Easy Come, Easy Go...

...yep, you guessed it, blastified again.

This time, it lasted longer. The first Level 4 mission I drew (yes, I did go in right after I posted last night) was "Worlds Collide". Figures, right? I'd never gotten this one on Level 3, so I really had no idea what to expect, other than I knew it was a big one.

In the first room I nearly lost it immediately, but got out, with about a third structure left, minus my drones. After repping and replenishing my drones, I went back in, a bit more cautiously. After managing to finish the first room, I had two gates to choose from and went to the Guristas gate. Apparently, that was a major mistake. I was immediately aggroed and in a pod before I even took out a single ship. Oy...

Now, having done a little reading on the topic, I know that the Serpentis route is probably best to take here and that's what I'll do next time, which will hopefully be soon...though I suspect that if I draw this mission again first time out, I'll take the standing hit and get more experience on others first.

Sigh...

Ready...Set...

...GO!

I spent the day getting my Dommie ready to hit space, and now, after hours of zipping around in one of my Tristans collecting mods and ammo, it's finally mission-ready. It's currently sitting at a station where there's a Level 4 +13 agent ready to send me on my first actual Level 4 mission.

Funny thing is, after all that time and ISK I spent waiting and getting it ready, you'd think I'd immediately want to get right out there and start running missions. While I guess that's true on the intellectual level, when I finally had everything ready to go, I logged. I really don't know why exactly, except that I guess I felt I needed to jump out and take a breather, and also one other thing...fear.

For those who came in late, I put my first Dommie in space several weeks ago, only to lose it to the lagmonster on the very first mission I took it out on. It wasn't even a Level 4, it was a Level 3 that I'd gotten my last Myrmidon vaporized on previously. This time, as last time, I've basically bankrupted myself getting this thing ready and if it happens again, I'm back down to frigs with almost zero ISK. Yet, if I'm to make any sort of headway here, I need to start making ISK again and running frigs just isn't going to do that for me. I know I'm going to do it because I have to, but I just felt compelled to wait, at least a little while.

It's just after midnight as I write this. I really not sure I want to go back in tonight and and yet, at the same time, I really want to. Since I'm busy most of tomorrow and probably won't get a chance to go in-game until at least late tomorrow night, the thought of waiting that long isn't really what I want, but still, there's that fear...

Shit, who am I kidding? I know perfectly well that as soon as I finish writing this, I'll probably find myself heading off on my first Level 4. I've been waiting too long. You, however, will probably have to wait until tomorrow night to find out how it went, though.

Alright, here we go...ready...set...I dunno...maybe...

Finally...

...tomorrow, my EvE life restarts.

The Dommie is in my hangar, so tomorrow will be spent fitting it, and beginning my return to regular play in EvE. Of course, I'm very excited and I've sworn to myself that I'm not letting this fucker get blown up anytime soon.

Now, you might be wondering where I've been all this time. Mainly, three things have been taking up my time. First, the RL stuff...my radio show is returning and I'm getting ready for that, but more importantly, I've been doing my bit for the US civil rights movement. Since I really don't want to spend any time talking about that here, if you really want to know what's going on (and if you're a US citizen, I especially hope you do because your support would really help the cause here), check my other blog and here, where I'm one of the newly-appointed Associate Editors. Also, please sign this petition. Thanks, and I'll shut up about this now.

The second thing that's been taking up my time (what little I've had of it anyway), has been a video game, but obviously not EvE. Since I was waiting for the Dommie, I decided to play something else in the meantime. Since I started playing EvE back in February, I haven't really been playing anything else. I thought a lot about what I wanted to play, and decided that I wanted it to be as completely unlike EvE as possible. What I ended up choosing was Max Payne 2. Like it's predecessor, it's got a film noir theme...guns, drugs, booze, rain, the city, cops, mobsters...kind of like a Sam Spade novel you can play.

Needless to say, it's about as completely unlike EvE as you can get, and it was a nice change. Ironically, I finished it tonight, just before I popped into EvE and found out that my Dommie was ready. Since it has tougher modes available, I'm going to hang onto it and probably play it when I need a break from EvE for whatever reason. I've also decided to get the original game and replay that at some point as well, perhaps as a continuous, two-part thing.

If you're into this kind of game I highly recommend it. The story is good, the gameplay is unique and fun, and it's engaging enough that they're actually making a movie based on the game. Good stuff.

