The Right Corp

Finding a corp that suites you, one that you can feel completely at home with, isn’t easy. In Eve, there are so many different types of playstyles, so many different personalities and goals and other aspects, that can make choosing a corp quite difficult. When I left Silver Snake Enterprises, it was not that I didn’t like their way of playing, it was simply a timezone issue. They had some awesome FCs, held some very entertaining ops, and just in general were some really good people.

It was a difficult decision leaving them, especially after they left Systematic Chaos (Sys-K), which was in my opinion a very good and timely decision, and joined Against All Authorities (-A-). I had some high hopes that my only qualm with being in the corp would change…. but in the end, I just wasn’t seeing what I was looking for. Most of Sys-K and -A- were European players and thus my chance for running ops with everyone were almost non-existent since I’m in the US. If I wanted to rat, mine, build or do other general PVE stuff it was a great corp/alliance to be a part of. But that’s not what I wanted. I wanted PVP, and I prefer the company of others when doing so. It’s entirely frustrating and demoralizing when 95% of the planned ops take place prior to you even logging on.

So when my real life buddy/roommate joined the pilots of New Eden, I took that as an opportunity and persuasive push to leave them and head back to empire. I spent a short amount of time helping him get his feet wet until we met the corp known as Valor.

Again, they were a good corp but just a few things began to bug me. First, although they did have a somewhat active presense in Empire, their primary focus was their home system out in NPC nullsec and they were regularly pushing for people to make their way out there. At first this sounded like a good idea but I wasn’t willing to go until I at least knew my RL friend could effectively live out there. Now, I totally agree that a new player could, in theory, survive out there. But without the base skills to effectively tank NPC rats in order to make isk, it really becomes a tough place to grow and develop. On top of that, I was not so sure, at that time, whether or not I wanted to go back to life in nullsec. I guess you could say I wanted a vacation. Eventually yes, but not at present. Plus, I’m Gallante, and thus, my main focus is on armor tanking. Pretty much all of their ops were centered around shield tanking and..well…I’ve been down that road before of attempting to shield tank Gallante ships and really had no desire to do it again. (plus my shield tanking skills are crap and really don't want to spare the time right now to train them further)

So when my roommate threw in the towel (actually, he decided to go back to cartoon land, otherwise known as WoW….ugh…), I decided to leave the corp and strike out on my own once more.

About 2 weeks passed and that brings me to the here and now.

I’ve been actively watching the recruitment channel as well as the forums. There were a few names I wrote down as possibles but most of them had one or two details that I just wasn’t so sure about. So I kept looking. Then, the other day, when I saw one that peaked my interest. I joined their public channel on Friday and after speaking with a couple of their directors/recruiters for a bit, I really felt that they sounded like the corp I was looking for.

My requirements were/are:
-Large US presence……check
-Heavy industrial focus and capabilites…..check
-Low tax rate……check
-Desire and capability for lowsec/nullsec PVP…..check
-No qualms against pirate activities both in lowsec AND highsec…..check! (hell yeah to Hulkageddon 3!)
-Can handle my often times sarcastic humor….check (a lot of em are active duty military or vets which I completely relate to being a vet myself)
-Room to grow and develop even further….check

So with those desires fulfilled, I feel I might have found a good group of people to fly with and really look forward to seeing how this plays out. Maybe someday I'll decide to return to Nullsec and once again join the battlefront. However, for now, I feel I have found what should be suitable for my current interests.

Oh, and I didn't realize this till after I joined but it seems the corp is also the home of another fellow blogger, miningzen, and his blog K162space.

Drooling for Infinity

OMG!

Beware, non-Eve stuff below but seriously worth checking out I think.

So being a sci-fi nut, I'm always curious to watch the progress of other space MMOs. At this time, Eve pretty much has the run of the scene and for perfectly good reason. I mean, pretty much every other space MMO I've seen is just ugh in terms of graphics and gameplay. But that doesn't stop me from watching a couple hopefuls.

Today however, I came across a new one I hadn't seen before (dunno why...) and OMG it looks to have the potential of being just pure win. The video below is long but certainly worth watching.



Now if that got your attention, go check out the website!

It's apparently been in development for quite a long time now and doesn't look to be releasing any time soon but I think I'll be one happy gamer geek when it does!

Random Blatherings, Part..whateva...

So a little bit of an update upon my returning to the pod…

As any active follower of Eve knows, PI, or Planetary Interaction, is now in full swing. Although I took the time to train my industrial associate up to lvl 4 for pretty much all related skills, and am considering training my own skills up to help out creating higher end products, I have yet to jump on the bandwagon and actually set up my own PI installations.

