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?