Anyway, that's about it for now. You'll start seeing more posts here now, but I am still very busy in RL so, you probably won't see me posting with my usual frequency for at least a few weeks yet. Some things just gotta take precedence, and right now, I've got a list of them. Still, I'm back, and that means I'll be writing so keep checking...

Til next time, fly safe.

Holding Patterns...

...yep, still waiting for that ore, but it seems that's going to take care of itself one way or the other very soon. We've working on it and I expect I'll be back in space very soon.

In the meantime, while I'm waiting, I decided to check out the first free episode of EvE TV this morning. Very well done...it seems this show gets better and smoother all the time. If it stays free, I doubt I'd ever miss an episode. As it is, Jalipo is just an unjustifiable expense for me right now. No it's really isn't all that much, but right now, it's one of those luxuries that I'm doing without to save money...it's gotta come from somewhere, and the food and gas budget ain't it. Once again, I quietly thank myself for paying for EvE for a full year in advance.

I have no doubt that if EvE TV becomes a free show its viewership will skyrocket. I heard SpiralJunkie say during the show that the Alliance Tournament got about 17 million downloads...not too shabby and more than enough to justify a profitable rate for commercial ad sponsorship. This week's free episode was described as a test, and what I really hope they're testing is if there's really enough people who will watch the show for free to make it worth trying to fund the show through sponsored ads, or perhaps for CCP to fully finance this great big ad for their product themselves.

If I had my choice, I'd much rather it were CCP paying the bills. Not only could players be confident that CCP would take as hands-off an approach to the show as they do with the game itself, but viewers wouldn't have to deal with the ads, making it a much more attractive media offering in general over the long haul. The other reality, as Spiral alluded to on the show, is that a lot of EvE's players and potential viewers of the show are college students who have very little disposable income. It's my guess that many players aren't watching EvE TV, not because they don't want to but because, like me, they just don't have the extra money to shell out for it. I'll be interested to see what happens here. I'm smelling the possibility of something big.

Oh and you may not see a lot of posts here over the next several days. Yeah, it's busy time again. My radio talk show is about to return from hiatus (October 4th, 7pm eastern check my other blog for details...fair warning though: It's not really about EvE, though I do occasionally talk about it on the air.), so I've been focusing a lot of my time on getting ready for that.

Til next time, fly safe.

E-Uni Blogger Coolness

As a former member of Eve University, I enjoy keeping up with what's going on with them, and it seems that two of their higher-ups, Director Dee Carson and Fleet Commander Silentbrick have started blogs of their own. I know Dee is a reader of this blog, and I'm enjoying the entries I've been reading on his. Silentbrick is also an interesting read as well. I highly recommend both, especially if you're an E-Uni member perhaps looking for a better picture of who these sometimes enigmatic corporation leader-types really are. I've also added links for both in the list.

Hmm, funny to see myself writing that, considering I'm now a corporate leader-type too, even if we currently don't have even 1/5oth the membership E-Uni does. We all start somewhere. I suppose even Goonswarm was a tiny corp once.

Can Ya Believe It?

I lost the Dessie too. I'm down to frigs now. I'm sitting on enough ISK to put a Dominix in space right now, and I think I've reached the point where I want to do it, even if I have to pay full price. One thing I did was go to the E-O website and copy the amounts of minerals I'd need to have one built. If I buy the minerals on the open market, it'll still cost me substantially less than if I buy the ship itself at full price. I'm going to have to think about this.

Basically, I'm now at a point where if I want to continue doing something significant in this game I have to buy another ship of some sort. I've got some salvage I can sell to the corp, but at most that's a few million. Once I've done that, anything I buy will be cutting into what I have, so I'm thinking that as long as I have to buy something, it might as well be a ship I actually want to fly. Of course, sooner or later I'm going to have to replace all the ships I've lost recently, but for the immediate future I want the most efficient moneymaker I can afford, and that means a battleship. More specifically, since I can't realistically put a Megathron in space, it means a Dominix.

Right now, I've got other stuff to worry about. It's a big day in RL tomorrow...at least, I think it might be. Hopefully, I'll be able to pop in for a while tomorrow evening. I need to start directing my efforts in this game outward again rather than just remaining in this holding pattern I've been in for the last several days. The only way that's realistically going to happen is if I get myself a Dommie.

