Friday, August 29, 2014

New Alt

Finally after 15 months of playing Eve I have filled the third slot.

The driver for this is Oliver's recent move into wormhole space.

Being realistic, there is going to come a point where I am podded out and will have an issue getting back, so paying for a months training to up the scan skills and some basic PI and I will have someone that can at least scan the way back in.

Also with a few planets PI it helps pay the fuel costs.

There are now two residents in my POS, both me.

Setting up for Wormhole Life

Oliver was basically given an ultimatum, 24 hours to leave Elite Mining Services (EMS) or the same period for John to leave Dead Jesters(he finally got in) and join EMS or Oliver would be kicked.

Now, living in a POS of a corp that's about to kick you is scary. I had only been there 3 weeks, two of which I was offline on holiday. As such assets were small. A scan ship, a Drake, two transports and two ventures. Had a heavy missile BPO and about 15 million in modules and stuff (most of my ships multitask)

I had a long chat with the pos owner and other people in the hole. They were all cool with me staying regardless of what happened in corp. Which was excellent.

So packed as much as I could into a scan ship and logged off in a safe. Mailed EMS and explained as it was my wedding anniversary (True) I would be excommunicated from several vital organs if I played Eve over the weekend so could not comply with the limit.

The CEO was understanding but one of the directors was being paranoid.

Anyway spent the next 4 days out of eve due to real life. Logged back on and had been kicked.

Such is life, its a game and I treat it less seriously than some.

The other inhabitants were supportive and offered to ferry all my stuff to the next high exit.

Some hard thought went into the next actions. I decided that I would like to stay. The tipper was that my PI was set up, and I was fed up shifting it....

So I had a chat to a friend who had his own corp, small and high sec, and joined with director privileges.
So shopping, I admit that I bought a Plex, cashed it in and went shopping for a POS.

Risk vs reward
Small, Medium or Large POS

I suspect small, unless staying only for a week or two is just kill board padding for someone, Large, for my needs is probably too fuel intensive and Medium about right.

After much reading of forums, settled on the rusty old Medium Mimnatar tower that has the downside of rare fuel, but Auto Cannons.
As luck would have it a K162 high sec was in system, coming out in a high sec island in Molden Heath.
One of the EMS chaps ran off to Rens for me and bought a tower, strontium, fuel and  an SMA for me, and we did an exchange in high sec. He also ran out my Iteron Mk 5 for me. Marvelous.
I in the meantime, collected some guns and Electronic warfare structures. All this was now stashed in a hisec station ready to run in.

First the tower. Loaded it and fuel and stront and headed in. Picked a moon around the same planet the EMS pos is at, (muddy the waters a bit for intruders), and started the anchoring process.
Never having put a pos together before, I have to say that the tower was painless, spent 15 mins warping around the system. Note to self, a cloak would be useful. Once anchored and fueled pressed online and went to get second load.
So far, painless.
Working out how to get the force field up took longer. Having to input a password was not the most obvious way.
Came back and dropped the SMA and an ammunition array and on lined both. I then made 7 more trips for Electronic Warfare and guns. Then went back for my scan ship.
A good job I had a free afternoon as I then spent 4 hours attempting to anchor guns and EW modules. The interface is bad. OK not within 5 km of shield is fine. Not knowing where the shield ends, or where the stupid green anchoring box is in relation is not good. Very frustrating to move it, anchor, be told no as you are 3k short, move agin etc until it just anchors with no way of telling how far away it actually is....
I have modules and guns now 31 - 40 k away from the tower. Shield is apparently 26km. It would be better to be visual, so that the anchoring grid was red where you could not and green where you can.

The last few I cheated, set orbit distance at 31500 m and orbited the tower and threw the last few out at random points. I did feel very vulnerable though as no guns were online.

Took me another hour to online everything, and the high sec was very end of life when I thought about ammo.... Not good I had stocked up on assorted small auto cannon ammo. Of course this did not fit. Silly me, small guns take medium ammunition.

I borrowed 10 thousand rounds from EMS for the night.

I was lucky in that the next low sec was 4 jumps from Jita, so went and stashed my scan ship in my new SMA, and  retrieved my trusty Iteron mk V.

Jita. Never had i seen such a hell hole. Left warp 5km from station and thought... Oh dear.
Still on the way in watched a Freighter being bumped and shot by a hoard, and Concord promptly blapping them in return.

