Empire Grind

I made a comment on another’s blog post not too long back about visiting empire after being out in the darkest parts of space. For her, she lives in a wormhole system. For me, I was used to life in nullsec. They are two totally different worlds yet the same in many ways.

We, in 0.0, have the luxury of stargates for travel and local comms to tell us who’s in system whereas in a wormhole, they don’t. However, what we both share is the lack of populated systems. We share the fact that if a person isn’t blue, they are an enemy. If you see such persons on your overview, then its run, die, or kill. You live out of a corporation constructed outpost or a POS. You rely on your logistics teams to provide the supplies you need to survive because (unless you have an active market hub for your neck of the woods) most of the things just can’t be bought locally. In essence, it’s a place where the only rules are the ones you make and enforce.

And then you go to empire. There, you will see so many neutrals, it’ll make your head spin. I still find it a bit discomforting to arrive at a stargate and see 20 neutral ships just hovering around it. I go to Jita and I want to scream death at the myriad of pilots, my fingers hovering over my weapons systems. I have to consciously force myself to relax, reminding myself that attacking any of those pilots would bring certain, senseless destruction to my hard earned ship.

It’s a whole other world, empire is. And if you never leave it, you’ll never truly live.

But here I am, living in empire once more….. albeit temporarily. Well, since I’m here, might as well earn some isk right?

So yesterday I sat down and went over my standings with the various factions and NPC corporations. The corporation I’ve joined up with puts an emphasis on running missions for Kaakaliota (forgive me if I spelled that wrong). Why exactly, I’m not sure other than there being some high level agent in their home system. However, looking at my standings, it was going to take some effort before that agent would even consider giving me work. I mean, my standings with the Caldari, the main faction for the corporation, were a piss poor -3.87 (even with diplomacy 3). So needless to say, the best agent I could get was a level 1, quality -13. It actually felt pretty demeaning.

For a moment, I nearly just said screw it and go track down one of my old level 4 agents with Federation Customs. In the end though, I chose to suck it up and headed for the low level agent’s office.

Looking at me, I guess the all too prim and uptight Caldari woman could tell I was no fresh pilot straight out of the academy. Either that or she was sure I’d throw in the towel if she gave me what’s considered to be a very difficult mission for that level. This very first mission she handed me was code named World’s Collide. All I could do was just nod my head and smile and pretend like I cared as she briefed me on the mission’s objectives. To sum it up, two pirate factions battling over a small bit of turf, and some poor sobs got caught in the middle. So that’s where I come in. I guess they decided that sending me in to pull their sorry asses out was better than them endangering the life of someone they actually gave a damn about. Oh…and their reports said only a frigate sized vessel would be able to access the warp gates. Insert rolling eyeballs here.

In all truth, that was just fine with me.

Notifying my associate of my given task, I instructed him to pull the Ishkur out of storage and have it assembled and geared up asap. To his credit, that man certainly knows how to get things done. With a proper loadout already in the fittings computer, it was a quick breeze to get it all complete and I was on my way in no time. Props Mr. Associate!

Now last time I’d run level one missions for an agent, I was a lot younger in terms of my pilot’s license. I could remember the days of battling my way through this or that mission in my trusty little Incursus, hoping that if shit hit the fan too hard, I’d be able to make it out in one piece. Now, I dived into the mission head first, confidence flowing strongly through my veins. And for good reason.

Arriving at the scene, immediately the Gurista ships locked on and started to burn towards me. All I could do was smile as I engaged my own sub-warp drives and burned towards them in return. I can only imagine what they were thinking, seeing this crazy lone frigate careening towards them as if playing the old children’s game of chicken that we used to play on our bicycles when I was young. What they didn’t know was that this lone frigate had a whole load of friends with her in the hold.

As soon as I reached my ship’s targeting range, I quickly locked on and gave the command that sealed their death sentences. Immediately, five small hobgoblin II’s launched from the drone bay with nothing but destruction programmed into their little computer brains. I seriously don’t think I’ve ever seen ships turned to debris so fast. Literally, like 10 ships, one pass, and a trail of carnage left in my wake.

The Angel ships had also locked onto me from way over on their side of the field, but I could care less. I burned to the gate and after entering the initiation sequence, warped to the next pocket. There too, more Guristas attacked and more Guristas died in vain. Rinse and repeat.