I have a feeling that my next several days in this game will prove more interesting than my last several....just call it a hunch.

I Am The Goddess Of Drones...

...or, at least, I'm going to try to be.

I'm currently training up Drone Interfacing V, to be followed by training Advanced Drone Interfacing all the way as well. By the time I'm done with those, sometime around the beginning of November assuming I don't stop and train other stuff in-between, I'll be able to put ten drones in space at the same time.

I decided to make this a project because the bonuses are so good for doing it. When I finish Drone Interfacing V, on or about October 10th, not only will I be able to begin training to control more drones, but I'll have also raised the damage my drones deal out by 100%. Considering that my next ship is going to be a Dominix, basically a drone boat, it's well worth the time spent in my opinion.

I'm already able to use Tech II Heavy Attack Drones, so I'm thinking that by the time I get all of this trained I'll hopefully be a pretty formidable mission runner and, with some more help and experience, an equally useful asset in PvP combat.

Once again, I find myself marveling at the craftmanship and finesse that has clearly gone into so many aspects of creating EvE. Just as it should, the farther along I find myself in this game, the more complex an undertaking it becomes to make it to the next logical step. The bigger and more valuable the prize, the more risky, expensive, and time-consuming it is to make it yours.

In this case, I know exactly how to get what I want. It's just a matter of time, money, and effort to make it happen. There's still the possibility of an unforeseen disaster, and it's going to take plenty of time to have this project fulfill it's true potential. The potential payoff is big, but so are the risks. Yeah, not too much like RL, huh?

Right now, I feel like I'm kind of on the cusp of something, though I'm really not quite certain exactly what. Of course, the new corp, Stonewall Interstellar, is a big part of it, but it's also as an individual character and even perhaps as a player. It just feels like my own role in the game is in kind of in flux right now, that many things are changing and will continue to change for me in this game.

It also may be stuff from RL spilling over as well. It's been a busy time for me and it shows no signs of slowing down any time soon. I jump into EvE when and as I can and that hasn't been much over the last several days. Most often, I've been popping in to do a mission or two before bed while I listen to my favorite radio talk show (besides my own ;)). It's really an interesting juxtaposition to be blowing away a squadron of Amarr ships while listening to a lesbian sex talk show. I've actually carried on on-air conversations as a guest or as a caller to various shows while in combat or salvaging. Weird perhaps, but it's a marriage that works well, for me anyway.

Chances are, if you see me in-game during the hours of 10pm to 1am eastern on a weekday, I'm listening to Diana Cage. From 2pm to 6pm eastern weekdays, it's Michelangelo Signorile. Other times, probably a CD or my mp3 collection. On very rare occasions, I'll even turn on the game sound.

Ok, that's enough for now. I think it's time to actually jump in-game for a while.

Catch ya out there, and fly safe.

Gettin' Itchy...

...just so much longer I'm going to be able to wait.

I flew my first mission in my Catalyst tonight in probably three months or more, just for fun. It was the first part of a four-part storyline, "Whispers In the Dark" I've done it a million times before, but it'll be a good distraction until I decide what I'm doing in terms of my next ship.

It's getting to be about that time...all in all, I'm pretty damn tired of flying Level 2 missions. At least I'm collecting a little salvage out of the deal...not much but enough, for now.

For now.

That Was Quick...

...and if this isn't a classic case of pilot stupidity, I don't know what is.

I was doing another Level 2 mission in the Thorax tonight, and I learned a valuable lesson I'd expect every EvE player who occasionally has drink or three now and then probably does sooner or later.

It was one of those missions where you just fly in and kill NPC's until you get to a big. powerful fleet and then fly away. I was a bit slow on the uptake and didn't fly away fast enough.

Whoops.

Yeah I think it took about five missiles, maybe six. How utterly stupid...I literally walked right into it and didn't realize what I was doing until it was too late. Bye Bye Thorax...for now.

I will replace it eventually...just not right now. I have bigger concerns. We're waiting for an ore delivery, one that will contain what Nealla and I need to build some stuff to sell and ourselves a couple of Dominixes to fly. It's late, no word, and we need it. Hard to believe it was only a few weeks ago that all I really had to worry about was my own character's issues. Being a Director, even of as small a corp as we still are, is different, very different.