Two reasons.

First, the land rush. With the introduction of PI and the possibility of having a semi-passive income stream, I envision a vast number of pilots in a mad rush to set up their multitudes of command centers, extractors and everything else. One thing I learned in watching the forums as well as playing with it a good deal on SiSi is that the location of the richest deposits on any given planet will shift once those deposits are mined out. I mean, I might be wrong about this but as of right now, that’s how I understand it. Keeping this in mind, I’ve chosen to wait it out a bit for the mad rush to be over and set up once things have quieted down and the deposits won’t be so shifty.

To me, PI is just like wormhole space and exploration in general. When Apocrypha came around, people went nuts training probing skills and making a mad rush for those unknown systems. The exploration career took a serious nose dive as well. (Which sucked cause I was already training at the time to get into it…) And now, as can be seen, the initial excitement of it has leveled off and things are flowing as normal as can be. I expect this will eventually happen with PI. Also, keeping that in mind, I’m not some sort of guru on market tracking. In fact, I suck at it quite frankly. But I’d imagine you can expect to see an enormous stream of products flooding the market soon. Because of that, sell and buy orders for said products will probably be excessively low until the initial flood calms. Personally, I think for the time being, the real money makers will be the people gobbling that stuff up to create the end products from the overabundance of low end materials.

Second, I am currently deep in Empire, a decent distance from any 0.0 system. I have no fear of operating, even solo, in a 0.0 NPC region and that is most likely where I will set up shop. Again, any person who has spent some time researching this knows what the reality is. Those planets in empire are immensely lacking in those new shineys. Just like moon mining, the richer deposits, the real money making deposits, are located in nullsec. So this is where I plan to go when I get around to setting up my own operation which I don’t want to move closer to until I have some other goals accomplished.

One objective is that I’ve currently have my industrial associate training a couple of long skills, Astrogeology V (to fly the exhumers) and Production Efficiency V. Together, that’s roughly 20 days till completion. So while those are training, I will be working on gaining enough standings to run level 4 missions for Duvolle Laboratories and will then have my associate piggyback to gain his own standings. That way, he’ll be able to access the high level R&D agents they offer. And once that task is complete, THEN I will probably move towards setting up my own PI operations.

As a further update on skill progression… My associate, after only like 8 months, is progressing quite well as a general industrialist. Only 10 days to fly a well fit exhumer, another 10 days to efficiently produce all manner of T1 products, and currently has a rather well balanced level of trading skills. Obviously, in training for all 3 areas of industry, he isn’t any sort of specialists and isn’t HIGHLY skilled in any particular area, but generalization is what I was aiming for (thank god though for neural remaps). In a few years I’m sure he’ll be one hell of a great industrialist. In fact, I know he’ll be an awesome industrialist in just about a year and a half. For now though, he’s almost to the point of where I want him to be to put him into full operational capacity. Ships he can fly include the Amarr freighter, Providence, the industrial command ship, Orca, and is really only a few days away from being able to pilot exhumers as well as the Amarr jump freighter, the Ark. (Although with a price tag of over 4 billion, I don’t expect to actually be flying one any time soon. It’s just nice to have that option for whatever corp I eventually join.)

For myself, I’m currently deviated to finish up a bit of racial cross training, but for the most part I am focused on training to fly and properly fit a Moros, the Gallante dreadnought and soon after that will the Thanatos, the Gallante carrier. At the time of writing this, I don’t have my skill plan in front of me but I believe all I have left for the long skills to train is Advanced Spaceship Command V with the other two long ones, Battleship V and Advanced Weapon Upgrades V now completed.

So that’s life in a nutshell. Now….back to the grind. (and insert mild grumbling here….)

Shame On Me

So for anyone reading my writings, I’m sure it’s been rather evident I haven’t written anything in quite some time. In fact, I guess it has been noticed when a fellow blogger called me out on it yesterday in the eve-bloggers channel, though I didn’t notice his comment given I was afk at the moment. Apologies Black Claw! Frankly, the reason for that is I took yet another random break away from life in the pod to pursue other interests. But…who can stay away forever from the addictive lifestyle that New Eden offers?

So in returning, I made a few changes to my status.