So through the final gate I went and yet again, the explosions of Gurista ships lit up the blackness of space. I barely paid any attention to them as I flew to the incapacitated ship and immediately began the transfer sequence to pull the stranded pilots out. Once that was complete, I looked around and realized there wasn’t even anything left. My drones sat there idly staring at me as if to say they were depressed it was already over. I could do nothing but laugh as I recalled them to the ship and warped away, course set for the agent’s station.

And so it was for the next umpteen dozen missions I completed that evening. I think I spent more time flying to and from the mission sites than I did actually doing the missions. By the time I settled down for the night on my cozy little cot, I believe I was able to pull my rankings with the Caldari up to about 2.07 and my standing with the particular corp up to about 1.40. Not bad at all for a single night’s work I dare say.

Random Blatherings

An old alliance mate of mine from Systematic Chaos, Manasi, posted an entry the other day that I have to give props to. It really does, in my opinion, sketch out the various differences between high sec, low sec, and null sec.

One of the questions that were raised in his comments though was one I KNEW would probably be asked at least once. He stated in his chart that high sec has low risk, low sec has high risk, and null sec has almost no risk.

Wait a minute…..what?!?! Null sec has almost no risk?!? That certainly can’t be true!! I mean…its Null sec!! There’s no Concord to protect me!!

Well…at first, and especially to those who have never lived there, that’s exactly how it could be seen. But the truth of the matter is that it’s quite the opposite. I was actually just touching a bit on this the other evening with the roommate. We were talking about whether or not a new player could survive in Nullsec. This is something that has been discussed a few times in the blogosphere as well and so far, most are saying they are of the opinion they could. In some respects I agree with that. In others, I completely disagree. I do not agree that a brand new player, fresh out of the academy and having just finished his/her initial tutorial missions, should be heading out to nullsec. Well…let me rephrase that, I agree that a new player, fresh out of the academy could IN THEORY survive, but the reality is the opposite and for one major reason, lack of piloting skill.

As any experienced PVP pilot will tell you, or for that matter any experienced combat pilot in general will tell you, it’s not always about how many skillpoints you have or what ship you’re in. It’s about knowing how to fit and fly your ship properly.

And all this newbie talk brings me to my next line of thought.

In an effort to sort of mold my associate industrialist into the Eve world, I’d recently had him apply and get accepted into a claimed full fledged industrial corp. Original intent was to learn a bit from more experienced industrialist pilots. Unfortunately the info about the corp by the recruiter turned out to be rather false. One is that, so far, the oldest member I’ve seen has had their pilot’s license for only 8 or 9 months. My industrialist has been a pilot for 5 months. So I guess in their eyes, 3 months more than my associate made them experts? Oh, and little do they know that the 5 month old industrialist is related to a pilot who is as old as I am. Mind you, I’m not laying claim that I am that old or even that a person’s time spent in Eve makes any relevant difference. I AM however claiming that I definitely feel far more knowledgeable and experienced than they are.

Two, they are not industrialists. Carebears yes, but not the industrialists I was looking for. Pretty much what they are is PVE’ers. Very little other conversation takes place other than who has what mission and what ship to bring and how to fit said ship for that mission.

Third, I don’t have that much of a knowledge base in terms of POS design and operation, but it appears none of them have even done any sort of prior research as I have. They were telling my associate about their intent to set up a POS when he first discussed joining. Yet after joining, I’ve recognized that they were still almost completely clueless about how to do it. They didn’t even know WHERE they would be able to set one up. I mean seriously, I think I’m going to have permanent scars on my tongue from the number of times I’ve had to bite it, just to maintain this naive persona I’ve been portraying. Oh, and I think the only reason they did start discussing the idea of putting up a POS was because I’d brought it up in the interview.

So my associate stepped up a bit and in essence gave them the low-down, as well as some links to some of the numerous POS guides available on the web. It was also suggested that instead of grinding up the standing as they were talking about doing, (while continuously accepting new recruits…), that they should consider purchasing one of the premade corps offered in the trade forums, get the POS setup, and then create an alliance with that corp. From what I understand, the only people you would actually have to keep in the corp would be a holder alt. Instead, the CEO of the corp shot this idea down with absolutely no second thought.

