Super Caps? No

"Lets build super caps"

"Yeah ok"

~ Me and a corp mate on super cap production ~

No we are not building super caps, but a dream is a dream and like that mansion in Hawaii you could be sitting in right now it just won't happen unless you do something about it! So with this mindset I set off on a small adventure to the Drone Lands to try my luck with drone alloys building smaller ships to see if one day in the future that dream could come true.

With every region in EVE there are bonus' and negative aspects, with the Drone Lands the negatives are that there is no bounties.. for a carrier pilot such as myself this was a bit of a turn off to begin with as the 16-22m wallet flashes are what kept me playing for a while when nothing was going on. The bonus' in the end outweighed this though as drone alloys sold for a heap and the alliance members in the Drone Lands could use these to build anything I needed from modules to drones to ships. With production in the region being so high most things sell for as cheap if not cheaper then high sec.

My personal favourite bonus of the Drone Lands is that the Drone hordes (Sanctum equivalent) have a trigger that can launch all the waves at once, roughly 25-30 battleships + bc's cruisers and frigs, this isn't really a problem to tank and it means I can warp my Noctis in on my other account and clean up as I kill allowing for almost no downtime in my ratting.

Chilling before down time.

I Got A Faction Spawn While Writing This...

Our system defense has been on the rise lately with flash fleets of 10-20 forming almost instantly with back up not to far away, unfortunately this seems to have scared off our usual "customers" so yesterday we took the fight to them.

The fleet moved up to Geminate stopping briefly to pop a Vagabond before resting in a Brick Squad owned system sitting quite comfortably outside their station. A Myrmidon undocks and is met by our grinning faces and torrents of bullets before he quickly redocks and we decide to shoot the station's clone bay...

For those of you who have never shot at a station or had one of your station shot at, this action sends a mail to the owners of the station.

So very shortly later local spikes up to about 50 and we get the order to align to a gate, myself being in the fastest ship i zip off at just under 5000m/s and 250km later the fleet warps to me and we set off home... unfortunately a real life issue shot up right at this point so I logged off and went to sort the issue, I come back a short while later and see the fleet is just about home and only myself and an Ishtar pilot were left in hostile space jumping between safe spots. Local sinks to about 6 including myself and the other fleet member and I tell the Ishtar to keep safe while i check the gate (my ship only cost 20m) I warp to the gate and jump through to 20 reds who light me up like a christmas tree (without the love) and I burn back to the gate and jump back through to meet an interdictor on the other side ready to stop me getting away and I'm promptly popped and podded... Good news is the Ishtar made it out safely!

We also recently moved system and upgraded our small tower to a large one in a much less inhabited system so the sites and belts are almost untouched by anyone but us with the more popular systems on either side of us acting as an intel buffer keeping us nice and safe.

In the rest of the universe its politics politics politics...

SOLAR has set blue (if only temporarily) to STR8NGE BREW [BREW] meaning another alliance will be joining the DRF fleets, this may be at the request of United Pod Service [UPS] and other close alliances to [BREW] as this is a vital time for DRF to make use of all the alliances to claim Geminate.

IT has continued to collapse over the past few weeks with major corporations leaving reducing IT's member count to an all time low (below 2500) which has caused tremendous pressure as the NC continues its warpath through IT sov.

The NC is also struggling with some internal disputes with Goons refusing to help after the NC's crushing defeat in Uemon. The Goons also are now offering a full reimbursement scheme for their members, begin praying to whichever deity you worship because this means trouble for everyone as the goons have no apparent interest in K/D ratio just the kills themselves so watch your intel channels...

The rumors i've heard about Pandemic Legion have been numerous as to what they have been up to and its hard to tell the fabrications from the truth, I've heard they were contracted to obtain assets for clients in the Delve region if this is true or not I'm not certain though it is believable enough with IT's demise imminent, unless some kind of miracle occurs.

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

CONCORD: ID-485

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!