And yes, I was flying while intoxicated. Totally my own fault, of course. I knew I was wasted and I did a mission anyway. Funny thing is, I kicked major ass through all of the ships I was actually supposed to kill, it was only when I got to close to the ships I was supposed to run away from that I was blastified. If I'd just stopped when I was supposed to I'd have been fine.

The insurance payment put me back over 100 million for the first time since I bought my first Dommie. I don't care. I'd rather have the ship back, and not just because it was worth more than the insurance payoff. For more on that, read the previous post.

I've still got my Destroyer, but that's the last thing bigger than a frig I own right now. I've been intentionally waiting to do something here because if that ore comes through I want to put more of my resources into fitting the Dommie I'll get from that rather than having to pay full retail. If it doesn't happen in a reasonable period of time, though, I'm going to have to do some thinking about whether I want to just say "Fuck it!" and buy the minerals on the open market, even though it'll cost more that way.

Now, though, I have to answer the question: What exactly is a reasonable period of time to continue waiting?

This is one of the ways that business in EvE is very different than business in the real world. In the real world, your business partners don't suddenly disappear for extended periods without notice...at least, not usually anyway. So many lower-level suppliers small corps depend on seem to be little more than single-person operations, that when that one person doesn't log on for a while it can throw the plans of those who depend on them out of synch for while. On the other hand, the price is right and how much aggravation is that worth? While the economy of EvE may share many characteristics with reality, actually doing business in EvE can obviously be an entirely different animal in some ways.

Tonight, I am a pod and I will stay a pod.

Tomorrow, I've got some thinking to do.

The Thorax: It Ain't Just Any Old Ship

Sometimes, you never know how good it can be until you actually see it for yourself.

A couple of days ago, a friend upgraded my computer for me. In doing so, I went from a 1 gigabyte processor to a 2.5 gig and substantially more RAM. Last night, I took EvE for a test run with it for the first time. When I upgraded from a 660 mhz to a 1 gig about a year ago, I thought it was a major improvement. I had no idea.

Not only is flying through space an altogether smoother, less jittery experience overall now, but things like making choices from right-click menus and, most importantly, targeting are now lightning-fast. It might seem like a minor thing in theory, but in practice it can make all the difference in the world, and, as I discovered last night, quite literally the difference between life and death.

I was doing a few Level 2 missions in the Thorax just to test out the new processor. I drew one of those missions where you fly toward a target and at some point as you approach it NPCs pop out of nowhere and start pounding on you. Usually, I get to the point where the NPCs appear, warp out, and then warp back in at a range that enables me to take them out from a longer range than I usually find myself at when they appear. This time, with my enhanced targeting ability and responsiveness, I felt I could stay and take them out on the first try, so I targeted some ships, released my drones and went after them.

After the first few ships were gone, I decided that I was taking too much damage and it was time to warp out and regroup. I didn't think I'd have enough time to call back my Hammerheads and I knew I had a decent supply of them back at my staging station, so I tried to warp out immediately, but found myself with an unanticipated problem.

I was too close to the ruined starbase that had been my original fly-to target and the Thorax was swinging back and forth, trying to align itself to warp out as I continued to get tagged by nearby ships. It quickly became apparent that I was going nowhere fast. My shield was just about gone, but my drones were still popping ships at a fairly decent rate. At this point, I concluded that this was going to probably be the last flight of my Thorax no matter what I did, so I figured I might as well take out as many NPCs as I could, that if I were going to go down anyway, I was going to go down fighting.

I turned on my hardeners, targeted some more ships, and then my armor repper and cap recharger as the damage level started to get into my armor. By this time, the Thorax had somehow shimmied its way into the body of the starbase itself, and I was certain I was a goner. Yet, I was managing to keep my armor up enough that I felt it was worth trying to manually maneuver the ship toward the one area around me where open space was still visible, assuming I had nothing to lose by trying.

The Thorax began to realign and slowly made its way toward the opening as I continued targeting, my guns and drones continuing to take out NPCs. My armor was now almost gone, but I was still doing plenty of damage, and for the first time since I'd gotten into trouble, I had the slightest glimmer of hope that I might actually survive this. Then, just as my armor was no more and I was beginning to take hull damage, I suddenly broke free and found myself in open space.