Well that just didn’t work for me since one of the main reasons I looked into getting my associate into a corp was the possibility to use a POS for BPO research. With the likely chance of that not happening, at least not anytime in the near future, nor anyone that could help me develop his trade, then I see no reason to keep him in that corp. And for this reason, I’m intending to have him join up with me in the corp that I will likely be applying to later this evening.

As a side note, I am not a griefer or a scammer and have never had any intentions of robbing or harming them in any way shape or form. Although it is felt that the recruiter lied prior to joining them, that will still not be reason enough for me to rob them, given my associate lied to them by not making it clear his relationships. Besides, I’m not sure they would have anything substantial enough to rob them of and potentially lose my credibility over.

Changes.....again.

Yeah, I know. I’m perhaps the most wishy-washy person in Eve. Well, probably not the worst, but with current happenings, I could be trying to compete.

Basically, as those who read my writings know, my corp left Systematic Chaos and joined up with En Garde. I’ll say now that En Garde is basically a testing ground for eventual corp acceptance into Against All Authorities [-A-]. Although I was excited about the possibilities this represented, I did a lot of deep thinking this past weekend and realized, what’s the beauty of being in a corp whose becoming a part of -A- when your own corp probably doesn’t fully trust you. And why should they? I’m rarely on when most of them are (that being mostly weekends) and rarely available when CTAs are taking place. They have corp roams quite often as well, but again, it’s usually before I’m home from work. And with that in mind, I wouldn’t be surprised if most of them just see me as a name on their roster, who appears to be rarely around. Thus I made the final decision to just pack my bags and find more fertile grounds for me to grow.

Ironically, in helping my roommate get his feet wet in Eve, as well as helping him decide whether Valor would be a good corp to join or not, it ended up helping me as well. My roommate has been telling me a lot of good things about the guys in his corp and working hard to persuade me to join them. And finally, after having a chat with both their industrial director as well as their CEO, I gave in and made the decision to put in my app and give them a go. I won’t have to miss out on my nullsec candy as they have ops constantly going on in 0.0 (for security reasons I won’t state where) as well as high sec operations. This will currently mean not being a part of the gigantic fleet battles I’m so affixiated with, but then hell, how many was I actually able to be a part of with my current corp? Also I think they would be a lot more helpful for me to nuture and fully develop my industrial associate.

So yeah. This past weekend was spent pulling my ships out of Catch and now all I have left to do is get my jump clones out as well. (and before someone suggests it, my jumpclones have some rather expensive implants in them that I’d really rather not lose)

Speaking of the associate, I have to say he’s actually doing really well. I mean already he’s made over a billion isk and with a little help from me, he was able to buy a freighter, the Providence, this past week without having to spend any of his own income. Reason for his success is that he found one of the little niche’s in the market that so many speak of and has really been taking flight with it. And the best part is, he doesn’t actually have to leave station in order to manage it all. However, to get the highest returns, he does undock quite regularly in order to move the goods to a more convenient location for the buyers. And this is where the freighter will come in handy as he’s now able to move more volume and thus expand to a larger scaled operation.

It really has amazed me how much isk a trader can generate just to provide convenience for consumers. I mean, I’m not going to deny it was difficult at first to allow myself to invest much isk into his operations, without the solid assurance that I could get a return on it, but in the end, it proved to be much better than I’d even imagined. There are still a few things I’m a bit hesitant about, but slowly I’m becoming more trusting in doing so. Currently, between myself and my associate, the total for our accounts is sitting at a cool 900 million in liquid isk, with about another 6 or 700 million in various trade investments. To the big industrialists, this isn’t much. But to me, given I went from my associate being mostly inactive since I first hired him and then actually making moves in like the past month, a billion isk in a month is not bad at all. And that is excluding getting the isk acquired for purchasing the freighter and thus the ability to really increase his operations. And soon, he will be able to begin production on his own stuff (after having collected hundreds of researched BPOs and BPCs from the contract market) I’m just waiting for him to get production efficiency to 5 before he begins actual production, in order to build things with the highest return rate after material investment.

This is something many new industrialists probably don’t grasp from the beginning. When building stuff, it is best to have production efficiency to at least lvl 4. I did the research and double checked the numbers and, at least from what I’m seeing, if you’re not mining your own materials, it appears you really can’t break even on manufactured items until you’ve reached lvl 3. To forgo getting lvl 5 in that skill simply because it takes so long to get is just wasting minerals as the difference is really quite significant. Eventually, I’ll also have my associate mining his own minerals so that I can decrease the up-front costs as well, but for now, getting that skill to 5 has become top priority. So current time standing: 19 days.

