Happy Valentines Day...

After a short breather from EVE I returned to the cold depths of space to find a few changes, some good some bad...

First up the return of Tom to the corp with his shiny new Thanatos which is a much welcome addition to the income of the corp wallet and a much welcomed return of a good friend to us all.

Along with Tom came a few others, another cap pilot I recruited just before my break made it out to our home system safely in yet another carrier, and a friend of Jason's will soon be joining us also (in another carrier..)

We also will soon be welcoming the people from our sister corp after their wormhole was finished they decided to join us in null sec so it seems our corp will be growing in size again in the near future.

But with the good news also comes the bad, when I logged back on I had about 50 mails and several notifications including 2 war decs... this didn't really affect me as I like most of the alliance live in null sec and we can be shot by anyone anytime, butI guess the intention was to harass us in high sec as we buy thing... but we can just do that with alts so I really have no clue as to why they have decided to waste their money.

And finally my blog has been listed by CrazyKinux on his blogroll! Massive thanks to him and if you haven't seen his site I suggest you check it out!

In the rest of the universe Rebel Alliance has moved out of Geminate and left several stations up for grabs, this of course being the big hot spot between the Northern Coalition and the Drone Russian Forces means that its a frantic race to claim sov and hold the stations, although the DRF already had an invasion force mobilized giving them the advantage as the NC scrambled a defense fleet.

NC managed to amass an incredible force from almost every alliance in the coalition to defend Geminate and destroyed the 1000 odd from DRF invading and regained control of the region with only 1 station lost to the DRF.

And of course Valentines day a day of love and care and a hell of a fight between DRF and NC with 9 NC titans destroyed, apparently the NC got word of a DRF fleet amassing and decided to hot drop the group but unfortunately for them the DRF had a massive reinforcement fleet inbound. I've asked around but so close to the aftermath its hard to determine the losses on each side but so far i've heard;

NC losses

9 titans (potentially 2 more)

2 super carriers

DRF losses

2 titans

2 super carriers

With news like this floating around it kind of makes me wonder what the rest of the universe does, it seems that either only the NC, DRF and IT have any noteworthy stories or more likely that all the reporters for eve related news are in one of those alliances...

Picture from evenews24

Server online? That's new!

So with the servers down once more to fix various bugs that came with incursion I take time out of watching the clock to keep you updated on the goings on of my capsuleers and the rest of the EVE universe.

At about 1am (Australian time) I logged on to EVE to add a skill to my queue before bed, as I logged on I saw a group forming up 1 system over to go on a roam, first to high sec, then back to our home system naturally killing everything on the way.
I jumped into a shuttle as was the plan to make getting to high sec easier and we set off.
We arrived in empire without any problems and started buying and fitting ships, just before I finished fitting my Rook we got news over comms of a Nyx super carrier trapped in a system near our station system... We rushed our new ships to the low sec gate to start the journey back as the Nyx was believed to be cloaked and refusing to show itself until it could cyno out (who wouldn't do that) So we set out on the way home to pick up more members to go Nyx hunting with.

About 10 jumps from home we got news over the intel channel that there were 2 red carriers near our home and they needed help to take them down, already being in PvP ships we burnt to the system as fast as we could.
As it turns out though they didn't need our help at all, jumping in several carriers as well as at least 1 Dreadnaught and tearing them apart before we could even make it there. The trip was not wasted, we arrived home and doubled our size before setting off to hunt the Nyx which was still refusing to show itself.

Jump after jump we traveled until we heard of a 20 man gang of neutrals 2 systems over heading our way, we set up camp and waited...

They never showed up... bugger... but while we were waiting we heard that the Nyx showed up on scan, he had broken cloak to jump and unfortunately he made it, so with no real point to coming out that way anymore we set off to a hotspot nearby to once more set up camp...
Not getting any luck with the gate camp we set off to a system closer to home to try and find some trouble but by this point it was getting late/early and people were getting tired/bored and a few people left us as we passed our home once more...

With only 7-10 remaining we continued along until we found 2 neuts in local, we burnt to 0km on the gate and waited...

A Dramiel (I hate Dramiels) zoomed up to us and didn't jump, we knew it was a scout/tackle and decided to engage, unfortunately the hostile gang was twice our fleets size and was much more alert and prepared and we lost 3 ships and 1 pod in the fray including my Rook which I was a little sad about but jamming was fun none the less.

