Cast Into The Aether

I haven’t posted anything to this blog in a very, very long time so I don’t expect that anyone is still listening, but here goes anyway.

Not long after my last post about my activities in Eve I quit playing the game.  I was a little burnt out and had things going on in RL that needed attention.  I’ve never stopped gaming, I just stopped playing Eve.  I’m not committed to coming back to Eve just yet but since they began the whole free to play alpha clone thing I have logged in and done some market stuff as well as starting a new character with the name I plan to try to establish in a larger gaming/online identity arena.  I won’t be abandoning my Parisma character but she will not be the primary face I put on when I visit New Eden.  If I return to Eve I will be known primarily as Nosepicka.  Nosepicka was my goblin squig herder from Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning and I had a great time with him.  I’m currently training all the skills for a combat/exploration pilot that the limited alpha clone level will allow.  Once I’ve trained all of the relevant skills that the alpha level will allow I may buy a PLEX and do some more training and playing.

What I mean by establishing a new online persona is that I recently upgraded to a new gaming computer and I want to try my hand at Twitch streaming under the identity of Nosepicka42.  I still need to buy a webcam and a new headset before I’m ready to stream but those will be coming very soon.  I’ve largely been playing Rainbow 6 Siege lately and I plan to start my streaming with it.  I don’t know if I’ll ever stream any Eve game play but it might happen, you never know.  Therefore I’m going to turn this blog into a more general gaming/streaming blog.  I don’t know how much time I’ll be able to devote to writing since I still have a full-time job and a family to take care of but the muse is upon me again and I feel the need to write down my feelings and activities.

I’ve been very interested lately in what’s going on over at Star Citizen.  I’ve been doing some reading and even watched a very impressive video they posted showing a sample of their planet side bases and missions.  I haven’t plopped down any money yet but I am seriously considering becoming a backer, which is what they call the people who have paid to get into the alpha, but I think I might in the very near future.  If I do buy a game package so I can get into the alpha I want to record my experience and possibly make a series of YouTube videos chronicling my experience as a brand new supporter/player.  I’m not holding on to any illusions that I can make anything out of streaming and making videos for YouTube but it will be fun to try.

If there is anyone still out there listening to this blog do wish me luck and who knows maybe I will come back to Eve.

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Long Silence

I haven’t put out a post for a while because of a busy RL and I haven’t been able to muster the energy to write. So tonight I’m just going to ramble around instead of giving any kind of structured update.

My hauler alt finally got skills trained to get into a Viator with appropriate cloaking device so now he can go al the way into Fliet to pickup and deliver items. Parisma has some PI skills and I think I’m going to set up a small PI operation in Fliet to help supplement my income.

I’ve had a lot of fun in small fleets with my corpmates but there are really only two combat actions I’m going to mention. The first is a couple of Black Ops drops we did with a bomber fleet, which was a ton of fun. We send out a small conventional fleet to find targets and then we drop the bombers on them. It was mostly practice since many of our pilots, including me, had never done a drop like this before but we did get a couple of kills and had a lot of fun. The other thing I wanted to mention was when I was out roaming solo and killed a Drake with an Enyo. It’s not a great feat of piloting since he wasn’t PvP fit, more likely he was out running missions and ratting but I still felt a sense of accomplishment in the kill.

Fly proud.

Monday Update 9-22-14

Not much to report this week, I didn’t get a ton of play time and I was also trying out a free trial of Final Fantasy 14. I have to say it is a gorgeous looking game and I would probably keep playing if it was free to play or buy once and play forever type of game but I don’t see it being worth a subscription.

I did manage to get one kill this past week. I was out doing exploration in my Astero and had ended up in null sec after going through a couple of wormholes. So far the trip hadn’t been very profitable but that was about to change.