God I hate those long skills.

Associate Update

My associate is a trader / industrialist. When I started my Eve career, I started as a miner / explorer. Eventually, like many, I realized that mining was really not all that entertaining, I’d chosen to sell my other self and used the isk to buy my new, combat focused self a plethora of ships and gear to sustain my life out in Nullsec for quite some time. Well… funds started running low and I began to consider real options for making isk.

One option I'd looked into, and found a small niche for, was building and trading. But that created a couple of significant hurdles for a fairly young pilot. First, I could not feasibly do the training myself. The time needed to train the necessary skills for building/trading as well as for flying an efficient hauler (and eventually freighter) would be time lost in training my combat skills. I did train enough to do some light building of T1 stuff such as rigs, T1 ammo, cap charges and T1 ships. (up to cruiser size I believe.) However, anything beyond that would just be too much time wasted.

The second hurdle was that much of my trading would have to be done in empire, given I have no intentions of investing that much time into training for a proper nullsec hauler. Flying an Iteron IV and with the improved cloaking device II, I’m able to give myself some bit of safety but it certainly is no blockade runner, transport ship or even better, jump freighter. Eventually, I do intend to be flying a carrier but that’s still a good ways off as far as I’m concerned. I mean, even if I focused entirely on a carrier now, it’d still be a solid 6 months before I would even feel comfortable enough to sit in the pilot’s seat.

So if I am to seriously get into industry / trading, I felt I had only one real option. Hire an associate.

Now, standing at roughly 5 million skillpoints, my business partner is already proving to be an invaluable addition. Amarrian by race, he can effectively fly the Amarr freighter, known as the Providence, along with transport ships, blockade runners and even a retriever, though lacking proper skills for energy consumption and T2 mining crystals. He also is a fairly decent trader now as well as builder and researcher for the same things I can do… and then some. Basically, he makes enough now to sustain himself and get the numerous skillbooks he needs, but not enough to support my combat life out in Nullsec.

A lot of his training comes from my past experiences in Eve and a lot of the knowledge I’ve gained about skill training since I first got my pilot’s license. When I hired my associate, I was adamant about spending the first couple months training his learning skills up to 5 for all the basics and 4s for the advanced. I also spent a good bit of time on EveMon and created a skill plan for him that pretty much maps out the next two years of training. In doing so, I also took into account the available times for him to do his neural remaps, keeping in mind to make him as useable as possible from early on…. but still managing to map it so that I feel I was able to give him the most efficient training plan a person can get for an industrial manager. Keep in mind, this plan does create a slight vacuum for the next 3 months as he will be training a couple of skills that won’t see their real use until much later on. However it was necessity to make best use of time and the 2 initial remaps a new pilot gets.

Now I just gotta get up enough collateral for him to invest in some real market trading as well as buy a freighter to haul it in.

Given I have not, nor do I plan on bringing my associate into my corp at this time, I’m considering putting a jump clone and a PVE ship in a station where I’m able to run level 4 missions. With me killing everything and my associate following behind with a salvaging ship, I could make a lot more isk, a lot faster, in Empire than I could doing it solo out in Nullsec. It might also give my roommate some more opportunities to run high level missions to help raise his standings, as well as get a chance for us to hang out in-game. Sure it’s spending time in Empire that I don’t really want to do, but to roll in the isk without bringing my associate into my nullsec corp, I think this may be the most viable option.

So……why did I write all that? Major reason is that writing things out helps me organize and rationalize to myself my own thoughts. :D Second reason is to give yet another example of what experience can give a New Eden pilot, besides just how to fly and fit your ships.

Who What When Where Why How??

I'm not really a part of the blog pack or the blog banter that many of you have seen on many of the other great blogs out there but this one I couldn't help writing a bit about myself and I'll tell you why in a moment. But here's the usual intro stuff:

Welcome to the sixteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

The third Blog Banter of 2010 comes to us from ChainTrap of the Into the unknown with gun and camera EVE Blog. He asks us: "Eve University turns six years old on March 15th; six years spent helping the new pilots of New Eden gain experience and understanding in a supportive environment. Eve is clearly a complicated game, with a ton to learn, so much that you never stop learning. So, the question is; What do you wish that someone had taken the time to tell you when you were first starting out? Or what have you learned in the interim that you’d like to share with the wider Eve community?"

