Not much ado about nothing

This week was a  bit slow for me in general.  A bit of mining to try and help the corp get a POS up.  Not much mission running.  I started to join in on more of the PvP in the region my corp is at.  Lots of people spending so much time complaining about people not joining fleet that they don't send invites to the folks that are trying to join.  You finally get in and they are only willing to camp gates.  They are only willing to get into stand up fights if they are deep within our own territory.  Even then they won't fight without a 3 to 1 favor.  I understand not wanting to lose expensive ships.  I can't afford to lose a battleship or battlecruiser once a week right now.  So instead I fly a cruiser.  Frigs would be good too if we weren't in low sec.  Gate and base guns will eat frigs a bit to quickly.  Of course that wouldn't be an issue if we didn't always gate camp.

So far it seems like other groups that run through the region consider .  I haven't heard of our region's alliance winning or dragging out a draw in a good fleet battle.  All of the recent victories have been either gate camps against small numbers or a battle of 15 ships with carrier support against 5 battleships.  Outside of that everyone pretty much just hops in station and lets the reds make a run through the systems picking off the one or two people to dumb to monitor the intel chat channel.

That doesn't bother me as much as the attitude of some of our own folks.  People that bitch about us not pulling together a reactionary fleet of 30 in 5 minutes, but refusing to join up when you try to get one going.

Anyways, I've been thinking about how the different corporations and alliances in Eve progress through a development cycle fairly similar to state entities in real like.  The different forms of state develop for the same reasons: To increase ones capability to project violence.  I am going to try to write up a better explanation later.

I also have started to get back into reading more about the Eve community.  Didn't realize that there were so many people blogging and podcasting on it.  It is pretty neat to see.  Certainly makes my blog feel silly, but that is fine since a whole two people read it at the moment.

No!  Either one of them is me or my mom.  Give me some credit!

Ship count for the week - 1

3 lost - Each one was to stupid mistakes.  I'm still getting use to PvP in Eve.

3 assists

Not a ratio that I'm happy about...

Veteran Noob

Well a lot has changed in Eve since I was last around.  To give you an idea of how long I've been out of the game, salvagers and titans were not around.  Although the game was instantly familiar, I'm finding all sorts of little improvements.  It is kind of amazing how far the game has come.  The improvements all seem to drive the fundamentals of the original game forward without drawing away from anything.  

The loss of T2 BPOs is kind of sad to me.  I always had a dream of owning a BPO from some small module.  Lets not fool anyone though, it never would have been more then a dream.  I think the new system is a nice method.  While T2 prices are much lower, it doesn't seem to have killed the economy either.  From what I have heard, the profit margin is now all that great on T2.  Maybe that is just compared to the ridiculous margins from the lotto system though.  The "new" exploring system seems interesting.  I'm looking forward to trying it out.

I restarted with almost no isk.  The last few weeks of my last Eve time was spent in a corp war that cost me a good chunk of assets.  The new skill books are eating up almost every dime a make.  Buying up skills and implants for my alt is only making things worse.

Did a bit of mining and was able to build a Drake.  It is such an awesome mission running ship.  Seems to be very popular too.  I'm trying to build up my shield skills for it.  All of the compensation skills are new since I was last around.  My BC skill is also only lvl3.  The Ferox just never provided enough to convince me to put anything serious into it.  I'm very close to running lvl 3 missions at my corp's new home.  I'm looking forward to throwing the Drake at something that isn't a complete snooze.

For every push there is a pull though.  Last night I was mining while a bit tired and buzzed.  I ended up losing my medium mining barge when a group a rats jumped in almost literally on top of me.  They closed the 10k pretty much immediately.  I didn't stand a chance.  Might have been the lack of sleep, but I didn't even see the change in Local until they were on me.  It was blue for hours until then.  Oh well.  I already replaced the barge.  They are not very expensive.  Just seems like I can't hold on to cash for anything this last week. 

I originally started playing Eve in 2005.  All I can say for myself is this:  I feel so noob....

Return of the Pleb

This first post is to announce my return to the game of Eve Online.  This really isn't news to anyone except myself and maybe one other person.  I'm sure the rest of you don't really care.  I plan to use this blog to voice my thoughts on a number of subjects, but Eve will be a subject that will help provide some daily (no promises on updates yet) focus.  Who is this blog written for?  No clue.  Let us enjoy the ride either way though.  Fair warning:  There will be many of typos and errors.  I simply don't have the time to heavily think out and rewrite entries.  Maybe with time, I'll get better at it.  Don't that expect that to happen anytime soon unless I find an English Lit implant.

As soon as I started playing again I did two things.  First I found my old corp on my original character.  While they have been through quite a bit, they are more or less in the same spot as where I left them.  The only difference is that it is not full of the carebears it once was.  Although small, they live out in low sec.  

This change to low sec was very exciting to me.  I spent a lot of time trying to drag folks out into low sec.  Not by force.  Just offering to bring people along on runs and looking for small skirmishes.  It amazed me the number of people that would be afraid to lose even a T1 frig.  Even with minimal investment, there is such a stigma against risk and lose for many Eve players.  The cowardly pirates are the proverbial boogie-man for these players.  While sitting in the depths of low sec, it is easy to forget just how many people really do prefer the comforts of CONCORD.  Especially when you consider how much of the news in Eve is driven by the actions in low sec space.

The second thing I did was start up an alt character on second account.  I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with this character.  A research rat?  An industrial puppet?  The pewpew ganker?  When I couldn't decide so I balanced out the stats and will just hope for the best.  Right now I don't see him joining my corp.  I think I want to take him off and meet new folks.  

For the time being he is just a carebear.  He is going through the Learning skills grind.  It is amazing how much as changed while I was gone and how little.  Hopefully no one is telling noobs to grind out 30+ days of Learning skills first thing.  There is plenty of shouting about whether the skills should be in the game.  My opinion on the matter is of no worth.  That aside...

The Learning skills seem to perfectly reflect the risk/reward nature of Eve and how players on a whole react to it.  This take a longer to start, but pays off in the long run.  What is funny is how players react.  They closely calculate the best risk/reward ratio and take it to the grave.  It reminds me of the folks that only move in low sec with a fleet or gang.  As if the loss of a single ship or skill point would be the end of the world.  It seems to me that the folks that have the most fun are the ones that understand the rules and still willingly hang it on the line.  Damn the calculators.  It is suppose to be a game!  Ok feel free to ignore all of this babbling if you have two accounts...