In the rest of the universe, EVOKE has joined with DRF to reclaim Geminate from the NC with several battles taking place and despite the amazing success of the combined assault on the NC, the Northern Coalition still managed to hold their ground for the time being.

Full story on Evenews24: http://www.evenews24.com/2011/01/27/ev0ke-afrika-korps-with-russian-support-in-geminate/

Red Alliance pushes further and further into The Initiative (INIT) territory and captured 3 stations from them, with little to no resistance it seems INIT has abandoned the region. RA's fleet had roughly 250 with 10+ super carriers and 50 other capitals.

Full story as always on Evenews24: http://www.evenews24.com/2011/01/26/red-alert-fortress-immensea-falls/

A Life Well Wasted.

The problem with being immortal is that life can sometimes have the fun drained out of it so yesterday when a red came into my system I didn't wait in hiding, I warped my carrier back to our POS and swapped to a drake and jumped to a safe spot 300km off the gate and as it would turn out that was the same gate which the red was warping to.

It was a curse (Amarr Combat Recon) vs a drake with no real need for cap? I think I could prove a somewhat annoying adversary for this guy.
Then I saw in fleet chat that one of the other guys in local had just switched to a rook and was waiting on my call, I warped to 0 and started unloading missiles into the curse and he started draining my cap, after a few volleys I gave the call and the Rook landed on top of us and jammed the Curse who proceeded to burn as far out of range as he could.
This fight seemed like a win for us until another red flashed up in local, "Run, this one was bait" I aligned but held out, with no point on me I was waiting to see what the other red was... A Vagabond, I hit warp and returned to my POS.
Hiding again? No not really.
Fleet chat came alive once more with pilots offering tackles, dps and ewar but unfortunately by the time we got anything sorted they had left system.

Yesterday I also celebrated my wallet reaching 1 billion isk once more thanks in no small part to my carrier, despite many interruptions that night it was still a major milestone for me as I have no debts and nothing to replace or to buy so this money is just piling up!

In the rest of the Universe Pandemic Legion has been keeping their assault on the NC in full force allowing us room to breathe down in Russian space. Though with the amount of Titan kills that I keep hearing about i'm sure morale on the NC side is rather high.

Over the Christmas break there was a lottery hosted by Destructive Influence (DICE) through internal feuds this lottery ended up being a rather nice deposit for one player who made a rather hefty profit of 40 billion!

Full story on evenews24: http://www.evenews24.com/2011/01/09/it-alliance-dice-x-mas-lotto-40bil-heist/

Is there a doctor in the house?

With my computer down and out for repair... by me... when i can afford the parts... i find EVE to be a rare part of my life over the last few weeks and being the holiday season i haven't exactly missed it with the family gatherings and the Falls Festival down in Tasmania where i live (4 days, 16,000 people, live music and lots of drinking) not to say i'm moving on from the game, just that i will be definitely slowing my pace a little.

I find myself in a rather stable position at the moment, my skills are just short of joining the capital fleet in the alliance and i think i would like to keep it that way for the time being, not that i'm against helping the alliance or anything, just that more responsibility with my extremely random and short hours that i can play don't make for a healthy fleet pilot.
So with my carrier safely in the home system (and not leaving) it almost seems like an end game position, I have the money to do all kinds of things but no desire to actually do them... So tick by tick my wallet increases and day by day my skill points go up and i'm hoping soon to have a revamped interest in EVE by the time my computer comes back to life.

In the rest of the universe, the Russians have kept out of trouble over the last couple of weeks generally staying out of the news, perhaps a little trouble with the NC here and there but nothing major. It seems the combined frag fest of IT, Goons, PL and our DRF has caused the NC to give up on the invasion to cure boredom as a member of the NC said, as they will no doubt have all the fights they desire on their hands. I doubt anything will cause the NC to crumble but i get the feeling if this keeps up for much longer we will see a rise of new competing super powers in the EVE universe.

Happy New Year!

Finally.

Today I write to you from my step fathers computer, as my computer has reached the end of its time and the graphics card is slowly frying itself in either a final push to prove its worth or as a f you before it dies.