I came into a dead end system and found a treasure trove, 3 relic and 2 data sites were on scan. I started running the sites when another pilot popped in system and launched probes. I happened to catch on scan that he was in a Probe and I was pretty sure an Astero could take him out or scare him off. I saw him disappear from scan and since it was a small system I was pretty sure he was cloaked. Then I saw him come back on scan and thought, “He can’t be doing a site with me and my probes still on scan.” But he was. I got to the site he was in and crept to within ling point range under cloak. Once I was in range I dropped my cloak and started to try and lock him up while also deploying my drones, which were the only weapon I I had. He must not have noticed me until I had him pointed because he didn’t warp while my timer from dropping cloak kept me from locking him. The drones chewed him up quick and I moved in to check his wreck. Inside the wreck were Sisters Core Probes….84 of them. Needless to say I scooped the loot finished the sites in the system and hot footed it back to Fliet to stash the goodies. Don’t ask me why he was carrying that many probes out in null sec but I was very glad he was.

Also I passed a new milestone, I now have a negative sec status for the first time ever. I am now at -0.5 sec.

I’m on vacation from work this week so I hope to get in a fair amount of play time.

Battleclinic rank: 99,667 up 5,396

Monday Update 9-15-14

Absolutely nothing to report on the combat front today, RL and upgrading to Windows 8 got in the way of my play time.  About all I’ve done is monitor skill queues and market prices.  I did post up on the invention thread in the ideas section of the Eve forums asking if there will be anything taking the place of the data interface material drops in data sites and how are data interface holders going to be compensated when the interfaces are removed from the game.  I know others have asked but I would like to see a dev response because anything else is just speculation.  I’m hoping to get some more play time in this week.

 

Battleclinic rank: 105,063 down 108

Eliminating an income stream

I just read the dev blog about the invention and reverse engineering changes and it seem that the changes will be eliminating one of my income streams, Data Interfaces. It seems that Data Interfaces are going to be removed from the game. I do quite a bit of exploration and one of the things that you can get from data sites are the blueprints for the various types of racial data interfaces which are a reusable component of inventing tech II blueprints. You also find the components to build the data interfaces in data sites, along with decryptors and datacores. I’m not going to rage or cry tears , I have no doubt that others will do plenty of that for me this is Eve, but I’m probably going to have to kick my Enyo building idea into higher gear to make up for the lack of data interfaces to build and sell. The dev blog did mention that players will be reimbursed for their data interfaces so I will keep building the ones I find and hope that a fat stack of them in my hanger will magically transform I to ISK on the day the changes go live.

I’d also like to know if data sites are still going to drop the interface building materials still or not. The materials won’t have any use if data interfaces are removed from the game so they will effectively become a trash drop. Will the interface materials be removed from the game as well and if so will data sites be dropping anything new or will you only be finding decryptors and datacores? I’m not a big fan of the forums but I think I may venture into them to see what posts have been made about the interface removal parts of the invention changes.

Fly slightly poorer.

The Rebuild Begins

With this latest payday I began the rebuild of my computer in a fairly modest way.  I upgraded to the latest version of Windows 8 and bought a new 1T hard drive (my old hard drive is only 500Gb) for only $60.  So far the upgrade has gone without a hitch except for the fact that I feel like I’m using someone elses computer.  When you’re on it a lot, like me, you tend to mold your computer around yourself like that old, comfortable pair of shoes.  You get used to the way it behaves and where to find everything.  Now I feel like I’m breaking in a new pair of shoes, nothing feels quite right yet.  I think I should be able to scoop up a new video card, the Radeon R9 280 is the one my research suggests would be the best fit for the money.

Fly Casual.

Hull Tanking Heroes

‘Real men hull tank’ has long been a joke in Eve but with the latest releases and the addition of the Transverse Bulkhead rigs hull tanking may become a thing with Gallente pilots. Gallente ships have always been known for having the most hull hit points of any of the races and when you use a Damage Control II to get 60% resists against all damage types you’re talking about a pretty fair tank. Using Reinforced Bulkhead II and the Transverse Bulkhead rigs you can get about 7k – 8k EHP on a Navy Comet without sacrificing any speed like you do when armor tanking.