First, I left the corp that had so graciously kept me on their roster even during my time of absence. Once again, it’s nothing personal against any of them, but I think I’ve had a fair amount of time to evaluate my involvement with them and have come to the conclusion that I just don’t feel they aptly suite my current play style in returning to Eve. I’m a Gallante, with a heavy focus in my armor tanking skills and although I have the skills trained up well enough to use T2 shield modules, I lack in many other shield tanking support skills. Something I think people tend to overlook is that just because you can use T2 modules for shield tanking, there are a few other skills that increase your shield’s resistances. In armor, its things like the thermic, EM, kinetic, and explosive armor compensation skills. For shields, I can’t remember right off hand but I believe it’s the same sort. I intend to train these shield skills eventually, as obviously even when armor tanking, having just that little bit extra HP in the shields could always mean the difference between you or your enemy popping first. However, I have some other things I’m currently focused on.

Why do I mention this? Well their group focuses heavily on shield tanking and is the fit of choice for their roaming gangs. It is in fact very heavily impressed upon their membership to train shield tanking skills. That’s fine and dandy for them, but I just don’t feel like spending much time on those skills myself right now. Second of all, they are based in deep NPC nullsec. Although they do have a fair bit of presence in Empire as well, their focus is out there and getting their younger pilots skilled enough to move out there. I’m quite experienced with nullsec life now, so for me it’d be fine, but I made the decision to hang tight in empire while I get my associate trained up.

At the same time, it’d be nice to focus on establishing some standings with an R&D agent so he can eventually do T2 research. The easiest and fastest way to accomplish this is to use my already positive standings with the Federation and build up a good standing with perhaps Duvolle Laboratories, a member corp of the Gallante Federation, and then have my associate piggyback on my missions to get his standings up as well. If I come across a corp that already has great standings in the Gallante Federation, then I might consider joining up with them. The corp I was a part of however, I had to start from the bottom up with Kaalioka (sp?), a Caldari corporation, since my standings with the Caldari are…well…less than desirable. If there is a neutral corp out there with R&D agents, I’d be interested to know and would be willing to start from the bottom with them so as not to endanger my trading by getting banned from some faction’s space. Although something also tells me I need to get a fix on what I intend to have my associate researching. I think I might have heard somewhere that different R&D agents offer different goods for different research? I dunno…I’ll have to do some more digging.

So that’s where I’m at. Don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly not giving up on my lust for blood. Quite the contrary. I packed up all of our belongings, mine and my associates, and have already made the move to Gallante space. The system I’ve settled in, where the agent I’ll be working with for some time is located, is only a couple jumps from a fairly active lowsec constellation. So hopefully you’ll be hearing a lot more stories soon of some devious encounters. I mean, trust me when I say, I really need to build up my killboard! I took a glance at it the other day and I gotta admit, it looks no better than a full-time carebear’s killboard! This just stinks of wrong! What good is all this time spent training combat skills if I never seem to use em? Just to run missions or go ratting? Blah! I could have my associate trained up enough to do that nearly as well in perhaps a couple months! No, I have those skills trained to fight other pod pilots and that’s what I intend to do.

So with that in mind, I’ve thought a lot about becoming a full time pirate. I certainly won’t deny I’m already guilty of my own fair share of evil deeds. I mean, I’ve acquired some belongings in the past, or whatever I need, via the more devious methods… Small example, I needed salvage the other day to build some rigs for a couple of ships. Run a mission and salvage it myself? Why do that when there’s just so much salvage lying around already?? Instead I just probed out other mission runners and salvaged their missions for them! It was, by the way, at this point where I discovered ninja salvaging is actually quite dull in my opinion. I mean, I think I salvaged and looted something like 6 or 7 mission sites, and not once did any of the mission runners attack me in retaliation. What the hell?? Seriously, the only time I ever came under fire was when I warped into a mission site, saw the first room cleared out and the missioner gone. So I salvaged and looted it all, then moved into the second room only to discover the mission runner had left without clearing the second room of its NPC occupants. Oops! And of course due to complacency and slow recognition that the missioner wasn’t present, I nearly lost my beloved Catalyst, The Vulture, on that one. Otherwise, if I was salvaging someone’s mission, majority of the time the missioner would just keep on truckin or run home and grab his own salvager to try and gather what he could before I could get to it. Ugh. Total bore. So apologies to those ninja salvagers out there but ugh…I dun get it…

And then of course there was the occasional can flip. Which again, brought no pvp juiciness. A few angry tears but no real excitement. Oh, and I might be mistaken or just unlucky in finding em, but it was actually slightly difficult finding jet can miners. I guess it might help if I went to the less crowded systems maybe…

But can flipping, ninja salvaging…or any sort of high sec piracy is just not my thing. I prefer the idea of engaging other ships whom I know are packing some heat and will be a test of my skills.

So in summary, I’m back once again! And with a lot of pent up aggression to burn off I might add!

Oh…and the roommate?


Need I say more?