Another kill!

In my desire to avoid my own death but to engage in the deaths of others, I'm doing my best to only fight in those battles where I am more likely to win. It's this reason that is encouraging me to join up with those other pilots who, in their nefarious ways, are going to help me find victory.

This is why I came back to Molden Heath! The violence, the adrenaline, the excitement of laying in wait for prey, and then striking hard, and winning! The few victories I've had in my short career only make me crave more of them.

Today, I joined with Temar, Jardin and Rebnok, skilled pilots who have been quite happy to help me learn their ways. I joined them in Atlar, and in our short time flying together we managed to kill ourselves a Drake. Among other kills as well, but I was unfortunate in that I had no sensor booster, and therefore by the time my target lock engaged, they were already dead.

I'm feeling less and less sorry for these people who I end up destroying... Instead of feeling sad for their losses, I'm starting to understand I'm here to help them grow as pilots. They will either find courage as they become warriors, or they will find wisdom and stay out of lowsec space. Or they will realise they're actually little girls and retire from being a pilot altogether.

Either way, it's my duty to help them realise their true calling, whatever it might be.

My short term goal is to match my losses with victories, and then to double the number of victories over losses. When I reach my goal I will have a party! Everyone will be invited - even those I have slain in battle. There is no shame in defeat, and those who join with me in battle, whether as friend or foe, are all brothers in arms. They will be welcome at my party.

Exciting times lie ahead, my friends. Exciting times.

The bloggers channel is becoming popular

A big thanks to Crazy Kinux and YoMma for them mentioning me and the EVE-BLOGGERS channel in their recent Micro Warp Cast #2. Very cool!

Since I created it a few days ago, it's been relatively quiet, with only a few other bloggers popping in now and again. As of today, however, that changed when it EXPLODED with guests! There were about 15 bloggers and other interested pilots sitting in the channel chatting about their adventures and misadventures.

It was awesome, and I really look forward to seeing this channel being a meeting place for all the Eve Bloggers in the Eve community.

If you're a blogger and you'd like to help promote it, please 'advertise' it on your blog or website, to spread the word. The more the merrier!

Ok, ok, I'm not very smart

I didn't think things through enough when I decided to fly on over to Gallente space. After being there a couple of days, doing L2 missions for the Federation Navy, I realised something.

I missed lowsec.

The nearest 0.4 system to where I was doing missions was 6 jumps away. It was too far! I couldn't just do a quick roam around some lowsec systems to see what I could see.

And they didn't even have any intel channels for me to sit in, mainly 'cause they weren't near any systems they needed intel on!

It made me homesick for where I'd come from, and I realised - I'm not home. Home was back where I came from!

The main reason I went to Gallente space was to do missions and earn loyalty points that could be spent on Gallente fleet battleships which, unlike the Minmatar ships, I could actually fly. As I was thinking of how much I missed Molden Heath and the border worlds of lowsec, I realised something else...

I could spend loyalty points on Minmatar fleet ships and sell them, and then use the money to buy Gallente fleet ships on contract!

So yeh, I'm not very smart. I'm impulsive, and just don't think things through.

So I'm back in Molden Heath now... And I really feel like I'm home.

Eve Bloggers

There's a movement of Eve Bloggers that's arisen, of people writing about their adventures in the Eve galaxy. If you're one of them, then join the in-game channel for all the Eve bloggers. It's called EVE-BLOGGERS.

I hope to see you in there.

Returning home

My roots are in Gallente space, and today I realised I need to return there. Not because of any soppy, heartfelt emotions drawing me back... No. For me, it's because I realised I'm working for the wrong people.

I'm Gallente, and here I was, working for the Minmatar. And their worthwhile rewards for my service were blueprints for Minmatar ships. I realised I was wasting my time.

I'm specialised in Gallente ships and their tactics. Minmatar ships are unknown to me... and here I was, working hard for Minmatar rewards that I can't use...

Stupid, stupid Black Claw!

So I've packed my few important belongings into my nice new battleship, which I only got yesterday (that was an exciting day!), and I'm heading off for Gallente space, where my rewards will be in accordance with my abilities to use them!

I found an agent and a system that's only 14 jumps away from where I was based, and I'm en route as I type this. Autopilot through highsec space is a wonderful thing.

Unfortunately, it's only a high-quality level 2 agent, but considering I was only doing level 3 missions at the moment, I don't mind working my way up again.

The only other issue I'll have is that I'll have to re-establish my mission setups in my new territory. My agent used to send me missions into any of 4 regular systems (Gulfonodi, Aeddin, Teonosude and Gelfiven), and so instead of having a single salvaging ship that I'd have to go and get and bring back, I set up a salvager in each system. This reduced travel time, which increased the available time for actually doing missions, thus maximising potential income. I wholeheartedly recommend it for anyone who runs missions and salvages.