Aideron is experimenting with a new hull buffer tank doctrine, and so far it seems to be holding up well. Our hull tank Catalyst fleets are meeting with quite a bit of success and are also a blast to fly. I am also really liking the new hull tanked Navy Comet fit our theory crafters have come up with. It’s fast, agile, and packs a respectable punch. Our intrepid Osmium crafters have also put together a fit for a hull tanked Enyo I’m dying to try out.

Could we be looking at the end of the hull tanking joke era?

Time Management

I have all three character slots on my account full right now but I’m not sure how I want to split the time between them. The first two are actually pretty easy to split since the first is Parisma, my main, and the second is my hauling/industry/market character. Obviously I spend the most time with Parisma doing exploration and PvP. I only log in my hauler when I need to haul things, update some market orders, or take care of my industry jobs. It’s the third character that’s been giving me the trouble, you know, the one I started with the express purpose of trying to fool Code agents into believing I had a legitimate mining permit. I kind of know what I want to do with this alt next, trying my hand at a corp heist (sounds better than theft don’t ya think?). I just don’t want to take time away from playing Parisma to join some sucker corp and make it happen. I have a feeling pulling off a corp heist isn’t something you can do in your spare time. It will probably take a good bit of social engineering to get the roles I need to be able to access any of the corp valuables. So for right now I think I will be putting that plan and that character on hold since I’ve proven to myself that if a miner just watches his back a little and forges his own permit he will be able to avoid the Code watchdogs.

Monday Update 9-8-14

Had a real good week and there is a lot of stuff to report on so I’m going to break it down by day. Most of the action I got was in a fleet with corpmates but I actually did get some solo kills this week, nothing shiny but I was pleased that I killed them all on my own.

Monday- I was flying a Navy Slicer when we jumped into a small Corax fleet that was inside a plex and we melted the Coraxes and their support. Then we were sitting on the Fliet gate when a neutral destroyer fleet landed with a single Navitas who had a suspect flag, we melted him of course. Later I lost an Atron when I went after the wrong Tristan while we were engaging a small pirate frigate gang in a plex in Deven, our fleet was holding the field when the enemy bugged out right before I got back with a Condor. We got reports of a GalMil fleet doing a POS bash and we decided to take out a pack of Maulus frigates so we could mess with the enemy and I ended up losing mine so I went back home to Fliet and called it a night.

Friday- I helped a couple of guys kill a Worm and a Firetail inside a plex with my new hull tanked Comet. I almost got the Tristan that was with them when my Comet went down I was just a little too slow getting my pod out and got podded for the first time in a while. Since it happened in Fliet all I had to do was update my clone and grab a new ship. I jumped into a Condor but promptly lost it because I jumped the gun and warped back to the plex before any of my fleet mates BUT after the enemy had some friends warp in.

Battleclinic rank: 104,955 up 25,921

Universal Greed

Rule 10:  Greed is eternal.

-Rules of Acquisition

 

Everyone wants more.  Unless you are some monk living in the mountains in Tibet (how are you even reading this?), and even then I would bet that in your deepest heart the sentiment still holds true, you want more than you have.  Who doesn’t want to live in a hilltop house driving 15 cars?

I don’t know the details of what went on with the Somerblink site.  I did use their site for entertainment but I never paid any attention to it other than to try to catch the occasional free promo, (I believe I won 5 out of over 1000 played).  I’m also not trying to condemn or judge anyones actions in or out of game, I’m just trying to point out that greed and the desire to have more is a universal human motive.  If humans never wanted more we would still be content with living in caves and eating raw Antelope.  I’m not trying to say that everyone who  runs a fan site or blog wants to turn it into a real money making venture but if you had the opportunity would you turn it down?  I’m sorry to see the SOMER lottery site stop operation it was a fun little distraction and checking for promo blinks was a fun way to spend a long warp in highsec.

Anything that involves money, real or virtual, will inevitably fall under the universal desire for more.  Anyone who tells you different is a liar or is trying to sell you something, except me of course.  If you believe that, then I have a stargate near the New Eden system I’d like to sell you. 🙂

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