A check of my overview told me that I'd taken out all of the NPC ships and only a few stationary guns remained, but they were still hitting, taking small chunks out of my hull each time. While getting myself to a safe distance away from the starbase in order to ensure that I wouldn't get entrapped in it again, I called back my drones. A few seconds later, my drones safely aboard, I again tried warping out. Just as my hull integrity fell below a third, the warp drive kicked in and I found myself streaking out of the area, ship and drones intact.

Whew. A narrow escape to be sure, but my adventure wasn't over just yet.

I arrived at my staging station with smoke and fire streaming, docked, fit a hull repper, and undocked again. Just after I finished repairing my armor and was still orbiting the station, waiting for the hull repper to finish, I noticed that the hull repair seemed to be taking an unusually long time to do its job. I was sitting there trying to figure out what the problem might be when all of a sudden, my screen went black.

At first, I thought it might just be that some other program on my computer which might have caused it, as has happened many times in the past, but this was different. The screen stayed black for far longer than usual when this kind of thing happens, and when it came back to my desktop, the icon for the client wasn't there. It had been a while since I'd had EvE completely crash to desktop on me, but even before the client automatically rebooted itself I knew that was what had happened. When I took a look at the client, though, I saw something I'd never seen before.

The server status message said "PROXY NOT CONNECTED". I'd never seen this before, so I tried to log in anyway. When I did, a message popup window appeared, saying "Proxy not connected to sol server.". I had no idea what this meant, other than that I was unable to log back in, so I immediately went to the E-O forums and found a thread already going, in which players who seem to have far more experience in this particular variety of server issue had written that we'd been the victims of a node crash.

Of course, I was not happy. My Thorax was still circling a starbase with a fiery trail behind it with its hull repper going. Anyone who came upon it before the repper had almost finished would instantly know that it would be easy pickings. As we waited for the server to be restarted, several of us who'd been in-game at that very late (or very early) hour continued posting in the thread, really doing little more than keeping each other entertained while we waited to get back in-game. Finally, at about a quarter after three AM eastern, the server came back up, and I logged back in to discover that my fears hadn't been entirely unfounded.

When I got back in-game, the first thing I noticed was that the Thorax wasn't orbiting the station where I left it, but was simply floating in space, about 45 AU from where I'd last seen it. The second thing I noticed was that a chunk of my armor, which I'd already finished repping before the node crash, was gone. While I didn't see it and chances are I'll never know for sure, the evidence seems to indicate that the Thorax was, in fact, attacked while I was unable to log in and had automatically warped itself out of the area to avoid being destroyed.

In all honesty, I wasn't really all that worried about losing the Thorax in monetary terms. Chances are, I'd have about broken even with the insurance payment. It was really more of an emotional thing. I'd just successfully piloted that ship through one of the narrowest escapes I've ever had in this game and losing it because of a node crash would have felt like an especially cheap and unfair end for a ship I've been through so much with. Of all the ships I've flown in EvE thus far, it's the one that's survived the longest by far, has the most battle scars, and been the one I've flown during some of my most memorable in-game moments.

So many firsts for me in this game have come while flying the Thorax, it would probably be impossible to try to list or even remember them all, but I think of that ship with the same kind of fondness you might have for a favorite car or pair of jeans. It's certainly not the most powerful ship I've ever flown, nor has it made me anywhere near the amount of ISK I made flying all those Myrmidons, but it's still a viable, useful ship, and I have such an intimate familiarity with it and its capabilities that sometimes it seems that if that Thorax is capable of doing something, I'm able to squeeze every erg of potential power out of it to get the job done. There's a reason why I went back to using the name of that ship in the title of this blog and kept it even though I've had several other ships since, and it's not just because I like the way it sounds.

For those wondering when I'll get back into a Dommie again and what's taking so long, the answer is "soon". There's a good reason, but it's not one I really feel comfortable talking about here just yet. In the meantime, I'm happy taking the Thorax out on some Level 2 missions, getting more familiar with how the game runs with this new, much faster processor, and training up some skills I've needed to get done for a while now.

One thing that was especially nice to see in the Alliance Tournament was being able to watch Star Fraction defeat the formerly undefeatable BoB...with ten Thoraxes! From my perspective, seeing BoB suffer its very first-ever Alliance Tournament loss at the hands of an underdog team of SF pilots was truly great to see. Seeing it happen at the hands of a fleet of Thoraxes...well, after that I can believe that just about anything's possible when you're flying one of these babies.

Til next time, fly safe.