On the plus side to this rather unfortunate Christmas surprise I have finally received my Chimera, though getting it to where I needed it to be was quite a challenge...


First off I had to get in contact with my friend who owed me a little cash, this wasn't so hard as he is a good mate of mine and sent some of the money through no problems, this money was used to reactivate both my accounts and buy 2 plex's ( I used my own money to buy 2 more) which got me close to 3b ISK a good amount to have.
With this money I bought all the skills I needed from Jita 4,4 and then headed south east to Minmatar space in search of a Chimera closer to home.
With a bit of luck and a lot of money I bought one about 30 jumps from my home system, and the talks began of cyno's to get it out there.
After banging our heads against the wall for quite some time as to how to move it safely it eventually dawned on me that I didn't have to be the one to fly it, so after a short conversation with an alliance mate we got him to fly down with his superior jump skills to be the one to move it.

Many hours I spent moving fighters and modules to my carrier before setting off on my cyno alt to light the first cyno, the move went down without a hitch and last night I finally got to fly the "RAAF Goliath" for the first time and my god can this ship do some damage!

In other news the war between the Russians and the NC is drawing to a close and attentions turns to attack rather then defense as we attack True Reign as well as mustering a counter attack on the NC.

Russian Counter attack http://www.evenews24.com/2010/12/19/the-russians-are-coming/
True Reign attack http://www.evenews24.com/2010/12/22/true-reign-in-troubles/

Rewards To Those Who Wait!

With the big learning skill redistribution patch hitting the cluster tonight it would seem my carrier is closer then ever, but in the wise words of an alliance member if it was easy it wouldn't be EVE and right he was, with the servers down for patching i only have a measly 300 million in my wallet, a clean 2 billion off my goal.

Luckily I quit World of Warcraft when I started playing EVE and have had a rather nice inactive account sitting around for a few months till someone asked if they could have it! I parted with it happily and will be receiving a totally unrelated $500 for being awesome!

For those of you not capable of instantly figuring out your exchange rate to in game market ratio of that amount in PLEX it totals about 10 billion ISK, now i love EVE it's a cool game... but i'm not insane. The Majority of that money will be going to various real life items/events I have been looking forward too, but a small amount will be hitting the wallet of CCP to sate my lust of a carrier!

Hopefully this carrier will be able to fund much more exciting adventures for you to read about... hopefully none of them involving my carrier exploding.

Now for those of you hoping to obtain something other then my ramblings from my blog, I do have a present for you!

Seeing as though the Carrier will be my main source of income from now on... I hope! I should no longer need various other tools i keep relatively quiet as exposing them could cause myself financial distress, well not anymore so lets get to business!

First things first, Miners you probably have a resource for everything, for those who just want a fairly solid start point for referencing try this site http://eve.finkeworld.com/asteroid-value-chart/
It has helped me alot in the past, hopefully it will help you too!

Now you've probably seen this on every bio in the game, if you haven't you need to open your eyes to this info, it's fairly common knowledge but alas its useful to have on hand!
http://pli.kortham.net/info.html

If you don't already have EVEMON and EVE FITTING TOOL then those are 2 more almost necessary things to have on your computer!
EVEMON is a skill planning program with access to battleclinic fits and much more handy info.
EVE FITTING TOOL is exactly what its name describes, a program used to find the best way to fit your ship (imports skills from your API)

Now heres the big one, the one that got me started on this crazy journey!
A program I found to give me the best trading routes in any region this made me HEAPS of money but unfortunately I can no longer remember the website I downloaded it from, but i'm sure you tech savvy readers will have no problems!
It's Called NAVBOT, it's a program that when run allows you to open a grid in your browser showing all trade routes based off how much you're willing to spend, how much cargo space you have and most importantly your willingness to risk it all for the big money by running low sec trade routes!
There is 2 downsides to running this program though...

1; You have to export every item on the market for it to find the best deals, there is no auto export or update, so you not only have to do this when you start it, but whenever you feel the market has changed enough to warrant a re-scan, you do however get the hang of whats selling and can only update those items!

2; This program CANNOT search outside you're current region as this would violate the rules of the game, this problem can be overcome by those with an interest as great as mine to become rich through various options of alts and recording data among other things.

Fly Safe.