Bit worried so bought the cheapest frigate and a micro warp drive and created an insta undock. On my third attempt. Was heavily bumped (accidentally I think) on first two.

Here, I bought a lab, ammo BPO's, more guns, ammo for said guns and an ore reprosessor. And all the ice products to make fuel.
Several runs later my ammunition array was churning out fuel blocks and I offlined a medium gun to get the lab up to research the ammunition BPO's. I suspect the lab will be up about a week to research all the small and medium ammo BPO's that I now have and then come out rarely if ever.

I hate Jita. I felt safer jumping into a random C5 than I did undocked there. Still no war decs and no load went above 70 million so was probably ok. Hauler was also shielded and had a rack of warp core stabilisers, so was in with a chance if attacked by a solo.

I then went home and sat, looked at stars and worried about attack. So shifted the majority of modules from top and bottom of POS and spread them out. Badly. But at least now a single bomb would only hit one or two weapons, and any attacker would have to move around the POS increasing their time in the danger zone, at the expense of not concentrating fire.

All my PI and modules were then delivered from the EMS pos in the remainder of my ships, great guys in our wormhole.

So not all Wormholes with two different corps are fighting....

John did not log in....

Oliver

Kill Rights

Love them or hate them they make life for some interesting and have no effect on others.

Kill rights are given to anyone who is podded in Low Sec or ship is destroyed in High Sec.

This kill right is basically a free pass to make the offender a legitimate target in either Low or High Sec for 15 minutes. This enables anyone to shoot him/her.

John now has 26 kill rights against him. 14 are currently active and a number are up for sale from between 2 (just 2) and 20 million ISK.

Utterly pointless while I have a security status of -9.3. I can never go to high sec, and anyone can shoot me elsewhere with no penalty.

But such is life. (or death)

Thursday, August 14, 2014

All Change

Honestly, I go away for two weeks to the third world (not really just somewhere with no internet connection and I am too tight to pay roaming phone charges), and upheaval occurs.
John's corp, Space Mutts has basically folded and mail asks us all to apply to Dead Jesters.
Oliver's corp, Elite Mining Services, was kicked from the alliance and homeless...

Deep joy.

Now after a holiday it seems like there is a massive amount to do at home, washing, ironing, cut the grass, sort out the weed problem, retrieve the dog, children in school holidays.... the list seems endless. So eve time is limited.
Both were training Cruiser V while away, John Amarr and Oliver Caldari.
First night, logged in and checked mails, and reset PI and went to bed.
Second night, Oliver added to training queue and collected PI. Scanned out the hole, the low sec connection was bad, 6 jumps in Molden Heath to a high sec station, and the C2 looked to have too much traffic, and they were a Low/c2 system with the C2 end of life, so went back.
John got on with plenty in local but no one from Jesters that could accept him. So after housekeeping, joined two others on the gate for 30 mins before bed.
It was a bizarre night, for in 30 mins, three gnosis managed to shoot
Thrasher
Catalyst
Catalyst again
Imicus
Algos

The Thrasher and the Imicus were the same person, Zen Zubon, and he lost his pod the second time. The Catalysts were also a special case, both piloted by Jacur Jigafur. Both identical fits and he lost his pod both times. With only 12 minutes between the two, one can only hope his stupidity was rewarded by failing to update his clone. It was interesting that he mixed blasters, with some ion some electron and some neutron.... must have had some issues. To lose your pod in low sec is fairly difficult, to do it twice in 12 minutes in the same place to the same people is silly.

The next day, everyone was somewhere else, so scanned out Oulley to see if anything interesting was there. There was a data site, so thought I would do that and went to swap ships. came out of station to find a magnate in system scanning, so swapped to proteus cloaked up and went to wait in the data site. The Magnate duly arrived and started hacking cans. Sportingly I waited until he was on the last can before I popped him
Magnate
and then his pod.

He did not seem amused and promptly made the kill right available.

I was then bored so took out a bait venture and started mining... All sorts of neutrals came through the system, either none d scanned or the name "Bait Miner" put them off. Mined a load of pure Jaspet and went to bed.

Oliver logged on to find the same holes still open and a gas site. No other anomalies available, so reset PI, and went to bed. All the corp and alliance shenanigans really did not effect me as no assets were in Oulley.


Fly safe

John