As I said, this one actually struck a chord with me. Recently, my roommate has finally torn himself away from his usual MMOs like WoW and Aion to give Eve a real try. It's not his first time, rather his second, but then I'm partially to blame for his first failure to really get caught up in it. A bit embarrassing but with him as well as a couple other friends being on WoW, they talked me into giving it a try instead. So I did, and just as I figured, I got a character to lvl 80, and then said, now what? Grinding for acheivements and gear was just horrendously boring and with nothing else really to offer other than to start a new character and grind that one to lvl 80, I soon just deactived my account. How people can play that game for years and never stop enjoying it I really don't get. After a while it really does become so insanely monotonous and repetitive, no matter what character you roll. My friends kept gettin annoyed with me the whole time too because I was always finding it much more entertaining to just go exploring than to work on leveling up my character. They kept tellin me it gets better when you reach the end game material. I did finally reach it.... and it didn't get better.

So anyways, as I was saying, I recently got him to try Eve out once again. I'm constantly telling him of all the action and events going on out in Nullsec and it's really peaked his interest. He's like me in that he loves stories of large fights and the strategy that goes into them. He loves hearing the latest news of who's fighting who and what led up to them fighting and so on so forth.

So once again, he's stepping out into the voids of space and seeing what treasures lie in wait. And of course, being his roommate, all you experienced players can only guess the number of times I've had to go sit with him and help him figure out this or that.

The thing I realized in doing this is the very answer to this the question posed by ChainTrap in this installment of the Blog Banter.

It comes down to one word, Corporation.

Something I don't think is emphasized enough anywhere really is the importance of finding a good corporation to join as early on in your Eve career as possible. And don't just do as I did and join the first corporation that sends you an evemail invitation. I'm not saying joining one that sends you a random invite is bad. I'm just saying that before you join, you should know what to look for in a corp.

I didn't really know anything about corporations when I joined my first. I just figured they were groups that joined up together to keep each other company. I didn't realize the benefits or the help that older members could offer to newer pilots. I didn't know what sort of things to look for such as forums, vent/teamspeak accessibility, ship replacement programs, and even timezone issues. My first corp was started and built by newbs. Every member in my first corporation was no more than a few months old and for the most part clueless about Eve. I mean, we got the jitters just from the idea of traveling through a 0.5 sec system because it's dot on the autopilot was yellow rather than green or blue.

So when my roommate started out and started getting random invites, I did my best to help him look at everything the corp had to offer and give my thoughts or opinions, pointing out the pros and cons I could see. In the end, I think he joined what appears to be a well put together group called Valor Inc. who I believe will be very beneficial in helping him learn and develop his skills in Eve. (and perhaps not bug me all the time for help and answers! :D)

Let the Fires Rage

This weekend I had my first real opportunity to truly experience the epic lag that has so many capsuleers up in arms. When I was in college, I actually majored in Multimedia Technologies, with an emphasis in video. I loved every bit of it and had truly intended to continue in that field yet life threw me down a different road. Anyway, reason I point that out is that I’ve wanted to try my hand at frapping a fleet battle and other activities in Eve and possibly see how well I can do at making a video of it. Unfortunately, I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to include a large fleet battle with the sort of lag I experienced during the op.

Prime example following.

In the continued efforts by Against All Authorities and Ushra Khan to burn Providence, a fleet was gathered this past Saturday to put an I-Hub into reinforced. Intel had been gained that CVA had amassed a rather decent sized fleet to defend the system so we were expecting a good fight. At one point, I think I heard the FC say something about our opponents having close to 400. (but I’m not positive on that and later found out Atlas was already there. Thus, I don’t know how many they had so can’t really judge by the local count.) Our fleet in itself had roughly 200. Even if CVA did have 400, we were certainly not daunted by their numbers. One thing history has taught us is that CVA lacks in organizational skills to handle large fleet battles. That’s really not the best way to word it as I’m sure they have some great FC’s, but with so many corporations and alliances being mixed together to defend their systems, they lose a lot of the cohesion and organizational training that the other nullsec alliances have.

Anyways, we waited at our staging POS, hovering around the titan, waiting for the FC to give the command for the Battleship and support fleet to bridge in. Soon enough, the order was given and we all jumped.

