this attitude that helped me decide on my new corp. I have conversations with many, many corps ranging from C1 guys all the way up to the C6 corporations.  Now I consider myself very inexperienced as far as wormholes go, in both skill points and physical pilot experience. Due to this lack of experience I chose to join a C5 > C5 PvP oriented wormhole corp – and idea that I still think is crazy, but the right one.  I decided to jump in higher up the chain because I believe that there is only one way to learn, and that surrounded by the right group of people anything is possible.  The guys I have joined seem great, and more than willing to help a squishy space learner. So from now on the stories should start flowing nicely!

I’ll start with moving day:

Imagine moving everything you own (in my case this is not a fat lot) through a door that may or may not contain several people actively trying to hunt you down and murder you. Oh and on top of that the door might slam shut at any time.Lesson number one: travel light. To me, the logistic of wormhole life is one of the worse things about the whole experience, but I fully acknowledge it is a necessary evil – and I’m sure in future I will take joy out of disrupting other peoples moving.

About thirty minutes after deciding to join up I had shifted my proteus and deimos (thanks to a very lucky highsec entrance) and was on my way back to Amarr to grab a couple of cheaper PvP cruisers when somebody in the alliance chat asked if anybody wanted to kill a procurer.  Always game for some fun, and feeling the need to prove I wasn’t afraid to jump into a ship and shoot stuff I span around in my shuttle and head straight back.  By the time I was back I had gotten onto teamspeak, introduced myself and hopped into my Deimos.

During my travel back the miners had realized our scout’s presence and sadly run away.  Shortly after however, their greed and need to chew on ice became too much for them to resist and three procurers were reported in the belt with a drake and deimos floating around in the system somewhere.  It was then that I was assaulted with a terminology I didn’t understand “jump to NSF on my word”. I started to panic a little, not wanting to appear the idiot and mess up the gank I started clicking around on everything I could until I figured that NSF is ‘Nullsec hole F’, and breathed a sigh of relief as I found the bookmark and aligned.  After a fleet warp I found myself outside the hole waiting for the command to jump through. A saber was going to warp a second before the fleet as a whole entered warp and hopefully trap the hapless miners.

“Jump jump jump”

I couldn’t ask for more on my first evening in the corp – I got most of my stuff in through a nice highsec and got a gank within an hour of joining. And best of all, I don’t have to look at the inside of a station anymore! I’ll leave you with the view out of the window!

TJ

Pastures New?

As quickly as it started it’s over. 

The corporation that I joined up with great hopes of learning about and succeeding in wormhole space is closing. Now I am disappointed, but the only reason our CEO has decided to shut up shop is because of a demanding new real life job, which you can’t hold against anybody - so there are no hard feelings!  I have really enjoyed it so far, so I fully intend to move back into W-Space as soon as I can.

K-space already feels claustrophobic; there are far too many people and I’m desperate to get back into the dark back alleys of Eve, but I’m going to take my time.  I am going to look around for a corp the really suits me, and that I think will offer me a new home for the foreseeable future.  I have often put little thought into choosing a corp, and that is reflected heavily by my employment history. So this time, I’ll do it properly.

For me there are several key questions that must be answered:

What do I want from a new corp?

The most important thing for me with any corp I join is that it must be relaxed. Now, don’t confuse relaxed with lazy or un-motivated, for me relaxed means passionate, dedicated, yet understanding. I also want my new corp to have patience for the new guy which I still am.  I don’t have the skill points, ISK or experience of the majority of wormhole players – but I am very eager to learn.

How big should the corp be?

This is difficult for me to answer.  After being a part of two ‘startups’ I am convinced I want to join up with an established group this time.  I would like to be surrounded by active players, but I also don’t want to be lost in a crowd – I like the idea of a tight knit team, not a blobby rabble. What do you consider as optimum numbers?

What class of wormhole?

I feel I can survive very well in a c4 > c3 static. So I ‘think’ that’s what I am going to aim for.  I don’t think I am ready in any way shape or form for a higher class wormhole, but it’s something to work towards!

What are my ideal corp’s objectives?

I don’t want to join a carebear corp, but equally I don’t have the trader/industrial alts to supply me with a decent supply of isk to keep me in ships. So the corp I join must strike the balance between PvE for isk generation and PvP for isk destruction. 

So to summarize: My current corp is closing down; I’m looking for a new one!

Thanks for reading, and as always – I appreciate any comments you may have!

TJ

Goals

It's time I set myself a few goals for the coming months! Now I've set goals in the past, some of which include 'I'm never drinking again' and 'yeah, I won't leave that until the last minute', both of which I have yet to achieve...

So here goes, I figured if I make them public it might help me get there:

My first goal I think is standard across the majority of wormholers, and many other Eve players:

1) PvP - become good less bad at it!

Skill training wise, I wish to create a near perfect Proteus pilot out of TJ Tamil, his skill points are well placed but there is a long way to go!  Skill points aside, the only way to achieve this goal is practice practice practice, something I plan to do a lot of.

My second goal is inspired by the following message, brought to you by the Proteus:

Your group of 250mm Projectile Turret II misses

Your group of 250mm Projectile Turret II misses

Your group of 250mm Projectile Turret II misses

Your group of 250mm Projectile Turret II misses

2) Get a Tengu Alt

To the amusement of some of you, I enjoy PvE in wormholes - it's less monotonous because at any moment somebody could try and spoil your fun. I like that.  I am however rapidly finding out that the Proteus is sub par for this activity, and as I want to achieve goal number 1 I don't want to spend an age training for a Tengu. So saving for an alt seems like an appropriate work around (I'd welcome some thoughts on this).

My final goal for now, is inspired by goal number 2)

3) Finally save some ISK

Throughout my Eve career so far I have been entirely useless at ISK. Watching my wallet tick up and sitting on a fat pile of space money isn't high up my list of priorities.  I don't think I've ever had over 1 Billion, but I'll need a fair amount to get my hands on a Tengu alt!

I'm sure these goals will take me a number of months, but I shall update when I reach certain milestones!

I would appreciate any pointers you guys/girls have got - even if it's in the form of hunting me down, blowing me up and telling me what I did wrong!

TJ