Anyway, setting myself up again in the new systems will involve more salvaging ships needing to be set up. I think that until I can afford to do this properly in each system, I'll be fitting salvagers and tractor beams to the battleship (a Dominix). I won't need the same firepower on the ship as I did with the level 3 missions, so my drones can do all the work while I salvage the remains.

It's going to be fun! I'm looking forward to returning home, finding new adventures, and meeting new pilots. If you're Gallente, and you're flying around Oursulaert systems, look me up and say hello. It'll be great to meet you!

Missions, tanks and battleships

As I venture through the various missions, talking to other pilots here and there, I've been taking on board a lot of their advice and building up a nice tank for my Myrmidon battlecruiser. I've trained up the Hull Upgrades skill to level 5, and I've installed T2 armour hardeners. It really makes a difference...

I did a mission that saw me warp in on a bunch of rat pirates, and there was about a dozen ships that immediately started to attack me. I activated the modules and started picking the ships off one at a time. I quickly discovered that there were 4 battlecruisers throwing their combined firepower at me, assisting their brothers in cruisers and frigates.

It was quite a battle, and I was excited to see that my own battlecruiser easily tanked everything they could throw at me. They all died to my railguns and drones, and victory was sweet.

I also tested how long I could maintain my cap while maintaining my armour tank. With 4 Cap Recharger II's sitting next to my afterburner, I could maintain the dual Medium Armour Repairer II's and the rat specific hardeners and Damage Control Unit II for about 7 minutes before the cap ran out. But if I threw on an extra cap recharger, I was able to hold the cap indefinitely at about 50%. After 12 minutes with it sitting at 50%, I gave up.

Unfortunatelly, my systems use the Apple OS, which means that both the skill training and ship fitting simulation programs that many other pilots use is unavailable for me. I have to make do with advice and personal experience. It's ok... I don't mind. Just means that I get to see how things really work, instead of in the simulations.

I'm using my missions to save up for a Dominix battleship. I'm not too far away now. I got excited last night when I realised that most of the modules I have in the battlecruiser can simply be transferred over to the battleship, saving me a lot of money. I'll have to upgrade the armour repairers, the guns and the afterburner. But that's a small cost to having a much larger tank.

I've been able to up the missions to level 3, and earning a bit more money than before... I'll have that Dominix faster than you can say OMGITSAGATECAMP!

Burnt by lowsec

It's been a few weeks since I last recorded my adventures, and while I've been quiet, I certainly haven't been bored. I've been taking on missions from Native Freshfoods and doing a few level 3 missions. Unfortunately, they weren't paying too much, so I decided to change agents and started working for the Republic Fleet; the money from level 2 missions has been equivalent to what I was getting from the previous level 3 missions... Go figure.

Coincidentally, the other few members of my corp were doing the same thing, so now we're working on getting the corp standings up so we can start implementing jump clones.

Some of the missions had been taking me into lowsec space, and while I tried to be careful, I lost two battlecruisers to pirates. As you might guess, this annoyed the hell outta me, so I made a very significant decision.

I've spent most of my career traveling and fighting around lowsec space. But after losing so much to pirates this time around (like, 300 million in ships and fittings over the course of a month - a lot when you only had about 400m to start with), I made the decision to stay out of lowsec systems with any ships I don't want to - or can't afford to - lose.

This is probably something that a lot of people already do, of course, but my time in lowsec made me overconfident, and I've suffered from it as a result. But no more.

Now, the only time I've gone into lowsec is after carefully using the map to check how many pilots are in space in the previous 30 minutes, and how many kills might have happened in the previous hour. If I think it's safe enough, I'll go in with a shuttle and do what I need to do (usually some kind of transport mission).

I've also been training up my cloaking skills, and once I took my Myrmidon for a spin through 5 lowsec systems and back, using my Improved Cloaking Device to keep myself invisible. It worked well! But I'm yet to use the Covert Ops Cloak on my Helios, which I'll have finished training for in just a few days. I'm expecting that to be just awesome. Bring on the cloaky goodness...

Oh, the only other time I'm likely to head into lowsec with my battlecruiser is when I have safety in numbers, like yesterday when I lost my 'gate camp virginity'. For the first time ever, I was a member of a gate camp, and for the first time ever, I was fired upon by sentry guns!

We got ourselves a kill, some poor soul who was flying a Rupture without any modules fitted. He was angry, as you'd expect, and lit up local comms with his smack talk. It was both amusing and sad at the same time. Amusing that he would fly a 'naked' ship into lowsec and expect to get away with it, and sad that he was relatively new to piloting and this was probably a big loss for him.

I still need to work on my 'carebear' feelings for other pilots and their losses... I need to get involved in more piracy/combat actions to eradicate these feelings from my system.

And I will, while I do missions to build up my money and buy bigger and better ships. In the short term, I'm training for a Dominix, which I could actually fly right now - if I had the money. So it'll have to wait. In the longer term, I'm going for the Arazu. The Dominix for missions, and the Arazu for real combat.

The future is looking bright. :)