Things for me got a little crazy at this point. I’m not entirely sure what happened but immediately the FC started calling targets. However, for some strange reason, I’m looking around and seeing absolutely nothing. Everything seemed to be appearing correctly on my overview yet there was nobody around. So I randomly picked another pilot I knew to be in a battleship and pressed the warp to. Sure enough, my ship turns about and soon enters warp. I don’t recall a titan bridge ever working like that before. Dropping people in the destination system at random locations?

Either way, I arrived just in time to see a nice long list of enemy ships and started locking em up one after the other, doing my best to make sure to include the ones the FC was calling as primaries and secondaries. I didn’t even think however that I’d managed to lock any of them fast enough to even get a shot in but the following day, I’m glancing at our corporation’s killboard and realized I was actually the final blow for one of the hostile battleships. Really quite amusing I have to say seen as I seriously don’t recall being able to shoot anyone. Between them running, ships turning to dust in seconds, and the lag itself, hostile ships were just disappearing too fast for my systems to keep up with.

So basically CVA was quickly bugging out. Only ships we really killed were the few stragglers that weren’t quick enough to run. We then warped to the I-Hub, shot that for a bit, got news of some ships jumping in system, warped to that location to engage, they again were popping what seemed like faster than the FC could call em, warped back, put the I-Hub into reinforced, then proceeded to manually fly back to our original staging system and titan bridged the rest of the way home.

So all in all I’d have to say it was probably the fastest CTA I’ve ever been a part of. I think we waited for the jump in longer than we were actually there shooting.

Now lag for me wasn’t as bad as what I’ve heard it being, but it was still a pain the ass. Either way, at this point, for a video I may just have to settle with small gang fights.

I’m also in the process of figuring out a good video editor to get for doing this. Currently, as I’m believing most people use, I’ve been playing around with windows moviemaker. However, I’m considering other options such as Adobe Premier (given my passion for Adobe products) as well as a few others. Any suggestions would be happily welcomed.

Oh, and I have to say that thus far this move by the Corp has been great. I’ve seen more CTA’s and fleet action going on than I have ever recalled. I’m actually beginning to wonder if I’m ever going to find time to carebear and make some isk (something I’m getting to the point of needing desperately as my wallet starts to look a little barren). Given the corp is attempting to prove itself to our new alliance brethren, we’ve established a rule that if your not in fleet during a CTA, you need to log off. This is simply to show that Silver Snake Enterprises is not just going to be a buff in numbers, but an active and useful asset to the alliance. And I’m proud to say we’ve all held to that mindset very well.

I'm L-A-Z-Y

Click on the map to get a bigger version.

So in light of the numerous other writers showing their maps of where they been, it got me curious as well and I pulled up the map to have a look. To be honest, I'm rather surprised. This isn't a version of the map I look at very often and looking at it now, I really don't get out much do I?

You can see where I've spent a good portion of my time up in the Solitude region with Gato Nero and then living down in the south with Systematic Chaos. And of course the varied journeys through -A- space as well as our recent invasion into Delve and Period Basis after the Goon failure.

Fun little map I have to say and definitely something I might try to make more colorful as time goes on.

Changes in the Solar Winds

So yeah, I admit, I’d lost the motivation to write. Sort of. It’s also been because I’d lost a lot of motivation to even log into Eve. Truth is that I gotten completely frustrated with the recent wars. First with Goonswarm and then the skirmishes with CVA. It’s not that I didn’t like the wars. They are what I yearn for, to take part in the massive battles to control systems. But that was just the problem. Even being in a nullsec corp, I was spending all my time reading about them rather than being a part of them. Most of the large battles you read about on the forums or in others writings all happened before I would get home from work. And it’s not like I work odd hours. I work a normal Monday through Friday with the occasional Saturday, 9 to 5 job…..but in US time zone. Some were in progress when I got home and logged in, but by the time I could get there, the fight was coming to an end or in the case of D-GTMI, I was told the gate was too hot, do not jump in system. So obviously I was getting a bit frustrated and then the topper came when someone in my corp gave me a little bit of shit for not getting in on any of the latest wars or roams. That just sort of sent me over the top.

But okay, I’m done whining now.

So I was asked one day, why am I still there then. Well….to be quite honest, I was in the process of moving my stuff back to empire. I’d gotten most of my larger ships, the battlecruisers, battleships, and iterons full of gear, in a station one jump from HED and managed to find (after moving all the larger ships) a wormhole path from our home base in Esoteria to a low sec system one jump from our high sec staging base. This allowed me to move all my cruisers and frigs out quickly.

So all I had left to do was wait for opportune moments to get my gear through HED. Everything was out of Eso except for one clone (no implants) and a T1 frig available for me to use when I decided to get that clone out. That of course was when the corp directors, and then other alliances, threw a wrench in my plans.

First, news was released from the higher ups in my corp that Silver Snake Enterprises was leaving Systematic Chaos alliance. It was something they’d been working on for some time as I understood it. And frankly, I was quite happy with this new direction. So I told myself, ya know what….how bout I just sit still for a bit and see how this goes. So that’s exactly what I did.

Soon enough, information was given regarding our new home and immediately a number of people put up the contracts for the logistics to move gear. This of course was when a particular new corp member who’d somehow gained more access rights then he should’ve had, accepted nearly all the contracts and ran off with it all. I can’t recall the exact amount he ran off with in assets, but in terms of our corp finances, it really wasn’t that much and I believe most of it has been replaced already. As is usually the case, this theft was in some ways good for the corporation as it also forced the directorship to reevaluate our security measures and it appears we have an even more secure and stronger logistics system now in place.

So anyways, given most of my ships were way up near HED-GP and the rest were in empire, I couldn’t help out much with the move itself. (Not that it mattered as the main moving ops were scheduled for….you guessed it, while I was at work still) Either way, the move was nearly finished when another small wrench was thrown in the gears.

War.

Stain Empire (SE) and Coven decided to reset Systematic Chaos (Sys-K). Here following is the chronology of events as I recall them from memory.

1. SE decides to reset IT Alliance either before they had time to reset SE as well, or just never told IT they were until after the fact. Point is, IT pilots were suddenly finding themselves under attack by pilots marked as blues.

2. IT of course was angered by this and immediately went to war with SE. As I understand it, IT were staging their attacks on SE space out of Sys-K stations though honestly not sure on that personally.

3. Coven, being a long time partner to SE, decided to step in as well, doing the same resets as SE.

4. Sys-K says we’re not getting involved. It seems, however, SE didn’t take to this well at all and thus reset Sys-K.

5. At first, it was not a huge deal but then SBU’s were dropped in Sys-K systems and all-out war commences.

6. For reasons I’m not entirely sure of, Atlas decided to get involved and reset SE/Coven.

7. Sys-K was returning from their operations in Providence, helping UK and Against All Authorities, -A-, in their fight against CVA when SE/Coven attacked. A few Luigueania Romania (nor sure I spelled that right) were in the Sys-K fleet, and being a part of the fleet helped in the fight. This didn’t sit well with SE/Coven, so they reset them as well.

8. Against All Authorities, -A-, have thus far chosen to stay neutral. Possibly to avoid having to fight two fronts, or possibly just not wanting to have to choose a side. Though if SE/Coven doesn’t stop bombing Sys-K and others at -A- jump bridges as they have been, then that may change.

In short, at least the way I see it and I’m just a grunt, SE/Coven may have bit off more than they can chew. Also, I don’t claim to have the best of memory and am too lazy to look through all the forum posts (I may or may not edit this later). So if my timing of events is a bit off, I apologize in advance.

Oh, and just so I don’t leave poor Bricks out, who pretty much have made themselves a decent little presence in the NPC Stain regions, they too are attacking SE/Coven….but then that’s not really anything new. And no, they are not aligned with Sys-K in any way, shape or form. They’re just doing what they’ve always done. Shoot everyone and smack talk local.

But anyways, to make clear one very important point in all of this, Silver Snake Enterprises (SS.E), my corporation, did not leave Sys-K due to the conflicts with SE/Coven. Our leaving was already in the works long before these wars broke out.

And as for me… Well, I’ve decided to stay with SS.E at least for a bit longer. With this move, I see the possibility of getting in more fleet action and thus find some more entertainment for the US folk within the corp. I do love nullsec and the large fleet ops, and I really just don’t want to leave. So perhaps with this move, things will be a bit different. I’m definitely willing to give it a chance and see. And hopefully once again find the motivation to write. I’ll keep y’all posted.